The Power Of Words: Essays In Lexicography, Lexicology And Semantics. In Honour Of Christian J. Kay 9042021217, 9789042021211

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The Power of Words

COSTERUS NEW SERIES 163 Series Editors: C.C. Barfoot, Theo D’haen and Erik Kooper

Christian Kay

The Power of Words Essays in Lexicography, Lexicology and Semantics In Honour of Christian J. Kay

Edited by Graham D. Caie, Carole Hough and Irené Wotherspoon

Amsterdam-New York, NY 2006

Cover photo: University of Glasgow Cover design: Aart Jan Bergshoeff The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents - Requirements for permanence”. ISBN-10: 90-420-2121-7 ISBN-13: 978-90-420-2121-1 ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2006 Printed in the Netherlands

Acknowledgements The editors would like to thank Mrs Flora Edmonds and Mr Ian Hamilton of the Department of English Language, University of Glasgow for their invaluable assistance and technical support. Ms Marieke Schilling of Rodopi has been most helpful, as has Professor Erik Kooper of the University of Utrecht and the series editor.

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List of Contents Introduction

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Old English colour lexemes used of textiles in Anglo-Saxon England C. P. Biggam

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Slang terms for money: a historical thesaurus Julie Coleman

23

‘Huv a wee seat, hen’: evaluative terms in Scots Fiona Douglas and John Corbett

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Lexical splits and mergers: some difficult cases for the OED Philip Durkin

57

Of fæderan and eamas: avuncularity in Old English Andreas Fischer

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$ho:fian{*}/vK2: a LAEME-based lexical study Roger Lass and Margaret Laing

79

The rhyme potential of Scots Caroline Macafee

91

Of politeness and people Terttu Nevalainen and Heli Tissari

103

ME douten and dreden Michiko Ogura

117

What did Anglo-Saxon seals seal when? Jane Roberts

131

Notes on the medical vocabulary of John Keats Jeremy J. Smith

159

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‘Tell her to shut her moof’: the role of the lexicon in TH-fronting in Glaswegian Jane Stuart-Smith and Claire Timmins

171

Forces of change: are social and moral attitudes legible in this Historical Thesaurus classification? Louise Sylvester

185

Key word in context: semantic and pragmatic meaning of humour Irma Taavitsainen

209

Lexicographical Lyrics James McGonigal

221

Notes on the Contributors

225

Tabula Gratulatoria

Introduction This volume is in honour of Christian Kay, Professor of English Language at the University of Glasgow since 1996. Christian’s career at the university goes back to 1969, when she was appointed a part-time research assistant on the Historical Thesaurus of English (HTE), an ambitious project initiated by Professor Michael Samuels. From 1969 Christian worked also as a part-time editor working on the Collins dictionaries, and the two posts started her on a research career in lexicography and lexicology. Christian’s love of collating and categorising things goes back to her Edinburgh childhood, when she was never happier than when putting buttons or sweets into piles according to colour, shape or size. Her schooling took place at the Mary Erskine School, made famous by Muriel Spark, though there is nothing of Miss Jean Brodie about Christian. Christian thrived there and went on to Edinburgh University, where she graduated M.A. in English Language and Literature in 1962. Like many Scots, she decided to see the world: first she travelled to the States, where she completed a postgraduate M.A. in English at Mount Holyoke College, writing a thesis on “Synonym Clusters in Beowulf”. After that she spent three years teaching English at the Folk University of Sweden in Stockholm, where, inter alia, she learned to speak Swedish. On her return to Scotland she took the diploma in General Linguistics at Edinburgh in 1968-69. Luckily for us she forsook Edinburgh, coming to Glasgow in 1969 to work on the Thesaurus as well as for Collins dictionaries, and in 1979 she was appointed to a full-time lectureship in Glasgow’s English Language Department. She has now worked here for thirty-six years and with effect from September 2005 she will be an Honorary Professorial Research Fellow in the Department. Christian has worked tirelessly and with great enthusiasm on the HTE and she has, since Michael Samuels’s retirement in 1989, been the project’s Director. The HTE, a monumental work, which promises to be such a great benefit to scholars in so many different disciplines, will be completed in the next few years. Already a large number of scholars have benefited greatly from using this project’s archives, as many of the articles in this collection witness. Many more visitors, too numerous to mention, have made pilgrimages to Glasgow to consult

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the research materials assembled here. The largest work that has so far come out of the HTE project is A Thesaurus of Old English (1995, 2000), which is now about to be published again, this time in electronic form. Christian has written a large number of articles on the HTE, semantics and lexicography. She has edited six volumes of essays, which include collections of conference papers on historical linguistics. At the turn of the century she embarked with Jim McGonigal and other colleagues at Glasgow University on the ambitious LILT project (Language into Languages Teaching) which was commissioned by the Scottish Executive Education Department. After its completion Christian toured Scotland introducing the software to teachers who have found it a major benefit in language teaching. Christian has always been at the forefront of computer assisted learning, producing programs such as English Grammar: an Introduction, The Basics of English Metre and ARIES: Assisted Revision in English Style. She has been Director of STELLA (Software for the Teaching of English and Scottish Language and Literature and its Assessment), a project in the Computers in Teaching Initiative, for many years and along with Jean Anderson has helped the University of Glasgow remain at the forefront of CALL. She is also a prime mover in the highly successful project, the Scottish Corpus of Texts and Speech. Her administrative abilities, including fund-raising, are legendary. When I succeeded Michael Samuels to the English Language Chair in 1990 Christian graciously guided me in the mysteries of Higher Education in the UK and in even more complex topics such as the administrative workings of the University of Glasgow. She made a superb Head of Department in the periods 198992 and 1996-99, demonstrating her flair for financial management and her admirable common sense and no-nonsense approach to some of the illogical or irrational dictates of central university or government. She also has wide experience of examining at all levels in the university system and is much in demand at international conferences. Christian’s teaching has covered a wide range of topics in English language, from her own subjects of semantics and literary and linguistic computing to general linguistics, the history of English, pragmatics and spoken discourse. She is an extremely caring teacher and many scholars today have her to thank for the encouragement and

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assistance she gave them. Many of the contributors to this volume acknowledge this help. I think that this quotation from Matthew Arnold which, although intended for classical translators, fits Christian admirably: she is “eminently plain and direct both in the evolution of [her] thought and in the expression of it, that is both in [her] syntax and [her] words; [she] is eminently plain and direct in the substance of [her] thought, that is in [her] matter and [her] ideas; and finally that [she] is eminently noble.” It is not all work and no play with Christian. She is a keen and knowledgeable supporter of opera and classical music, especially Scottish Opera. It is therefore a great honour and pleasure to prepare this volume of essays on her research areas of lexicography, lexicology and semantics. Graham D. Caie

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Old English colour lexemes used of textiles in Anglo-Saxon England C. P. Biggam Introduction This paper is the first of at least two articles to investigate the Old English (OE) vocabulary of textile colours, in relation to both AngloSaxon manufactures, and imported materials.1 While the present paper concentrates on colour words, the next will be principally concerned with dyes and dye words.2 It is hoped that this semantic investigation will complement the valuable work taking place in the disciplines of 1

I would like to record here my gratitude to Prof. Kay for the years of interest and support she has generously given to my efforts in historical semantic research. Colour has long constituted one of our mutual interests. In all my work, including the present paper, her Thesaurus of Old English, produced with Jane Roberts and Lynne Grundy, has proved an invaluable research tool (Jane Roberts and Christian Kay with Lynne Grundy, A Thesaurus of Old English, King’s College London Medieval Studies XI, 2 vols., London: King’s College London Centre for Late Antique and Medieval Studies, 1995). 2 The principal sources of Old English word definitions in this research are the Dictionary of Old English (DOE), and, for those words which have not yet appeared in the DOE (from the letter G onwards), the dictionaries by Clark Hall, and Toller (Angus Cameron, Ashley Crandell Amos, Antonette diPaolo Healey et al. (eds.), Dictionary of Old English in Electronic Form A-F, Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2003; J. R. Clark Hall, A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, with a supplement by Herbert D. Meritt, 4th edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960; T. Northcote Toller (ed.), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Based on the Manuscript Collections of the Late Joseph Bosworth, Supplement by T. Northcote Toller with revised and enlarged addenda by Alistair Campbell, 2 vols., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1898-1972). In cases where I have published word-studies, I use my own definitions, and provide references. For Latin words, my principal authority is the dictionary by Latham and Howlett (DMLBS) and, for those words which have not yet appeared in the DMLBS, the Oxford Latin Dictionary (OLD), and the dictionary by Souter (R. E. Latham and D. R. Howlett, Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975- ; P. G. W. Glare (ed.), Oxford Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982; Alexander Souter, A Glossary of Later Latin to 600 A.D., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949). Definitions have been abbreviated where appropriate.

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archaeobotany and the chemical investigation of dye traces on surviving textiles. 2. Scope of the Research The results presented and discussed in both this and later papers are drawn from a review of all occurrences of hue words and dye words in the Old English corpus.3 All those references which could definitely or reasonably be related to a textile referent were retrieved, and then classified as belonging to one of four different contextual types relating to the geographical location of the textile: English, exotic, generalized and unknown. For these papers on the situation in AngloSaxon England, I have drawn on the English and the generalized contexts. The latter indicates contexts in which the author implies that a colour or dye usage is universally appropriate, and we must assume that an Anglo-Saxon audience or readership would have interpreted this as applicable to them. The research does not include achromatic colours, namely, the range from black, through all the greys to white, since these colours (and also brown) were available without the use of dyes as, for example, in woollen textiles produced from sheep’s fleeces of these colours. Also excluded are words denoting colour features other than hue, such as DARK, PALE, BRIGHT and others, and textile colours which are not the result of dyeing, such as thread of gold.4 3

Antonette diPaolo Healey and Richard L. Venezky, A Microfiche Concordance to Old English, Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1980. 4 I have also decided to exclude OE pæll and pællen, unless they are in association with a colour or dye word. Although the older dictionaries are agreed that this noun and adjective refer principally to a type of garment, they also tend to add senses which imply a specific colour, such as ‘purple garment, purple’ (Clark Hall, op. cit., s.v. pæll). The Old English word derives from the Latin pallium which, in the context of early medieval ecclesiastical dress, was white in colour (Janet Mayo, A History of Ecclesiastical Dress, London: Batsford, 1984, pp. 23-24). Some examples of this garment were made of a costly material known as purpura in Latin, but it is clear that purpura was not always purple in colour, as Dodwell quotes examples of red, white, green, black and mixed-colour purpura (C. R. Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Art: a New Perspective, Manchester Studies in the History of Art 3, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1982, p. 146). It is clear, therefore, that the use of Modern English ‘purple’ in the definition of OE pæll/pællen is unsafe, whether it is intended to refer to the colour of the pallium, or to the meaning of purpura. Dodwell defines purpura as a textile word, referring to shot-silk taffeta (colour not specific) (op. cit., pp. 147-50).

Old English colour lexemes

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3. Textile Types 3.1 Silk 3.1.1 (seolc; geolu) In the tenth-century medical work now known as Bald’s Leechbook, jaundice (gealadl or geolwe adl) is said to cause the body of the patient to ‘turn yellow like good yellow silk’ (ageolwaþ swa god geolo seoluc).5 3.1.2 (godwebb; geolu) See Section 5.1.1 under Garments (Unspecified). 3.2 Wool 3.2.1 (wull; hæwen) See Section 4.2.3 under Straining-Cloths. 4. Textile Manufactures (Excluding Clothing) 4.1 Hangings and Coverings 4.1.1 (wagrift, stræl, hwitel, wæstling; brun, brunbasu) In his prose work De virginitate, the Anglo-Saxon scholar Aldhelm (died 709 or 710) stresses that purity is not sufficient, by itself, to achieve perfection, since it must be accompanied by other virtues. To illustrate his point he reminds the reader of hangings and coverings woven in diverse colours which please the eye much more than a monochrome product. Aldhelm, writing in Latin, uses the words cortina ‘curtain, wall-hanging’ and stragula (for stragulum) ‘bed- or couch-cover, rug, blanket’.6 In two manuscripts of this text, cortina is Under these circumstances, it is not possible to interpret any context, which lacks further elucidation, as involving a particular colour. 5 Oswald Cockayne (ed.), Leechdoms, Wortcunning and Starcraft of Early England, Rerum Britannicarum medii aevi scriptores 35, 3 vols., London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts and Green, 1864-66, II, 1865, 10, 106. 6 Rudolf Ehwald (ed.), Aldhelmi Opera, Monumenta Germaniae historica: Auctorum antiquissimorum 15, Berlin: Weidmann, 1919, p. 244.

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glossed in Old English with wagrift ‘tapestry, veil, curtain’, and stragula is glossed with stræl ‘curtain, quilt, matting’, hwitel ‘blanket’, and wæstling ‘sheet, blanket’.7 Certain of the threads in these products are said to be dyed purpureus in colour, that is ‘purple, crimson or sim[ilar] (the exact shade depending on the technique used)’, referring to the dye obtained from the purpura shellfish. Purpureus is here glossed brun in Old English. Both Napier and Goossens suggest that brun is an abbreviation for brunbasu (although Goossens adds a question mark to his comment), and the DOE agrees (s.v. brun-basu). While it is true that abbreviations are common in these glosses, the expansion to brunbasu in this context may be unwarranted. There is no doubt that the hangings and coverings evoked by Aldhelm are of the highest quality, since he describes the embroiderer’s skill in working pictures, and he continues with a second example comprising the Temple hangings in Jerusalem. This high-quality context may have persuaded earlier editors that brun, traditionally defined as ‘brown’ or ‘dark’, indicates too ordinary a colour, while brunbasu is more impressive, meaning ‘dark purple, purple; red-purple, scarlet’.8 The DOE, however, while also defining brun as ‘of a brown hue, dark-coloured’, continues its definition to include this word’s extended range into ‘purple’ and ‘red’ (among other colours) when glossing Latin words with such meanings. Old English had no basic term for PURPLE and so conveyed this colour with various ‘reddish’ words,9 and the use of 7

Arthur S. Napier (ed.), Old English Glosses Chiefly Unpublished, Anecdota Oxoniensia 4, part 11, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900, p. 28; Louis Goossens (ed.), The Old English Glosses of MS. Brussels, Royal Library, 1650 (Aldhelm’s De laudibus virginitatis), Verhandelingen van de Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, Klasse der Letteren, Jaargang XXXVI, 74, Brussels: Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, 1974, pp. 218-19. 8 I must express my doubts about this dictionary sense of ‘scarlet’ for brunbasu. Both elements of this compound term need more research, but it is clear that basu denotes warm (red-based) colours which are vivid, rich and eye-catching. I suspect that the addition of brun- creates a darkening effect to such colours, indicating, perhaps especially, violet, dark purple and crimson. This would parallel the effect of blæ- in blæhæwen which darkens hæwen ‘blue (grey)’. (C. P. Biggam, Blue in Old English: an Interdisciplinary Semantic Study, Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1997, pp. 22339.) Scarlet is not dark, and so appears to be in inappropriate company in the DOE’s definition of brunbasu. 9 Roberts, Kay with Grundy, op. cit., I, 146.

