The Saxons in England, Volume 1 (of 2) / A history of the English commonwealth till the period of the Norman conquest

by John Mitchell Kemble

[748]. Beów. l. 5624.

[749]. Cod. Vercel. Anal. l. 3121.

[750]. Cod. Exon. p. 355.

[751]. Beów. l. 1386.

[752]. Cod. Exon. p. 183.

[753]. Ibid. p. 417.

[754]. I am almost inclined to think the words searorúna gespon, the web of various runes, merely a periphrasis for wyrd, taken in the abstract sense of event. Cod. Ex. p. 347.

[755]. “As tems ou Berte filait,” i. e. in a period anterior to the memory of man: in the days of heathendom, of the goddess Bertha, not the queen.

[756]. Wælcyrige is derived from Wæl the slain and ceósan to choose.

[757]. I do not know whether the expression Hine Wyrd gecéas, can be found in Saxon poetry; but ceósan is a very common word in phrases denoting death, though by Christian poets transferred to the doomed hero, from the god or goddess: ǽr ðon forðcure, wintrum wæl reste. Cædm. p. 99. “Priusquam annis [i. e. vita] praetulerit mortiferam quietem.”