SUMMARY
Amongst the treasured reminders of my postgraduate years in England, I cherish a sizable sheaf of manuscript pages, now yellow with age. They are in the hand of Sir William Craigie, that venerable pioneer of lexicographical study. The neat and delicate lines trace out the beginnings of a new venture. Sir William was making a record of the nominal compounds in Beowulf: they are arrayed under the banners of various headwords, each of which, as a glance will show, is a s e c o n d element of composition. Alas, work on the project was never completed, nor are the present generation of Anglo-Saxonists aware of the particular line of argument Sir William had in mind when he set out to re-list the Beowulf compound vocabu lary.