engraved by Olaus Wormius, in his Fasti Danicid, is hexagonal, and has an intermixture of Runic letters. He gives another, flat but divided into six columns, besides other varieties. A similar one, but ruder, was found in a castle in Bretagne, with two sides in six divisionsf. Dr. Plot has published an engraving of one of these Clog almanacks. This is republished by Fosbrooke, in his Encyclopedia of Antiquities, and again by Hone in a frontispiece to his Every Day Bookh. Another is given by Gough in his edition of Camden's Britanniai. There are still (1850) preserved in the Ashmolean Museum, at Oxford, a large one of English workmanship, three small square ones and ten small flat ones from Denmarkk. There are also two in the Cheetham library at Manchester. symbols given in the following calendar are facsimiles from one which is preserved in the Bodleian library, and we here give engravings of the two English specimens from the Bodleian and the Ashmolean Museum. The These Clog Almanacks are also called RUNIC d ii. c. 2. p. 87. e c. 3. p. 90. f Plot's Natural History of Staffordshire, folio, Oxford, 1686, p. 418-420. g 1825. 4to. vol. i. p. 221. h vol. ii. 8vo. 1827. i 1798, folio, vol. ii. p. 380. * The words of the original entry in the Catalogue of the Ashmolean Museum are as follows:-Anno 1683. Joannes Hensig Sueco-Stolmensis (dedit) tabulam Antiquitatum Runicarum, a tria Kalendaria e ligno Runica, Agricolis passim in Borealioribus Sueciæ et Laponiæ partibus etiamnum usitata; &c. in patriam rediens grato animo reliquit. CALENDARS, and apparently with reason, as some of them appear to have Runic characters upon them, although those which we have preserved are of much later date than the period when their characters were in general use, being probably not earlier than the time of Queen Elizabeth. These Runic characters were however continued in use for particular purposes almost to our own day; they are said to have been used as ciphers in the thirty years' war in Germany. The original meaning of the word runic is secret, and Mr. Kemble has observed with his usual sagacity, that probably at all times the knowledge of these letters and their powers were confined to certain classes only of the people. History and tradition assure us that they were known to that family which furnished the Teutonic tribes with priests and kings, and to both old and young among the women, the sacred sex. Yet to many even of these, and to all but these, they were in themselves mysterious and awful symbols; and hence the name given to them, viz., run-stafas, mysterious staves1. In times when there was neither pen, ink, nor parchment, the bark of trees and smooth surfaces of wood or soft stone, were the usual depositories of these symbols: hence the word writan, now to write, but whose primary signification was to cut or carvem. Hence also stafas, the smooth sticks on 1 Beôw, 1. 3388. Archæologia, vol. xxviii. p. 329. m Beow, 1. 5406. which they were cut; and hence even the word bôc, book, which recals the beechen tablets on which they were inscribed. The earliest runes, then, were cut in surfaces of stone and wood. The former case would comprise inscriptions on rocks, grave-stones, and weapons; the latter would be confined to the wooden tablets or sticks used in casting lots and divination". n Ib., p. 330. |