This fourth supplement brings up to date my Hand-List of Anglo-Saxon Non-Runic Inscriptions (Cambridge, 1971), and the three supplements which appeared in Anglo-Saxon England 11 (1983), 21 (1992) and 33 (2004). This fourth supplement contains twenty-two entries and includes all the Anglo-Saxon non-runic inscriptions that have come to my notice between 2004 and 2017. Wherever possible I have personally examined all the existing inscriptions contained in this supplement. For ease of reference, this supplement follows the same pattern as before: the Entries appear first, with the same layout as before, followed by the Bibliography and Addenda.

In a recent paper Michel Margue and Jean Schroeder have drawn a vivid picture of the intellectual life of the diocese of Trier in the time of Archbishop Egbert (977-93). They portray it as ‘a colourful and busy world of small and greater personalities, who give the impression of being constantly under way: budding students, renowned teachers, talented copyists or recognised authors who do not cease moving from place to place for the purpose of education and knowledge and who do not keep to the rule of stabilitas loci’. One of the greater personalities to whom Margue and Schroeder have drawn attention is an Englishman, Abbot Leofsige of Mettlach (c. 988-c. 993).

The Benedictine abbey at Malmesbury in Wiltshire was one of that select group of English houses which could trace its history back to the golden age epitomized and chronicled by Bede. To Bede's older contemporary Aldhelm (ob. c. 709) belongs most of the credit for setting the recently founded community on its feet and for making it a by-word throughout the British Isles for the pursuit of divine and secular learning.2 During his abbacy Malmesbury eclipsed the reputations of the Irish schools and of Hadrian's Canterbury. At only one other point in its long history did the abbey attain a comparable reputation for learning, when it housed the monk William (c. 1095–1143), whose career, intellectual interests and writings were consciously modelled upon the examples of Bede and Aldhelm.

A brief history of the tradition of birds as motifs on textiles is followed by a catalogue of the birds in the Bayeux Tapestry and a discussion of their function. The possible significance of identifiable birds (cocks, doves, peacocks, storks), the birds of Aesop's fables and the creatures in the border ‘bird scaring scene’ is analysed. The individuality, in colouring and position, of all the border birds is demonstrated and the apparent interest which many of them take in the action of the main register is highlighted to suggest that the border birds present a commentary on, and audience-participation in, the narrative.

In a series of sketches by Elizabeth Gaskell, which appeared in Charles Dickens's weekly periodical Household Words between 1851 and 1853, the small Cheshire town of Knutsford was immortalized under the name Cranford. Mrs Gaskell, who had spent most of her childhood in Knutsford, knew the town and its inhabitants intimately and she returned to it as the setting for some of her later works, in which she called it ‘Eccleston’, ‘Dunscombe’ and ‘Hollingford’. Each of these four fictional names is convincing enough as the name of a small provincial town. Three of the names, indeed, are borne by settlements elsewhere in England, and the fourth, ‘Hollingford’, is close enough in form to the genuine names Hollington and Hollingworth to be acceptable. On her marriage, Elizabeth Gaskell had moved from Knutsford to Manchester and she exploited this commercial city, too, as the setting for some of her works. Her first published novel, Mary Barton (1848), actually bore the subtitle ‘A Tale of Manchester Life’, but in later works the city appears under the fictional names ‘Drumble’ and ‘Milton’. Milton is a name which occurs quite frequently in England, although never as the name of a large city. Drumble is an artificial name – presumably a portmanteau word containing the words drear and rumble, which antedates Lewis Carroll's first exploitation of this device in a handwritten version of the poem Jabberwocky from 1855. Elizabeth Gaskell is not the only author to have coined a fictional name for Manchester in the course of time. Charles Dickens referred to it as ‘Coketown’ in Hard Times (1854), for example, and Louis Golding as ‘Doomington’ in Magnolia Street (1931).

