Philological Essays: Studies in Old and Middle English Language and Literature in Honour of Herbert Dean Meritt [Reprint 2019 ed.] 9783110820263, 9789027907219

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PHILOLOGICAL

ESSAYS

JANUA LINGUARUM STUDIA MEMORIAE NICOLAI VAN WIJK DEDICATA

SERIES

MAJOR 37

1970

MOUTON THE HAGUE • PARIS

HERBERT DEAN MERITT

PHILOLOGICAL ESSAYS Studies in Old and Middle English Language and Literature in Honour of

HERBERT DEAN MERITT P R O F E S S O R OF E N G L I S H STANFORD

PHILOLOGY

UNIVERSITY

Edited by

J A M E S L. R O S I E R U N I V E R S I T Y OF

PENNSYLVANIA

1970

MOUTON THE HAGUE • PARIS

© Copyright 1970 in The Netherlands. Mouton & Co. N.V., Publishers, The Hague. No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publishers.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER : 74-102958

Printed in The Netherlands by Mouton & Co., Printers, The Hague.

PREFACE

The generosity of friends has greatly contributed to the privilege of preparing this volume in honour of Professor Meritt. My greatest debt of gratitude is to Professor Robert W. Ackerman who at every stage has given warm encouragement, excellent advice, and material assistance. I am grateful to Professor Fred C. Robinson for his ready willingness to make suggestions and compile lists of subscribers. One of the early supporters of the volume was the late Richard Foster Jones of Stanford. He had very much hoped to write a contribution. The collection would have been much the richer had he been able to complete this final work before his death. A continuing illness made it impossible for Professor Bogislav von Lindheim of Heidelberg to complete a contribution. We are saddened by his loss of health and by the absence here of his hoped-for paper. Finally, I wish to express thanks to the contributors. Their responsiveness, punctuality, and courtesy have rendered the making of this volume a pleasure as well as a privilege. Philadelphia, December 1967 JLR

To Herbert Dean Meritt Professor of English Philology at Stanford University on his retirement Deep in the Cretan cave, Each golden artifact Or work in stone or clay In palace hall or grave Somehow appeared to stay — For all the scholar lacked. But round the buried word Is only rich decay; The meanings fall away. What was it that men heard? With cool persistent tact You form what men would say. Yvor Winters.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

5

Deep in the Cretan cave by Yvor Winters

7

Herbert Dean Meritt: A Biographical Sketch by Robert W. Ackerman

11

Bibliography of the Writings of Herbert Dean Meritt compiled by Fred C. Robinson and John J. Quinn

13

On the Consonantal Phonemes of Old English by Sherman M. Kuhn

16

Much and Many. The Historical Development of a Modern English Distributional Pattern by Albert H. Marckwardt

50

Beowulf's Old Age

55

teries by Dorothy Whitelock

10

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Six Words in the Blickling Homilies by Rowland L. Collins

137

Some Notes on the Liber Scintillarum and its Old English Gloss by René Derolez

142

A. S. Napier, 1853-1916 by Neil Ker

152

The Venus of Alanus de Insulis and the Venus of Chaucer by Dorothy Bethurum Loomis

182

"The Tale of Gareth" and the Unity of Le Morte Darthur by Robert W. Ackerman

196

ROBERT W. ACKERMAN

HERBERT DEAN MERITT: A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

The setting for Herbert Dean Meritt's birth in 1904 and for his early youth was Durham, North Carolina, seat of Trinity College, later (in 1924) to become Duke University. In view of his special talent in languages, we are not surprised to learn that his father, Arthur Herbert Meritt, was professor of Greek at Trinity College. His only sibling, Benjamin Dean, born in 1899, also inherited the paternal interests, becoming professor of Greek at Johns Hopkins University and then in 1935, as the foremost classical epigraphist in the country, joining the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton, where he still carries on his work. Soon after Arthur Meritt's untimely death in 1912, his widow, Cornelia Dean Meritt, moved with her two boys to Vernon, New York, in the neighborhood of which the Dean family had been established for a century and a half. Herbert finished his secondary schooling in 1921 at Mount Hermon School in western Massachusetts and then entered Hamilton College, graduating in English literature and Greek. He at once began graduate work at Princeton University, completing his M.A. degree in English in 1926. For two years he served as instructor in English at Union College, Schenectady, New York, but thereafter resumed graduate training. After three years, during one of which he held the Proctor Fellowship, he was awarded the Ph.D. in Indo-European Philology by the Department of Oriental Languages and Literatures at Princeton. He wrote his dissertation, The Construction and KOIVOU in the Germanic Languages (published by the Stanford University Press in 1938), under the direction of Harold H. Bender, a distinguished Indo-Europeanist and editor of the etymologies in the second edition of Webster's New International Dictionary. Granted an American Council of Learned Societies fellowship, Meritt spent the period 1931-33 in Europe, living mainly in Munich but visiting many of the important European libraries. Here he made the acquaintance of manuscripts glossed in Old English which he has since returned on a number of occasions to study anew. He also studied Old Church Slavonic at the University of Munich. Upon his homecoming, he accepted a Sterling Fellowship in linguistics at Yale University and read Germanic philology and Sanskrit under Edward Prokosch and Franklin Edgerton. Beginning in 1934, he was instructor in English at his Alma

12

HERBERT DEAN MERITT

Mater, Hamilton College, but in 1936, Arthur Garfield Kennedy. Professor of English Philology at Stanford University, persuaded him to come to Stanford as assistant professor of English. Promoted to associate professor in 1942 and to professor in 1947, Meritt also succeeded to the title of Professor of English Philology which had been held by Ewald Fliigel and Arthur Kennedy before him. In the summer of 1947, he was Frederick Ives Carpenter visiting professor at the University of Chicago. Many generations of Stanford students, undergraduates and graduates alike, attest to his great gifts as a teacher. His light touch, his wry humor, and his occasional resort to the southern speech of his youth have always made his classes a delight even when the subject is the development of Old English long " a " or the classes of strong verbs in the Germanic languages. His undergraduate courses in the history of the English language and in Chaucer early became famous as did his graduate course in Beowulf. His graduate students, most of whom have written dissertations on Old English-Latin glosses, are the beneficiaries not only of his great learning but also of his endless patience and understanding. Few teachers have acquired so devoted a student following. The scholarly task which Meritt set for himself at the outset of his career and which he has since pursued with complete dedication may be described as the recovery of the Old English vocabulary. Most of his often brilliant results derive from his painstaking study of glosses — Old English words written or scratched in the margins of eighth to eleventh century manuscripts as explanatory notes to Latin texts of the Psalter, the Gospels, and works by Aldhelm, Bede, Prudentius, and the like. Not seldom an understanding of the relationship of gloss to lemma and, hence, of the meaning of the Old English word in question involves finding the original context of the word in the glossator's mind, such as a Biblical commentary. By dint of such basic research, Meritt has exposed numerous 'ghost' words and has otherwise rectified many misconceptions enshrined in dictionaries. The importance of his discoveries to proper appreciation of Old English literature is obvious. Meritt's preeminence as a lexicographer which he won by his publications was acknowledged by the syndics of the Cambridge University Press who asked him to provide an extensive supplement to the fourth edition of John R. Clark Hall's A Concise AngloSaxon Dictionary. When the dictionary appeared in 1960, the great value of Meritt's 1700-word supplement was at once recognized by reviewers. The Meritts (Herbert Meritt married Constance Schneider in 1936) have two sons, jhe older of whom is an architect practicing in San Francisco and the younger a candidate for the doctorate in German history at the University of California in Berkeley.

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE WRITINGS OF

HERBERT DEAN MERITT Compiled by Fred C. Robinson and John J. Quinn BOOKS

The Construction and KOIUOU in the Germanic Languages (= Stanford University Series, Language and Literature, VI, No. 2). Stanford: 1938, 114 p. (2) Old English Glosses (a Collection) (= The Modern Language Association of America, General Series, XVI). London: Oxford University Press, 1945. XX, 135 p. (3) Fact and Lore about Old English Words (— Stanford University Series, Language and Literature, XIII). Stanford: 1954. VIII, 226 p. (4) The Old English Prudentius Glosses at Boulogne-sur-Mer (= Stanford Studies in Language and Literature, XVI). Stanford: 1959. XIV, 158 p. (5) John R. Clark Hall, ed. A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Fourth Edition with a supplement by Herbert D. Meritt. Cambridge: University Press, 1960. 452 p. (6) Some of the Hardest Glosses in Old English. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1968. XIII, 130 p.

(1)

ARTICLES

(1) "Old English Scratched Glosses in Cotton MS. Tiberius C. ii", American Journal of Philology, LIV (1933), 305-322. (2) "Old High German Scratched Glosses", American Journal of Philology, LV (1934), 227-237. (3) "Old English Entries in a MS. at Bern", Journal of English and Germanic Philology, XXXIII (1934), 343-351. (4) "An Old English Gloss obereliman: innanorum,\ Modern Language Notes, L (1935), 77-82. (5) "Old English Sedulius Glosses", American Journal of Philology, LVII (1936), 140-150. (6) "Possible Elliptical Compounds in Old English Glosses", American Journal of Philology, LIX (1938), 209-217.

14

FRED C. ROBINSON AND JOHN J. QUINN

(7) "The Vocabulary of Sir John Cheke's Partial Version of the Gospels", Journal of English and Germanic Philology, XXXIX (1940), 450-455. (8) "Some Minor Ways of Word-Formation in Old English", Stanford Studies in Language and Literature (Stanford University Press, 1941), pp. 74-80. (9) "Three Studies in Old English", American Journal of Philology, LXII (1941), 331-339. (10) "The Old English Glosses dedce and minncern: a Study in the Ways of Interpretation", Journal of English and Germanic Philology, XLIII (1944), 434-446. (11) "Beating the Oaks: An Interpretation of Christ 678-79", American Journal of Philology, LXVI (1945), 1-12. (12) "Studies in Old English Vocabulary", Journal of English and Germanic Philology, XLVI (1947), 413-427. (13) "Twenty Hard Old English Words", Journal of English and Germanic Philology, XLIX (1950), 231-241. (14) "Old English Aldhelm Glosses", Modern Language Notes, LXVII (1952), 553-554. (15) "Old English Glosses to Gregory, Ambrose, and Prudentius", Journal of English and Germanic Philology, LVI (1957), 65-68. (16) "Old English Glosses in Latin Manuscripts" (a Report), Year Book of the American Philosophical Society, XIII (1959), 541-544. (17) "Old English Glosses, Mostly Dry Point", Journal of English and Germanic Philology, LX (1961), 441-450. (18) "The Leiden Gloss to Histrionibus", Anglia, LXXX (1962), 379-383. (19) "Strange Sauce from Worcester", Studies in Old English Literature in honor of Arthur G. Brodeur (University of Oregon Press, 1963), 152-154. (20) "Old English hunsporan", Studies in Language, Literature, and Culture of the Middle Ages and Later, ed. E. Bagby Atwood and Archibald A. Hill (University of Texas Press, 1969), 70-72. (21) "The Old English Ghost Word Drisne", Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, LXIX (1968), 47-53. (22) "Thestisuir in the Leiden Glossary", Anglia, LXXX (1968), 155-57.

REVIEWS

(1) Some Studies of Medieval Literature and History (= Colorado University Studies in the Humanities, Vol. I, No. 3, February 1941), Modern Language Quarterly, II (1941), 660-662. (2) Charles W. Kennedy, The Earliest English Poetry (London, 1943), American Journal of Philology, LXV (1945), 223-224. (3) M. Long, The English Strong Verb from Chaucer to Caxton (Menasha, 1944), Modern Language Quarterly, VI (1945), 495-496.

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE WRITINGS OF HERBERT DEAN MERITT

15

(4) Class Schaar, Critical Studies in the Cynewulf Group (Lund, 1949), Modern Language Notes, LXIX (1954), 606-609. (5) Helge Kökeritz, Shakespeare's Pronunciation (New Haven, 1953), Modern Philology, LII (1952), 275-276. (6) Peter Goolden, The Old English "Apollonius of Tyre", Speculum, XXXV (1960), 603-605. (7) Sherman Kuhn, ed. The Vespasian Psalter, (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1965), Speculum, XLI, No. 4 (1966). 750-753. DISSERTATIONS D I R E C T E D

(1) Jack E. Conner, A History of Double Vowels in English Spelling (1952). Abstracts of Dissertations. Stanford Univ., XXVII (1953), 211-212. (2) William G. Stryker. The Latin-Old English Glossary in MS Cotton Cleopatra A 111 (1952). Abstracts of Disserations, Stanford Univ., XXVII (1953), 238-242. (3) Freeman Burket Anderson, The Latin and Middle English Glosses in the Psalter of MS Additional 17376 (1952). Abstracts of Dissertations, Stanford Univ., XXVII (1953), 209-210. (4) Norman C. Waldorf, The Hapax Legomena in The Old English Vocabulary: A Study Based upon the Bosworth-Toller Dictionary (1953). Dissertation Abstracts, XIII, 558. (5) Daniel Ludlum, Jr., A Critical Commentary on the Vocabulary of the Canterbury Psalter (1954). Dissertation Abstracts, XIV, 979-980. (6) Niel Klendenon Snortum, Ap6 Koindu and Allied Constructions in Middle English (1955). Dissertation Abstracts, XVI, 749. (7) Lowell Kindschi, The Latin-Old English Glossaries in Plantin-Moretus MS 32 and British Museum MS Additional 32246 (1955). Dissertation Abstracts. XVI, 117. (8) John Joseph Quinn, The Minor Latin-Old English Glossaries in MS Cotton Cleopatra A 77/(1956). Dissertation Abstracts, XVI, 1902-03. (9) John Allan Conley, Four Studies in Aureate Terms (1956). Dissertation Abstracts, XVII, 353. (10) Robert Thompson Oliphant, The Latin Old English Glossary in British Museum MS Harley 3376 (1962). Dissertation Abstracts, XXIII, 4345. (11) John Douglas Tinkler, A Critical Commentary on the Vocabulary and Syntax of the Old English Version in the Paris Psalter (1964). Dissertation Abstracts, XXV, 1900-01. (12) Bruce Liles, The Canterbury Psalter: An Edition with Notes and Glossary (1967). Dissertation Abstracts XXVIII, 1053A. (13) William S. Morris, Words of Uncertain Etymology in Holthausen1s Altenglisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. (1968). Dissertation Abstracts XXIX, 587A. (14) Alan K. Brown, The Epinal Glossary Edited with Critical Commentary on the Vocabulary (1969).

SHERMAN M. KUHN

ON THE CONSONANTAL PHONEMES OF OLD ENGLISH

1. Some years ago I attempted a brief description of the Old English vowel system.1 Writing from the viewpoint of the traditional linguists, I sought to transpose their ideas into structural terms. The few innovations introduced seemed to me necessary to a sound structural description and, at the same time, not incompatible with the traditional methodology. The present study is designed as a roughly parallel treatment of the Old English consonant system.2 1.1. At the outset, I wish to point out that the task of describing the consonantal phonemes is considerably more difficult than that of describing the syllabic phonemes. Three factors contribute to this increased difficulty. First, the OE spelling practices show at least as great a variety in the representation of consonants as in the representation of vowels; but the variant graphs are often widely differing symbols (in free variation) for a single phoneme (e.g., f , b, and u for /f/), while real phonemic distinctions are often ignored almost completely (e.g., g for the velar /g/, the semivowel /g/, and the voiced affricate /g/). Second, the problems of interpreting the consonantal spellings are often less obvious than those presented by the vowel symbols. As a consequence, the traditional linguists have tended to overlook some of the facts; for example, they have generally been content to regard /g/ simply as a long or geminated /g/, leaving it for a structuralist to observe that these are two contrasting sounds regardless of quantity. Third, while structuralists have made significant contributions to the description of the OE consonants, they tend to attack the problem piecemeal, each fitting his new analysis of a few phonemes into a general system which is still essentially the traditional one. This practice leads to frequent clashes between structuralist and structuralist, which must be resolved somehow by anyone who attempts to state the traditional views (with their own omissions and contradictions) in structural terms. 1.2. The consonant system which I present is that of about A.D. 700. It is basically 1

"On the Syllabic Phonemes of Old English", Language, XXXVII (1961), 522-538. To avoid confusion, I make no mention of other schools than the Structuralist; e.g., the Tagmemic and the Generative-transform schools. I believe, however, that the system presented here could be converted into tagmemic or generative-transform terms rather easily. 2

ON THE CONSONANTAL PHONEMES OF OLD ENGLISH

17

Mercian, but the sparse evidence of eighth-century Northumbrian points to a very similar system for that dialect, and the West Saxon and Kentish systems (judged by their earliest written records, which are of the ninth century or later) probably differed from this one only in the incidence of certain phonemes and allophones. In reconstructing the system of c 700, I have used three early manuscripts: the CORPUS GLOSSARY (Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 144), the EPINAL GLOSSARY (Bibliothèque Municipale, Épinal, MS 72), and the ERFURT GLOSSARY (Amplonian Library, Erfurt, MS 42). All three are glossaries of difficult Latin words and phrases, with explanations or synonyms usually in Latin but occasionally in English. The body of Old English material provided in this way is small,3 but it constitutes the most extensive that we have for the earliest period. Of the three texts, the latest is Erf., an early ninth-century copy of an English exemplar. It was made by a scribe with a High German background, which causes him at times to substitute Old High German words for the OE, and at other times to write hybrid forms which are basically OE but contain one or more graphs used in the OHG manner. There are compensations, however: when the OE gloss did not suggest any OHG equivalent, this scribe copied very cautiously, often it would seem preserving the archaic spellings of his exemplar exactly as he found them. The earliest of the three texts orthographically is Ep., which preserves many archaic spellings and seems to be closer Linguistically to A.D. 700 than either of the other MSS. There are lacunae in Ep., a large part of the c-section, a little of u-v, and all of d, e, x, y, and z having been lost from the MS. Corp. is approximately twice as long as Erf. It contains nearly all of the matter found in the other two glossaries, plus extensive additions, and all of the items have been rearranged in a more nearly alphabetic order. The compiler of Corp. was an innovator, and his innovations extend to the spellings, which he frequently modernized. In other words, his text is the latest of the three, linguistically and orthographically. Both Ep. and Corp. are eighth-century MSS.4 1.3. The relationship of the three glossaries can be shown, with the aid of two hypothetical MSS (Archetype II, the ancestor of Ep. and Erf., and Archetype I, the ancestor of Arch. II and Corp.), as in Table I. If this stemma is correct (and it is supported by abundant evidence),5 any form in which all three glossaries agree, or 8

Ep. contains only about 951 English entries, about 149 having been lost through destruction of one leaf of the MS. Erf. fills this gap, but its approximately 1186 English entries include about 186 that are in supplementary sections not paralleled in either Ep. or Corp. Corp. contains about 2176 English entries, but nearly half are not paralleled in the other glossaries and represent material added to the original, presumably when Corp. was compiled. Allowing for corrupt forms, accidental omissions of individual words, etc., we have only about 900 English words available as evidence of the state of the language when Arch. I was written. 4 The exact dates of Ep. and Corp., as well as their relative dates within the century, are controversial. Since these matters are not essential to the problem in hand, I shall not enter into a lengthy palaeographical digression at this time. 5 See H. M. Chadwick, Studies in Old English, in Transactions of the Cambridge Philological Society, IV (1899), 87-265; Henry Sweet, The Oldest English Texts, EETS, OS, LXXXIII (1885), 1-34.

18

SHERMAN M. KUHN

are in substantial agreement, may be assumed to go back to Arch. I; e.g., anguens: breer (Corp. 161, Ep. Erf. 68), accearium: steli (Corp. 55, Ep. 49 steeli, Erf. steli).6 A form in which only Ep. and Erf. agree may be an innovation in Arch. II, but one in which Corp. agrees with either of the other two is likely to have descended from Arch. I.7 TABLE I.

•Arch. I (c 700 or earlier)

•Arch. II (early 8 cent.)

Epinal Corpus Erfurt

2. Table II is a somewhat modified traditional arrangement of the OE consonants, with their most important allophones. It may not be completely logical at certain points; for example, /n/ is not a dental in all positions, and /g/ is not a stop in all positions. The rule followed here is one sanctioned by custom; namely, that the allophone which occurs in initial position is regarded as primary and determines the designation of the phoneme and its place in the table. After leaving the stops and spirants, the table is decidedly asymmetrical; but for this I offer no apology, since it reflects the system of an asymmetrical language.8 Allophones are indicated sparingly. According to the findings of modern acoustic phonetics, every phoneme is so modified by neighboring sounds that it might even be said to have a separate allophone for 8

Citations, unless otherwise indicated, are from Sweet, OET, pp. 35-110. There are better editions of individual glossaries, but for our purposes Sweet has two advantages: he includes only those Latin lemmata which have OE (or possibly OE) equivalents, and he has arranged the texts in parallel columns with convenient cross-references between Corp. and Ep. Erf. 7 There are possible exceptions, of course; e.g., two scribes working independently could conceivably substitute an 6 for an archaic d ( = 6) in their archetype or make some similar modernization, or they might correct an obvious blunder in the same way if there were only one obvious correction. 8 The symmetry of my vowel tables may even be misleading in some instances. For example (Table I, Lg., XXXVII, 524), /a/ was a back vowel as compared with /i/, /e/, /ae/, etc., and its effect in producing velar umlaut in Mercian was certainly that of a back vowel, but phonetically /a/ and l&l were probably central rather than back. In this case, the pressure of symmetry and a desire to avoid an extra column in the table led me to oversimplify. I hope that no one was misled.

ON THE CONSONANTAL PHONEMES OF OLD ENGLISH

19

every environment in which it occurs. No doubt, a similar state existed in OE times, but for the purposes of this discussion, it seemed best to include only those secondary allophones which either became independent phonemes at a later date or which give rise to spelling problems in the OE texts. 2 . 1 . TABLE II.

Old English Consonants, c 700. Labial

Dental

Palato-velar-glottal

Voiceless stops M [t] M [k, k'] IPI [ri Voiced stops /b/ [b, b] Idl [d] /g/ [g, g, g'l Spirants /h/ [h, X. X'] /f/ [f, v] /W [t>, 8] Liquids M [r, r] N P. H Nasals /m/ [m, ip] /n/ [n, n, q] Sibilants N ts> z] ./§/ m Semi-vowels lël [j] Ml [w] Voceless affricate /¿/ W] Voiced affricate /g/ [d 3 ] Length: Usualy indicated by doubling of the consonant, /pp/, etc. Later changes and dialectal variations in the OE consonants will be noted in the discussions of individual phonemes, but a systematic treatment dialect by dialect is probably unnecessary, inasmuch as dialectal variations in the consonants are much less significant and much harder to determine precisely than are those in the vowels.® 2.2. Structuralists who have dealt with OE consonants sometimes differ from this table, as well as from one another, in the symbols used for transcribing the phonemes. There should be no misunderstanding if the following variant usages are kept in mind: /k/ for /c/ — Penzl, Moulton, Stockwell, Hockett; /9/ for /f>/ — Stockwell, Hockett; /x/ for /h/ — Stockwell; /sc/ for /s/ — Stockwell; /sk/ for /§/ — Hockett; /jI for /g/ — Moulton, Stockwell; /?/ for /g/ — Hockett; /k'/ for /c/ — Penzl; /c/ for /c/ — Stockwell; /k/ for /c/ — Hockett; /g/ for /g/ — Moulton; /jj/ for /g/ — Stockwell; /g/ for /g/ — Hockett. 10 These differences in transcription do not seem to reflect any basic difference in the interpretation of the consonant system. I piefer /c/ for the palato-velar stop [k, k'] because this phoneme is normally spelled c in the MSS and in the printed texts, k being a very infrequent graphic variant. A symbol which is readily identified has some advantage over one which might be misunder* E.g., in my Table II (Lg., XXXVII, 533 : the Mercian syllabics), independent phonemes appear which are not present in Table IV (p. 536 : West Saxon syllabics) or in Table V (p. 537 : Kentish syllabics). The consonants present no comparable differences from dialect to dialect. 10 Herbert Penzl, "The Phonemic Split of Germanic k in Old English," Language, XXIII (1947), 34-42; W. G. Moulton, "The Stops and Spirants of Early Germanic," Lg., XXX (1954), 1-42; C. F. Hockett, A Course in Modern Linguistics (New York, 1958), pp. 372-379; R. P. Stockwell, "The Phonology of Old English : A Structural Sketch," Studies in Linguistics, XIII (1958), 13-24.

20

SHERMAN M. KUHN

stood. On similar grounds, one might regard /J>/ as preferable to /0/ for the dental spirant Q) or 0, 5]; /g/ as preferable to /j/ or /y/ for the palatal semi-vowel [j] (usually spelled g, in many printed texts g); /c/ as preferable to /k'/ or /k/ for the voiceless dental affricate [tj] or [ts]; and /g/ as preferable to /jj/ or /g/ for the voiced affricate [d3]. The symbol /§/ does not represent the usage of MSS or printed texts, and /g/ is only partially representative,11 but I believe that we gain something by reserving /sc/ for the cluster [sk] in words like scolere 'learner' (Medieval Latin scholarius), and by indicating that /g/, although a cluster phonetically and a geminate etymologically, was a phonemic unit in OE. Lastly, it is customary in dealing with OE consonants to take the initial allophone as primary; hence, one would prefer /h/ to /x/ for the palato-velar-glottal spirant [h, x, x']. 2.3. There are four important areas of disagreement in the analysis of the OE consonant system: (1) /g/, /h/, in which Moulton and Hockett are in agreement against Stockwell, whose views coincide rather closely with those of the traditional linguists; (2) /l/, /r/, in which Samuels and Reszkiewicz are in opposition to Hockett, Stockwell, and the traditional linguists; (3) /hi/, /hi/, hn/, /hw/, in which Hockett, Stockwell, and probably most traditional linguists hold views differing from those of A. Campbell, himself a traditionalist; and (4) the semi-vowels, m which Stockwell is at odds with Hockett, Kurath, and the traditional linguists.12 These controversies will be taken up at appropriate points: (1) after the phoneme /h/, (2) after the phoneme /r/, (3) after the phoneme /w/, and (4) after the phoneme /g/. 2.4. The distributions of the phonemes are generally presented in terms of Moulton's twelve environments: 13 (1) post-junctural position, 14 C—; (2) lengthened or geminated, CC or C:; (3) after nasal and before vowel, NCV; (4) pre-junctural after nasal, N C + ; (5) after /l/ and before vowel, 1CV; (6) pre-junctural after /1/, 1 C + ; (7) after /r/ and before vowel, rCV; (8) pre-junctural after /r/, r C + ; (9) between vowels, VCV; (10) pre-junctural after vowel, V C + ; (11) after vowel and before /s/, VCs; (12) after vowel and before /t/, VCt. For some of the consonants which were not included in Moulton's study, additional positions must be noted: for liquids and nasals, (13) pre-junctural after consonant; for /n/ and /s/, (14) after vowel and before /c/ or /g/. In treating the phonemes /c/, /g/, and /h/, I find that I must divide several of Moulton's positions into two, an (a) and a (b). Blanks due to incompleteness of the shared glossary data will be filled, when such a procedure II

Perhaps /sc/ and /eg / would have been better. See note 10 and also M. L. Samuels, "The Study of Old English Phonology," Transactions of the Philological Society, 1952 (1953), pp. 18-19, 42-43; Alfred Reszkiewicz, "The Phonemic Interpretation of Old English Digraphs," Biuletyn Polskiego Towarzystwa J^zykoznawczego, XII (1953), 180-184; Hans Kurath, "The Binary Interpretation of English Vowels : A Critique," Lg., XXXIII (1957), 111-122; and A. Campbell, Old English Grammar (Oxford, 1959), pp. 20, 186. 13 Op. cit. 14 Several types of juncture are recognized. As used here, post-junctural means word initial, initial in the second element of a compound, or initial after a prefix which was still productive in OE; pre-junctural means word final, final in the first element of a compound, or immediately preceding a derivational suffix which was still productive in OE. 12

ON THE CONSONANTAL PHONEMES OF OLD ENGLISH

21

appears safe, with forms from a single glossary or with forms from slightly later texts in the same dialect, i.e. Mercian,15 or from rougly contemporary texts in other dialects. Such substitute forms will always be indicated. 3. Voiceless Stops 3.1. /p/ [p]: (1) pic 'pitch' 1593;16 paad 'cloak' 1654; spoed 'success' 1663. (2) yppe 'upper chamber' (Ep. uppae) 1114; stoppa 'bucket' (Ep. jstappa) 309. (3) cempan 'warriors' (Ep. caempan) 984; ampre17 'sour dock' (Ep. amprae, Erf. omprae) 2077. (4) gelimp-lice 'suitable' (Ep., Erf. out) 548; lemp-halt 'lame' (Ep. laempi-, Erf. tlemphi-) 1250. (5) elpendbaan 'ivory' (Erf. elpendes ban, Ep. out) 712; gelpende 'boastful' (Ep., Erf. out) 1940. (6) tgelp-lih 'boastful' (Corp. wlonclice, Ep. uulanclicae) Erf. 112; cf. hwelp 'cub' (VPs.). (7) wondeuueorpe 'mole' (Ep. uuandaeuuiorpae, Erf. uuondceuuerpe) 1975; cf. hearpe (VPs.). (8) wearp 'warp' (Ep., Erf. out) 1928; scearp-nis 'sharpness' (Ep., Erf. out) 50. (9) scipes 'of a ship' 1748. (10) naep 'turnip' (Erf. nep) 1363; \>rop 'thorp' (Erf. drop, Ep. out) 557. (11) uaeps 'wasp' (Corp. waefs, Ep. out) Erf. 255. (12) geuaerpte 'recovered' (Ep., Erf. out) 572.18 The /p/ presents no real phonemic problems. On the basis of its history and the evidence of Germanic cognates and Latin borrowings, it was a voiceless bilabial stop with but one important allophone. It is written p. 19 3.2. /t/ [t]: (1) tiig 'Mars' 1293; tasul 'a die' (Ep. tasol) 2000; stig 'path' (Ep. out, Erf. stiig) 651. (2) gesette 'he set' (Ep. gisettae, Erf. gisette) 505; meottoc 'mattock, trident' (Ep. maettoc, Erf. mettoc) 2047. (3) minte 'mint' (Ep., Erf. out) 23; cf. muntas 'mountains' (VPs.). (4) flint 'flint' 1561; cf. munt 'mountain' (VPs.). (5) milte 'spleen' (Ep., Erf. milti) 1896;fultum 'aid' (Erf.fulteam, Ep. out) 743.20 (6) helt 'hilt' (Ep., Erf. out) 359; malt 'malt' 322. (7) cf. wyrte 'plant' (VPs.); wearte 'wart' (Ep. uueartae, Erf. uearte) 1485. (8) walhwyrt 'foreign plant' (Erf. uualhuyrt, Ep. out) 714; steort 'tail' (Ep., Erf. out) 404. (9) teter 'tetter' 262; fleotas 'estuaries' (Erf. fleutas) 95. (10) hucet 'brisk' (Ep. huet, Erf. huaet) 1223; hnut-beam 'nut tree' 1394. (11) gitsung 15 Forms cited from the Vespasian Psalter gloss (VPs.) will be found in the glossary to my edition, Ann Arbor, 1965. 16 Line numbers, unless otherwise indicated, are those of Corp. A form from Ep. or Erf. is given only when it varies from that in Corp.; i.e., when Corp. alone is cited, the other glossaries have an identical form. An obvious misspelling or the use of a different word is marked with a dagger. It is usually assumed that the reader will know when an inflected form of a word (e.g., the dat. sg. of a noun) is cited instead of the uninflected form. Readings of Corp. and Ep. have been checked in W. M. Lindsay, The Corpus Glossary (Cambridge, 1921); J. H. Hessels, An Eighth-Century Latin-Anglo-Saxon Glossary (Cambridge, 1890); Sweet, The Epinal Glossary, EETS, OS, LXXIXb (1883, repr. 1936); and my own microfilm of Corp. 17 Between nasal and liquid, an environment similar to NCV. 18 Examples for (11) and (12) are open to question. Earlier /fs/ shifted to /ps/, and the cluster /ps/ may not have occurred in Arch. I. The /pt/ cluster in geuaerpte straddles a morpheme boundary, but the same is true of Moulton's cepte, p. 22. 19 The use of p for /f/ is treated under /f/ below. 20 The /It/ straddles an old morpheme boundary in fultum, but it seems probable that the word was no longer felt as a compound.

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'greed* (Corp. gidsung) Ep. 82; cf. geunrotsad 'sad' (VPs.).21 (12) See (2). The /t/ was probably a pure dental, although it would be difficult to prove that it was not an alveolar like its Modern English reflex. There was a tendency in Mercian to shift pre-junctural /d/ and /{>/ to /t/, as in raefsit 'reproved' (Ep. raebsid, Erf. repsit) 1084; borettit 'he brandishes' (Corp. borettid, Erf. boretit) Ep. 1092.22 In West Saxon, the incidence of /t/ was increased by syncopation and assimilation in the sg. 2 and 3 of many verbs; e.g., WS rit 'he rides', beside Merc, and Nhb. rided. 3.3 /c/ [k]: (la) cempan 'warriors' (Ep. caempan) 984; kaelid 'he cools' (Ep. caelith, Erf. ccelid) 1119; kylle 'wine skin' (Ep., Erf. out) 231; cynedoom 'royal authority' (Ep., Erf. cynidom) 1719; cf. ceafurtun 'vestibule' (VPs.). (2a) -sticca 'stick' (Erf. t-stecca) 171; cf diccum 'thick' (VPs.). (3a) stincendi 'stinking' (Ep., Erf. out) 895. (4a) cf. geswinc 'trouble' (VPs.). (5a) cf. ylcurn 'all' (VPs.). (6a) cf. mile 'milk' (VPs.). (7a) spatrca 'spark' (Ep., Erf. out) 1827. (8a) berc 'birch tree' 285; -gewerc 'work' (Ep. -giuueorc, Erf. -giuerc) 1040. (9a) gqces2Z 'cuckoo's' (Ep. geacaes, Erf. gecaes) 58. (10a) laec 'leek' 154; cuic- 'alive' (Erf. out) 368. (11a) cf. ricsad 'he rules' (VPs.). (12a cf geecte24 'he increased' (VPs.). [k']: (lb) cop 'cope, vestment' (Ep. out) 757; quida 'womb' (Erf. out) 1290; chroa, croha 'pot' (Ep. crocha, Erf. chroca) 461. (2b) loccas 'locks of hair' 160; fingirdoccana 'of the finger-muscles' (Erf. -doccuna, Ep. out) 687. (3b) cf doncas 'thanks' (VPs.). (4b) wlonc-lice 'proudly' (Ep. uulanc-, Erf. fgelp-) 85. (5b) asolcen 'torpid' (Ep. asolcaen, Erf. asolccen) 1092. (6b) calc 'lime' 345. (7b) orceas 'demons' (Ep., Erf. out) 1080; cf. carcerne 'prison' (VPs.). (8b) store 'stork' (Ep. out) 465; ore 'pitcher' 1454. (9b) tacur 'brother-in-law' (Ep., Erf. tacor) 1204; draca 'dragon' (Ep. fdroco, Erf. draco) 2027; cf. gebreocu 'I break' (VPs.). (10b) aac 'oak' 1749; aqueorna25 'squirrel' (Erf. aquorna) 1811. (1 lb) box 'box tree' (Ep., Erf. out) 332.26 (12b) No early evidence. 3.31. The /c/ represents one result of a phonemic split in proto-English, the other result being the voiceless affricate /c/. Germanic /k/ in very early times developed positional variants: a palatal allophone [k] in words like */kinnuz/ 'chin', OE cin, Gothic kinrtus, and a velar allophone [k'] in words like */kornaz/ 'corn', OE corn, Got. kaurn. At first, the difference was probably no more noticeable to untrained ears (of which there many in those days, no doubt) than that between the MnE sounds in kin and coal. The two allophones also occurred in medial and pre-junctural positions in accordance with patterns which can best be seen by comparing the examples 21

The cluster in gitsung was originally /ds/, and the form in Corp. may be that of Arch. I, the Ep. Erf form being an innovation in Arch. II or even an independent innovation in the two MSS. The cluster /ts/ is rare in OE and usually derived from something else. 82 For evidence of the same shift in Bede's English names, especially those in the early Merc. MS, Cotton Tiberius C. ii, see Hilmer Strom, Old English Personal Names in Bede's History (= Studies in English, VIII, 128-138), Lund, 1939. 83 So MS; Lindsay gaeces. 84 The /ct/ straddles a morpheme boundary. 85 I.e., ac-weorna. 26 In native words in the earliest period, x has the value /hs/, and /cs/ is spelled cs\ but in this borrowing from Latin, we should probably assume the Latin value of x.

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23

given for /c/ above and for /c/ below. These allophones became independent phonemes before the time of the earliest surviving written records in English. According to Penzl,27 the split grew out of the workings of i-umlaut, which caused front vowels to occur after the velar allophone, thus making [k'] no longer a positional variant but a phoneme /c/ in contrastive distribution with the palatal consonant. For example, Merc, caelf /caelf/ 'calf' {cf. Got. kalbo) has an initial phoneme which contrasts with that of cese /cese/ 'cheese' (cf. Lat. caseus).28 /-umlaut is commonly thought to have been complete in proto-English at some time in the sixth century; 29 hence, Penzl's explanation would enable us to date the emergence of the /c/ and /c/ phonemes near the close of the sixth century or relatively early in the seventh. Moulton attributes the split to the loss of the /i/ and /j/ in words like bene 'bench' (Gmc. */bankiz/) and streccan 'to stretch' (*/strakjan/), which left the /c/ and /cc/ in contrastive position with the /c/ and /cc/ of words like dranc 'he drank' and hnecca 'neck'. 30 Since this loss of /i/ and /j/ probably occurred early in the seventh century, 31 Moulton's explanation narrows the time span during which the plonemic split can be dated; i.e., it can hardly have taken place earlier than the beginning, or later than about the middle, of the seventh century. 3.32. A second sound change, assibilation, affected the palatal phoneme /c/, shifting it from [k], through some such stage as [kj], to [tj]. There is some uncertainty as to the time at which assibilation occurred. I suggest that the change could not have been very far advanced at the time when medial unaccented /i/ was lost in the preterites of Weak I verbs. For example, OE drencan [drentfan] has the preterite drencte [drenkte], in which an /I/ had originally stood between a palatal [k] and the ¡tj. The effect of bringing the dental into contact with the palatal was to shift the latter to [k'], so that instead of becoming [tf], phonemically /c/, it remained with the velar phoneme, OE /c/. Such a shift of the palatal is very difficult to account for if the two sounds were as far apart at the time of the shift as [k'] and [tfl. Since loss of the medial /i/ is generally placed in the first part of the seventh century, it would appear that assibilation began at approximately the time that Moulton sets for the phonemic split of /c/ and /c/. 32 3.33. When linguistic history repeats itself, the result is apt to be confusing even to linguists; witness the confusion of the late eighteenth century produced by similarities between the Gmc. and the High German consonant shifts. The OE velar /c/ developed positional variants paralleling those of the earlier Gmc. /k/; that is, a palatal [k] in some positions, a velar [k'] in others. The evidence of the new palatal 27

Op. cit., p. 42. For WS examples, see Penzl's article. 29 See, for example, Karl Luick, Historische Grammatik der englischen Sprache (Leipzig, 1929), p. 266. 30 Op. cit., p. 24. 31 Luick, p. 321. 32 The palatal [kk] also split from the velar [k'k'J and was assibilated at about the same time, e.g. flicci beside -sticca. 28

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[k] is found chiefly in the Mercian and Northumbrian dialects, in which diphthongs underwent the sound change called smoothing before /c/, /g/, and /h/, or a cluster containing one of these preceded by a liquid. 33 For example, early Merc, l&c 'leek' (later lëc, WS lëac), Merc, mile 'milk' (WS meolc, from */mioluc/), and Merc. were 'work' (WS weorc) have lost the velar off-glides of their diphthongs. It is hardly possible that a palatalizing change like this could take place before a velar consonant; hence, we must assume a palatal [k] in IËC, etc., which would be in complementary distribution with the velar [k'] after back vowels, as in hoc 'book', etc. From the evidence provided by smoothing, we can be fairly certain that [k] occurred medially and finally after all diphthongs whose stressed element was front; i.e., after /!o/, /ëo/, /¡la/, 34 and in the clusters /lc/ and /rc/ after such diphthongs. Presumably [k] also occurred after the front vowels themselves, /ï/, /ë/, /&/, and in the clusters /lc/, /rc/, and /nc/ after those vowels. Arguing from the analogy of the earlier Gmc. [k], we might also assume this new [k] in post-junctural position before front or front round vowels and before diphthongs whose first element was front; e.g., in cempan, kaelid, cynedoom, ceafurtun.35 We should probably assume the velar [k'] in all other positions. We can do little more than assume (except where the evidence of smoothing appears), for the scribes rarely differentiated between [k] and [k'] or /c/ and /c/. In WS and Kentish, the two allophones are impossible to pin down with any certainty. 3.34. If the velar /c/ had developed an allophone [k] while /c/ was still pronounced [k], the new allophone would have fused, fallen together phonemically, with /c/; and MnE leek, work, milk would be *leech, *worch or *werch, *milch.36 The new positional variants of /c/ must, therefore, have arisen after /c/ had undergone assibilation and become a sound approaching [tj]. Since smoothing of the diphthongs from Gmc. and of the short diphthongs from breaking was far advanced by 700,37 it seems reasonable to place assibilation about the middle of the seventh century. The relative chronology of the sound changes mentioned in §§ 3.31-4 is as follows: (1) /-umlaut (? sixth century); (2) loss of /i/ and /j/ (? early seventh century); (3) phonemic split of /c/ and /c/ and assibilation of /c/ (? mid-seventh century); (4) rise of new [k] and [k'] and onset of smoothing (? later seventh century). 3.35. The incidence of /c/ is decreased in later Mercian by the substitution of /h/ 83

Comparable evidence for WS and Kentish is not easily found. It is possible, of course, that palatal and velar allophones of /c/ existed in those dialects unaccompanied by smoothing. Speech sounds may make sound changes possible, but they do not cause sound changes. Even when we use an expression like 'umlaut-producing,' we should remember that this is merely a sort of shorthand, used only to avoid a more accurate but very cumbersome locution. If an /// or a /j/, of itself, caused i-umlaut, we should not be able to pronounce army or arduous today without fronting the /a/. 34 Evidence for /fe/ is lacking. 38 The -ea- reflects velar umlaut of /a/, a sound change which was still in progress in the eighth century and not fully reflected in the spellings of the early glossaries; cf. caebrtuun (Ep. cebçr-, Erf. caeber-) 2094; cleadur 'a rattle' (Ep. claedur, Erf. cledr) 599. 36 The rare MnE milch, as in milch cow, is a different, though related, word. 73 See Lg„ XXXVn, 525, 531.