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brun to fulfil this function in a translation context suggests it may have had a close relationship with the more impressive warm colours even where translation was not involved.10 4.2 Straining-Cloths 4.2.1 (claþ; hæwen) A number of medical recipes in Old English call for a concoction to be strained or wrung through a blue cloth. In Bald’s Leechbook, treatment for ‘a broken head’ involves boiling some herbs in butter and straining them (seohhian) through a hæwen cloth (claþ).11 In Book 3 of the Leechbook, a treatment for palsy involves mixing coriander powder with a woman’s milk, and wringing it (awringan) through a hæwen cloth.12 Also in Book 3, the preparation of an ear-salve involves soaking several herbs in wine or vinegar, and then wringing (wringan) the resulting liquid through a hæwen cloth into the ear.13 The Old English colour word hæwen has been researched, and defined as ‘blue (grey)’ indicating that ‘grey’ is a less common sense than ‘blue’.14 4.2.2 (claþ; linhæwen) Two further references of related interest to those in Section 4.2.1 occur in another medical text, the Lacnunga, at least part of which dates to the late tenth to mid eleventh century, but which contains much older elements. The first reference concerns a treatment for eyes that are ‘stopped up’, and which recommends taking specified herbs, and dripping (drypan) their juice into the eye through a cloth.15 The second reference is a treatment for ‘dimness of the eyes’ which involves soaking a part of wild teasel in honey, pounding it, and then 10

This may explain the references where brun is used of flowers (DOE, s.v. brun, 1.b). 11 Cockayne, op. cit., II, 24. 12 Ibid., II, 338. 13 Ibid., II, 344. 14 Biggam, op. cit., pp. 115-270. 15 Edward Pettit (ed. and trans.), Anglo-Saxon Remedies, Charms, and Prayers from British Library Ms Harley 585: the Lacnunga, Mellen Critical Editions and Translations 6a-b, 2 vols., Lewiston, NJ, Queenston, Ontario and Lampeter: E. Mellen Press, 2001, I, 6.

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wringing (wringan) the resulting substance through a cloth into the eye.16 In both these cases the cloth is described as linhæwen. Lin can mean ‘flax’ or ‘linen’. It seems unlikely that a cloth would be described as ‘linen-blue’ (or ‘linen-grey’) since such a description would be redundant if the cloth were made of linen (‘linen-blue linen’) and confusing for other textiles (e.g. ‘linen-blue wool’). The flax-plant probably provides the answer, since the most common colour of its flowers is pale blue, so linhæwen is reasonably defined as ‘flax-flower blue’.17 (See also Section 4.2.3 below.) 4.2.3 (claþ; hæwen) In Book 3 of the Leechbook, a treatment is recommended for ‘small eye’ (æsmæl), and all pains in the eye. ‘Small eye’ has been variously interpreted as shrinkage of the eye, or contraction of the eyeball or pupil.18 The problem is to be treated by chewing wild teasel and then wringing (wringan) the juice through a blue (hæwen) and woollen (wyllen) cloth onto the eyes of the patient.19 Although several British plants can produce a blue dye, there is little evidence, either historical or archaeological, that anything other than woad (Isatis tinctoria L.) (OE wad) was exploited for this purpose in Anglo-Saxon England.20 The blue cloths used in medical treatments, therefore, were most likely to have been dyed with woad, and there may have been a very good reason for this. The woad plant has vulnerary and styptic properties, aiding the healing of wounds and the staunching of blood,21 and its appearance in certain Anglo-Saxon medical recipes suggests these properties were understood.22 It is clear, however, that wound-healing qualities are not especially helpful for some of the problems mentioned above, and it may be that certain

16

Pettit, op. cit., I, 8. Biggam, op. cit., pp. 209-10. 18 DOE, s.v. æ-smæl. 19 Cockayne, op. cit., II, 338. 20 Penelope Walton Rogers, Textile Production at 16-22 Coppergate, The Archaeology of York 17/11, York: Council for British Archaeology for York Archaeological Trust, 1997, p. 1766. 21 Malcolm Stuart (ed.), The Colour Dictionary of Herbs & Herbalism, London: Orbis, 1979, p. 80. 22 For example, Cockayne, op. cit., II, 132 (a burn); II, 36 (an eye ulcer). 17

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healers had come to consider a woad-dyed cloth as standard medical equipment. 4.3 Binding-Strips 4.3.1 (wræd; wrætt; read, wræteread) In Book 3 of the Leechbook, a treatment for migraine (healf heafod ece) is given which involves binding plantain roots around the head. The instruction reads bind þa moran ymb þ[æt] heafod mid wræte reade wræde. Cockayne interprets this as an instruction to bind [plantain] roots and wrætt (a plant) around the head with a red band (… reade wræde),23 but others have taken wræte read to be a compound term meaning wrætt-red.24 The latter interpretation would, of course, assume the binding-strips to have been dyed with wrætt dye, and would exclude the presence of wrætt plants. Since the term wrætbaso ‘wrætt-red’ (or ‘-purple’, or ‘-crimson’) is extant, there can be no objection to the theoretical existence of wrætread. Another cure for pain in the head (heafodece), however, lends support to Cockayne’s interpretation. In this instruction, the physician is told to take the lower part of wrætt, put it on a red binding-strip, and bind it to the head (genim nioþowearde wrætte do on readne wræd binde þ[æt] heafod mid).25 In this second cure, wrætt is the only plant involved, and the binding-strip is an unspecified red. It would clearly be safer to interpret the first cure along similar lines, with the exception that two plants were involved in that case, plantain and wrætt, perhaps because migraine is a stronger pain than general headache. Both cures would then involve the plants being tied to the head with red binding-strips, but not specifically wrætt-red. It is quite possible that the writer of these two cures was unconcerned about distinguishing between the wrætt plant and wrættdyed cloth, since it may have been simply the presence of wrætt, in any form, which was important. Schlutter makes a good case for the wrætt-plant being a source of red dye, by considering the evidence for the cognate word in Old High German, rezza or riza.26 This lexeme is 23

Ibid., II, 307. For example, O. B. Schlutter, “Anglo-Saxonica”, Anglia, 30 (N. F. 18) (1907), 23960, 248; Toller, op. cit., see Supplement, s.v. wræt-read. 25 Cockayne, op. cit., II, 304. 26 Schlutter, op. cit., 249. 24

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used to gloss several Latin words which can indicate red dyes, such as coccum ‘scarlet dye etc.’, murex ‘purple dye etc.’, sandix ‘red dye etc.’ and others. The Old English word wrætt also appears to be identified with madder, probably the best-known red-dye plant in England, in a herbal glossary.27 Wrætt-dye will be further discussed in a future paper (see Section 1). 4.4 Patches 4.4.1 (fihl, fogclað; read) In St Matthew’s gospel (9.16), Jesus is asked why his disciples do not fast regularly, and he offers a metaphor to explain. He says that one does not repair an old garment with a piece of “new cloth” (Authorized Version), as this just makes the split worse. The words used in the Vulgate for this phrase are panni rudis, and rudis has many senses, but usually indicates something unfinished or untried. The Old English gloss to rudis in the West Saxon gospels is niwe ‘new’, but, in the Lindisfarne Gospels, the gloss to the phrase is fihles [ve]l fotclað reades. Fihl is defined as ‘cloth, rag’, and fogclað as ‘‘joining-cloth’, patch’ (fotclað is a manuscript error). It would appear that the glossator of the Lindisfarne Gospels mistakenly understood Latin rudis as meaning ‘red’, and has produced a puzzling sentence implying that a red patch makes a split in a garment worse. Clearly, his attention was on the sense of the individual words rather than the meaning of the sentence.28 5. Clothing 5.1 Garments (Unspecified) 5.1.1 (gewæd; geolu) The solution of Riddle 35 in the Exeter Book,29 and the almost identical Leiden Riddle30 is ‘mail-coat’.31 The mail-coat is the 27

J. Richard Stracke (ed.), The Laud Herbal Glossary, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1974, p. 42. Line 728 reads Grias .i. medere. wrette. See also Stracke’s comments on p. 97. 28 I am grateful to Roy Liuzza for discussing this passage with me. 29 George Philip Krapp and Elliott van Kirk Dobbie (eds.), The Exeter Book, The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records: a Collective Edition 3, New York: Columbia University Press, and London: Routledge, 1936, p. 198.

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narrator, and admits it is a garment (gewæd) but presents a series of statements which are intended to confuse those attempting to solve the riddle, one of which is that it is not made of any textile. The mail-coat further states that it has not been woven by worms which decorate, with great skill, the fine yellow (geolu) cloth (godwebb). Aldhelm’s Latin original of this riddle refers to ‘Chinese worms’ (Seres … vermes), making it sufficiently clear that silk is the fabric in Aldhelm’s mind.32 5.1.2 (hrægl, reaf; hasufag) Riddles use several ploys to mislead and confuse the listener, so that the solution to the riddle is more difficult to guess.33 Riddle 11 of the Exeter Book begins with the two lines ‘My clothing (hrægl) is hasufag; ornaments bright, red and shining [are] on my garment (reaf)’.34 Suggested solutions to this riddle include ‘night’, ‘gold’ and ‘wine’, but only ‘gold’ could result in the ‘garment’ being any form of textile, namely, a purse, although the purse could just as easily be made of leather.35 This riddle, has, however, been included in this paper solely on the basis of its deliberately misleading introduction, which encourages its audience to envisage a person’s clothes, before the later clues cause them to consider an alternative solution. Hasu usually means ‘grey’ but can also mean ‘grey-brown’,36 and fag indicates ‘particoloured, variegated; discoloured, stained, marked’, so the compound word suggests either a garment of various shades of grey and/or brown, or a garment stained with grey and/or brown marks. Anglo-Saxon sheep were not only white, but also brown, black

30

Elliott van Kirk Dobbie (ed.), The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems, The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records: a Collective Edition 6, New York: Columbia University Press, and London: Routledge, 1942, p. 109. 31 Krapp and Dobbie, op. cit., pp. 340-41. 32 Ehwald, op. cit., p. 111. 33 For riddling techniques, see Archer Taylor, English Riddles from Oral Tradition, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1951; Nigel F. Barley, “Structural aspects of the Anglo-Saxon riddle”, Semiotica, 10 (1974), 143-75. 34 For the Old English text, see Krapp and Dobbie, op. cit., p. 186. 35 C. P. Biggam, Grey in Old English: an Interdisciplinary Semantic Study, London: Runetree, 1998, pp. 281-87. 36 Ibid., pp. 272-304.

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and grey,37 so particoloured garments of these colours could be produced relatively cheaply with no dyeing involved. Alternatively, the ‘discoloured’ sense of fag may be foremost in this passage. In either case, it would seem that the audience of this riddle gained a first impression of cheap clothes, or a working-garment, perhaps stained with dirty marks, and this image would have been immediately disrupted, in typical riddling fashion, by the following mention of apparently costly red and shining adornments. The third possibility is the only one which causes this reference to appear in this paper. The garment may be dyed brown to produce a sober-coloured item appropriate for church (see Sections 5.2.1 and 5.6.2). The following mention of shiny adornments would provide the same confusing contradiction as in the previous interpretation, since they are not appropriate for a religious context. 5.1.3 ((ge)scierpan; read) Much of the content of the Late Anglo-Saxon homily sometimes known as Napier XLIX, concerns those who are wealthy, encouraging them to carry out charitable work, and reminding them of the temporary nature of earthly riches. The examples given of such riches are the brightest gold, the costliest gems and clothes of the reddest fine cloth (þeah we us scyrpen mid þam readdestan godewebbe) (Scragg’s edition).38 Nine versions of this homily survive,39 and two of them40 exhibit an interesting change of wording: ‘brightest gold’ and ‘reddest fine cloth’ have been altered to ‘reddest gold’ and ‘brightest fine cloth’. Scragg suggests that certain scribes thought gold was more likely to be red than fine cloth,41 but the phrase ‘red gold’ is, of

37

M. L. Ryder, “Medieval sheep and wool types”, Agricultural History Review, 32/1 (1984), 14-28. 38 A. S. Napier (ed.), Wulfstan: Sammlung der ihm zugeschriebenen Homilien nebst Untersuchungen über ihre Echtheit, Sammlung englischer Denkmäler in kritischen Ausgaben 4, Berlin: Weidmann, 1883, p. 262; D. G. Scragg (ed.), The Vercelli Homilies and Related Texts, Early English Text Society os 300, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992, p. 209. 39 Scragg, op. cit., pp. 191-95. 40 Ibid., pp. xxx-xxxi (sigla J and K). 41 Ibid., p. 217.

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course, familiar from other Anglo-Saxon texts and may have come easily to mind.42 Anderson suggests that the reason for this phrase is that OE read (and its Germanic cognates) retained colour senses from their IndoEuropean origin in a term for earth colours, especially ochre and haematite which, depending on their treatment as pigments, can produce colours such as red, reddish brown, orange and reddish yellow.43 I agree with Anderson that OE read would have included ORANGE in its coverage, although I have suggested that fire, rather than ochre/haematite, was the earliest prototype for the warm colours.44 Old English, and its predecessors, had no basic colour term for ORANGE,45 so, until this emerged, the colour orange would have been considered a type of red and/or yellow, depending on the composition of any particular shade. The phrase ‘red gold’ provides evidence that much of the colour denoted by Modern English (ModE) orange was considered a form of red by speakers of Old English. It is clear that the Old English RED category differed in its extent from the equivalent category in the modern language. The crucial question arising from the ‘reddest fine cloth’ in Napier XLIX is, therefore, whether Old English speakers envisaged the ‘reddest’ part of the category as being the same as in present-day English. There is very little evidence to help answer this question, but an indication is found in a glossary entry in which two Old English compound colour terms, geoluread ‘reddish yellow’ and geolucrog ‘saffron yellow’ translate three Latin words: flavus ‘pale yellow, golden’, fulvus ‘tawny (from dull yellow to reddish brown), golden-yellow’ and rubeus 42

Earl R. Anderson, “The semantic puzzle of ‘red gold’”, English Studies, 81 (2000), 1-13. 43 Ibid., 10-11. 44 C. P. Biggam, “Prototypes and foci in the encoding of colour”, in Christian J. Kay and Jeremy J. Smith (eds.), Categorization in the History of English, Amsterdam Studies in the Theory and History of Linguistic Science, Series IV: Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 261, Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2004, pp. 1940. 45 Brent Berlin and Paul Kay, Basic Color Terms: their Universality and Evolution, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969. The lack of a basic term does not preclude the use of non-basic terms, such as compound terms, or of descriptive phrases, to denote a particular hue, but, in addition, such hues can usually be denoted by an existing basic term with broader coverage than its modern equivalent.