This article re-examines the use of place-names in the early prose Lives of Cuthbert and provides an additional explanation for Bede's removal of many of the place-names that greatly localize the events in the anonymous Life. I argue that the author of the anonymous Life was following a common Irish hagiographic practice of using place-names as propaganda to create a network of churches, monasteries, or lands under the authority of the paruchia of a saint's leading church. Bede's deliberate choice to remove certain place-names that were outside Lindisfarne's diocese, or even its immediate sphere of influence, suggests that he was aware of this agenda and intentionally revised these details in order to set right the Northumbrian ecclesiastical landscape.

Of the three legends of virgin spouses in Ælfric's Lives of Saints, Julian and Basilissa would have been the least familiar to an Anglo-Saxon audience. Yet it is the most useful among the stories of chaste marriage and martyrdom for demonstrating how Ælfric uses them to emphasize the importance of constancy in the Christian faith. Altering verbally and structurally his Latin source, he rewrites Julian and Basilissa to model the asceticism and orthodoxy he feels are lacking among his flock. As odd a choice as the legend may seem, his selection suits his aim of rekindling the faith of the English laity with the Lives and is consistent with the larger goals of his programme of pastoral care.

The metrical grammar of Beo 665a cwen to gebeddan is, for that poem, strikingly irregular: the verse is of Sievers Type A with a preposition and prefix in the first dip and yet displays single - rather than the expected double - alliteration. The Metres of Boethius, a text whose metrical grammar (unlike that of Beowulf) generates a number of similar examples of this licence, allows a better understanding of the structure and rhetoric of the Beowulf verse. In particular, these analogous exceptions show that the absence of the expected alliteration accentuates the semantic contrast of the two stressed elements of the verse.

This paper aims to demystify the concept of bookland, and to suggest that it matters less for understanding what was distinctive about early England than historians have often supposed. The first part emphasises diplomas as beneficiary-led symbols of culture and status rather than instruments of royal policy. As the primary monastic context faded during the ninth century, so did the distinctive aspects of bookland. By c. 950, bōcland could translate fundus or simply terra, and thereafter diplomas had little effective function beyond signalling the status of landowner and thegn: bookland was absorbed into straightforward allodial possession. In the second part, it is argued that large areas of eastern England never had lay bookland tenure at all, though there was a limited extension of diploma use into parts of the east midlands after c. 940. Rather than a homogeneous Anglo-Saxon charter tradition, we should envisage distinct traditions in the south and west reflecting Italian, Frankish and Brittonic influences. Eastern England, by contrast, faced the North Sea, Scandinavia and the Low Countries: like other English regions it had a high monastic culture during c. 670–800, and that could have included diplomas, but its main documentary tradition is likely to have been more vernacular and decentralized.

The fragment in question consists of the remains of a bifolium, now a complete single leaf with an irregular stub carrying the ends of three lines of script at its head. The text is Judges v.5–6, vi.6 and x.7 to xi.26. It is undecorated, but written in a highly accomplished Insular cursive minuscule of Phase ii. The fragment, hitherto unpublished, is of importance as the relict of what may have been a bible written in Southumbria during the first half of the ninth century and which on stylistic grounds evidently belongs to the so-called ‘Canterbury’ or ‘Tiberius’ group of manuscripts. This group has played a prominent and often controversial role in the evaluation of the ninth century and its contribution to the history of Anglo-Saxon manuscript production.

Oxford, Bodleian Library, Tanner 10 is the oldest extant copy of the Old English translation of Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum. The volume dates from the early tenth century. This in itself adds significantly to its interest, for manuscripts produced in England during the sixty or so years from s. ix2–x1 are scarce. It is ornamented with a remarkable set of decorated initials which are of considerable importance for understanding the characteristics and development of manuscript art during this period, and this is our primary concern here. The text of Tanner 10 was edited at the end of the last century, its codicology and palaeography have recently been reviewed, and a complete facsimile edition is currently being prepared: an examination of its extensive decoration is long overdue. To put this art-work in its context, before turning to the manuscript itself, it will be helpful first to review briefly the main classes of decorated initials which appear in late Anglo-Saxon books as a whole, and then to examine the early history of the particular type that was used in the Tanner Bede.

