There is evidence from an Essex charter that this was already lost in 692 or 693 (uuidmundesfelt)[[248]]. From this date on, examples without the u are forthcoming in increasing number[[249]]. One certain example only has been claimed for the preservation of u. In the runic inscription on the "Franks casket" flodu is found for flod. But the spelling of the Franks casket is erratic: for example giuþeasu is also found for giuþeas, "the Jews." Now u here is impossible[[250]], and we must conclude perhaps that the inscriber of the runes intended to write giuþea su[mæ][[250]] or giuþea su[na][[251]], "some of the Jews," "the sons of the Jews," and that having reached the end of his line at u, he neglected to complete the word: or else perhaps that he wrote giuþeas and having some additional space added a u at the end of his line, just for fun. Whichever explanation we
adopt, it will apply to flodu, which equally comes at the end of a line, and the u of which may equally have been part of some following word which was never completed[[252]].
Other linguistic data of the Franks casket would lead us to place it somewhere in the first half of the eighth century, and we should hardly expect to find u preserved as late as this[[253]]. For we have seen that by 693 the u was already lost after a subordinate accent in the Essex charter. Yet it is arguable that the u was retained later after a long accented syllable (flódu) than after a subordinate accent (uuídmùndesfèlt); and, besides, the casket is Northumbrian, and the sound changes need not have been simultaneous all over the country.
We cannot but feel that the evidence is pitifully scanty. All we can say is that perhaps the flodu of the Franks casket shows that u was still preserved after a fully accented syllable as late as 700. But the u in flodu may be a deliberate archaism on the part of the writer, may be a local dialectal survival, may be a mere miswriting.
B. The preservation of h between consonant and vowel.
Here there is one clear example which we can date: the archaic spelling of the proper name Welhisc. Signum manus uelhisci occurs in a Kentish charter of 679[[254]]. The same charter shows h already lost between vowels: uuestan ae (ae dative of ēa, "river," cf. Gothic ahwa).
Not much can be argued from the proper name Welhisc, as to the current pronunciation in Kent in 679, for an old man may well have continued to spell his name as it was spelt when he was a child, even though the current pronunciation had changed[[255]]. But we have further evidence in the glosses, which show h sometimes preserved and sometimes not. These glosses are mechanical copies of an original which was presumably compiled between 680 and 720. We are therefore justified in arguing that at that date h was still preserved, at any rate occasionally.
Of "Morsbach's test" we can then say that it establishes something of an argument that Beowulf was composed after the date when final u after a long syllable, or h between consonant and vowel, were lost, and that this date was probably within a generation or so of the year 700 A.D. But there are too many uncertain contingencies involved to make the test at all a conclusive one.
Morsbach's Zur Datierung des Beowulf-epos will be found in the Göttingen Nachrichten, 1906, pp. 252-77. These tests have been worked out for the whole body of Old English poetry in the Chronologische Studien of Carl Richter, Halle, 1910.