Branson now I'm drooling, about the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles. The Chaucer has a photocopy front and back of a page of the oldest copy and and the facing page is Middle English. About "The Book of Kells," I know in the 70's my wife Kathy, who is a calligrapher, and me drooled over it but could not afford it. I guess the old saying 'if you wait long enough, it will come at lest worked this time. Do I read Old English? No but I read Middle English or as it is better known Chaucerian English. My favorite class in college.
Anne Savage's translation of the Chronicles (1983, by St. Martin's/Marek) is an excellent translation. I had to translate a photo copied page from a manuscript for my final exam in my first Old English class, so I checked her translation of that page. Very well done, not an easy task. The other copy I have is titled The Saxon Chronicle, translated by Reverend J.Ingram (1993 by Studio Editions, London) -- left half of the page in Old English, right half in Modern English. Also a good translation.
We had to read, write (caligraphy) and speak both Old and Middle English for the classes. I can still recite the Prologue to Canterbury Tales from memory.
On a lark I translated from Modern to Old English:
Naefre onginn laeran swyne hwistilan. Thu gethagh aenne geswincan thine thrag, ond wen is that thu gremma seo swynne.
"Never try to teach a pig to whistle. You'll only succeed in wasting your time, and probably pissing off the pig." Robert Heinlein
Does your wife have a copy of Celtic Art: The Methods of Construction, by George Bain? He has almost all of the alphabets used in the Book of Kells in a format that shows how to produce them. It's available in a Dover edition for about ten bucks.