Almost exactly forty years ago, Evert Barger published his survey entitled ‘The Present Position of Studies in English Field Systems’. It is a measure both of his percipience and of an underlying stasis in this field of scholarly enquiry that, even after the academic dynamism which has characterized agrarian studies so much in the two most recent decades, Barger's paper is still, if suitably edited rather than completely recast, by no means entirely superseded. Indeed, in some respects large parts of the evidence, the research and the published sources on which he drew for his synthesis are not only as relevant today as they were in 1938 but could even be said to be more fashionable now.

Three eleventh-century English coin types bear legends on the reverse field which are customarily interpreted as forms of the Latin word pax, ‘peace’. The earliest is the Pacx type of Edward the Confessor, which takes its name from the letters p-a-c-x distributed in the four angles of a cross (see fig. 2a); the second is the sole, Pax, type of Harold II, which has the legend pax disposed horizontally within an inner circle (see fig. 2b); and finally there is the Paxs type of William I, which has four annulets within the angles of a cross, each containing one letter of the legend paxs (see fig. 2c). The issue of a type conveying ‘peace’ could be, and has been, regarded as a political gesture arising from specific circumstances, but it is difficult for a historian to understand why such a gesture should have been made on the three occasions in the eleventh century indicated by numismatic chronology – at the beginning of the reigns of Edward and Harold, and again two decades after the accession of William.

Recent research has established beyond question that, in the study of medicine at least, Anglo-Saxon England was far from being ‘a backwater in which superstition flourished until the mainstream of more rational and advanced Salernitan practices flowed into the country in late medieval times’. On the contrary, Anglo-Saxon medicine was at least at the same level as that of contemporary European schools. In ninth-century England the medical works inherited by ‘post-classical Latin medical literature (which included translations and epitomes of Greek and Byzantine medical authorities)’ were not only well known, but served as the basis for original reworking and compilation, as the example of the Læceboc shows. More important, it was in pre-Conquest England that, for the first time in Europe, medical treatises were either compiled in or translated into a vernacular language rather than being composed in Latin or Greek. Ancient medicine made substantial use of drugs obtained from plants; and therefore, since the sources of Anglo-Saxon medical lore were in Latin (or in Greek: but invariably known through the medium of Latin), it is not surprising that most medicinal herbs used in the preparation of Old English prescriptions were not indigenous to England or even to continental Germany. And since such medicinal herbs were not indigenous to northern Europe, it is evident that, in using them, speakers of vernacular languages were obliged to create a vocabulary appropriate to denote them.

Received scholarly opinion regards Genesis A as an Old English versification of the Latin text of Genesis in Jerome's Vulgate revision of the bible. This view has prevailed in modern editions of the poem, which normally print a critical text of the Vulgate Genesis in their apparatus. The textual basis of Genesis A is perhaps ‘vulgate’ in character in so far as the poem renders Genesis readings that were commonly known in Anglo-Saxon England, but the identification of this base text with that of the Hieronymian Vulgate remains an untested hypothesis. Ten years ago A. N. Doane printed a list of readings in the Old English text which show affinity with the ancient versions of Genesis that emerged before the completion of Jerome's translation, readings associted with the Vetus Latina or Old Latin bible. Doane did not, however, challenge the long-standing belief that Genesis A follows a single, lost exemplar that contained in all essentials the text established by Jerome. The present study attempts to survey, without any preconceptions, all the details in the poem that might derive from Latin sources; its intention is to make a first step towards the recovery of the Latin textual basis of Genesis A.

Although the Ruthwell Cross has universally been regarded as one of the most outstanding achievements of early Northumbrian civilization, the meaning of its iconographic programme remains the subject of considerable debate. Central to most interpretations is the largest panel on the Cross, one depicting Christ and the beasts (see pl. Ia). The correct identification of this scene has long been regarded as crucial for achieving an understanding of the iconographic programme as a whole. While this scene must be accepted as the key to the programme, no entirely satisfactory explanation of its meaning has hitherto been offered. This study will draw attention to textual and visual evidence which provides a new basis for understanding this panel and its relationship to the remaining scenes.

