Gelobistu in Got alamehtigen fadaer? Ec gelobo in Got alamechtigen fadaer.
Gelobistu in Crist Godes suno? Ec gelobo in Crist Godes suno.
Gelobistu in halogen Gast? Ec gelobo in halogen Gast.”
An isolated piece of early “Saxon” is found in one of the letters contained in vol. iii of the Epistolae of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, the volume containing Epistolae Meròwingici et Karolini Aevi (Berlin, 1892). The letter is No. 146 of the “letters of Boniface and Lull”. It is written by a poor and humble monk to a personage described as reverentissimus atque sanctissimus, who would appear to have had the reputation of not carrying out his purposes. The proverb looks like the eighth century; Brandl thinks that it is pre-Christian. The dialect is probably Northumbrian, varied by a West-Saxon or a German scribe.
“I hear of thee that thou proposest to make a journey: I exhort thee not to fail. Do what thou hast begun. Remember the Saxon saying
Oft daedlata dôme foreldit
Sigisitha gahuem suuyltit thi âna”.
That is, Often the tardy man (deed-late) loses glory, some victory; thus he dies solitary.
The suggested date of the letter is A.D. 757-786.
Mention was made on [page 57] of the inscriptions which exist on the great shaft of a cross in the churchyard of Bewcastle in Cumberland. These inscriptions are the earliest extant pieces of English prose. They give the names of the King of Mercia, Wulfhere, his queen and her sister, with the date “first year of Ecgfrith King of this realm”, that is, A.D. 670. We have another inscription dated in Ecgfrith’s reign, that, namely, on the dedication stone of the basilica of St. Paul at Jarrow, “in the 15th year of King Ecgfrith and the fourth year of Abbat Ceolfrid”, so that the manner of dating the Bewcastle cross was that usual at the time; the Jarrow inscription is in Latin[282]. [Plate XI] shows a facsimile of all except the two top lines (which were beyond my reach) of the main inscription on the Bewcastle cross, a copy of which is given in . The runes on Plate XI begin with the gar of Wothgar, the second of the three persons who “set up this slender token of victory in memory of Alchfrith once King and son of Oswy”, the half-brother of King Ecgfrith; mention has been made of him on [page 9].