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for /c/ in ah 'but' (WS, Kt., Corp. ac); in Northumbrian, by the substitution of /h/ in ah and in other words, especially in the unstressed pronouns ih, meh, usih, etc. (beside ic, mec, usic, etc.). The incidence of /c/ was increased in some portions of the Nhb. area by the failure of Gmc. /k/ in certain positions to become /c/. 38 In Merc, after 700, the distribution of the allophones [k] and [k'] was affected by the operation of velar umlaut, as reflected for example in Corp. borddeaca 'shield-roof, testudo' (Ep. t borohaca, Erf. fbrodthaca) 1999 or VPs. hreacan 'throat' (WS hracan), spreocad 'they speak' (WS sprecap). A velar off-glide could hardly have developed after the palatal vowel in these forms unless the [k] had become velar through the influence of the following back vowel. On the other hand, Merc, forms like draecena 'of dragons' (VPs.) and sprecu 'I speak' (VPs.) may be due to the continuing operation of smoothing39 or, in some cases at least, to analogy with forms in which the /c/ was followed by a front vowel. Unsmoothed diphthongs in Kentish are attributed to the fact that velar umlaut occurred in that dialect, but not smoothing. 3.36. I have said that OE scribes rarely differentiated /c/ and /c/ in spelling. This is true, but some exceptions to the rule may be seen if one compares the tabulation for /c/ above with that for /c/ below. The spelling k is used rarely for /c/, never apparently for /c/. There are instances of qu for /cw/, a usage lifted bodily from Latin, but q for /c/ is negligible.40 Rare ch for /c/, as in chroa, may be due to the influence of Latin words of Greek origin; ch normally represents /h/, not /c/ or /c/. A complete account of usage in later OE is hardly feasible here, but I should like to mention two texts which are later than those which we have been considering. The early WS (late ninth-century) Hatton MS of King Alfred's translation of the Pastoral Care contains many examples of k for /c/: kelnesse 'cooling', kok 'cock', kokke (dat.), ankor 'anchor', ceker 'field', geoke 'yoke', ceak 'basin', etc.41 Farman's glosses in the Rushworth Gospels (tenth-century mixed-Mercian) show k for /c/ about 130 times: kining 'king', kasere 'Caesar', kneorisse 'generation', krceftgum 'skillful, learned', besenked 'sunk, drowned' (with /c/ by analogy with pret. -sencte),

38

J. W. Watson, "Non-initial k in the North of England," Lg„ XXIII (1947), 43-49. If smoothing was still operative in the eighth century, its effect upon velar-umlaut diphthongs was obviously partial and almost sporadic. This explanation will account for the lack of smoothing in borddeaca, etc., but some other diphthongal forms present greater difficulties : Ep. geacaes (Gmc. /au/) and -giuueorc (breaking), Erf. teag (see /g/ below), Ep. fleah and leax (see /h/ below), etc. These latter might be attributed to uncertainty in scribal practice due to the fact that smoothing was a recent sound change, but they could also be explained as forms taken without respelling from other dialects, e.g. West Saxon. The materials of Arch. I and the additional matter in Corp. were apparently collected from scattered interlinear and marginal glosses found in older MSS, some of which may have come from non-Mercian areas. For the best analysis of the heterogeneous origins of the glossary items, see W. M. Lindsay, The Corpus, Epirtal, Erfurt and Leiden Glossaries, Oxford, 1921. 40 The second qu in Ep. quiquae is an obvious scribal error, as may be seen by comparison with the forms in Corp. and Erf. 41 For further examples in EWS, see P. J. Cosun, Altwestsachsische Grammatik (The Hague, 1883), I, 152-153. 39

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wolken 'sky', carkern 'prison', ciken 'chicken', seoke 'sick', ek 'also', etc.iZ Nei ther of these texts contains any clear example of k for /c/. 4. Voiced stops 4.1. /b/ [b]: (1) beer 'bier' 264; baar 'boar' 287. (2) ribbe 'ribwort' (Ep., Erf. ribbae) 356; cf. habbad 'they have' (VPs.). (3) cimbing 'joint' (Ep. out) 554; ambaect 'servant' (Ep. ambect, Erf. fambaet) 1706. (4) ymb-driodung 'deliberation' (Erf. fymbdritung, Ep. out) 644; hymb-licae 'hemlock' (Erf. fhuymblicae, Corp. hymlice) Ep. 185; camb 'comb' 355. (5-9) Becomes [b], (10) unsib 'enmity' (Ep. unsibb) 1836; rib 'rib' (Ep., Erf. out) 585. (11), (12) Does not occur. [b]: (1-4) Becomes [b]. (5) aelbitu 'swan' (Erf. f&itu) 1439; halbae 'side' (Erf. halbe, Corp. halfe) Ep. 51. (6) halb-clungni 'half-congealed' (Corp. half-) Ep. 931; salb 'ointment' (Corp. salf) Ep. 635. (7) huerbende 'turning' (Ep., Erf. out) 764; sinuurbul43 'round' (Corp. |siunhuurful, Erf. fsinuulfur) Ep. 1047; cf. hwerfed 'it returns' (VPs.). (8) huerb 'whorl of a spindle' (Ep., Erf. out) 2108; tyrb 'turves' (Ep., Erf. out) 452. (9) haebern 'crab' (Ep. habern, Erf. haferri) 1370; sceaba 'plane' 1755; clouae44 'buckle' (Ep. clofae, Erf. clofce) 1327. (10) endistaeb 'end' (Erf. fst$b, Ep. out) 785; staeb-plegan 'letter-game' (Corp. staef-, Erf. fscceb-) Ep. 577; gloob 'glove' (Erf. glob, Corp. glof) Ep. 631. (11), (12) Does not occur. 4.11 The voiced bilabial stop allophone of /b/ is derived from proto-Gmc. /b/, from Indo-European /bh/ in positions (1-4). This [b] alone survived the eighth century to become the /b/ of most OE texts. In pre-junctural position, [b] is due to simplification of older geminates. The bilabial spirant [t>] has two sources: IE /bh/ in positions other than (1-4) and proto-Gmc. /f/ (from IE /p/) in accordance with the operation of Verner's Law. The evidence of the early glossaries indicates that /b/ [b, t>] and /f/ [f> v] were carefully distinguished in Arch. I, the former being written b, the latter /, 4 5 It seems likely that a bilabial spirant pronunciation was current around 700, or had recently been current. That this pronunciation was shifting, or about to shift, to labiodental is indicated by the frequent use of / for [b] and of b for /f/ 46 in the individual glossaries, especially in Corp. 47 In the course of the eighth century, [t>] in positions (5, 7, 9) fell together with [v], while [b] in positions (6, 8, 10) fell together with [f]. We may also observe that, in the speech represented by Arch. I, it was apparently possible for [b] and [b] to contrast in position (10). Even though this contrast would rarely occur in speech or writing, it would nevertheless tend to 42

For further examples, see E. M. Brown, The Language of the Rushworth Gloss to the Gospel of Matthew, II Gottingen, 1892), 30-31. Altered from sinuurful; b above / . 44 The u is probably an error for / or (more probably) b. In the Latin text of Corp., u appears occasionally for f nearly twice as often for b ; see Hessels, pp. xxxvii-xxxviii. 45 Chadwick, pp. 232-240. 46 See /{/ below. 47 For similar confusion in eighth-century Nhb., see Strom, pp. 132-133. 43

ON THE CONSONANTAL PHONEMES OF OLD ENGLISH

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make the phonemic system unstable at this point. Indeed, we are not completely certain that the phoneme /b/ had not already split apart, its apparent identity being an illusion produced by archaic spelling conventions. 48 4.2. /d/ [d]: (1) disc 'dish' 1490; durhere 'folding door' 1948. (2) geddi 'a lay' (Ep. out) 733; cf. Adda (early Bede MSS). (3) windil 'basket' (Erf. ^pindil) 348; sonde 'sending' (Ep. •fscandae,*9 Erf. sondae) 502. (4) lind 'linden' 2019; brond 'firebrand' (Ep. brand) 2018. (5) salde 'he gave' (Ep. saldae, Erf. fsaltae) 1089. (6) feld- 'field' 323; hold 'carcass' 853. (7) wyrde 'fate' (Ep., Erf. uuyrdae) 1480; -geardas 'enclosures' 1998; uuordes 'of a word' (Ep., Erf. out) 2115. (8) seglgqrd 'sail-yard' (Ep., Erf. segilgaerd) 165; uueard 'guardian' 1783; brord 'point' (Erf. broord, Corp. fbrond) Ep. 782. (9) gredig 'greedy' 1046; sadol 'saddle' (Erf. ^satul) 1839. (10) coldred 'plumb line' (Ep. colpred, Erf. coldraed) 1548; hood 'hood' 369. (11) gidsung 'greed' (Ep., Erf. gitsung) 184; cf. bledsung (VPs.). (12) Does not occur. The /d/ presents no difficult phonemic problems. From the ninth century on, we find texts in which the graphs d and d are frequently confused; this is an orthographic confusion due to the fact that d is merely an OE d with a short stroke through the upright. The tendency for /d/ to become /t/ has already been mentioned under /t/, and the shift of /£/ to /d/ in a few words will be noted under ¡\>j. 4.3 /g/ [g]: (1) gyrdils 'girdle' 1244; goos 'goose' 172. (2) earwicga 'earwig' (Ep. earuuigga, Erf. faeruuica) 240; sugga some kind of small bird (Erf. sucga) 878. (3) hringe 'ring' (Ep. fhringiae, Erf. hringae) 874; pungas 'aconite' (Ep., Erf. thungas) 45. (4) hringfaag 'ring-streaked' (Erf. fhrnigfaag) 1612; pung 'purse' (Ep. out) 391; uulatunc 'nausea' (Ep. uulatung, Erf. uulating) 1357. (5-12) Does not occur. [g]: (1-4) Becomes [g]. (5a) suelgendi 'whirlpool' (Ep., Erf. out) 2160. (6a) No clear early evidence. (7a) duergedostle 'pennyroyal' (Ep. duuergaedostae, Erf. duergaedostae) 1686. (8a) duerg 'dwarf' 1362; merg 'marrow' (Ep., Erf. out) 1308. (9a) egan 'eye' (Erf. cegan) 2133; egur 'high tide, flood' (Erf. aegur, Ep. out) 702. (10a) taeg 'cord, tie' (Ep. teac, Erf. teag) 1821. (11a) No clear early evidence. (12a) Does not occur. [g']: (1-4) Becomes [g]. (5b) cf. gehalgade 'hallowed' (VPs.). (6b) cf. forswalg 'it swallowed' (VPs.). (7b) morgenlic 'of the morning' (Erf. tmorgendlic) 1535. (8b) borg 'security' 2080. (9b) bogan 'bow, arch' 901; cf. weogum 'ways' (VPs.). (10b) crog 'pot' (Ep., Erf. croog) 1171. ( l i b ) No clear early evidence. (12b) Does not occur. 4.31. The /g/ has a more complicated history than the other voiced stops. The Gmc. palato-velar spirant /g/ became a stop [g] in post-junctural position, after a nasal, and in gemination; 50 elsewhere it remained a spirant. The spirant allophone developed, or already possessed, positional variants, a palatal [g] and a velar [g'], 48

Anyone familiar with Old Irish will note the striking similarity between the Olr. use of b and that of Arch. I. 49 ? c expuncted. 50 A great deal has been written about the age and origin of the geminations which occurred in earwigga, sugga, etc. Suffice it here to say that the geminations did indeed occur and that the results were not the same as those of the gemination in words like brycg.

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whose distributions roughly paralleled those of the allophones of Gmc. /k/. 51 In West Gmc., [g] was geminated to [gg] before Gmc. /j/. In proto-English, prior to the period of i-umlaut, [g] became palatal [g] before front vowels and diphthongs whose first element was front, and also when preceded by a nasal and followed by Gmc. /j/. At this point, there were three allophones [g, g, g'] and two geminates [gg, gg]. The phonemic split and assibilation of [g] and [gg] took place at about the same time as those of [k] and [kk], resulting in: a new [j], which fused with the old Gmc. /j/ to produce the phoneme which I label /g/, as in ieces, byrgen, etc.; and a [d3], which became an independent phoneme /g/, as in brycg, fenge, etc. Only [g], [gg], and [g'] remained with the phoneme /g/. 4.32. After the split, /g/ developed new allophones much like those already described for OE /c/. The [g] remained a stop in post-junctural position, in gemination, and after a nasal, probably with palatal and velar variants which we need not indicate here since they had no observable effect upon the spelling or the later history of the language. The [gg] remained a long'palatal or velar stop. The [g'] remained in the neighborhood of back vowels but became palatal before and after front vowels or diphthongs whose stressed element was front. In the Merc, and Nhb. dialects, this new [g] made smoothing possible in egan, duerg, etc.52 The Merc, dialect provides one exception to this last pro«-ess: the [g'] must have remained or been restored in forms like weogum (VPs.), which show velar umlaut and no smoothing of the diphthong. In pre-junctural position, [g] and [g'] had a tendency to become unvoiced, as is indicated by sporadic /¡-spellings in early OE. Later, perhaps in the tenth century, this unvoicing was so general that final [g, g'] must be regarded as having split from /g/ and fused with /h/. 53 Sporadic OE examples like uulatunc and more frequent examples in later English seem to reflect a tendency to unvoice final [g] after /n/. Forms like teac in Ep. are exceedingly rare; they are difficult to explain, unless we suppose that c represents /h/, i.e. [x, x']. 5. Voiceless spirants 5.1. /f/ [f]: (1) porh-ge-feht 'through-fight' (Ep. jporgifect, Erf. dorhgifecilae) 1537; falu 'fallow' 970; gron-uisc some kind of fish (Ep., Erf. out) 66. (2) maffa 54 'cawl,? entrails' (Erf. \naffd) 1443; cf. Ojfa (early Bede MSS), ofriu 'I offer' 55 (VPs.). (3), (4) Nasals were lost before /f/. (5) Became [v]. (6) wylf 'she-wolf' (Ep., Erf. out) 1260; ww//'wolf' (Ep., Erf. out) 1259. (7) Became [v], (8) cf. acearf'he cut off' (VPs.). (9) Became [v]. (10) hrof- 'roof' 2020; wu/'owl' 334. (11) uuaefsas 'wasps' (Ep. \waeffu

Their distribution may be observed in a general way by a comparison of the examples for /g/ above with those of /g/ and /g/ below. 88 For rare unsmoothed forms like Erf. teag., see note 39. 63 For a discussion of Moulton's differing analysis, see /h/ below. 64 Possibly an error for Lat. mappa, according to Lindsay. ss From Lat. offerre, with the geminate simplified either in pronunciation or merely in spelling.

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sas, Erf. fuuaeps sg.) 2098; raefsit 'reproved' (Ep. raebsid, Erf. repsit) 1084.58 (12) reftras 'rafters' 150; gepofta 'comrade' (Ep. gidopta, Erf. fgidogta) 503; scaept'shaft' (Erf. out) 1005; lybt 'air' (Ep., Erf. out) 1961. [v]: (5) wulfes 'wolf's' (Ep., Erf. uulfes) 355; scalfur 'diver' bird (Ep., Erf. scalfr) 1304. (7) cf. ceorfed 'he carves' (VPs.). (9) cefer 'chafer' (Ep., Erf. cefr) 326; ceber (Ep., Erf. out) 214; hofer 'hump' (Ep., Erf. ofr) 2074. 5.11. The labiodental spirant /f/ had two allophones, which became separate phonemes in Middle English: a voiceless [f] in post- and pre-junctural position, in gemination and before a voiceless consonant; and a voiced [v] in other medial positions. At the close of the seventh century, /{/ was wholly a reflex of Gmc or Lat. /f/. During the next century, [t>] split from /b/ and fused with /f/ in the manner described above. The [f] allophone was then augmented by reflexes of Gmc. [t>] as follows: (6) halb—half, salb—salf and similar words; (8) huerb—*hwerf,57 tyrb—tyrf,5S etc.; (10) staeb—stcef, glob—glof etc. The [v] allophone was similarly augmented: (5) aelbitu—*alfetu,59 halbe—halfe, etc.", (7) sinuurbul—siunhuurful, huerbende—*hwerfende, etc.; (9) haebern—hcefern, sceaba—*sceafa,60 clouae—clofe, etc. Evidence for the long /if/ is weak in earliest OE, but snoffa 'nausea', pyffan 'to puff, ojfrian 'to offer', etc., turn up in later OE. 5.12. The spelling b for /f/ became rare after the eighth century, but it turns up occasionally in ninth-century Merc, and Kt. charters, in early WS texts, in the Nhb. gloss of the Lindisfarne Gospels, in Farman's mixed-Merc, glosses, and in the twelfth-century mixed-Kt. gloss of the Eadwine Psalter. The spelling u for /f/ became even rarer until ME times, but it appears sporadically and unexpectedly in various texts throughout the OE period. If post-junctural /f/ was voiced in Southern England in late OE times, this change is not reflected in the spelling until ME. The spelling pt for /ft/ practically disappeared in OE after the eighth century. 5.2. ¡\>! Q>]: (1) pearm 'gut' (Ep., Erf. thearm) 1058; dinga 'of things' (Erf. thadga) 1442; pinga (Erf. dinga) 1701; pixlum 'wagon poles' (Ep. fdislum, Erf. dixlum) 2007; dorh 'through' (Ep. porch, Erf. dorh) 1547; pu-distel 'sowthistls' (Ep. pupistil, Erf. tpopistil) 1179; thrauuo 'rebuke' (Ep. thrauu, Erf. ttrafu) 200; dhtiehl 'washing' (Erf. thuachl, Ep. out) 641. (2) cynewiddan 'diadems' (Ep., Erf. cyniuuithan) 1743. (3), (4) A nasal was lost before /J>/. (6) spilth 'ruin' 1544. (8) meard 'marten' (Ep. mearth, Erf. meard) 937; \forht 'forth' (Ep. fordh, Erf. tforthe) 1090. (10) mid 'with' (Erf. mid) 1591; gefremid 'he makes, perfects' (Ep. gifraemith, Erf. gifremit) 1629;

86

Original /fs/ became /ps/ ; see Karl Brunner, Altenglische Grammatik nach der angelsächsischen Grammatik von Eduard Sievers (Halle, 1951), p. 167. 87 Not spelled with / in the early glossaries, but cf. VPs. hwer/an, WS hwierfan ; LWS hweorfa, etc., are from the same root without {-umlaut. 88 Spelled with / in later OE. 69 Cf. LWS ylfete. 40 Cf. WS scafa.

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lath 'hateful' (Ep. laath) 1113. (11), (12) No occurrence before /s/ or /t/ because of assimilation.61 [5]: (5) haldi 'sloping' (Corp. haldi, Erf. fhahdi) Ep. 754. (7) corthr 'troop' (Ep. fcortr, Erf. cordr) 2099; heorde 'hearth' (Ep., Erf. out) 906. (9) suedelas 'swaddling bands' (Ep., Erf. suedilas) 1060; quida 'womb' (Erf. out) 1290; nethle 'needle' (Ep. naedlae, Erf. nedlce) 1591; aethm 'breath' (Ep. ethm, Erf. out) 130; loda 'cloak' (Ep., Erf. lotha) 1237; hleoprendi 'crying out' (Ep. hlaeodrindi, Erf. fhleodendri) 1065; wodhae 'eloquence' (Ep., Erf. out) 583. 5.21. The dental spirant /£/, from Gmc. /J)/, had two allophones, a voiceless [£>] or [9] and a voiced [3], with distributions roughly parallel to those of the allophones of /f/. In a few words, /J>/ was retained until some time in the eighth century and then shifted to /d/. The preposition mid is one example; cf. VPs. mid, ninth-century WS mid, but tenth-century Nhb. mid. Other examples involve the clusters /\)l/ and /It»/, which shifted to /dl/ and /Id/; e.g. haldi and nethle,62 5.22. The most frequent spellings for /J)/ in the glossaries are th, J>, 6, and d; rare spellings, possibly errors, are dh, dh, ht, and t (as in cortr). Since it is possible that two scribes might independently substitute a lp or an d for an archaic spelling of the phoneme, one cannot reconstruct the spellings of Arch. I with much confidence; I believe, however, that the effort is worthwhile. Many correspondences like those in thrauuo, spilth, lath, aethm suggest that th was the most popular spelling around 700. Correspondences between Ep. and Erf. like those in dixlum, suedilas, and hlaeodrindi suggest that d was used in Arch. II; and from the archaic appearance of some of these words, one might infer that some of the d's go back to Arch. I. 63 If this is the case, the compiler of Arch. I used an English adaptation of Old Irish spelling conventions. In Olr. texts generally, a distinction is maintained between thforvoiceless /0/ and d for voiced /5/; in OE texts this distinction was abandoned, and the two graphs were interchangeable.64 Correspondences between Corp. and Ep., as in pinga,65 suggest that the runic J) was used, at least occasionally, in Arch. I. The error popistil in Erf. is also of some interest. OE scribes occasionally confused the letters t> and p because of the similarity of their shapes; they did not mistake d, d, or th for p. Hence, the Erf. scribe's mistake would have been unlikely, if not impossible, if anything but Ep. pupistil had appeared in Arch. II. Comparing this with Corp. pudistel, one would suspect that the compiler of Corp. merely substituted an e for an archaic i and an d for one of the JJ'S in his exemplar, which was either Arch. I or a 61

Moulton's WS cwipst (p. 22) has f restored analogically; the usual WS form is cwist. Note also the cluster /rjj/ in Corp. suearth 'sward* (Ep., Erf. out) 406. 63 Some of the d's in Erf. are probably due to Continental German spelling practices. 64 Even in Olr., the distinction was not carried through with absolute consistency; cf. pecead beside peccath 'sin,' buaid beside buaith 'victory,' etc. Confusion is most frequent in preiunctural position; see Rudolf Thurneysen, A Grammar of Old Irish (translated and revised by D. A. Binchy and O. Bergin; Dublin, 1946), p. 83. 85 Other examples are porh- (Ep. frorh-, Erf. dorh-) 1537; ¡¡ingunge (Ep. pingungae, Erf. \ingungae) 1093. 62

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copy of it. If J) was used in Arch. I, it was evidently commonest in post-junctural position. Similar conventions, i.e. J) preferred in post-junctural position and some other graph (usually d) preferred in other positions, are reflected in many later texts.66 The Irish use of d for both [d] and [8] must have been troublesome to the English, for whom these sounds were separate and frequently contrasting phonemes. The solution was to add a short distinguishing stroke through the upright of the d and to use the resulting d for the spirants [5] and Q>].67 From correspondences between Corp. and Ep. like those in dinga, mid, and quida, one might suppose that d was used in Arch. I, although this could be only an assumption, for during the eighth and ninth centuries d became increasingly popular in Merc, and Nhb. texts for /J)/ in all positions. If d was used in Arch. I, it was like th, d, and J) in having no allophonic significance. 5.3. /hi [h]: (1) hearma 'weasel' 1307; holegn 'holly' 53; aesil 'hazel' (Corp., Erf. haesl) Ep. 50. (5) cf. salhas 'willows' (Leiden Glossary).68 (7) furhum 'furrows' (Corp./urww) 69 Ep. 884. (9) bituichn 'between' (Ep. bituicn,70 Corp. tbitun) Erf. 546; suehoras 'fathers-in-law' (Corp., Erf. sueoras) Ep. 1062; sueor (Ep. out) 2107; ryhae 'blanket' (Corp. rye) Ep. 1080; uulohum 'fringes' (Corp. uuloum) Ep. 1066. [x]: (2a) cf. hlcehad 'they laugh' (VPs.). (3), (4) A nasal was lost before /h/. (6a) elh 'elk' (Ep., Erf. elch) 443. (8a) mcerh 'sausage' (Ep. maerh) 1249 \faerh 'hog' 1616. (10a) thegh 'thigh' (Erf. theoh, Ep. out) 556; fl^1 'flea' (Ep.fleah, Erf. t f l o e ) 1684; haeh-nisse 'height' (Ep., Erf. out) 1960. (11a) laex 'salmon' (Ep. leax, Erf. lex) 1155; pixlum 'wagon poles' (Ep. fdislum, Erf. dixlum) 2007. (12a) tyctende 'inciting' (Ep., Erf. tyctendi) 70; oembecht 'office' (Ep., Erf. ambechtae) 501; naeht- 'night' (Ep. naecht-, Erf. nect-) 1384. [x']: (2b) croha 'pot' (Ep. crocha, Erf. chroca) 461. (6b) uualh- 'foreign' 1075; salh 'willow' (Ep. salch) 1767. (8b) horh 'filth' 888; dorh 'through' (Ep. porch, Erf. dorh) 1546. (10b) flach 'hostile' 1066; slagh- 'sloe' (Ep., Erf. slach-) 1380; slah(Ep. slagh-, Erf. fsalach-) 1898; druh 'trough' (Ep. thruuch, Erf. thruch) 2067; 66 One of these, a portion of the twelfth-century Laud MS of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, has been used to cast doubt upon Hockett's statement to the effect that OE ¡3 and 5 were not used to make allophonic distinctions; see R. P. Stockwell and C. W. Barritt, "Scribal Practice : Some Assumptions," Lg., XXXVII (1961), 78-79; C. W. Hockett, "The Stressed Syllabics of Old English," Lg., XXXV (1959), 580. In general, the statistics compiled by Stockwell and Barritt show merely that the Peterborough scribe preferred t> over 6 in post-junctural position, where it represents [{)]; but 6 over J) in pre-junctural position, where it represents, not [8], but Q>]; and 6 over b in medial position, where it may represent either [5] or [{)]. It is unlikely that an Irish prototype of Sahagun prescribed this usage, for Olr. has neither of the two symbols. 47 For the use of d and 5 for //>/ in the early Bede MSS, see Strom, pp. 129-131. In some OE texts (e.g. the VPs. gloss), d and 5 are often interchanged merely by the careless omission or addition of the small distinguishing stroke. 88 Oldest English Texts, p. 113; or J. H. Hessels, A Late Eighth-Century Latin-Anglo-Saxon Glossary (Cambridge, 1906), p. 19. 49 Lindsay and Hessels, S 117; Corp. form omitted by Sweet. 70 From bituin ; c added above. 71 So MS; Lindsay flaeh.

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misthagch 'degenerated' (Ep., Erf. out) 667. (lib) cf. oxan 'oxen' (VPs.). (12b) sohte 'sought' (Ep. sochtae, Erf. fscochtae) 1545. 5.31. The glottal spirant allophone [h] occurred in post-junctural position, possibly also between vowels and between a liquid and a vowel. The palatal spirant [x] occurred after a front vowel, or a diphthong whose stressed element was front, in the following environments: in gemination, in pre-junctural position and in the clusters /lh/ and /rh/ when pre-junctural, and in clusters with a voiceless consonant, especially in /hs/, /ht/. The velar spirant [x'J occurred in the corresponding environments after back vowels. I can find no satisfactory evidence of a mute h in Arch. I, but the early glossaries show h omitted in Ep. aesil (also in Ep. Erf. ofr 'hump' 1046 and a few other instances), excrescent h in Corp. hedir 'kidney' (Ep., Erf. out) 1731. In some of the later OE texts, omitted and excrescent h are much more frequent. 72 Between vowels and between a liquid and a vowel, /h/ 73 must have been lost in the late seventh or early eighth century. Forms like salhas, furhum, bituichn, and uulohum could be explained as having an analogically restored /h/, i.e. [x] or [x'J, from salh, furh, bitwih, wloh. Other forms like suehoras and ryhae do not admit of such an explanation. These indicate either that the /h/ was still pronounced, at least occasionally, when Arch. I was compiled, or that the loss was so recent that spellings with -h- did not impress the compiler as serious blunders. The spellings hlahad and croha, which are later than Arch. I, illustrate the tendency to simplify geminated hh. By the time these forms were written, single intervocalic /h/ was completely lost, so that there was no longer any contrast between short and long /h/ in this position.74 Diphthongs were smoothed in Merc, and Nhb. before [x], just as before the palatal allophones of /cI and /g/.75 In WS and Kt., smoothing did not occur; in LWS, however, the later sound change called palatal umlaut shifted neaht /naeaht/ to niht /niht/. reoht /reoht/ to riht /riht/, etc., indicating that a palatal allophone [x] had developed in that dialect, beside the velar [x'] in gepoht 'thought', etc. From the precision with which the VPs. gloss uses x for /hs/ and cs for /cs/, I judge that the shift of /hs/ to /cs/ was considerably later than the eighth century; hence, I place oxan for the early period under /h/, but for a later period would place it, like Moulton, under /c/. 76 72 The best example is probably Farman's tenth-century glosses in the Rushworth Gospels, which contain is 'his', us 'house', eard 'hard', eortum 'hearts', oefdon 'they had', yngrade 'hungered', wilce 'which', welpas 'whelps', ragl 'clothing', ruescum 'soft', etc., and his 'is', heow 'you', hapas 'oaths', hehtende 'persecuting', hwute 'let us', hryft 'cloak', ge-hroefa 'reeve', etc. For further examples, see E. M. Brown, II, 34. I would suggest that the 'cockney' treatment of initial /h/ is a Mercian feature going back at least to the tenth century. London was, of course, a Mercian city in OE times. 73 Most linguists assume that /h/ in these positions was [h]. For Moulton's arguments in support of this view, op. cit., p. 26. 74 When written ch, as in crocha, the length was not expressed; cf. also the long //>/ in cyniuuithan above. Long /hh/ written h is much less frequent in WS than in Merc. 75 For unsmoothed diphthongs, or diphthongal spellings, in Ep. fleah, leax, see note 39. 79 Corp. box has probably picked up its x from buxus, its lemma as well as its etymon. In EWS, x for /cs/ is rare, but we find ax, beside tecs, 'ax' in the Pastoral Care ; cf. Corp. -gcus (Erf. aesc, Ep. out) 703 and VPs. gcesum 'axes'. For frequent x representing etymological /hs/ in EWS weaxan.

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5.32. From the evidence of the early glossaries, it would appear that [h] was written h in Arch. I. Spellings like the ch in Erf. bituichn and the c in Ep. bituicn may well be analogical [x], as already noted. The gh and gch in thegh, slagh-, misthagch, etc., are of later origin than Arch. 1.1 take them to be an indication that pre-junctural /g/ was already beginning to be unvoiced. The palatovelar allophones [x, x'] were probably written either h or ch, but the latter spelling was much more frequent in Arch. I than in the glossaries descended from it. The spellings x for [xs] and ct (beside cht) for [xt, x't] must also have been in vogue around 700.77 From the differing treatment of [h] and [x, x'], one might argue that the two were separate phonemes, but I should not take the argument too seriously. Arch. I must have been compiled hardly more than thirty years after the Irish-trained Northumbrian, St. Chad, became the first bishop of the Mercians with a fixed see and a permanent abode. Although Chad does not impress me as having the type of personality from which Sahaguns are made, there was abundant opportunity during his episcopate for the popularizing of Irish spelling conventions in Mercia. The use of ch for [x, x'] parallels the Irish use of ch for [x] from lenited /c/. In Old Irish, x was frequently used for [xs],78 and ct beside cht for [xt].79 The Irish orthographical silent h, often used before an initial vowel symbol, was not adopted by the compiler of Arch. I; but the Irish usage no doubt reinforced the runic usage and the rather shaky usage of seventhcentury Latin, thereby helping to establish h as the spelling for post-junctural [h]. The eventual adoption of h, instead of ch, as the normal graph for [x, x'] was due to the English themselves, and I take it as a strong indication that they regarded [h] and [x, x'] as one phoneme. 5.33. This seems the appropriate point at which to take up Moulton's analysis of /g/ and /h/. According to that analysis, proto-English /h/ split into two phonemes: /h/ [h], originally occurring in positions (1, 5, 7, 9), later reduced to (1) by the loss of /h/ in the other three environments; and /x/ [x], occurring in positions (2, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12). These two sounds were obviously in complementary distribution and would normally be regarded as allophones. The first had glottal articulation, however, while the latter had velar articulation; and, since both were voiceless spirants, the difference in place of articulation alone distinguished them. On the basis of this articulatory difference, Moulton analyzed them as two phonemes. According to Moulton, proto-English /g/ also split into: [g], which became a separate phoneme /g/ occurring only in positions (1, 2, 3, 4); a [g], which was unvoiced to [x] in positions (6, 8,10) and fused with the phoneme /x/; and a [g] which remained voiced in positions (5, 7, 9) and became a voiced allophone of /x/. Since the voiced [g] remained in beside weahsan, 'to grow', etc., see Cosijn, I, 180. Farman's glosses show axe 'ax', geaxast 'he asks', etc., with etymological /cs/; wexatt 'to grow', sextig 'sixty', etc., with etymological /hs/. 77 For usages similar to those of Arch. I in early Nhb., see Strom, p. 131. 78 But x for [ks] is a later, Middle Irish, usage. 79 Olr. cs for [xs] either was not adopted by the English or did not survive long enough to affect Arch. I.

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complementary distribution with [g], the two might well be analyzed as allophones of one phoneme. Moulton's arguments for separating [g] from [g] and combining it with [x] were two. First, this solution simplifies OE morphophonemics by making it possible to analyze late OE dragan (inf.)—droh (pt. 1 sg.) as /draxan—dro:x/ rather than as /dragan—dro:h/, and to analyze some other OE verbs with the same sort of simplification. Second, giving /x/ a voiced allophone makes the voiceless spirants more symmetrical, inasmuch as both /f/ and /]b/ had voiced allophones.80 5.34. Stockwell and Barritt rejected Moulton's analysis into /h/, /x/, and /g/. 81 They pointed out that [h] and [x] were spelled alike in most OE texts "except in environments where morphophonemic alternation with /g/ readily explains the use of g," that the [h] and [x] were in complementary distribution, and that the two were "phonetically similar." They analyzed [h] and [x] as one phoneme, [g] and [g] as another. I agree, of course, but I should like to supplement their discussion. 5.35. The difference between glottal and velar articulation seems to me an insufficient reason for separating two sounds which are alike in their other phonetic features, which are in complementary distribution, and whose earlier and later history makes it desirable to treat them diachronically as one phoneme. 82 As I see it, the glottal articulation is merely a pushing further back of the velar articulation. The difference between the glottal pronunciation in horn and the velar in scoh 'shoe' may be greater than that between the velar in scoh and the palatal in stihst 'he climbs', but I submit that the difference is not sufficient to produce a phonemic split. It seems to me no more unreasonable to combine OE [x, x'] with [h] than it is to combine modern French trilled and uvular /r/. The arguments for a split of /g/ and fusing of [g] with /x/ are also dubious. Morphophonemic irregularities are so abundant in OE that simplifying a few verbs is like taking a bucketful of water out of the ocean. A host of other complications will remain unaffected: pencan—pohte, dag—dagas, weorpan— wurdon, feoh—feos, and many others. 83 Even in cases like dragan—droh, Moulton merely postpones the problem to ME times, when his /x/ in dragan becomes /w/ and his /x/ in droh remains unchanged phonetically and phonemically. The argument from symmetry is open to the objection that the parallelism between /f/ and /]d/ on the one hand and Moulton's /x/ on the other can be only partial at best. The /f/ and /t>/ occur post-juncturally, while the /x/ never does. The allophones of /f/ and /£>/ are not distinguished in spelling, while (as Stockwell and Barritt point out) the supposed allophones of /x/ are usually written differently. Moreover, arguments from symmetry are apt to be dangerous; for example, one might argue that, since MnE has a dental nasal /n/ and a palatovelar nasal /q/, MnE must also have a labial nasal /m/ and a palatovelar nasal phoneme which it obviously does not have. 80

Op. cit., pp. 22, 25-27, 39. Hockett, pp. 376-377, follows Moulton. Lg., XXXVII, 79-80. They began as one phoneme in proto-Gmc. (Moulton, pp. 39-40), and they were one phoneme throughout much of the ME period; cf. Hans Kurath, Middle English Dictionary, Plan and Bibliography (Ann Arbor, 1954), p. 5. 88 Moulton was aware of this weakness, p. 27. 81

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I should, therefore, regard [g, g, g'] as one phoneme and [h, x, x'] as another throughout the OE period; and I should regard the unvoiced final [g, g'] as having split from /g/ and fused with /h/. 84 6. Liquids.65 6.1. /I/ [1]: (1) lind 'linden' 2019; lund-laga 'kidney' 1712; plumq 'plum' (Ep., Erf. plumae) 1664; elate 'burdock' (Ep. clatae) 306; blaec- 'black' 1360; gloed 'ember' (Ep. out) 396; flooc 'flatfish' (Erf. floe) 1602; hlutre 'clear' (Ep., Erf. hlutrae) 1216; slahdorn 'sloethorn' (Ep. slaghthorn, Erf. \salaehthorn) 1898; uulatunc 'nausea' (Ep. uulatung, Erf. uulating) 1357. (2) spelli 'story' 1720; bolla 'bowl' (Erf. bollae) 1826. (3) thumle 'entrails' (Ep., Erf. out) 2140. (4) An /1/ would become syllabic in this position. (5) See (2). (6) Long /I/ was simplified, cf. (10), stal. (7) Early evidence lacking, but *ceorlas no doubt existed in the dialect of Arch. I. (8) ceorl 'man' (Ep., Erf. out) 2174. (9) felu- 'much' (Ep. felo-) 2049; statu 'places, stalls' 2153. (10) smel 'small' (Ep. smael, Erf. smal) 992; hool 'hole' 2159; stal 'stall' (Ep., Erf. out) 1905. (11) gyrdils 'girdle' 1244; haelsere 'soothsayer' (Ep., Erf. out) 253. (12) smeltas 'smelts' 1784; holt- 'wood' 54. [1]: (13) netl 'needle' (Ep., Erf. out) 66; -adl 'disease' (Corp. -aid) Ep. 999; scofl 'shovel' (Erf. scolf) 2051; lebl 'bowl' (Ep., Erf. lebil) 2045; weft 'warp' or 'woof' (Erf. uuefl, Ep. out) 482; tebl-stan 'a die' (Ep. tebelstan, Erf. f tebiltari) 349; wedl 'poverty' (Ep., Erf. out) 1554; duehl 'washing' (Erf. thuachl, Ep. out) 641; haesl 'hazel' (Ep. haesil) 536; hrisl 'shuttle' (Ep. hrisil) 1704; dixl 'wagon pole' (Corp., Ep. out) Erf. 1147; cf. saw!, sawul 'soul' (VPs.); segl- 'sail' (Ep., Erf. segil-) 165; sigl 'jewel' (Ep., Erf. sigil) 331; snegl 'snail' (Erf. out) 1283. 6.11. The /1 / had two important allophones: the purely consonantal [1] in most positions and a syllabic [J] in pre-junctural position after another consonant. In post-junctural position, [1] clustered freely after a labial or velar stop, a labial or glottal spirant, /s/, and /w/. 86 The [1] could probably have occurred after consonants other than those in the examples (cf. cepl 'apple', tungl 'star', spinl- 'spindle', etc., in later OE), but the evidence for the earliest period is sparse. Two of the examples are questionable. The form netl may be merely an error, 87 or it may represent the same development which we see elsewhere in OE sepel, setl, seld, etc., 'seat'. The second h in dhuehl represents an [h] which had probably been lost by the time that Corp. and Erf. were written; it may have been merely an archaic spelling even when 84

See /g/ above. This is the traditional term, which serves to bring together two consonants which are similar in their articulation and in their effects upon neighboring sounds. I am well aware that the term does not describe these phonemes literally and that there were articulatory differences not indicated by the word 'liquid'. 86 For Campbell's interpretation of hi, see /w/ below. 87 Cf. Corp. nethle (Ep. mediae, Erf. nedlte) 1591.

85

36

SHERMAN M. KUHN

Arch. I was compiled.88 The [1] usually resulted from the loss of an earlier vocalic ending, as in scofl (from */skot>l5/) or tebl- (from */tabla/, from Lat. tabula). Frequently the syllabic consonant developed into vowel plus [1]. One would assume that the vowel must at first have been /a/; i.e., [a] after a syllable containing a back vowel, [I] after a syllable containing a front vowel. The /a/ could then remain /a/ or become a full vowel: /u/, /o/, /i/, or /e/. In specific instances, it would obviously be difficult for us to determine whether the compiler of one of these glossaries pronounced [1] or vowel plus [1], but I believe the evidence as a whole points to the existence of [1] at the time that Arch. I was compiled.89 6.2. /r/ [r]: (1) redboran 'counsellors' 1160; ragù 'lichen' 1324; spryng 'ulcer' 1492; treuleasnis 'faithlessness' (Ep., Erf. treulesnis) 1533; crop 'top, sprout' 57; breer 'brier' 161; drop- 'drop' (Erf. \dro-) 1914; grytt 'meal, grits' (Erf. gryt) 1620; from 'bold' (Ep. t f r a a m ) 60; -dred 'thread' (Ep. -pred, Erf. -draed) 1548; hrooc 'rook' 991; screauua 'shrew mouse' (Ep. screuua, Erf. out) 1344; wrot 'snout' (Ep. uurot, Erf. urot) 327. (2) sibunsterri 'Pleiades' (Ep. sifunsterri, Erf. tfunsterri) 1599; cearricgge some kind of vehicle (Ep. cearrucae, Erf. cearricae) 1849. (3) cf. geamrung (VPs.). (4) An /r/ would become syllabic in this position. (5) cf. aire 'all' fem. dat. sg. (VPs.). (6) An /r/ becomes syllabic. (7) See (2). (8) Long /r/ was simplified in this position. (9) berecorn 'barleycorn' 1677; spora 'spur' 361. (10) scir 'bright' (Ep., Erf. sciir) 1952; baar 'boar' 287; fear 'bull' (Ep., Erf. out) 1985; heor 'hinge' (Ep., Erf. out) 423. (11) first- 'time' (Ep. frisi-, Erf. Writ-) 1108; hors- 'horse' (Erf. out) 1346. (12) -wyrt 'plant' (Ep. -uuyrt, Erf. out) 1289; wearte 'wart' (Ep. uueartae, Erf. uearte) 1485. [r]: (13) otr 'otter' (Erf. tocter) 1246; ottor 'otter' (Ep. otor, Erf. otr) 1945; tetr 'tetter' (Corp. teter) Ep. 766; heolstr 'hiding place' (Ep., Erf. helostr) 1838; cledr 'rattle' (Ep. claedur, Corp. cleadur) Erf. 218; spaldr 'asphalt' (Corp., Erf. spaldur) Ep. 54;fingr- 'finger' (Erf. fingir-, Ep. out) 687; cefr 'chafer' (Corp. cefer) Ep. 150; ofr 'hump' (Corp. hofer) Ep. 1046; scalfr 'diver' (Corp. scalfur) Ep. 647; rodr 'rudder' (Ep. rothor, Erf. pohr) 2031; thothr 'ball' (Ep. thothor, Erf. |thorr) 1584. The allophones of /r/ roughly parallel those of /l/ in their distribution. The [r] allophone clustered freely after any post-junctural consonant other than a liquid, a nasal, an affricate, /s/, or /g/.90 The [r] was less frequent than [1] and occurred after a more limited range of consonants; it originated as the result of loss of a vocalic ending {e.g. otr from */otraz/) and tended to develop into vowel plus [r], 6.21. It is possible that further allophonic variants of /I/ and /r/ existed. In Corp. aid 'old', an /ae/ was retracted to /a/ before the /l/-plus-consonant cluster; in the WS cognate of this word, eald, /ae/ was broken to /aea/.91 In Corp. heard 'hard', 88

Cf. suehoras, ryhae, etc., above. For the views of Samuels and Reszkiewicz, see /r/ below. 90 Fot further discussion of /hr/, see /w/ below. 91 For a brief account (with bibliographical details) of other views as to what happened, see Sherman M. Kuhn and Randolph Quirk, "Some Recent Interpretations of Old English Digraph 89

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37

/ae/ was broken to /aea/ by the cluster; but in tharme 'entrail', the /se/ may have been retracted, as it frequently was in Nhb. Some scholars explain these sound changes (merely orthographical differences in the opinion of a few) by assuming different articulations for the /l/ in aid—eald and in lad 'hateful', for the /r/ in heard and in wer 'man'. Although the idea of dual pronunciations for the two consonants is an old one in traditional linguistics, I shall cite only a few examples, drawn from recent writers whose views are structurally oriented. For proto-English, M. L. Samuels describes the /I/ and /r/ of ald-eald and heard as 'dark', the liquids in lad and wer as 'palatal'. 92 Fernand Mosse described the /I/ in aid—eald as 'velaire', the /r/ in heard as 'retroflexe'. 93 Marjorie Daunt called the /r/ in words like heard 'retroflex'. 94 Alfred Reszkiewicz calls the /r/ in heard 'preconsonantal' or 'postvocalic' and describes it as "probably... retroflex," contiasting this with the /r/ in words like wer, which he calls 'prevocalic' and describes as "probably trilled." 95 Although articulatory differences of some sort probably existed, in the present state of our knowledge, we can only conjecture what they may have been. All of the guesses are legitimate attempts to account for the phonetic effects of /I/ and /r/, but they are only guesses. The allophones in question, whatever their nature, had no effect upon the spellings of the consonants themselves, nor did they become distinguishable phonemes in any dialect of Middle English. 6.22. Reszkiewicz holds that there were two /-phonemes and two r-phonemes in OE. 96 He sought to prove that WS ea, eo, and ie of the kind traditionally regarded as representing short diphthongs were merely spellings for allophones of /a/, /e/, and I'll, respectively. In order to make his proof, he found it necessary to account for such WS minimal pairs as am 'building': earn 'eagle'. He saw three ways of explaining this pair: (1) "the two words are homophones," (2) "ce and ea represent two different phonemes," or (3) "the two r's... represent two different phonemes." He rejected (1), rightly I think, on the ground that the consistency with which words like cern and earn were differentiated in spelling indicates that they were differently pronounced. "The second explanation is hardly possible," he says, "since a phoneme would have to be postulated which would occur in only a limited number of positions (before h r I and after c g sc) and contrast contextually only in the position before

Spellings," Lg. XXIX (1953), 143-156; "The Old English Digraphs : A Reply," Ibid., XXXI (1955), 390-401. 92 "The Study of Old English Phonology," Transactions of the Philological Society (London, 1953), p. 43. The precise meaning of 'dark' is not clear to me. 93 Manuel de l'anglais du Moyen-Âge, I. Vieil-anglais (= Bibliothèque de philologie germanique, VIII); (Paris, 1945), p. 34. 94 "Old English Sound Changes Reconsidered in Relation to Scribal Tradition and Practice," Trans. Phil. Soc. (London, 1939), pp. 121-122, 128; "Some Notes on Old English Phonology," Ibid. (1953), p. 51. 95 "Phonemic Interpretation," p. 183. The explanation of the occurrence of a 'prevocalic' phoneme in final position is on pp. 184-185. 96 Op. cit., pp. 179-187. The article deals with early WS only.

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SHERMAN M. KUHN

r 1 and after c g."97 Hence, only (3) remains, and Reszkiewicz analyzes cern as /arin/ and earn as /ar2n/. His argument against (2) is self-refuting. Contrast in one position, any position, is generally accepted as sufficient to establish a phonemic difference. If, as he says, /ae/ and /aea/ contrast in four positions, most structuralists would have no choice but to classify them as separate phonemes. The argument in favor of (3) is also defective. According to Reszkiewicz, the trilled phoneme /r/i was spelled r both medially and finally (e.g. faran and fcer, weras and wer, fireri), but the retroflex phoneme /r/2 was spelled rr medially, either rr or r finally (e.g. fearras and fearr or fear, feorran and feorr or feor, fierran and fierr or fier); hence, far is /fari/, and fear(r is /far2/, etc. All of the spellings cited to prove the existence of /r/2 are derived from geminated /r/. When Reszkiewicz says that "geminated consonants did not occur finally... in early Germanic languages," he is correct, but he overlooks the fact that OE represents a stage in the language much later than that in which the r's were geminated. Fear 'bull', for example, had an inflectional ending at the time of gemination, i.e. */farza-/. Much later the ending was lost, the /rr/ became final and was simplified in pronunciation, although it was often spelled with rr by analogy with forms like the plural fearras, which had retained its ending and its long /rr/. There is a quantitative difference between Reszkiewicz's two r's, but it has nothing to do with trilled versus retroflex articulation. 98 6.23. Samuels suggests the possibility that /l/ and /r/ split in proto-English into palatal /l/, /r/ and 'dark' /l/, /r/, the latter being the phonemes which caused breaking. Later, according to Samuels, the palatal and dark phonemes fused "to form single, more or less neutral /- and r-phonemes." 99 As far as OE from about 700 on is concerned, there would seem to be no conflict between the views of Samuels and those which are generally accepted. I am inclined, however, to question the likelihood of two complete phonemic splits followed by two complete fusions, without any residue 100 and without any permanent effect upon the consonants of the language. These pairs of phonemes are not needed as a means of accounting for breaking, which could have been caused (or rather made possible) by the combined effect of the liquid plus consonant rather than by the quality of the liquid alone. 7. Nasals 7.1. /m/ [m]: (1) megsibbe 'kinship' (Ep., Erf. megsibbi) 103; mus 'mouse' 1884; smeltas 'smelts' 1784. (2) -uuemmid 'corrupted' (Ep. -uuaemmid, Erf. -uemmid) 97

Ibid., pp. 183-184. Proof for the two r-phonemes is given, but the proof for the two /-phonemes, is merely suggested, p. 186. 99 Op. cit., pp. 42-43. 100 By w a y 0 f comparison, when /a/ split into /a/ and /a/ in Merc., and then /a/ and /d/ fused in ME times, there was a small residue; i.e., the vowels in orn "he ran," long "long," etc., were left (as the result of changes occurring after the split) with phonemes other than the combined 98

ON THE CONSONANTAL PHONEMES OF OLD ENGLISH

39

1101; gremman 'to irritate' (Ep., Erf. out) 1195; cf rommas 'rams' (VPs.). (3), (4) Does not occur. (5) selma 'couch' 1895; helmes 'of a helmet' (Ep., Erf. out) 418; duolma 'confusion' (Erf. \dualma) 457; cf. salmas 'Psalms' (VPs.). (6) elm 'elm' 2149; cualm-stou 'place of execution' (Ep., Erf. out) 2. (7) orfiermae 'squalid' (Erf. orfermae, Corp. |orfeormnisse) Ep. 933; hearma 'weasel' 1307; tharme 'entrail' (Ep., Erf. out) 2140. (8) -wyrm 'worm' (Ep., Erf. -uuyrm) 1253; pearm 'entrail' (Ep., Erf. thearm) 1058; storm 'storm' 1378. (9) gefremid 'made' (Ep. gifraemid, Erf. gifremid) 1643; hqmedo 'copulation' (Ep., Erf. out) 1036; leoma 'light' 1166; haman 'crickets' 464. (10) liim 'lime' (Ep., Erf. lim) 295; stream 'stream' 1714; brom 'broom' (Ep., Erf. broom) 959. (11) hromsa 'garlic' (Ep., Erf. hramsa) 56. (12) Does not occur. [m]: (13) ouuaestm 'sprout' (Ep., Erf. out) 1942; cf. western (VPs.); aethm 'breath' (Ep. ethm, Erf. out) 130; faedm 'fathom' (Ep., Erf. out) 1510; -bosm 'bosom' (Ep., Erf. out) 412. The labial nasal [m] was, of course, the common allophone. The syllabic [m] occurred in pre-junctural position immediately after another consonant; it seems to have been rare except after a dental or sibilant. Like the other syllabic consonants, [m] originated as the result of loss of a following vowel and had a tendency to develop into vowel plus non-syllabic consonant, as in VPs. western or later OE madm, madum, madm 'treasure'. 7.2. /n/ [n]: (1) nest 'rations' (Ep. out) 756; naep 'turnip' (Erf. nep) 1363; nomun 'they took' (Ep. naamun, Erf. \noumun) 247; cnioholen 'butcher's broom' (Ep. cnioholaen, Erf. fcniolen) 1759; a-gnidine 'rubbed' (Erf. agnidinrte, Ep. out) 655; fnora 'sneezing' (Erf. fhuora) 1909; hnut- 'nut' 1394; snel 'quick' (Erf. tblidi) 127. (2) grennung 'grinning' (Ep. graennung, Erf. fgraemung) 1738; scinneras 'magicians' (Erf. fscineras) 1822; woman 'pale' (Ep., Erf. uuannan) 1215. (3) cf. nemne 'unless', gesomnung 'assembly' (VPs.). (4) An /n/ would become syllabic. (5) No early evidence. (6) An /n/ would probably become syllabic. (7) pyrne 'thorn bush' (Erf. thyrnae, Ep. out) 710; eornisti 'earnestness' (Ep. eornqsti, Erf. eornesti) 1845; suornadun 'coagulated' (Ep. suornodun, Erf. suarnadun) 518. (8) isern 'iron' (Ep. isqrn, Erf. isaern) 115; -dorn 'thorn' (Ep., Erf. -thorn) 1897; horn 'whale' (Ep. hran, Erf. hron) 267. (9) taenil 'basket' (Erf. tenil) flanum 'arrows' 1894. (10) tin 'wooden beam' 2023; bruun 'brown' 931. (11) suinsung 'harmony' (Erf. |ruinsung) 1303. (12) flint 'flint' 1561; cf. munt 'mountain' (VPs.). [n]: (13) sigebecn 'trophy' (Ep. sigbeacn, Erf. tbeane) 2043; hraefn 'raven' (Erf. hraebn, Ep. out) 553; stebn 'voice' (Ep., Erf. out) 2164; bituihn 'between' (Ep., Erf. out) 1310; bituichn (Ep. bituicn, Corp. fbitun) Erf. 546; lybsn 'amulet' (Ep., Erf. out) 1413; regn- 'rain' (Ep. regen-) 1253; segn 'banner' (Ep. seng) 1167; pegn 'servant' (Ep. thegn, Erf. degn) 77. [q]: (14) lenctin- 'springtime' (Ep. flectin-) 2001; wlonc-lice 'proudly' (Ep. uulanclicae, Erf. fgelplih) 85; heringas 'herrings' 1781; holunga 'in vain' 1373; pung 'purse' (Ep. out) 391.

