The Anglo-Saxon Runic Poem.
The Anglo-Saxon Runic Poem is taken from the Cottonian MS. Otho B x, which perished in the fire of 1731. It had, however, been printed by Hickes in his Linguarum Veterum Septentrionalium Thesaurus, I. 135 (London, 1705), from which the present text is derived. It consists of short stanzas, 29 in all, of two to five lines each, at the beginning of which stand the Runic characters described, preceded by their equivalents in ordinary script and followed by their names. It has been suggested, however, that in Otho B x, as in the Norwegian poems, the Runic characters alone were found, the names being added from some other MSS. At any rate Hempl, Mod. Phil. I. 135 ff., has shown that the variant runes, etc., were taken from Domitian A ix, and some such theory is needed to account for the frequent discrepancy between the stanzas and the names which they describe. This may be due in part to the lateness of the MS., which from linguistic criteria can scarcely have been earlier than the eleventh century, e.g. v. 37, underwreþyd for -od (-ed), and vv. 32, 91, ðon, ðonn for ðonne. The poem must, however, be far earlier, pre-Alfredian at least (with traces perhaps of an original from which the Scandinavian poems are likewise derived); for there is not a single occurrence of the definite article, ðone in v. 70 being demonstrative. The versification is moreover quite correct. Cf. Brandl, Grundriss der germanischen Philologie2, ii. 964.
The Norwegian Runic Poem.
The Norwegian Runic poem was first printed (in Runic characters) by Olaus Wormius, Danica Literatura Antiquissima, p. 105 (Amsterodamiæ, 1636), from a law MS. in
litteras solutorias, de qualibus fabulae ferunt, concealed about his person. These litterae solutoriae are doubtless to be compared with Hávamál, CL:
þat kannk et fiórþaef mér fyrþar bera
bọnd at boglimum
Svá ek gelat ek ganga má
sprettr af fọtum fjọturr
en af họndum haft.
