I know we've got a good contingent of Heathens on this forum so perhaps you could have a look at the attachment and give me your opinions.

It's a page from a Welsh grammar book written round about the 1850s by John Williams ab Ithel. He publishes various alphabets, including the Nennius and the Coelbren, and then gives this one, exactly as here, with no further explanation except to say that he thinks it must be a British one from the context in the manuscripte.

About 60 years later, another grammarian, John Morris Jones, rubbished this and said it was "obviously" runic.

Is it? Anyone seen it before and know how the letters run?

gwyn eich byd

Ffred

Looks pretty runic to me. Not a futhark I recognize, though. Looks like it reads right to left. In this example, anyway. Runic scripts can read either way. Entirely depends on who was writing it.

It's possible it could be a set of bindrunes.

Davkin? What do you reckon?

T

That's a very ornate form of the Younger Futhark.

I've never seen the Futhark with that much decoration before. Maybe someone got bored and doodled?

You might have a point there, Moonhunter.

T

I've seen something like this before but can't think where.

I'll have a mooch through some books.

Singe

Gottit - it's a cryptic.

One way of using runes was to turn them into codes.

The elder futhark had 24 letters divided into three sets. These could be encrypted by e.g. giving a bar with one set of strokes to the left of, say, between one and three - comprising the set the letter came from, and then strokes to the right between one and six to denote the letter in that set.

I can't decrypt the first line but if you look at the two below it, the first one divides the Futhark (alphabet) in one way, by giving strokes to the left to divide them into sets. The third line divides them into unusual sets in the same way.

Fascinating!

Cheers all.

gwyn eich byd

Ffred