The chief interest of these Glossaries lies in the fact that a small
proportion of the hard words is explained, not in Latin, but in
Mercian English, of which there are two examples in the six glosses
here quoted. Thus Abelena, which is another spelling of Abellana or
Avellana, "a filbert," is explained as "haeselhnutu"; which is a
perfectly familiar word when reduced to its modern form of "hazel-nut."
And again, Abies, which usually means "a fir-tree," is here glossed by
"etspe." But this is certainly a false spelling, as we see by
comparing it with the following glosses in Epinal and Erfurt (Nos. 37,
1006):--"Abies. saeppae--sæpae"; and "Tremulus. aespae--espæ." This
shows that the scribe ought to have explained Abies by "saeppae,"
meaning the tree full of sap, called in French _sapin_; but he
confused it with another tree, the "trembling" tree, of which the
Old Mercian name was "espe" or "espæ," or "aespae," and he miswrote
_espe_ as _etspe_, inserting a needless _t_. This last tree is the
one which Chaucer called the _asp_ in l. 180 of his _Parliament of
Fowls_, but in modern times the adjectival suffix _-en_ (as in
_gold-en_, _wood-en_) has been tacked on to it, and it is now the
_aspen_.

The interpretation of these ancient glosses requires very great care,
but they afford a considerable number of interesting results, and are
therefore valuable, especially as they give us spellings of the eighth
century, which are very scarce.

One of the oldest specimens of Old Mercian that affords intelligible
sentences is known as the "Lorica Prayer," because it occurs in the
same MS. (Ll. 1. 10 in the Cambridge University Library) as the
"Lorica Glosses," or the glosses which accompany a long Latin prayer,
really a charm, called "lorica" or "breast-plate," because it was