Abecediary

An Abecediary or Abecedary is the full alphabet carved in stone or written in book form, historically found in churches, monasteries and other ecclesiastical buildings.

Purpose

Abecediaries are generally considered to be medieval teaching aids, particularly for the illiterate. The alphabet may have been thought to possess supernatural powers along the lines of the runic alphabet. Each letter would have had a symbolic meaning to the devout.

An example, the first seven letters or so of which were found in 1967, is from the long demolished Church of St Mary of the Grey Friars in Dumfries, Scotland. In this case the letters are inscribed in the Lombardic script of the 1260s and the complete structure would probably have stood near the high altar.

One of the oldest examples is now in use as a gravestone in Kilmalkedar, near Dingle, Co. Kerry. It has the appearance of a standing stone and is known as the Alphabet' stone, displaying as it does an alphabet dating from early Christian times.

Abecedarian psalms and hymns exist, these are compositions in which, like Psalm 119 in Hebrew, distinct portions or verses commence with successive letters of the alphabet.

The New England Primer, a schoolbook first printed in 17th-century Boston, includes an abecedary of rhyming couplets in iambic dimeter, beginning with:

In Adam's fall,

We sinned all.

Thy life to mend,

This Book attend.

The Cat doth play,

And after slay.

See also

• Abecedarium
• A Researcher's Guide to Local History terminology