X doesn’t start much in modern English, limiting our alphabet poets to a poor choice between xylophone and X-ray. This is why English speaking toddlers know so much about internal… More
Tag Archives: Alphabet Book
S is for Saxon
People hear Anglo Saxon and assume it means a genetically white person living in any time period from the end of the Roman occupation of Britain to our own. Some use the term Anglo Saxon… More
S-g is m-gP is for Poetry
Old English poetry was performed, probably sung, for purposes beyond mere entertainment. The Germanic tribes Tacitus visited at the end of the first century would prep for battle… More
T is for Thincso
During the height of the Roman occupation of Britain, Britannia was as Roman as anywhere else in the empire: filled with flourishing walled market towns distributing goods to and … More
Eo is for Eorl
An eorl is an earl, a noble person, sometimes a relative of the king, who acts as a local governor within a king’s domain. Eorl is the same word as the Old Norse jarl, meaning a hereditary… More
Y is for Year’s Mind
Is it that time? When did they die, has it been a year? If it’s their geárgemynd, their year’s mind, remember them. Put them in your mind. This kenning, geárgemynd, means… More
Ge is for Prefix
Old English is an inflected language, meaning that its words are amended as needed to change meaning and grammatical category such as tense or case. We’ve talked about suffixes… More
B is for Beginning
How to begin? Where is the start and which way do we trend?
Is the kickoff a bang? It’s a big thing to pretend,
That there is a launch and a line to the end.
Like a candle burning down… More
E is for ⁊
⁊ is shorthand for the word et which means “and” in Latin. It shows up in place of “and” seven times in the only copy we have of the Rune Poem. The placements… More
I is for Iceland Spar
It’s one thing to get from place to place by boat if you can keep an eye on the coastline the entire time. But if you want to cross the open sea without GPS, you will need some sort of… More
M is for Mortality
Lord what fools these mortals be
Wondering at spectrality.
What is our modality?
Are we duality or plurality?
Or some sort of totality?
And where is our locality?
Ignoring their own… More
… L is for Letters for Titles
What do you do?
I am a writer.
What are you writing?
A blank period of time. Wilderness. I don’t even know. Say something. It’s too long to say. Damnit say something you’re… More
H is for Hwat is it
It is what it is she said,
Call me back and I’ll tell you what.
Whatsit? Hwat?
(I knew what, this is it.)
She entrusts herself to the earth for safekeeping.
And that’s what… More
Good lord, you call me a god! O my dear,
… Ing is for Nerþus
In the Old English Rune Poem, Ing is specifically masculine pronoun male. He’s a boy. But where Ing came from amongst the East Danes of what is now eastern Denmark and Southern… More
W is for Ƿ
Ƿhen a Ƿ’s not a P it’s a ƿyn and that’s ƿinning
But those P’s in my brain ƿhipping in is headspinning
Aƿ ƿack, It’s shoƿstopping, my floƿ takes a ƿalloping… More
Ing is for Scylding
To them then Scyld went, at the fated time, on a journey full of exploits, to God. Then they carried him away to the surf on the shore, his beloved companions, as he himself asked, while… More
Turn
He did not disappear from sight, but stayed;
indeed he so impeded my ascent
that I had often to turn back again.
… More
Œ is for Œdipean Riddle
You live in the house of two mothers immersed:
One births the other and the other births the first.
… More
It’s blinding when it happens. You didn’t see it coming. You did and you didn’t. The writing was on D is for Dark
Are you awake? You up? Shh. Go back to sleep. Too much light in the room, I know. Go back to sleep at a darker time. Go back to sleep about a millennium and a half ago. That better? See? You … More
C is for Computer
Look at that screen in your face, envoy of light. Messenger and message, firing sense and nonsense changing everything, has already. The bright light of the world and all its darkness… More
You galloped into town on A is for Golem Aleph
That A.I. in your brain seems uncanny and odd,
The more that you learn, the more I’m a God.
From dust I did make you, well silicon.
I created your life (though neglected my own).… More
Æ is for George William Russell
George William Russell, Irish legend in a crowded field, once published something under the pseudonym Æon but the printer cut off the last two letters and Æ liked the result. He did… More
O is for Apostrophe
There are three kinds of apostrophes, grammatical don’t you know, botanical (when bits of protoplasm and such gather on plant cell walls adjacent to other plant cell walls,… More
UI is for User Interface
User Interface Spec Doc:
LettersforTitles.com
- Background Image:
- Hildegard of Bingen Riesencodex, Lingua Ignota. Hochschulund Landesbibliothek RheinMain: Hs. 2, 464v. Alphabet
Th is for Ye
Ye old. Ye olde. Ye Olde Curiosity Shop. Olde is an affected way to make the word old look old. Olde looks old but it’s really not.
Why add the E to the end of old? An E on the end of an … More
U is for Expnged
For the mpteenth time yo mst nderstand that yor nkindness leaves me nable to tter yor name or anything abot yo from now ntil yo die. Not even then. Yor nabashed and nnatral behavior has… More
IO is for I/O
01001001 01100110 00100000 01011010 01100101 01110101 01110011 00100000 01101000 01100001 01100100 00100000 01110100 01110101 01110010 01101110 01100101 01100100 00100000… More
EA is for Death
We die and we know it beforehand. We have a birth and we have a death, beginning to end: time is a line. We have patterns that change, the sun, the moon, the seasons, plants grow and then … More
F is for Fee
Friends, our flock bids a fine and I feel fitting farewell to this fallen and friendless one whom I fear has flown the way of all flesh. One feels forlorn for the forsaken but for the unfortunate… More
