Jenny Kowalski, age 16, of Shreveport, La., for her question:

WHAT IS A RUNE? '

A rune is any one of the characters of the earliest written alphabet used by the Teutonic peoples of Europe. The term "rune" comes from a Gothic word meaning "secret." The runes were associated with secrecy or mystery because only a few persons knew them.

Heathen priests probably first used the characters in their charms and magic spells. But later, runic characters were scattered on monuments, slabs, coins and jewelry.

The runes were made almost entirely of straight lines, arranged singly or in combinations of two or more.

The oldest runic instructions date back to the A.D. 200s. But the characters are believed to have been used even before the time of Christ.

Some experts say that the runic characters came from the Roman alphabet and others claim that they were based on Greek letters. Traces of their use occur most often in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. But other runic characters were discovered in Germany, France, Spain and England.

Horsemen believed that their chief god Odin invented runic characters. Christian missionaries introduced the Latin alphabet because the runes were identified with heathen worship.