Item 1992/1 - Letter from Veronica Smart

1 item, paper

Letter from Veronica Smart, in manuscript, three pages on two folios, dated 28 May 1992, thanking IS for his letter and enclosures, and noting that she has "already wrestled with part of the Æthel-ferth/-weard problem", indexing the coin legends as philological specimens and cross-referencing them. She alluded to "a similar mess-up of these elements at Lincoln in [William I]"; NB: the square brackets here are hers. She goes on to "the Al- group" before cautioning that Odel- is not, strictly speaking, "the Germanic equivalent of Adel- or Æthel-, which would be an over-simplification. It needs to be "Continental" rather than "Germanic" because "OE is a Germanic language and so is ON". She says that Odel- is the equivalent of a less common Œthil-, meaning "native land". She also notes that the wide range of spellings is not necessarily indicative of a wide spectrum of contemporary pronunciation, since many forms represent traditional spellings that are no longer pronounced. In closing, there is reference to someone named "Tom" who was sorry to have offended IS and hoped that VS would convey his apologies.