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‘red’.46 The presence of rubeus is a little surprising, although it could be argued that the Anglo-Saxons would have understood this word was not ruber, the basic Latin term for RED, and might, therefore, have taken it to represent a mixed colour like the others in this glossary entry. The significant point, however, is that a mixture of red with yellow, while apparently included within the boundaries of the red category, was not at the focus of that category, or a compound hue term would not have been necessary. This may suggest that the reddest red for an Anglo-Saxon was an unmixed, fully saturated, or vivid red, as it is today. 5.2 Garments, Female (Unspecified) 5.2.1 (hrægl; brun) An Old English penitential text usually known as the Confessionale pseudo-Egberti, possibly dating to the late ninth century,47 includes in its list of sins and points of guidance for the use of confessors, a statement concerning the colour of clothes (hrægl) which women must wear to Mass, as decreed by St Basil.48 The colour word used is brun. As discussed above (in Section 4.1.1), brun can gloss Latin words meaning ‘purple’ and ‘red’, but, more commonly, it means ‘brown’ or ‘dark’, and the latter pair of meanings would be more appropriate for this context. Corroboration of this view comes from the Latin text of the Penitential of Theodore, one of the sources upon which the Confessionale draws.49 It states that women may receive the host under a veil, as Basil decided, and the Latin colour word used of the veil is niger, meaning ‘black’ or ‘dark’.50 It is debatable whether an 46

Robert T. Oliphant [ed.], The Harley Latin-Old English Glossary Edited from British Museum MS Harley 3376, Janua linguarum, studia memoriae Nicolai van Wijk dedicata, Series practica 20, The Hague and Paris: Mouton, 1966, p. 187. 47 Allen J. Frantzen, “The tradition of penitentials in Anglo-Saxon England”, AngloSaxon England, 11 (1983), 23-56, 42. Frantzen refers to this text as the ‘Scrift boc’ and argues against a previously suggested late tenth-century date (ibid., 49, where this text is referred to as the ‘Confessional’). 48 Robert Spindler [ed.], Das altenglische Bussbuch (sog. Confessionale PseudoEgberti): ein Beitrag zu den kirchlichen Gesetzen der Angelsachsen, Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1934, p. 189. 49 Frantzen, op. cit., 44. 50 A. W. Haddan and W. Stubbs (eds.), Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents Relating to Great Britain and Ireland, 3 vols. in 4, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1869-71,

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Anglo-Saxon reader who was not familiar with the Latin version, would interpret brun in this context as ‘brown’ or as ‘dark’ (of any hue). 5.3 Garments, Royal 5.3.1 (godwebb; tirisc) In Bede’s metrical Vita Sancti Cuthberti, he relates how, after the death of King Ecgfrith of Northumbria (685 A.D.), Aldfrith returned from his studies under Irish scholars to become the next king.51 Bede’s phrase for Aldfrith’s royal state is Tyrio …in ostro, and this has been glossed in Old English as in tiriscum godwebbe.52 The place-name refers to Tyre, now in Lebanon, and a location once famous for the production of so-called ‘Tyrian Purple’ (Latin purpura), a dye extracted from three types of whelk.53 Bede seems to be clearly echoing the Roman phrase for the accession of a new Emperor, namely, ‘taking the purple’, so it is possible that the phrase was not to be taken literally. The following discussion, however, presumes there was a real tirisc royal garment. The Old English glossator translated ostrum ‘purple garment’ (in this context) as godwebb ‘fine clothes’. Owen-Crocker defines godwebb as ‘something made of precious cloth, frequently purple, normally of silk; probably shot-silk taffeta’.54 Since the Old English phrase means something like ‘in Tyrian fine clothes’, the exact force of the qualifier, tirisc, is difficult to assess. It could simply mean that the fabric of the royal garment was believed to have come from the III, 1871, 196; John T. McNeill and Helena M. Gamer, Medieval Handbooks of Penance: a Translation of the Principal libri poenitentiales and Selections from Related Documents, Records of Civilization: Sources and Studies 29, New York: Columbia University Press, 1938, p. 205. 51 Werner Jaager [ed.], Bedas metrische Vita sancti Cuthberti, Palaestra 198, Leipzig: Mayer & Müller, 1935, p. 99. 52 Herbert Dean Meritt, Old English Glosses (a Collection), The Modern Language Association of America: General Series 16, New York: Modern Language Association of America, and London: Oxford University Press, 1945, p. 17. 53 John Peter Wild, “The Eastern Mediterranean, 323 BC – AD 350”, in David Jenkins (ed.), The Cambridge History of Western Textiles, 2 vols., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, I, 102-17, 115-16. 54 Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Dress in Anglo-Saxon England, revised and enlarged ed., Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2004, p. 334.

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Levant, but the fame of Tyrian dye makes it more likely that it combines semantic features concerned with the high quality and colour of that dye. The final hue resulting from dyeing with Tyrian Purple varied, as has been mentioned already (see Section 4.1.1), according to the particular species of whelk used, whether and how their dyes were mixed, and how long the dyed cloth was exposed to the light when drying.55 The colours most usually associated with this process are those that were the most highly prized in the Classical world, namely, violet, purple, crimson and scarlet, and this range, or part of it, may have been included in the semantics of OE tirisc. 5.4 Garments, Monastic (Inappropriate) 5.4.1 (brunbasu) The scholar Aldhelm wrote both a prose and a metrical Latin text in praise of virginity, and presented the prose version to the nuns of Barking. He makes very clear his disapproval of those nuns who wear colourful and ornamented clothes, describing certain fine garments as ‘coloured with precious dyes of purple tincture’.56 Aldhelm uses the Latin phrase purpureae tincturae,57 and purpureus has been glossed with OE brunbasu.58 Basu ‘purple, red, crimson’ is especially associated with vivid and deep (i.e. darkened vivid) varieties of these hues, occurring in much-admired contexts such as phoenix feathers, illuminated manuscript letters, luxury fabric, and gem-stones. The DOE defines the compound term, brunbasu, as ‘dark purple, purple; red-purple, scarlet’. I have suggested (in footnote 8) that the sense of ‘scarlet’ is the least likely, since the force of brun- in the compound term is probably to add darkness, just as the blue element in the colour purple is seen to have a darkening effect on the red element. It seems, therefore, that purple, violet,59 and possibly crimson,60 are the most likely colours of the garments disapproved of by Aldhelm.

55 Wolfgang Born, “Purple in classical antiquity”, Ciba Review, 4 (Dec. 1937), 11117, 112-13. 56 Michael Lapidge and Michael Herren (trans.), Aldhelm: The Prose Works, Ipswich and Totowa, NJ: Brewer, 1979, p. 124. 57 Ehwald , op. cit., p. 314. 58 Goossens, op. cit., p. 468; Napier (1900), op. cit., p. 130. 59 By violet, I mean a mixture of red and blue in which blue is perceived as dominant.

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5.5 Copes and Chasubles 5.5.1 (mæssehacele; grene) The Visio Leofrici is a short text which recounts several vision experiences of the pious Leofric, Earl of Mercia (died 1057). On one occasion, Leofric was praying in Christ Church, Canterbury when he saw himself standing in the middle of the floor, with arms outstretched, and dressed for taking Mass, including a green (grene) cope or chasuble (mæssehacele). The garment is described as brightly shining (beorhte scinende) but this may be a feature of the vision rather than a realistic depiction of a fabric he had seen.61 5.5.2 (mæssehacele; brun) A writ of Edwin, a monk of New Minster, Winchester includes details of an agreement between the Old and New Minsters in the town. The text is not authentic in its present, probably late twelfth-century form, but Keynes believes it “incorporates some convincingly circumstantial information”.62 The writ purports to date from 1031-1032, since it claims to have been written when Ælfwine was abbot of New Minster (1031-1057) and Ælfsige was bishop of Winchester (1012 x 10131032), and it refers to an earlier agreement which it claims took place while Æthelwold was Bishop of Winchester (963-84). This agreement is said to have been ratified by Bishop Æthelwold’s gift of a brun cope or chasuble (mæssehacele) to each monastery. Harmer translates this colour as ‘brown’.63 This is a rather sombre colour for a prestigious, and intentionally impressive garment, so it may be that its 60

Basu as a simplex can certainly denote scarlet, and crimson can be seen as a darkened form of this colour which could reasonably be denoted by the compound term, brunbasu. This is not to say that basu could not also have been used, on its own, to denote crimson, since individual speakers must have differed in their usage, as in modern languages, where colours are closely related. 61 A. S. Napier, “An Old English vision of Leofric, Earl of Mercia”, Transactions of the Philological Society, s.n., (1909 for 1907-10), 180-88, 184. 62 Simon Keynes (ed.), The Liber Vitae of the New Minster and Hyde Abbey, Winchester, British Library Stowe 944 together with Leaves from British Library Cotton Vespasian A.VIII and British Library Cotton Titus D.XXVII, Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile 26, Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1996, p. 101. 63 F. E. Harmer, Anglo-Saxon Writs, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1952, p. 403.

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common alternative meaning of ‘dark’ should be understood here, perhaps indicating a colour similar to violet or crimson. 5.5.3 (mæssehacele; geolu) The will of Bishop Theodred of London and Suffolk (died c.952) survives in a much later manuscript, and it includes four copes or chasubles (singular: mæssehacele).64 Theodred bequeaths a geolu ‘yellow’ mæssehacele, which he bought in Pavia, to Odgar. Pavia, in Lombardy, sold Byzantine silks, and was well-known to Anglo-Saxon merchants,65 but there is no information on the fabric of Theodred’s garment. He leaves another yellow (geolu) mæssehacele to Gundwine, and this garment is further described as ungerenod ‘unornamented’. 5.5.4 (mæssehacele; read) Bishop Theodred (see Section 5.5.3. above) also mentions a read ‘red’ mæssehacele, and this sentence contains an unfamiliar word (spracacke) which has been interpreted as the name of a beneficiary. Whitelock, however, finds no similar name in any Germanic language, and prefers to consider the passage corrupt.66 Theodred’s position in the Church, and his ability to buy items in Pavia, suggest that his vestments are of the highest quality, but it may not be so in all cases. The four bequests involving these garments appear to be listed in descending order of value: thus another Theodred receives a white mæssehacele from Pavia (not discussed here), a chalice and a massbook; Odgar receives a yellow mæssehacele from Pavia; Gundwine receives an unornamented yellow mæssehacele, and, finally, the red mæssehacele is mentioned. It is noteworthy that the last garment is probably not in the admired colours of purple, scarlet, violet or crimson, since, if that were the case, I would expect a more specific colour term, such as basu or brunbasu. Read, the basic term for RED, seems to constitute an unenthusiastic description which may indicate the use of a locallyobtained fabric and dye, in contrast with luxury goods from southern Europe. 64 Dorothy Whitelock (ed.), Anglo-Saxon Wills, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1930, p. 4. 65 Dodwell, op. cit., pp. 149-52. 66 Whitelock, op. cit., pp. 4, 103.

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5.6 Dresses Modern English dress is used here to indicate ‘a one-piece garment for a woman or girl that covers the body and extends down over the legs’.67 The Old English garment terms appearing in this section are cyrtel and tunece. Old English cyrtel probably originated as a word for a short garment (OE *(ge)cyrtan ‘to cut off, shorten’) and it is certainly used of a man’s short tunic, but Owen-Crocker identifies it with the long, and sleeved woman’s dress seen in manuscript illustrations, and suggests that the semantics of the word had extended to include this long dress, worn by secular women on most occasions.68 I have avoided the use of ModE gown as the COD defines it as a dress for formal occasions only. Old English tunece, as a woman’s garment, occurs very rarely. Owen describes it as similar to a cyrtel, but she presents evidence that suggests it had religious associations and was, therefore, likely to be dull and/or dark in colour.69 As a woman’s garment, the Modern English definition of OE tunece is not tunic since that cannot be longer than the knee (COD). 5.6.1 (cyrtel; blæwen) Æthelgifu was a late tenth-century Englishwoman of considerable wealth. Her will survives, dated to 980-90, and, in it, she disposes of large estates, gold, slaves, horses and garments. She leaves to Beornwynn her dark blue (blæwen) dress (cyrtel) which is untrimmed at the bottom (neaþene unrenod).70 Whitelock translates blæwen as ‘blue’, but I have suggested there is sufficient evidence to prefer ‘dark blue’.71

67

Judy Pearsall (ed.), The Concise Oxford Dictionary, 10th edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Henceforth referred to as the COD. 68 Owen-Crocker, op. cit., p. 217. 69 Gale R. Owen, “Wynflæd’s wardrobe”, Anglo-Saxon England, 8 (1979), 195-222, 203-04, 211. 70 Dorothy Whitelock (trans. and examined), The Will of Æthelgifu: a Tenth Century Anglo-Saxon Manuscript, with a note on the document by Neil Ker and analyses of the properties, livestock and chattels concerned by Lord Rennell, Oxford: Roxburghe Club, 1968, p. 13. 71 Biggam (1997), op. cit., pp. 91-104. The DOE prefers ‘some shade of blue’.

