British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences

British Academy/Royal Irish Academy Joint Symposium

Anglo-Saxon/Irish Relations before the Vikings

The Irish role in the development of the Old English alphabet: a reconsideration of the evidence

Patrick P. O'Neill (UNC, Chapel Hill, USA)

Conventional wisdom among Anglo-Saxonists holds that the Old English alphabet derives from the Latin alphabet as it was transmitted to the Anglo-Saxons by Irish missionaries (thus Sievers-Brunner) or, alternatively, from the Latin alphabet of the grammatical tradition with some influence from Old Irish spelling (Campbell). In both cases Latin is posited as the primary model, modified by some Irish influence. The present paper will review these theories and propose an alternative hypothesis of direct and primary influence from the Old Irish alphabet.