The attention by ‘modern’ linguists to the problems of Old English diphthongal spellings and their phonetic realizations may perhaps be dated (without doing anyone an injury) from the study by Robert P. Stockwell and C. Barritt (1951). Since that time much ink has been spilled (or typewriter ribbons worn out) in attempts to specify in some precise and principled way the phonological structure of the entities spelled in Old English ea, eo, io, Ia and ie. I will spare the reader a review of these articles and commentaries since such a review would prove both tiresome and uninformative.