The New Sign ᛠ in the Baconsthorpe Inscription: A Rune and its Sound Value

Abstract

Found in 2009, the Baconsthorpe runic inscription confronts us with a new sign that was described and discussed by John Hines in Anglia 129 (2011), 281–296. As it occurs in a runic inscription, the new sign was initially automatically labelled as a rune, i.e. a grapheme representing a phoneme. With the exception of its runic environment, there are, however, no clear indications for categorizing this new sign as a rune. In this article I will make an attempt to show the difficulties involved in the process of proving that the new sign is in fact a rune. To this purpose, the different types of runes (e.g., single rune, transparent bindrune, obscured bind-rune) are analyzed and compared to the new sign (section 2.1). Although my transliteration (section 2.3) differs only slightly from the one by Hines (section 2.2), I parse the inscription differently (section 2.5). Theoretically, the new sign may be an ornament instead of a rune (section 2.4). I therefore initially ignored the new sign in my parsings and interpretations. The results were grammatically possible but improbable from a pragmatic point of view, suggesting that the new sign is not an ornament. If the new sign is, then, a rune, it should be possible to determine its sound value (section 4). Judging from its environment, the new rune must (a) be a monophthong and (b) a vowel that is not covered by the runes of the Old English rune-row. Such a vowel may have been brought about by Second Fronting: the new sign may represent /ɛ / and – since the Baconsthorpe inscription was probably written between 750–800 – may thus document the stage of development before the Vespasian Psalter Gloss (dated to the (mid-)9th century). – My analysis of the inscription is based on two autopsies in November 2010 and September 2011.