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SHERMAN M. KUHN

The [n] was a dental (possibly alveolar) nasal, which clustered post-juncturally after /c/, /g/, /{/, /h/, and /s/. 101 Syllabic [n] occurred after /c/, /b/ (i.e. [t>], later /f/), /h/, js/, and /g/. VPs. wepen 'weapons' does not show any spelling indicating [n], but cf. later WS wcepn. Later OE myIn, mylen 'mill' and stemn (from stefn, from stebn) do not appear in early texts. 8. Sibilants 8.1. /sj [s]: (1) segn 'banner' (Ep. seng) 1167; sadol 'saddle' (Erf. fsatul) 1839. (2) cressa 'cress' (Ep. cressae) 1860; cf. assan 'asses' (VPs.). (4) cf. wrigelse 'covering' (VPs.). (6) bridéis 'bridle' (Ep. bridils, Erf. brigdils) 261. (8) baers 'bass' (Corp. fbrers) Ep. 592; hors- 'horse' (Erf. out) 1346. (10) saes 'seat' (Ep., Erf. jcj) 2050; mus 'mouse' 1884. (12) pistel 'thistle' (Erf. thistil, Ep. out) 384; ost 'knob' 1387. (14) musclan- 'mussel' (Ep., Erf. out) 593; musscel (Ep., Corp. out) Erf. 1117; malscrung 'enchantment' (Ep., Erf. out) 838; aesc 'ax' (Corp. %cus, Ep. out) Erf. 321. [z]: (3) hromsa 'garlic, ramson' (Ep., Erf. hramsa) 56; suinsung 'harmony' (Erf. truinsung) 1303. (5) haelsere 'soothsayer' (Ep., Erf. out) 253. (7) cf. horsum 'horses' (VPs.). (9) isern- 'iron' (Ep. isqrn-, Erf. isaern-) 272; tasul 'a die' (Ep. tasol) 2000; briosa 'gadfly' 1976; haesl 'hazel' (Ep. haesil) 536; -bosm 'bosom' (Ep., Erf. out) 412; lybsn 'amulet' (Ep., Erf. out) 1413. 8.11. The voiceless [s] occurred post- and pre-juncturally and in medial position before or after a voiceless consonant. The cluster /sc/ probably occurred in muscel and other borrowings from Latin which were too recent for the cluster to have undergone palatalization and assibilation to /s/. In aesc, we may have a metathesized form of acs, in which case the sc certainly represents /sc/. One could not be certain about malscrung from the OE evidence, but the forms of ME malskren and MnE masker point to retention of the sc-cluster. The cluster was also retained, beside /s/, in some forms of fisc 'fish', fuse 'tusk', etc.; otherwise, later OE metathesized fixas, tux, ME tusk beside tush, etc., would be difficult to explain. The voiced [z] occurred medially between vowels or between a vowel and syllabic /l, r, m, n/. Theoretically, it should also occur medially before or after a voiced consonant, but in these positions there was apparently some fluctuation between the voiced and voiceless allophones. Before a voiced consonant, [z] was regular: raesde 'he rushed' (Ep., Erf. out) 1120; osl% 'ouzel' (Ep., Erf. oslae) 1306; besma 'besom' (Ep., Erf. out) 1794; lybesne 'amulets' (Ep., Erf. out) 1930; and leswe 'pasture' (VPs.). But hlysnende, 'listening' (Ep., Erf. out) 82, acquired a /t/ in ME times, which suggests that a voiceless pronunciation of the /s/ existed in OE. 102 After a voiced consonant, the fluctuation is more obvious. How does one account for the OE change of bledsian to bletsian, mildsian to miltsian, etc., if the /s/ was invariably voiced? How shall we account for ME rampsoun beside ramesen, etc., or the post-OE development of the 101 102

For discussion of /hn/, see /w/ below. The /t/ could also have come through analogy with hlystan.

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inflected forms of horsl Analogy with related forms in which the clusters were pre-junctural might account for these phenomena if they were somewhat rarer; but in view of their frequency, it would seem safer to assume a great deal of fluctuation between [z] and [s] in medial position after a voiced consonant. 103 The [z] in positions (3, 5, 7) should, therefore, be taken with a small grain of salt. 8.2. /§/ [J]: (1) seel 'shell' (Ep. out) 716; scadu 'shadow '(Ep., Erf. sceadu) 1801; scomo 'shame' (Ep. scamu, Erf. scoma) 1679. (3), (4) A nasal in these positions was lost. (5), (6) No clear early evidence. (7) cf. forscas 'frogs' (VPs.). (8) mersc 'marsh' (Erf. tnerisc, Ep. out) 394; horsc-lice 'briskly' (Ep., Erf. horsclicae) 1358; forsc 'frog' (Ep., Erf. out) 1258. (9) biscop- 'bishop' 1021 \frysca 'kite' bird (Ep., Erf. out) 340. (10) disc 'dish' 1490; edisc 'park' 324; flaesc 'flesh' (Ep., Erf. out) 2135; tusc 'tusk, tooth' (Ep. out, ? Erf. dens:tusc) 961. (12) gegiscte 'closed' (Ep. gigiscdae, Erf. tgescdae) 1447; cf. wysctun 'wished' (VPs.). The contrast between /§/ and /sc/ is difficult to establish in Mercian of around 700, partly because the materials are sparse, partly because palatal diphthongization did not operate in Merc. 104 In WS of the ninth to eleventh centuries, forms like sciel, sceamu, bisceop, etc., furnish clues. There are similar clues in Nhb. But it is not until the rise of ME spelling practices, including the adoption of sh and sch for /§/, that we can have much certainty in specific cases. The fact that a phoneme /s/ existed in the period when Arch. I was compiled seems, however, to be undisputed. 9. Semi-vowels 9.1. /w/ [w]: (1) uueod- 'weed' (Ep., Erf. uuead-) 1764; windil 'basket' (Erf. tpind.il) 348; woedeberge 'mad berry' (Erf. tpoediberga, Ep. out) 736; waar 'seaweed' (Erf. uar, Ep. tpaar, altered to uaar) 120; tuin 'twine' (Erf. tuigin, Ep. ^tuum) 343; cuicbeam 'aspen' (Erf. out) 368; quida 'womb' (Erf. out) 1290; duerg 'dwarf 1362; ¡>uerh'cross-' (Ep., Erf. thuerh-) 1761; hwaeg 'whey' (Ep., Erf. huaeg) 1847; suualuue 'swallow' (Ep. suualuae, Erf. suualutia) 1665. (2) A /ww/ became /uw/, which developed in various ways. (3) No clear early evidence. (4) A /w/ became /u/. (5) calwer 'pressed curds' (Ep. caluuaer, Erf. calmer) 956. (6) A /w/ became /u/. (7) gegeruuid 'prepared' (Ep. gigeruuid. Erf. fgigarauuit) 1632; spearua 'sparrow' (Ep. spearuua) 855. (8) A /w/ became /u/. (9) beowes 'of grain' (Ep. beouuas, Erf. beouaes) 1278; clauuo 'claw' 211; pauua 'peacock' 1509. (10) iuu 'yew' 1972. (11) cf. hreowsade 'repented' (VPs.). (12) No early evidence. 9.11. The rounded labial spirant /w/ presents no great phonemic problems, but the spellings used for /w/ are of some interest. In the earliest texts, u and uu are the usual spellings, the former being especially favored in clusters after another consonant. The symbol v, a graphic variant of u, appears rarely in later OE texts, although it is 103 104

tion.

The phonetic reasons for this fluctuation offer a promising field for further study. The form sceadu above probably contains /sea/ by velar umlaut, not by palatal diphthongiza-

42

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KUHN

rather frequent in a few, e.g. the tenth-century Nhb. gloss to the Durham Ritual. The u- and v-spellings were obviously adapted from Latin usage. They were not influenced by Old Irish; for, in the latter, u represents a vowel, except in a few quforms borrowed from Latin. Apparently uu was an English innovation, intended to distinguish /w/ from /u/, a distinction which was highly desirable in written English but not absolutely necessary in Latin. Mercian scribes seem to have been the first to introduce the runic w (p) into texts written in the Latin alphabet. Although the rune was familiar enough to Northumbrians and appears in the seventh-century inscriptions of the Ruthwell Cross and the Bewcastle Column, the personal names of the early Bede MSS have only u and MM.105 In MSS of around 700, the runic w was probably a rare innovation. Errors like pind.il, poedibergce, and paar indicate that an unwary scribe might mistake it for p. It could also be mistaken for J3, as we see in tpoot (Erf. \puood, Corp. out) Ep. 444. This last word glosses facundia, eloquentia (i.e. OE wöp) and points to something like *wood or *wood in the exemplar. The scribe of the Corpus Glossary, who was an innovator, frequently substituted w for the older spellings, e.g. in calwer. The Erfurt scribe (or the English scribe whose MS he copied) preferred u or uu exclusively, and may have substituted one of these for any w which he found in his exemplar, except when he mistook the w for a p. The Epinal scribe, who was either the earliest or the most conservative of the three, used w only nine times, in five instances corresponding to w in Corp., four times corresponding to uu in Corp. The evidence is admittedly inconclusive, but it seems to point (and this is especially true of the p and £> errors) to the use of the runic w in Arch. I. 106 The runic symbol increased in popularity, until in the ninth century it became the usual spelling for /w/ in all areas except Northumbria, where u, uu, and v were often used (beside more frequent w) as late as the tenth century. 9.12. Now that we have examined the phonemes /l, r, n, w/, the time has come to discuss the clusters which these consonants form with /h/, as in hlutre, hrooc, hnut-, hwaeg, etc. During ME times, the first three clusters lost the /h/, while the fourth often appeared (especially in East Midland texts) in the form wh, a spelling which is commonly assumed to have represented a voiceless w, like the [M] which survives in the speech of some people today. Linguists have naturally been inclined to entertain the possibility that voiceless /w/ and also voiceless /I/, /r/, and /n/ existed in OE times, perhaps as occasional variants of the clusters or perhaps as pronunciations characteristic of certain (not clearly defined) areas. Karl Brunner expressed the thought as follows: "Anlautendes h... steht unbeschränkt vor Vokalen, außerdem in der Verbindungen hl, hr, hn, hw, die vielleicht nur als stimmlose /, r, n, w aufzufassen sind (wie z.T. engl. wA)."107 A Campbell has carried the idea a step further. In his ms See Ström, p. 128. These MSS also have a uu-ligature, which may be called a 'w', but it bears no resemblance to the rune. 106 This is the view of H. M. Chadwick, op. cit., pp. 242-244, to whom the present discussion is deeply indebted. 107 Altengl. Gram., p. 195. For earlier expressions of the same idea, see Sievers, Angels. Gram., § 217, and H. Sweet, A History of English Sounds (Oxford, 1888), p. 135.

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table of consonants, he lists four new simple consonants: voiceless liquids hi and hr, voiceless nasal hn, and voiceless spirant hw.10S Later, in his discussion of the loss of consonants, Campbell says: "In all Gmc. languages, initial x became a breathing or glottal spirant. Before I, n, r, u, it disappeared, leaving the consonant voiceless, and h is written in OE as a diacritic to indicate this." 109 9.13. We should take note of the fact that, although Campbell writes in phonetic rather than in phonemic terms, his analysis creates four new consonantal phoneme 5. If accepted, his hi would be in contrast with /I/, his hr with /r/, his hn with /n/, and his hw with /w/. The contrasts can easily be illustrated with minimal pairs (WS) like the following: hlxw 'mound': liew 'injury'; hlaf 'loaf': laf 'remnant'; hrim 'hoarfrost': rim 'number'; hrum 'soot': rum 'space'; hnifol 'forehead': nifol 'gloomy'; hnat 'he clashed': nat 'he knows not'; hwer 'kettle': wer 'man'; hwa 'who': wa 'woe'. There are many more like these; and, for those who are not impressed by minimal pairs, there are the examples in my discussions of /h, 1, r, n, w/ above, which clearly show that /hi/, etc., were in contrastive distribution with post-junctural /II,

etc.

9.14. I do not believe that we can accept the four new phonemes. They are not supported by the OE spelling evidence. Texts which contain sporadic examples of / for /hi/ and hi for /l/ also contain sporadic examples of dropped and excrescent h before a vowel. A text, like Farman's glosses in the Rushworth Gospels, which shows rather numerous spellings like rcegl for hragl and gehroefa for geroefa, will also show rather numerous spellings like eard for heard and had for ad.110 The evidence of the OE alliterative poetry is against the new phonemes, for /hi/, /hr/, /hn/, /hw/ alliterate with one another or with any other initial /h/, although /I/, /r/, /n/, and /w/ do not alliterate with one another or with vowels. This argument is weakened by the fact that the poetic tradition was conservative and occasionally followed rules of alliteration which antedated some sound changes and phonemic splits; however, I suppose that we may assume that the /¡-alliterations reflect contemporary speech until someone brings forward evidence to prove that they are only traditional. 9.15. The voiceless-w phoneme is hard to reconcile with the evidence of Middle and Modern English. A mere diacritic is not likely to survive massive changes in scribal tradition as the h did in several dialects of ME and Middle Scottish, in the combinations hw, qu, quh, 3w, etc. It is even less likely to develop, among mainly non-literate speakers, into a distinctly audible sound [h] and then survive for centuries as it has in the speech of millions of English-speaking people today. Even those who pronounce a voiceless [m] or a voiced [w] in most wA-words are apt to have an [h] in who.111 It would seem that the h in this word has never been a diacritic. 108

OE Gram., p. 20. Ibid., p. 186. See E. M. Brown, II, 34. 111 Reduction of /hw/ to /h/ must have been rather frequent in ME. I see no other way to interpret reverse spellings, such as those for hou 'how' (OE hu) which appear in certain ME texts : hwu, whou, who, qwou, quhu, etc. 109

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9.16. The voiceless-r phoneme is rendered dubious by the evidence of metathesized forms in OE. If metathesis occurs in a word with hr, so that the 'voiceless-r' is no longer post-junctural, what happens ? Will not the voiceless r either remain voiceless and keep its diacritic, or become voiced and lose its diacritic? OE hors 'horse' was metathesized from older */hros-/ (cf. OIc., OHG hross); it became neither ohrs, with voicless r and diacritic h, nor ors, with voiced r and no diacritic. Instead, the so-called diacritic became a consonantal phoneme. It may be objected that the metathesis in hors could have occurred befor the /h/ was lost in the cluster /hr/; cf. OFris. hors, OS hers. The next example is not open to this objection. The word hrcen 'wave, sea' occurs in the Epinal Glossary, made long after the Anglo-Saxons left the Continent. The original /hr/-cluster is confirmed by OIc. hronn, gen. hranrtar. Metathesized hcern appears in a tenth-century MS (Andreas 531 in the Vercelli Book) and in an eleventh-century glossary (Cotton Cleopatra A. iii).112 The metathesized form is neither cehrn nor cem. Another example may be disputed, but I think that most scholars will accept it after a little cogitation. The word hornfisc occurs in Andreas 370, a poem probably composed in the eighth century but preserved in a MS of the tenth. The word is frequently interpreted 'garfish' and compared with a late and very rare word in Old Icelandic {i.e., hornfiskr in the Sturlunga Saga). From the context in Andreas, the garfish seems unlikely. This is probably a metathesized form of hronfisc 'whale'; cf. hronfixas in Beowulf 540 and hronfiscas in Alexander's letter to Aristotle. 113 So far, I have not been able to find similar test words for the other three clusters, but if h represented /h/ rather than a diacritic before /r/, we are probably safe in assuming that it also represented a consonant before /l/, /n/, and /w/. 9.2. /g/ [j] From Gmc. /j/: (1) gere 'year' (Ep., Erf. geri) 1028; geoc- 'yoke' (Ep., Erf. out) 1424; iesen 'entrails' (Ep., Erf. out) 797; cf. gugude, iugude 'youth' (VPs.). (2) Gmc. /jj/ underwent various developments. (3-6) A /j/ would be lost or vocalized. (7) -berge 'berry' (Erf. -bergce, Ep. out) 736; -beriae (Ep. -beriq. Erf. -bergen) 59; styrga 'sturgeon' (Ep., Erf. styria) 1614; cf. swergu 'I swear' (VPs.); hergan 'to praise' (Caedmori's Hymn). (8) Became /i/, then /e/. (9) cf gecegu, geceigo 'I call' (VPs.). (10) cf heg 'hay' (VPs.); ei, eig 'island' (early Bede MSS). (11), (12) Does not occur. From Gmc. /g/: (1) gaec 'cuckoo' (Erf. gqc, Ep. out) 618; ieces 'cuckoo's' (Erf. fiaces, Ep. out) 380; gesca 'sob' (Ep., Erf. iesca) 1865; -gcet 'gate' (Ep., Erf. -gaet) 1538; cf. iefian (altered to gefian) 'joy' (VPs. 20,6); hin-iongae 'departure' (Bede's Death Song). (3), (4) A /g/ became /g/ oi /g/. (5) faelge 'felly' (Erf. felge, Ep. out) 390; -felge (Ep., Erf. -felgae) 1563. (6) -baelg 'bag' 910; tylg 'more strongly' 1636. (7) byrga 'surety' (Ep., Erf. byrgea) 1652; byrgen 'tomb' (Ep., Erf. out) 1350; wergendi 'cursing' (Erf. uuergendi, Ep. out) 632. (8) myrg-nis 'mirth, music' (Ep., Erf. out) 1352; cf. on byrg 'in the town' (Charter, Cotton Augustus II. 79, early ninth-cent.). (9) faegen 'glad' (Ep. out) 543; staegilre 'steep' (Ep. staegilrae, Erf. stegelrce) 1638. (10) suoeg 'noise' 925; grei 'gray' 981; greig (Ep., Erf. out) 850; 112 113

Thomas Wright, A Second Volume of Vocabularies (London, 1873), p. 33. Stanley Rypins, Three Old English Prose Texts, EETS, OS, CLXI (1924), p. 33, line 7.

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bodeg 'body' (Ep., Erf. bod%i) 1891; omei 'rusty' (Ep., Erf. out) 866; popag 'poppy' (Ep. popaeg, Erf. tpapoeg) 1621; popei (Ep., Erf. out) 1516. (11) cf. egsatt 'fear' (Leiden Riddle). (12) Does not occur. 9.21. The above tabulations show the two main sources of the semi-vowel /g/. In the earliest written records, g is used indiscriminately for the reflexes of both Gmc. /j/ and the palatal allophone which split from Gmc. /g/ in proto-English. The letter i is in free variation with g, as a minority spelling for /g/ from both sources. Rarer graphic variants are ge in geoc (Corp.), byrgea (Ep., Erf.) and ig in greig (Corp.), geceigo (VPs.). All of these variants appear in later MSS throughout the OE period. The preference for g over i increased greatly, except that in the work of WS scribes i rather than g became the preferred spelling for the /g/ in verbs like herian, swerian (generally hergan, swergan in Merc, and Nhb. texts). The use of ge for /gI increased in later texts, especially WS texts, before back vowels. There can be no real doubt as to the pronunciation of /g/: it was a palatal spirant with very weak constriction. 9.22. Stockwell classifies his OE /j/, which corresponds to /g/ in this analysis, as a 'stop' and suggests that its pronunciation was similar to that of the palatal spirant in North German liegen.Ui There is no evidence in Old or Middle English to support this view. It requires us to assume that Gmc. /j/ became a stop and then reverted to semi-vowel in ME, an assumption which I should not be prepared to make without some kind of supporting evidence. 9.23. So far from being supported by the OE evidence, Stockwell's interpretation of /g/ appears to be refuted by the treatment of Scriptural names in OE poetry and by the evidence of vocalization. Names like Iacob Iudip, Hierusalem (with silent h), etc., often alliterate with one another, which suggests that the semi-vowel still had the Latin (sometimes Popular Latin) sound, i.e. [j] or, raiely, [i] or [i]. Frequently such names alliterate with native /g/ or /g/, just as the native /g/ does: 115 Iared in Genesis A 1174, Iafed in Genesis A 1552, losep in Exodus 588, Hierusalem in Daniel 2, Iudea in Daniel 707, Iuliana in Juliana 148, Iudith in Judith 168, etc.116 Occasionally such names are spelled with g or ge and alliterate with /g/ or /g/: Gerusalem in Daniel 707, Geared in Genesis A 1195, etc. When /g/ from Gmc. /g/ occurred between I'll and another consonant, it frequently vocalized to /i/, and the two vowels coalesced into /I/. Early examples are: Corp. bridels 'bridle' (Ep. bridils, Erf. brigdils) 261; iil 'hedgehog' (Ep., Erf. out) 765; VPs. bridels, lies (altered to igles 103,17), hefie 'heavy', weolie 'rich', etc. The OE stops did not behave in this manner. 9.3. The semi-vowels of OE were /w/ and /g/. To the best of my knowledge, there were no others. I am familiar with the phonemic analysis and system of transcription 114

SIL, XIII, 18. This is not the view of Moulton, p. 25, of Hockett, p. 376, or of most linguists, traditional or structural. 115 The alliterative tradition, in this instance, is older than the split of /g/ from /g/. 116 Sometimes the alliteration is with vowels : Iared in Genesis A 1063, Hierusalem in Paris Psalter 124, 1, etc.

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which George L. Trager and Henry Lee Smith Jr. have worked out for some dialects of Modern English.117 Their system takes full advantage of certain distributional facts of MnE; i.e., that, in most dialects, the consonants /h/, /w/, and /y/ occur only in post-junctural position. These symbols are, therefore, available for the transcription of non-initial phenomena of any sort. It is certainly convenient to be able to transcribe bite /bayt/, bout /bawt/, yeah /yeh/, etc. Whether it is scientifically accurate to give labels like /h, w, y/ to purely vocalic glides and lengthenings after vowels, is another matter. The acoustical researches of Gordon E. Peterson and Ilse Lehiste show that the consonants /h, w, y/ are altogether dissimilar to the glides and lengthenings of MnE and as unrelated to them phonetically as they are historically.118 9.31. Stockwell posits the three semi-vowels of Trager and Smith for OE. 119 For WS (and presumably, with some modification, for other dialects), he presents the following complex syllabic nuclei containing his post-vocalic /h/: /eh/ as in fet 'feet', ¡ah) as in Mian 'to heal', /oh/ as in ban 'bone', and /oh/ as in scoh 'shoe'. The /h/ in these nuclei is unrelated to the phoneme spelled h in hxlan and scoh, which Stockwell phonemicizes as/x/. 120 It is called "an off-glide in the direction of central position"; but in practice it seems to be equivalent to a phoneme of length, added to the vowels /e/, /ae/, /o/ (my /a/), and /o/, and presumably varying in articulation from mid-front-unround to mid-back-round. As far as WS is concerned, this glide is rarely reflected in the writing; but when written, it is an e after /e/, an a after /o/, and an o after joj. The following nuclei containing Stockwell's /w/ are posited: /iw/ as in bietel 'beetle', dlofol 'devil', and stiward 'steward'; 121 /ew/ as in breost 'breast' and feower 'four'; /aew/ as in beam 'beam' and feawe 'few'; /uw/ as in ful 'foul' and cnuwian 'to break'; /ow/ as in growan 'to grow'; and /ow/ as in clawu 'claw' and blawan 'to blow'. This /w/ is called "an off-glide in the direction of high back rounded position" but must have varied greatly in articulation. In WS it is written e, o, or zero after /i/, o after /e/, a after /ae/, zero after /u/, zero after /o/, and w or zero after /o/ (my /a/). Only two of Stockwell's nuclei contain his /y/: /iy/ as in bitan 'to bite' and /iiy/ as in fyr 'fire'. This /y/ is called "an off-glide in the direction of high front position" but seems to be merely a phoneme of length after I'll and /ii/ (my /y/). In WS, it is almost never expressed in writing, although we sometimes see ii for /!/. 117

An Outline of English Structure (= Studies in Linguistics : Occasional Papers, III ; Norman, 1951), pp. 11-52. 118 Peterson and Lehiste, "Duration of Syllabic Nuclei in English," Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, XXXII (June, 1960), 693-703; Lehiste and Peterson, "Transitions, Glides, and Diphthongs," Ibid., XXXIII (March, 1961), 268-277; Lehiste, Acoustical Characteristics of Selected English Consonants (Bloomington, 1964), especially pp. 116-140, 181-189. 119 SIL, XIII, 15-17. Kurath, "Binary Interpretation," esp. pp. 111-112, 121, and Hockett, op. cit., p. 376, reject Stockwell's view. 120 Stockwell is unable to preserve the phonemic model set by Trager and Smith, in which the initial consonant /h/ is equated with the post-vocalic centering glide. 121 When the glide /w/ precedes a consonantal /w/, Stockwell posits an OE geminate; i.e., iw is a spelling for /iww/, eow for /eww/, eaw for /aeww/, uw for /uww/, ow for /oww/, and aw for /oww/.

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9.32. The /h, w, y/ hypothesis for OE is interesting and ingenious, but I am not sure that it belongs, strictly speaking, in the realm of linguistic science. It cannot be tested by such methods as Peterson and Lehiste have applied to MnE, for there are no native speakers to provide the acoustical data. It cannot be tested by spelling evidence, since the three posited phonemes are generally unrelated to anything in scribal practice. It cannot be tested by comparative evidence, for the same glide phonemes can be posited for any language which is no longer spoken; indeed, I once heard a linguistic speaker posit them for an even half-dozen of languages, and prove their existence to his own satisfaction — in slightly under three minutes. As a method for transcription the scheme would be moie useful if it were simpler to apply and less beset with pitfalls. Experience shows that even those scholars who are most familiar with it and who are dealing with carefully selected OE words must devote much of their time and energy to correcting errors in their own carefully considered transcriptions. 122 10. Affricates 10.1. /c/ [tJ]: (1) cest 'chest, casket' 365; ceol 'ship' 442; cese 'cheese' (Ep., Erf. out) 912. (2) flicci 'flitch' 1551; styccimelum 'piecemeal' (Erf. fscyccimelum) 1473; wraeccan 'exiles' (Ep., Erf. out) 812; recceo 'I narrate' (Ep., Erf. out) 139. (3) lepeuuince 'lapwing' (Erf. laepaeuinca, Ep. out) 619; uulencu 'pride' (Ep., Erf. out) 846. (4) fine 'finch' 921; bene 'bench' (Ep., Erf. out) 1895. (5) milcit 'he milks' (Ep. mi!tip. Erf. milcid) 1323 ;suelce 'also'(Ep. suilcae, Erf. suilce) 75; gehwelci 'each' (Erf. gihuelci, Ep. tgihuuuelci) 1700. (6) cf. hwelc 'which, what' (VPs.). (7) birce 'birch' (Ep., Erf. birciae) 1609; serce 'shirt' (Ep., Erf. sercae) 210. (8) cf. wirc-nisse 'occupation' (VPs.). (9) boece 'beech' (Ep. boecae, Erf. fboeccae) 93; leceas 'physicians' 1578; quice 'couch grass' (Ep. f cuiquae, altered to fquiquae, Erf. quicae) 989; quicae (Ep. cuicae, altered to quicae, Erf. fcuique) 2130. (10) pic 'pitch' 1593; broec 'breeches' 1244; cryc 'crutch' (Ep., Erf. crycc) 1222. (11), (12) Does not occur. 10.11. The manner in which a palatal [k] split from Gmc. /k/ and, by assibilation, became [tf] /c/ has been outlined above in the discussion of /c/. It is easy to see that a separate phoneme is present in ME, after the c/j-spelling, adopted from the Old French, came into regular use for the reflex of OE /c/. In OE, the phonemic identity of /c/ is less obvious. The use of k for /c/ but not for /c/ in some texts has been noted above. Further evidence appears from the late ninth century on: orceard, orcerd, orcyrd, etc., for older ort-geard 'orchard', and gefeccan, etc., for older gefetian, -fetigan 'to fetch'. 123 This shift of /tg/ [tj] to /c/ [tj] parallels the later development in words like nature, feature, etc., and strongly suggests that /c/ was recognized by the scribes as a special sound with an identity of its own. Contrastive distribution 122

See SIL, XIII, 23; and the later article by Stockwell and Rudolph Willard, "Further Notes on Old English Phonology," SIL, XIV (1959), 10-13. For additional evidence, see Penzl, op. cit., p. 36.

123

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of /c/ and /c/ can clearly be seen by comparison of the tabulations for these two phonemes. Minimal and analogous pairs, chiefly from WS and much later than c 700, may be cited. Moulton notes the following: cene 'bold': cen 'pine torch' (dat. ce«e);124 hnecca 'neck': reccan 'to narrate'; drincan 'to drink': drencan 'to give to drink'; dranc 'he drank': bene 'benoh'. To these one may add: cwic 'alive' (pi. cwice): cwice 'couch grass'; 125 beswic 'deceit' (dat. -swice): swice 'escape'; weorcum 'works' (dat. pi.): Miercum 'Mercians' (dat. pi.); 126 sincan 'to sink': sencan 'to cause to sink'; swincan 'to toil': swencan 'to oppress'; smeocan 'to emit smoke': smican 'to fumigate'. 10.2. /g/ [dj]: (1), (2) Does not occur. (3) fenge 'capture' (Ep., Erf. faengae) 1630; gemqngan 'to mix' (Ep., Erf. out) 547; gemengiunge 'confusion' (Ep. gimaengi-) 522. (4) steng 'pole' (Erf. stqng, Ep. stegn) 480; spryng 'ulcer' (Ep. spyrng) 351; cf leng 'longer' (VPs.), lencg (Golden Gospels inscription). (5-8) Does not occur. (9) asaecgan 'to say' (Ep., Erf. out) 720; galdriggan 'enchanters' (Ep., Erf. out) 1124; cf. dernlicgende 'idolatrous' (VPs.), demliggad (VPs.), to ymbhyeggannae 'to think about' (Bede's Death Song). (10) saecg 'sedge' (Ep. segg, Erf. secg) 977; ecg 'edge' (Ep. Erf. out) 50; mygg 'midge' (Erf. mycg) 1814; brycg 'bridge' (Ep., Erf. out) 1623. (11), (12) Does not occur. 10.21. The voiced affricate had a limited distribution, for it could occur only when Gmc. /g/ had been preceded by /n/ and followed by /i/, as in feng, steng spryng, leng, etc.\ preceded by /n/ and followed by /j/, as in gemengan, gemengung, etc.; or preceded by a short vowel and followed by /j/, as in asecgan, galdricge dernlicgan, ymbhyegan, secg, ecg, mycg, brycg, etc. It was, nevertheless, an independent phoneme, contrasting with /g/, /g/, and the geminates of those two. I believe that Moulton was the first to demonstrate unmistakably that the OE consonant in words like ecg was no longer merely a geminated /g/. 127 10.22 Spellings vary in the earliest texts: after /n/, usually g, rarely gi or eg; after a vowel, either eg or gg. There is no reason to suppose that the spelling situation around 700 differed materially from this. In later texts, especially in WS, ge and cge occur frequently, as in sengean, beside sengan, 'to singe', secgean, beside secgan, 'to say'. Pre-junctural eg is often simplified to g or c in the early Bede MSS; e.g., Egbrect, Ecberht, beside Ecgbercht.128 Otherwise, final eg or gg for /g/ was very seldom simplified, an indication that the scribes did not regard it as an ordinary geminate like bb or nn. We may here note a parallel between /g/ and /c/ in the late OE micgern 'fat of the kidneys', from an older */mid-gern/ (or /-giern/ or /-gearn/), cf. OHG mittigarni. The Scottish and North English use of [g] rather than [d3] in

124 Op. cit., p. 24. Around 700 and for some time afterward, cene 'bold' was cöene /cäne/, and there could be no minimal contrast until after unrounding of /ce/ in the ninth century. 125 Cf. above cuic- 'alive' : quicae 'couch grass' (c 700). 126 Cf. werc-um in VPs., Merc-iorum (with Lat. inflection) in early Bede MSS. 127 Op. cit., p. 25. Moulton notes the contrast as seen in weg /weg/ 'way' : weeg /weg/ 'wedge', etc. 128 Ström, p. 133.

ON THE CONSONANTAL PHONEMES OF OLD ENGLISH

49

words like brig 'bridge', rigg 'ridge', etc., is probably due to Scandinavian influence rather than to any dialectal usage in Nhb. 129 11. /:/ Consonant length existed in Old English, and length was phonemic in most of the dialects throughout the OE period, as the following pairs (chiefly ninthcentury WS) illustrate: hopian 'to hope': hoppian 'to hop'; häte 'hotly': hätte 'is (was) called'; seten 'a shoot': setten 'set' (pr. opt. pi.); scyte 'shooting': scytte 'I shoot'; baca 'bake' (impel, sg.): bacca 'ridge'; loca 'enclosure': locca 'locks of hair' (gen. pi.);gebeda 'of prayers': gebedda 'bedfellow'; hoga 'care': hogga 'of hogs'; bile 'beak': bille 'sword' (dat.); swelan 'to burn': swellan 'to swell'; sparode 'he spared': besparrade 'bolted, shut' (? from ON); freme 'perform' (imper. sg.): fremme 'perform' (opt. sg.); wine 'friend': winne 'struggle' (pr. opt. sg.); suna 'son' (dat.): sunna 'sun'; rece 'stretch', etc. (imper. sg.): recce (pr. 1 sg.). 11.1. All consonants could occur with length except /s/, /w/, /g/, and /g/. Long consonants did not occur post-juncturally. They were simplified in pre-junctural position, 130 but the long consonant was often restored (at least in the spelling), through analogy with inflected forms in which the long consonant was medial. When forming a cluster with another consonant, a long consonant was usually simplified, even if the cluster was a relatively late development due to loss of an intervening vowel: sende 'he sent' (send-de), wyrtruma 'root of a plant' (wyrt-truma), sibsum 'peaceful' (sibb-sum), feorcund 'foreign-born' (feorr-cund), locfeax 'hair' (locc-feax), stilnes 'quietness' (still-nes), prymlic 'powerful' (prymm-lic), henfugol 'hen' (henn-fugol), etc. Consequently, long and short consonants contrast only in positions (2) and (9). By the close of the OE period, as Hans Kurath has pointed out, long consonants occurred almost exclusively after short vowels.131 Consonant length may have been non-phonemic, or nearly so, in Northumbria as early as the tenth century. No other explanation would seem to account for the many false geminations in the gloss of the Lindisfarne Gospels: clioppadon 18, 40; earlipprica 18, 10; eorlippric 18, 26; hrippe (for ripe) 4, 35; ucetter 4, 11; uittnesa 8, 18; auritteö 8, 6; ongeattas 8, 43; spreccende 8, 40; sprecco 12, 50; to bruccanne 4, 32; reccone 18, 27; huidder 8,14; didder 18,2; goddo 10, 34; nomma 17,12; frumma 8,25; cymmende 10, 12; cuommon 18, 20; penninga 12, 5; heannissum 8, 23; and many more. 132

129

Richard Jordan, Handbuch der mittelenglischen Grammatik (Heidelberg, 1934), p. 172. Moulton, p. 25. 131 "The Loss of Long Consonants and the Rise of Voiced Fricatives in Middle English," Lg., XXXII (1956), 435-436. For some exceptions, see James Sledd, "Some Questions of English Phonology," Ibid., XXXIV (1958), 252-258. 132 These examples are from John's Gospel, but the other Gospels contain many similar spellings. 130

ALBERT H. MARCKWARDT

MUCH AND MANY: THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF A MODERN ENGLISH DISTRIBUTIONAL PATTERN

In Modern English, much and many as indicators of quantity or of quantitative increase are distributed according to whether the substantive to which they apply is a mass or count noun. Many is used with the plural of count nouns: many books-, much is used with the singular of mass nouns: much water. A complete account of the behavior of the language with respect to this point requires further amplification, 1 but the broad generalization which discriminates count and mass, or between nouns of discontinuous quantity and those of continuous quantity, as Palmer phrased it, 2 is sufficient for the present purpose. In Old English there were forms corresponding to both words. Much has developed from OE my eel; many from OE monig. In addition, however, there was also the Old English word fela, frequently used in a partitive construction and of a somewhat higher incidence than either of the others. This has disappeared completely. On the surface, therefore, it would seem that Old English used three words to perform the functions which are now taken care of by only two. This raises two questions: How did the present distribution come about? What is the chronology of this development ? Old English fela had cognates in all the Germanic languages (Goth, filu, ON fiol, OHG, OS filu, filo, OFris. felo). It survives today as German vie! and Dutch veel. In Old English as elsewhere the word was indeclinable and was often followed by the genitive plural of the substantive with it was used. Typical instances of this construction are: t>£r wearQ Heahmund ... ofslaegen ond fela godra monna. (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle) Fela spella him sffidon fca Beormas. (Ohtere and Wulfstan) 1 Some nouns may be used in either a mass or count sense : much salt, many salts ; much coin, many coins ; much rain, many rains. Others appear to be plurals and hence countable but occur only with much : news, mathematics. Yet in the main, it may be concluded that if the referent is countable and can be used with numbers, many will be employed with it; if not, the appropriate word is much. 2 Harold E. Palmer, A Grammar of Spoken English, 2d ed. (Cambridge, W. Heffer and Sons, Ltd., 939), p. 62.

51

" M U C H " AND " M A N Y "

Most Old English nouns appearing in such a construction were countable. The first dozen which occur with fela in Beowulf may be taken as typical: 3 madma 'treasures', wera 'men', wifa 'women', wundorseona 'wondrous sights', geosceaftgasta 'fated spirits', wsepna 'weapons', Srgestreona 'ancient treasures', earmbeaga 'bracelets', missera 'half-years', fyrena 'crimes', landa 'lands', and mzrda 'glorious deeds'. The genitive plural forms of the Old English nouns were fairly distinctive, the -ena of the weak declension being wholly so, and the -a inflection of the strong nouns duplicated only as a possible alternative in the nominative-accusative plural of the feminine nouns. This distinctiveness did not survive the transition to Middle English where ultimately the -es plural inflection came to be applied not only to the vast majority of nouns but to all cases as well. At this point the genitive was no different from any other plural, and consequently the partitive construction was no longer formally recognizable. Yet fele (the final vowel having been neutralized) persisted throughout the period, though with somewhat decreasing frequency. Typical examples from different parts of England are: Her fele pines ai sal J>ou fele. Cursor Mundi JDU ne scelt habe uele4 Godes. Ayenbit of Inwit It is important to recognize, however, that fela was not used exclusively with count nouns. Mass nouns appear from time to time in the genitive singular, as in the following: Fela sceal gebidan leofes and lafces se Jje longe her on 3yssum windagum worolde bruceQ!

Beowulf, 1060-62

welhwylc gecwaeQ, Jjaet he fram Sigemunde[s] secgan hyrde ellendaedum uncudes fela ...

Beowulf, 874-76

In addition, there are instances in Old English where fela appears to have had the capacity to govern singular and plural of the same noun, suggesting the possibility of both a count and a mass interpretation. ... lixte se leoma

ofer landa fela.

Da se eorl ongan

for his ofermode

alyfan landes to fela latere 5eode.

Beowulf, 311

Maldon, 89-90.

In Middle English there seems to have been a concentration of the use of fele with 3

The noun forms are cited here as they occurred in the poem, namely in the genitive plural. The spelling uele shows voicing of the initial fricative, characteristic of the Kentish and Southern dialects at this time.

4

52

ALBERT H. MARCKWARDT

feminine nouns, usually with such abstract derivational suffixes as -ing or -ung. Examples from the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries follow: Mid alse fele frefringe, JDU hauest blissed min soule. Trinity Homilies. Of hir his leve he tok with kysseng fele. Generydes. Certain set combinations, such as fele folk, fele fold, fele kyn, many of them collective in force, also appear with a fair degree of frequency. By the fifteenth century the reinforcement of fela by some other quantitative term, usually many, seems to indicate clearly that the word was losing its force. Seke men come jpedur, mony and ffele. Life of St. Editha He ... hadde ... of the queene many giftes fele. Seven Sages In the light of this, the disappearance of fela by the close of the sixteenth century is not at all astonishing. The fact that it survived in the language as long as it did may well be the greater cause for surprise. At any rate, the Oxford English Dictionary records no seventeenth-century citations, and I have not encountered any elsewhere. The Old English use of monig was primarily distributive, closer to the expression 'many a . . . ' i n present English than to anything else. This is illustrated by: Da waes on morgen ymb Jja gifhealle

mine gefraege gu3rinc monig.

... J)aet he her swa manigne man aflymde.

Beowulf, 837-38. Maldon, 243.

Examples such as these abound throughout the entire period. 5 In this construction, the Old English equivalent of many is followed by a singular noun. Although the indefinite article a, or an earlier form of it, was inserted between many and the noun it modified early in the thirteenth century,6 the construction without a persisted until the late sixteenth century,7 just about the time that fela disappeared from the language. The correspondence may be coincidental; it may on the other hand point to two elements in a larger pattern of development. When, in Old English, monig was used with a plural substantive, it was sometimes though not always followed by the genitive of the noun to which it was attached. Examples from Beowulf are: rinca manega (728), eorla manegum (1235), manegum mxgpa (1771), monegum fira (2001), haleda monegum (3111). On occasion, however, the adjective many appears in the same case as the noun it modifies, pus manige men, to continue with examples from Beowulf (337), illustrates this use with what is clearly a count noun. Manigre mzgpe (75) and manigum mxgpum (5) could be interpreted as possible collectives. 5

In Beowulf alone, lines 689, 838, 908, 918, 1510, 2762 may be cited. A1 t>a twa ferden of moni ane eaerde." Layamon, Brut. 7 "Countenance bears out many evill counseller." G. Babington, A very fruit full exposition of the commandments, 1583. a

" M U C H " AND " M A N Y "

53

In one type of construction, namely with long-stemmed neuter plural nouns, there was an obvious ambiguity. In monig word, monig leod, monig sxdeor, the adjectivenoun combination might be construed as either nominative-accusative singular or nominative-accusative plural. In the former instance, monig would have to be understood in its distributive sense; in the latter it is being used with the plural of a count noun. This ambiguity would not, of course, have persisted much beyond the twelfth century, when neuter nouns adopted the -es plural inflection of the masculines by analogy. What may be significant, however, is the number of times that monig with a plural substantive is accompanied by a second adjective. Frequently the concurrent adjective is oder. Typical examples are: poet he sende Agustinum ond odre monega munecas mid him, (Bede); bi odrum monegum spellum, (Bede); and monige odre cyninges pegnas, (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle). Other adjectives do appear with monig in this construction from time to time. The instances which have been collected include, manega haliga bee, (Aelfric, Homily on St.-Gregory); mcenegum yfelum monnum, (Alfred, Boethius); manega and mislica gemetsunga, (Alfred, Boethius). Such a parallelism, had it been employed with fela would have been ambiguous. The construction fela oderra muneca could have been interpreted either as 'many of the other monks', or 'many other monks'. The resolution of the ambiguity through the use of monig may well bear some relationship to the increase, in Middle English, in the frequency of many at the expense of fela. The earliest use of Old English mycel was with respect to size. The following quotation from the Alfredian Boethius shows monig and mycel in contrast: ... ncefre swa manega gesceafta, ond swa micla, ond swa fxgra. It is clear that the first adjective refers to quantity, the second to size, and the third to some characteristic feature or quality. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle abounds with instances of mycel used with such words as here, fierd, and sumorlida, referring to the size of armed forces. Likewise, in the translations of the Gospels, the combination mycel menigu, is the regular rendering for 'great multitude'. With such nouns as wind, lond, or abstractions like ellenwddness in the familiar Bede passage describing Caedmon, the notion of magnitude appears to be clearly justified by the contexts in which the word appears. Mycel had a dual development in the language. The form with unpalatalized c and the retention of the final I has continued to the present day in the north of England and in lowland Scots as mickel and muckel. It is still used with reference to size, as in muckle-mouth Meg. Standard English much reflects a form of mycel with palatalized c and loss of the final syllable. It continued for some time to be used in the sense of 'great'. The latest Oxford English Dictionary citation, from Tusser's Five hundreth pointes of good husbandrie, bears the date 1573: a tar kettle, little or mitch. Instances of much indicating quantity rather than size begin to appear in the early eleventh century, particularly with non-countables and abstractions, where the notions of size and quantity tend to merge. With countables like fictreow or stan, the adjective clearly referred to size; quantity would have been indicated by fela

54

ALBERT H. MARCKWARDT

with the genitive plural, or by many. But with nouns such as herehyd 'booty', walsliht 'slaughter', ege 'fear, terror', and mod 'courage', mycel seems to signify not so much the notion of size as of bulk or extent, both of these moving in the direction of indicating quantity. Even earlier mycel had also been employed in absolute constructions with the genitive singular of the noun to which it applied.8 Here the reference is clearly to extent or quantity. It would seem then that the combination of these two types of use, the absolute and the adjectival with abstractions or non-countables, led to the present distribution of much as compared with many. Again the date of the disappearance of the earlier meaning with reference to size corresponds neatly with that of the latest citations for fela and the distributive use of many without the indefinite article. Certain other semantic shifts also must be added to the picture. The adjective great, originally used with reference to something awkwardly large, coarse, or massive, came to be somewhat less pejorative, possibly around the end of the thirteenth century. This, too, was just about the time that big entered the language, and that large began to indicate size rather than abundance, liberality, or copiousness. It is difficult to say if these developments are to be interpreted as cause or effect; the fact that they do coincide in time with the decrease in frequency of the use of much with reference to size or stature certainly hints at some kind of relationship among these various developments. In summary, the modern distribution of many and much with count and mass nouns seems to reflect a continuation and development of the early uses of many with noun plurals, often occurring with a second adjective, and of much with noun singulars, particularly abstractions or things existing in mass or bulk. Many with countable noun singulars developed into the present distributive construction, many a. Much with noun plurals and with countables gave way to other adjectives indicating size, the result of word borrowing and semantic development. Fela became obsolete, possibly because the distinctive genitive plural case construction it originally demanded did not survive the Middle English breakdown of the Old English inflectional system. Thus, a situation which had been thrown into some confusion in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was fairly well regularized along the lines of the modern pattern by the end of the sixteenth.

8

j>œr wearô sëo cwën ofslœgen ond micel ¡>xs heres... oô hie pas londes hœfdonmicelonheora onwalde.

Both citations are from Alfred's Orosius.

JOHN C. POPE

BEOWULF'S OLD AGE

In composing the second part of Beowulf the poet was faced with several problems, not the least of which was the fact that, according to the story he had inherited, or the form of it that he chose to tell, the central episode, the dragon-fight, took place when his hero was by ordinary standards a very old man. Beowulf had ruled the Geats, as we are twice told, for fifty years. If we accept this round number at face value and make a rough estimate of the age at which he came to the throne, we must conclude that he was close to eighty when he undertook that last, fatal battle. Thus, however much we may allow for hyperbole in a tale so full of prodigies, his death cannot be looked upon as grossly contrary to the natural human cycle. It cannot have quite the same kind of tragic implications as the death of Hector, or Achilles, or Turnus, or Roland. 1 Indeed one can hardly help feeling, from the mere contemplation of the outline of Beowulf's career, that poetic justice has been fulfilled, that fortune, however cruel in other respects, has been kind in granting him a death not only heroic but appropriate and timely. "Perseverance, dear my lord, keeps honour bright," as Ulysses says to a much younger hero. It is not given to many men to renew the lustre of their prime on the brink of the grave. The poet gives indirect expression to this aspect of the matter through the only character who can gain in our esteem by being cheerful. Beowulf himself, in his last moments, is allowed to take satisfaction not only in a long life well spent, but also in having been permitted, at the end, to win the treasure for his people.2 He does not speak directly of the increase of his reputation, but we know that he has always striven for this, for dom ar deade as he puts it, 3 and he shows that he thinks the dom he has achieved is worth remembering when he gives Wiglaf instructions for his 1

S. B. Greenfield's essay, "Beowulf and Epic Tragedy" (Comparative Literature, XIV [1962], 91-105), suggests some interesting distinctions between what seems typically tragic in the drama and what we tend to call tragic in epic poetry. He does not concern himself with this further distinction. 2 That they choose to bury the treasure with him testifies to their love and grief rather than to the futility of his sacrifice. The outlook of the poem is preponderantly this-worldly but not materialistic. Counting the profit and loss is a poor way to estimate the significance of the achievement. 3 Line 1388. My quotations of the poem throughout are from Klaeber's third edition.

