Alu and hale

'Be thou hale' is a traditional form of greeting in both Old Norse and Old English. Hale itself, though, is usually held to be a key member of the Old Germanic religious vocabulary; it has traditionally been considered to be related, for example, to both Modern English holy and Old Norse heill (omen, auspice, talisman). Yet cognates to hale are surprisingly rare in the earliest Germanic sources: hale and its congeners are relatively marginal terms both in runic epigraphy and in the Gothic Bible. In Gothic, hale (in its religious sense) seems to have been usurped by weihs (holy) (cf German Weihnachten [Christmas, literally 'the holy nights']), whereas runic inscriptions more commonly feature other magico-religious terms such as the etymologically controversial 'charm word' alu. This paper examines the use of the various descriptions for 'blessed', 'lucky' or 'holy' in the earliest Germanic sources and proposes an explanation for their differing usages in light of the widespread appearance of runic alu in magico-religious contexts.