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5.6.2 (cyrtel; dunn) As explained above (Section 2), this research is not concerned with textiles described as ‘dark’. The colour word dunn has a general definition of ‘dark, dusky’ in the DOE, and the specific meaning of ‘dark’ in the contexts of animals, the onyx stone, and clothing. In the context of landscape features, however, it is defined as ‘dull brown’, and I suggest that it could have had an additional sense of ‘brown’ in the contexts of animals,72 and the onyx.73 If this suggestion is accepted, there seems no reason to suppose that clothing would be the one context in which a meaning of ‘brown’ is excluded, so examples of textiles with dunn have been included in this research. In Æthelgifu’s will (see Section 5.6.1), she bequeaths to Wulfgifu one or more of her dunn dresses (sing. cyrtel).74 If this colour is possibly to be understood as brown, there is a further difficulty in that brown clothing can be produced without the use of dyes, the principal consideration of this research. Brown wool can be spun from naturally brown fleeces, and Lord Rennell expresses confidence that this is exactly the meaning of Æthelgifu’s dunn dress/es.75 If Rennell is correct that the colour of these dresses relates to a natural fleece colour, then this example is not relevant in the present 72

I make this suggestion because OE dunn is used to gloss Latin baius (= badius) ‘bay (horse)’, meaning a brown horse with black points (principally, the mane, tail, and lower limbs). Badius is also glossed by brun ‘brown, dark’ in, for example, the First Cleopatra Glossary (William Garlington Stryker, The Latin-Old English Glossary in MS Cotton Cleopatra AIII, unpublished dissertation, University of Stanford, 1951, 76). In addition, dunn glosses Latin balidus ‘dun, dark brown’. This evidence appears to indicate at least a distinct possibility that dunn could be defined as ‘brown’ as well as ‘dark’ in most contexts (DMLBS, s.v. badius, cross-reference from baius, and balidus). 73 The only example of dunn glossing a word cognate with onyx, in this case, onichinos, occurs in the Leiden Glossary. The OLD defines onychinus as ‘made of onyx marble’, and onyx marble is yellowish green, white and brown (Walter Schumann, Gemstones of the World, New York: Sterling, and London: N.A.G. Press, 1977, pp. 210-11). Kitson suggests that glosses of onichinus with OE dunn and brun may have originated in a confusion of Latin flavus ‘yellow’ with fulvus ‘brown, tawny’ or furvus ‘sombre’. He points out that furvus is used more or less as a synonym for fulvus in Late Latin, and translates OE brun and dunn as well as deorc (Peter Kitson, “Lapidary traditions in Anglo-Saxon England: part I, the background; the Old English lapidary”, Anglo-Saxon England, 7 (1978), 38-39). 74 Whitelock (1968), op. cit., p. 12 n. 12, explains that the Old English is ambiguous as regards the number of gowns involved. 75 Ibid., p. 82.

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investigation into dye colours. I have retained examples of dunn textiles in this research, however, as there remains a possibility that they were dyed. Owen makes the point that dull-coloured garments were needed by women when attending church,76 so the dunn dresses, which were sufficiently valuable to be listed in the will of a very wealthy woman, may have been of a finer textile than wool, or of fine white wool, and dyed a shade of brown considered appropriate for religious contexts. Since the principal sense of dunn was ‘dark’, such a colour is likely to have been a dark brown. 5.6.3 (tunece; dunn) In the will of Wynflæd a dunn tunic (tunece) is bequeathed.77 Little is known about Wynflæd, although it can be said that she had an interest in religious houses, and may even have been a lay-abbess.78 The text of the will dates to the mid tenth century, and survives in an eleventhcentury copy. As discussed above (in Section 5.6.2), dunn may refer to a natural, undyed wool colour, or it may refer to a dyed fabric, most likely dark brown in colour. 5.6.4 (hæwen, wæden, weolocread) See Sections 5.7.1 and 5.7.2 under Tunics. The context is Aldhelm’s criticism of the vivid and luxurious clothes worn by certain churchmen and nuns. These include the Latin garment term tunica, which is not glossed in Old English. The OLD describes the tunica as the standard Roman garment for women, reaching to the feet. The word habit, normally used of nuns’ dresses, seems inappropriate in this case, considering the colours involved. 5.7 Tunics Modern English tunic is defined as ‘a loose sleeveless garment reaching to the thigh or knees’ (COD). This seems to be the best term for the standard male garment designated either tunece in Old English,

76

Owen, op. cit., p. 204. Whitelock (1930), op. cit., p. 14. 78 Ibid., p. 109. 77

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or tunica in Latin, although the Anglo-Saxon garment could extend to a little below the knees, and often had sleeves.79 5.7.1 (hæwen, wæden) Towards the end of Aldhelm’s prose De virginitate, he proceeds to thunder against the vanity and insolence of men and women of the Church, including monks and nuns, who wear adornments and fine clothes. He specifically mentions red and blue tunics (tonica coccinea sive iacintina).80 The Latin word used here for ‘blue’ (hyacinthinus) is glossed, in various manuscripts of this text, with OE hæwen ‘blue’,81 and, in other manuscripts, with OE wæden ‘blue’.82 The latter word is cognate with OE wad ‘woad’, and means literally ‘woaded’. 5.7.2 (weolocread) The red (coccineus) tunics in the same passage as in Section 5.7.1 above, are glossed with OE weolocread, meaning literally ‘whelkred’.83 This compound term is appropriate for the extremely expensive and prestigious Tyrian Purple dye, derived from specific Mediterranean shellfish, but also for the local British shellfish dye, praised by Bede for its beauty, and described by him as coccineus ‘red’ and having a rubor pulcherrimus ‘most beautiful redness’.84 6. Conclusion It is clear from the historical record that Anglo-Saxon England was rich in textiles, both in quantity and quality, and much of this information is found in Latin texts. Dodwell refers to “the vast textile wealth of churches and monasteries”, and provides a review of the evidence in his chapter on textiles which provides an often stunning 79

Owen-Crocker, op. cit., pp. 245-51. Ehwald, op. cit., p. 318. 81 Goossens, op. cit., p. 479; Napier (1900), op. cit., pp. 134, 147; J. J. Quinn, The Minor Latin-Old English Glossaries in MS Cotton Cleopatra A.III, unpublished dissertation, University of Stanford, 1956, p. 164. 82 Napier (1900), op. cit., pp. 163, 170. 83 Goossens, op. cit., p. 479; Napier (1900), op. cit., p. 134. 84 Charles Plummer (ed.), Venerabilis Baedae Historiam ecclesiasticam gentis Anglorum, Historiam abbatum, Epistolam ad Ecgberctum una cum Historia abbatum auctore anonymo, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1896, p. 10. 80

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impression of Anglo-Saxon wealth, and love of luxury and colour.85 It is understandable that it was the exotic and expensive fabrics and colours which were the subjects of written descriptions or comments, and this review of textiles described by colour from the Old English records shows a similar picture. A large proportion of the references come from the wills of wealthy people, and Aldhelm’s criticisms of the inappropriate clothes of men and women of the Church who could afford a degree of ostentation. The ordinary world of natural wool colours and home-dyed textiles is almost invisible, with the probable exception of the medical references. The use of blue straining-cloths and red binding-strips is, at least sometimes, connected with domestically produced textiles (linen and wool), and probably homegrown dye-plants (woad and wrætt), and may involve colour symbolism. This paper, and its brief conclusion, should be regarded as an interim report pending a survey of the dye-names and dye-plant names which will follow.

85

Dodwell, op. cit., pp. 129-69.

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Slang terms for money: a historical thesaurus Julie Coleman A project as extensive and long-lived as the Historical Thesaurus of English (HTE) requires large amounts of external finance, and Christian has often been successful in the tiresome activity of funding application. This paper combines these two closely related fields - the HTE and MONEY - by providing a classification of terms for money listed in cant and slang dictionaries published between 1567 and 1874.1 This is an exploration of the potential usefulness of a historical thesaurus of slang to supplement the vocabulary provided by the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), and hence by the HTE. The following classification includes terms for specific amounts of money, many of which are names for notes or coins. Some of these are also used with reference to money in general. Because many cant and slang lexicographers from this period reproduced material found in earlier dictionaries, only the date of the first dictionary appearance is noted. Variant spellings follow the original form, and are preceded by ‘>’. Some of these are clearly the result of erroneous copying, but a few may reflect genuine variation or change in the spoken language. When the first glossary of cant appeared in 1567, attached to Harman’s Caveat, there were no notes and no coins, as we understand them.2 The economy was based on the value of silver. Changes in the 1

These are the dictionaries discussed in J. Coleman, A History of Cant and Slang Dictionaries. Volume I: 1567-1784, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004 and Volume II: 1785-1858, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. I have added material from the various editions of J.C. Hotten, A Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words, London: John Camden Hotten, 1859, and from J. Greenwood, The Seven Curses of London, London: Stanley Rivers and Co., 1869. 2 Thomas Harman, Caveat or Warening for Common Cursetors, London: William Griffith, 1567. The historical material in this paper is combined from a number of sources: J. Giuseppi, The Bank of England: A History from its Foundation in 1694, London: Evans, 1966, J. Craig, The Mint: A History of the London Mint from A.D. 287 to 1948, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953, and the excellent websites of:

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price of precious metals affected the value of coins, which were exchanged according to weight rather than at their face value, so names were needed both for coins and for amounts of money. For example, the pound sterling was an amount of money (twenty shillings), whereas the old sovereign (issued 1489-a1625) and guinea (issued 1663-1813) were gold coins originally issued at twenty shillings, but exchanged according to the fluctuating value of the gold they contained, sometimes for up to thirty shillings. Especially for larger coins, distinctions between names for amounts of money and designations of specific coins are not always preserved in slang terminology, which explains some of the muddiness of the classification. The chronology of this classification is based on each term’s earliest appearance in slang dictionaries. Dates in square brackets represent the OED citation range. OED dates for some of the slang dictionaries consulted here are not always the same as mine. For example, I have used c1698 for B. E.’s New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew; the OED uses 1690, c1690, and a1700. I have used the publication date of Vaux’s Memoirs (1819)3; the OED uses the date noted in the dedicatory letter (1812). I have used 1797 for Potter’s New Dictionary of all the Cant and Flash Languages4; the OED uses 1795, the date of a first edition that I have not been able to examine. This means that although the slang dictionary and OED dates do not always tally, the citations are sometimes identical. In addition, it is not always possible to achieve a perfect match between OED and slang dictionary definitions. For example, the OED defines pony as “£25”, but not as “money” or “£50”, the definitions found in the slang dictionaries I have examined. I have not commented separately on each of these near misses, which accounts for apparent omissions of OED material. Chard Ltd (http://www.24carat.co.uk), the Bank of England (http://www.bankofengland.co.uk), Tony Clayton (http://www.tclayton.demon.co.uk/coins.html#Index), and Predecimal.com (http://www.predecimal.com/index.html), which includes a history of British coinage by Ken Elks. 3 J.H. Vaux, Memoirs of James Hardy Vaux. Written by Himself, London: W. Clowes, 1819. 4 H.T. Potter, A New Dictionary of all the Cant and Flash Languages..., 3rd edition, London: B. Crosby, 1797.

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Money; a (large) sum of money; a coin lowre 1567>lower 1610>loure 1665>lour 1673 [lour, lower n21567-1889], shells 1591 [1592 + 1611], coale 1688>cole c1698 [1673-1870]>coal 1820, the ready 1688 [1688-1977], balsom c1698, chink c1698 [1573-1611], cly c1698 [c1690 + 1834 + 1858], cog c1698 [1532-1729], coliander seeds c1698 [c1690 + 1725]>coriander seeds 1785 [1737], crap c1698 [a1700-1787]>crop 1725, darby c1698 [1682-1785]>derby 1811, dust c1698 [(1526 +) 1607a1845], gelt c1698 [a1529-1968]>gilt 1725 [1598-1885]>gelter 1797, gingerbread c1698 [a1700-1864], goree c1698 [a1700 + 1725]>gory 1741, king’s pictures c1698, lurries c1698 [1673-a1700], muck c1698 [?a13251864], quids c1698, recruits c1698 [1662-1818], rhino c1698 [1688-1851], ribbin c1698 [a1700-1812]>ribben 1788>ribbon 1797>ribband 1819, round sum c1698 [1579-1887], Tom fool’s token c1698, blunt 1703 [1812-a1845], spanks 1725 [1725], bit 1753 [1894-1928], iron 1785 [1785-1966], the mopusses 1785 [1699-1980], plate 1785, spankers 1785 [1663-1785], the Spanish 1788 [1788-1869], glanthem 1789, kelter 1789 [1807-1828], rhino of rag 1797, rubbish 1797, stephen 1797 [1812-1834], rag 1809 [1590-1846], rust 1809 [1858], pony 1811, brads 1819 [1812 + 1841], bustle 1819 [1812 + 1830], dibs 1821 [1812-1883], brass 1822 [1597/8-1871], dimmock 1822, the needful 1822 [a1777-1981], rent 1822 [1828-1977], monish 1835 [17811866], pewter 1835 [1829-1888], rivits 1835 [1846-1937], tip 1835, posh 1839 [1830-1905]>pash 1839, meg 1845, denaly c1855, okre c1855 [1854 + 1890], soskin5 c1855, tin c1855 [1836-1854], chinkers 1859 [1834], feathers 1859, greed 1859, rowdy 1859 [1841-1856], stuff 1859 [1775-1896], clink 1861 [1729-c1817] Saved or hoarded money grannam-gold c1698 [a1700]>grannan gold 1779>grannon gold 1780>grannum(’s) gold 1785 [grandam gold [(1598 +) 1700], nest-egg c1698 [1686-1990] Stolen money, or money as the object of theft caravan c1698 [1688 + 1690], cargo c1698 [1690], prey c1698, ring c1698 [a1700 + 1796] Money paid as a bribe oil of palm 1821 [1819 -1935], grease 1835 [1823] A gold coin6 old Mr. Gory 1673 [a1700 + 1725], goldfinch c1698 [1602-1896], yellowboy c1698 [1662-1957], queer ridge 1848, ridge blunt 1848 5

It seems unlikely, given the citation gap, that this is related to the fifteenth and sixteenth-century terms seskyn and suskin “a Dutch coin of the value of six mites” (OED). 6 Terms for ‘gold’ and ‘silver’ in general, such as ridge and wedge, are excluded here unless they are specifically defined with reference to money in the slang dictionaries.