56

JOHN C. POPE

memorial barrow. 4 In spite of the pain of his wound he accepts his fate with composure, permitting himself no hint of complaint beyond the implied wish that he had had a son and heir. 5 From his own point of view his death is anything but tragic. What, then, has the poet found in the situation to justify the elegiac melancholy that darkens the tone of many a passage in Part II, and the occasional more strident protestations of some of his characters? Whether we choose to describe the total effect of this second part as elegiac or tragic, there is no question that the tone of affirmation is strongly counterbalanced (though at the same time paradoxically heightened) by expressions of grief and dismay. There would seem to be at least two main grounds for the darker emotions. One of these may be seen in its purity as the basis for sorrow at the death of Scyld as this is described in the prologue to Part I. Scyld, like Beowulf, is old when he dies, and his death, unlike Beowulf's, seems to have been entirely natural. The sadness with which his splendid obsequies are invested rests simply on the universal affliction of human mortality, intensified by love and admiration for a great individual on whom the well-being of a whole community has seemed to depend. There is no bitterness attending such a death, though the sorrow may be all the greater in proportion to the length of the mourned one's life. Much of the sorrow for Beowulf rests on the same ground, and its expression, for obvious reasons, is greatly expanded, besides being complicated by recognition of the suffering before death. But in Beowulf's case, as opposed to Scyld's, there is a second ground, perhaps more for dismay than for sorrow. Scyld is the first in a great line of kings, the founder of a dynasty whose ascending fortunes can seem like a perpetuation, even a dilation, of his spirit. Beowulf dies without issue, the last of Hrethel's direct descendants. His people look forward to renewed assaults from the enemies he has kept at bay, for they know that the aggressiveness of their predecessors exposes them to retaliation at this moment of weakness. In their minds and the poet's, who assures us that the messenger's dire predictions were not far wrong (he ne leag fela, 3029), Beowulf's death assumes the proportions of a national disaster. The main effect is twofold: to increase our sense of Beowulf's importance, and to complicate the mournfulness of elegy with tragic foreboding. In the broad ways I have mentioned, most readers will grant, I think, that the poet has developed the special features of his plot with discernment as well as imagination. What is perhaps not so clear is his success in dealing with a subordinate problem that his main design has rendered inescapable. Beowulf must be presented as old in years and in experience, yet still untouched by the ordinary infirmities of age. We must be made to feel that, although he needs Wiglaf's assistance in killing the dragon, and even so must lose his life, it is not primarily because he no longer has the strength of his youth, but because the dragon is the most powerful of all his adversaries. The main function of Beowulf's age is not, as with King Lear, to develop a conflict between the now exaggerated flaws of a great nature and its still partially unrealized * Lines 2802 ff. * Lines 2729Jf.

BEOWULF'S OLD AGE

57

capabilites, but rather, in a simpler way, to increase our awe at his enduring strength and spirit, and secondarily (as also to some degree in Lear's case) to heighten the sense of fortune's malice — for the kindness of which I have spoken has its obverse side: at the very time when Beowulf might properly be allowed a respite from his labors he is required to face the greatest trial of his whole life. Superficially, the poet succeeds very well in keeping us aware of Beowulf's age and at the same time denying most of its consequences. He tells us of the fifty-year reign, and makes repeated use of the epithets of old age,6 yet he never intimates that Beowulf, as he enters the fight, is less vigorous than before. Even if we permit ourselves to imagine some slight diminution of his formerly prodigious strength and resilience, the loss is not crucial. Such weakness as appears after the fight has begun is brought about by the dragon's paralyzing fire, and even the fire is for a time withstood. At the critical moment it is the sword that gives way, precisely because Beowulf strikes too powerfully at the dragon's impenetrable head. He is still too strong for man-made weapons, which must either fail to bite or break under excessive stress. In his preternatural resistance to physical decay, a mark of his heroic endowment, he resembles and surpasses the mighty Hildebrand, whom legend assumes to have been more than a match for his thirty-year-old son.7 The question is, however, whether in any important way the poet has given positive expression to his conception of Beowulf's age beyond mere assertion - evidently a difficult matter in view of his need to avoid any hint of infirmity. Recently a distinguished critic, objecting to Professor Tolkien's emphasis on the balanced opposition of two periods in the hero's life, his youth and his age, as a dominant structural feature in the poem, 8 has argued that the old age, though often mentioned, lacks elaboration, 9 thus implying that it is not to be taken very seriously. This is not the place to enter into the very complicated structural question, which can hardly be settled by the limited considerations here advanced. It is already evident, however, that I attach a good deal of importance to the concept of Beowulf's age even without elaboration. Furthermore, although I grant that the elaboration is much less obvious than in the depiction of Hrothgar, in whom slight touches of infirmity can appear with advantage to the conception of his character, it seems to me that some elaboration is observable, and that in at least one place it has great dramatic value. I pass over such small indications as the contrast to young Wiglaf or the 6

The length of the reign is mentioned by the poet at line 2209 and by Beowulf at line 2733. The epithets, in order of frequency, are gamol, frod, eald and ealdhlaford, har. 7 Within the poem, a similar toughness of fibre, though on a smaller scale, is exhibited by the redoubtable old Ongentheow. 8 J. R. R. Tolkien, "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" (Sir Israel Gollancz Memorial Lecture, 1936, Proceedings of the British Academy, XXII, and separate reprint, Oxford University Press, 1937 and 1958, to which I refer), p. 29. 9 Kenneth Sisam, The Structure of Beowulf (Oxford, The Clarendon Press, 1965), p. 23. He lists the epithets of old age that I have mentioned above, note 6. A general treatment of youth and age in the poem, and of the broad changes noticeable in Beowulf as he grows older, will be found in Anton Pirkhofer's monograph, Figurenstaltung im Beowulf-Epos, Heidelberg, 1940.

58

JOHN C. POPE

composed serenity of the dying speeches, or the little glimpse of the mortally wounded king as he seats himself by the wall of the barrow, looking at the great stone arch at the entrance, the work of giants, and notes the seemingly eternal life of this earthhouse : ece eordreced.10 The imaginative power of this contrast, with its emphasis on the littleness of a man's lifetime, would be far less if we did not have Beowulf's great age, by purely human standards, in mind. The poet helps us to remember it, and at the same time suggests Beowulf's own ability to apprehend the force of the comparison, by applying to him at this juncture the epithet wishycgende.11 But the passage on which I wish to dwell is the long speech Beowulf addresses to his chosen companions on the headland just before he advances alone to the dragon's barrow. Certain passages in the speech are often considered quite apart from Beowulf because of their thematic and tonal importance, and it is obvious that the poet is not solely concerned with the speaker's character and state of mind. 12 Yet I think he is very much concerned with them, and that when the speech is read in these terms Beowulf's age proves to be an important element in the total effect.13 Beowulf's ostensible purpose in this speech is to prepare himself as he had done long ago to meet a dangerous enemy — to muster his resolution, to make his 'boast' (in essence a solemn vow to fight to the uttermost), to say farewell in case he should not return. But what a difference from the clearly directed, single-minded boasts before the other two fights! The poet forewarns us of the new complexity of the speech in the introductory lines. Both he and his hero, though in different ways and different degrees, are deeply troubled : Gesset 9a on naesse niQheard cyning; Jjenden haelo abead heorQgeneatum, goldwine Geata. Him waes geomor sefa, w£efre ond waelfus, wyrd ungemete neah, se 6one gomelan gretan sceolde, secean sawle hord, sundur gedaelan lif wiQ lice; no J)on lange was feorh aejjelinges flaesce bewunden. [2417-24] 10

Line 2719. Line 2716. 12 Tolkien, op. tit., p. 44, being troubled by Beowulf's use of what he considers an uncharacteristic expression, Godes leoht geceas, with reference to Hrethel's death (2469), maintains that "in the very long speech of Beowulf from 2425-2515 the poet has hardly attempted to keep up the pretence of oratio recta throughout," and that "from 2444 to 2489 we have not really a monologue in character at all." I should not care to insist that every syllable of the speech is in character, but I think there is much to be gained by accepting as properly Beowulf's the sequence of thought in the speech and its main topics and sentiments. 13 My interpretation has a good deal in common with that of Adrien Bonjour in The Digressions in Beowulf (Medium i v u m Monographs V, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1950), pp. 32-35. For further insights, in a different and larger context, see E. B. Irving, Jr., A Reading of Beowulf (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1968), pp. 223-30. 11

59

BEOWULF'S OLD AGE

The very first line of this passage gives us the basic contrast: the relaxed and friendly gesture of sitting as opposed to the formidable toughness and authority implicit in nidheard cyning. The next lines bring out first, partly by the unobtrusive choice of the epithet goldwine, the warmth of Beowulf's feeling for his hearth-companions, then the deep sadness of a troubled mind filled with the presentiment of death, a presentiment that the poet turns into a certainty for himself and his audience as he lets his own sorrow engulf that of the hero. The first part of the speech (lines 2426-71) more than fulfills the expectations thus aroused, though by no means in an obvious and straightforward manner. It presents at the beginning a conflict between two almost contrary impulses: 'Fela ic on giogo3e guSrsesa genaes, orleghwila; ic t>ast eall gemon.' [2426-7] Hearing these words for the first time, we should have every reason to expect a review of Beowulf's victories in his youth as a means of strengthening his resolution in meeting the dragon. A few lines previously the poet has used very similar expressions in order to remind us of the Grendel episodes and to touch upon later exploits.14 But it is as if, when Beowulf had said He pat eall gemon' the very idea of remembering had released an almost unconscious but powerful desire to recall a different kind of experience. What follows directly is his memory of childhood in the court of his maternal grandfather, King Hrethel, where for a time all had been kindness and affection: 'Ic waes syfanwintre, t>a mec sinca baldor, freawine folca set minum fader genam; heold mec ond haefde Hre3el cyning, geaf me sine ond symbel, sibbe gemunde; naes ic him to life laSra owihte, beorn in burgum, fonne his bearna hwyle, Herebeald ond Hae3cyn o33e Hygelac min.' [2428-34] But suddenly there had been a tragic accident: an arrow shot by Haethcyn had missed the mark and killed Herebeald, Hrethel's eldest son and heir: 'Waes J>am yldestan ungedefelice maeges dasdum morJ>orbed stred, sy33an hyne Hae3cyn of hornbogan, his freawine flane geswencte, miste mercelses ond his masg ofscet, bro3or oSerne blodigan gare.' [2435-40] 14

Lines 2349-51 and, in recapitulation, 2397-9.

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It is an inexpiable crime according to the old Germanic code, even though an accident; yet Hrethel can take no vengeance against his own son: 'I>ast waes feohleas gefeoht, fyrenum gesyngad, hreQre hygemeSe; soeolde hwae8re swa £>eah aedeling unwrecen ealdres linnan.' [2441-3] There follows the famous simile, to a portion of which I shall return presently, in which Hrethel's grief is compared to that of an imaginary old man whose son has been hanged — a death meted out to criminals, and consequently one for which the law allowed no vengeance to be taken. 15 After a moving description of the old man's sorrow and loneliness, Beowulf returns to the plight of Hrethel, who, finding no outlet for his grief, dies, leaving all to his two surviving sons. This portion of the speech has no obvious value as a preparation for fighting the dragon. Rather, it is a preparation for death, a digression from the proposed theme for the satisfaction of an undefined but deeper need. Beowulf's impulse to fortify himself by the recollection of dangers outlived, enemies overcome, is postponed in favor of a meditative exploration of another side of his experience, a largely passive side in which he had glimpsed the limitations of human life, the sudden crosses and the inexorability of fate. The sense of his own vulnerability seems to draw him closer to the period of boyhood dependency with its vivid but half bewildering impressions, its affectionate response to kindness, its helpless awareness of the suffering of elders. A young man under threat of death might, no doubt, turn back in this same way, but the effect here is enhanced by the time-span, and Beowulf's age makes itself felt not only in the leisurely digressiveness of the reminiscence but in the composure that accompanies the pathos, and especially, perhaps, in the depth and delicacy of his insight into the sorrows of old men. At the climax of his description of the bereaved father, he imagines him visiting the dead son's dwelling only to be overwhelmed by a vision of its emptiness, which seems to grow larger as he tries to fill it with the shadowy images of departed life and joy — winehall, horsemen, sound of the harp — until his loneliness comes upon him with such intensity that he retreats to his bed, seeking to shut out the surrounding void: 'GesyhS sorhcearig on his suna bure winsele westne, windge reste reote berofene,— ridend swefaS, haele8 in ho5man; nisfcaerhearpan sweg, gomen in geardum, swylce 3aer iu waeron. Gewite5 J^onne on sealman, sorhlecS gsleS an after anum; fuhte him eall to rum, wongas ond wicstede.'

[2455-62]

15 Dorothy Whitelock, The Audience of Beowulf (Oxford, The Clarendon Press, 1951; reprinted with corrections, 1958), p. 18.

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61

The entire passage concerning Hrethel's grief, of which the simile is the imaginative center, displays in extreme form, under pressure, as it were, of age and circumstance, a trait already discernible in the Beowulf of Part I, a ready sympathy for and understanding of persons less able than he to cope with life. Thus, in his report to Hygelac, he had entered imaginatively into the probable feelings of Ingeld and the Heathobards after the proposed marriage to Freawaru, showing both political and psychological acumen; 16 and his account of Hrothgar in the same report contains a passage in which certain typical characteristics of old age are sensitively described. It is worth quoting here for the contrast it affords between Hrothgar's old age and Beowulf's: 'Hwilum eft ongan eldo gebunden, gomel gu6wiga gioguSe cwi9an, hildestrengo; hre3er inne weoll, Jjonne he wintrum frod worn gemunde.' [2111-14] We may note here a point of likeness in the tendency of both old men to indulge in reminiscence, but the difference is more striking. Beowulf is certainly not to be described as eldo gebunden even though he has now, presumably, as many years behind him as Hrothgar had then. And Beowulf, in the whole course of his reminiscence, breathes no word of complaint for his lost youth and strength, or for anything in his own lot, past or present. Though touched as he begins to speak by sadness and the prospect of death, he enters into the bitter experiences of others, partly in magnanimous sympathy, partly as if to look steadily at the whole range of human suffering, what he has observed as well as what in his own person he has endured, and to prove tc himself that he is not dismayed. The remainder of Beowulf's speech, conforming more nearly to expectation, needs no extended comment. It proceeds, after the seemingly arrested movement of the passage I have discussed, by carefully graduated stages toward the high resolve that is to set the speaker on his way. Beowulf continues to review the course of his early life — not the aspect of it that was treated in Part I, his career as adventurer and monster-queller, but his experiences as a member of the royal family. These experiences fall into two stages. In the first stage, as a still youthful spectator, Beowulf had witnessed the outbreak of war between the Geats and the Swedes. A partial success of the Swedes, involving the death of Haethcyn, had been quickly countered. Ongentheow had been killed, his army defeated, and the victorious Hygelac had succeeded to the Geatish throne. The outbreak of hostilities had been the work of the younger generation — the sons of Ongentheow against the sons of Hrethel — and Beowulf now characterizes the strife as synn ond sacu, thus marking its violence and outrage, but conveying at the same time its excitement. His own spirit seems to quicken as he proceeds with the story. In the second stage, he recalls his years of 16

Lines 2020-69.

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devoted service to Hygelac, years of Geatish prosperity that had come to an end in the disastrous raid on the Rhinelands in which Hygelac lost his life. And now at last indirection has found direction out. That obscure impulse to review his life as a Geatish prince and loyal retainer leads him to recall the one episode that can best satisfy the purpose half expressed at the outset of his speech: to prepare himself for meeting the dragon by recalling former success in battle. The recollection of his victory over Daeghrefn, the standard-bearer of the Franks, satisfies several needs at once. It was a victory achieved in the service of Hygelac at the expense of the army that destroyed him, thus confirming the bonds of kinship and allegiance; it had been won without use of a sword, by that prodigiously powerful grip that he had learned to trust more than waepons; and finally, it had provided him with Daeghrefn's sword, the weapon to which he will now trust (though reluctantly and, as it turns out, in vain) for success against the dragon. With the recollection of this victory the twofold purpose of his search into the past has been fulfilled. He marks the fact by repeating the formula with which he had begun and this time completing the thought it had left unfinished. The poet directs attention to his words by interrupting the report of the speech with a fresh introduction: Beowulf maQelode, beotwordum spraec niehstan si9e: 'Ic gene5de fela guda on geogoQe; gyt ic wylle, frod folces weard fsh8e secan, maer8u fremman, gif mec se mansceaQa of eorSsele ut geseceQ.' [2510-15]

Recollection has at last been brought to the point where it can fortify the will. The normal significance latent in the contrast between the successive phrases, on geogode and frod jolces weard, is firmly denied. Dangers that have been risked with impunity in youth shall be risked again in experienced old age — as if this condition were almost an advantage — and mcerdu shall again be performed. The book of the past is closed. All that remains is to say farewell, to glance into the future at ways and means of conducting the battle, make one last vow, and advance against the dragon. In his powerful description of that advance the poet takes full advantage of the climactic progression in the preceding speech. A simple gesture helps to mark the contrast between beginning and end: as Beowulf had sat down before starting to talk, now he rises up beside his iron shield and moves forward, all vestiges of sorrow and foreboding gone: Aras 5a bi ronde rof oretta, heard under helme, hiorosercean baer

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under stancleofu, strengo getruwode anes mannes; ne bi9 swylc earges si8! [2538-41] As he takes sharp note of the enemy terrain he seems to be armed with the protective mass of battles endured, victories won, rather than burdened by weight of years: Geseah 5a be wealle se 9e worna fela gumcystum god guSa gedigde, hildehlemna, fonne hnitan fe9an, stondan stanbogan, stream ut ^onan brecan of beorge. [2542-6] His voice, never put to such a use in the previous battles we have witnessed, has more potency than any slughorn as he shouts his challenge: Let 9a of breostum, 9a he gebolgen waes, Weder-Geata leod word ut faran, stearcheort styrmde; stefn in becom hea9otorht hlynnan under harne stan. [2550-3] Moments later the mighty opposites confront each other, both experienced old campaigners, seemingly the tougher and fiercer for their years, like the ancient sword itself, which now receives as an honorific the epithet gomele. Each senses the terror projected by his adversary: Sweord aer gebrsed god gu9cyning, gomele lafe, ecgum unslaw; aeghwae9rum waes bealohycgendra broga fram o9rum. [2562-5] This is surely a greatly imagined and brilliantly executed passage, powerful in its own right. Yet its impact is enhanced by the poet's careful preparation for it, the finely managed crescendo of vigor and determination that follows upon the tender melancholy in the first part of Beowulf's speech. The full force of the contrast depends in some measure, certainly, on what we can perceive beyond the changing mood of Beowulf himself — namely, on the polar opposition between the black despondency of Hrethel, oppressed as he is by a grief that can have no outlet in action, and the energetic resistance of Beowulf to an external foe. Nevertheless the change in Beowulf's own mood is striking, and our memory of his state of mind as he starts to speak must affect out estimate of the great burst of energy and resolution with which, having brought his speech to a firm conclusion, he challenges the dragon. In comparison with his earlier speeches before battle, those he has made before encountering

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Grendel and Grendel's mother, this one has developed more slowly, much less directly, and with a sense of difficulty. The will to fight is less spontaneously achieved; the presentiment of death, reinforced as I have argued by feelings natural to old age, has been allowed some consideration before being set aside. The poet thus brings Beowulf as close to the condition of an ordinary old man as is compatible with his design before causing him to summon up the huge reserve of strength and determination that has made him a hero. As a result he seems to defy not only the dragon but old age and death as well. Even in his younger days his extraordinary physical strength had been inseparable from the energizing force of an equally extraordinary will. Now, in his old age, it may seem that the will, though slower to assert itself than before, has ultimately surpassed expectation. His astonishing hardihood no longer appears so much a miraculous gift from above as it does a direct product of that indomitable will. It is in helping to produce this impression that, as I believe, Beowulf's old age has been put to its most dramatically significant use.

G. V. SMITHERS

DESTINY AND THE HEROIC WARRIOR IN BEOWULF

In recent studies of Beowulf there has been a marked tendency for critics to interest themselves exclusively in the Christian aspects of the poem, and to offer an interpretation of it in Christian terms. We are bound to sympathize with such an approach: Beowulf is undeniably the work of a Christian. But the Christianity can be shown 1 to be merely one stratum (and of course that which lies on the surface) in a series of layers of meaning; and each of the others is marked by beliefs and ideals distinct from those of Christianity. One may consist in notions indistinguishable from those typically expressed in 'international wonder-tales'. 2 Another may be made up of beliefs regarding the nature, the properties, and above all the powers of supernatural beings of a baleful kind. Yet another expresses the heroic ideals that we should regard as assumptions about the conduct of life in a particular form of society — though in the poem they are a powerful pulse that beats in the hero at his most exalted moments. The importance of these submerged layers of meaning is that they may be utterly alien to us, and hence inaccessible (without further information) and indeed incomprehensible. Or, in practice, they are wholly missed, either because we are blind to them, or simply because we do not read the text closely enough. It is of course potentially misleading to speak of them as layers (or whatever else) of 'meaning'; but the word which will say what I have in mind, without suggesting what I do not wish to suggest, is not at present available in English. As used above, it is applied to certain ideas and beliefs and values in the mind of the author or of his characters, but with the recognition that the full 'meaning' of such things within a poem necessarily includes much else — the imaginative forms in which they are expressed and the responses that these draw from us, the emotional force with which they are charged for the figures in the poem, their power to move those figures to certain decisive acts of choice, and so on. 1

As I hope to have done in the book with which fellow-students of the poem have been threatened since 1961 (See The Making of 'Beowulf', Inaugural Lecture of the University of Durham, p. 3), and in which the subject of this paper is more fully documented than is possible here. 2 I.e., in the more precise terminology available in German, Zaubermärchen, the most important category of Märchen. The usual English rendering 'folk-tale' for the latter is unsatisfactory (for one thing, because it divorces the Märchen from the 'fairy-tale', when in fact they overlap to some extent).

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There is one such system of ideas in Beowulf that has not been given its due in the more recent critical or interpretative discourses avowedly dealing with the poem. Aspects of it have been appreciated in contributions by two scholars. But one of these deals summarily (though felicitously) with it, and ostensibly with only one component of it; expressly excludes Beowulf; and is in any case an investigation of it in relation to Christian notions that were not fully compatible with it3. The other is a group of papers by Dr. B. J. Timmer, one of which is concerned with the uses in Old English at large of the term wyrd,4 and is thus for my present purpose incomplete. In two other papers Dr. Timmer did notice and deal perceptively with other conceptions belonging to the same system of ideas in Beowulf.5 But his treatment, if extremely sound, is very summary; and I am seeking here to do more to bring out their significance as a whole in the poem. This system of ideas is a complete heroic ethos. Its meaning, though of course fully clear to some earlier critics, has latterly been lost sight of, and in fact cannot be grasped without a scrutiny, which must in some degree be systematic, of the expressions of it in the text. Merely to collect them will bring home its centrality in the poem; and to see them alongside the proper illustrative material outside it (which is Scandinavian) may do so with the force of a revelation. The ideas contained in it are expressed on the one hand in words referring to 'fate', and on the other in terms for 'glory; renown; good repute (as a warrior); honour'. It is the first group that is the best starting-point.6 The terms in Beowulf that have to do with 'fate' are nearly all matched in one or more of the cognate early Germanic tongues, in that sort of sense, and are thus ancient, at least as words. Their actual uses in the poem can of course be determined only from the individual context (which in many cases is an ambiguous one). But the first surprise is to find how frequent they are. The originally pagan words used in the poem as a whole (without reference for the present to the niceties of their uses) are as follows (roughly in the order of their frequency): I. Wyrd7 (twelve examples); ON. urdr 'fate' and Urdr 'the goddess Fate', OHG. wurt, OS. wurd. Related to the verb represented in OE. weordan and Lat. uertere. s

B. S. Philpotts, 'Wyrd and Providence in Anglo-Saxon Thought', Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association XIII (1928), 7-27. * 'Wyrd in Anglo-Saxon Prose and Poetry', Neophilologus, 26 (1940), 24-33; ibid. 27 (1941), 213-28. s 'Heathen and Christian Elements in Old English Poetry', Neophilologus 28 (1942), 180-5, and •Beowulf: the Poem and the Poet', ibid. 34 (1948), 122-6. • References to fate (which is merely a part of my subject) have been marshalled in a brief space by A. G. Brodeur (The Art of Beowulf (1957) pp. 102-4) and judiciously discussed, as also in ch. VII, passim. At certain points my views on questions arising in this paper are nearer to those of J. R. R. Tolkien, in Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics (Proceedings of the British Academy, XXII, 1936) than of Brodeur; but that cannot be gone into here. 7 See in general L. Mittner, Wurd (Bern 1955).

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67

2. Metod 'that which assigns fate' or 'fate assigned to one'; cf. ON. migtudr 'fate' and OE. metena (once; v.l. gydena) glossing Parca. Gmc. *meton, OE. (gepattc) metian 'to measure, consider', related to OE. metan 'to measure' and cognates. 3. Fcege 'ripe for death'; ON. feigr, OHG. feigi, OS.fegi. 4. Formations on Gmc. *skap- (with the same base as in the verb *skapjan'to create'): (heah)gesceap '(exalted) destiny', gescap(hwile) '(hour) ordained by fate'. Cf. ON. shop pi. 'fate', OS. giscapu pi. 'fate'; ON. skapa 'to make, etc.'. gescipe 'fate'. earmsceapen 'fated to misery'; OS. armscapan. geosceaft 'something ordained long before'. metodsceaft 'destiny assigned to one'. wonsceaft 'miserable destiny'. 5. Gyfede 'granted (by fate)', gyfede n. 'fate'. Cf. OS. gidichig 'granted' (with suffix -ig); ON. gcefa '(a person's) good luck'. Formed on Gmc. *get>- 'to give'. 6. Feorhlege 'life(span) allotted by fate'. A synonymous variant of ealddrlegu; cf. ON. aldrlag 'life allotted by fate; death', OS. aldarlagu pi. 'life', and OE. orleeg, ON. orlog, OS. orlag 'fate'. Gmc. *laga 'that which is placed, laid down, arranged', pi. 'law'. 7. (Sigor)eadig, (sige)eadig 'having (victory) destined for one'. Cf. OE. eaden, ON. audinn 'granted by fate'; OE. ead 'good fortune; wealth', ON. audr 'wealth', OS. od 'good fortune'. Gmc. past participle *audana\ cf. Lith. audmi 'to weave'. 8. Geseelan 'to turn out happily for one'; OE. seel 'good fortune'; ON. sail 'fortunate'. Cf. Lat. salvus. 9. Gewiofu 'what is woven (by destiny)'; OE. wefan 'to weave'. 10. Gebyrd 'fate'. An opulent record of pagan Germanic beliefs about fate, as expressed in literature, has been left us in Old Icelandic. Without rushing into the obvious trap of piojecting these, lock, stock and barrel, on to the Anglo-Saxons, we can learn much from the early Scandinavian presentation of them. The notion of the individual human being's destiny was naturally associated, among other things, with the moment of his birth and that of his death. It is the second of these that is normally in question in Beowulf, as when Scyld is said on his death to have departed 'at the hour ordained' (to gesccephwile 26), or WealhJjeow puts it that HroSgar at his death will depart 'to see the destiny assigned him by fate' (metodsceaft seon 1180); or when the hero himself speaks of having paid for the dragon's treasure with his 'allotted span of days' (feorhlege 2800). The moment of birth is sometimes represented in Old Norse poetry and prose as being attended by the three goddesses of Fate who are there called 'Norns', and who

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respectively bear the names Urdr, Skuld, and Verdcmdi. They are likewise often said, alike in the Eddie poems and in sagas, to determine his death, the fact and the time of which are spoken of as being fixed by 'the judgment of the Norns' (noma domr) or 'the utterance of the Norns' (noma kvidr). The operations of the Norns to determine the quality of a man's life, if not as fully and explicitly described as we should wish, undeniably include above all the 'weaving' and the web of his life. It is thus of singular interest that in Beowulf the concept of 'weaving' is applied once to the destiny that allots victory in battle (wigspeda gewiofu 697); and that the word for it is, in a morphological analysis, a formation that must be ancient. It is in the same context of a destinal process determining victory in battle that 'weaving' is presented in the Old Norse Darradarljdd8 — in what is now thought to be a picture of a process of magic rather than an elaborate metaphor — and is ascribed to a group of valkyries bent on ensuring the victory of the 'young king' who is the leader of one of the two armies. This poem is a late one, composed perhaps in the twelfth century. On the other hand, the name Vabusoa 'weaveress' for a Germanic goddess, on a Roman inscription,9 is potential evidence that the conception of 'weaving' by a destinal agent is ancient among the Germanic peoples. It is moreover another item in the argument 10 against the claim that the 'weaving' of the Norns and of the Old English Wyrd11 is simply an adoption, along with the conception of the trio of goddesses of Fate, of the Roman Parca12 with their characteristic function. Old English uses of the plural wyrda, wyrde, even in the ancient collocation wyrda gesceaft (with the possible exception of the example in The Wanderer 107), are shown by their contexts not to be admissible evidence for the survival of this particular conception in Old English at the time when the extant works were composed. But, since the plural has survived as a word-form in application to a destinal agency, the heathen conception of more than one goddess of fate may well have been inherited in Old English and have been known in the period before the Conversion. And gewiofu, because it is in Beowulf used accurately (i.e. in the right sort of connection and context), is a fragment of live Germanic belief. The actual names Skuld and Verdandi for two of the three Norns occur in relatively 8

Available in a translation, alongside the edited text, in N. Kershaw, Anglo-Saxon and Norse Poems (Cambridge 1922), pp. 122 ff. Edited also by A. Heusler and W. Ranisch, Eddica Minora (Dortmund 1903), pp. 58-60. See A. Holtsmark, "Vefr Darradar", Maal og Minne 1939, pp. 74-96; F. Strom, Diser, Nornor, Valkyrjor (Stockholm 1954), pp. 78-80. 9 S. Gutenbrunner, Die germanischen Gotternamen der antiken Inschriften (Halle 1936), p. 67. 10 Weightily put by W. Gehl, Der germanische Schicksalsglaube (Berlin 1939), pp. 95-8, to whose work in the latter book and in his Ruhm und Ehre bei den Nordgermanen (Berlin 1937) I am greatly indebted. Similarly (with much the same material, enlarged by illustrative parallels from elsewhere in the Indo-European area) H. Giintert, Kalypso (Halle 1919), pp. 252 ff. See also P. Herrmann, Nordische Mythologie (Leipzig 1903), pp. 87-93, and J. de Vries, Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte I (Berlin 1956), pp. 192-3. 11 Wyrd ¡>cet me gewtef in The Rhyming Poem 70. 12 A. Brandl, "Zur Vorgeschichte der Weird Sisters' (Festgabe Liebermann, 1921), pp. 255, 270, who has collected Old English examples of 'weaving' by Wyrd. See also F. Kauffmann, 'Ober den Schicksalsglauben der Germanen' (Zeitschrift fur deutsche Philologie 50 (1926), pp. 361-408).

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late Old Norse sources; and the last is generally agreed to be an innovation in Old Norse, while Skuld is also the name of a valkyrie. But the existence of cognates in the other early Germanic tongues shows Urdr (and thus Old English Wyrd along with it) to be ancient. Two fundamental aspects of destiny (and those that are still easily comprehensible today) are expressed in the Old Norse word: as a name, it designates a personified goddess of fate; but it also occurs as an ordinary noun, denoting 'that which is destined; destined course of events'. It is extremely difficult to find in Beowulf assured examples of wyrd as a name for a personified goddess of fate. 13 But there is the occasional symptom elsewhere in Old English of antiquity, at least in the purely formal aspect (i.e. of expression). The use of the adjective in the phrase Wyrdseo mare in The Wanderer 1.100 is an example: this word is also applied to a destinal concept in Old Saxon mart metodo-giskapu. Whether personified or not, wyrd is some king of destinal agent or force in the important statement in Beowulf 572. In others, wyrd is the instrument that 'sweeps away' (11. All and 2814) and 'carries off' men in battle, 14 or the agent that bestows glory in battle (2574). The sense 'that which is ordained by fate' is illustrated in 11. 734 ff. and 1233-4, and probably in 11. 1056-7 and 2526. Other senses (which are subsidiary) are 'death' in wyrd ungemete neah 2420 (established by the parallel expression dead ungemete neah 2728, used likewise of Beowulf, which developed also in Old Norse miotudr 'fate'; and 'event' 3030, which is a natural development from 'what is ordained by fate'. A major point in Beowulf, however, is that God has been introduced into e.g. 11. 1056-8 (by name), and 11. 2526-7 (as metod). But what really matters is that the Christian reference has been added to statements about Wyrd, and has not replaced them. Another characteristic and important difference is that, while in Old Norse mythology the gods were under the dominion of the norns, just as men were, in Beowulf the Christian God is necessarily seen (at least once) as being able to annul the workings of fate: Jione J?e Grendel aer mane acwealde — swa he hyra ma wolde, nefne him witig God wyrd forstode ond Sees mannes mod. (1054-57) 'him whom Grendel had wickedly done to death — as he would have done more of them, had not God in his wisdom, along with the man's courage, warded off the workings of fate from them.' This passage is unambiguous, since the grammatical object of forstandan must idiomatically be an accusative, and him therefore means 13

This use is too freely posited in passages, in Beowulf and elsewhere in Old English, in which it seems to me far from assured, by R. Jente, Die mythologische Ausdriicke im altenglischen Wortschatz (Anglistische Forschungen 56 (1921), pp. 200-201). 14 Which in The Wanderer 1.99 is an action expressed by the same verb {fornomon), of which wyrd seo mare is the subject (along with tesca j>rype and wapert walgifru).

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'from them, in relation to them', in a construction like that of forstandan in 1. 2955. It therefore suggests a similar analysis of wyrd as a grammatical object, implying that fate is under the control of God, in 11. 2525-7: ac unc furQur sceal weor3an aet wealle, swa unc wyrd geteod Metod manna gehwses. The addition of the Christian God to an utterance in Germanic terms regarding fate recurs in another type of statement in Beowulf, which, while not always directly naming fate as such, concerns one of the main issues governed by fate according to Scandinavian belief. Victory, like 'triumph' or glory, and survival or death as alternative outcomes of a battle, is often said by the author of Beowulf to be 'granted' or determined by one or another superhuman agency. Of the seven passages in which the operation of a destinal agency is expressed by the word gyfede 'granted', five are concerned with the course or the outcome of a battle; 15 and a simple variant formed on the same Germanic base is once applied to the 'granting' of continued success in war (1. 64): t>a was Hro5gare

heresped gyfen.

These words gyfede and gyfen are perhaps best regarded as neutral, i.e. as compatible with an unspoken reference either to a Germanic conception of fate or to God: we cannot know which the author had in mind. They are highly reminiscent of the way the same notion is commonly phrased in Old Icelandic saga: mun oss verda sigrs audit 'victory will be granted us'. In the comment that foreshadows the outcome of Beowulf's fight with the dragon, the poet refers only to wyrd (2574-5): swa him wyrd ne gescraf hre8 aet hilde. This might be taken as a reference to the Germanic 'fate'; though it recalls the expression in 11. 818-9: Beowulfe wearQ gudhred gyfepe. On the other hand, in the very passage in which he uses the ancient notion of the 'weaving' of success in battle (which we have seen to be properly and originally inseparable from the pagan conception of goddesses of fate), the author of Beowulf represents the agent as God (696-7): Ac him Dryhten forgeaf wigspeda gewiofu. 16

LI. 299, 555, 819, 2491, 2682.

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He does so without any further ado in 11. 1553 ff.: ond halig God geweold wigsigor; witig Drihten hit on ryht gesced. The same applies to the event which was the turning-point in Beowulf's fight under water with Grendel's dam (1657-63): aetrihte waes guô getwaefed, nymôe mec God scylde... ac me geude ylda Waldend t»aet ic on on wage geseah wlitig hangian ealdsweord eacen. Likewise, the climactic moment when Wiglaf's anxious attentions could not prevent Beowulf's death draws the following comment from the author (2855-9): Ne meahte he on eordan, ôeah he uôe wel, on ôam frumgare feorh gehealdan, ne ôaes Wealdendes wiht oncirran ; wolde dom Godes dœdum raedan gumena gehwylcum, swa he nu gen deô. If we had no more than these passages available to us, it might seem that the poet, in going far towards making God the arbiter of these issues, was probably no longer aware of the meaning of the old pagan view of the facts; and that the words for it have in Beowulf f&àsà into a more or less formal façade. But it will prove not to be so. It is of course true that in the Icelandic sagas there is a more elaborate panoply of devices to express the workings of fate. The dreams which are intimations (often vivid and powerful) of catastrophic or tragic events to come are not to be found in Beowulf ; though the hero has premonitions of his death just before it. There is no-one with the power of seeing into the future ; and there are no portents (when, just once, the omens are scanned [heel sceawedon 204], this is something rather different). We do not find in O.E. at any stage — nor, after what has been said above, would we expect to find — any name but wyrd (and once metena) used for a destinai agency comparable with the Norns of Old Norse. The conception of someone as 'a man destined to be lucky' or 'a man marked for disaster' is not to be traced in any such developed form as the gœfumaôr or the ôhappamaôr of the Icelandic sagas. But the notion that things turn out well for a man, on an isolated occasion or regularly — which is a natural concomitant of ideas about fate — is twice expressed by the use of the verb gescelan, in relation to Beowulf (574) and to Sigemund (890), to mark a successful moment in a fight. This last point is fairly small beer. But there are unmistakable indications that Beowulf is marked out for the favours of destiny in an altogether conspicuous degree,

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and indeed with a more exalted degree of auspiciousness than the gœfumaôr. One arresting expression of this is the designation of him twice as sigoreadig (1311 and 2352). For one thing, this (with a morphological variant of the first element, viz. sige-eadig) is used otherwise, in Beowulf and in Old English, only of the trolls' sword in the cave under water. The latter is just the sort of sword (because of its supernatural owners) to be 'destined to bring victory', as various examples in O. Icelandic literature show; 16 and there is an O. Icel. cognate sigraudigr used in the same application: Vâpniu eru sigrauôig (Islendinga sôgur, (Copenhagen 1848), II, 319. Above all, the two elements of the compound occur in another form of fixed collocation : ekki mun oss sigrs verda audit 'victory will not be granted us by fate' (Laxdœla Saga ch. 72, 14); mun oss sigrs verda audit (Flateyjarbôk II, 284). Thus Beowulf was 'marked out by destiny for victory'; and since the poet has used the equivalent sige-eadig accurately in an application which is specifically Germanic and pagan, his application of it to Beowulf is unlikely to carry any Christian implications such as 'blessed' — i.e. it is (predominantly, at least) destiny in the Germanic conception, and not God, that has marked out Beowulf to be always victorious. There is no space to do more here than note in passing — though I have treated the matter more fully for publication elsewhere — that this sort of information links Beowulf for us with members of the same very special group of Germanic heroes as Sigurd, Starkaô, and others. His preeminence is in fact of a specifically Germanic kind; and the point about these other heroes is that they were protèges of Ôôin (though this of course does not apply to Beowulf). There is one other fact about Beowulf which is a remarkable survival of a specifically pagan Germanic conception of the same kind, and which therefore strengthens the foregoing interpretation of sigoreadig. It is highly significant that the adj. eacen applied to him in 198 is used otherwise in the poem only of the sword that he found in the cave (1663 and 2140), and of the lair of Grendel and his dam ; and the compound eacencrœftig only of the treasure (3051 and 2280). All these objects were charged with power of a magical kind: so much is clear from the text. The Old Norse equivalent of eacen is aukinn, which is a past participle meaning literally 'increased', but is palpably in certain passages a technical term of the magico-religious Germanic vocabulary meaning 'endowed with extra strength of a supernatural kind'. That this is an authentically ancient use is shown by similar tendencies in the cognate Lat. augere, especially in the derivative augustus. In the Old Norse passages in question, aukinn is normally further defined: a drink is 'charged with the strength of the earth' [v.l. 'of fate', instead of 'of the earth'] in GuÔrunarkvida II, 21. The gods are called rammaukinn 'strongly endowed with magical power', and are said to have (magically) enhanced the strength of Jarl Hâkon (Vellekla 32). And the god Heimdall is called rammaukinn in Hyndluljôô 37 (see on all this de Vries, Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte I, §§ 194-9). Rammr 16

E.g. Tyrfing, which was forged by a dwarf or dwarves, in Hervarar Saga, ed. G. Turville-Petre (London 1956), p. I, lines 6 ff.

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itself implies strength of a magical quality. We can now see that when Beowulf's strength is said to be God-given, this is not the whole story: it is again a transposition of something Germanic and pagan into Christian terms, and not a repudiation of the Germanic view of it. Another most illuminating example of the survival of a Germanic conception in Beowulf is the hero's utterance in lines 572-3, regarding his final emergence from the perils of his swimming contest with Breca: unfaegne eorl,

Wyrd oft nereQ Jjonne his ellen deah!

'Fate often spares a warrior whose death is not yet at hand, if his courage is strong'. This is at first sight baffling: why should wyrd be invoked as 'sparing' a warrior who is in any case not 'marked by fate for death'? And why should the operation of fate on his behalf depend on his exercise of courage ? The second point is closely paralleled in a passage in Laxdaela Saga ch. 15, the gist of which is as follows: A man named ]j6r61f is on the run because of a killing, and is being hunted by a brother of the slain man. He takes refuge overnight on a farm; and the farmer's wife first hides him, and after the pursuers arrive, sends him away, guided by a thrall. The two men come to a river, which is ice-bound at the banks, with ice piled up in the middle; and they are nearly overtaken by the pursuers. They confer, and see that they have a choice between (a) standing and fighting (against odds) and being killed, and (b) swimming the river. They swim; and the author says: 'And because the men were brave and fate ordained that they should live longer, they got across the river' (Ok med pvi at menn varu hraustir ok peim varp lengra lifs audit, J)£ komaz Jjeir yfir dna). This parallel gives us a means of judging the comparable passage in Beowulf 1054 ff.: Jjone 6e Grendel aer mane acwealde — swa he hyra ma wolde, nefne him witig God wyrd forstode ond dees marines mod, as also another in which God acts to preserve a man who is not 'marked for death' (2291-3). The Old Icelandic example shows that the conception expressed in the first two Beowulf passages is in origin pagan and Germanic, since in its original form it must have referred not to God, but to Fate. To make God's control of the situation (even as an act of grace) contingent on a man's exercise of courage might pass muster with a modern critic; but in fact it makes poor sense by comparison with the Germanic formulation of 11. 572-3, as we shall see if we explore the ideas implicit in the latter. Above all, it is the mention of 'courage' (ellen 573, mod 1057) in both passages, in association with 'fate', that is especially revealing: the conjunction infallibly shows that what underlies both utterances is the specifically Germanic heroic ethos, and leads us straight to that aspect of the Germanic conception of fate which is the most

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difficult for those living in a different world to grasp (and which is taken up below, p. 78). On the one hand, notwithstanding the poet's introduction in some passages of God as the supreme power who can and does set aside 'Fate' in human affairs, there can be no doubt that he has also retained the fundamental Germanic conviction that the decrees of Fate cannot be resisted. From his point of view, there need be no fatal inconsistency in this: God in his wisdom chose either to let Fate operate or to set it aside, just as it seemed fitting to God to let such a man as Beowulf lay open the dragon's hoard, i.e. to annul the operation of the curse on the treasure. By whatever process, he has at any rate also transmitted the fundamental Germanic conviction that Wyrd gad a swa hio seel — just as the author of The Wanderer wrote that 'Fate is fore-ordained from first to last' (Wyrd bid ful arad 5), and Ne masg werigmod

wyrde widstondan (15).

The expressions of this belief in Old Norse poetry and prose are legion. In the second half of Beowulf,\ the author has chosen a different mode, at once more oblique and more subtle than such direct and general axiomatic comments, of invoking fate to make this part of his work heavy with the sense of doom. He draws in fate in its specific relation to the experience of the hero, by periodically foreshadowing Beowulf's death in the dragon-fight. At the beginning of the dragon's depredations, he says (2320-1): swa hyt lungre wearS on hyra sincgifan sare geendod. And he conveys these intimations by the pregnant use of the word scolde 'was destined to', which is a form of the base that was one of the elements in the Germanic vocabulary of fate, as is indicated by the Old Norse name Skuld for one of the norns and for a valkyrie (2341-3): adding aergod worulde lifes.

Sceolde laendaga ende gebidan,

When Beowulf is about to fight the dragon, the poet represents the hero's heart as being heavy with the knowledge of his impending death, in a remark which names wyrd (2419-24). Yet again, when Beowulf is about to strike the first blow, the author indicates the outcome (2574-5): swa him wyrd ne gescraf hre5 aet hilde. And once more, when the dragon goes into action, the poet says that Beowulf 'was destined' (sceolde) to die (2589-91). When Beowulf has killed the dragon, we are told that he is at the end of his destined span of life (2725-8): wisse he gearwor t>aet he daeghwila gedrogen haefde.

