About this site:
This is a personal site, devoted to the interests of the people who have pages here. We have tried to make our pages available to as wide an audience as possible, so we have tried to avoid anything but basic graphics and text, and to make these accessible to as wide a variety of browsers and methods of access as possible.
The images:
The image on these pages (black, blue harp) is a photo of my harp (Tale), taken and edited by my husband. No, she's not blue - that's a color filter we both liked. She is a Lorraine harp, made by Stoney End Harps, which happens to be based about an hour drive from where I live.
Copyright:
As always, copyright is held by the creator of the material. All creative and written content on this site, unless otherwise noted, is copyright to the author of the page. If you wish to copy the material for your own use (a single copy), that's fine.
If you would like to distribute it (in any way, whether that's printing it out, or copying material to a webpage of your own), please contact the author of the material (via the contact information provided) to ask permission.
Linking to these pages is welcome and encouraged, as is conventional on the Web.
What does gleewood mean?
According to a book of mine, glee-wood is an old Anglo-Saxon word meaning "harp". This is what the book says (The book is Glee-Wood: A Treasury of Medieval English Literature by Margaret Williams, published by Sheed and Ward in 1949.)
"In Anglo-Saxon times the harp was called 'glee-wood', for a maker of song is a maker of joy. It was a small harp that a roving scop could carry in his hands; it hummed to his words even when his song was sad. There is a passage in Beowulf that tells of a man's loneliness at the passing of the heroic days of his clan: 'There is no more harp-joy, game of the glee-wood, nor does the good hawk swing round the hall, nor the swift steed beat his hooves in the courtyard; for the war-horror sends living men far away.'"
It also turns up in later literature. I always liked the sound of that passage (the book mentioned was a gift from my brother, knowing of my interest in Medieval verse.), and decided quite a while ago that if and when I got a domain name of my own, it would be gleewood. It's easy to spell, but also evocative.
The site host:
These pages are hosted at drak.net who we have (so far) found extremely reliable and responsive. In January 2004, these pages were moved to new servers and we've been moving things around a bit: if you find missing links or other oddities, please let us know through the contact page.
Questions?
The contact page lists the various ways you can get in touch with me.
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page last edited June 4, 2004
questions or comments? see the contact page