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A silver coin smash 1797 [1795], white 1816 [c1374 + 1390 + c1676 + 1823-1960], queer wedge 1848 A guinea; a sovereign; a pound; twenty shillings heart’s ease 1665 [a1700 + 1785/96], husky lour 1674, job c1698, meg c1698 [1688-c1742], piece c1698 [1616-1727/41], strike 1703, ned 1753 [17531846], canary bird 1785, ridge 1785 [1665-1955 “gold”], yellow George 1785 [1784 + 1785], stranger 1785 [1785], (rum) quid 1789 [1688-1977], good-looking picture 1797, noge 1797, shino 1797, bean 1811 [1811-1928], shiner 1821 [1760-1887], sufferer 1835, cooter 1839>cuta 1845>couter 1851 [couter, cooter 1846-1880], foont 1839, deanee 1845, James 1865 [15671893] Ten shillings; half-sovereign; half a guinea smelt c1698 [1635 + 1688 + (1822)]>smell 1848 (erron), half a slat 1747, half a ned 1789, regent 1821, half-couter 1851, net-gen 1851 Seven shillings spangle 1811 [1811 + 1823] Six shillings and eightpence noble c1698 [1350-1996] Six shillings six bob bit 1821 A crown; five shillings bull’s eye c1698, (hind) coach-wheel c1698 [c1690 + 1812 + 1834], decus c1698 [1688 + 1822], ounce 1725, bord 1741, whore’s curse 1785, bull 1789 [1812 + 1852], dews 1835, ewif-gen 1851, cart-wheel 1859 [1867 + 1885], thick ’un 1865 [1848-1968] Half a crown; two shillings and sixpence fore coach-wheel c1698, george c1698 [1659-1785], slate c1698 [a1700]>slat 1703, trooper c1698 [a1700], half an ounce 1725, half a bull 1789, half bull 1822 [1789-1906], alderman 1839, bull 1848, flatch-ynork 1851, half case 1857, halftusherroon 1859 Thirteen and a half pence loon-slatt c1698 [a1700], hangman’s wages 1785 A shilling; twelve pence bord 1567 [1567-1688], hog 1673 [1673-1875], twelver c1698 [a1700-1732], traveller 1747, mejoge 1753, boar 1754, button 1785, grunter 1785 [1785 + 1858], she-lion 1785 [1785], thirteener 1785 [1762-1836], bob-stick 1789, peg 1797, bender 1809, peg-stick 1809, bob 1811 [1789-1915], breaky leg 1839, deaner 1839 [1839-1946], twelve 1839, tevis 1845, gen 1851, rogue and villain 1857, stag 1857 [1857 + 1887], Abraham’s willing 1859, chinda 1871 Elevenpence leven 1851

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Tenpence jumper 1821, net-yenep 1851 Ninepence ill-fortune c1698, the picture of ill-luck 1785, enine-yenep 1851 Eightpence teaich-yenep 1851 Sevenpence neves-yenep 1851 Sixpence half a bord 1567, half-bord 1665>half-boad 1828>half-head 1828, half a hog 1674, pig c1698 [1622 + a1700], sice c1698>size 1797 [sice, size 1660-1709 + (1830)], simon c1698 [a1700]>smon 1708, kick 1725 [c1700-1871], sibuxom 1747, griff-metoll 1753, cripple 1785 [1785 + 1885], crook-back 1785, syebuck 1785>syeboord 1871, tester 1785>teaster 1821>teaser 1848, crook 1788, bender 1789 [1836-1855], Tilbury 1796 [1796-1812], tizzy 1796 [1804-1946], bob 1797, half a grunter 1809, tanner 1811 [1811-1908], bandy 1821, fiddler 1835 [1846-1885], tinker 1835, downer 1839, lord of the manor 1839 [1839-1972], snid 1839 [1839], sprat 1839 [1839-1902], scab 1845, tawne 1845, hop 1848, exis-yenep 1851, suchera 1871 Fivepence five win 1789, kid’s eye 1821, ewif-yenep 1851 A groat; fourpence flag 1567 [1567 + a1700 + 1851], croker c1698, groat7 1835 [(1351) + 13621885], rouf-yenep 1851, bit 1859, joey 1859 [1865-1884] Three and a half pence yenep-flatch 1851 Threepence treswins 1665, threpps c1698, thrums c1698>thrum 1741 [1699 + 18441933], erth-yenep 1851

As the value of silver rose, it became an uneconomical material for small change. The last silver farthing was minted in 1553, after which production was suspended until the introduction of copper farthings and halfpennies in 1672. Throughout most of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there was a shortage of small change. Locally issued tokens were customarily used instead, and accepted as legal tender up to the value of sixpence. Pennies and twopence-pieces, containing their own value in copper, were issued from 1797 onwards.

7

It is not clear why this standard English term was included in a slang glossary.

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After 1860, farthings, halfpennies, and pennies were all produced in bronze. A copper coin mag 1797, brown 1816 [1812-1865] Twopence deuswins 1665, deuce c1698 [a1700 + 1851]>dace c1698>duce 1703, jemmy 1835, owl-yenep 1851 A penny wyn 1567>win 1608 [1567-1900]>wind 1703>wing 1845, brown 1820, georgy 1820, yenep 1851, brown bread c1855, copper 1859 A halfpenny make 1567 [?1536-1618 + 1826-1946]?>meg 1753 [?1747-1988]?>mag 1797 [?1775-1918], baubee c1698 [bawbee 1542-1862], mopus c1698, rap 1785, scuddick 1821, tannie 1821, tonic 1822, copper 1835, flatch 1851, curdie 1871 A farthing; a quarter of a penny grig c1698 [1656/7-1839], jack c1698 [a1700-1873], mopus c1698, rag c1698, token c1698, scrope 1703, meg 1753, fadge 1789 [1789-1873], queer rag 1809, Covent Garden 1859 Half a farthing doit c1698 [1594-1850] A sixth of a penny bodle c1698 [1650-1834]

Among the terms for small change are several that the slang dictionaries define more specifically than the OED, which describes them as general terms for coins of small value. These include mopus [1699-1980], rap,8 scuddick [1823-1901], all of which frequently occur in the construction ‘not a …’. Similarly, the OED defines copper as “copper money … a copper coin” [(1588) + 1712-Mod], while the slang dictionaries define it, variously, as “a penny” or “a halfpenny”. Either the slang lexicographers are closer to these terms’ usage and are thus able to define them more precisely, or else they are unaware of or insensitive to their wider use. Token, which the OED defines as “A stamped piece of metal, often having the general appearance of a coin, issued as a medium of exchange by a private 8

OED 1a: “A counterfeit coin, worth about half a farthing, which passed current for a halfpenny in Ireland in the 18th c., owing to the scarcity of genuine money. Now only Hist.” [1724-1827], also 1b “taken as a type of the smallest coin” [1823-1881].

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person or company, who engage to take it back at its nominal value, giving goods or legal currency for it”, indicates the complex legal status of all small change in this period. Because gold and silver are both relatively soft metals, they quickly became worn in circulation. This made it possible to pass poor quality counterfeits and even blank discs, which accounted for about a sixth of silver coinage by the end of the seventeenth century when they were withdrawn for recoinage. Another method of coin-fraud saw the gold and silver content of coins reduced, sometimes to as little as half of their legal weight, by clipping off small amounts of metal or burning it off with acid. Since small change also contained its value in metal, less ambitious fraudsters specialized in copper coinage. Counterfeit coin(s) swimmer c1698, queer 1741 [1812-1981], button 1785, dump 1788 [18211908], frying-pans 1797, smash 1797 [1795-1860], prince’s money 1813, (half a) case 1839, schofel 1839 [shoful 1828-1856], sheen 1839 [18391890], sinker 1839 [1839-1900], the things 1839, sham 1845, gammy 1857 Counterfeit queer c.1698, gammy 1839, bogus 1848 [1839-19429] A maker of counterfeit coins queer cole maker c1698, queer bit maker 1785, smasher 1797 [1795-1895], bit-smasher 1809, bit cull 1821, face-maker c1855, bit-faker 1869 Counterfeiting money making browns/whites 1816 To pass counterfeit money ring the changes 1811 [1786 + 1874], smash 1811 [1801-1905], work the bulls 1839 One who passes counterfeit money queer cole fencer c1698, smasher 1809, dealer in queer 1822, schofel-pitcher 1839 [1859] Passing counterfeit money smashing 1799 [1812 + 1891], slumming 1839 [1839 + 1888], schofelpitching 1859 To clip money niggle c1698 Clipping money nigging c1698 [1699 + 1796]

9

Only the first citation refers to money.

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The metal clipped from coins spangle 1674, end c1698, nig c1698 [1699 + 1709 + (1725-c1825)], shavings c1698 [a1700], parings 1725, curle 1785 One who clips or otherwise reduces coins niggler c1698, curler 1809, nigger 1835

The Bank of England began issuing banknotes soon after its establishment in 1694, initially for precise sums, but increasingly, as the eighteenth century progressed, with fixed denominations. Until 1855, cashiers still had to fill in the name of the payee and sign each banknote individually. These banknotes could be cashed in for gold and silver coins (i.e. real money), as required. A bank-note; bank-notes (rum/queer) screen 1789 [1789-1864], flimsey 1811 [1824-1845], rag 1811, screave 1821 [1801], leel 1871 Large (of a bank-note) long-tailed 1839 A hundred thousand pounds plumb 1785 [plum 1689/1702-1898] Fifty thousand pounds half a plum 1826 Fifty pounds pony 1848 Ten pound note double finnip 1839>double finnuff 1859 Five pound note finnip 1839 [1839-1966]>finnuff 1859

Slang and cant terms for money have a variety of origins. Terms for coins sometimes refer to the colour (e.g. okre (for ochre), goldfinch, yellow-boy, and canary-bird for gold coins; white for silver; brown for small change) or lustre of the metal (e.g. shiner “a guinea”). Others terms refer to the size (e.g. coach-wheel, cart-wheel, and thick ’un, all ‘a crown’; fiddler, sprat, and scab, all ‘sixpence’), weight (e.g. ounce ‘a crown’; sinker and swimmer both ‘a counterfeit coin’), sound (e.g. chink, chinkers, and clink, all for ‘money’), or quality (e.g. cripple, crook-back, and bender, all for ‘sixpence’ “that

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piece being commonly much bent and distorted”10). Many refer to the value, either directly (e.g. twelver and thirteener ‘a shilling’; sice ‘sixpence’; deuce ‘twopence’), or by mathematical formulas (usually half (a) …). A few appear to refer to the method of production (e.g. smash ‘a silver coin’; strike ‘a guinea’; smelt ‘half-guinea’). Images and inscriptions supply some nicknames for coins. General examples include good-looking picture ‘a guinea’ and king’s pictures ‘coins’. The use of george for both ‘a guinea’ and ‘half a crown’ and of georgy for ‘penny’ may result from St George’s presence on the reverse of many coins. Bord ‘a shilling’ may refer to the shield on the reverse of Tudor and Stuart shillings (Partridge)11. Partridge also notes that hog ‘a shilling’ is “probably ex. the figure of a hog on a small silver coin”, but I have not been able to find any examples. The name decus for ‘a crown’ is from the inscription decus et tutamen ‘ornament and safeguard’. Presumably because of discontinuities in coinage, some denominations were designated by the name of the monarch depicted on them (e.g. James, ?George, ?ned). Regent, for a half-sovereign, is a punning reference to the position of the Prince Regent, waiting for the death of his father before he could become a full sovereign. It appears that the development of a slang sense can have a dragchain effect on related terms. For example, hog is listed with the sense ‘a shilling’ in B.E.’s dictionary in c169812, to be joined by boar in 1754 and grunter in 1785. Half that amount, sixpence, is designated a pig. It is possible that kid’s eye ‘fivepence’ is similarly related to bull’s eye ‘a crown’. Similarly, once iron came to be used for money, it opened the way for other base metals, including brass, pewter, and tin to acquire the same meaning. Some of these terms allude to the effect that the money has on the possessor (e.g. balsom [sic] ‘money’; heart’s ease ‘a guinea’; tonic ‘a halfpence’), or to the speaker’s lack of familiarity with the coin (e.g. stranger ‘a guinea’). Many imply that money is not important, either by reference to refuse (e.g. dust, muck, rubbish, rust all for ‘money’) 10

F. Grose, A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, London: S. Hooper, 1785, s.v. cripple. 11 E. Partridge, A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, 5th edition, London: Routledge, 1967. 12 B.E., A New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew, London: W. Hawes, c1698.

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or to worthless objects of a similar shape and size (e.g. rivits [sic] and brads both for ‘money’). Dibs, also for ‘money’, are sheep’s knucklebones or small rounded pebbles used in a children’s game. A few of these terms are derived from the names of foreign coins, many of which were in circulation in Britain to make good shortages of small change and precious metals. These include doit ‘half a farthing’ from eMnDu duit; flag ‘fourpence’ from MLG vleger; and soskin ‘money’ possibly from MDu seskijn ‘a coin worth six mites’ (all OED). More speculative etymologies include couter ‘a sovereign’, from Romany kotor (Partridge); deaner ‘a shilling’, from French denier or Lingua Franca dinarly (Partridge); mejoge ‘a shilling’, from Shelta midgic (Partridge); posh ‘money’, from Romany posh ‘half’ (OED); schofel ‘counterfeit money’, from Yiddish schofel ‘worthless stuff’ (Partridge); and tanner ‘sixpence’, from Romany tawno ‘small’ (Hotten, from Ainsworth13). Also suggesting financial exchanges between excluded social groups is monish ‘money’, which may represent a pronunciation influenced by Yiddish (OED). A few disguised terms employ word-play (e.g. she-lion for ‘shilling’), rhyming slang (e.g. rogue and villain for ‘shilling’; lord of the manor for tanner ‘sixpence’; Covent Garden for ‘farthing’) and back slang (e.g. flatch for ‘half(pence)’; yenep for ‘penny’, etc.) may have been used to refer to coins on the brink of liberation from their unsuspecting possessor. Terms like threpps and thrums, both for ‘threepence’ represent non-standard pronunciations of the standard term, although they do not appear to have been created for the sake of deception. Slang lexicographers are particularly fond of anecdotal and narrative etymologies. In 1785 Grose (op.cit.) listed: WHORE’S CURSE, a piece of gold coin value five shillings and threepence, frequently given to women of the town by such as professed always to give gold, and who before the introduction of those pieces, always gave half a guinea.

13

W.H. Ainsworth, Rookwood: A Romance in Three Volumes, London: Richard Bentley, 1834.

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The Lexicon Balatronicum14 has: TILBURY. Sixpence: so called from its formerly being the fare for crossing over from Gravesend to Tilbury Fort.

Narrative etymologies survive into modern slang dictionaries. Beale’s edition of Partridge’s dictionary15 gives the following explanation for rhino ‘money’: Origin problematic. In Malaya, long ago, the rhinoceros was almost ‘worth its weight in gold’ to those opportunists who converted every part of a slain rhinoceros into aphrodisiacs and sold packets at very high prices, to Chinese mandarins, who placed great faith in them.