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And Beowulf, when on the point of death, speaks of it in terms of wyrd and metodsceaft (2813-6). Another way of putting this notion that a man's life was at its destined end is in terms of the condition termed fcege (which likewise applied in early Scandinavian literature, where both feigr and the noun feigd are used). In Beowulf, this equivalence is clear in the passage (1233-58) that describes how, the night after Beowulf had routed Grendel, the Danes lay down to sleep in Heorot, unaware of the wyrd, the geosceaft grimme (1233-4) that was in store for one that them, who is called fus ond fcege. Beowulf, reporting how he survived the fight with Grendel's dam, observes that he was not fcege (2141); likewise, the poet says that Eofor, who distinguished himself in the battle of the Geats with the Swedes, was not yet fcege (2975). He speaks of the man who is unfcege in the two gnomic utterances of lines 573 and 2291. There are similar references to destinal control of events in the first part of the poem. In lines 83-4, 'the time was then not yet at hand when a mortal feud between father-in-law and son-in-law was destined (scolde) to flare up'. The son of Hildeburh fell 'in accordance with fate' (on gebyrd 1074); and she did not mourn the decree of fate (metodsceaft) without cause (1076-7). It was not 'destined' (wyrd 734) that Grendel should devour more of the warriors once Beowulf had taken charge. Grendel was 'destined' {scolde 819) to flee mortally wounded, knowing his hour had come. And 'fate' (wyrd 1205) carried off Hygelac on the disastrous expedition against the Franks. There is thus no doubt that the author of Beowulf sought to build up a powerful background of destinal agency behind the important events in the action; or that his conception of that agency is part of the ideas which he inherited from a pagan and Germanic literary culture and outlook on life that still had meaning for him. There is probably no reader of Beowulf today who does not think of it as a heroic poem, among other things because it is about certain feats in combat by a warrior who was a great hero. What exactly was it that Beowulf, as an acknowledged hero who was foremost in strength and courage, believed that he was doing or seeking to do, or ought to be doing, in these exploits ? This question is answered again and again in the text, in the most explicit and consistent terms. Just before his encounter with Grendel, Beowulf says that he must do deeds of courage befitting a warrior (eorlic ellen 636-8), or die; and HroSgar, in formally committing the hall into his keeping, specifically exhorts him to 'keep his thoughts on renown' (gemyne mcerpo) and 'show mighty courage' (mcegenellen cyd 659), with the promise of rewards if he survives 'that feat of courage' (pcet ellenweorc 661). After the victory, Beowulf rejoices in 'the renown that his courage would bring him' (ellenmcerpum 828); and in his first words reporting his exploit to HroSgar he calls it pcet ellenweorc (958). The poet sees it as Beowulf's 'courage' (mod 1058), as well as God's agency, that prevented Grendel from doing more killings. And it is the poet who refers to the task that Hrunting was meant to do in the fight under water as

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ellenweorc (1464). Before diving into the lake, Beowulf says that he will 'win glory' (dom gewyrce 1491) or die. On his entering Heorot with Grendel's head, he is designated 'valiant in action' (dcedcene) and 'distinguished for the glory that he had won' (dome gewurpad 1645). In his report to Hygelac, Beowulf says that HroSgar called on him to act as follows (2132-4): f>xt ic on holma gearing eorlscipe efnde, ealdre geneQde, mcerdo fremede. In one of his ominous comments in advance on the dragon-fight, the poet says that Beowulf had lived through every savage battle and all 'deeds of valour' (ellenweorca) till that one day (2399). In his last words before the fight, Beowulf declares that he will 'do deeds deserving renown' (mcerdu fremman 2514) and win the gold courageously (imid elne 2535-6) or die. It is for him alone in this situation to 'show the qualities of a warrior' (eorlscype efne 2535); and when he moves in to the attack, the poet says that this was not an undertaking for a coward (2541). The attack on the dragon is called by Wiglaf pis ellenweorc (2643), which Beowulf is bent on undertaking singlehanded because he has done 'deeds bringing renown' (mcerda 2645) above all other men. During the battle Beowulf remembers about 'deeds of renown' (mcerda 2678); in the end, he and Wiglaf kill the dragon by exercising 'courage' (ellen 2706). Finally, what the Geat warriors in their dirge praise Beowulf for is his eorlscipe and his ellenweorc (pi.; 3173). Nothing could be plainer: Beowulf's aim is always to show courage, without regard for his life, and to act as befits a warrior; and the result of courage and warrior-like conduct is fame or glory (mcerdo) — as we see in reverse when UnferQ is said to have forfeited glory by his lack of courage (1470-1). The acclaim that follows the exercise of courage is sometimes called dom, lof, or occasionally tir. We are left in no doubt that Beowulf has achieved it. HroSgar expressly tells Beowulf that by his deeds he has brought it about that his glory — dom 954, though an emendation, is assured by the alliteration — will live for ever. WealhJjeow tells him he has brought it about [by his conquest of Grendel] that men will praise him over the whole face of the earth (1221-4); and Hro9gar, after the fight under water, says that Beowulf's bleed would now be (as a result) exalted among all peoples. The poet, in his own person, fully endorses this view of what Beowulf has done: he says that a man who is bent on winning lasting repute (lof) in battle must do as Beowulf did, viz. trust in his own strength, and that such a man will not be concerned about his life (1533-6). At two other points Beowulf is again said to have 'trusted in his (own sole) strength' — when beginning his vigil against Grendel (669-70), and when he was about to do battle against the dragon (2540-1). And in a brief recapitulation of the fight with Grendel, the poet states that Beowulf 'remembered the power of his strength' (1270). We need not be deceived by the addition, in the first of these three passages, of 'the

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grace of God' (Metodes hyldo) to 'the strength of a brave man' (modgan magenes) as what he trusted in. This addition is on the same footing as the introduction of God into references to fate or to the control of victory in battle: the basic original element in each case is the pagan one. If proof be needed, it is available in the O.N. equivalent expression trua a matt sinn ok meginrt 'to trust in one's own strength and power', which is clearly displayed as a pagan Germanic trait in a warrior in an anecdote of the Saga ins helga dlafs konungs, ch. 215.17 Arnljot Gellini, a fighting-man of remarkable physique and prowess, came to King (5laf and offered to enter his service. The king asked him if he was a Christian; and he replied that so far as belief was concerned, he trusted in his own strength and power, and that form of belief had so far served him more than well. He then offered to believe in King (3laf instead, was of course referred to Christ, and accepted baptism. It is made clear in Beowulf that the glory accruing from the continuous exercise of courage in battle is something that survives a man's death, and is valued above life itself (and is regarded as even more desirable posthumously than during life). When Wiglaf says 'Death is better than a life of shame' (2891), he is formulating (against the cowardly retainers) a basic tenet of the Germanic warrior code that is often stated in O. Icelandic sagas, as in Svarfdwla Saga ch. 4 (ed. Jonas Kristjansson, Eyfirdinga Sogur (Islenzk Fornrit IX, 1956), p. 135): 'No-one can escape the day destined for his death; and it would seem to me more honourable to die with you, than to have life in shame and disgrace'. In Beowulf, Sigemund gained untold glory (dom 885) after his death, by his dragonfight (which he survived). Beowulf lays it down that a man should do glorious deeds (wyrce... domes 1587-8) before his death — and 'that will be best, after his death, for a retainer who has passed hence'. This concern above all for posthumous acclaim is one of the focal points in the Germanic heroic ideal. It is only partly due to the desire for self-perpetuation in the human community, which can only mean (since one might, like Beowulf, have no children) perpetuation of one's name. This element in it is made plain in a remarkable (and unusually explicit) passage in Svarfdala Saga, ch. 5. After the brothers frorsteinn and Jjorolf have sought out and defeated the formidable viking Ljot and his forces, jDorolf reveals to Jiorsteinn that he is mortally wounded. When Jjorsteinn replies that he would have given much for them not to have undertaken this expedition, t>6rolf, before dying, speaks the words quoted above (p. 77), and then asks a boon of l^orsteinn, as follows: 'My name seems not to have been in existence for long, and it will die like withered grass; and I shall not be mentioned when you have passed away. But I see that you will multiply 17

Ed. Finnur J6nsson, Heimskringla (Kobnhavn 1911) pp. 393-4.

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our line and live long; and you will be a man of auspicious personal qualities. If destiny should grant you a son, then I should like you to let him be named torolf — and I want to bestow on him all those auspicious qualities that I have had; then I should expect that my name would survive while there were men in the world'.

A vivid example of the same notion occurs in Vatnsdala Saga,18 ch. 3, in the speech of the dying bandit Jokull to his young slayer {jorsteinn, whom he enjoins to marry his sister: 'I have a hunch that you will turn out a man smiled on by fortune. Now, if fate should grant a son to you or your sons, don't let my name die out; and I should expect to benefit from that'. What is at issue in a Germanic warrior's conduct is not fully contained in any of the words dom, mardo, lof, or tir, since it amounts to 'honour'. Dom is probably nearest to expressing this notion: when Wiglaf describes the conduct of the cowardly retainers as a domleasan deed (2890), he means 'a dishonourable deed'. The heroic ethos abstracted above from Beowulf is rooted in the passionate regard for one's individual 'honour' and that of one's kin. At every important point it is echoed again and again in the teeming abundance of the stories told in prose in the early Icelandic sagas, which are in accord with the outlook expressed in O.N. poetry. In the farming milieu of early Iceland which many of them depict, to every man, from the powerful chieftain down to the humblest farmer, honour is the breath of life (unless he is constitutionally sluggish or cowardly). That milieu is of course a very different one from the aristocratic society of the Danish and the Geat royal court; but its values are essentially the same. The core of this heroic ethos is the nexus between 'fate' on the one hand, and a man's honour and unremitting exercise of courage on the other. The essence of the matter is that 'fate' confronts a hero with a situation in which he is called on to respond to an ineluctable obligation, and to follow a course of action which will lead — often through a series of situations of mounting difficulty — to disaster and death. He is in a sense free to choose not to act, or to withdraw, or to evade that particular course of action. But the apparent alternative is an unreal one: for the man of heroic quality, courage was an overriding inner necessity, even when it inexorably meant his death. The Germanic hero accepts his destiny, and launches himself on it, knowing that on the one hand he is sacrificing human happiness, and on the other obeying the dictates of honour. In fact, the hero really has no choice: the obligation of honour is an absolute one, whether it be to wreak vengeance or to resist an intolerable wrong. The man who, like Gisli Sursson, kills to avenge a kinsman or a sworn brother is commonly certain of being outlawed, hunted down, and killed. In some stories, he knows from the outset that he has chosen death. But this too he accepts: he exercises total courage 18

Ed. Einar (Si. Sveinsson, Islenzk Fornrit VIII, Reykjavik 1939, p. 10.

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in continuing to fight up till the moment of death, and in dying he is therefore undefeated, and his honour exalted. Indeed, one reason why his honour survives his death is precisely that he adds to it in the moment and by the manner of his death. When, in Njäls Saga ch. 77, Gunnarr is finally cornered and killed by his enemies, one of them expressly vouches that his conduct in the fight will be remembered for ever: 'We have now laid low a hero of great stature, who made it hard for us to achieve; and the fight he put up will be remembered as long as men inhabit the earth.'19 That honour and destiny are woven into one and the same web can now be seen to be implied in The Wanderer 15 if.: Ne mag werigmod wyrde widstondan ne se hreo hyge helpe gefremman. For öon ¿owgeorne dreorigne oft in hyra breostcofan bindaö fasste. The immediate conjunction of the two pagan conceptions — the irresistible power of fate, and the desire for 'glory' — is here obscure because it has been taken out of the old heroic context. But in Beowulf all is plain. There is no more vital statement in the poem than Wiglafs comment (3084-6) on Beowulf's action in choosing to fight the dragon (even though Wiglaf was lamenting it): Heold on heahgesceap; hord ys gesceawod, grimme gegongen; was J>aet gifede to swiö, J>e öone fceodcyning fc>yder ontyhte. 'He did not swerve from his lofty destiny... the fated course of events that drew the people's king thither was so powerful'. This is the counterpart of the various attestations noticed above to Beowulf's undying glory: it makes the poet's definition of his conduct complete in terms of the Germanic heroic ideal. Beowulf himself, when waiting for death, takes comfort and satisfaction from two things — God cannot reproach him with the killing of kinsmen, and he has not sworn any false oaths. These were major crimes in the Germanic heroic code: the hero of the poem thus takes stock of his life, at its very end, in terms that are substantially not Christian. 20 Again, we must not be misled into discounting this by the poet's expression of his own approbation of Beowulf in Christian terms: Beowulf's soul 19 For another example, see Glsla Saga Sürssonar ch. 36, ed. Björn K. i>6rolfsson and Guöni Jönsson (Islenzk Fornrit VI, Reykjavik 1943), p. 116. 20 Tolkien's comment on these two offences — which amounts to much the same as the view expressed here — is not adequately met by Brodeur (in whose The Art of Beowulf there is much to admire) with the point that Beowulf thinks of them in terms of not having earned the displeasure of God. We know, after the discussion of other additions of a Christian reference to a Germanic conception, what to think of this one : even if the Germanic conception was part of the poet's received material, he has retained it without blurring its original significance.

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departed to 'the glory reserved for the righteous' (sodfastra dom 2820). This we now know to be his normal procedure. Enough has now been said to show that Beowulf's life and death are explicitly represented as being governed by destiny, and that his conduct throughout his life is represented as being in the highest degree honourable and as being crowned with the appropriate Germanic reward of heroic glory. The picture is an authentic and complete one of an exemplary hero according to the Germanic warrior code. Though the poet has interjected his own Christian values as well, as when from time to time he sets Beowulf's destiny under the omnipotence of God, the real dynamic impulse in Beowulf's life is the inherited pagan ethos. It is abundantly clear that, because Beowulf acts in accordance with this ethic, he is acting under an absolute inner necessity. As a man born to greatness of the specifically heroic kind (tireadig 2189) — as the poet insistently conveys by repeated references to his valour and glory — he is foredoomed to death in battle. His death is a noble one, because he exercises the highest courage and thus fulfils his destiny. The fact of his death is painful, because of the human sympathies it arouses; but for Beowulf himself, as for the poet, all is well. The 'meaning' of Beowulf is thus already complete within the Germanic heroic ethos. The place in all this of the curse on the treasure is limited and aesthetically dubious: the poet had no overriding need of it, and has not fully integrated it within the action. But it did of course fit into the destinal setting of Beowulf's life — and also into an encounter with a dragon, who is merely an epiphany of a draugr or ghost, with all the latter's sinister qualities — and was potentially appropriate within it: a curse is a specific form of doom, though this particular curse is a contingent one — 'touch this, and you die'. A curse might be thought to belong to a lower order of fatality, because it is the work of human beings (or other inferior beings, such as baleful spirits) who wield the power of noxious magic. But it is important to note that in O. Icelandic sagas the malign use of magic by someone bent on mischief not uncommonly achieves its purpose, and may even find a place in a disastrous destinal pattern — as in Laxdcela Saga, ch. 30: When Geirmund chose to abandon his wife tmriSr, she revenged herself by getting possession of his sword Fotbit, which he very highly prized. When she would not give it back, he laid a curse on it, that it would be the death of that man in her family whose loss would be the greatest and most unfortunate. She later gave it to her kinsman Bolli, who duly slew with it his great friend Kjartan, by whose family he had been fostered — and this is the central tragedy of the saga.

To give due weight to the things which I have here sought to bring out in their true significance is of course not to claim that they exhaust the poet's conception of Beowulf's life and its meaning. But the foregoing analysis is incidentally the most appropriate answer that I can devise to the recent interpretation of Beowulf by Mrs. M.E. Goldsmith, 21 put forward with impeccable intellectual good manners »

"The Christian Theme of Beowulf", Medium /Evum XXIX (1960), 81-101.

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— Mrs. Goldsmith has documented and argued her case fully from the text — but exclusively with reference to the Christian morality expressed through the experience of the hero. The thesis that the poet displays Beowulf as having succumbed to the sins of pride and avarice leaves out too much, and is not finally compatible with the unqualified praise and approbation that he is accorded throughout the poem in terms of the Germanic heroic ethos.

JAMES L. ROSIER

DEATH AND TRANSFIGURATION : GUTHLAC B*

Within the medieval tradition of hagiographical narrative, both Latin and vernacular, the poem Guthlac B is an unusual, in large part an exceptional, text. Within the particular tradition of memorials and narratives of St. Guthlac, for which Felix's Vita Sancti Guthlaci1 is the primary source and model, the poem represents a consummate achievement in refinement. Prominence given to the narrative of a saint's death is typical of Lives in the tradition of the Vita Antonii, such as Severus' Vita Martini, Adamnan's Vita Columbae, and Gregory's Benedict. Bede's account of Cuthbert's final illness and death 2 is more dramatic, and the section occupies more space in the Vita as a whole, than in these earlier Lives. Felix's account of Guthlac's illness and death, which owes much to Bede's Cuthbert, 3 is the fullest expression — in length and stylistic elaboration — of the section in the Antonian tradition, and it was from this fulness that the poet of Guthlac B drew his inspiration. Although the conclusion of Guthlac B is missing from its sole remaining text in the Exeter Book, the poem is otherwise a self-contained expansion of chapter L (in Colgrave's edition) of Felix's Vita. This separation of the section as the subject for a poem — or for an individualized elaboration in any form — is perhaps to be expected, given the prominence of a saint's death in Antonian hagiography and particularly Felix's development of it in his Guthlac; but it remains a fact that the poet's isolation of the subject had no exact precedent. A kind of precedent is suggested by the division of Lives into lections, especially those for the octave of a saint. In at least two of the manuscripts containing Felix's Guthlac, C.C.C.C. 389 (10th c.) and Douai 852 (12th c.), the sections corresponding to the octave are so divided; in the former (fol. 57v) the initial division marked is at chapter L. Perhaps still •

I am grateful to Robert M. Lumiansky for reading this paper and making useful criticisms. Ed. Bertram Colgrave, Felix's Life of Saint Guthlac (Cambridge, England, 1956); all references to Felix's text are to this edition. 2 Chapters xxxvii - xxxix, in B. Colgrave, ed., Two Lives of St. Cuthbert (Cambridge, England, 1940), pp. 271-285. 3 For discussion of Felix's indebtedness to Bede, see B. P. Kurtz, "From St. Antony to St. Guthlac", University of California Publications in Modern Philology, XII (1925-26), 103-146. 1

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another near-precedent is seen in the epitomies of Lives which occur independently or in legendaries; among the surviving accounts of Bede's Cuthbert, for example, there is an epitome of the saint's death and burial (Vienna, Nationalbibliothek 9394, fols. 95-97). The part-by-part correspondences of Guthlac B to Felix's Vita have been described by Gordon H. Gerould, 4 and his comparative analysis of the two works shows succinctly that the poet, while omitting some details and expanding others, faithfully followed the sequence of the Latin narrative in chapter L. The closeness of the poem to Felix's chapter can not, however, be defined solely in terms of likeness of parts and their sequence. There are, as well, sentences and phrases throughout the Latin which the poet has rendered more or less literally, and some of these will be noticed in the following discussion.5 The only point at which the poem departs in detail from the narrative sequence of the Latin chapter is a section enclosed in lines 878a-932a. These lines contain an epitome of Guthlac's virtues and victories which the poet culled from earlier chapters of the Vita (Us secgaô bec hu Guôlac..., 878-79a). Following a generalized statement of the saint's fame (881a-893), that he gave the sick helpe ond haelo, the sequence of the epitome, most of which is syntactically linked by Hwilum, follows the sequence of several chapters in order, namely: 1) the attack of devils (lines 894-915) corresponds to chapter XXXVI, 2) the coming of birds (916-919) corresponds to chapter XXXVIII, and 3) Guthlac's healing of the sick in mind and body (919b-932a) corresponds to chapters XLI-XLII. Structurally the epitome provides a transition from the prologue on the presence of death in the world to the coming of death to Guthlac. Felix had similarly provided a transition but he required only a brief clause : Contigit ergo inter haec, postquam dilectus Dei famulus Guthlac ter quinis annorum voluminibus devoto famulatu superni regis solitariam duxit vitam... (Colgrave, ch. L, p. 152; italics mine). For the poet, however, such an abbreviated transitional reference would have been too abrupt and only vaguely allusive. He therefore expanded Felix's transition by providing the epitome derivative of details recounted earlier by Felix, and in so doing introduced the context of Guthlac's death with a condensed eulogy of his merits. *

"The Old English Poems on St. Guthlac and their Latin Source", MLN, 32 (1917), 86-89. The description of Felix's style as "prolixus et aliquantulum obscurus" (Ordericus), while on the whole just, is not so true of chapter L, which is relatively free of the complicated syntax and rare diction of earlier sections. But even here, where he seems intent on a more direct and economical style, Felix's mannerisms persist in part, e.g., in pleonasms and occasional rare words (spiraminibus, pallidescere, transtolli) and phrases (inchoatae molestiae). Although comparison of styles in different languages is tricky business, there are indications in the Old English (in passages Nor answering to anything in the Latin) that the poet was attracted to and influenced by Felix's rhetoric; e.g., Felix's fondness for odd words, some of which he may have coined, may be reflected in the fact that Guthlac B contains a notably high frequency of hapax legomena (about ninety in a text of 560 lines!). Any consideration of the poet's style vis-à-vis Felix's should not, in any case, be confined to chapter L, since in all probability the poet was familiar with the whole of the Vita. 5

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From the Antonian tradition in general and from Bede in particular Felix had inherited a kind of dramatic setting and action for the dying days of a saint. But the setting and action he inherited were largely external in form and impersonal in affect: descriptions of the saint's final temptations and fortitude, healing miracles and prescience of his own death, directions for his burial, and consoling and instructive conversation with a servant or close friend. Felix retains, explicitly or obliquely, most of these details, but with the important difference that he introduces and emphasizes the subject of death itself and to a degree renders the saint's concern with death introspective and analytical. Chapter L opens with a terse statement of the inevitability of death for all men, and of its prescription in Adam: Nam sicut mors in Adam data est, ita et in omnes dominabitur. Quisquis enim huius vitae saporem gustaverit, amaritudinem mortis evitare nequit (Colgrave, pp. 150-152). Throughout the discourse with his servant, Beccel, Guthlac refers several times to the source of his illness and the nature of his impending death, as in the following: Fili mi, languoris mei causa est, ut ab his membris spiritus separetur. (pp. 152-54). expedit enim, sarcina carnis abiecta. (154). Postquam spiritus hoc corpusculum deseruerit. (154). nam me nunc tempus cogit ab his membris dissolvi, et decursis huius vitae terminis ad infinita gaudia spiritus transtolli malit. (158; all italics mine). The explanation of death as a separation of the soul from the body which is repeated and varied here, as commonplace as that explanation is elsewhere in Christian writings, does not occur in Felix's immediate source, Bede. The closest reference to it in the relevant section of the Vita Cuthberti is the conventional announcement following the saint's death: intentam supernis laudibus animam ad gaudia regni coelestis emisit,6 which Felix echoes: animam ad gaudia perpetuae exultationis emisit (p. 158). It was precisely this new emphasis in Felix that the Old English poet redeveloped, both stylistically and thematically, as a dominant interest. Guthlac B might as readily be termed a poem on the subject of death, or the coming of Death, as a poetic account of the last days of a particular saint. A clear indication of the play of interest in death as a separation of soul from body can be seen in varied lexical compositions. Those for 'body', the soul's container, which occur throughout the poem are: ban-cofa lic-hord 6

ban-faet ban-hus

B. Colgrave, ed., Two Lives of St. Cuthbert, p. 284; italics mine.

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ban-loca sawel-hus flaesc-homa greot-hord

85

hre]?er-loca lames gejjaca lie-fate (fast)7 lic-homa

The predominating terms for 'death' are compounds with -gedal, 'separation', as a final element: gaestgedal8 dea5gedal sawelgedal lifgedal

nydgedal feorggedal t>eodengedal

Of the words cited some occur only in this poem (greothord, deaSgedal, Jjeodengedal; sawel- and feorg-gedal are rare), and many in particular instances are used with contextual aptness (esp. the cmpds with the elements -cofa, -hord, -loca, -hus, -faet; see further below). Felix's brief, three-sentence introduction to chapter L, on the necessity of death and its origination in Adam, is expanded by the poet into a full-scale prologue (lines 819-878a) consisting of: God's creation of the race of man, Adam's bliss in Paradise, the Fall of Adam and Eve and their expulsion, the entrance and rule of death in the world, the inevitability of death for all men, even for those who serve God wall. The reference here to the deadberende gyfl/pcet da sinhiwan to swylte geteah... pone bitran drync pone Eue fyrn Adame geaf (850-51, 868-69) is later repeated (though not in Felix) as death approaches Guthlac: Bryfien was ongunnen/t»aette Adame Eue gebyrmde... [Eue] scencte/bittor baedeweg... Jtone bleatan drync,/deopan dea5weges (980-81, 984-85, 990-91). In Paradise, where there is ne lifes lyre ne lices hryre, ne dreames dryre ne dea3es cyme, (829-30)9 Adam and Eve possess leomu lie somud ond lifes gast (838); for their sin they are repaid purh deades cwealm... purh gcestgedal (858, 862).10 For Guthlac, who as a physician halde bu tu lie ond sawle (928-29), death comes also as the great separator, but with the difference of course that for him the separation of soul from body is a transfiguration for which he yearns. Throughout the narrative of Guthlac's progressive debility, the oppression of his pain is constantly muted by expectation of the soul's 7

Apart from lichama, the only cmpds recorded with lie meaning 'body' are the two cited here; licfiet occurs once elsewhere, Juliana 708. 8 This is the only cmpd. recorded with geest- meaning 'death'; the word also occurs once in Genesis A 1127. 9 Words, as lices here, are italicized in particular contexts throughout the paper to illustrate points in the discussion. 10 So God pronounces to Adam in Genesis A 930-31 : Jje is gedal witod///cei and sawle.

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release. At the onset of sickness the poet assures us, as Guthlac is later to console his disciple, that Naes him sorgcearu on {>as lasnan tid, feah his lie ond gcest hyra somwiste, sinhiwan tu, deore gedcelden. (966-69) Here the union of soul and body described as a wedded pair (somwiste, sinhiwan), soon to be sundered, is reflexive of the reference to Adam and Eve who received deaSberende gyfl t>£et 5a sinhiwan to swylte geteah. The poet personifies Death, although he does not make it a figure of major narrative interest. The prologue is devoted to the origin of Death's release into and rule of the world: Dea8 in geJ)rong/fira cynne, feond rixade/geond middangeard... DeaQ ricsadej ofer foldbuend (863-65, 871-72). Elsewhere the only other epithets (besides feond) for Death are enge anhoga and wiga wcelgifre, which occur in apposition in lines 997-99. The form and action of Death, with his precursor adl (sar, ware), is that of a trespasser or alien warrior who seeks to enter, to unlock, the saint's domain (his door, house, and hoard = the body) and plunder the treasure (his life = the soul). This pattern is described in general terms in a passage echoing the prologue: Jjaette aenig ne waes fyra cynnes from fruman si33an mon on moldan, J>aette meahte him gebeorgan ond bibugan fone bleatan drync, deopan deaSweges, ac him duru sylfa on t>a sli5nan tid sona ontyned, ingong geopenad. (987-93) The progression of Guthlac's final illness is described in particular terms of a thief who enters and binds the inhabitant: Waes se banco/a adle onaeled, inbendum faest, liehord onloeen. (954-56) 'Ic wille secgan J>aet me sar gehran, waerc in gewod in Qisse wonnan niht, liehord onleac... Wiga nealceeed, unlaet laces. Ne bi9 £>aes lengra swice sawelgedales fonne seofon niht fyrstgemearces... (1027-29, 1033-36)

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The soul as the treasure of life is specified in 1057-59: Wyrd ne meahte in faegum leng feorg gehealdan, deore frcetwe, Jjonne him gedemed wass.11 Guthlac's foreknowledge and warning that the Wiga nealceced (1033) is fulfilled as Death follows the preliminary violation of adl with an assault which combines cunning and violence: Dea8 nealaecte, stop stalgongum, strong ond hreQe sohte sawelhus. Com se seofeQa dasg aeldum ondweard, fees f e him in gesonc, hat, heortan neah, hildescurum flacor flanfracu, ieorhhord onleac, searoccegum gesoht. 12 (1139-1145) This passage climaxes the figuration of Death, renders explicit the motif of the treasure house and hoard sought out and unlocked — searoccegum, and completes the collocation of feorg — frcetwe (1058-59) in sawelhus, feorhhorA. At pam ytemestan endedogor/nydgedales (1167-68) Guthlac bids his servant to hasten to his sister with news of his death and with instructions for his burial, s i f f a n lie ond leomu on Jjes lifes gcest asundrien somwist hyra f>urh korggedal.13 (1176-78; cp. 966-69 quoted above) As Guthlac dies, the poet describes the release, ascent and victory of the soul in terms of the same paradigm of separation, emphasizes again the soul's eagerness for separation, and now contrasts the new condition of body (now a mere greothord, under lyfte) and soul (on sellan gesetu, on upweg) in separation. Nu of hrej>erlocan to {Dam sojran gefean sawel fundad. Nis seo tid latu, tydra3 fis b a n f a t , 11

Cp. the creation of Eve in Genesis A 184-85 : Feorh in gedyde, ece saula. The weapons of Death are referred to again in 11. 1153-54 : Nearwum genaeged nydcostingum,/ awrecen wcelpilum. The description as a whole is resonant of Grendel's approach to Heorot (11. 702 b ff.), the sine/age sel, and also of the portrayal of the approach of evil in Hrothgar's sermon: bona swide neah,/se j)e of flanbogan fyrenum sceotefl./Jjonne bi5 on hrefire under helm drepen biteran s t e l e (Beowulf 1743-46). 13 Cp. Soul and Body I 3-5 : ¡jonne se dea5 cymed,/asyndred J)a sybbe t>e £er samod w£eron,/lic ond sawle. 12

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greothord gnornaQ, gcest hine fyseQ on ecne geard, utsij>es georn on sellan gesetu. (1263-68) Nu of lice is, goddreama georn, gcest swi3e fus. (1298-99) Da wees GuQlaces gcest gelaeded eadig on upweg. Englas feredun to ]mm longan gefean, lie colode, belifd under lyfte. (1305-08) The same contrast of condition is reexpressed with rhetorical balance in the disciple's speech which concludes the poem (lines 1348 if.). He refers to Guthlac's death as a peodengedal (1350), and explains: Is hlaford min... ond brojjor J>in... gewiten... wica neosan/eardes on upweg. Nu se eordan dcel, banhus abrocen.../wuna3 waelrsste, ond se wuldres dalu/ of licfate in leoht godes/sigorlean sohte (1357-59, 1365-70). Guthlac has long been separated from his sister in life; now he is separated from her in death, as his soul is separated from his body. But as the soul and body were before together (somud) and joined in union (somwiste, sinhiwan), so he sends her promise of a new union of their spirits: 'ond ]?e secgan het bast git a mosten in f>am ecan gefean mid J)a sibgedryht somudeard niman.' (1370-72) The personification of Death, as the unlocker of a man's house and hoard and plunderer of his treasure, is a subordinate part of the major figuration of the soul and body. The prologue to, the preliminary stages, the course and issue of Guthlac's death are ordered and developed on the base of the simple collocation: lie (leomu) ond gcest (sawel). This collocation, or some variant of it, occurs sporadically elsewhere in Old English poetry (e.g. Christ, Genesis A, Soul and Body I & II) and prose (e.g. the Blickling homilies), but it never occurs in any one text with such frequency, in so many lexical and phrasal recombinations, and as a principle of organization, as it does in Guthlac B.

II The patterns of repetition, recomposition, and balance, which occur in the configurations based on lie ond sawel, are typical of the style of Guthlac B. These same patterns are of course typical of Old English poetic style generally, but they are not 14

Similarly : Se ecea dsl, daet is seo sawl. Blickling Homilies, III, 32.

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often to be found in other individual poems with such consistency, in such density and profusion. The expression of Guthlac B is, if anything, elaborate, at points even extravagant. The poem's composition seems to represent an instance of what may be called form-translation: the reinforcement of habits peculiar to one traditional medium (here Old English poetry) by habits peculiar to another (here Felix's Aldhelminfluenced prose); the rhetorical types and penchants incidental to a style in one language may not be imitated precisely type for type in the style of another language, but the degree of cultivation of those types may induce a similar degree of cultivation of other types incidental to the idiom, and inherited style, of the translating language. There are instances in Guthlac B in which rhetoric and figurative forms show a direct connexion with Felix's Latin, such as tearas geotan weallan wcegdropan (1057) rendering crebris lacrimarum rivulis maestas genas rigavit (p. 154), but on the whole the stylistic influence is indirect. The description of the devils' attack upon the saint (in the epitome) illustrates the manner in which the poet has, in condensed version, preserved in his own idiom something of Felix's rhetoric (in chapters XXXI and XXXVI). Oft to Jmm wicum weorude cwomun deofla deaQmaegen dugujja byscyrede hlojjum Jsringan, fser se halga t»eow elnes anhydig eard weardade. t>aer hy mislice mongum reordum on J)am westenne wo5e hofun hludne herecirm, hiwes binotene, dreamum bidrorene. (894-901) The pleonastic variations, reordum... wo3e hofun hludne herecirm, duplicate the Latin: clamoribus raucisonis... inmensis vagitibus ...clangisonis boatibus (p. 102). But here, as elsewhere, to Felix's prolix culling of synonyms and odd words in series (bestiarum hinnitus, grunnitus, crocitusque, pp. 114-15) the poet prefers parallel phrases with lexical repetition (dugu})a 6>>scyrede... hiwes Amotene,/dreamum ¿idrorene; Hwilum wendende... hwilum cyrdon eft... hwilum brugdon eft, 907-10), and antitheses: as the devils assail Guthlac with mongum reordum (898), so the birds honor him with meaglum stefnum (919).15 In the introduction I noticed that the poet condensed the narratives of several of Felix's chapters for a brief epitome, and in the paragraph above I have tried to show how he condensed and modified the Latin style. But in part 11 also suggested that Felix's few, but significant, references to the separation of body and soul may have been the impulse for the poet's greatly expanded, and thematic, working out 18

For striking antithesis, cp. the two consuming fires in Guthlac's breast : Waes se bancofa/adle inbendum fast (954-55) ...ac him Dryhtnes lof¡born in breostum, brondhat lufu/sigor/iwr in sefan (963-65).

ortceled,

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of the same subject or motif. Now he also expands figuratively and stylistically contexts which in Felix are terse. On the night before Guthlac's death Beccel "igneo candore a mediae noctis spatio usque in auroram totam domum circumsplendescere videbat" (p. 158). This rather perfunctory description becomes a complexly elaborate set-passage in the Old English: Pa se aejjela glaem setlgong sohte, swearc norSrodor won under wolcnum, woruld miste oferteah, jsystrum bijjeahte, jorong niht ofer tiht londes fraetwa. Da cwom leohta msst, halig of heofonum haedre scinan, beorhte ofer burgsalu. Bad se J>e sceolde eadig on elne endedogor, awrecen wielstraelum. Wuldres scima, asjjele ymb aej^elne, ondlonge niht scan scirwered. Scadu swejjredon, tolysed under lyfte. Waes se leohta glaem ymb Jjjet halge hus, heofonlic condel, from aefenglome offset eastan cwom ofer deop gelad daegredwoma, wedertacen wearm. Aras se wuldormago, eadig elnes gemyndig, spraec to his onbehtfiegne, torht to his treowum gesijje. (1278-1295) Like the Beasts of Battle, this motif of the light (the sun, God) overcoming the darkness (night, death) occurs often in Old English poetry, and the precedent itself no doubt influenced the poet's expansion. In filling out the brief reference in Felix by reshaping a stock motif in the native poetry, the poet uses nearly all of the rhetorical devices at his command: balanced antithetic sets and symbols (won under wolcnum, woruld miste oferteah... Jsrong niht ofer tiht... beorhte ofer burgsalu... Scadu... under lyfte... cwom ofer deop gelad dasgredwoma; nor3-... eastan), multiple lexical generation (e.g. aej3ela...aej}ele ymb aefielne, halig...halge hus, heofonum...heofonlic, etc.), ablaut pairs (glaem...glaem...aefenglome, ende-dogor...dasgred-woma). 18 Finally, as the night is dispersed and passes, Guthlac arises, a wuldormago, like the Light Wuldres scima, and also like the Light he is torht. After Guthlac is dead Beccel (who is nameless in the poem) leaves the island to carry the news to Pega, the saint's sister (also nameless in the poem). Felix's account of the departure is brief: arrepta navicula portum reliquit ac deinde, quo vir Dei praeceperat, coepto itinere perrexit (p. 158). Here again the poet elaborates, and as 16

Cp. 1019 larbennum...sorgoa.; 1038 daeg...dogor.

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in the previous instance, on the base of an Old English poetic commonplace: the themes of departure and arrival. Da afyrhted weard ar, elnes biloren, gewat £>a ofestlice beorn unhyQig, fcaet he bat gestag, waeghengest wraec, waeterfcisa for, snel under sorgum. Swegl hate scan, blac ofer burgsalo. Brimwudu scynde, leoht, lade fus. Lagumearg snyrede, gehlassted to hy5e, J^aet se haernflota asfter sundplegan sondlond gespearn, grond wi6 greote. (1326-35) Like the Light passage, this inset is ornamented, although with some differences in technique. The controlling devise, as in the cultivation of the theme elsewhere in the poetry, is multiple variation: bat... waeghengest... W8eterfc>isa...Brimwudu... Lagumearg... haernflota. The variation pattern is artistically reinforced by balanced contrast (snel under sorgum/blac ofer burgsalo), distant alliterative consonance (inel...5«yrede, jean...scynde), 17 homonymic forms (unAjdig...to hyde), and in the last two lines ablaut contrast (sund- ... sond-) and triple rime (sond-lond...grond). 18 The Light and voyage passages show in closed, set contexts a habit which dominates the style of the poem: CLUSTERED repetition, often with recomposition, of especially verbs and nouns — a habit I have elsewhere called generative composition. 19 The repetition is frequently inexact, involving slight phonetic or inflectional differences (retan/unrot 1062/64, onguldon/ongyldon 857/861, hlofcum/hleoimim 896/906); simplex and affixed forms (faeste/sigorfaest 960/965, hofun/ahofun 899/905. fus/ ellorfusne 1050/1054); shift in derivation or compound structure (baedeweg/deaSweges 985/991, wasrfest/bifffiste 1190/1193); shift in syntactic function (si3frome/si5ade 921/924, gifrum grapum/wiga waelgifre 996/999), [with homonymic contrast:] modsorge waeg/waegdropan 1051/1057, waeghengest/Gnornsorge waeg 1329/1335); shift in position (lifes weard/worulde lifes 929/932); and shift in referent (godes willan 867 [subject: no man], 873 [subject: holy men], 879 [subject: Guthlac]). 20 Prepositional (esp. on-) affixing in clusters also occurs throughout the text, often with striking effect, as Waes se bancofa adle onaeled, /«bendum faest, lichord onlocen. (954-56) 17 Cp. vocalic consonance in 1041: fore meotudes cneowum meorda hleotan, and 1048: geongum geocor sefa, geomrende hyge. 18 Cp. 829 b hryre/830a dryre, 1079" gefean/1080a frean, 1302" to heofona rice/1303a to geofona leanum. Most of the rhetorical structures enumerated in this discussion can be traced in the great stylistic fugue which concludes the poem, lines 1348-end. 19 "The Literal-Figurative Identity of The Wanderer", PMLA, LXXIX (1964). 20 It will be noticed that several of these categories overlap.

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I have noticed several homonymic pairs above. Another, more complex, instance appears in lines 980 ff.: Bry\>tn waes ongunnen Jiaette Adame Eue geiymde...Feond ¿j>rlade...I>aes J^a byre sif^an. The verb gebyrmde, 'fermented,' is notably apt for the burden of brew Eve prepared for Adam — bittor bsedeweg (985), £>one bleatan drync (990).

ALISTAIR CAMPBELL

VERSE INFLUENCES IN OLD ENGLISH PROSE1

It is generally accepted that in Old English, as in the other Germanic languages, the development of artistic prose came later than the development of verse, and that, while early verse was based on Germanic poetic practice, early prose had nothing to build upon but the simple sentences of daily use. Prose, when it came, depended upon the development of three clause types, the common, the demonstrative, and the subordinate. 2 These three types are distinguished by different word-orders. C o m m o n order is when the clause begins with subject + verb, e.g. he com, 'he came'. In subordinate order, a conjunction 3 begins the clause, e.g. pa he com, 'when he came'. In this order, however, the verb is free, i.e. it may be indefinitely delayed. This is the order used after all conjunctions, even ond, e.g. and he mid his bletsunge pcet waeter to adelum wine awende, A H i, 58, 11-12. There is not in any ancient Germanic language a distinction between conjunctions in their influence o n wordorder, such as has developed in modern German 4 . In demonstrative order, the 1

This article is the central part of my inaugural lecture as Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon, delivered 21 Oct., 1964. Old English poems are referred to by easily understood abbreviations followed by line references. Old English prose works are referred to by the following abbreviations with references to page and line : AH The homilies of the Anglo-Saxon church, edited by Benjamin Thorpe. 2 vols. London, 1844-6. Bede The Old Engilsh version of Bede's Ecclesiastical History, edited by T. Miller. Vol. i. E.E.T.S., 1890. Boeth. King Alfred's Old English version of Boethius, edited by W. J. Sedgfield. Oxford, 1899. CP King Alfred's West-Saxon version of Gregory's Pastoral Care, edited by H. Sweet. E.E.T.S., 1871. Or. King Alfred's Orosius, edited by H. Sweet. E.E.T.S., 1883. SC Two of the Saxon Chronicles parallel, edited by C. Plummer. 2 vols. Oxford, 1892-9. 2 I follow S. O. Andrew, Syntax and style in Old English, Cambridge, 1940, in the use of the terms 'common' and 'demonstrative', but have preferred 'subordinate' to Mr. Andrew's 'conjunctive'. 3 To which a relative pronoun is, of course, equivalent. 4 Failure to recognise that even co-ordinating conjunctions are syntactically subordinating has often led scholars to quote clauses which are opened by such conjunctions without the conjunctions, which alone make their word-order possible. Such mal-quotation is frequent in Bosworth-Toller's Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, and renders much of the material in Paul Bacquet, La structure de la

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clause begins with any element other than a conjunction or the subject, e.g. pa com he, then he came. Since many adverbs are identical with conjunctions in form, the demonstrative order is of great value for clarity. These three clause types are the foundation of the prose of all Germanic nations, so we cannot doubt that they were an ancient heritage, preserved from generation to generation in popular speech. Yet in Old English prose they are much obscured, and I would suggest that the reason for this at least in part is that the new art of prose was influenced at its inception by the old-established art of verse. In Old English poetry, as in early Germanic poetry generally, the opening of the clause was governed by the law of sentenceparticles observed in recent times by Hans Kuhn. 5 This law is simply that unaccented elements which are not proclitic or enclitic to accented elements in a clause must be placed either before the first stress, or between the first and the second stress of their clause.6 Once the second stress is passed, these elements will receive a stress if they are used.7 They are, principally, finite verbs, adverbs, conjunctions, and pronouns. They are contrasted with prepositions, articles,8 and grammatical endings, which are proclitic or enclitic to the accented elements of their clause. The two positions in which sentence-particles are used may be illustrated by two half-lines of Maldon: 106 Wœs on eorpan cyrm; 126 Wcel feol on eoröan. Here we see an unaccented finite verb used before the first stress (106) and between the first and second stress (126). Further on than this it would be placed under accent. If a clause has two or more sentence-particles, they must be grouped together in one or other of the permitted positions, not divided between them, e.g. Beow. 269 Wes pu us ¡arena god; id. 316 Mal is me to feran. Mai. 106 Wœs on eorpan cyrm, illustrates a further limitation. If the position before the first stress of a clause is used at all, it must contain a sentence-particle. Clauses opening with a sentence-particle before the first stress alone or with an element (generally article or preposition) enclitic to the first stress are innumerable, e.g. Beow. 4 Oft Scyld Scefing; id. 915 hine fyren onwod; id. 997 Wees pat beorhte bold. But we seldom find in the position before the first stress material enclitic to that stress alone. Exceptions in Old English are almost all with forms of se, e.g. Beow. 107 pone cwealm gewrœc, id. 1110 ¿Et pœm ade wœs. I will now consider how the opening of the verse clause influences the clauses of Old English prose. The principal clause with common order is, of course, of great frequency, e.g. with pronominal subject, Or. 278, 21 He gesette under him gingran casere, and with nominal subject id. 16, 31-2, Burgendan habbaÔ pone ilcan sees earm be westan him. Now this type of clause falls readily into conflict with the law of sentenphrase verbale à Vépoque Alfrédienne, Paris, 1962, irrelevant. See also my review of the latter work, Review of English Studies, New Series, XV (1964), 190-193. 5 Kuhn's views are put forward fully in "Zur Wortstellung und -Betonung im Altgermanischen", Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur lix (1933), 1-109. 6 I pass over certain licences allowed in the structure of clause openings of the metrical form A3 in the Sievers system, as they do not affect the points discussed in this paper. 7 And so, by definition, they cease to be sentence-particles. 8 Including possessives and indefinite adjectives of quantity (manig, nœnig, fela, etc.).

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ce-particles. We have noticed that the initial dip {i.e. the material before the first stress) of a clause must be absent entirely, or must contain a sentence-particle. This rule is clearly broken in clauses like Or. 188, 23-4, pas wundor gewurdon on Arpis pam londe. It is, however, frequent for the old tendency of verse to assert itself, so that the verb is drawn into the position before the first stress, as in the verse type Was pees beorhte bold mentioned above. Hence we find quite often prose openings like Or. 34, 25, Wees se hungor, Boeth. 135, 25, Healdad pa tunglu, SC i, 84, 31, hafde se cyning. So in Boeth. 10,19, Sittad manfulle, inversion could be avoided only by stressing the verb, for the second stress is on -full-, and therefore, since manfull is an indivisible compound, any sentence-particle must come before it. Such inverted sentences gave rise analogically to inversion with pronominal subjects. This is found chiefly with hit, pis, and pat in proleptic reference to noun clauses, e.g. Oros. 118, 6-7, Was pcet micel wundor pat..., Boeth. 86, 10-11, Is pis la wundorlic... pat..., cf. id. 42, 10 Is pat ponne fordyslic geswinc pat..., CP 467, 31, Is hit lytel tweo pat... In verse, subordinate and demonstrative order are the same. The clause is introduced by a conjunction or adverb, and these are of the same effect on word-order. They open the clause with a dip, and all unaccented adverbs and pronouns, and the verb if it be unaccented, are drawn into that dip, e.g. Beow. 863 ac pat was god cyning, id. 917 Da was morgenleoht. Now the major weakness of the poetical language is this lack of any distinction between demonstrative and subordinate order. There is no way to distinguish the two, if the initial word be ambiguously adverb or conjuntion in form, except through our conception of the structure of the whole passage. The half-line just quoted, Beow. 917, stands thus in its context, with Klaeber's punctuation: Da wass morgenleoht scofen ond scynded. Eode scealc monig swiQhicgende to sele t>am hean... Do we translate: "Then the morning-light had been sent forth and hastened. Many a retainer high of heart went to the lofty hall..."; or "When the morning-light had been sent forth and hastened, many a retainer, etc"? I think that such passages were open to personal interpretation, and that reciters would indicate their view of the passage by intonation. 9 The new prose, with its need for precision, had to develop a more rigid distinction of demonstrative and subordinate word-order. It partially achieved this by frequently marking demonstrative clauses by inversion of subject and verb, thus using the order normal in verse in both demonstrative and subordinate clauses, when the verb was unaccented, e.g. Or. 234, 27-8, pa brohton Romane, id. 172, 19-20, pa genom Celatinus, CP 28, 17, Sonne gebigd pat folc, all like 9

Valuable as is the contribution of the late S. O. Andrew to the study of Old English syntax, his attempts to determine whether clauses are principal or subordinate in verse from their wordorder fail entirely (op. cit., and also Postscript on Beowulf, Cambridge, 1948, passim).

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Da was morgenleoht. This frequent use of inversion in the demonstrative clause had the effect that the clause without inversion after an introducing word would normally be subordinate. Yet such a clause, although unexceptional when the subject was pronominal, would conflict with the law of sentence-particles if it were nominal. E.g. CP 122, 5, da hi agylton is unexceptional, but SC i, 82, 17, ar pa scipu cuomon, conflicts with the law of sentence-particles, unless a stress is placed on the verb, so that it ceases to be a sentence-particle, and distribution of sentence-particles over two positions is so avoided. This was, no doubt, the usual way of accenting such clauses, and it appears already in verse, e.g. Beow. 1846 pat 6e gar nymed. Nevertheless, the desire to keep the verb unaccented in so early a position in the clause was strong. Yet it could be achieved only by adopting the demonstrative order by inverting subject and verb. Hence subordinate clauses with demonstrative order are fairly common, e.g. Or. 164, 18, ond waron pa men todon dysige, id. 28, 6-7, peer is se burh neah pe man hat Libeum, Matth. viii, 18, Da geseah se Haland. In these examples, ond is unambiguously a conjunction, pa and par are best so taken, and the clauses are subordinate in the Latin originals. This order is extended analogically to clauses with pronominal subjects, Or. 14, 26, Nu habbe we scortlice gesad,10 Bede 166, 28-9, pa com he arest upp. We have now observed two types of clause where the influence of the law of sentenceparticles seems to be traceable in Old English prose, i.e. principal clauses with the order hafde se cyning, and subordinate ones with the order Da geseah se Halend. Once the reason for these two types is understood, two of the three major difficulties in Old English prose word-order disappear. The third of these difficulties is the very imperfect establishment of demonstrative or inverted order in principal clauses which do not begin with the subject. It is best established after pa, ponne, and par, but it is very inconsistent after all other adverbs and after adverbial phrases. Thus the types Be dam cwad Crist and Be dam Crist cwad are equally common, and so are both orders after the her of the annals, e.g. SC i, 16. 13 and 15 Her sunne apiestrode, id. 19 Her Ida feng to rice, but passim Her for se here. The reason for this imperfect introduction of demonstrative order is not clear. Its more regular observance after pa, ponne, and par is no doubt due to the fact that these three adverbs were identical in form with particularly common conjunctions, and avoidance of ambiguity was accordingly very desirable where they were concerned. I wish now to pass from points concerned with the placing of sentence-particles to certain other contacts between the language of prose and verse. Professor Macintosh's demonstration of the influence of the two-stressed group, which is the basis of the verse half-line, upon the language of Wulfstan is well-known.11 He, perhaps, did not sufficiently emphasise that two-stressed groups are a regular element in the material out of which Old English prose is built. Wulfstan is simply more regular in his use of them. They constitute another bridge between the language of 10 11

" N o w that we have briefly told . . . " . Angus Macintosh, "Wulfstan's Prose", Proceedings of the British Academy xxxiv (1949), 109-42.

