Dear old Ian Hislop was pottering around North Petherton, Somerset, on television, to talk about the Alfred Jewel, found nearby (where the king burnt the cakes) in 1693 by a labourer digging for peat. Since then, learned men have made foolish pronouncements on the jewel — as in a game of charades when the guesser says ‘pot’ and ‘a toe’, but can’t get potato.
The ninth-century Alfred Jewel, a favourite exhibit in the Ashmolean, is a tear-shaped piece of rock crystal, two and half inches long, covering an enamel figure holding two scepters. Round the edge, gold letters spell out: Aelfred mec heht gewyrcan — ‘Alfred had me made’.
Alfred the Great had actually mentioned the thing as an aestel, or astel as we’d spell it now. In his introduction to Gregory the Great’s Pastoral Care, which he’d translated with such labour, the king said he was sending a copy to every bishop in the kingdom, together with an ‘aestel’ worth 50 mancuses.
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