ginally came from. The word
"rune" means secret or mystery. To "round" in a person's ear means to
whisper, so that what is said is a "secret" or a "mystery." The word
comes from "rune." When we use the word to "write" we think of setting
down words on paper with a pen or a pencil. But the old meaning of
"write" is to incise, or to cut, or engrave. Probably the runes were at
first cut in wood. A wooden tablet was called "boc," from beechwood
being used for it. When we talk of a book we are away from the first
idea of a book a good distance. Runes were also carved, or incised, in
metal and in bone. They were associated, not only with secrecy or
mystery, but with magic, and were supposed to possess power for good or
evil. People thought that "runes could raise the dead from their graves;
they could preserve life or take it, they could heal the sick or bring
on lingering disease; they could call forth the soft rain or the violent
hailstorm; they could break chains and shackles, or bind more closely
than bonds or fetters; they could make the warrior invincible and cause
his sword to inflict none but mortal wounds; they could produce frenzy
and madness, or defend from the deceit of a false friend."

There is a story in an old Norse book telling that Odin, the
Scandinavian god, learned them and used them. St Bede tells in his
"Church History" a story which proves that the belief in the magic power
of runes lingered on in England after Christianity had become the
professed religion of the people. It takes a good while to lose
superstition that has been with people for a long, long time. Because
Christianity condemns anything like magic, the use of the runes,
associated with it, gradually went out. The Irish missionaries in the
North of England taught the people there a beautiful kind of handwriting
from which the English handwriting of later times was formed. The
"Lindisfarne Gospels" are written in the earlier Irish rounded
characters. In a copy of St Bede's "Church History" written after
A.D. 730, a more pointed hand is used. If we want to write fast, we do
not write so round as when we write slowly. Afterwards, in the tenth
century, the English began to use the French style of writing.

The runes were sometimes used as ordinary letters, without any thought
of the old connection with magic. So the great Christian poet, Cynewulf,
wrote his name in runes, which is how we know him to be the author of
some of the poems we have b