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verse and prose. Consideration of the structure of these elements throws light upon another problem of word-order. In verse adverb + verb is a frequent two-stressed element, the heavier stress being on the adverb, e.g. Beow. 1280 pa deer sóna wéaró, id. 1650 wéras ón sàwon, Cri. 478 ond mid wùnige. The retension in prose of this group adverb + verb causes many exceptions to the general rule that in common order the clause will begin with subject + verb. There are two elements which frequently intervene between subject and verb, and one of these is the adverb, e.g. CP 153, 21, Ic da eode inn, or with two adverbs SC i, 64, 26, He pa swa dyde. The other element which frequently comes between subject and verb is the pronoun, e.g. CP 269, 14, He us stiered, id. 413, 11, God us drencte. The intervention of the pronoun at this point again recalls the language of verse. The pronouns (if not placed under accent) are sentence-particles and must be grouped together, e.g. Beow. 292 ic eow wisige. When prose adopted this pronominal group, the type he us would give rise to the type God us. Sometimes the two types of intervention (adverb and pronoun) are combined, e.g. CP 389, 14, Sio swidre hand hine donne beclipd. Of course, the adverb is often delayed till after the verb, and indeed the type CP 399, 9, Loth for ut, can be regarded as the normal prose equivalent of weras on sawon. In short the separable verb has emerged. Yet inseparability lingers, and not only when the element before the verb is an adverb. There are other and rarer intruders such as the object, e.g. AH i, 50, 17-8, Da redan Iudei wedende pone halgan stcendon.12 This is to make an accentual group, and hence a separable verb, of noun + verb: halgan stcendon is accentually the same as donne beclipd, and again the type is familiar in verse, e.g. Beow. 7 he pees frofre gebad. It may now be asked whether later English and the other early Germanic languages provide evidence to support the view that the word-orders of verse influence the formation of prose. I am not of the opinion that any purpose would be served by the investigation of early Middle English prose fom this point of view, because early Middle English verse shows clearly that sensitivity to the law of sentence-particles was no longer present in Englishmen of that time. Every page of Layamon's Brut has such clauses as 7869 hu pa nunne hafde isceid, where the sentence-particles hu and hafde are in separate dips, or 1 An préost wes on léoden, where there is an introductory dip containing no sentence-particle. When we turn to the other Germanic languages, our material is limited. The word-order of the Gothic remains is too artificial for our purpose. There is practically no prose in Old Saxon. In Frisian and Old Norse the earliest prose texts belong to a comparatively late date, and there is no reason to believe that literary prose was of early growth in either of them. 13 12

See on this word-order Bruce Mitchell, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen lxv (1964), 124. Old Frisian prose, being practically all legal in content, has a lack of variety in its sentence forms which would render it difficult to use for the present purpose. The two clause types to be discussed below are found in the classical prose of Iceland. The principal clause with inversion (type Fór jarl a vetzlur) is very common, but its origin is perhaps stylistic rather than accentual. The same may apply to subordinate clauses with the verb between the conjunction and the subject, 13

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It would therefore be hazardous to attribute a living sensitivity to the law of sentenceparticles to the period in which the traditions of their prose was formed. Old High German is a more promising field for investigation. We observed above two types of clause in which the influence of the law of sentence-particles is to be suspected in Old English, principal clauses with inversion, e.g. hcefde se cyning, and subordinate ones with the verb between the conjunction and the subject, e.g. Da geseah se Hcelend. These types both appear in Old High German, e.g. for the first Isidor xxii, 16, Meinida dher forasago, and for the second Tatian xcv, 3, thuruh then quimit asuuih. With caution due to the sparsity of the material, we may therefore see in Old High German some support for the conclusions drawn above from the Old English material.

e.g. Snorri, Gylf. xliv, sva at hvitnudu knuarnir, but these are not sufficiently common to justify the drawing of general conclusions about them.

FRED C. ROBINSON

LEXICOGRAPHY AND LITERARY CRITICISM : A CAVEAT

Once a word is placed in a dictionary, the very fact of its niche there tends to induce its inclusion in later dictionaries and to give it a usually quite fitting garb of authenticity; not all of them deserve it. Herbert D.Meritt, Fact and Lore About Old English Words (Stanford, 1954), p. viii.

No one familiar with the literary history of England would be so rash as to suggest that lexicography and literary study are incompatible pursuits. Admired writers as different from one another as Coleridge, James Boswell, and Alexander Pope all involved themselves in lexicographical projects,1 and it cannot be wholly fortuitous that three of the greatest prose stylists in English — ¿Elfric, Addison, and Samuel Johnson — have also been lexicographers.2 The two roles would seem to coincide harmoniously, and one might well question the wisdom of the caveat announced in the title above. The warning I wish to raise, however, is not against versatile lexicographers doubling as men of letters; rather it is against subconscious confusion of the two roles both by those who compile dictionaries and those who use them. For, sometimes when a lexicographer is assessing the meaning of a word in a given occurrence, he slips unawares into the role of literary interpreter, recording a meaning for a word not on the basis of lexicographical evidence but purely because his particular critical interpretation of the passage requires such a meaning. Scholars who then encounter his judgments in the dictionary often fail to distinguish between what is lexicographical fact and what is the dictionary-maker's momentary indulgence in literary criticism. In some instances, these unsubstantiated ad hoc meanings can fix the critical interpretation of a passage in a permanent course of error; for, so long as they remain unchallenged, 1

See A. W. Read, "Projected English Dictionaries, 1755-1828", JEGP, XXXVI (1937), 193, 360-361, and Samuel Johnson's Plan for his Dictionary (Works [Oxford, 1825], V, 20). 2 ¿Elfric's and Johnson's places in the history of English lexicography are well known; for Addison's "design to make a dictionary", see Johnson, Works, VII, 442.

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the dictionary definitions of words are necessarily the starting point for any critical explication of the literature which uses those words. What follows here is an exploration, by way of example, of the various ways in which unconscious literary interpretation masquerading as lexicographical fact can impair literary understanding of passages in early English poetry. An important consideration in any critical reading of The Battle of Maldon is the precise meaning of the epithets applied to the Vikings in the poem. It has often been noted that the poet's terms for the foe seem curiously restrained and dispassionate, a remarkable feature when we remember that these marauders constitute the nemesis of the heroic English. Yet, for the most part the poet describes them in approximately the same way as they describe themselves in 11.29-38, that is, as 'seamen': brimlipend, brimmen, flotan, lidmen, scelidan, Siemen, scerincas. Elsewhere he calls them "Vikings" (wicingas), 'the enemy' (fynd), 'strangers' (gystas), 'hated or hostile people' (lade leode), or 'heathens' (hcedene), all of which are simply descriptive. In a number of instances he uses the same terms to refer to the Norsemen as he uses to refer to the English themselves: hyssa, leode, werod, and ceorl. A quite reasonable explanation for this choice of epithets would seem to be that the Maldon poet deliberately avoids vilifying terms for the Vikings because he does not want to misdirect his readers into viewing the narrative as primarily a conflict between virtuous Englishmen and evil Vikings. Such a polarization of sympathies would divert attention from the important conflict — the tensions within the English ranks. (It would lead, in fact, to a simplistic narrative like The Battle of Brunanburh, which has the moral subtlety of a Wild West film.3) But many readers seem not to share this conception of Maldon. They feel that some indignation on the part of the poet is required, and consequently they search the dictionaries for evidence that at least some of the poet's epithets for the Vikings are in fact pejorative. In the case of one epithet they are not disappointed. The word scealcas, applied to the Vikings in line 181, is "a term of reproach" according to BT DA If this is correct, then we must adjust our interpretation of the narrator's tone accordingly. But what is the dictionary's authority for saying that in Maldon the word scealcas is "a term of reproach" ? In most of its occurrences scealc means 'man, soldier, sailor, servant', in which sense it is applied to Beowulf, David, and other admirable pers

For a perceptive discussion of how the early Germanic writer achieved moving effects by resisting facile moral judgments when describing human conflicts, see Jorge Luis Borges' essay on the confrontation of King Harold and Tostig in "El pudor de la historia", in Otras Inquisiciones (Buenos Aires, 1960), pp. 229-233. 4 The following abbreviations are used in this paper : BTD stands for An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary based on the manuscript collections of the late Joseph Bosworth, ed. and enlarged by T. Northcote Toller (Oxford, 1882-98); BTS stands for An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Supplement (Oxford, 1908-21) by Toller; CHM stands for A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, 4th ed. with Supplement by Herbert D. Meritt (Cambridge, 1960); GKH stands for Sprachschatz der angelsächsischen Dichter by C. W. M. Grein with the assistance of F. Holthausen, revised by J. J. Köhler (Heidelberg, 1912); B is A Short Dictionary of Anglo-Saxon Poetry by J. B. Bessinger (Toronto, 1961).

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sonages. There are, on the other hand, only two documentations in BTD for the supposed pejorative sense of scealc: one is the Maldon passage in question; the other is Christ and Satan 133, which BTD quotes as "Hwilum ic gehere helle scealcas, gnorniende cynn." This second example requires close scrutiny. To be sure, the characters described here as scealcas are Satan's fellow-victims, but this does not necessarily imply a pejorative sense for unmodified scealcas any more than it does for cynn, which stands in apposition with scealcas. And in any case, modern editions no longer read scealc in this passage as an independent word. The line is now taken by editors universally as hwilum ic gehere gnornende cynn

hellescealcas,

thus removing this piece of evidence altogether from the picture. Indeed, BTD records the compound hellescealc some three hundred pages before the scealc entry, citing as the sole occurrence of the word Christ and Satan 133! One can only assume that the entry "scealc... II. as a term of reproach" is based entirely upon the lexicographers' literary critical interpretation of Maldon and that the Christ and Satan passage was brought in (somewhat absent-mindedly) as a desperate means of giving that interpretation some documentary support. The fact is, however, that it has no support. The supposed pejorative sense of scealc is merely a bit of literary criticism posing as lexicographical fact. There is, then, no objective evidence that the Maldon poet expresses open contempt for the Vikings, and regardless of whether one agrees that he is a better poet for dramatizing without asserting their iniquity, one must accept the fact that he apparently did not assert it. 5 Similar instances are not far to seek elsewhere in the dictionaries. The famous example of lofgeornost in Beowulf 3182 comes readily to mind. Our entire conception of the poet's attitude toward his hero rests to a considerable extent upon our decision whether this term is wholly complimentary in Christian terms (as are the three adjectives preceding and paralleling it) or whether it is a frank acknowledgment of the secular Germanic side of the hero's character. Both BTD and BTS assure us that the word is used here "in a good sense" meaning "eager to deserve praise" and BTS sets up a special entry for this semantic category. But when the reader notices multiple documentations for the word's use "in a bad sense" meaning 'ostentatious, boastful* and only the single Beowulf occurrence to support the 'good 5

Other epithets from Maldon which scholars have tried to interpret pejoratively are shown by J. E. Cross, "Oswald and Byrhtnoth : a Christian Saint and a Hero who is a Christian", ES, XLVI (1965), 14-16, to be in fact connotatively neutral. Professor Cross does concede a slight pejorative sense for scealc, however, on grounds of the Olcel. cognate skalkr 'rogue', but this seems to me an unnecessary concession. If an English writer today referred to "knights" in a story dealing with German gentry, this term would hardly take on pejorative connotations simply because the German cognate of knight is Knecht. The Maldon usage of scealc is also declared pejorative by G. C. Britton in "The Characterization of the Vikings in The Battle of Maldon", NQ, n.s. XII (1965), 85-87, where the word is rendered 'louts' (on the strength of the BTD entry which I have challenged above).

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sense' the inevitable question arises. What evidence beyond the lexicographers' benevolent literary interpretation of Beowulf warrants the lexicographic authority which the "good sense" now enjoys? Their interpretation may, of course, be right, but the responsible student must insist upon full access to the evidence for it. 6 One Beowulfian nonce-word which the dictionaries have interpreted dubiously is of considerable interest in understanding the role of Grendel. In the poet's single detailed description of the monster's cannibalistic attacks, we are told that he seized a warrior and bat banlocan, blod edrum dranc, synsnsdum swealh. (11. 742-743) "he bit the bone-lockings, drank blood from the veins, swallowed the synsnadum." At first glance, synsnadum looks like a word meaning 'sinful morsels', but the dictionaries reject this possibility, preferring to see syn- here as a form of the prefix sin'perpetual, permanent', which is then assigned the ad hoc meaning 'huge, immense' so that it will make acceptable sense in this occurrence. 7 This interpretation was offered very tentatively in BTD, but subsequent dictionaries have long since given it the full authority of an unqualified entry, and editors and translators have, without exception, followed their lead. But I am convinced that there is much to be said for the less complicated interpretation of synsnadum as 'sinful morsels', an alternative which seems never to have been explored. (The dictionaries' confident agreement that the word here means 'huge morsels' would suggest that there is nothing to explore.) In Anglo-Saxon times the mention of blood-drinking would probably have suggested a specific and horrifying sin, a sin which would match on a spiritual, theological level the physical horror of Grendel's feast. A casual examination of OE prose writings reveals an almost obsessive concern with the Old Testament injunction against the drinking of blood. 8 iElfric and Wulfstan, as well as other homilists, reiterate the warning both 6

An analogous example from Beowulf is that of forpringan in 1. 1084. The expected meaning of this verb would be 'to crowd out' and it is documented with this meaning in the OE translation of the Benedictine Rule (Bibl. der ags. Prosa, II, 114, 115). But the Beowulf occurrence is glossed by the dictionaries with a precisely opposite meaning, 'protect' (BTD), 'defendere ab aliquo' (GKH), purely on the grounds that satisfactory literary interpretation of the episode seems to require such a meaning. But see Beowulf with the Finnesburg Fragment, ed. C. L. Wrenn (London, 1953), pp. 204-205. 7 From time to time one or another of the numerous other sin- compounds has been entertained as possibly constituting a second instance of sin- 'immense' (e.g. sinfrea, sindolh, sinhere), but all are equally well explained in terms of the usual meaning of sin-, 'perpetual, permanent'. Sinfrea means 'permanent lord, husband'. Sindolh is adequately interpreted by Heyne as meaning 'immerwährende, d.i. nicht zu heilende Wunde'. Sinhere would seem to mean 'permanent army' — i.e. the standing retinue of the prince as opposed to an emergency levy. There is no justification in the context for the assumption that the force referred to was an 'immense army': see Beowulf 2936. 8 For Biblical statements of the prohibition, see Gen. 9: 4-5; Lev. 3:17, 7:26-27,17:10-14, 19:26; Deut. 12:15-16, 12:23-25,45:23; I Sam. 14:32-34; and the important New Testament allusion to the law in Acts 15:19-21, 28-29. For a generous sampling of the copious patristic and canonical

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in Latin and vernacular writings, 9 and it is a constant theme in penitential writings. 10 Alfred the Great incorporated the blood-proscription into his law-code, 1 1 and Bede dealt with it is his theological writings. 12 It even turns up elsewhere in OE poetry: Genesis A, 11. 1518-1520, contains the injunction Naefre ge mid blode beodgereordu unarlice eowre J>icgea5, besmiten mid synne sawldreore. Here the mention of blood is followed, as in the Beowulf passage, by an elaborative epithet. The two collocations may be thought of as roughly proportional: blode: besmiten mid synne sawldreore

=

blod:

synsncedum

The true meaning of synsnced, I suspect, is closer to the Genesis poet's besmiten mid synne sawldreore than it is to the dictionaries' gloss 'huge morsels'. The reasons which medieval commentators offered for the blood-prohibition suggest some interesting tie-ins with Grendel's characterization elsewhere in the poem and also with some of the poet's other terms for 'blood'. It was widely held, of course, that blood was identical with the soul. This notion, which was current in vernacular OE writings, 13 probably lies behind both the compound sawldreore in Genesis 1520 and the Beowulf poet's striking expression D a wass heal roden feonda feorum. writings on the subject, see Karl Böckenhoff's Das apostolische Speisegesetz in den ersten fünf Jahrhunderten (Paderborn, 1903), esp. pp. 93 ff., and his Speisesatzungen mosaischer Art in mittelalterlichen Kirchenrechtsquellen des Morgen- und Abendlandes (Münster, 1907), pp. 37-49. Pages 62 to 107 deal abundantly with the especially large literature on the subject in Britain during the early Middle Ages. (It has been convincingly argued that the remarkably vigorous tradition of the bloodprohibition in Anglo-Saxon England resulted from dual Eastern Christian influences transmitted through Celtic agents on the one hand and through Theodore and Hadrian on the other.) 9 See -lElfric's vernacular Preface to the Old Testament translation, Bibl. der ags. Prosa, III, 84, and his Latin letter to Wulfstan, Bibl. der ags. Prosa, IX, 223. See Wulfstan's Homily Xc, p. 205 of the Bethurum edition, and Pseudo-Wulfstan XXIX, p. 136 of Napier's edition. A rather detailed vernacular account of the prohibition is cited by Kluge in Englische Studien, VIII (1885), 62-63. 10 Pseudo-Egbert provides typical vernacular examples {Bibl. der ags. Prosa, XIII, 57, 62), and the constant repetition of the blood-proscription in Pseudo-Theodore, Canons of Edgar, Pseudo-Bede, and the Irish penitentials suggest that this was a regular feature of the confessional. See also "Be BlodJjigene" in Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ed. F. Liebermann (Halle, 1903), II, 130, 18. 11 Gesetze, I, 44. 12 PL, XCII, 977, 1024. 13 See iElfric's metrical Letter to Wulfget (Bibl. der ags. Prosa, III, 12), 11. 302-303 : ic wylle ofgan set öe his blödes gyte, t>Eet is sawul In the prose Salomon and Saturn the question "hwjer restaö ö»s mannes sawul öonne se lichama slapö?" is answered, "... on öam braegene, oööe on öaere heortan, oööe on öa blode". See Kemble's The Dialogue of Salomon and Saturnus (London, 1848), p. 188. /Elfric's assertion heora blod is heora lif refers to animals alone (Sermo de initio creaturae, Thorpe, I, 14).

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"Then the hall was reddened (or stained) with the souls of the foes." 14 It also explains the compound feorhlast 'bloody track (lit., track of the soul)' in 1. 846: faege ond geflymed 5aer waes on blode

feorhlastas baer; brim weallende

(For the extraordinary difficulties of the dictionaries in assessing the meaning of feorhlast, see the entries in CHM and BTS.) It was largely because of this assumption that the blood was the seat of the soul that blood-drinking was regarded as such a heinous offense. To imbibe the blood of any creature was worse than merely to kill it; to do so was to consume life itself, which is reserved properly to the Lord (see esp. Lev. 17: 10-14 and Deut. 12: 15-16). In view of this identification of the blood with the soul, it is not surprising that a number of early commentators (e.g. Tertullian, Origen, Justin, Athenagoras) should explain that blood-drinking was specifically characteristic of certain corporeal demons descended from the evil giants who inhabited the world before the Flood. (The giants, as we are told in the Apocryphal Book of Enoch, turned violently on mankind, devoured flesh, and drank the blood; it was precisely in consequence of their violating the blood-prohibition, according to the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions, I, xxx, that God sent the punitive Deluge.) The giant-sprung demons who persisted in the antediluvian blood-craving continued to seek out blood in any form, and it is for this reason as much as for any other, explains Origen, that human beings are strictly forbidden to consume it: blood is the food of demons. 15 Bloodthirsty monsters from secular pagan literature could be brought into the context of Christian interpretation without difficulty. Thus Clemens of Alexandria identified as one of the postdiluvian demons those shades of Hades who, in the Odyssey, XI, 34 if., rush in to drink the blood of an animal slain by Odysseus. It is not wholly improbable, then, that a Christian Anglo-Saxon poet might view one of the monsters from his own heroic literature in terms of the Christian Fathers' abhorrence of blood-drinking. That Grendel is not the only such ogre in Germanic tradition is amply attested, of course, by numerous parallels, one of the most interesting being the evil figure Grimr in the Olcel. Gongu-Hrolfs saga, who drinks the blood of both men and beasts and is endowed with supernatural powers, such as the ability to dull the edges of the Danes' swords. (He is called Grimr cegir because his mother was a sea-monster.) This rather lengthy exposition of the possible implications of synsncedum in Beowulf 743 may serve to illustrate what complex and important allusions can be concealed by a lexicographer's untimely indulgence in literary interpretation. If 14

Beowulf 1151-1152. Cf. the identical use o f f e o r h in Juliana 476-478: ... t>®t him banlocan blode spiowedon t>aet hi fseringa feorh aleton Jjurh aedra wylm. 15 For a succinct survey of these early patristic expositions, see Karl BOckenhoff, Das apostolische Speisegesetz, pp. 36-64.

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dictionaries had from the start recorded the literal meaning of synsnced, then the need for literary scholars to establish a rationale for the compound would have been apparent. But the compilers judged the literal meaning aesthetically unacceptable and substituted an unwarranted sense which merged blandly into the context. The result was that scholars and editors alike have been distracted from what might be an important, functional allusion. Yet another instance of lexicographical obfuscation was cited several years ago by Ernst Leisi in an article which seems to have suffered unmerited neglect.16 Professor Leisi suggests that the dictionary definitions of the OE verb geweordian have long obscured an important cultural function of treasure and rewards in pre-Conquest times. He argues ingeniously that sumptuous gifts and precious objects were valued by the Anglo-Saxons not for any intrinsic worth but rather because they were an objective measure of the recipient's human achievement and prestige — of his Manneswert. This, Leisi explains, is the reason for the poet's frequent use of the verb (ge)weordian in phrases like since geweordod, geofum geweordod, and madmum geweordod.17 Dictionaries are wrong to enter special contextual meanings like 'adorn, reward' for these occurrences, suggests Leisi; the verb should be read in its primary sense of 'honored, distinguished, ennobled', and we should discern in its usage with words like sine and gifa a clear indication of the Anglo-Saxons' symbolistic concept of gold and gifts, a concept which, if firmly authenticated, would be of considerable importance in any general interpretation of Beowulf.1* The examples cited thus far illustrate how the lexicographer can unwittingly blind his reader to denotations and allusions which are important to a full understanding of the specific work in which they occur. Another kind of lexicographical obfuscation results when the dictionaries conceal from the reader the full force of the poetic style and particularly of the figurative language used in the early texts. If a word occurs in a slightly unusual application, the lexicographer's tendency is to introduce into the dictionary entry a special meaning for the occurrence, a definition which will fit in a literal way the context in question. This propensity often leads lexicographers to flatten out figurative language and to resolve ineptly numerous intended ambiguities. Effects like synaesthesia, paronomasia, and personification are, I believe, far more frequent in OE than our dictionaries and glossaries permit us to see. 16

"Gold und Manneswert im Beowulf," Anglia, LXXI (1953), 259-273, esp. 262. Cf. Beowulf 1901-1902, he sydpan was/on meodubence mapme py weorpra, where the adjective suggests the full meaning of weordian in similar contexts. The primary sense of the word is also clearly attested in the following Boethius passage: "... ge beo|) on gedwolan, bonne ge wenad{last cenig masg mid fremdum welum beon geweordod. Gif hwa nu bi8 mid hwelcum welum geweordod ... hu nu ne belimpd se weordscipe f>onne to {jam {>e hine geweordad?" (King Alfred's Old English Version of Boethius De consolatione philosophiae, ed. Walter John Sedgefield [Oxford, 18991, p. 32). 18 In passages where (ge)weordian is used of inanimate objects {e.g. Beowulf 1038 : sadol ... since gewurpad) we should perhaps sense a slight personifying effect : "saddle ennobled by treasure". See Neil D. Isaacs, "The Convention of Personification in Beowulf" in Old English Poetry : Fifteen Essays ed. by Robert P. Creed (Providence, Rhode Island, 1967), pp. 215-248, for a careful demonstration of the pervasiveness of personification in Old English poetry. 17

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In Beowulf 1160-1162 the poet describes the sounds of revelry which fill the hall: Gamen eft astah beorhtode bencsweg, byrelas sealdon win of wundurfatum. The force of this description, as I read it, lies in the synaesthetic representation of the convivial sounds "glittering" through the hall as the wine streams out of the bright chalices.19 But the dictionaries, which are dutifully followed by editors and translators, explicitly deny this effect. Without exception, they list copious instances of the verb beorhtian in the visual sense ('glisten, shine, brighten') and then list a second meaning to accomodate the one occurrence in Beowulf 1161: 'to sound clearly' (CHM), 'to sound clearly or loudly' (BTD), 'clare sonare' (GKHJ, 'sound clearly' (B). No evidence is cited by the dictionaries in support of this decision to reduce an arresting figure of speech to a commonplace descriptive phrase; one can only assume that lexicographers have at some point judged synaesthetic metaphor to be uncharacteristic of OE poetic style. But the judgment seems hasty. We know from Soul and Body 15 that OE poets could speak of human voices in tactile terms: CleopaS Jjonne swa cearful

cealdan reorde

and the presence of the same figure in the Atlakvida (1. 7) suggests that the trope was a traditional Germanic one: kallaSi J>a Knefrcedr

kaldri rgddo

The synaesthetic expression 'a cold voice' continues into modern times, of course, but then so does the image of beorhtode bencsweg, as is attested by the seventeenthcentury "till my music shine" and Swinburne's "light of sweetest songs" and "music heard as light." It is hard to see what line of reasoning led the lexicographers to credit a synaesthetic figure in the one case (they enter no aural meaning for ceald) and to reject it in the other. Actually, the Anglo-Saxon poets appear to have been unusually bold in their use of synaesthetic imagery. Certainly the Exodus poet did not shrink from mingling the senses in order to gain a striking dictional effect: describing the horror and confusion of the overwhelmed Egyptian soldiers, he says, lyft up geswearc faegum stefnum 20 "The air above grew dark with doomed voices." Frank recognition of the AngloSaxon poets' capacity for this kind of literary language might even help us to resolve 19

In an earlier description of a similar scene (11. 494-497) the poet also juxtaposes this synaesthetic image (scop hwilum sang/hador on Heorote) with the description of a steward pouring bright wine (pegn ... scencte scir wered). 20 Cf. Aeneid, X, 895 : "clamore incendunt caelum".

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some of the textual puzzles which have perplexed critics of OE literature. The famous crux in The Battle of Brunanburh (11. 12-13) feld dennade secga swate has provoked a multitude of conjectures as to what dennade (v.l. dcen[n]ede) may be. One of the least strained interpretations is the view that it represents the common verb dynade 'resounded', but this reading, of course, presupposes a remarkable synaesthetic image, 'the field resounded with the blood of men'. Before rejecting this interpretation as too bizarre, however, careful attention should be given to the battle-scene described in 11. 28, 357 If. of Layamon's Brut: feldes beoueden eke; gurren t>a stanes mid Jmn blod-streme>21 "the fields also trembled; the stones resound with the streams of blood." Our own sense of the limits of synaesthetic imagery may not have been that of the earlier writers, and we should remember this when evaluating the dictionaries' numerous ad hoc entries which implicitly deny synajsthetic effects in OE poetry. Anothei area where modern lexicographers are reluctant to acknowledge dictional complexity in OE writings is that of deliberate verbal ambiguity. There is, in fact, a general assumption among OE scholars that the use of puns or double entendre "does not seem consistent with Anglo-Saxon poetic method."22 The basis for this assumption is hard to determine, for paronomasia was a favorite device among the writers most familiar to the Anglo-Saxons,23 and the OE writers themselves discussed and used puns both in their vernacular and in their Latin writings.24 Yet, even the 21

Cited by Klaeber in Palaestra, CXLVIII (Leipzig, 1925), 1-7. Bennett and Smithers, Early Middle English Verse and Prose (Oxford, 1966), p. 152, print, without comment, zurnen for gurren. I do not know the authority for this reading. G. L. Brook, Selections from Layamon's Brut (Oxford, 1963), p. 114, reads, like the generally accurate Madden, 3urren. Assuming the traditional reading, some may still feel that the sense is sufficiently strained as to require further authentication in some independent allusion. This may be at hand in Orosius' Historia, IV, 2: "Triste adeo id bellum fuit, ut merito dicatur tantum humanum sanguinem susceptura terra tremuisse", which Alfred renders, with only slight inaccuracy, "seo eorbbeofung tacnade ¡Da miclan bloddryncas £>e hiere mon on t>asre tide to forlet" (EETS, 79 [1883], 160-162). 22 J. D. A. Ogilvy, "Unferth: Foil to Beowulf?" PMLA, LXXIX (1964), 372-373. 23 See, for example, Christine Mohrmann, "Das Wortspiel in den augustinischen Sermones", Mnemosyne, 3rd ser., Ill (1935), 33-61, and A. Guillaume, "Paronomasia in the Old Testament", Journal of Semitic Studies, IX (1964), 282-290. 24 Bede discusses and illustrates paronomasia in De schematis et tropiis, and Aldhelm uses puns in his Ainigmata {e.g. no. 99 : Camellus - camillus) and elsewhere. For Alcuin's punning, see Peter Dale Scott, "Alcuin as Poet", UTQ, XXXIII (1964), 248 and n. 27. Dorothy Bethurum, The Homilies of Wulfstan (Oxford, 1957), p. 92, refers to Wulfstan's fondness for puns, and William M. Ryan, in an article forthcoming in the Rudolph Willard Festschrift, will discuss word-play in some Old English homilies. J. Edwin Whitesell's "Intentional Ambiguities in Beowulf", TSL, XI (1966), 145-149, is well-conceived but not finally convincing. A vernacular OE discussion of paronomasia may be found in Byrhtferth's Manual, EETS, o.s. 177 (1929), 176.

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most explicit puns in OE are denied recognition by the dictionaries, which arbitrarily select one or the other of two intended meanings in a given occurrence, enter it in the article for the word, and omit mention of the other simultaneously intended meaning. Consider, for example, three puns from the OE verse Riddles: wonge (31: 14) 'in the field' and 'in the cheek'; bleed (37: 7) 'breath' and 'prosperity'; hcefte (73: 22) 'handle' and 'confinement'. 25 The standard dictionaries deal with these puns (all of which are explicitly cited by editors of the Riddles) as follows. BTD and GKH agree in identifying wonge as signifying only 'earth, campus'; GKH indicates that bleed in Riddle 37 means only 'ubertas, prosperitas, etc.'' and not 'breath'; GKH enters the citation for hafte in Riddle 73 under the meaning 'manubrium, Heft', excluding the sense 'confinement'. {BTD and BTS do not cite the last two.) A good example of the difficulties which artful ambiguity can pose for the lexicographer is a single line in Exeter Riddle 20. This riddle is spoken prosopoetically by a sword which, since it is assigned the dignified formulas of OE heroic poetry, is automatically transformed by that diction into a noble warrior. It is just this double sense of the poetic language which creates the riddling quality as well as the light humor of the poem, a humor not wholly different from that in Chaucer's characterization of Chaunticleer, who, while speaking the language of a courtly knight, reveals unmistakably his essential roosterhood. Just so the sword, as it speaks of serving its frean with its byrne and compweepnum, nevertheless leaves no doubt that it is merely an inanimate weapon accustomed to the restraining grip of its owner's hand. This fine equivocation is brought to perfect balance in 1. 23 of the poem, where the sword speaks of its relationship to t>am healdende

J>e me hringas geaf.

Healdend means 'ruler, lord', but it is also the present participle of healdan 'to hold, grasp'. ¡>e me hringas geaf refers to the literal fact that the sword's owner had outfitted it with rings — the ornamental devices by which it is attached or suspended; but at the same time it is a poetic formula commonly spoken by a warrior who receives rings (gold circlets used as money) from his lord in reward for service. The two meanings of the phrase stand here in precise equipoise, and one turns with interest to the dictionaries to see how the occurrence is glossed. BTD and BTS in their entry for hring pass over the Riddle usage in silence; GKH enters it hesitantly under the meaning 'vinculum', posting a query alongside. Under healdend GKH enters an ad hoc meaning 'possessore' to accomodate the passage in question, while BTD suggests 'guardian'. The effect in each case is to deny the puns intended.26 25 These are all noted by Tupper, The Riddles of the Exeter Book (Boston, 1910), pp. 158, 145, and 213. In my references, however, I use the Krapp-Dobbie numbering of the riddles. 26 Another kind of dictional richness not unrelated to punning is the use of a word in both its abstract and concrete senses simultaneously, a device which dictionaries do not adequately recognize. Thus the Beowulf verses "Ic him fenode/deoran sweorde" (II. 560-561), which GKH explicate bluntly as meaning 'erschlug sie damit', has been shown by Rosier, PMLA, LXXVIII (1963), 9-10,

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It must be acknowledged, of course, that deliberate ambiguities present an especially delicate problem for the compiler of a citatory dictionary. He must enter a meaning which is suitable for each occurrence of the word, but he cannot register every stylistic subtlety of each occurrence. Perhaps the best way to deal with explicit ambiguities would be for the lexicographers to avoid citing passages involving puns (if the dictionary is not exhaustively citatory), or else to enter a punning occurrence twice, once under each relevant meaning. Either expedient would avert implicit disavowal of this prominent feature of OE poetic style. Poetic effects other than synaesthesia and paronomasia are sometimes inadvertently obliterated when they pass through the medium of lexicographic explication. The characteristic Germanic understatement in phrases like "wop waes wide, worulddreama lyt" (Exodus 42) and "J)is sweord ... J>aet mec aer ond si9 oft gelasste" (Beowulf 2499-2500) is entirely lost for the reader whose dictionary defines lyt and oft as meaning, respectively, "not at all" and "constantly, regularly, continually." 27 Similarly, one wonders whether the poetic word feasceaft is rightly rendered (as in CHM and B) "destitute, miseiable, helpless, poor," with no inkling of the wry meiosis lurking in the element fea-. Yet another kind of interference with stylistic effect occurs in recent dictionary entries for the word fus 'eager, hastening' as it is used in Dream of the Rood 21: "Geseah ic Jjaet fuse beacen/wendan wasdum ond bleom." The normal meaning of fus, which would imply strong personification here, has been denied by recent editors of the poem who insist instead on a special meaning 'bright', although there is no firm evidence for such a meaning elsewhere. This tenuous conjecture has now passed into lexicographic fact, for recent dictionaries give it sanction in their entries for the word. 28 But the adjective fus is used elsewhere repeatedly to modify personified inanimate objects — e.g. a military banner in Exodus 129, an arrow in Beowulf 3119, a cloud in Riddle 3: 43 — and considering the extraordinary degree of personification vested in the speaking cross in Dream of the Rood, one wonders whether it is wise for the dictionaries to validate such a slenderly evidenced meaning and dismiss the possibility of fits's being used in its customary sense with personifying effect: the cross is "eager and hastening" as it moves through its awesome transmutations into the dreamer's ken. The examples I have cited here are neither exhaustive nor exhaustively representative, and the fact that they all come from OE dictionaries should not, of course, be taken to imply that lexicographic interference with literary interpretation is a phenomenon unique to OE textual criticism: though less noticed, it is no less to carry concrete, metaphorical force, the verb penode meaning 'to serve up (food)' as well as 'to strike down*. This reading is strongly supported by one of Layamon's expansions of Wace in the description of Pascent's death : "He smat hine uuenen bat haeued bat he adun halde/and bat sweord putte in his muô : swulc mete him wes uncuô" (11. 18090-18093). 27 The words are so glossed in Martin Lehnert's Poetry and Prose of the Anglo-Saxons : Dictionary (Berlin, 1956), a generally excellent student dictionary which deserves to be better known among students of Old English despite the minor lapses cited here. 28 See Lehnert's Dictionary and B s.v.f us.

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pervasive in the scholarly study of later English literature.29 The obvious way to reduce the interference would seem to be to study with a cold eye all the dictionaries on which we rely, pointing out, as I have tried to do here, the various points at which lexicographers trespass on literary critics' ground. This method cannot be ultimately successful, however, for there must always be some element of literary interpretation involved in lexicographic judgments, and experts will sometimes differ as to what is excessive and what is appropriate. Perhaps the best course would be for the users of dictionaries to become more fully aware of the proper limits of lexicographic speculation and to develop a healthy suspiciousness in evaluating the dictionaries' information on any vocabulary item affecting literary interpretation. A thoughtful recollection from time to time of the words quoted as the epigraph of this essay, and frequent reference to H. D. Meritt's numerous publications exposing error in lexicographic entries, would be a good way of cultivating in our own minds that proper balance of grateful admiration and affectionate scepticism with which we should approach the venerable dictionaries upon which literary study of our early texts is ultimately based.

28

The OED and even the currently appearing Middle English Dictionary contain many instances. One example from the latter may serve for many here. The final verse of the famous lyric Foweles in t>e frith is "For beste of bon and blod", which could be taken to mean either " f o r (a) beast of bone and blood" or "for (the) best of bone and blood" — i.e. "for the best lady in human form". The MED decides unhesitatingly in favor of the first alternative, citing this line prominently as its first quotation under "best/e n. ... One of the animal kingdom". One wonders, however, at the lexicographers' confidence in ruling out the second alternative, for the MED itself quotes in its entries for blod, bon, and the superlative adjective best such quotations as "be feyrest on bateuer wes mad of blod ant bon", "nys non so feyr of blod ant bone", "be fairest leuedi ... bat mi3t gon on bodi and bones", "so brighte a barne of bane and blode", "leuedi, best of alle t>ing", and "lauerde, be is best of us".

JAMES J. MURPHY

THE RHETORICAL LORE OF THE BOCERAS IN BYHRTFERTH's MANUAL

When S. J. Crawford published his edition and translation of Byhrtferth's Manual (A.D. 1011) for the Early English Text Society in 1929 he identified as "rhetorical figures" a series of 17 devices which the author ascribes to boccraefte.1 Byhrtferth, setting down what is evidently a series of lessons for his students, presents in his Manual a compotus to teach the methods of calculating calendric data. His primary source for computistical doctrine is Bede, especially the De temporibus and De temporum ratione. The bulk of the Manual, therefore, consists of lessons on the computation of Easter, on lunar cycles, and the like. Henel believes that Byhrtferth originally intended to divide the book into daily lessons but abandoned the plan after concluding the first day's portion; for instance at the beginning of the second lesson he reviews the first.2 In its present form the treatise has four major parts — or four plus Epilogue if Ms. Oxford St. John's 17 can be taken as an integral part. 3 The fourth part deals with the symbolism of numbers. But following a discussion of "embolismic years" at the end of the third part, however, Byhrtferth inserts a long section (170,17 ff.) dealing with wisdomes lare as it relates to verbal rather than numerical language. Earlier, he had noted in passing that "Very often grammarians and computists agree together" (Wei oft eac grammaticeras rimerceftige pegnas hig gepwcelcecad.) Evidently Byhrtfert is interested in the relation between verbal symbols and numerical symbols, because in another place (182,31-32) he remarks that the boceras have ten signs for marking accents. Indeed he seems concerned that computists respect the grammarians, and vice versa.4 1

Byhrtferth's Manual (A.D. 1011), Ed. S. J. Crawford from Oxford Bodleian Ms. Ashmole 328. Early English Text Society, O. S. 177. London : Humphrey Milford, 1929. Portions of the text appear also in F. Kluge, "Angelsächsische Excerpte aus Byhrtferth, Handboc oder Enchiridion", Anglia 8 (1885, 2 heft), 298-337. References to the work will be to page and line of the Crawford edition. 2 Heinrich Henel, "Notes on Byhrtferth's Manual", JEGP 41 (1942), 427-43. 3 Henel, "Byhrtferth's Preface : The Epilogue of his Manual"!", Speculum 18 (1943), 288-302. Both of Henel's articles include useful bibliographies. 4 For instance, he declares that priests should know about the useful signs used by the bookmen: Boceras habbaö on heora craefte wuröfulle hiw and tacna, swa t>as synd t>e ic Jjence preosta gecyöanne (182, 22-23).

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The inserted section begins with an Old English translation of a paragraph from Bede's De arte metrica naming three types of poetry (activum vel imitativum, ennarativum, commune vel mixtum). Then Byhrtferth provides Old English renderings of 17 devices of language based on the first part of Bede's Liber de scematibus et tropis. It is this set which Crawford designates as 'rhetorical figures'. The appearance of these devices in an Old English computus of the year 1011 certainly raises some questions. Why did Byhrtferth include them at all? What relation do they play to the rest of the book ? What can they tell us about English educational practices in the early eleventh century ? Is it proper to call them 'rhetorical' ? Before treating these questions directly it might be useful to sketch briefly the two separate traditions underlying the use of the so-called figurae. Although the Sicilian sophist Gorgias (fl. 431 B.C.) popularized five special devices, and Aristotle treated Metaphor in his Rhetoric, it was the Hellenistic tradition that produced the elaborate system of 64 exornationes found in the influential Pseudo-Ciceronian Rhetorica ad Herennium (c. 95 B.C.).5 Their purpose, according to the Pseudo-Cicero (IV.xi.16), is to provide 'distinction' (omne genus orationis... dignitate adficiunt exornationes). Quintilian devotes Books Eight and Nine of his Institutio oratoria to this subject, employing the term figurae to denote the majority of the devices; his careful and even pedantic treatment indicates clearly that by the end of the first Christian century the doctrine of figurae was well accepted even if classification systems differed from author to author. 6 By the middle of the fourth century, moreover, the proliferation of figures had proceeded to such a stage that more than 200 exornationes had been designated by rhetoricians like Rutilius Lupus and Aquilus Romanus. 7 The basic divisions were two: 'figures of diction' (figurae verborum) and 'figures of thought' (figurae sententiarum). Beginning with the Rhetorica ad Herennium, a special set of ten figures of diction was put into a separate category; later, in Quintilian and after, these special figures of diction were called 'tropes' (tropi). 6

The history of the figurae remains unwritten. The best introduction to individual figures can be found in the excellent notes in {Cicero) Ad C. Herennium de Ratione Dicendi (Rhetorica ad Herennium), Ed. and Trans. Harry Caplan (Loeb Classical Library; Harvard University Press, 1954.) Two recent books furnish useful cross-references for individual figures, but each suffers from a lack of overview. The first is Heinrich Lausberg, Handbuch der literarischen Rhetorik (Two vols.; München : Max Heuber, 1960). which presents a survey of primary source citations for Rhetoric (Including elocutio) with examples up to A.D. 600. The second, much shorter book is Leonid Arbusow, Colores Rhetorici: Eine Auswahl rhetorischer Figuren und Gemeinplätze als Hilfsmittel für Übungen an mittelalterlichen Texten. (Zweite Auflage, Hsgb, Helmut Peter; Göttingen : Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1963). Arbusow proposes functional divisions among the figures, but unfortunately his book's title is misleadingly broad. Both books are influenced by the example of Ernst Curtius (e.g., European Literature in the European Middle Ages, New York : Pantheon, 1963) and consequently both authors introduce confusing interrelations between topoi and figurae which medieval writers surely never intended. 6 Est autem non mediocris inter auctores dissensio, et quae vis nominis eius et quot genera et quae quamque multae sint species. Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, Ed. H. E. Butler (Loeb Classical Library; Harvard University Press, 1953), IX.i.10. 7 Texts in Carolus Halm (ed.), Rhetores latini minores (Lipsiae : Teubner, 1863; reprinted Wm. C. Brown, 1960), pp. 1-21, 22-37.

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The figures of diction, generally, deal with word-changes and sound-patterns as opposed to conceptual arrangements typical of the figures of thought. These distinctions have never been precise, however, and some overlapping occurs at every stage in the tradition. 8 4 Up to the middle of the fourth Christian century the fignrae and tropi were the primary domain of the rhetoricians. Although Quintilian would admit that the grammaticus is perhaps capable of treating them, only the rhetor is competent to handle the matter fully.9 The rhetorical textbooks illustrate this too. All in all, then, it is perhaps best to identify this early strain as a 'rhetorical tradition' in respect to the figurae. The reasons for this distinction become evident when one considers the contributions made in the fourth century by Aelius Donatus, the grammarian who was teacher of Saint Jerome. After Donatus, it is possible to identify a somewhat different approach to the figurae that might properly be termed a 'grammatical tradition'. It must be recalled that for the Romans the ars grammatica had two quite distinct though related parts — first, the teaching of correct language, and second, the interpretation of the poets (ars recte loquendi et ennaratio poetarum). Ideally, the grammarian could illustrate both 'correct language' and 'distinctive language' through adroit teaching of his poet-models.10 The two most important works of Donatus in this connection are his Ars minor and Ars Maior. Both profess to deal only with the ars recte loquendi, but the second work includes the so-called Barbarismus which tends to extend the control of the grammarians over some of the materials formerly handled only by the rhetoricians. The first book, De partibus orationis (also known as Ars minor),11 is a simple description of the eight Latin parts of speech. The little treatise, probably the most widely copied original book ever written in the Western world, became so popular that the term 'Donat' or 'Donet' became a medieval synonym for 'primer' or 'elementary textbook'. 12 8 The distinction is stated initially by the Pseudo-Cicero : Verborum exornatio est quae ipsius sermonis insignita continetur perolitione. Sententiarum exornatio est quae non in verbis, sed in ipsis rebus quandam habet dignitatem. Rhetorica ad Herennium IV.xii.19. Even Cicero remarks (De oratore III.iii.200) that already there are available verba et sententiae paene innumerabilis. Quintilian believes, in fact, that there are not really as many figures as some people claim; see his remarks (Institutio IX.i.22-25) prior to quoting what he terms Cicero's 'medium course* in the matter. 8 Quintilian warns, for instance, that the grammarians must be kept in their proper sphere : N o s suum cuique professioni modum demus. Et grammatice ... fines suos norit. Institutio II.i.4. 10 A prime example of this concept may be seen in the massive Partitiones duodecim versum aeneides of the grammarian Priscian (fl. A.D. 510). Text in Henry Keil (ed.), Grammatici Latini (Seven vols.; Leipzig, 1853-80), III, 459-515. Each word of Virgil is literally taken apart, its case, number, or gender justified, and its relations to other words carefully explained. Priscian's discussion of the 74 words requires 56 printed pages in the Keil edition. 11 Text in Keil, Ibid., IV, 355-66. It has been translated by Wayland Chase, The Ars minor of Donatus, University of Wisconsin Studies in the Social Sciences and History, No. 36 (Madison, 1926). For a brief summary, see Paul Abelson, The Seven Liberal Arts (New York, 1906). 12 In the fourteenth century, for instance, Bishop Reginald Pecock chose to adopt the name as a

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The Ars grammatica (i.e. the Ars maior)13 is more complex. It not only treats the eight parts of speech in greater detail, with classical examples, but includes in Book Three a discussion of figures and tropes. It became almost as popular as the Ars minor. Book Three (called Barbarismus from its opening word) thus marks the first major recorded intrusion of grammatica into a field heretofore appropriated by rhetorica. The middle ages in general was of course unfamiliar with Roman educational practice in which grammarians were allowed some latitude with the figures, consequently the appearance of this exornative doctrine in a popular grammatical textbook meant only that medieval writers could look either to grammar or to rhetoric for their knowledge of figurae or tropi. This is a matter of profound significance, and one often overlooked by students of medieval culture. The inclusion of this lore in ars grammatica meant, in brief, that even the most elementary educational programs of the middle ages could be expected to provide a comparatively sophisticated treatment of these linguistic adaptations (with classical examples) based on Donatus. The nature of the Donatic doctrines may illustrate this point. The Barbarismus opens with definitions of "barbarism" as a vice of a single part of speech, and "solecism" as a vice of a part of speech in context. Then Donatus points out that the barbarism in poetry is termed 'metaplasm', and that the solecism which is a fault in prose is called 'scheme' in poetry. 14 This doctrine of 'the permitted fault' 15 is further developed in the rest of the book, which deals with metaplasms, schemes, and tropes. After brief definitions of twelve vices of diction,16 Donatus defines 'metaplasm' as a change in a word for the sake of metrical ornament. 17 Most of the devices indicated in this section depend upon the alteration of a letter or letters within a single word; sometimes a letter is to be added 18 or deleted,19 or merely transposed, 20 synonym for 'primer' when he named his exposition of Christian doctrine the Donet (Ed. Elsie V. Hitchcock : EETS 156; London, 1921). 13 Text in Keil, IV, 367-402. 14 Barbarismus est una pars orationis vitiosa in communi sermo. In poemata metaplasmus itemque in nostra loquella barbarismus, in peregrina barbarolexis dicitur ... barbarismus fit duobus modis, pronuntiatione et scripto. ... Soloeocismus est vitium in contextu partium orationis contra regulam artis grammaticae factum. Inter barbarismus et soloeocismus hoc interest, quod soloeocismus discrepantes aut inconséquentes in se dictiones habet. barbarismus autem in singulis verbis sit scriptis vel pronuntiatis. ... soloeocismus sit duobus modis, aut per partes orationis aut per accidentia pertibus orationis. Soloeocismus in prosa oratione, in poemate schema nominatur. Donatus. Ars. Maior III. 1-2. 15 This ancient idea of 'poetic license* is of course not unknown to the rhetoricians as well. Quintilian (I.viii.14) refers to it as well known. 18 Barbarismus, soloeocismus, acyrologia, cacenphaton, pleonasmus, perissologia, macrologia, tautologia, eclipsis, tapinosis, cacosyntheton, amphibolia. 17 Metaplasmus est transformatio quedam recti solutique sermonis in alterem speciem metri ornatusue causa. 18 Prosthesis, epenthesis, paragoge. 19 Aphaeresis, syncope, apocope. (It might be noted that while ad Herennium does not provide a separate discussion of these devices, these three and the preceding three could be included under the description of types of adnominatio (paronomasia) in ad Herennium IV. xxi.29). 80 Metathesis.