The trouble with such accounts is that they are entirely beyond proof. Slang terms cannot be subject to the same etymological investigation as more fully documented standard English terms, and many of the etymologies listed here may owe more to lexicographers’ wishful thinking than to solid fact. Most of the terms listed here are also to be found in the OED, and hence in the Historical Thesaurus, often with earlier citation dates, and sometimes much earlier. A few predate existing OED first citations, however, as shown above. The most striking are bender ‘a shilling’ (27 years), blunt ‘money’ (109 years), bull ‘a crown’ (23 years) and rust ‘money’ (49 years), which are joined by many minor antedatings. While this thesaurus is by no means either an exhaustive or authoritative account of slang usage in this field, it does document the available contemporary dictionary evidence. This, in itself, reveals interesting details in the history of individual terms. Why, for example, are brass ‘money’ and James ‘a guinea’ first listed in nineteenth-century slang dictionaries when they are both documented from the sixteenth century? The obvious and most probable explanation is that earlier slang lexicographers, not aiming to provide comprehensive coverage, had overlooked them. However, a few intriguing possibilities suggest themselves, which require further 14

Lexicon Balatronicum, London: Printed for C. Chapel, Pall-Mall, 1811. P. Beale, (ed), A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English by Eric Partridge, 8th edition, London: Routledge, 2002.

15

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exploration. Had once standard or colloquial terms drifted into slang? Had the terms moved down the social spectrum? Had slang users revived terms drifting into obsolescence? The re-presentation of OED material in thesaurus form opens up intriguing new research possibilities, previously impossible or impractical. Scholars in many fields will soon find that the HTE is worth its weight in gold. A reliable historical thesaurus of slang is much further off.

‘Huv a wee seat, hen’: evaluative terms in Scots Fiona Douglas and John Corbett

Introduction During her distinguished academic career, Christian Kay has combined a record of research into lexicography and lexical semantics with a longstanding interest in teaching pragmatics and stylistics. As a token of our respect and gratitude for the insights she has afforded us in these fields, we offer the beginnings of an exploration into the semantics, pragmatics and stylistic force of evaluative terms in Scottish speech and writing. Our data come mainly from the Scots Thesaurus and the growing archives of the Scots Corpus of Texts and Speech (SCOTS), a project that Professor Kay initiated and to which she continues to contribute. At the time of writing, the SCOTS project is in its early stages, with almost 400,000 lexical items in its archives, a sizeable proportion of which is literary Scots. As the archive grows, the nature and distribution of evaluative terms in Scottish speech and writing will be easier to explore; this chapter aims only to present a preliminary sketch of possible directions for future research. The Scots Thesaurus is a sample of the vocabulary of modern Broad Scots, arranged in lexical sets.1 Like all thesauri, it provides a fascinating ‘map’ of the linguistic culture from which it springs. The SCOTS archive is a body of electronically-searchable texts, compiled by the University of Glasgow and made available on the Web.2 The SCOTS texts range from Broad Scots to standard Scottish English.3 1

Caroline Macafee, “The Scots Thesaurus: an index to the dictionary record”, Review of Scottish Culture, 6 (1990), 85-86; I. Macleod, (ed.), The Scots Thesaurus, Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1990. [Reprinted 1999, Edinburgh: Polygon] 2 W. J. Anderson (forthcoming), “The SCOTS Corpus: a resource for language contact study”, in the proceedings of a conference held in St Andrews, Scotland (1113 June 2004) on “Language Contact and Minority Languages on the Littorals of Western Europe”, to be published in the Symposium Logos Series Studies in

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Kay in a comparison of the Old English Thesaurus and the Scots Thesaurus (ST),4 observes that [ST] presents a lexicon which is to some extent incomplete. This is partly a matter of editorial selection [...] and of the exigencies of space, but also indicates the extent to which Standard English has taken over in certain areas of Scottish life. The impression given by the ST lexis is that it is largely nominal and descriptive: a bedrock of names for natural phenomena and everyday objects, leavened by a highly descriptive vocabulary for individuals and their characteristics, words such as fushionless, glaikit, peeliewallie, or phrases such as a bonnie fechter or a knotless threid. This passage identifies a neglected area of research into the use of Scots terms: in a lexical economy in which both Scots and Standard English terms have currency, what is the function and value of those ‘highly descriptive’ Scots evaluative terms? Evaluative terms have recently become a focus of interest in pragmatics, discourse analysis and corpus linguistics.5 In their introduction to a ground-breaking anthology of articles on evaluation, Thompson and Hunston argue for the importance of evaluative language.6 For example, evaluative language functions to: x Express opinion x Maintain relations between speakers or writer/readers

Eurolinguistics, Vol. 4, edited by S. Ureland and S. Pugh; F. M. Douglas, “The Scottish Corpus of Texts and Speech: Problems of Corpus Design”, Literary and Linguistic Computing, 17:2, 2003, pp. 259-61. 3 For definitions and discussion of the Broad Scots–Scottish English continuum, see J. Corbett, J. D. McClure and J. Stuart-Smith, eds. The Edinburgh Companion to Scots, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003. 4 C. Kay, “A lexical view of two societies: A comparison of the Scots Thesaurus and a Thesaurus of Old English”, in A. Fenton and D. A. MacDonald (eds.), Studies in Scots and Gaelic, Edinburgh: Canongate, 1994, pp. 41-47. 5 For example, S. Hunston and G. Thompson (eds.), Evaluation in Text: Authorial Stance and the Construction of Discourse, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000; P. Leistyna, and C. F. Meyer (eds.), Corpus Analysis: Language Structure and Language Use, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2003. 6 Hunston and Thompson, op. cit., pp. 6-13.

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x Manage discourse organisation (e.g., by signalling boundary points in sequences of discourse). The second of these functions promises to be particularly relevant to the use of Scots, particularly in situations where a sense of the individual’s relationship to the community is negotiated through texts that contain markers of Scottish identity. Such situations extend from casual conversation to newspaper texts.7 This chapter sketches some possible approaches to combining thesaurus and corpus resources in order to investigate the cultural function of evaluative lexis. Defining Evaluative Lexis The kind of terms that fall into the category of evaluation are various. J. R. Martin attempts to formulate the possibilities in a set of related systems such as AFFECT (emotions such as happiness or fear), JUDGEMENT (ethical assessments such as morality), and APPRECIATION (aesthetic judgments such as beauty).8 Each system has positive or negative polarity. A random selection of terms from the Scots Thesaurus that would fit neatly into Martin’s model of APPRAISAL are: AFFECT JUDGEMENT APPRECIATION

7

POSITIVE canty, joco, mirrie, (15.5.4) dacent, douce, leal (15.3.1) bonny, guidly, wallie (15.6.1)

NEGATIVE crabbit, disjaskit, dour (15.3.5) coof, notour, waster (15.3.2) ill-farrant, peelie-wersh, scabbit (15.3.2)

Cf. F. M. Douglas, The Role of Lexis in Scottish Newspapers, unpublished thesis submitted to the University of Glasgow in fulfilment of requirements for degree of PhD in the Department of English Language, 2000. 8 J. R. Martin, “Beyond exchange: APPRAISAL systems in English”, paper given to Sydney Linguistics Circle, NCELTR, Macquarie University, 3 June, 1994; J. R. Martin, “Beyond exchange: APPRAISAL systems in English”, in S. Hunston and G. Thompson (eds.) op. cit., pp. 142-75; J. Rothery and M. Stenglin, “Interpreting Literature: the role of APPRAISAL”, in L. Unsworth (ed.), Researching Language in Schools and Communities: Functional Linguistic Perspectives, London: Cassell, 2000.

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However, as Thompson and Hunston’s introduction and the succeeding chapters in their anthology show, defining evaluative terms–even agreeing a name for them–is a tricky matter. Thompson and Hunston identify affect,9 attitude,10 appraisal,11 connotation,12 modality,13 and stance14 as possible terms, before finally opting for evaluation themselves.15 They define evaluation as “the broad cover term for the expression of the speaker or writer’s attitude or stance towards, viewpoint on, or feelings about the entities or propositions that he or she is talking about”.16 With two qualifications, this is the definition that we shall adopt here. The first qualification goes beyond issues of terminology to address the nature of ‘expressing an attitude or stance’ on something.17 Cruse observes that evaluative lexical items sometimes describe emotional states such as surprise:18 I am dumfounert. – and sometimes they simply express them: Jings! Martin’s distinction between ‘construed’ and ‘implicated’ affect touches on the difference to which Cruse alludes; however, Martin

9

N. Besnier, “Reported speech and affect on Nukulaelae Atoll”, in J. H. Hill and J. T. Irvine (eds.), Responsibility and Evidence in Oral Discourse, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 161-81. 10 M. A. K. Halliday, An Introduction to Functional Grammar (2nd ed.), London: Edward Arnold, 1994. 11 Martin, 2000, op.cit. 12 J. Lyons, Semantics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. 13 Halliday, op. cit. and M. R. Perkins, Modal Expressions in English, Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1983. 14 D. Biber, S. Johansson, G. Leech, S. Conrad and E. Finegan, The Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English, London: Longman, 1999, and Hunston and Thompson, op. cit. 15 Hunston and Thompson, op. cit., p. 2. 16 Hunston and Thompson, op. cit., p. 5. 17 A. Cruse, Meaning in Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 5859. 18 A. Cruse, op.cit., pp. 58-59.

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rightly blurs the apparently clear distinction.19 The use of even an apparently neutral term in context can load it with evaluative meaning. The term ‘literary’, for example, can refer descriptively to a certain kind of text. However, in examples from the SCOTS archive, the term can be used in either a positive or, at least, a more ambivalent way: …the excellent literary quality of the Lanarkshire dialect material… …ere’s maybe something aifter aa in fit es literary kinna lads say aboot e ‘hard’ Northeast… As Sinclair, Louw and Channell have indicated, continued use of terms in positive or negative contexts shapes their evaluative force, a point we shall return to in due course.20 In the following extract from an abstract by McClure, the authorial stance is clear from the distribution of negative and positive terms that contrast attitudes to the Scots language over time.21 ‘Literary’ is embedded again amongst more explicitly positive terms. (All terms that could be considered evaluative have been highlighted.) The Scots language, traditionally neglected or actively suppressed in the education system, has in recent years enjoyed a quite dramatic reversal in its fortunes. In chronological order, the following related developments have taken place: a remarkable literary efflorescence, including a corpus of brilliant, inventive, and strongly politically-motivated poetry…

19

Martin, 2000, p. 155. J. Sinclair, Corpus, Concordance, Collocation, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991; B. Louw, “Irony in the text or insincerity in the writer? The diagnostic potential of semantic prosodies”, in M. Baker, G. Francis and E. Tognini-Bognelli (eds.), Text and Technology: In Honour of John Sinclair, Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1993, pp. 15776; and J. Channell, “Corpus analysis of evaluative lexis”, in Hunston and Thompson, op. cit., pp. 38-55. 21 J. D. McClure cited in I. McGugan, Inquiry into the role of educational and cultural policy in supporting and developing Gaelic, Scots and minority languages in Scotland, Edinburgh: The Scottish Parliament Education, Culture and Sport Committee, 2003. 20

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Apparently non-judgemental or technical descriptive terms, then, can nevertheless be used with evaluative force, both to describe and even to express opinions and emotions.22 Our second qualification is that some apparently technical descriptive terms can also be used nonliterally to manage interaction, as in the use of wee to create a sense of intimacy or familiarity amongst speakers: Get a wee drink o watter doon ye. You huv a wee seat, hen. We shall look in more detail at wee shortly. To summarise thus far: given the symbolic use of Scots to establish and maintain social relations, an investigation of the nature and function of evaluative vocabulary in Scots and Scottish English promises to be fruitful. The Scots Thesaurus offers an initial way into evaluative lexis in Scots; resources like the SCOTS archive promise an increasingly powerful means of exploring the function of evaluative terms across a range of genres. Some lexical items express evaluation; others describe evaluation; and yet other terms that are not in themselves evaluative can be used pragmatically to communicate evaluations in context. Again, the Scots Thesaurus and the SCOTS archive offer resources for the preliminary investigation of this topic. Evaluative Lexis in the Scots Thesaurus The key sections of the Scots Thesaurus that deal most explicitly with evaluation are: x Section 8 (‘Life cycle, family’) x Section 9 (‘Physical States’) x Section 15 (‘Characters, emotions, social behaviour’) We focus here on Section 15, which is the largest and, since it deals explicitly with descriptions of character, emotion and behaviour, its lexis is most obviously evaluative. As noted above, Martin’s system of affect has positive and negative polarities. Cruse supports such a dichotomy, observing that 22

Cf. Hunston and Thompson, op. cit., p. 15.

