Some runic stones. 17 



))Tlie biSU RI TJIHA is a puzzle to me; tlSURI «s a dat. s. ii. I can- 

 not accept; it must then be divided PISU. But what are we to do with 

 KT UIHA or RIUIHA (hitherto redd incorrectly UISR)?» '). Where Save 

 failed, I may well trip also. I therefore propose my ideas with great 

 diffidence. 



Ï>ISIT I take to be THIS, in the dat. or ac. sing. f. But t»ISU 

 is else (t*ESSU, t*ESSO, KHSA) dat. s. nent. Hitherto we have no ex- 

 ample of PISU as dat. or ac. sing. fem. to agree with RI (RIÏ^), which 

 is everywhere feminine^). In our oldest Scando-English monuments, how- 

 ever, we have very many surprising local variations and confusions in 

 the case-forms of this pronoun as of others, and fresh »variants)' are 

 found yearly. They will one day be carefully collected by a student of 

 facts^ not theories. Rydqvist (Sv. Spr. Lagar, II, 496) has only glanced 

 at a very few of them. I therefore think this »illegal» form to be no 

 real difticulty. 



RI I look upon as the word Rll> (RID, Icel. HRID, Old-Engl. HRID, 

 thne^ period, all fem.). Of old, phrases of time, when this term was 

 employed, were in tlie dat. or ac. with or without a preposition. t*ISU 

 RI would therefore be at t /tis time, tlien. It is a date. But it helps us 

 not. For we cannot say when the mystical HIULFIR (or GYLFIR) lived. 



') »SIULFIR tager jag for SIU-ULFIK, isl. S^-ULFK. Shitet !»ISU-KI-riHA 



är mig obegripligt; rISUKI sAsom dat. sing, neutr. kan jag ej tro på, utan bör väl 

 delas flSrï Men Inad skall man då göra med Kl UIHA eller UIUIHA (hittills 

 orätt läst: riSK)?» 



-) III or IMF is another instance, to the many already found on our runic 

 pieees as on our old veJlunis and in our local tails, old and new, of the very fre- 

 quent slurring of the P, from early times downwards. P'or a long list of runic »assi- 

 Hiilatious», »softenings», »vocalizations» and »elisions» of F see my Old-Northern Runic 

 Monuments, ^'ol. I, p. 39. I have since found others. — For examples from Swedish 

 codices see Rydqüist's »Svenska Språkets Lagar» II, 299: «î* = th can in certain situa- 

 tions dissolve into H, or disappear altogether», — — — »f can fall away at the 

 beginning of a word, inside a word and at its close», with, p. 402, Apheresis ; p. 409, 

 Synkope; and p. 422, Apokope. But I need not insist further on a thing so well 

 known. — As for the (/cnder of Rlr, there may very well have been a local neuter. 

 There are swarms of these words in olden times in all our dialects with one or ttvo 

 or three f/enders in more or less similar forms, and often words have changed their 

 gender, were once niase., then fern, or neuter, etc. Every day we are finding words in 

 to us formerly unknown genders. Of this RI may be a new instance. Therefore, 

 also from this standpoint, RI as neuter, PISU RI may be perfectly regular and correct. 



Nova AÄa Reg Soc. Sc. Ups. Ser. III. 3 



