-
Another Sutton-Hoo?
Archaeologists in Prittlewell, Southend, Essex, England have found a seventh century Anglo-Saxon royal tomb, complete with grave goods. The burial is being compared to the 1939 Sutton Hoo finds, though that included a ship as well as the king and grave-goods, so the comparison seems a bit excessive. You can see pictures of the grave-goods here, including gold and glass ware. All that remains are the grave-goods, which makes identification a bit difficult, but it’s still quite a find.
-
I want my Yogh
There is a glyph in Middle English called the yogh.You can see a manuscript version of a yogh here. The yogh was used almost exclusively for Middle English in England, but it lingered through the eighteenth century in Scotland. The yogh, along with the thorn, another of the four special medieval English characters, is used in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Sir Orfeo, two core texts for my dissertation. Unfortunately, there is no yogh in Unicode. There should be; the other Medieval English characters are represented in Unicode. I’m not sure why there isn’t yogh, but there’s a very good discussion of why there should be a yogh…
-
Tolkien on Beowulf
There’s a SlashDot story that links to a story about the discovery by Professor Michael Drout (yes, he of the Wormtalk blog) having brought to light an unpublished and hitherto unknown translation of Beowulf by Tolkien. Drout has already edited and published Beowulf and the Critics. I can see, from the SlashDot story and other things I’ve seen on and off line about Tolkien and Lord of the Rings, in part because of the films, that I need to write an FAQ about Tolkien and languages, particularly the Celtic ones. Give me a couple of days, and I will.
