- Name
- hægl
- Meaning
- hail
- Transliteration
- h
- Sound
- /h/; [x] and [ç] (as in Scots loch) inside and at the end of words
- Unicode
U+16BBrunic letter haegl h
Line of descent
History
The h rune has two forms in England. Early inscriptions use the single crossbar of most elder inscriptions, ᚺ. The double-barred form ᚻ became the standard English rune; according to the survey in Wikipedia's "Anglo-Saxon runes", its first securely dated English example is on St Cuthbert's coffin of 698. In Scandinavia the rune went another way and became the star-shaped ᚼ of the Younger Futhark. The double-barred form is the one in the manuscript rune lists and in Hickes's rune poem; Dickins, following George Hempl, held that Hickes took his variant rune forms from another manuscript, Cotton Domitian A.ix.
The name hægl "hail" is the same word as Old Norse hagall. The English and Norwegian poems both call hail a kind of grain: "the whitest of grains" in English, "the coldest of grains" in Norwegian. This parallel is one of the strongest signs that the rune poems share a common source (see *hagalaz).
The rune stood for h and for the rough fricative that English h had after vowels, as in niht "night". On the Franks Casket it appears in ahof and hronæs, and in the Ruthwell poem in hweþræ.
In the rune poems
wealcaþ hit windes scura; weorþeþ hit to wætere syððan.
gusts of wind toss it about; afterwards it turns to water.
Original text from the public-domain editions named on each poem's page; translations are our own.
Where it is found
- St Cuthbert's coffin, Durham (698): earliest dated double-barred h in England
- Seax of Beagnoth, position 9
- Franks Casket, front panel: ahof, hronæs
On inscriptions described on this site
Sources
- Dickins (1915), pp. 14–15 and note to v. 25.
- Wikipedia, 'Anglo-Saxon runes' (St Cuthbert's coffin), checked 2026-10.