Aesc, the Second Anglo-Frisian Addition

Aesc is the second of the five Anglo-Frisian runes added to the futhorc with no Elder Futhark cognate, its sound value ae representing a vowel distinct from any the inherited twenty four rune row could mark, one of several such refinements Old English orthography needed as the language's vowel system developed further than the Elder Futhark's original continental design had anticipated.

R. I. Page's survey notes that Aesc went on to a documented life in Anglo-Saxon manuscript writing well beyond runic inscription, adopted, like Wynn discussed earlier in this account, into the everyday Latin based alphabet scribes used for ordinary Old English prose and verse as the standard letter for this same ae sound, a role the character, now usually printed as the ligature æ, held throughout the Old English period and which modern typography still occasionally borrows for stylistic or scholarly purposes. Aesc's position as the twenty sixth rune, second among the five late additions, places it firmly within the futhorc's Anglo-Saxon specific extension rather than its shared, older Germanic core. Page notes that the character's survival into standard Old English manuscript spelling means Aesc is unusually well attested compared to some of the row's other late additions, its use documented across a large body of surviving prose and verse rather than resting on runic inscription alone.