ᚸ gar

Line of descent

History

Gar "spear" is the hard-g partner of calc. In Old English, g before front vowels became the y-sound of geard "yard" or a palatal fricative, while elsewhere it stayed the stop of good. The old rune gyfu, an X, wrote all of these. Northumbrian carvers added gar for the hard sound: in its usual form, gyfu's X crossed by an upright, with further strokes added. It is transliterated ḡ.

Dickins noted that both calc and gar appear on the Ruthwell Cross "in the value of guttural c and g". Wikipedia's survey of English runes adds that gar probably also occurs on the Bewcastle Cross, the other great Northumbrian cross. Like calc, it is absent from the Seax of Beagnoth and from southern inscriptions. Dickins took this as a sign that both were Northumbrian developments.

The name is the ordinary Old English word for a spear, familiar from poetry (gar morgenceald "spear cold in the morning" in Beowulf). It begins with the sound the rune writes, as acrophony requires, which suggests the name was chosen at the same time as the rune was created. Hickes printed gar last, below the poem, with cweorð, calc and stan, so it ends the 33-rune row that modern handbooks give.

Where it is found

• Ruthwell Cross: gar for hard g (Dickins 1915)
• Bewcastle Cross: probably (Wikipedia, after Page)
• Hickes (1705), printing of Cotton Otho B.x: rune at the foot of the poem

Sources

• Dickins (1915), p. 22, note to v. 91; p. 15 note to v. 16.
• Wikipedia, 'Anglo-Saxon runes', checked 2026-10.