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while in others a syllable is to be broken apart 21 or two syllables merged into one. 22 There are fourteen metaplasmi: prosthesis, epenthesis, paragoge, aphaeresis, syncope, apocope, ectasis, systole, diaresis, episynaliphe, synaliphe, ecthlipsis, antithesis, metathesis. In only one instance (systole) is there the addition of another word. The discussion of schemata then follows. Donatus points out that schemes are of two kinds: figures of diction and figures of sense (schemata Lexeos,figurae sensum). But figures of thought apply to orators, while figures of diction pertain to grammarians. 23 And while there are many of these latter, it is necessary to take up seventeen: prolepsis, zeugma, hypozeuxis, syllepsis, anadiplosis, anaphora, epanalepsis, epizeuxis, paranomasia, schesis onamaton, parhomoeon, homoeoptoton, homoeoteleuton, polyptoton, hirmos, polysyndeton, dialyton. Tropes are defined as expressions altered from their usual significance for the sake of ornament. 24 Donatus, however, treats thirteen tropes as compared to the ten found in the Rhetorica ad Herennium. Moreover, since one of his tropes has seven species, another has five, and a third has three, it might be said that Donatus proposes almost thirty tropes. 25 A tabular comparison of the Barbarismus and Rhetorica ad Herennium IV. xiii ff. may serve to demonstrate the similarities and differences between the two works which in large measure shape the doctrine of figurae in the middle ages.26 The Barbarismus of Donatus Compared to Rhetorica ad Herennium IV Barbarismus

ad Herennium

A. Metaplasmus

A. (No equivalent section, but seven types of metaplasmi could be included under the discussion of adnominatio (paronomasia) in IV. xxi. 29.)

B. Schemata lexeos 1. Prolepsis

B. Verborum exornationes —

21

Diäresis. Episynaliphe. 23 Schemata lexeos sunt et dianoeas, id est figurae verborum et sensum. Sed schemata dianoeas at oratores pertinent, ad grammaticos lexeos. Ars maior III.5. 24 Tropus est dictio translata a propria signiiìcatione ad non propriem similitudinem ornatus necessitatisue cause. Ibid., III.6. Cf. the similar definitions in ad Herennium IV.xxx.42 and Institutio IX.i.4. 25 J. W. H. Atkins, for instance, mistakenly credits Saint Bede with following Isidore of Seville in expanding the standard list of ten tropes to twenty-eight. But Bede (De scematibus et tropis, ed. Charles Halm, Rhetores Latini minores (Lipsiae, 1863), pp. 611 ff.) is merely listing each of Donatus's species separately. Cf. Atkins, English Literary Criticism : the Medieval Phase (New York, 1952), p. 47. 26 See the tabular comparison between ad Herennium IV and various medieval 'rhetoricians* in Edmond Farai, Les arts Poetiques du XIIe et du XIIIe siecles (Paris, 1924), pp. 52-54. 22

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2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

Zeugma hypozeuxis syllepsis anadiplosis anaphora epanalepsis epizeuxis paronomasia schesis onamaton parhomoeon homoeoptoton homoeoteleuton polyptoton hirmos polysyndeton dialyton (asyndeton)

C. Tropi 1. metaphora 2. catachresis 3. metalepsis 4. metonymia 5. antonomasia 7. synecdoche 6. epitheton 8. onomatopoeia 9. periphrasis 10. hyperbaton a. hysterologia b. anastrophe c. parenthesis d. tmesis e. sychisis 11. hyperbole 12. allegoria a. ironia b. antiphrasis c. aenigma d. chaerentismos e. paroemia f. sarcasmos g. astismos

— (but cf. 19. gradatio)

17. adnominatio — (but see IV. xii. 18 : O Tite, tute ..) 15. similiter cadens 16. similiter desinens 17. adnominatio

33. dissolutum C. (Tropi) (order of tropes) 44. translatio (9) 43. abusio 38. denominatio (3) 37. pronominatio (2) 42. intellectio (7) 36. nominatio (1) 39. circumitio (4) 40. transgressio (5) — perversio

41. superlatio (6) 45. permutatio (10) — (per contrarium?) — (per contrarium)

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13. homoeosis a. icon b. parabole c. paradigma D. (schemata dianoeas excluded)

117

— — — — D. (Nineteen sententiarum exornationes)

It is apparent from such a comparison that the two sets of devices concur only in the tropi,27 only sketchily in the figurae verborum, and not at all in the figurae sententiarum. The Pseudo-Cicero, like other rhetoricians, does not discuss metaplasmi. And with the larger list of tropes in Donatus, of course, the concurrence is not exact even there. It thus seems fair to conclude that even in the realm of figures, there is a Roman grammatical tradition different in some ways from that represented by the Ciceronian rhetorical school. The Roman student of rhetoric, of course, had the advantage of a curriculum which first took him through the lore of the grammarians and then later that of the rhetoricians. As a consequence he was exposed to a rather large total number of figures. But even more important, he was exposed to the whole concept of ornatus within the framework of a system which intended the study of the figures to be a means of sharpening a student's awareness of the niceties of language. The figures are not intended to be ends in themselves.28 When the two sequential steps of the Roman educational process are separated, and their representative textbooks are studied separately in later centuries, the distinct traditions are readily recognizable. Isidore of Seville includes schemata and tropi under ars grammatica in his Etymologia sive origines (I. xxxvi-xxxvii),29 although he adds two more schemes to the Donatio list of 17; under Rhetoric, Isidore lists a mixture of metaplasmi, formulas, and figurae sententiarum.30 Cassiodorus does not treat elocutio when he discusses rhetoric in his encyclopedic Institutiones divinarum et humanarum lectionum, although he does illustrate Scriptural figures in his In psalterium expositio (Migne PL 70, col. 9-1054); while Martianus Capella uses classical examples exclusively in the treatment of figurae elocutionist1 Saint Bede (673-735) provides a link to England and ultimately to Byhrtferth. 27

The tropes are regarded as common to both poets and orators. Quintilian, Institutio I.viii.15. Quintilian, for instance, assigns them a definite place in the educational process. Ibid. I.viii.14-16 and VIII.iii.15 ff. 29 hidori hispalensis episcopi etymologarium sive originum libri XX, Rec. W. M. Lindsay (Two vols.; Oxonii e typographeo clarendoniano, 1911). 30 Isidore discusses figures under grammar (I.xxxvi-xxxvii) and then again under Rhetoric (Il.xvi) where he also introduces figures derived from Donatus. 31 Halm (Rhetores latini minores, pp. 451-492), prints excerpts from the section on Rhetoric. For text of the complete work, cf. De nuptiis philologiae et mercurii et de septem artibus liberalibus, Ed. Wilhelm Dick (Lipsiae, 1925). 28

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If his Liber de schematibus et tropis32 were to be regarded as a rhetorical work, it would be the first written in England and the first ever written by an Englishman.33 Bede defines and exemplifies 17 schemata and a total of 28 tropi, using 122 Scriptural passages for his examples. At first glance this would seem to be a typical collection of rhetorical figures of the type made familiar by Aquilus Romanus and Rutillius Lupus in the third century. But a closer inspection reveals that Bede's schemes and tropes come directly from Donatus, Barbarismus (i.e. Ars maior III). In no case is any figure given a definition which would distinguish it from that of Donatus, even in these very few cases where Bede does not present a verbatim repetition of Donatus's definition. It is scarcely necessary, therefore, to suppose that Bede drew on the rhetoricians in compiling the list. The De schematibus is apparently intended as a work on grammar. This view is strengthened by an examination of another major work of Bede, his De arte metrical This is a work of 25 short sections dealing entirely with the language or linguistic forms of poetic expression. There is no treatment of invention, and virtually no discussion of arrangement of parts of a poem. A good idea of the work's general nature might be gained from the fact that of the 25 sections, nine are devoted to types of meters, seven to syllables, and two to metaplasms. It is apparent both from their structure and from Bede's own words that the two works are to be viewed as complementary to each other. At the end of De arte metrica he announces his intention of publishing a sequel: "te solerter instruerem, cui etiam de figuris vel modis locutionum, quae a Grecis schemata vel tropi aicuntur, parvum subicere libellum non incongruum duxi." In other words, Bede seems to feel that a discussion of schemes and tropes would follow rather naturally from what he has already done. A glance at the structure of De arte metrica, in comparison to the structure of Donatus's Ars maior III, may reveal what he had in mind. 35 88

Text in Halm, Rhetores, pp. 607-18. See J. P. Elder, "Did Remigius of Auxerre Comment on Bede's De scematibus et de tropisl", Medieval Studies 9 (1947), 141-50. A translation is now available : Gussie H. Tanenhaus, "Bede's De Schematibus et Tropis — A translation", QJS 48 (1962), 237-53. Miss Tanenhaus points out that Bede copies his definition of zeugma from Cassiodorus, and is close to Isidore on epanaphora, but the general Donatic inspiration of Bede's terminology is otherwise quite clear. 33 Atkins, for instance, cannot decide its proper sphere, terming it variously 'metrical', 'literary', and 'rhetorical'. — J. W. H. Atkins, English Literary Criticism : the Medieval Phase (New York, 1943), p. 47ff. 34 Text in Keil, Grammatici, VII, 227-60. Considerable interest has been shown recently in this work. For a survey of Bede's career and writings, see M. L. W. Laistner, The Intellectual Heritage of the Early Middle Ages (Cornell University Press, 1957), pp. 93-149. On the De arte metrica, see Robert Palmer, "Bede as a Textbook Writer : A Study of His De arte metrica", Speculum 34 (1959), 573-84; Robert (?) Davies, "Bede's Early Reading", Speculum 8 (1933), 179-95; and Bronislas Gladysz, "Elements classiques et post-classiques de l'œuvre de Bede De arte metrica", Eos 34 (1933), 319-43. 35 Cf. Palmer, op. cit., where Bede's collation of sources for his section de littera is carefully analyzed. It is apparent also that Bede expects the reader to be familiar with the grammatical lore, for there is no prologue or other explanation.

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Bede, De arte metrica

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Donatus, Ars maior III

capitulum i litera ii-viii syllaba xiii-xiv synalipha, episynalipha, diaresis xv-xvi poetic license ix, x, xii, xvii-xxiii various meters xxiv rhythmus xxv tria genera poetarum

I

Vices of diction: letters and syllables (including doctrine of permitted fault) II Metaplasms III schemes IV tropes

Thus it is clear that Bede's De arte metrica represents a distillation of the standard grammatical lore on that particular subject, abstracted from its usual surroundings in an ars grammatica and broken into two separate parts. As for the significance of the two works of Bede, two items might be noted. First of all, the appearance of the works at this period demonstrates the presence of a viable grammatical tradition in Anglo-Saxon England, which is further evidenced by such later authors as Aelfric and Bryhtferth. There is no evidence of a rhetorical tradition. Second, Bede's use of Scriptural passages as examples in his De schematibus continues a practice encouraged by Augustine and taken up in part by Isidore, who mixes classical and Scriptural examples in his treatment of figures.36 Turning now to Byhrtferth, it is evident at once that the author of the Manual has looked directly to Bede's De schematibus et tropis for the 17 devices he presents as the lore of the boceras. This is not at all surprising, of course, because Byhrtferth follows Bede closely in the computistical sections of the Manual. The source cannot be a rhetorical work like the Rhetorica ad Herennium, which does not treat the same 17 schemata. Nor can it be Isidore, whose schemata are Donatio but whose examples are classical rather than Scriptural.37 For Byhrtferth takes up the 17 schemata of Bede, in the same order, and with only a few alterations in the Scriptural examples. 36

Augustine devotes a large portion of the fourth book of his De doctrina Christiana to the task of demonstrating that Scriptures contain adequate examples of all three styles described by ancient rhetoricians. See James J. Murphy, "Saint Augustine and the Debate about a Christian Rhetoric", QJS 46 (I960), 400-10. 37 For a brief survey of early English knowledge of the figures, see Jackson J. Campbell, "Knowledge of Rhetorical Figures in Anglo-Saxon England", JEGP 66 (1967), 1-20. Campbell points out that a ninth-century manuscript of the Etymologia is extant, written in Anglo-Saxon miniscule. He also notes that English writers practiced the glossing of poetry to indicate the use of figures, and points to Cassiodorus's Commentary on the Psalms as another possible source for figures in England. Campbell does not discuss Byhrtferth, however, although he treats at some length the donation of books by Bishop Leofric to the Cathedral Library at Exeter before 1072. yElfric does not discuss either rhetorical or grammatical figures in his English-Latin grammar book, although he presents brief English definitions of the terms schemata and tropi toward the end of the book as part of triginta divisiones grammaticae artis. He uses the English word hiw in relation to schemata, but not to tropi. See AZlfrics Grammatik und Glossar, hsgb. Julius Zupitza (Berlin: Wiedmannsche, 1880), p. 295.

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But Byhrtferth translates into Old English, and thus presents what is to my knowledge the first discussion of any of the figurae in the English language. The schemes are: prolepsis, zeugma, hypozeuxis, sillepsis, anadiplosis, anaphora, epanalepsis, epizeuxis, paranomasia, schesis onamaton, paromoeon, homoeoteleuton, homoeoptoton, polyptoton, hirmos, polysyndeton, and dialyton. Byhrtferth's problem, of course, is to take the Latin expressions that are a product of a thousand years of tradition, and render them for the first time into an English with a limited literary vocabulary. His success in this endeavor may be seen by a comparison of the Latin and English definitions:38 Bede 1. Prolepsis, id est praeoccupatio sive presumptio, dicitur figura, quando ea quae sequi debent ante ponuntur.

2. Zeugma, id est coniunctio, dicitur figura, quando multa pendentia aut uno verbo aut una sententia concluditur. 3. Hypozeuxis est figura superiori contraria, ubi singula verba vel sententiae singulis quibusque clausulis subiunguntur. 4. Syllepsis est, cum casus discrepantes in unam significantiam congregamus 5. Anadiplosis est congeminatio dictionis in ultima parte praecedentis versus et prima sequentis.

6. Anafora, id est relatio, cum eadem dictio bis saepiusve per principia versuum repetitur... Hanc quidam epanaforam vocant.

38

Byhrtferth 1. Prolemsis hatte pcet forme, pcet ys on Lyden anticipatio uel preocupatio uel presumptio, pcet ys on Englisc forestaeppung o59e dyrstynnys, öoane se nama byö beforan 9e sceolde beon baeftan. 2. t>aet oöer hiw ys geciged zeuma, £>aet ys gefeig on Englisc. t>is gefeg ys swyöe gelome on halgum gewritum. 3. [Hypozeuxis] ys pam foresprecenan hiwe genoh wyöertyme.

4. Silempsis ys an hiw, £>onne J>a casus on anre gesetnysse hig totwaemaö. 5. Anadiplosis ys on J^aere fiftan stowe amearcod; pcet ys on Lyden iterata dupplicatio, on Englisc geedlascend twyfealdnyss, porrne pcet uers geendaö on f>am naman J>e hit eft onfehd. 6. Anaphora ys/>«isyxte hiw \ pcet yson Lyden gecweden relatio uel repetitio, on Englisc gelomlicnys, porrne pcet uers onginò on forewerd eallswa pcet o5er... Sume uöwitan hataö £>is hiw epanaphoram, pcet ys super relationem

The text of Bede is from Halm, Rhetores latini minores, pp. 608-11.

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7. Epanalepsis est sermonis in principio versus positi in eiusdem fine repetitio.

8. Epizeuxis est eiusdem verbi in eodem versu sine aliqua dilatione geminatio... Alibi repetitio eiusdem sermonis palinlogiae optinet nomen.

121

7. Epanalemsis ys on jjaere seofeöan stowe. £>is hiw byö gehwaer funden on gewritum \>onne se cwyde byö on forewearduw pam uerse eft on aefteweardum. 8. Epizeuxis ys on £>aere cahtoöan stowe, pxt ys on Lyden superconiunctio, on Englisc getwynnys, \>orme man cwyö twa gelice word on anum uerse... On oöre wisan ys J>is hiw genemned palilögie, pcet ys on Lyden repetitio sermonis, on Englisc...

9. Paronomasia, id est denominatio, dicitur, quotiens dictio paene similis ponitur in significatione diversa, mutata videlicet littera vel syllaba... Pulchra itaque una vel addita vel mutata littera sic verborum similitudinem temperavit.

9. Paronomasia, id est denominatio on Lyden. J>is hiw byö gesett on myslicum andgite.

10. Schesis onomaton est multitudo nominum coniunctorum, diverso sono unam rem significantium.

10. Sches*is* onomaton, pœt fyyspœt hiw J)e manega namanbeoögegaderode of myslicum swege getacniaö an t>ing.

11. Parhomoeon est, cum ab isdem litteris diversa verba ponuntur. Quae nimirum figura, quia ad positionem litterarum pertinet, melius in ea lingua, qua scriptura est édita, requiritur.

11. [Paromoeon], pœt ys on Lyden propc simile, poet ys on Englisc wel gelic. J)is ys pœt teoöe hiw.

12. Homoeoteleuton, id est similis terminatio, dicitur, quotiens media et postrema versus sive sententiae simili syllaba finiuntur.

12. Omoeuteleuton, pœt ys on Lyden similis terminât*io* ; omoeu, id est similis, teleuton terminât [io]; telos Grece finis Latine. Jjast hiw byô geciged omoeuteleuton, swa oft swa se middel se ytemysta dael geendaô on gelicum stœfgefege,

13. Homoeoptoton est, cum in similes sonos exeunt dicta plurima. 14. Polyptoton est, cum diversis casibus variatur oratio.

13. Omoeuptoton, pœt byô hiw £>e on gelicum byô geendod. 14. Polyptoton ys feowerteoôe hiw, hyt ys t>us to undergitanne; nam polon multum dicitur; tot on ]?aet y s casuale.

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15. Hirmos, id est convenientia, dicitur, quando series orationis tenorem suum usque ad ultimum servat, nulla videlicet alia vel causa vel persona mutata. 16. Polysindeton est oratio multis nexa coniunctibus. 17. Dialyton vel asyndeton est figura superiori contraria, carens coniunctionibus.

15. Hyrmos ys pat fifteoöe hiw: pat ys gejswasrlic hiw... Hyrmos Grece ys gecweden on Lyden conuenientia.

16. Polysindeton ys pat gebed, J)e byö mid manegum gefegednyssum gefraetwod. 17. Dialiton — J)is hiw fiolaö J>aes stefgefeges, Jse boceras cigeaö coniunctiones.

It is evident from these comparisons that Byhrtferth had a fairly good understanding of the concepts involved in Bede's definitions. Some of his renderings are direct synonyms, as in the case of zeugma where he supplies 'joining' (gefeig) for the Latin coniunctio, or in the case of prolempsis, where the Latin is rendered as forestappung odde dyrstnnys. The English getwynnis for superconiunctio (in epizeuxis) is perhaps not as felicitous, being more broad than the Latin term it denotes. His handling of the examples also indicates a good sense of word value. In the case of paronomasia he adds examples not found in Bede, and expands on the source version of a passage from Isaiah. (Ordinarily, though, he shortens his own versions by omitting some of Bede's examples for each item.) At one point, for the figure homoeoteleuton, he uses his own name to introduce an example: swylce frater Byhrtferth pus cwede; in Bede the passage which follows is noted as coming from Ecclesiastes (6:9). His handling of examples for this figure, in fact, illustrates several things about his use of Bede. For one thing, he retains the Latin examples even while he translates the definitions into English. For another, Byhrtferth identifies Sedulius as the author of a line which in Bede is simply ascribed to 'the mode of poets'; no doubt this kind of minor detail is due to the intervention of commentators and glossators of Bede's text. But Byrthferth himself is probably responsible for cutting out Bede's references to Gregory and Jerome as users of this figure — consistently, he uses only sufficient exemplary material to illustrate meaning. Nor should it be inferred that he had access only to a shortened or mutilated text of Bede, for in several cases he skips over one or two examples to include further definitional materials found at the ends of Bede's sections. Byhrtferth's treatment of homoeoteleuton also poses a problem, however, in that he supplies an etymology of the term that is not found in Bede. Nor is it to be found in such familiar sources as Donatus, Rutilius Lupis, Aquilus Romanus, Isidore, or Martianus Capella. Some other source must therefore have been available to Byhrtferth, or at least a version of Bede's De schematibus influenced by some other source. This judgment is reinforced by the very term he uses as his common name for the 'figures'. That term is Old English hiw ('hue, color'). He begins the whole section by

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123

pointing out that there are many hiw in the bookman's art: pœt on¡>am boccrcefte fela hiw synd amearcode. (172,13). Now the ancient names for ornative devices, whether in the grammatical or in the rhetorical tradition, were terms like exornationes,figurae, and the more specialized schemata. The term 'color' (color) to designate a rhetorical or grammatical figure is a medieval term, not found in ancient treatises; to my knowledge it is first used in a rhetorical treatise by Onulf of Speyer about 1050 A.D. 39 This, of course, is on the continent and not in England. What Byhrtferth's use of the term means, then, is that he probably had access to materials separate from the grammatical tradition to which Bede's De schematibus clearly belongs. This additional source was undoubtedly continental, since there is nothing in English grammatical or rhetorical history to indicate that any English writer concerned himself with these matters between the time of Bedt and that of Byrhtferth. Since the term color first appears in relation to a rhetorical work, too, rather than a grammatical treatise, it may also indicate that Byrhtferth or his school at Ramsey possessed some as yet unidentified rhetorical commentary or treatise. The history of eleventh-century commentaries on the rhetoric of Cicero is far from clear. Some modern students go so far as to place the commentative movement entirely within the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, believing that the eleventh century did not produce any works of note. 40 But it would be unwise to mistake a lack of known manuscripts for a lack of eleventh-century activity. Byhrtferth's Manual is a case in point, with its indirect indications of some glossing or commentative practices in the late tenth or early eleventh century. At some point before the composition of the Manual in A.D. 1011, Byhrtferth's manuscript of Bede acquired several glosses, or additions, or perhaps only marginalia, which were added by a person familiar with current rhetorical developments. The use of the Latin color (OE hiw) must surely argue for a later rather than an earlier glossing, since the term color becomes fairly common throughout Europe after about 1050 but apparently is not generally used before that time. It does not seem likely that Byhrtferth himself supplied these non-Bedean elements. For one thing, he takes for granted the term hiw, while carefully explaining or synonymizing a number of other items (e.g. coniunctiones = stœfgefeges). This would seem to indicate that his manuscript carried the descriptive term colores, which he routinely renders into OE hiw. And even if he himself were making original comments or additions, how would one account for the two additional etymologies (for polyp39 Onulf von Speyer, Colores rhetorici, Ed. W. Wattenbach in Sitzungberichte der konigliche preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaft 20 (1894), 361-86. And see Luitpold Wallach, "Onulf of Speyer : A Humanist of the Eleventh Century", Medievalia et Humanística 6 (1949), 35-56. Onulf follows the order of Rhetorica ad Herennium, and declares that the work treats a part of Rhetoric (artis rhetoricae). 40 For instance, Philippe Delhaye, "L'enseignement de la philosophie morale au XII e siècle". Medieval Studies 11 (1949), 77-99. It must be noted however that Delhaye does not seem to be aware of the rhetorical commentary of Manegold of Lautenbach (c. 1030-1103). Given the ambiguity of medieval library cataloguing methods, and our own lack of research into this problem, it would be hazardous to assume too readily that we have already identified all the works of this type.

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to ton and homoeoptotori) which appear in Byrthferth and not in Bede? The Manual's definitions refer several times to additional Latin synonyms not found in Bede: itera duplicatio for anadiplosis; superconiunctio for epizeuxis-, and prope simile for paroeomon. These minor additions perhaps indicate no more than an occasional bit of marginalia, or even a suggestion on Byrhtferth's part. But his manner of writing the etymology for homoeoteleuton undoubtedly indicates a source copying rather than an original composition — which he invariably does in English. The entire etymology is kept in Latin, which is contrary to his practice elsewhere of using the English term on Lyden to introduce untranslated terms: omoeo, id est similis, teleuton terminatio, telos Grece, finis Latine. This is to be compared with other passages in his treatments of prolepsis, zeugma, anadiplosis, anafora, epizeuxis, paranomasia, parhomoeon, hirmos, and dialyton. But the most revealing difference is seen in a comparison of the etymology style to his citation of Greek and Latin terms in the figure hirmos: Hyrmos Grece ys gecweden on Lyden convenientia. Here, he uses English to explain the other two languages. This too would seem to indicate the presence of a non-Bedean source which is merely transcribed at this point rather than translated. Whatever Byrhtferth's source of additional synonyms, or of his term hiw, he is clearly following very closely the De schematibus et tropis of Bede, which in turn is solidly in the Donatic grammatical tradition. Why, then, does he stop after 17 schemata and ignore the tropi of Bede ? Despite his obvious relish for the symbolism of numbers, which occupies a good part of his fourth section, Byrhtferth seems to lack interest in broader grammatical concepts; perhaps the tropi seemed too difficult for what is after all only a digression in his compotus. He ends the discussion of the figures with the conventional statement that much more could be said about the matter. But, he adds, the boceras might object to such discoursing about their secrets (digolnyssa) (180, 17) ,and he soon returns to other types of numerical signs and symbols after noting that the boceras also have ten symbols for indicating accents. In summary, then, we see that Byhrtferth has inserted into his Manual an English translation of the first part of Bede's De schematibus et tropis. This rendering of 17 schemata or 'figures of words' thus supplies us with the first English language renderings of these devices. It would be a misnomer to term them 'rhetorical figures', however, for Bede is clearly in the grammatical tradition which goes back directly to the Ars Maior III (Barbarismus) of the fourth century grammarian Aelius Donatus. On the other hand Byrhtferth apparently had access to some later rhetorical source, or gloss on Bede, since his use of the Old English term hiw ( = Latin color) indicates some source (probably continental) of the late tenth or early eleventh century. This combination of grammatical lore and later, more rhetorical gloss thus provides an interesting insight into one particular teaching situation in England of the early eleventh century.

DOROTHY WHITELOCK

THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE ACCOUNT OF KING EDGAR'S ESTABLISHMENT OF MONASTERIES1

In the British Museum Cotton MS. Faustina A. x, immediately after a text of the Old English translation of the Rule of St.-Benedict, there occurs a unique Old English work describing the revival of monasticism in England in the tenth century. It is written in the same hand as the translation of the Rule, a hand dated by Dr. Ker as belonging to the first half of the twelfth century 2 ; the language, however, is good West Saxon and could belong to the tenth century. This short text was published by Oswald Cockayne in 18663 and he attributed its composition to Athelwold, bishop of Winchester, in which view he was followed by Arnold Schroer in 18884.1 included a translation of this text as No. 238 in my English Historical Documents c. 500-1042 in 1955s, and in my introduction to it I briefly defended its attribution to Athelwold against the criticism of this view by J. Armitage Robinson in 1923.6 I have since come across information which has a bearing on this question and justifies a full reexamination of it. The Old English rendering of the Rule of St.-Benedict is accepted as the work of Athelwold, on the evidence of the Liber Eliensis, Book II, c. 37, which says that King Edgar and his wife ¿Elfthryth gave to Athelwold the estate of Sudbourne, Suffolk, on condition that he would translate the Rule of St.-Benedict into English, and that Athelwold then gave the estate to Ely. The Ely historian had access to early

1 I am indebted to Dom Thomas Symons for calling my attention to the correspondence between this text and the New Minster charter, which caused me to reconsider the whole matter; also to Dr. Peter Clemoes for reading and criticising this article. The abbreviation BCS is used for W. de G. Birch, Cartularium Saxonicum. 2 Catalogue of Manuscripts containing Anglo-Saxon, No. 154. 3 Leechdoms, Wortcunning and Starcraft of Early England, III, pp. 432-444, henceforward cited as C, quoted by page and line. 4 Die angelsächsischen Prosabearbeitungen der Benedictinerregel (= Bibliothek der angelsächsischen Prosa, II), reprinted in 1964 with an appendix by H. Gneuss. s I omitted the section on the conversion of the English, as of little importance to the historian, and commenced after the lacuna mentioned below. 8 The Times of St. Dunstan, pp. 159-168.

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reliable documents relating to the lands of the monastery, and he had seen a chirograph dealing with this transaction. 7 We need first to consider what the text on the establishment of monasteries consists of. It begins on f. 148, not quite at the beginning of a line, after four blank lines. Armitage Robinson took this as a sign that the scribe had a mutilated exemplar8, but Dr. Ker suggests tentatively that the space was left for a heading. The first sentence begins imperfectly:...geardmidpcem leomanpas halgan geleafan mildheortlice weardgefylled (C. 432. 8 f.). After the first leaf, either one leaf or three leaves are missing. As we shall see, it is possible to form some idea of what the missing section contained. The beginning describes the conversion of the English through St.-Gregory, referring briefly to the story of the English youths in Rome, to Gregory's desire to convert the English himself, to his prevention by the Romans and to his sending of Augustine.9 The author then says that Gregory by his messengers instructed Augustine to build monasteries and to teach the servants of God the same practice as that which the Apostles observed in the beginning of Christianity, and he quotes, as did Gregory in his answer to the first of Augustine's queries, Acts iv. 32.10 He claims that this practice lasted long in the monasteries of England. The word 'but' follows, and then comes the lacuna mentioned above, obviously just as the author is about to describe a decline. After the gap, the text resumes in the middle of a sentence with (un)derstody wiste getreowne dyhtnere his halegra cyricena ar he gewurpe mannum geswutelod. he him forpy mcenigfealde y genihtsume cehta y mihta gesealde (C. 434.21-23) '... understood and knew (him) a true steward of his holy churches before he was revealed to men. For that reason he gave to him manifold and plentiful possessions and power.' Cockayne assumed that the subject of understod y wiste is Edgar, and the getreowne dyhtnere Dunstan; but in my opinion a better sense is given if the subject is taken to be God, and the dyhtnere to be Edgar, for the rest of the section is concerned with God's granting of power to Edgar: 'Nor did he delay long, nor withhold power. It was not long before his brother (i.e. King Eadwig) ended the time of this transitory life.' We are then told of the accession and successful rule of Edgar. We can guess that the missing portion first described the decay of monasticism. From later references in the text we can see also that it must have related an incident earlier in Edgar's life. That Edgar was mentioned in the lacuna is proved by his being called 'the aforesaid king' the first time he is mentioned in the extant text 7

See Liber Eliensis, ed. E. O. Blake, p. I l l , and pp. ix-xi of my foreword to this edition. Op. cit., p. 158. Robinson was unaware that a later lacuna is to be attributed to the loss of one or more leaves in Faustina A.x, and not to a faulty exemplar. 9 All this is from Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, Book II, c. 1. Dr. Ker has recovered some additions made in faded ink, which expand the text with short extracts from /Elfric's homily on St. Gregory (Catholic Homilies II, pp. 116-132). Interesting in themselves, they are irrelevant to our present subject. 10 Historia Ecclesiastica, Book I, c. 27. 8

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(C. 436.2). Later, we are told that 'as soon as he was elected to his kingdom, he was very mindful of the promise which he had made as an atheling in his youth to God and St.-Mary, when the abbot invited him to the monastery.' 11 No abbot has been mentioned previously in the extant text, so this must refer to something in the gap, and there can be little doubt that the abbot meant is Athelwold, whose monastery, Abingdon, was dedicated to St.-Mary. The text continues: 'As we have said above, admonished by that promise he began in the beginning of his reign to be very intent on advancing that place just as he had promised in his childhood.' We learn of his endowing it richly, of his ordering a glorious minster12 to be built within three years and to be consecrated to St.-Mary, and of his assembling there a great number of monks. With this reference to the influence of an abbot on the young Edgar one should first compare a passage near the beginning of the prologue to the Regularis Concordia, the document drawn up in Edgar's reign, between 965 and 975, to establish uniformity of monastic practices in English monasteries, a document believed to have been drafted by Athelwold.13 It runs: Gloriosus etenim Eadgar... ab ineunte suae pueritiae aetate licet, uti ipsa solet aetas, diuersis uteretur moribus, attamen respectu diuino attactus, abbate quodam assiduo monente ac regiam catholicae fidei uiam demonstrante, coepit magnopere Deum timere, diligere ac uenerari.u The text goes on to describe Edgar's restoration of monasteries. Dom Thomas Symons, in his note on this passage, discusses whether the abbot is Dunstan (as the late Edmund Bishop thought) or Athelwold, which, if the latter drew up the work, is suggested by the anonymous terms of the reference. This seems likely, and it could refer to the same incident implied in the Old English text we are studying. In itself, of course, it does not prove that Athelwold was the author of this, for the incident may have been well known. Of greater interest, however, is a passage in William of Malmesbury's Life of St.-Dunstan,15 for it tells of a promise by the young Edgar to restore a specific ruined monastery, and William gives as his authority the prologue to an English version of the Rule of St.-Benedict. Speaking of Edgar, he says: D e n i q u e , ut in cujusdam p r o l o g o legi, qui regulam Benedicti A n g l i c o enucleabat f u s o , d u m q u a d a m die ludibundus sagittis exerceret animum, animadvertit procul asdificia magna, sed situ et ruinis deformia; consuluit ergo socios quid esset, indaginem veri sollicita mente rimatus: dictum est a b eis fuisse ibi monasterium olim magnificum, nunc, vel bellica hostium clade vel tyrannica regum destructum, raro incoli habitatore. Turn ille levatis in altum oculis huic se v o t o fecit o b n o x i u m , ut si u n q u a m regnaret, et istud et alia in statum 11

C. 438.3-7: to ¡>a ungereclican uncysta (p. 19, 11. 5-7). From this instance alone, the adjective ungereclic entered the lexicon. The word seemed reasonable indeed, for the adverb ungereclice is fairly common. The Latin source for this homily, the second homily of forty by Pope Gregory the Great on the gospeh, shows that the Old English ungereclican corresponds with the Latin tumultus.10 Furthermore, both the Bosworth-Toller Dictionary and Supplement refer to instances where ungerec glosses tumultus. Thus, even though there are no other known occurrences of ungereclic as an adjective, a good case can be made for the word. A close examination of the original manuscript, however, shows that Morris's c is clearly a t (fol. 9r7). Perhaps the scribe erred and wrote t when he meant c; the letters are similar in structure and could easily be confused. If ungeretlican can make sense, however, no such assumption of error is necessary. An immediate problem is that the manuscript's ungeretlican, like Morris's ungereclican, is unique. The manuscript reading also has analogues, however. Geunretan is a known verb meaning 'to make sad' or 'to trouble'; its opposite, geretan, means 'to restore' or 'torefresh'. If one can allow the miscellaneous ordering of prefixes, i.e., un- before ge-, and the usual formation of an adjective by the addition of -lie plus ending, the extant ungeretlican emerges as a viable adjective meaning 'troublous' or 'dolorous'; and ungeretlican is quite a satisfactory translation for the tumultus in the source. Since the seemingly normal ungereclic does not, in fact, survive, it should be deleted from the lexicon; since the sensible ungeretlic does indeed survive, it should be added. (3) Later in this same homily for Quinquagesima, a discussion of the Incarnation is developed. Morris reads : Hwast hsefde seo godcunde fmrh {ja menniscan nemne buton pat heo mihte beon acenned, & wacian, & arisan, & faran of stowe to ofrerre; bonne m[ar]{)on {were godcundnesse nsenig onwendnesse on carcerne waes of Jjaere menniscan gecynde, na las of b®re godcundan; miht he bib & wesende, & aeghwaer ondweard, & aslce stowe he gefylb & ufan ofer-wryhb, & & bib ece (p. 19,11. 21-27). 10

Patrologia Latina,

LXXVI, cols. 1081-1086; see par. 3.

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The confessedly troubled m[ar]pon cannot be documented elsewhere and Morris wisely did not attempt to define it; he did, however, enter it in his glossary (p. 341). The reconstruction attempts to deal with a portion of fol. 9v which is badly defaced by a stain. While ultra-violet light is no help in verifying or correcting Morris's guess, strong white light and magnification reveal that the initial letter is not m, but rt; the second is e, followed by bi. The passage, clearly, is ponne ne bip on pare.11 The sentence forms a straightforward and simple response to the initial question, and the passage can be repunctuated as follows : Hw»t haefde seo godcunde {)urh {m menniscan nemne buton past heo mihte beon acenned, 7 wacian, 7 arisan, 7 faran of stowe to oberre? bonne ne bib on b®re godcundnesse naenig onwendnesse; The next part of the sentence, then, is grammatically independent: on carcerne waes of b»re menniscan gecynde, nalas of godcundan miht; he biö a wesende, 7 aeghwaer ow/weard... (4) In the third homily for Rogationtide (Morris X) the advice is given, as transcribed by Morris: Foröon we habbaf) nedbearfe {)£et we to lange ne fylgeon unwit-weorcum, ac we sceolan us geearnian ba siblecan waera Godes & manna... (p. I l l , 11. 1-3). From this sentence alone, the plausible word unwitweorc, 'evil work', entered the lexicon, even though the first syllable was questioned by Clark Hall. 12 He suspected the word might have been intended to be inwitweorc, 'foolish work', although neither word was elsewhere documented. In 1918 J. H. Kern reviewed the passage and recommended no change from Morris's reading, finding unwitweorc as sensible a word as inwitweorc.13 A good look at the manuscript, however, reveals that Morris was wrong and that Clark Hall's guess was more right than he knew. The word is not an error for inwitweorc; it is inwitweorc and the word should enter the dictionaries; unwitweorc should be deleted. (5) In the Ascensiontide homily (Morris XI) the homilist discusses the visibility of Jesus's footprints after his departure into the heavens: 7 swa nu get on b®re eorban ba stoplas onabrycte syndon ob bysne andweardan daeg... (fol. 78v5-7). 11

Without consulting the manuscript, Max Förster guessed that this might be the true reading; see his "Zu den Blickling Homilies", Archiv, XCI (1893), 191; for two earlier questionings of the Morris reconstruction, see Zupitza, op. cit., p. 120, and F. Holthausen, "Beiträge zur Erklärung und Textkritik Alt- und Mittelenglischer Denkmäler. I. 1. The Blickling Homilies", Englische Studien, XIV (1890), 393. 18 Morris's text at this point is followed without comment by James W. Bright in his Anglo-Saxon Reader (New York, 1891). 13 Kern, op. cit., p. 290.

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Although Morris glossed onaprycte as 'impressed, imprinted' and described it as a past participle in the nominative plural, the word has not been made a part of any dictionary nor has it received any commentary. Morris's description seems fully reasonable; dryccan is a well documented word meaning 'to press, trample on, push'. The word here recorded must have been a part of *onapryccan, a weak verb meaning 'impress' or 'imprint'. The Bosworth-Toller Supplement records onpryccan, 'to impress', from the questionable single occurrence of onpricced, transcribed in Cockayne's The Shrine, p. 81, 1. 4. The Blickling entry alone establishes the word; the variants, onpryccan and onapryccan, confirm each other. (6) About midway through the homily on St. Michael (Morris XVII) the meteorological accompaniments to a great fight between heathens and Christians are described : & unhierlic storm of daem munte astag, & mid fystro-genipum ¡5aes muntes cnoll eall oferswogen waes (Morris p. 203, 11. 7-9). Morris glosses pystro-genipum and its occurrence as pystro-genipo later in this same homily (p. 209, 1. 33) as 'mists of darkness'. The definition is etymologically sensible and contextually felicitous. For some strange reason, however, this word failed to be picked up by any dictionary. Perhaps the word was not regarded as a genuine compound because it translates two words from the Latin source; the source sentence reads: et caligo tenebrosa totum montis cacumen obduxitM The Latin source has been reorganized at many points in the Old English; one change in translation makes no special point. Perhaps the word was not seen as a unit because pystro- is the last word on fol. 122v and -genipum the first on fol. 123r; but word division is a generally ruleless phenomenon. From all grammatical and formal tests, however, pystrogenipum seems clearly to be a genuine compound noun; pystro- bears no clear case ending and the dative plural suffix on -genip- answers the requirements of the prepositional phrase. The hyphen, then, is unnecessary; and the noun pystrogenip should enter the lexicon as 'dark mist'.

14

Líber de apparitione Sancii Michaelis in Monte Gargano in G. Waitz, ed., Monumenta Germaniae Histórica, Scriptores Rerum Langobardicarum et Italicarum (Hanover, 1878), p. 542, 1. 13.

RENÉ DEROLEZ

SOME NOTES ON THE LIBER SCINTILLA RUM AND ITS OLD ENGLISH GLOSS (B.M., Ms. Royal 7 C iv)

The Liber Scintillarum, a collection of moral maxims compiled by Defensor of Ligugé about 700, must have been one of the texts most widely read in monastic circles to the very end of the Middle Ages. More than 350 surviving manuscripts bear witness to that popularity.1 Its claim on the attention of English scholars rests almost exclusively on one manuscript, now in the British Museum, in which every single word (with very few exceptions) of the Latin text has been given an interlinear Old English translation. The present notes are an attempt to throw some light on the Old English glosses which have attracted little attention since they were first printed in full, as long ago as 1889.2 Not all manuscripts with Old English glosses are as pleasant to the eye, or offer as few serious difficulties to the editor, as Mr. Royal 7 C iv, the Latin text of which, at least, "is admirably written in an English hand" of the first half of the 11th century.3 At present it consists of 107 folios, the first 100 containing the Liber Scintillarum proper, the remainder a treatise entitled Hic pauca incipiunt de uitiis et peccatis (beginning fol. 100v, 1. 17 ff.). The description of the manuscript in Neil Ker's Catalogue calls for only a few additions. The manuscript has suffered a number of mutilations resulting in the loss of fairly large sections of the text : one folio between the present fols. 7 and 8 (corresponding to Liber Scintillarum III, 16 et omnis homo — Ill, 43 sed habere se putat ; Rhodes p. 15);4 a whole quire between fols. 39 and 1

H.-M. Rochais, "Defensoriana. Archéologie du 'Liber scintillarum'," Sacris erudiri, IX (1957), 199-264. The list of early library catalogues mentioning copies of the Lib. Scint. (p. 250 ff.) contains only addenda to the list in the author's first survey : "Les manuscrits du 'liber scintillarum'," Scriptorium, IV (1950), 294-309 (esp. 303 ff.). The latest statement of the author's views will be found in his edition of the normalized text (with a French translation) in Defensor de Ligugé. Livre d'étincelles. Sources chrétiennes 77, 86 (Paris, 1961-1962). 2 E. W. Rhodes, Defensor's Liber Scintillarum with an Interlinear Anglo-Saxon Version Made Early in the Eleventh Century. (= Early English Text Society, Original Series 93) (London, 1889). Quoted by page and line (Latin and O.E. being counted as one). 3 N. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts containing Anglo-Saxon. (Oxford, 1957), no. 256, p. 323 f. 4 All references to the Latin text of the Liber Scintillarum in general (as distinct from references to the text of Royal MS. 7 C iv, or to Rhodes's edition) are to the edition by Dom H.-M. Rochais,

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40 ( = Lib. Scint. XVIII, 8 inuocaueris — XXI, 11 Qui tenet; Rhodes p. 86); four folios between fols. 65 and 66 ( = Lib. Scint. XXXIX, 3 in agnitione — XLII, 10 numquam est uacua ; Rhodes p. 142); and again a whole quire between fols. 91 and 92 ( = Lib. Scint. LXV1, 12 [...] tribue hereditatem tuam — LXXV, 5 sententia gregi timenda est; Rhodes p. 202). Moreover, the first folio of the first quire has disappeared, and hence it is impossible to decide with certainty whether the manuscript ever began with one of the prologues, and the list of 81 chapters, found in other manuscripts. From the arrangement of the text on fol. 1R, and especially from the absence of the chapter heading De caritate and from the large capitals introducing the first sententia (DOM/Nt/S DICIT / IN EWANGELIO) it would appear that Royal Ms. 7 C iv was itself copied from a manuscript that had lost its initial leaves. Finally, the treatise De vitiis et peccatis, which has also been provided with a continuous interlinear gloss, does not seem to be complete either. Although the text ends at the bottom of fol. 106R and both fol. 106V and fol. 107 remain blank, apart from a few glosses and various probationes pennae,5 it lacks the last three chapters found in other manuscripts of De vitiis et peccatis. There is no explicit, nor does the manuscript present any clue as to why the treatise was not completed. There are other sporadic mutilations. The fine white parchment seems to have been so much appreciated that the outer and lower margins of many leaves were cut off, often with some letters of the text (e.g. fol. 2 R , 1. 9 f. to pol[e]lbyrdnysse : ad to/lerantiam ; 1. 14 f. byd g[e]/lufod: diligi/tur).6 On a number of pages, too, the a of the Latin digraph ae (rarely o in oe) has been erased some time after the O.E. glosses had been written; sometimes in the operation parts of the O.E. gloss above or below the ae have been erased as well (e.g. fol. 5 B , 1. 11 patienti[a]e ; below the erased a O.E. gode has lost the major part of its g and nearly all of its o : 1. 12 a deo : fram [go]de). But as a rule the text is easy to read and only very rarely can there be any doubt as to either the Latin or the O.E. In quires 4 and 13 the order of the folios has been disarranged; notes in Junius's hand show that this had happened in the latter before excerpts were copied in Bodleian Ms. Junius 40; the correct order is given in Ker's description. There is only one other manuscript of the Liber Scintillarum with Old English glosses, viz. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, Ms. 190, from which Ker printed

Defensoris Locogiacensis Monachi Liber Scintillarum. Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina CXVII (Turnhout, 1957), quoted by chapter and sententia. I have, however, adopted the orthography of the Royal manuscript. 5 The glosses in the left top corner of fol. 107B are partly illegible owing to creases in the parchment, but there is at least one that has its counterpart among the Liber Scintillarum glosses : castigo : gewilde, cp. 163/14 castigati: gewylde. 6 Letters that have been lost, or are only partly legible, will be indicated by square brackets. Rhodes, o.c., 3/8 prints polibyrdnysse, but what remains visible in the manuscript points to pol[e]- ; cp. polebyrde 13/11 (not polo-) and 13/13. Rhodes does indicate the loss of e in g[e\lufode, but not in pol[e]byrdnysse.

