A horn book and half a hammy

[Urien of Rheged]

Well you live and you learn as they say. And today I learned what a Horn book is.
At first I thought it was another rolled up piece of lead trash until noticing lettering just as it was entering the compartment where all the recycling is destined for.
I carefully unrolled it without breaking it up to find a floral design on the inner side.
A quick Google search out in the field revealed it's a Horn book given to kids back in the days (from the 14th century) before schooling was a thing to improve literacy among the common folk
I'm thinking this one is early 17th century especially so as half a Charles I penny came up not 10 yards away. But if anyone disagrees please do pipe up. I am no expert and appreciate that finds close to each other do not mean they are contempory.
Found in The county of Lancashire, Northern England on pasture using the equinox 600 field mode 1

 

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[pepperj]

Now that is really a cool recovery.
I would say it could be earlier than that being made of lead.
It's hard to date something even when a coin is found near by.
Reasons being the amount of history that you have is crazy long.

 

[Urien of Rheged]

Now that is really a cool recovery.
I would say it could be earlier than that being made of lead.
It's hard to date something even when a coin is found near by.
Reasons being the amount of history that you have is crazy long.

The reason I would put it into the 17th century rather than earlier is due to that floral design which looks just like designs popular in that era. I have some tokens with the same kind of pattern that are from the civil war period (1640's)
The alaphabet is pretty archaic though with the U and V being interchangeable and that fancy looking A.
Thanks for the interest as ever. ✌

 

[tamrock]

Interesting find. I'd never heard of a horn book until today. I had to look up on how old the ABC song is now. Turns out something like it has been used to teach children for around 264 years now. My grandson had the ABC song nailed at four years old, which he learned in preschool and at five he's learning what to do with those 26 letters.

 

[cudamark]

No J either.......interesting bit of history!

 

[E-Trac-Ohio]

Wow ... what great finds - congrats !

 

[Urien of Rheged]

Wow ... what great finds - congrats !

The little coin was a disappointment in that it was halved. I'm always a bit pissed at half cut coins and I thought they'd packed that in by Charles I's time. Would have been ironic had that cut been through his neck considering his fate not too long after that coin was struck. Poor fella, he wasn't a bad monarch, not great with the purse strings admittedly his problem really was his grace though or as some would call it, weakness.
I know you folks arent over keen on the idea of Monarchs but all I can say to that is Joseph R Biden. 🤫😆

I should add too that the horn book is missing a little handle.

 

[cudamark]

That might have been the reason for the horn book's loss. That or the plow took out the handle. As for Joe, he's more a puppet than a monarch.....and not a very good one at that....

 

[Red-Coat]

That’s a terrific find, and I think you’re underplaying it.

It’s not a true horn book, though. Those first appeared around 1450 but weren’t common until the end of the 16th Century. They were carved from oak, with a short handle and had a piece of leather or vellum (later, paper) with the alphabet embossed (later written or printed) glued onto the wood and protected by a thin sheet of semi-transparent horn.

Small tablets of a similar nature and purpose had been used for many centuries before that, usually cast from lead but without the horn covering, and that’s what you have.

I have a few observations. The styling of the ‘A’ is typical for Old English and Middle English scripts. There were several alphabets/scripts in use in England during the Mediaeval period – notably Hiberno-Saxon, Old English (Fōresprǣc), Old English/Anglo-Saxon ((Ænglisc) and then Middle English. They have overlapping dates and which one would be familiar would depend largely on what part of the country you lived in, but they also saw different usages (ordinary writing, manuscripts, church scripts etc).

They each have differences in character styling and different introduction dates for specific letters, so sometimes a date period can be determined when a full alphabet is shown. Here, it’s difficult, but what can be said for sure is that there’s a fully fledged letter ‘W’. Although that had long-standing use in the Latin (Roman) alphabet, it was unknown in Old English, with the runic letter ‘wynn’ ⟨Ƿ⟩) being used instead. Norman influence forced wynn out of use and by the 14th Century it was replaced by the ligature of two ‘V’ glyphs to form a ‘W’ as on your piece.

There’s no ‘Æ’ (‘ash’) ligature on your tablet, which was part of the Old English alphabet but began to die out from the beginning of the 14th Century.

Also, your piece has a letter ‘Q’ which wasn’t used in Old English (‘Cw’ and ‘Cu’ were commonly used instead); a letter ‘Z’ which was rarely used; and a letter ‘K’ which was used only very rarely (with ‘C’ used instead) until about 1500 when the French influence on English written/spoken by well-educated folk began to die out. Note that ‘K’ was and still is an infrequently-used letter in French, found mainly in words borrowed from other languages. Unfortunately the ‘H’ is unreadable; Old English had a very characteristic form for that letter, looking like a lower case ‘h’ curving inwards from the shoulder.

I would say it’s a Middle English alphabet, which progressively fell out of use from the beginning of the 16th Century. Note that there’s no letter ‘J’, which didn’t enter the alphabet until 1524 (previously, ‘I’ was used instead). That doesn’t help too much though because ‘I’ and ‘J’ were regarded as interchangeable for many years thereafter.