Page:Runic and heroic poems of the old Teutonic peoples.djvu/35

Rh T. (?) is a (guiding) star; well does it keep faith with princes; it is ever on its course over the mists of night and never fails.

B. (the poplar) bears no fruit; yet without seed it brings forth suckers, for it is generated from its leaves. Splendid are its branches and gloriously adorned its lofty crown which reaches to the skies.

E. (the horse) is a joy to princes in the presence of warriors, a steed in the pride of its hoofs, when rich men on horseback bandy words about it; and it is ever a source of comfort to the restless.

M. the joyous (man) is dear to his kinsmen; yet every man is doomed to fail his fellow, since the Lord by his decree will commit the vile carrion to the earth.

L. (the ocean) seems interminable to men, if they venture on the rolling bark and the waves of the sea terrify them and the courser of the deep heed not its bridle.

moreover no good description or illustration of the germination of poplars seems to have been published in England before that of Miss F. Woolward in 1907; of. Elwes and Henry, The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. . pp. 1770 ff. (Edinburgh, 1913).

The grey poplar (populus canescens), indigenous to England and Western Europe, is a large tree attaining 100 ft or more in height (lyfte getenge) and 15 ft in girth.

55. Eh, as the Salzburg Codex. Cf. Gothic aihwatundi, Lat. equus, Greek ; value E in the original alphabet and in AS.

In Scandinavian, however, the word became jór and the letter disappeared, E being represented by I. Later still a dotted I was introduced to differentiate between E and I.

56. Hickes ymb, emended to ymbe, metri gratia (Sievers, P.B.B., x. 519).

59. Man (Salzburg AS. mon, Goth, manna). Cf. p. 32, l. 1 (Icelandic poem), Maðr er manns gaman ok moldar auki.

Above the correct value m Hickes engraves d. deg., doubtless taken from Domit. A. Cf. v. 74, Dæg.

The Runic character for M is used fairly often in the Lindisfarne Gospels and the Rituale of Durham, once too in the preface to the Rushworth Gospela, FarM for Farman (e.g. Surtees Society, Stevenson, Rituale Ecelesiae Duntlmensis, 1840; Stevenson and Waring, The Lindisfarne and Rushworth Gospels, 4 vols., 1854-1865). It is found moreover in the Exeter Book, e.g. Ruin, v. 24, Mdreama, for mandreama.

63. Lagu, sea, cf. OS. lagu- in compounds, ON. lygr. (Salzburg Codex AS. lagu, Goth, laaz.)

The name meaning is found in the Runic passages of Cynewulf, Crist, v. 807, Elene, v. 1268, Fates of the Apostles,. v. 7.

66. ne gym[eð]. Hickes, negym, the last two letters being doubtless illegible in the.