Hwæt!

A corner of one of my magnet boards. I do like the shiny metal goose that I found at Caerlaverock Wetland Centre when we were there a few weeks ago. But the one I'm going to explain is Hwæt!

I got this at the British Library Exhibition of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. Hwæt is the first word of the long Old English poem Beowulf, which we are reading on my course at the moment. The word has been translated in many different ways - Lo! Behold! Listen! Seamus Heaney, whose translation I like best, uses the word 'So'. It's an exclamation/ a call to attention - Stop what you are doing and listen, as I have a story to tell you. 

You might notice that I have used w instead of the strange p-looking sign. I mentioned runes a few days ago and said that the rune alphabet was eventually replaced by the Latin alphabet that we use today. Some runes stayed in use, even after most other runes had been forgotten. The p-looking one (wynn) is an example. It was used to represent the sound that we now write as w. Eventually it was replaced with uu, which was then simplified to w, which explains why w is called 'double-u'. Now you always wanted to know that didn't you!!