aespae--esp{ae}." 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 "esp{ae}," 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 recited thrice a day to protect the person who used it from all possible injury and accident.

I give this Prayer as illustrating the state of our language about A.D.