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oppositeness is ‘in some way cognitively primitive’.23 Cruse’s turn from the study of lexis to cognition recalls van Dijk’s assertion that ideologies are sociocognitive phenomena that construct the in-group in a positive light and the out-group in a negative light.24 One line of investigation would be to identify the resources for evaluation in Scottish discourse, monitor the use of evaluative language in context, and explore the ideological or socio-cultural function of evaluation in establishing and maintaining in-group/out-group identities. As Table 1 shows, many of the categories in Section 15 fall easily into positive or negative categories, though others are more ambivalent. Table 1: Initial categorisation of section 15 Scots Thesaurus categories according to positive/negative polarity. Good/Positive 15.2.3 Intelligence

Bad/Negative 15.2.4 Stupidity

15.3.1 Misc. positive types 15.3.3 Warm, friendly 15.5.2 Compassion 15.5.4 Joy, merrymaking 15.5.15 Skill

15.3.2 Misc. negative types 15.3.4 Aggressive 15.3.5 Pessimistic 15.3.6 Touchy

15.3.9 Bold

15.5.20 Obedience 15.6.1 Misc. sources contentment 15.6.5 Elation

15.3.7 Weakness of character 15.3.8 Treacherous 15.3.10 Timid 15.3.11 Wild, eccentric

15.6.6 Go

15.3.12 Villainous

15.6.11 Liking

15.4.2 Spendthrifts, spongers 15.4.3 Affectation 15.4.5 Slovenliness, laziness 15.5.3 Mockery 15.5.5 Uproar

15.4 Personal, values and behaviour 15.4.1 Thrift, miserliness, avarice 15.4.4 Dress sense

15.6.12 Gratitude 15.6.17 Laughter 15.7.6 Endearments

23

Ambivalent 15.1 General & neutral terms 15.2 Social status & inherent qualities 15.2.1 High class 15.2.2 Low class 15.3 Character types

15.3.13 Earnest 15.3.14 Independent

15.4.6 Eating habits 15.5 Social behaviour 15.5.1 Persuasion 15.5.6 Drink

Cruse, op. cit., p. 167. e.g. Teun A. van Dijk, Ideology: A Multidisciplinary Approach, London: Sage Publications, 1999, pp. 8-10. 24

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42 Good/Positive

Bad/Negative Ambivalent 15.5.8 Nosiness, slander 15.5.7 Chitchat 15.5.9 Quarrels 15.5.13 Mastery 15.5.10 Opposition 15.5.19 Indifference, restraint 15.5.11 Abusiveness 15.6 Emotions & states 15.5.12 Revenge 15.6.3 Miscellaneous sensations 15.5.14 Scolding 15.6.4 Strong emotions 15.5.16 Bad 15.6.10 Longing workmanship 15.5.17 Shambles 15.6.18 Grimaces, gestures 15.5.18 Being hampered 15.7 Interjections 15.6.2 Misc. sources 15.7.1 Miscellaneous discontent 15.6.7 Anxiety, care 15.6.8 Madness 15.6.9 Jealousy 15.6.13 Anger 15.6.14 Shame 15.6.15 Fear, disgust 15.6.16 Sorrow, tears 15.7.2 Disgust 15.7.3 Impatience 15.7.4 Discontent 15.7.5 Gratuitous abuse

At first glance, this table seems to confirm the stereotypical dourness of the Scot. That this trait is evident to the casual reader of the Scots Thesaurus is supported by Fenton’s observation in the introduction that ‘criticism rather than praise is a kenmark of the Scots language’,25 and by the editor Iseabail Macleod’s query:26 Is the [Scots] national reputation confirmed by the long section (15.4.1) on ‘Thrift, miserliness, avarice’? Grippie, meeserable, meesart, nairra-beagun, peengin, pegral, scrubby, scruntie, wheetie all mean ‘miserly, mean’; they are treated together with cannie ‘frugal’, fendie ‘thrifty’, etc., on the other side of the same coin. Scottish grudgingness with praise seems to be confirmed by 25 A. Fenton,“Introduction”, in I. Macleod (ed.), The Scots Thesaurus, Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1990, p. xii. 26 I. Macleod, “Research in progress: Some problems of Scottish lexicography”, English World-Wide, 14:1 (1993), 115-28.

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the fact that the section on ‘Miscellaneous negative types’ (15.3.2) is several times as long as that on ‘Miscellaneous positive types’ (15.3.1). As Macleod suggests, the apparent preference for negative terms is evident both in the categories as a whole, and in the terms within each category. There are more terms listed for ‘Low Class’ (15.2.2) than ‘High Class’ (15.2.1), for example. Furthermore, while the great majority of ‘Low Class’ terms are negative (165 of 182, or 91%), only about half of the ‘High Class’ terms are positive (63 of 127 or 49.6%). Indeed, 53 of the ‘High Class’ terms are negative, including cockapentie ‘a snob’, crouse ‘conceited, arrogant, proud’, hingthegither ‘clannish’ and sneist ‘behave in a contemptuous, arrogant way, be scornful or supercilious’. Some classifications, however, seem to determine whether the polarity of their members will be positive or negative. Not surprisingly, 59 of the 67 lexemes within ‘Intelligence’ (15.2.3) are positive, only one being obviously negative (souple, which can mean ‘devious’), while, at least out of context, the others appear neutral or ambivalent e.g. ‘sanshach’ or ‘pawkie’. The lexemes in the category of ‘Stupidity’ (15.2.4) are overwhelmingly negative, 159 of the 161, with none apparently positive, again out of context.27 It is again noticeable that there are considerably more terms available in Scots to express the negative characteristic ‘Stupidity’ than there are to express its positive counterpart. Happily for Scottish self-esteem, a disproportionate weighting towards negative evaluative terms seems to be a general feature of lexicographical reference works. Channell notes that During the writing of CCED [Collins Cobuild English Dictionary], compilers noted more than double the number of negatively loaded words to positively loaded ones. It is too early to know why that might be, or even if it is a substantive observation. It might be, for example, that compilers were more 27

Cf. K. L. Allan, “An examination of metaphor from Old English to present day English focusing on notions of intelligence/cleverness and stupidity”, Ph.D. thesis submitted to the Department of English Language, University of Glasgow, 2003, for a discussion of the concepts of intelligence and stupidity in the Historical Thesaurus of English.

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sensitive to negative items because the social consequences of an error with a negative term are much greater than those arising from a misuse of a positive item. The whole area of evaluative language seems to require tying up with the notion of ‘facework’ employed by Brown and Levinson (1987) in their explanation of ‘politeness’.28 To relate evaluative language to ‘facework’, and to explore other pragmatic issues, it is necessary to turn to speech and writing in context, as evidenced, for example, by the SCOTS archive. We shall turn to language in context in the next section. Before doing that, it is illuminating to consider the distribution of evaluative lexis in the Scots Thesaurus in greater detail, with reference to Martin’s model of APPRAISAL, mentioned briefly above.29 To summarise, the model of APPRAISAL assumes that the evaluative resources of a language fall into three general categories, APPRECIATION, AFFECT and JUDGEMENT. Together, these form a network as shown in Table 2. The general system of APPRECIATION involves the speaker’s evaluation of the worth of something. It can be subdivided into reaction (i.e. an expression of the impact of something on the speaker), composition (i.e. an expression of its aesthetic characteristics) and valuation (i.e. an expression of its worth). The system of AFFECT indicates the evaluation of mental states such as happiness, security and satisfaction. The final system, JUDGEMENT, involves an initial choice between social sanction and social esteem. Social sanction comprises of the categories ethics (good/bad) and truth (true/false). Social esteem involves resolve (brave/cowardly, reliable/unreliable, etc), capacity (intelligent/stupid, gifted/incapable, etc) and normality (normal/peculiar, lucky/unlucky, etc).

28

Channell, op. cit., p. 55; she refers to P. Brown and S. Levinson, Politeness, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. 29 Martin (1994, 2000), op. cit.

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Table 2: The APPRAISAL System (cf Martin, 2000; Rothery and Stenglin, 2000 )

APPRAISAL

APPRECIATION

reaction composition valuation

AFFECT

un/happiness in/security dis/satisfaction

ethics social sanction JUDGEMENT

truth

social esteem

Resolve capacity normality

The question is: to what extent do the resources of Scots realise the forms of evaluation thus detailed? Looking again at Section 15 of the Scots Thesaurus, we can begin to see the distribution of terms according to types of evaluation, or, in Martin’s terms, APPRAISAL. Table 3 shows how part of Martin’s APPRAISAL system, the subsystem of APPRECIATION, might be mapped onto Scots Thesaurus categories and examples. Table 3: APPRECIATION and the Scots Thesaurus categories APPRECIATION

ST CATEGORIES

EXAMPLES

REACTION

Grimaces, gestures Laughter Mockery Uproar Opposition

bo ‘make a face’, girn ‘snarl’, ‘grimace’ heffer ‘laugh heartily’, snicher ‘snigger’ dunt ‘insult’, taisle ‘tease’, ‘irritate’, ‘vex’ brangle ‘state of confusion’, too hoo ‘fuss’ conter ‘oppose’, disassent ‘refuse to agree’

COMPOSITION

Dress sense Affectation

barrie ‘smart’, perjink ‘trim’, ‘neat’ dink ‘prim’, ‘precise’, yaup ‘speak affectedly’ gabbit ‘fastidious about food’, vorax ‘voracious’ bauchle ‘spoil’, hairy ‘rough’, ‘untidy’ boorach ‘muddle’, ‘mess’, moger ‘mess’

Eating habits Bad workmanship Shambles

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46 VALUATION

High class Low class Liking Chitchat Nosiness, slander

digne ‘worthy’, far kent ‘widely known’ coof ‘lout’, landwart ‘rustic’, ‘uncouth’ belufit ‘beloved’, kittle ‘make excited’ blether ‘talk foolishly’, clype ‘gossip’ blaud ‘defame’, clash ‘tell tales’

It is always difficult to assign members to single, broad semantic categories in a clear-cut, absolute manner. However, it is evident from the above that Scots evaluative lexis can be distributed across Martin’s categories of APPRECIATION, AFFECT and JUDGEMENT; in other words, there are terms aplenty in Broad Scots for expressing impact, aesthetic appreciation, emotion, ethical judgements, and so on. In the following section, we shall examine how these systems are realised in the dynamic context of a dramatic text. Evaluative Language in the SCOTS archive ‘Facework’ is the designation given to a host of strategies, some of them linguistic, designed to negotiate the individual’s relationship with the community.30 For example, an individual will wish to protect his or her autonomy and wish to be respected by the community for who he or she is (negative face). The same individual will also wish to be considered a respectful member of the community, and to be seen to harmonise with its values (positive face). When our face is threatened, we may attempt to save face by switching topics, hedging, disclaiming, paraphrasing, joking, apologising or justifying. Obviously, some of this activity will involve evaluation. For example, the term dour is defined in the Concise Scots Dictionary as having four possible senses, all of them evaluative: 1. 2. 3. 4.

30

determined, hard, stern, severe obstinate, stubborn, unyielding sullen, humourless, dull slow, sluggish, reluctant (to do something)

Cf. Brown and Levinson, op.cit. and S. Ting-Toomey, “Intercultural conflict styles: a face-negotiation theory”, in Y. Kim and W. Gudykunst (eds.), Theory in Intercultural Communication, Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 1988, pp. 213-35.

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In the SCOTS archive, the term occurs several times in a short story entitled ‘A Gey-Dour Bitch’ by Sheena Blackhall.31 The story is a monologue by someone whose character is evaluated by others, probably as a combination of the first three senses, ‘severe’, ‘stubborn’ and possibly ‘sullen’: She’s a dour bitch, that’s fit I think o her A damned dour bitch, that’s fit I think o her In response to this evaluation, the main character negotiates face, not by rejecting the description, but by asserting that her dourness is in part a result of circumstances, that it is an inevitable part of her character, that it is only occasional, and that it is justifiable: Weel, if I was dour afore, I wis ten times waur eftir thon. ye’ll hae tae pit up wi me, dour bitch or no. I can be dour fyles. It’s a peer pianie that plays nae mair nor eichtsome reels an cheerie ballants. Evaluative terms, then, can be related to facework: individuals or groups anticipate, make and respond to descriptions, whether they are negative, like dour, or positive, like douce (1. sweet, pleasant, loveable; 2. sedate, sober, respectable; 3. neat, tidy, comfortable). The few examples of douce so far collected in the SCOTS archive tentatively suggest that in Scottish English the second sense is more prominent (with the added hint of hypocrisy at times), whilst in Broad Scots the first sense is also still current, particularly in relation to plants, animals, women and children: Spittin wild cat, douce blue-bell Fellow-traivellers like yersel rub yer niv on eir braid foreheids. Douce kinna beasts a swack an douce-like quine whiles, the wee ones that’s douce Feet together, backs straight white socks and navy bloomers, Douce quines frae Broomhill the universal misery of beggardom. Douce, sober citizens 31

S. Blackhall, S., “A Gey Dour Bitch” in The Fower Quarters: Tales by Sheena Blackhall. Edinburgh: GKB Books, 2002, pp. 10-18. [See also http://www.scottishcorpus.ac.uk/]

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that was her mother’s way. Keeping up a douce front. Gin we leive mair douce lik an hae a mair hummil style The availability of corpus evidence for the use of lexical items allows us to explore in depth some of the issues touched on above. The discussion of polarity in relation to categories such as ‘Intelligence’ and ‘Stupidity’ assumes that the Scots Thesaurus is an at least partial index of the expressive resources of the language. Channell argues that assumptions such as this are inadequate, because dictionaries and other reference books compiled before the coming of corpora did not have access to information about lexical meaning that was not open to introspection.32 Only an analysis of corpus evidence, she argues, shows that expressions like par for the course, roam the streets and regime imply negative polarity, while other expressions, like off the beaten track imply positive polarity. These implications are not open to introspection because the terms themselves do not express negative or positive meanings; their evaluative force comes from their being used consistently in either negative or positive ‘frames’.33 An example from the Scots lexicon is wee, which is defined thus in the Concise Scots Dictionary: 1. small, tiny, little, restricted in use 2. as intensifier with nouns signifying a small amount 3. football used to describe the reserve team A list of combinations is then given, the foremost amongst them wee ane ‘a young child, a little one’, an expression that also appears in the Scots Thesaurus, under ‘Childhood, Infancy’ (8.5). Douglas demonstrates that wee is amongst the most widely used Scotticisms in newspaper texts, and it appears in both the written and spoken materials in the SCOTS archive.34 At first glance, wee simply refers to size, although evaluation is also implied in the sense ‘restricted in use’. However, it is clear from its use in context that wee has a number

32

Channell, op. cit. Sinclair, op. cit. 34 Douglas (2000), op. cit. 33

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of evaluative functions. It is used 29 times in one of the SCOTS texts, Refuge, a play by Janet Paisley about victims of domestic violence.35 CHILDHOOD it minds me ae bein wee, an bein looked efter a wee boy calls mummy, mummy what’s the wee boy’s name? the wee boy’s two She’s got a wee boy and a bairn and wee Timothy’s demolishin the playroom CAROLANNE: She’s got children. AGNES: Wee yins? INTENSIFICATION a wee bit ae practice a wee bit ae rejuvenation a wee bit upset DRINKS ah huv a wee can get a wee drink ae watter doon ye a wee kick-starter, just DESCRIPTION OF PEOPLE (NEGATIVE) Right wee chatterboax, isn’t she? Racket dis ma heid in. Only wee men need tae cut their wimmin doon DESCRIPTION OF PEOPLE (POSITIVE) That ma cocoa? Yer a wee lamb Might just pick up a wee pick-me-up Just a couplae wee yins. Tae practise oan. DESCRIPTION OF BEHAVIOUR gie a wee cough couple o gills and a wee shufty at the talent dae ye think ye could see yer wey tae a wee warnin furst

35

Janet Paisley, Refuge, 1997: http://www.scottishcorpus.ac.uk/.

