SPINDLE WHORL

Professor Okasha, from University College, Cork has provided a preliminary reading which has been done from the photographs only. She notes:-

"Many texts start with a cross and one would expect it to continue clockwise. There appears to be some decoration, or possibly lettering that I cannot make out, immediately preceding the worn part. This worn part could have contained a further three or four letters, and is followed by a final two letters, returning the reader to the cross.

Here follows a possible reading, where an underlined letter indicates damage, a letter in square brackets indicates the reading is uncertain, and the letter read as H seems to be lowercase and upside down:

+ R U [L H I V] R O [L] decoration? [− I R]

I suggest that following the initial cross this might be an attempt, possibly blundered, at a personal name, perhaps starting RULH-. My reasoning is that a personal name is the sort of text that tends to be inscribed on small personal objects, such as a spindle whorl, probably more for the satisfaction of the owner than as an aid to identification if the whorl got mislaid.

However, the etymology of such a name from my reading is not so easy to explain. It could possibly be a form of one of the Scandinavian names Hrolfr or Hroaldr which appear in Domesday Book with spellings Ro- or Rou- (Feilitzen p. 284). Another possibility is that it is a Welsh name: Feilitzen (p. 350) takes the DB Herefordshire name Ruillic as probably Old Welsh, possibly connected with Welsh rhwyll 'hole'. Alternatively, my reading may be wrong.

There is nothing in the script which can be used to date the text, except that it is consistent with a dating of around or after the Norman Conquest".