Curiosities of Olden Times
of A; E in that of B, and so on; or else in writing B for A, C for B, etc.
Secret characters were used at the Council of Nicæa; and Rabanus Maurus, Abbot of Fulda and Archbishop of Mayence in the ninth century, has left us an example of two cyphers, the key to which was discovered by the Benedictines. It is only a wonder that any one could have failed to unravel them at the first glance. This is a specimen of the first:
.Nc.p.t v:rs:.:s B::n.f:c.. :rch. gl::r.::s.q:.:: m:rt.r.s
The secret of this is that the vowels have been suppressed and their places filled by dots,—one for i, two for a, three for e, four for o, and five for u. In the second example, the same sentence would run—Knckpkt vfrsxs Bpnkfbckk, etc., the vowel-places being filled by the consonants—b, f, k, p, x. By changing every letter in the alphabet, we make a vast improvement on this last; thus, for instance, supplying the place of a with z, b with x, c with v, and so on. This is the system employed by an advertiser in a provincial paper which I took up the other day in the waiting-room of a station, where it had been left by a farmer. As I had some minutes to spare, before the train was due, I spent them in deciphering the following:
Jp Sjddjzb rza rzdd ci sijmr, Bziw rzdd xr ndzt:
and in ten minutes I read: "If William can call or write, Mary will be glad."
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