Older England: Illustrated by the Anglo-Saxon Antiquities in the British Museum in a Course of Six Lectures ..., Volume 2Witting, 1884 - 226 pages |
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adopted alewife Alfred alphabet ancestors ancient Anglo Anglo-Saxon Anglo-Saxon Chronicle antiquaries Aurochs Baldur Beowulf björk bōt Britain British Museum Britons Cadmon called carved casket century chess Christian classic coin comb deity derived descended Divine drinking early English earth Edda expression external fathers figure forefathers Frithioff Futhork German gods gold grand Greek hand heaven Hengest horn Icelandic idea king language Latin Layamon Lecture letter London means ment mind modern monster myth nation Norman Norse Northumbria Odin Old Norse Older England original pagan peorth perpendicular picture poem pound present principal stroke race referred remains remote represented rings Roman Rome Runes Runic Russia Saxon Scandinavian sceat Scyld shillings sound stone Swedish sword Tacitus Taplow teachings Teutonic thing thorn thought translated truth Valhalla vessel vice Völuspá vowel warrior whale wine wonderful wood word
Popular passages
Page 197 - ... pastime, though a hazardous one, is the pleasure of the spectators. What is extraordinary, they play at dice, when sober, as a serious business: and that with such a desperate venture of gain or loss, that, when everything else is gone, they set their liberties and persons on the last throw. The loser goes into voluntary servitude; and, though the youngest and strongest, patiently suffers himself to be bound and sold.
Page 93 - A. 457. — This year Hengest and ^Esc his son fought against the Britons at the place which is called Crecgauford, and there slew four thousand men ; and the Britons then forsook Kent, and in great terror fled to London.
Page 129 - Moreover, he promised, as far as his infirmity and his means would allow, to give up to God the half of his services, bodily and mental, by night and by day, voluntarily, and with all his might...
Page 54 - The chariot, with its curtain, and, if we may believe it, the goddess herself, then undergo ablution in a secret lake. This office is performed by slaves, whom the same lake instantly swallows up. Hence proceeds a mysterious horror ; and a holy ignorance of what that can be, which is beheld only by those who are about to perish.
Page 130 - ... of the tents, they then unavoidably burned out and finished their course before the appointed time; the king therefore considered by what means he might shut out the wind, and so by a useful and cunning invention, he ordered a lantern to be beautifully constructed of wood and white ox-horn, which, when skilfully planed till it is thin, is no less transparent than a vessel of glass.
Page 97 - Take thin plates of gold and silver, rub them in a mortar with Greek salt or nitre till it disappears. Pour on water and repeat it. Then add salt, and so wash it. When the gold remains even, add a moderate portion of the flowers of copper and bullock's gall ; rub them together, and write and burnish the letters.
Page 130 - God's elect, which always accompanied him wherever he went; but sometimes when they would not continue burning a whole day and night, till the same hour that they were lighted the preceding evening, from the violence of the wind, which blew day and night without intermission through the doors and windows of the churches, the fissures of the divisions, the plankings...
Page 130 - ... and he caused it to be weighed in such a manner that when there was so much of it in the scales, as would equal the weight of seventy-two pence,* he caused the chaplains to make six candles thereof, each of equal length, so that each candle might have twelve divisions! marked longitudinally upon it. By this plan, therefore, those six candles burned for twenty-four hours, a night and day, without fail...
Page 194 - And if the moneyer be guilty, let the hand be struck off with which he wrought that offense, and be set up on the money-smithy : but if it be an accusation, and he is willing to clear himself; then let him go to the hot-iron, and clear the hand therewith with which he is charged that fraud to have wrought. And if at the ordeal he should be guilty, let the like be...
Page 167 - Hours, and afterwards certain psalms, and several prayers, contained in a certain book which he kept day and night in his bosom, as we ourselves have seen, and carried about with him to assist his prayers, amid all the bustle and business of this present life. But, sad to say ! he could not gratify his most ardent wish to learn the liberal arts, because, as he said, there were no good readers at that time in all the kingdom of the West Saxons.