Ear
The twenty-ninth futhorc rune, transliterated ea. Its name means the grave, and its stanza, the bleakest in the poem, closes the Old English Rune Poem.
At a glance
- Rune
- ᛠU+16E0
- Unicode name
- RUNIC LETTER EAR
- Alphabet
- Anglo-Saxon Futhorc
- In use
- c. AD 400 – 1100 (Early medieval England and Frisia)
- Position
- 29
- Transliteration
- ea
- Sound value
- /æɑ/
- Name
- ear: earth, the grave, dustAttested
Names
How the rune is called in each tradition, and how securely each name is recorded.
| Form | Language | Meaning | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| ear | Old English | earth, the grave, dust | Attested |
An asterisk marks a reconstructed form: a word linguists have worked backwards to, not one that appears in any surviving source.
Etymology
The stanza makes the meaning unmistakable: the grave is horrible to every noble, when the flesh begins to cool and choose the pale earth as its bedfellow. It closes the Old English Rune Poem, and it is the bleakest stanza in it.
Sound value
The Old English diphthong ea. Another rune created to cover a sound English developed.
Historical use
The last of the 29 runes the poem covers. Its position at the end is almost certainly deliberate: the poem opens with wealth and closes with the grave, and the arrangement reads as a designed frame.
Rune-poem evidence
The medieval verse that records this rune's name. Original text plus our own translation.
Ear byþ egle eorla gehwylcun, ðonne fæstlice flæsc onginneþ, hraw colian, hrusan ceosan blac to gebeddan; bleda gedreosaþ, wynna gewitaþ, wera geswicaþ.The grave is horrible to every noble, when steadily the flesh, the corpse, begins to cool and to choose the pale earth as its bedfellow; fruits fall, joys depart, agreements break.(our translation)
Attested in
Objects and monuments where this rune can actually be seen.
- Thames scramasaxRiver Thames, London · 10th century
Closes the inlaid futhorc row.
Signatures follow the Scandinavian Runic-text Database so you can look each inscription up directly. Each name links to the object's own entry.
Modern meaning
Why this entry has none.
None is given here. Modern rune divination is built almost entirely on the Elder Futhark, and no established modern tradition reads the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc separately. Inventing a reading for Ear to fill the space would be exactly the kind of fabrication this site exists to flag, so the field is left empty rather than filled. How modern rune meanings were arrived at is a separate discussion.
Sources for this entry
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