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three glosses in his Catalogue? This is not a complete text, only a collection of "excerptiones ex libro scintillarum", and its glosses are, of course, too few to enable us to establish any kind of relationship with those in the Royal manuscript, except in a negative sense: the two manuscripts have only one of the three glosses (22/17 perspicuus : purhbeorht) in common. 8 Though printed eight times between 1544 and 1560, and accessible (in a poor text, to be sure) in Migne's Patrologia, there was no satisfactory edition of the Liber Scintillarum until ten years ago. To Dom Henri-Marie Rochais, working in the very place where Defensor produced his Liber Scintillarum, we owe not only an entirely new edition of the text, but also a series of illuminating studies on its sources and its background, its place in mediaeval literature and its later history.9 Written in the faulty Merovingian Latin of the late seventh century, and setting out on its course with an author's name and a place of origin that would soon mean very little to scribes copying it all over Western Europe, it underwent many metamorphoses, not the least being the revision of the text according to the stricter rules of Latin grammar prevalent from the 9th century onwards. Dom Rochais, faced with an enormous number of copies, wisely decided to present a text as close as possible to the original (for which he relied on half a dozen manuscripts older than the 9th century); nor could he, in his critical apparatus, give more than the variants found in those manuscripts. As a result, however, it is not possible at present to assign to the Latin text of Royal 7 C. iv a place in the widely ramified textual tradition of the Liber Scintillarum. With the help of Dom Rochais's list of manuscripts, however, it is possible to give some indications as to its place in the British tradition of the text. It appears that there are three strains in that tradition. One ascribes the compilation to Cassiodorus and is represented by ten manuscripts, none of which, however, seems to be older than the 12th century.10 Another, represented by half a dozen or so manuscripts, puts chapter 22 (De perseverantia) at the end, and is often also characterized — especially in Britain — by the addition of a chapter De his qui a Deo mundi amore repelluntur between chapters 50 and 51 (one late manuscript of this group names Cassiodorus as the author, thus linking up with the first group). 11 This strain is the only one that has a clear connexion with the 7

Ker, Catalogue, no. 45 A, p. 70 f. In her edition of The Homilies of Wulfstan (Oxford, 1957), p. 340, Miss Dorothy Bethurum points to the presence in this same manuscript (pp. 95-96) of " a passage on the subject [life's shortness] made up largely of sentences from Defensor's Liber Scintillarum". The first sentence quoted there is Rochais LXXX, 11 {De brevitate huius vitae). 8 The other two are 61/14 huic saeculo ... discretus : CCCC 190 fram pysre worulde ... ascyred I asyndrod, Roy. 7 C iv pissere worulde ... todceled. 9 See the bibliography at the end of "Defensoriana", note 1. 10 Rochais, "Defensoriana", nos. 39, 114, 199, 204, 205, 206, 209, 210, 214, 232 (attribution in a later hand). One late manuscript now in Brussels mentions not only Cassiodorus as the author, but also Prepositinus and Bede (Rochais no. 29). In passing we may note that the majority of the numerous manuscripts assigning the authorship to Bede originated on the continent. 11 Rochais, "Defensoriana", nos. 103, 117, 214 (i.e. Bodleian, Rawlinson C. 59, s. XV, which also has the attribution to Cassiodorus. cp. note 9), 241, 309 (St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, MS. 426, s. ix), 330, 339.

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Continent: its earliest representative is a 9th-century St. Gallen manuscript. The third strain, finally, again represented by six manuscripts (and a 17th century copy by Junius of one of them, viz. the one under discussion) is anonymous, but is characterized by the addition of the treatise De vitiis et peccatis ; its oldest representative is precisely Royal 7 C. iv.12 Dom Rochais found no evidence of the Liber Scintillarum in Britain before the 11th century, though the text may have been in English hands at a much earlier date: Dom Rochais claims that Alcuin used it extensively for his Liber de virtutibus et vitiis.13 Returning now to the Royal manuscript and its interlinear gloss, I can only agree with Rhodes that "the chief feature of the latter (i.e. the interlinear gloss) is its remarkable accuracy; there are very few mistakes, and these only trifling ones". 14 He might also have mentioned the richness of its vocabulary, which deserves closer study by lexicologists, the more so as the contents of the work — over 2000 biblical and patristic quotations — may be expected to present many points of contact with other O.E. texts. Unfortunately, the only complete edition of the text must have proved unreliable from the very beginning, and the absence of any identification of the quotations was not likely to encourage further research either. The latter problem has now largely been solved, but the former still awaits a solution. Kluge was the first to edit part of the O.E. gloss to the Liber Scintillarum. He seems not to have thought a complete edition worthwhile, and examined the text mainly with an eye to grammatical and lexicographic information. 15 In all he collected some 500 items, which he arranged in alphabetical order. Limited though the usefulness of such an edition may be, it is at least free from some of the misreadings that disfigure Rhodes's work, e.g. p. 37 dreccincge ( = MS.; Rhodes 217/6 dreccunge); floggettan ( = MS.; Rhodes 205/18 flogettan); fyrian ( = MS.; Rhodes 124/5 scyrian ; correct form in the glossary, p. 241); p. 41 twuwa ( = MS.; Rhodes 247 twuwu), etc., whilst only very rarely adding one of its own (p. 42, widerwerdnysseun for -nyssum). Contrary to Kluge's expectations, it took only four years for a complete edition of the whole gloss to appear. What makes Rhodes's edition so difficult to use is not so much the number of mistakes — which is large indeed — as their unpredictability. This is not the place to examine how and why an edition based on a transcript 12

Rochais, "Defensoriana", nos. 82, 109, 111, 113, 197, 213, i.e. apart from the four manuscripts mentioned by Ker, Catalogue, p. 323 (Royal 6 D. v, Royal 7 C. iv, Royal 8 A. xxi, and Bodleian, Rawlinson C.23) also Hereford Cathedral, P.3.1, and Bodleian, Bodley 443. Both these manuscripts are dated s. XIII by Rochais ; his no. 207 is Junius's collection of excerpts in Bodleian, Junius 40 ("Excerpta de libro scintillarum") with gaps corresponding to the lacunae in Royal 7 C. iv. 13 H.-M. Rochais, " L e 'Liber de virtutibus et vitiis' d'Alcuin. Note pour l'étude des sources", Revue Mabillon, XLI (1951), 77-86. But cf. L. Wallach, "Alcuin on Virtues and Vices", The Harvard Theological Review, XLVIII (1955), 175-195 (esp. 180 if.). 14 Rhodes, o.c., p. xiii ; this point had already been made by Junius in the preface to his Gothic dictionary (1665). 15 F. Kluge, " Z u m altenglischen sprachschatz. Excerpte aus der interlinearversion von Beds's Liber Scintillarum (Cod. Reg. 7 C iv)", Englische Studien, I X (1886), 35-42.

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made by Skeat, and "then, or afterwards when in proof, carefully compared with the MS." (Rhodes, p. xii) should have turned out to be well below the standards of the Early English Text Society. We might, however, try to see where Rhodes failed, and what will be the problems of a future editor. Reference has already been made to the state of the manuscript and to the difficulties that may arise from the various mutilations which it has suffered. Before we can discuss further details, a brief account of the hands of the glosses must be given. Ker distinguishes two layers: (a) the Latin glosses — which are rather more numerous than Ker's "a few" would suggest: some 450 in all — and a number of O.E. glosses, viz. those to the chapter headings and some scattered ones esp. on fols. 24 v , 25 R _ V , 31 v ; and (b) the rest of the O.E. glosses. The differences between the two scribes lie not only in the handwriting (Ker mentions two forms of g as especially characteristic). There are also linguistic differences: 13/16 nihstan (: proximi) in the title of ch. 3, as against nehst- in the text of that chapter (14/5; 15/9; 16/7,17; 17/11; cp. also 147/8 nihstan in the title of ch. 45, and nehst- 148/1,2,3,6; etc.); 41/4 dcedbotnysse (: paenitentia) in the heading of ch. 9, but dcedbote in the text (41/5,9; 46/6); 155/16 be almessan (: de elemosina, ch. 49), but celmyssan 155/17; 156/1,5,6, etc., and also 51/1. The form hlehter 171/1 {be hlehtre : de risu, ch. 55) turns up again 171/6, but otherwise hleahter seems to be the rule (171/15; 172/16; 173/6), and the same holds for 173/7 wurpscip {be wurpscipe : de honore, ch. 56), again found at 174/9 (and 111/13) though wyrpscip seems to be far more frequent (174/8, and also 22/16; 78/16; 108/19; 125/5; 180/5; 181/12 [where Rhodes prints wurp-], 16, 19, 20; etc.). The Latin glosses belong mainly to four categories: words supplied for the understanding of the text (3/16 amore flectendum : gl. est ; 5/13 non separat : gl. homines ; 8/4 habentes : gl. sit is), often introduced by scilicet (7/5; 9/10; etc.); indications of the grammatical structure (esp. abl = ablativus, e.g. 8/12); synonyms (9/2 in discutiendis : in discernendis ; often introduced by id est, e.g. 11/16 ducit : id est reputet); and, finally, textual variants (e.g. 1/7 diligite : vel diligentes). A number of these Latin glosses, especially of the first type, have themselves been glossed, for instance 174/17 quomodo : gl. fecerunt : hu dydon. Occasionally the Latin gloss, rather than the word in the text, has been translated in O.E.: 82/8 altum : id est superbe received the gloss ofermod, which hardly does justice to the meaning of alius in this passage (quod hominibus altum est abominatio est apud Deum) ; cf. also 83/2 apostatare : gl. recedere : framgewitan. In his introduction (p. xv) Rhodes points out a couple of glosses that seem to have been influenced by the form of their Latin lemma. Here are a few more instances: 84/6 g for c in ongnawen (: agnosci) ; 113/6 wcestm, with an ending -um erased (: fructum) ; 119/12 crceftis (— artis) ; 152/12 u for w in ueras (: uiri). On the whole scribal errors among the glosses are few and fairly easy to spot: e.g. 9/12 falliere for folclicre (:publicam) ; 11/17 wed for wend (: arbitratur) ; 19/5 undefehd for underfehd (: suscipit) ; 80/8 unhawendlic for unhalwendlic ; 84/15 on eowlum for on neowlum (: in imo), with which compare leahter for hleahter after

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purh 171/12 (: per risum) ; 86/1 beearnum for bearnum (: filiis) ; 90/16 ofrrad for offrad (: immolat) ; 110/4 eafodlic for earfodlic ; 122/10 heahnynysse for heahnysse (: oilmen), and similarly 60/11 geswincfulnyss nys (: laboriosum non est) for geswincful nyj; 1 6 173/6 onbrydnyss for onbryrdnyss, and blega for plega (: iocus) ; 180/16 wasm for wcestm ; 199/9 bbiss for bliss ; 204/2 arwupud for arwurpud. Comparison with Rhodes's edition will show that some of these errors have been silently emended, whilst no account was taken of some corrections made in the manuscript, e.g. 88/12 innemynstre (: intimq) where the third n has been expunged; 182/1 wealdt (: imperat) where d seems to be cancelled; and especially 18/3 wyln[ ], with n expunged and / written above it (read wylle : fonte), but which got into Rhodes's glossary as wyln, 'a fountain, a stream'. Through failing to take account of the state of the manuscript, Rhodes presents the reader with a fairly large number of readings that are doubtful, to say the least. Silent emendations occur frequently, and will mostly be found to be justified, e.g. 12/11 geswencd, where the manuscript has geswen[\, the final letters having been erased with the a of uit[a]e above it, and similarly 18/13 ofermod[um] (-um cut away), 34/1 st[ran]gustre, 35/4 [u]pparcerd, 42/2 bear[n], 42/10 mi[ht]. Occasionally, however, Rhodes's text is clearly misleading. Thus 42/15 he prints prefinu : forestiht. Both words occur at the end of a line on a page whose margin has been curtailed. Rochais's edition has prefinitam (IX, 16) defining sententiam, and close inspection of the Royal manuscript shows prefini[t], with part of the final t, and whatever letters may have followed, cut away. It is probable that forestiht, too, lost its ending and should be completed to forestihte or forestihtode. At 62/11 Rhodes has no gloss for curis, but a c and part of an a remain visible at the edge of the page, and point to a gloss carum ; and without warning the reader, he prints 129/1 yrpad (: colit), the initial letter of which must again have been cut away (read wyrpad). Where erasures of a or o in ae, oe may have resulted in damage to the glosses, we are similarly left in the dark, either because such erasures are not systematically indicated in the edition (e.g. 7/15 Qu[a]e ; 7/16 h[a]ec ; 9/13 iracundi[a]e, all printed with ae ; or 11/9 obc[a]ecat, 12/17 l[a]edas, 13/8 [a]equanimiter, etc., all printed with e only), or because Rhodes silently completes the glosses, introducing forms such as anigum for [ce\nigum (12/19), or fader for f[ce]der (13/11). Again, there is no evidence supporting 206/7 dysignysse (: audaciam), where dyrs[...]gnysse must no doubt be completed to dyrstignysse ; or 224/4 tosolpene (: dissoluta), where tos[l.]pene points to toslopene. From what has been said it will be clear that Rhodes's brief survey of the "phonetic or grammatical peculiarities" (p. xiii if.) needs very careful checking. What he suggests to be "errors made by the scribe" are as often as not found in his edition only, and not in the manuscript: under a for £ he lists gemane, but the text has gemcene ; (e for ea) 12/16 ongeen : read ongean ; (o for u) 8/7 folfremed: read fulfremed; (o for a) 18/18 onmode : read anmode (: unanimes) ; (ea for ce) 56/14 16

The entry in BTS p. 423 s.v. geswincfulnys may consequently have to be cancelled.

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bearnó : read bcernó ; (ea for se) 40/2 deadbote : read dadbote, and similarly 41/9, 42/10, 43/4; (ea for eo) 136/4 leagan : read leoganP It is not possible here to d o more than warn the reader that these are only a few of the dozens of errors in the edition. 1 8 The grammatical appreciation of the text is further impeded by the numerous faulty endings, such as a for e (4/3 maro), a for u (57/7 ceafa), e for a (46/18 dcede), e for « (51/9 faestene, MS. /cestenti), e for / (163/4 forpe), an for urn (161/5 lichaman), um for an (9/18 ealdum), ne for re (144/11 sylfne), es for re (152/15 nanes); re for e (23/11 sopre), addition or omission of s (57/16 godspelles ; 28/15 gecorene), etc. and by the rough treatment of prefixes (ge- omitted: 11/13 nihtsumnesse, 65/6 fean ; or added: 15/14 gelufod ; 151/2 gedemed, or substituted for be- : 103/19 getceht, etc.), pronouns (39/11 peccata sua : synna his, read heora ; 117/17 debemus : ge scylon, read we), verb forms (13/1 onginnan, read ongunnan ; 76/14 uppsprangen : read uppsprungen ; 107/1 druncan, read drincan ; 139/18 awyrig, read awyrigde), etc.19 If an edition of the O.E. glosses to the Liber Scintillarum does not, at first sight, seem to present great difficulties, it is possible that a closer study of their relation to the Latin text and, indeed, of the Latin text itself, will raise new problems. 2 0 Rhodes noted in passing that, though there were only few mistakes in the interlinear version, it did contain this strange one : 97/16 sicut nec auris esca nec guttur uerba cognoscit : swa swa ne gold mettas ne protu wordu oncncewd. One could hardly expect to find a variant aurum among Rochais's readings (XXIV, 48); the sentence, here 17

The only other instance of èà for eo quoted by Rhodes, 116/1 lareawum, is in the gloss to the title of ch. 32, written by the first hand. 18 As could be expected from the above sample, almost any possible confusion of vowels will be found in the edition : a for w (173/5 nanne) ; ce for a (54/5 peer, 81/2 todcele) ; a for ea (176/17 behaldari) ; ce for e (105/13 gehwtede) ; e for « (13/7 steppe) ; ea for ce (31/3 gehealp) ; ea for e (148/14 ealles) ; e for eo (34/3 gemeriari), not counting such minor matters as y for i (and vice versa), ae for a, and, with the consonants, p for 6 or 6 for p. Instances with d for 6, or the reverse, will be found 8/7 gepylò (read gepyld), 86/17 leofad (for leofaò), etc., as well as confusion of c and e in 121/15 gehwyle for gehwylc, etc. 19 I cannot even begin to list misreadings and misprints that do not fall under any of the categories mentioned above. Here are just a few samples : 3/18 spennysse for grennysse (noted in BTS p. 485 s.v.), 20/1 gronunge for gnornunge ; 21/15flcescessarleasan forflcescespas arleasan ; 27/7 heofenrices for heofenlices rices ; 41/17 awendne for awendendne ; 42/17 awinsud for apinsud (also 47/3, 60/6) ; 64/18 gewyrf for gehwyrf ; 69/17 syxagfeald for syxtigfeald ; 78/12 cynga for cyninga ; 130/16 gepriò for gewriò ; 196/9 wunigende for runigende ; 205/18 flogettan for floggettan ; 217/2 idelstum for idelum ; 227/20 cearum for ceapum. Occasionally glosses have been added (232/9 hyre sylfe : sylfe is not in the manuscript), but more often they have been omitted ; once a whole line has dropped out : 105/9 after diffundet : ... ongytt : Nullum secretum est ubi regnai ebrietas : nan digle is par par ricsaò druncennyss (Rochais XXVIII, 5) ; so also 64/9 inlendiscnysse, marginal gloss to peregrinationis ; 131/1 surgere : arisen (in the left margin), surgere being taken up from nititur : id est surgere conatur ; 208/2 eornostlice (: ergo), besides 79/4 redeleas (: citatus) already noted by Ker, and the numerous instances of scede (: dixit), drihten (: Dominus), etc. in the sentences introducing the quotations. Fortunately, the misreadings have as a rule been kept out of BT and BTS. 20 After all that has been said about the interlinear gloss, it will be understood that Rhodes's Latin text, too, should only be used with great caution. His statement on the accentuation e.g. of that text is again substantially correct (p. xii : "When they [i.e. the Latin accents] are used they are used correctly"), but his edition contradicts it all too often.

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ascribed to Gregory, has not been identified either. Did the text originally read os, or does the mistake lie in esca ? So, too, unless 139/12 emerguntur : beod besencte is simply due to carelessness on the part of the glossator, it may be worth examining the textual history of the passage : Rochais's text (XXXVIII, 26) reads et nostri mutui (var. nostro, motui) mergunt, so that merguntur becomes a possible textual variant at some later stage. The case of 169/17 effundas : bewera seems less simple. The form effundas is in the oldest manuscripts (Rochais LIV, 4), but so is offendas, and from the latter to defendas (cp. 104/7 defendit : bewerap) would be only one step. But if some such explanation is accepted, it seems to imply that the gloss was copied from a manuscript with the reading defendas. Some such hypothesis might also explain 215/12 ducunt : beod geladde — but in this case there is nothing in Rochais to suggest ducuntur, and the carelessness of the glossator might again be invoked, as it might at 30/6, where hie me et sabbato was glossed her oppe on restendcege before being corrected to hieme et sabbato. In the case of a text (Matt, xxiv, 20) well known to any reader, such a discrepancy can hardly be conclusive. But there are other indications of our manuscript having been confronted with another copy of the Latin text, with or without glosses: at 39/19 iudicet was corrected to iudicat, but again the O.E. (: deme) was left unchanged (Rochais VIII, 32 has only iudicat, but there is a form iudicetur in the same line); and 103/15 fauemus has a expunged and replaced by o, but we gestrangiad could practically render either. The situation is again different 69/15 where libidinis was corrected to libidini by erasure of the final s (prompted in the first place by the following word, subiacuit ?) after which the glossator added the ending -bus between the lines, thus causing the Latin to agree with his dative plural gcelsum ; and 185/6 where despectus may have been corrected to despectius before receiving the gloss forsewenlicur. In the first of these instances Rochais (XIII, 7) has libidinem in the text, and apparently in four of his five old copies, only one manuscript reading libidini ; in the second he has only the comparative. But these and other changes (e.g. 112/2 pior > prior : cerre, Rochais XXX, 18 peior ; 115/1 propter uos > proteruos : for eow, Rochais XXXI, 25 propteruos [jic], var. proteruos) could only be studied with a much fuller critical apparatus — which may not be available so soon. 21 Tempting though it would be to pursue this course, and to trace readings of our text to the manuscripts characterized as 'insular' or even 'Anglo-Saxon' by Rochais, the very richness and complexity of its textual history would require as a starting point for such a study a much vaster collection of variants than will be found in Rochais's edition.22 There is, however, another angle from which the study of the O.E. gloss (and the Latin text) may be pursued without such a laborious preparation, 21 Note that in the last instance the accentuation has been adapted to the change : propter uds > proteruos, a detail of some importance for establishing the relative dates of the various 'layers' of work on the manuscript. 22 The fact that a Munich manuscript of the late 8th century (Rochais, " D e f e n s o r i a n a " , p. 233, no. 159 bis = Clm. 6433) was completely written by an Anglo-Saxon scribe (who calls himself Peregrinus) is a further indication of early Anglo-Saxon interest in Defensor's w o r k , cp. note 13

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viz. that of the relationship between the gloss and other O.E. texts, and, in a more general sense, of the Liber Scintillarum as a commonplace book, a sort of dictionary of quotations useful in a variety of contexts. As a compendium of biblical and patristic quotations it is unique, and it is not the least of Dom Rochais' merits that he succeeded in identifying the vast majority of the quotations, even when e.g. some of those ascribed to Augustine proved to be from Caesarius. Of the 1150 biblical quotations, about 350 are from the New Testament (ca. 130 from the Gospels, ca. 160 from St. Paul, etc.), and about 800 from the Old Testament, mainly from Proverbs and Ecclesiasticus (ca. 750). Of the 1800 patristic quotations, some 700 fall to Isidore (esp. his Sententiae), about 300 to Gregory, 200 each to Jerome and Augustine, etc. 23 Almost 60 years ago Max Forster identified the source of a homily in Cotton MS. Tiberius A iii (fol. 105v-106), Be purhwununge, as Defensor's ch. 22 De perseverantia;2i between our gloss and this homily, however, he found no verbal agreements close enough to point to a direct relationship between the two, though the two manuscripts in question both come from Christ Church, Canterbury. Some other comparisons may prove more fruitful, if only for the study of the O.E. vocabulary. The same scholar traced back parts of Vercelli Homily III to Alcuin's Liber de virtutibus et vitiis, but since the latter work received little attention from Anglo-Saxon glossators,25 the obvious place to look for O.E. parallels will be the gloss to a closely related work, the Liber Scintillarum. Forster's discussion of the initial lines of the homily provides a first point of contact. Examining whether the rendering of caritas is a compound, sodlufu, as suggested by Clark Hall,26 or adj. sod + subst. lufu, he decides in favour of the latter because, in his text, the group seo sode lufu also occurs. He does mention the spelling sodlufu (one word) in two manuscripts, but seems to attach more importance to the other evidence. The situation is perhaps slightly more complicated. The gloss to the first chapter of the Liber Scintillarum presents us with a complete inflection of this rendering of caritas : 1/8 sod lufu, 1/6 seo sope lufu (: caritas) ; 1/1 sope lufe, 2/2 pa sopan lufe (: caritatem) ; 1/9 on sopre lufe (: in caritate) ; 2/4 sopre lufe full (: caritate plenus), but also 1/14 sopre sop lufu (: verq and Bernhard Bischoff, Die südostdeutschen Schreibschulen und Bibliotheken in der Karolingerzeit, I. Sammlung bibliothekswissenschaftlicher Arbeiten 49 (Leipzig, 1940), p. 75. 23 The unidentified quotations, which still numbered 240 in Rochais's 1957 edition, had been reduced to 200 by the time of his edition of 1961-62. As could be expected, they are mainly sentences ascribed to Augustine, Gregory, Jerome and Isidore. 24 Max Förster, "Altenglische Predigtquellen II", Archiv vol. 122 (1909), 246-262 (esp. 259-261). Ker, Catalogue, p. 246 describes this homily as "A translation of Alcuin, D e virtutibus et vitiis" but, as we know (note 13), there is no fundamental contradiction between these different attributions. 25 M. Förster, Die Vercelli-Homilien. (Hamburg, 1932 ; repr. Darmstadt, 1964), p. 53 ff. Ker, Catalogue, p. 268, knows only of 30 interlinear glosses to Alcuin's De virtutibus et vitiis in Cotton Ms. Vespasian D. vi. Fragments of a translation survive in Ker's nos. 18, 186, 209, and 394. 24 Förster, Vercelli-Homilien, p. 54, note l a ; John R. Clark Hall, A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, 4th ed. with a Supplement by Herbert D. Meritt (Cambridge, 1962), p. 304 s.v. soplufu (but cp. Supplement, s.v. : "two words?").

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caritatis), where, unless we assume that the scribe was less careful here than elsewhere in the chapter, we have indeed an instance of the compound. One will, of course, always have to take into account that the gloss is bound to be more literal, less free than a homiletic text (cp. the two renderings of 1 John iv, 16 Deus caritas est, etc. : in Verc. Horn. Ill, this becomes God is seo sope lufu, and se pe wunap on dare sodan lufan, he wunap on Gode, and God wunad on him, in the Lib. Scint. gloss God sod lufu ys, and se pe wunap on sopre lufe, on Gode he wunat and God on him).27 Again, when Forster points to his homilist's lack of understanding for the original meaning of Latin pensare, which is rendered by pencan though meaning 'to weigh', the Lib. Scint. gloss seems to suggest that the use of a loanword was, at least for some scholars, the only solution; cp. Verc. Horn. Ill, 63 f. (Forster, p. 59): Forfiam God ne sec5 na swa swi3e J)sera tida lenge, ac he f>enc3 hu mycel sio lufu sie J)aere syferlicnesse on Jjaere heortan J)aes hreowsiendan, and Lib. Scint. 42/15 if. na sodlice tide l[en]ge asmea5 God ac mid willan syfernysse bot byd apinsud (Non enim temporis lo[n]gitudinem requirit Deus sed affectu sinceritatis paenitudo pensatur; cp. also 60/6 pensat: apinsaQ).28 Further soundings of this sort will no doubt throw light on other problems. To facilitate such studies, however, editors of O.E. texts should make it a habit to give indexes of sources. John Pope's recent edition of homilies by jElfric sets an example in this respect.29

27

Forster, Vercelli-Homilien, p. 55. In both instances, and in his glossary, Rhodes prints awins-, cp. note 19. 29 John C. Pope, Homilies by Mfric. Vol. I (Early English Text Society 259). (London, etc., 1967), p. 150-177.

28

NEIL KER

A.S. NAPIER, 1853-1916

I So far as I know, Farnell's in the Oxford Magazine is the only obituary of Napier, and the only appreciations of any length are Farnell's in An Oxonian looks back and Wyld's in his inaugural lecture.1 One might expect to find an obituary in the Proceedings of the British Academy, but in those days some members of the Academy were remembered in this way and some were not: Napier, like Edward Moore who died in the same year and Sir John Rh^s who died in 1915, was not. One goes with some confidence to the Dictionary of National Biography, obituaries of 1912-21, only to draw blank. Sweet (1845-1912) is there and Murray (1837-1915) and Skeat (1835-1912), but not Napier. The omission is perhaps because Napier's memorials are less obvious than their's: Sweet has his work as a phonetician, Murray his Dictionary, and Skeat his editions of Piers Plowman and Chaucer. Napier's are substantial memorials, none the less, the quality of what he published, his eminence as a philologist, and his work for the Oxford Final Honour School of English. In attempting to give some facts about Napier fifty years after he died I have been much helped by letters and papers in the English Faculty Library (EFL), the Bodleian Library (BL), and the Oxford English Dictionary Archive (OEDA). These are no substitute for personal recollections. I have been fortunate to have had letters about Napier from three people who knew him well, although, it should be remembered, at a time when he was not as young as he once was and after the great years of Old English Glosses and the fight for the Honour School: from Kenneth Sisam, who came to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar in 1910 and was Napier's assistant from January 1912; from Mrs. Somerset, formerly Miss Rubie Warner, who attended his lectures from 1905; and from Mr. Harold Napier who was twenty-six when his father died. Dr. Sisam sent me extensive notes in February and April 1966 and in July 1967. Mrs. Somerset wrote down her recollections for me in February 1966. I had letters from Mr. Harold Napier in May 1966 and later. I am very much in their debt. I owe special thanks also to Miss Margaret Weedon and her staff in the 1

Oxford Magazine, 19 May 1916, p. 313. L. R. Farnell, An Oxonian looks back (1934), pp. 50-4. "English Philology in English Universities" in Oxford Lectures on University Studies, 1906-21.

A. S. NAPIER,

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English Faculty Library, to Mr. R. W. Burchfield and his secretary, Mrs. Blackler, at 40 Walton Crescent, Oxford, the present headquarters of the Oxford English Dictionary, and to Mr. D. G. Vaisey, the Deputy Keeper of the University Archives. II Arthur Sampson Napier was born on 30 August 1853, the eldest of the nine children of George William Napier of Merchistoun, Alderley Edge, Cheshire, a house named after the ancestral Edinburgh home of the Napiers of Merchiston, but not because of any established connection with them. His mother was the daughter of Sampson Bridgwood of Lightwood Lodge, near Longton, Staffordshire, china and earthenware manufacturer. George Napier was in the cotton-spinning firm of Napier and Goodair of Preston and Manchester, and died in 1884. He was a book-collector of some importance. That his son, throughout and beyond his boyhood, had a family home full of black-letter books may have been influential.2 Napier was at school at Rugby (Arnold's house) and went from there in 1871 to Owens College, Manchester, with an Entrance Exhibition to read chemistry, a subject likely to be useful to one intended for business. A business career for him was still the intention when he left Owens College in 1873, with a first in the London University B. Sc.: Henry Roscoe wrote to him on 5 December to say he was sorry that the claims of business would prevent a promising pupil doing research.3 In fact he was awarded a science scholarship at Exeter College, Oxford, spent 1874-7 there reading chemistry, and got a first in the Final Honour School of Natural Science in 1877. At Manchester and Oxford he learned German — Hamann says in his testimonial that he taught him for four years — and he visited Germany and had a term of the academic year 1876/7 in Göttingen "to pursue chemical experiments". He also learned Norwegian and went for walks in Norway in vacation. At Oxford he went to Max Müller's lectures and to Earle's. As a result, instead of being in business, he was in the spring of 1878 a lector in the English department of the University of Berlin under the great Anglo-Saxon scholar, Julius Zupitza. In 1879 he married Mary, daughter of James Hervey, J. P., The Whins, Alderley Edge. In 1882 the dissertation on which he had been working under Zupitza was accepted by the University of Göttingen for the degree of Ph. D. Its publication brought him an immediate reputation in Germany and with Zupitza's backing he was made an 'ausserordentlicher Professor' of English at Göttingen. The first three of his five children were bom in this German period, which lasted until the summer of 1885. In the spring of that year (7 March), the newly created "Merton Professorship of English Language and Literature" at Oxford was advertised. Zupitza urged Napier to go in for it. Eighteen professors, all but three of them continental, one ex-professor (Stubbs), Furnivall, Hamann — formerly Taylorian 4

The books, 2396 lots, were sold at Sotheby's, 22-29 March 1886. There is a good deal about them in the obituary of George Napier on the back page of the Alderley and Wilmslow Advertiser, 19 Dec. 1884 (copy in EFL). * Letter in EFL.

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Teacher of German at Oxford —, Augustus Jessopp, and four fellows of Exeter College, Boase, Bywater, Farnell and Tozer, wrote testimonials in his favour. 4 Probably Zupitza and Stubbs carried most weight. Jessopp put the matter conveniently in a few words: "If the new Chair is intended to be a Chair of English Philology, first and foremost", then Napier's claims are preeminent. On 27 May the electors 5 were unanimous and on 10 June Napier wrote from Göttingen accepting the appointment. EFL has much material from April, May, and June 1885. There are about 100 letters to Napier and drafts in his hand of letters he wrote to the authorities at Göttingen and at Oxford, and to his supporters, Furnivall and Zupitza. There are also drafts of what must have been difficult letters to Sweet. Sweet had written twice to Napier, 5 June and 9 June, and was to write again 15 June, in reply to the letter Napier wrote to him on 12 June. I quote from the letters of 9 June and 15 June because of what Sweet has to say about Napier and about himself : the former covers much the same ground as his letter to the Academy (I, 422) written on the previous day. (9 June)... I had the greatest respect for your character and your career, your accuracy and zeal, but was sorry to see you following the lead of Zupitza so blindly. I am certain that if you had been able to work with Sievers and Kluge instead of the Berlin clique, you would have had a far more indépendant and original development, and would have identified yourself with the party of progress. It also made a painful impression on me to see you ignoring the work of the English phonetic and modern language school, which is now spreading its influence all over Germany. When I knew you better, I saw that it would be a great gain if we could both work together at the same university. My idea was that I should take English generally, but concentrating myself more on the living language and its dialects, phonetics, syntax, and style, while you took Old English, text-criticism, Comparative Teutonic philology, etc. We should thus supplement each others defects. You are more accurate than I am, and have had a proper training in German methods, while I am wider and more original, though less accurate. If I had got the Merton prof., I could have guaranteed your succeeding Earle; we should then have been perfectly well suited. The Merton prof, was my last chance. You probably know that all my efforts to get a footing in England have failed hitherto. I had the Baltimore professorship offered me in America, and my name was sent up for the Berlin one (through Lepsius's intervention) before Zupitza got it. I refused both because I was determined to stick to England. The next chance I get may come too late, as in a few years I shall have lost the necessary elasticity. This I regret because I am sure I could train up a school of workers who would develope a new science of language not a mere copy of Germany. I am quite unsettled. I may throw up English altogether. ... Yours in haste Henry Sweet® 4

5

Testimonials in Favour of Arthur S. Napier (Göttingen, 1885), 3 2 + 2 pp., 8°.

Two Oxford professors, Freeman (Modern History) and Max Müller (Comparative Philology), E. A. Bond (Librarian of the British Museum), E. W. B. Nicholson (Bodley's Librarian), and G. C. Brodrick (Warden of Merton College). 6 Both the original and Napier's copy of this letter are in EFL.

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(15 June) ... What I really regretted in my letter was the reference to Zupitza, which was altogether superfluous ... Thank you for your expressions of sympathy. I am afraid I do not deserve them. I have myself to blame for not making friends at Oxford, and for my criticisms of and attacks on the institutions of the place. I am really no worse off than before. I am glad I went in for the professorship, for the result has opened my eyes to my own position. I am personally pleased that you have got it, and altho I think you have not QUITE earned so commanding a position, I hope and believe that a few years of the leisure which you are sure to enjoy will enable you to complete your training and put yourself above all criticism. Again congratulating you, and wishing you success I remain Yours very truly Henry Sweet In his last sentence Sweet was not telling Napier anything he did not know. After being offered the chair and while hesitating whether to accept it he paid a brief visit to Oxford and jotted down the pros and cons on a sheet of Merton College writing paper now in EFL. 7 Contra die Lit. von Ch. ab nicht vertreten. Style of lecturing so different. What they want in Oxf. more brilliancy and originality. I am not begabt enough. Have settled down and have got into the German way of lecturing, have conquered my ground. My philological knowledge not good enough. Pro Time enough in Oxford to learn. My line really Anglo-Sax. Pro Never such another chance from pecuniary point of view. If I throw it up, I shall neither have a chance in Oxf. nor in England again and must make up my mind to live quietly there (?). When once settled much more leisure. In the rest of the present section I have included a few facts and dates f r o m Napier's all but thirty years at Oxford. His professional activities, campaigning for English as a n H o n o u r School subject and organizing the School when it existed, lecturing, examining, supervising, giving a private class, helping scholars, young and old, in need of advice in his special field of competence — and writing are discussed in [IV-XI]. I have put writing last, because I think that that is where Napier would have put it. He was not a scholar with great schemes of research for ever distracted by professorial duties. His duties came first and research second. Napier rented at first a house in Pullen's Lane, at the top of Headington Hill, named Torbrex. It was one of the first houses there. His youngest son, Harold, was born at Torbrex in 1890. In the same year he moved to Southfield House, Cowley, 7

Evidence for this visit comes from the envelopes of several letters in EFL. Napier was expected at Dawlish, where his mother was living, on 3 June, according to a letter written by his grandfather, John Napier, on that day.

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where his daughter, Hilda Mary, was born in 1891. In a letter written on 1 January 1892 Furnivall says that he was 'greatly taken' with Southfield. The final move was in 1892, to the slope below Torbrex, where a new house was built down the slope of the hill, so as to interfere as little as possible with the view of towers and spires from Torbrex. Sisam describes it as "a big 'Victorian' house with good lawns and gardens and ample service".8 From this house, as Mrs. Somerset recollects, Napier walked each lecture day to the examination schools in High Street. Summer holidays were on the Welsh coast, first at Nevin and later at Saundersfoot in Pembrokeshire: Mr. Harold Napier remembers the annual exodus with "our domestic staff of 4 " in a Great Western Railway saloon. Napier visited Vercelli in 1887, a 'busman's holiday'. He was in Tyrol with Joseph Wright one summer and in Norway for some weeks in 1891. He retained his membership of the Norwegian Tourist-Club until 1900 but Mr. Harold Napier does not remembei his going to Norway. Napier applied for the degree of D. Litt.Oxon in 1901. The application was referred to Skeat and Murray and approved on 10 June. He was elected to the British Academy in 1904. He was given honorary degrees at Manchester and at Groningen, and was a Corresponding member of the Gottingen Akademie der Wissenschaften and an Honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was a member of the Philological Society from 1886 and its president in 1892.® Furnivall wrote to Napier in 1896 asking about the health of his wife and children: "no need to ask about you: you're tough and strong". Farnell, who knew him well, is probably nearer the mark in saying that he was never robust. His ill health became obvious before the 1914-18 war and it seems likely that the comparative lack of achievement in the last ten years of his life was because his energy and capacity for work were not what they had been. The political situation did not help him. Mr. Harold Napier remembers that for some years before August 1914 "my father was very bitterly opposed to the Germans". Farnell makes the same point, and so does Sisam, who tells me that after the war broke o u t ' 'he never seemed to be the same man' Napier died on 10 May 1916. Immediately afterwards Joseph Wright organized "The Napier Memorial Library Fund" to buy his working library "for the benefit of undergraduates and registered women students reading for the English School, and of others interested in the subject". The money was subscribed in a fortnight and the English Faculty Library is the happy possessor of a very fine basic collection of books on teutonic philology and especially Old and Middle English. Many of them have side-notes in Napier's neat hand. 8

It is now a Students' Residence of the College of Technology in Oxford. Other societies of which he was a member for longer or shorter periods are the Chaucer Society, the Deutsche Shakespeare-Gesellschaft, the Early English Text Society (he took over his father's subscription in 1884), the English Dialect Society, the Modern Language Association, the New Palaeographical Society, the Numismatic Society, the Samfund til udgivelse af gammel nordisk Litteratur, the Spenser Society, and the Yorkshire Dialect Society : the receipts of payments to these societies are in EFL. 9

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III In one of his letters to me about Napier Sisam wrote: " A few impressions. He was gentle in his manner, hating quarrels and controversy; very modest about his remarkably wide range of competence: science, Greek and Latin, French of all periods, Norse, especially Norwegian dialects; Germanic philology; and a complete mastery of written and spoken German. None of this was 'on show'." In another he said "If I had to choose one word to describe his manners and temper I should choose 'gentle'." Mrs. Somerset remembers him as a "handsome well built man with no superfluous flesh" and as "a shy man and much happier with few people". "After the 1914-18 war broke out and I went to Belfast I spent even more time in the Napiers' house during the vacations. We used to work from about 9.30 to 12 and then go for a walk and it was during those walks that I heard much of his early life.... He went among other lectures in various subjects to one by Max Miiller (?) on Comparative Philology and realized this was to be his future work. He went every vacation to see Zupitza in Berlin.... He often told me he did not think examination papers were a real test of a person's ability and he would like it to have been possible to offer a thesis for the B.A. degree. He was very much averse to the D.Ph. degree.... He thought Doctors should be people of mature age who had had time to do work of real originality and able to put the books on the table for the Assessors."

She remembers his "delicious cigars" and the smell of them in his study and the thrillers there in "huge cupboards" underneath the open shelves — "he considered that books ought to be allowed to breathe" —; walks in Merton garden and, if it was the season, strawberries and cream at the Cadena — 'I don't caie if they are bad for rheumatism, they don't last long enough to do much harm'; excursions by hired car with his wife and friends to wellknown places of interest — "one realized then that his interests were really wider than one had supposed. His chief friend among the Dons was Mr. W. H. Stevenson of St. John's, and 1 remember when I said Place-Names always interested me he warned me that he only knew one man eligible to deal with them, and he was an historian as well as a good philologist, this was Mr. Stevenson." Of his contemporaries, Henry Bradley and, it seems, L. R. Farnell 10 were also Napier's close friends in Oxford and letters show that he was on very friendly terms with Skeat and Furnivall both of whom were older. On this subject Sisam wrote to me: "... besides Bradley, I think chiefly of W. H. Stevenson, who found Napier the ideal collaborator because he kept so closely to his own special field. Napier entertained external examiners at his Headington house... From him I got an impression of Skeat, who could not be idle. He would sit in the evening knitting, with a text before him and a bag for slips which he made when anything he thought (worth) collecting occurred in his reading. W. P. Ker whom he admired greatly, also used to stay with him, and again he was an ideal collaborator and co-examiner." 10

Cf. Farnell's appreciations of Napiet referred to above, p. 152.

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Mrs. Somerset's anecdote about place-names draws attention to one of Napier's strongest characteristics, his refusal to go beyond his own province. This came from his training in Germany, where in Sisam's words the "system of research was based on strict delimitation of fields of competence and a free collaboration among advanced scholars... Napier applied this principle rigorously: he would not express judgements or opinions unless he felt specially qualified. It was not a question of whether or not he was interested, or even moderately competent. It was sometimes a question of etiquette — he would not intrude on the official province of some other scholar." Sisam continues: "This has a bearing on the common belief that he cared nothing for literature. It is true that 1 never heard him, in lectures or in classes, touch upon literary criticism (in the sense 'aesthetic criticism'). In classes, if a question of comparative literature came up, he would say 'You should ask W. P. Ker'... If a question concerned the philosophy of literary criticism he would say 'That is rather Andrew Bradley's province'. On the other side, when he lectured on texts, he chose literary texts: Beowulf, Gawain, Pearl... It was the same in his classes: he chose e.g. Exodus, Andreas, the less known Anglo-Saxon Elegiac pieces; in Middle English Havelok, etc.; and he distinguished sharply texts of purely linguistic interest, which, if my memory serves, he dealt with only in lectures on historical grammar. I am not saying that he was himself interested in aesthetic criticism: I think he distrusted it; certainly he did not think his own views on it had any special value or authority. He thought that his business in lectures was to explain the meaning of the text, and he left the 'appreciation' to the students, or to their teachers on the literary side. You will remember that he had a high opinion of de Selincourt. I think he never opposed any improvement on the literary side of English." One can add de Selincourt's11 and Gerould's to this weighty testimony. Neither was a philologist but both of them owed much to Napier. Gerould wrote of Napier in the preface to his Saints' Legends, with some exaggeration, perhaps — he was writing only two months after Napier died: "To him I owe my first impulse to the study of saints' legends, and to him I had hoped to submit this volume in all humility. The field was his more than any other man's, just as a searching knowledge of the earlier periods of our literature in general was more completely his than any other scholar's." 12 I do not know if this opinion can be reconciled with Raleigh's, that in Oxford in Napier's time there had been "no competent teaching in the first eight centuries of English literature".13 IV CAMPAIGNING FOR ENGLISH AS AN HONOUR SCHOOL SUBJECT

Napier took no part in the paper war on the teaching of English in Universities 11 12 13

See p. 164. G. H. Gerould, Saints' Legends (1916), p. ix. The preface is dated "Princeton, July, 1916". Quoted by D. J. Palmer, The Rise of English Studies (1965), pp. 145-6.

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which began in 1885,14 but, inevitably, he was involved almost at once in university politics on the question of whether there should be a Final Honour School of Modern Languages: English was to be one branch of this. His career in Oxford, politically and administratively, is in four parts, because of the way things developed from 1885 to 1887, from 1887 to 1894, from 1894 to 1904, and from 1904 onwards. The events in the three crucial years were the rejection of the statute in favour of a School of Modern Languages on 1 Nov. 1887, the passing of the statute in favour of setting up a Final Honour School of English in June 1894, and Walter Raleigh's arrival as Professor of English Literature in 1904. The progress towards an Honour School and the early years of the School are the subject of several chapters in a recent book by D. J. Palmer,15 in which Napier is a "dim figure". 16 Palmei only refers to him once in fact before 1894 in connection with the School, as a signatory to the memorial of 1891. This does not square with what contemporaries said of Napier. According to Farnell's obituary notice, "he set himself whole-heartedly to the task of his life, the introduction and organization of the scientific study of English in Oxford. He knew our University well enough to realize that his sole chance of success was the creation of an Honours School ... with the help of powerful friends 17 he pulled it through at last". 18 A writer (female, I think) in The Friend (8 December 1894, p. 799) makes the same point in announcing the establishment of the School, "after a hard struggle maintained on the one side by the Professor of English Language and Literature, with an indomitable perseverance worthy of the cause and on the other with a prejudice and blindness...". 19 Furnivall wrote a characteristic postcard to Napier on 20 June 1894, the day after the vote in Convocation: "I congratulate you heartily. You've won the match off your own bat... What a splendid answer and rebuke you've given to the geese who hisst at your appointment." 20 These opinions may be over simple, but they show at least that what one would think true a priori is likely to be so, that Napier was a leading figure m the creation of the School. Fortunately there is material among Napier's papers in the English Faculty Library to show his part in the first years. Mr. Palmer did not have access to it. The protagonists were Napier and Frederick York Powell, then lecturer in law at Christ Church, a man of wide interests. They were working on a scheme in March 1886, Napier's second term in Oxford. 21 It took form as a printed memorial of "considerations in favour of establishing a final School of Modern Language and Literature", of which

14

He followed it with the aid of cuttings (now in EFL) supplied by an agency, Romeike's. D. J. Palmer, The Rise of English Studies (1965). See especially pp. 95-140. 16 The words are Sisam's in a review of Palmer in Review of English Studies, New Series, XVIII (1967), 231. 17 See p. 161, footnote 29. 18 Loc. cit. 19 Cutting in EFL. 20 Letter in EFL. 21 Letter from Powell to Napier in EFL. 15

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proof copies survive, corrected by Powell — in his invariable violet ink — and by Napier. Napier sent the memorial to probable well wishers on 2 November. Letters to him in reply from F. Armitage, H. R. Bramley, Ingram Bywater, Robinson Ellis, A. J. Evans, W. W. Jackson, W. P. Ker, W. M. Lindsay, R. L. Nettleship, Charles Plummer, R. L. Poole, D. G. Ritchie, Arthur Sidgwick, T. C. Snow, Whitley Stokes, and H. F. Tozer express willingness and (Jackson22 and Plummer only) unwillingness to sign it. Six of the letters ai rived after 13 November when the memorial, with twenty-three signatures appended, was sent to the Hebdomadal Council. A committee of Council reported on it on 27 November : Napier made a copy of the report which was favourable on the main point. On 1 December Napier and Powell put out over their names a printed letter to the Provost of Oriel (D. B. Monro) on the subject of the proposed School : one of the fifteen copies in EFL is emended by Powell.23 A committee on the school of Modern Languages, eight persons, Napier and Powell among them, was set up and reported on 12 February 1887. Napier and Powell issued a final paper "in favour of establishing" a Final School of Modern Languages in April of this year. It bears no date, but the copy for the press in EFL is stamped "Received at the University Press 21 April 1887". This copy is in part in Napier's hand, in part in Powell's, and in part cuttings from the printed memorial of 2 November 1886, of which the whole is, in fact, a reworking. The statute for the School was introduced to Congregation by Monro on 3 May 1887, but in a final vote on 1 November it did not secure a majority: the voting was 92 for and 92 against. The events from 1 Nov. 1887 to June 1894 are not so well represented in EFL. Henry Nettleship revived the rejected scheme in a pamphlet, The Study of Modem European Languages and Literature, written before 17 December 1887, when Churton Collins replied to it in the Academy. Napier revived it in a brief letter to the Hebdomadal Council written in May 1888, asking that a committee of Council be appointed to consider the whole question. It bore nine signatures, besides his own. EFL has Napier's draft and also four copies of the letter, all in his hand, signed by Earle, Mayhew, Max Miiller and Henry Nettleship respectively: the others who signed were Lindsay, Macdonell, Murray, Powell, and Rhys. Jackson wrote to Napier on 5 June to say that council had deferred consideration of the letter until next term "in the interests of obstruction". After this there was no forward move for three years. In this interval Napier and his supporters in 1888 had a change of mind. In June 1891 all of them, except Murray, are among 108 members of Congregation who signed a memorial in favour of an Honour School of English.24 Council considered it (Oct. 26) and asked for a "fuller scheme". Naoier replied on 14 Novem22

Jackson approved, but felt that he could not sign as he was a member of Council. To secure Monro's interest was important. A piece of paper in EFL, presumably from this period, bears a list of names in Napier's hand and against most of them either " N " or " F Y P " . Against Monro's is "call on together". 24 Printed by Palmer, pp. 107-8, and, with the signatures, in Hebdomadal Council Papers, vol. 29. 23

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