191 
II. (5.) — Ih, il That this was sometimes long i^ is proved 
by its occurrence in the name Gislheard on a tombstone at 
Dover. This, however, is not Northumbrian. At Ruthwell 
it makes a diphthong with III. 3 in celmeittig. In the word 
drigithy on a casket in the British Museum, it cannot be long. 
It has not yet been found on any monument to justify the 
value eOi derived from eoh, 
I. (4.)— (75, o\ 
I. (2.)—Ur, u\ 
I. {S.)—Wen, w. 
lY. (3.)— Fr, probably u^. 
II. (4.) — Geary " year," y consonant. 
II. (7.) — lies was also a vowel, but it has not yet occurred 
in a Northumbrian inscription. Notwithstanding the vowels 
in the name eolhx I think it must have had an a sound in the 
southern kingdoms, as Professor Stephens has clearly shown 
that it had in Scandinavia. 
Thus we have thirteen runes for the seventeen vowel 
sounds, and in the three first divisions of the futhorc we have 
fifteen of the twenty consonants, and the unknown characters 
of the 5th division may well be believed to have represented 
the rest. So the futhorc was perfectly adapted for the 
expression of our language, and as being so presents the 
strongest evidence of its indigenous origin. Had it been 
retained, the advocates of phonetic orthography would have 
been spared the trouble of inventing their alphabet of thirty- 
nine characters. 
The influence of the missionaries of the Christian faith was 
strenuously and successfully exerted to substitute their 
abecedarium for the old futhorc, and in the earliest MS. 
monuments of our language Latin letters alone appear. Yet 
it was not long before the inadequacy of the letters u and d 
to express the sounds of the runes wen and thorn demanded 
imperatively their restoration ; and, although the incon- 