It is my purpose in this article to discuss one aspect of land tenure in Anglo-Saxon England. For good reason there has been little enduring agreement among scholars on fundamental tenurial questions, and opinion on issues of interest to legal historians has tended to be cyclical. There are no contemporary manuals on land law, and as legal documents the primary sources are intractable and opaque. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that scholars have held and continue to hold divergent views about the essential incidents that attached to bocland and folcland, the two types of tenure that are usually taken to be comprehensive of all independent landholding in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms after the introduction of written title in the seventh century. At present the most popular explanations of these tenures derive in essence from the thesis set out by Sir Paul Vinogradoff nearly a hundred years ago. Vinogradoff argued that folcland was so called because it was subject to folcriht, the general communal law of the land, and that bocland was land freed by the royal act embodied in the diploma (OE boc) from the constraints and burdens which folcriht imposed. The diploma was thus a kind of private statute in favour of the grantee. The thesis has its difficulties, and few have accepted it without reservation, but alternative views have similarly failed to find wholehearted support.

This supplement brings up to date my Hand-List of Anglo-Saxon Non-Runic Inscriptions (Cambridge, 1971). It contains twenty-six entries, being all the Anglo-Saxon non-runic inscriptions which have come to my notice since the publication of the Hand-List. The entries are followed by the Bibliography. This gives in full the references quoted in abbreviated form throughout the supplement unless they have already appeared in the General Bibliography of the Hand-List. The Bibliography is followed by Addenda to the Hand-List which give additional information about several of the Hand-List inscriptions. A list of Corrigenda to the Hand-List follows and the supplement concludes with Addenda to the Bibliographies of the Hand-List entries, bringing them up to date.

The Metres of Boethius offer a unique opportunity to study the complex subject of Old English verse syntax. They enjoy this distinction because of the unusual way in which they were composed. The versifier did not work directly from the original Latin metra of Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy but from an Old English prose intermediary, freely translated from the Latin originals. King Alfred was the author of the prose translation and was probably also responsible for turning the parts of the prose corresponding to the Latin metra into Old English verse. Since a copy of the prose model survives, it affords us an opportunity to compare the two versions in order to judge the versifier's debt to the prose. He apparently followed it quite faithfully and without referring back to the Latin originals. In many verse passages one can find words and half-lines which are direct transcriptions from the prose. Consequently the Old English Metres are generally considered nothing more than prose expanded into verse, adding only ‘poetic’ embellishments (like repetition and variation) and obvious morals drawn from the passage. The fruit of the versifier's labours may be uninspired poetry, but the way that he rearranged the words of the prose offers a rare glimpse into the more elusive conventions of verse-making. Since the many similarities make the differences quite pronounced, the poetical shortcomings of the Metres may be a blessing. A mediocre versifier is more likely to compose mechanically and to imitate established patterns than a good poet, whose virtuosity often conceals the rudiments of his craft.

In lines 14b–15a of The Dream of the Rood the cross is said to be honoured by a garment, or garments (wædum geweorðode) and in a 21b–2a it is said to change (wendan) because of or along with or with respect to these garments. What they might be is a question which has racked many brains. The usual opinion at the present day is that they are some kind of cloth trappings. Cook, for instance, was reminded of a streamer which, he said, formed part of the labarum (but in so saying he was misled either by memory or by mistranslation, for the only cloth which the labarum comprised might, from its size and shape, more properly be called an apron). Ebert proposed silk cords or tassels. Others prefer the veil or pall with which the cross is shrouded on Good Friday, to be dramatically revealed on Easter Sunday. The weakness of all such explanations is that their proponents feel bound not to leave the spot without discovering an explanation: they scrupulously refrain, that is, from looking either backwards or forwards, with the result that, as the reference fails to explain itself, they are compelled to look outside the poem. They fail to take into account repeated references within the poem itself to coverings that, however unexpected and however diverse their materials, all agree in performing, to a greater or lesser degree, the principal office of a garment, that of enveloping the cross: in line 5b it is described as leohte bewunden, ‘suffused, or wrapped round, with light’ and in 16a, and again in 23b and 77, gold is said to ‘clothe’ it (gyrwan), the verb signifying, as it may, more than a sporadic embellishment. Nor is it to be overlooked that the first reference to the cross's wæde is in the immediate context of its glory: it is wuldres treow (14b) that is so clothed.