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DESCRIPTION OF THINGS Wee curer the night, but Ah was that prood ae ma wee hoose You huv a wee seat, hen don’t bring oot oney wee things a wee treat this last wee while if ye end up wi a bagfu, bring a wee yin back for me

Only in a few instances here is it clear that wee is a neutral description for ‘small’ – the most obvious is don’t bring oot oney wee things, whereby one character warns another character that small toys will be unsuitable for a child. The use of wee to refer to children is partly literal (they are indeed small), but it also carries with it a sense of vulnerability and intimacy. The senses of intimacy and vulnerability transfer to some positive descriptions of adults (wee lamb), but here and in the negative descriptions, there may be an additional connotation of insignificance (wee pick me up, and wee yin tae practise oan refer to casual relationships – enjoyable but transient – while wee chatterboax and wee men are contemptuous dismissals). Although the use of wee with different kinds of drink tends towards the formulaic (in expressions like a wee dram), it is nevertheless interesting: in this play, expressions like wee can (beer) and wee kickstarter (coffee) downplay, or possibly deny, the importance of alcohol and caffeine to the speaker by presenting the beverage as insignificant. The offer of a drink that does not contain stimulants (Get a wee drink ae watter doon ye) focuses more on the connotations of intimacy and reduces the social distance between speakers. The same effect is achieved by the offer of a chair (You huv a wee seat, hen) – presumably not a small chair! The use of wee to describe ‘things’ in this play hints at a developing semantic prosody of the kind described by Sinclair and Channell.36 Here, wee tends to describe things that are desirable: curer, hoose, seat, treat, yin. We can appeal to the concept of facework to explain this apparent pattern: the speaker expresses a desire for or pride in something but does not wish to appear greedy or 36

Sinclair, op. cit. and Channell, op. cit.

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selfish. The speaker therefore downplays its significance. Furthermore, the use of wee with behaviours refers to something the speaker intends to do (shufty) or wants from others (cough, warnin). When asking for something the speaker desires but the hearer may not wish to give, it saves the hearer’s face to have the act of giving described as insignificant. A further issue is how Scots evaluative terms in the systems of APPRECIATION, AFFECT and JUDGEMENT function in an actual text. To explore this issue, we shall focus on an exchange in Refuge in which one of the women in the safe house, middle-class Carolanne, rises and enters the kitchen after a night on the town. She is met by another of the residents, working-class Sadie. SADIE: Oh, great, up in time fur lunch, then? No, dinnae tell me, let me guess. Eh, a generous wedge of ripe camembert, deep fried, served with cranberry sauce and crispy salad. Or, the freshest of fresh mussels cooked to perfection in a creamy white wine and garlic sauce. Or - would that be toast? (BEFORE CAROLANNE CAN THROW UP, BETH ENTERS FROM KITCHEN WITH A BOWL OF FOOD WHICH SHE PUTS DOWN TO COLLECT TOYS THE CHILDREN HAVE LEFT BEHIND. SADIE AND CAROLANNE FREEZE AS SHE ENTERS, WATCHING BETH’S PROGRESS AS SHE JUGGLES TOYS, COLLECTS THE BOWL AND HEADS FOR UPSTAIRS.) SADIE: Nae bletherin noo, there’s work to be done. (BETH EXITS. SADIE SHUTS THE DOOR) SADIE: Right wee chatterboax, isn’t she? Racket dis ma heid in. CAROLANNE: She’s working though. SADIE: At hauntin the place. A fortnight an she’s still creepin aboot wi nae shoes oan. We should hire her oot. Rentaghost. (CAROLANNE MAKES A FACE AND TURNS TO HER COFFEE) SADIE: Must be catchin. You look gey peely wally. CAROLANNE: Headache. SADIE: The mornin efter, huh? CAROLANNE: Don’t know. I never had one before.

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SADIE: Bet you never hud a bit ae rough before either. CAROLANNE: (LOOKS UP TOO QUICKLY) I never. Oww. SADIE: I don’t know sae much. You couldnae huv slid a razor blade between yeese withoot cutting aff something vital. (SADIE GOES ON INTO KITCHEN) CAROLANNE: We danced. That’s all. SADIE: (FROM OFF) Hey, never heard it cawed that before. CAROLANNE: Oh, come on. He had (WINCING) tattoos. SADIE: (FROM OFF) On his teeth. CAROLANNE: Did he have teeth? SADIE: (FROM OFF) Mostly. (COMING BACK IN WITH COFFEE) I think he left them in yer neck. CAROLANNE: You’re having me on. Is that lunch? SADIE: A wee kick-starter, just. Good night, but. Dae ye mind chattin up the lamppost oan the wey hame? CAROLANNE: Now I know you’re exaggerating. Because I remember that lamppost. SADIE: So ye should. A sudden but intense attraction. Ye made a big impression there. CAROLANNE: I was holding it up. SADIE: Oh aye. CAROLANNE: Aye. I mean yes. It was leaning over. SADIE: Nope. Straight as a die. Giving an absolute and unequivocal identification of the semantic nature of the lexis used evaluatively here is problematical, not least because the meaning of any text and its constituents is always open to interpretation. Ever since Stanley Fish’s counterblasts against stylistics in the 1970s, there has been an issue about whether meanings are determined by linguistic constituents or whether they are imposed by a community of readers and listeners.37 There is a particular danger in arguing that because a lexical item has been categorised in a particular way in a thesaurus, its meaning in context will therefore be determined for all contexts. This is clearly not the case. For example, the above dialogue contains tattoo, which (if it qualified for entry as a Scots term) would most likely be categorised in the Scots Thesaurus 37 S. Fish, Is There a Text in this Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980.

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under Skin (9.8) alongside various terms for epidermal tones, such as measlet ‘blotched’, plouk ‘pimple’ and sleekit ‘having glossy skin’. In context, though, tattoo is taken as a valuation of social class, and the literally absurd allegation that he has tattoos on his teeth functions to intensify the valuation. In sum, meanings cannot be ‘read off’ a thesaurus or dictionary. Nevertheless, the dictionary/thesaurus meanings are relevant to any given use in context. What follows, then, is not an unambiguous or ‘fixed’ account of the meanings of this dialogue, but a record of our engagement with a text as readers, drawing upon our interpretation of thesaurus categories in relation to one possible system for modelling evaluative lexis. The italicised terms from the above dialogue are shown in Table 4 with their polarity, their value in the system of APPRAISAL, and their likely Scots Thesaurus categorisation (since this is a mixture of Scottish and English terms, only a few of the terms here are actually in the Scots Thesaurus). Table 4: Evaluative lexis in a scripted dialogue (extract from Refuge by Janet Paisley) (a) Sadie Term great generous freshest cooked to perfection creamy bletherin right wee chatterboax racket dis ma heid in hauntin creepin rentaghost gey peely wally a bit ae rough something vital on his teeth wee kick starter just good chattin up intense attraction big impression straight as a die

Polarity + + + + + + + + + + + +

APPRAISAL value valuation composition composition composition composition valuation valuation reaction reaction reaction reaction reaction capacity valuation valuation composition valuation valuation valuation reaction reaction valuation

ST Category Misc. positive Misc. food Misc. food Misc. food Misc. food Chitchat Chitchat Uproar Uproar Fear, disgust Fear, disgust Fear, disgust Bad health Low class Parts of body Parts of body Misc. food Misc. positive Chitchat Strong emotions Strong emotions Skill

54 (b) Carolanne Term tattoos having me on exaggerating leaning over

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Polarity -

APPRAISAL value composition truth truth valuation

ST Category Skin Mockery Weakness of character Bad workmanship

This activity highlights the dialogic ‘flow’ of this exchange. The character of Sadie is given much more evaluative vocabulary than Carolanne; she is the one who dominates this excerpt using a variety of linguistic strategies – commenting interrogating and contradicting – while it is Carolanne’s role largely to respond and justify. If we concentrate on the evaluative lexis, we see Sadie’s initial turn sarcastically using the culinary language of the middle-class to taunt hungover Carolanne. Sadie then directs her sarcasm against the silent Beth, whom she characterises using Scots as an empty chatterbox (right wee chatterboax…racket dis ma heid in). When Carolanne defends Beth, Sadie expresses the fear and disgust that Beth’s behaviour arouse in her. She then directs her attention towards Carolanne again, linking her appearance with Beth’s (both are pale) but evaluating Carolanne as in bad health, again using Scots (peely wally). Her next evaluation concerns Carolanne’s recent choice of a sexual partner, whom Sadie characterises again in class terms (a bit ae rough). Carolanne and Sadie then engage in bantering around how far Carolanne’s relationship has gone with someone whom both characterise as being of a lower social class, symbolised by tattoos…on his teeth. Carolanne accuses Sadie of exaggerating, and attempts to redirect the conversation towards the inadequacy of Sadie’s lunch, a cup of coffee. Sadie responds by evaluating this as an insignificant stimulus (a wee kick-starter, discussed above) and she counter-attacks by directing the exchange towards Carolanne’s inebriation the previous night. The excerpt ends with further banter about the nature of Carolanne’s behaviour the previous night. Each contradicts the other about the valuation given to the lamp-post that Carolanne was holding onto – was it leaning over (an example of bad workmanship) or straight as a die (a product of skilled workmanship)? By this point Carolanne is more of an equal partner in the exchange, entering into the fantasy that Sadie is constructing on her own terms.

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This description of the ‘flow’ of the dialogue shows the importance of evaluation in the process of bonding – what we called earlier the establishment and maintaining of social relations. Evaluative language is used in conversational gambits to orient participants in respect of in-groups and out-groups. Sadie here is the key player: her initial evaluations (in English) mock Carolanne by appropriating the language of her class to nauseate her. Then her evaluations (in Scots) invite Carolanne to share her negative perceptions of Beth; when Carolanne refuses the invitation, she evaluates Carolanne’s health, a common expression of empathy. In the ensuing banter, Sadie constructs a fantasy in which Carolanne has enjoyed sexual relations with a person of low class, and got drunk enough to attempt to seduce the lamp-post that was holding her up; Carolanne denies the accusation and constructs a counter-fantasy in which she is supporting the badly-constructed lamp-post. The exchange works to construct the character of Sadie as someone who needs to challenge others – middle-class Carolanne and silent Beth – and orient them towards her own working-class garrulity. That her strategy is at least partly successful with Carolanne is signified by the latter temporarily adopting markers of Sadie’s speech community: Aye. I mean yes.

Conclusions It has been our intention in this chapter to raise more questions than we attempt to answer. We have argued that the evaluative nature of much Scots lexis has been often commented on; yet it remains under-researched as a pragmatic resource for in-grouping and outgrouping. There remains the difficult issue of how we define evaluative lexis, across the Broad Scots – Scottish-English continuum, bearing in mind that, in specific contexts, technically descriptive lexis can be given evaluative force. We have attempted to manage this issue by relating semantic categories used in the Scots Thesaurus to pragmatic functions offered by Martin’s model of APPRAISAL, and using these combined resources to interpret the way characters in a scripted dialogue use evaluative text to establish and maintain social relations. The example is offered as a case study for a series of much broader and deeper analyses of the nature and function of evaluative texts across a range of genres of Scottish speech and writing.

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Given the space at our disposal, this sketch can only begin to show the kinds of applications that can be made of resources such as dictionaries, thesauri and corpora – the kind of resources to which Christian Kay has devoted much of her professional career. Kay argues for a larger Scots Thesaurus, one that incorporates all the data in the Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue and the Scottish National Dictionary within a framework supplied by the Historical Thesaurus of English.38 Ten years after this suggestion, DOST and SND have been combined in an electronic version the Dictionary of the Scots Language, and HTE nears completion. An amalgam of available resources, plus updated lexical material, would make the kinds of analysis attempted here much subtler and more revealing. As she heads towards what we hope is a long and productive ‘retirement’, we continue to look to Professor Kay for inspiration and leadership in the lexicography of English and Scots, and in its wider applications.

38

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Lexical splits and mergers: some difficult cases for the OED Philip Durkin Christian Kay and Irené Wotherspoon have in a recent article looked at some of the complicated issues surrounding orthography and homophony that can exist within a lexical set.1 Here I will examine the related issue of lexical splits and mergers, i.e. cases where two or more words of distinct etymology converge, and also cases where what is etymologically a single word diverges, giving two or more lexical items distinct in spelling or pronunciation or both. I will look in particular at the challenges that dealing with such words can pose for a historical dictionary, where complex changes must be accommodated within a diachronic account of individual word histories. I will take examples from entries which have been revised for the third edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (on OED3 see the online Preface to the Third Edition of OED, www.oed.com /about/oed3-preface).2 Words which have split will require two distinct dictionary entries under the usual modern forms, but splits which have occurred in historical times pose some problems in assigning data to the respective entries. At mantle and mantel, or ordnance and ordinance, from a modern synchronic perspective the split is (largely) complete, but the earlier evidence requires some difficult decision-making. Complete mergers, such as mare ‘female horse’, are largely unproblematic, but examples of partial merger, as is 1

Christian Kay and Irené Wotherspoon, “Wreak, wrack, rack, and (w)ruin: The history of some confused spellings”, in Teresa Fanego, B. Méndez-Naya and E. Seoane (eds.), Sounds, Words, Texts and Change. Selected Papers from 11 ICEHL, Santiago de Compostela, 7-11 September 2000, Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2002, pp. 129-43. 2 James A. H. Murray, Henry Bradley, Sir William A. Craigie and Charles T. Onions (eds.), The Oxford English Dictionary, 1884-1933; Robert W. Burchfield (ed.), Supplement, 1972-86; John A. Simpson and Edmund S. C. Weiner (eds.), 2nd edition, 1989; John A. Simpson, Edmund S. C. Weiner and Michael Proffitt (eds.), Additions Series, 1993-97; John A. Simpson (ed.), 3rd edition (in progress) OED Online, March 2000- , Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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probably the case with certain of the senses of mean ‘ungenerous, ignoble’ (of Germanic origin) and mean ‘intermediate, average’ (of Romance origin), are much harder to deal with, and require explicit comment from the lexicographer. The modern English words mantle (‘loose sleeveless cloak’ and related senses) and mantel (‘ornamental structure of wood, marble, etc., above and around a fireplace’ and related senses) show a process of split in the written form of the word.3 In Old English, classical and post-classical Latin mantellum is borrowed as mentel in the sense ‘long sleeveless cloak’ (with i-mutation probably resulting from suffix substitution). In Middle English this persists, coalescing with borrowing of mantel, the Anglo-Norman and Old French reflex of the Latin word (and perhaps also reborrowing of the Latin word itself) to give Middle English mantel, mantle (and other related spellings). From the thirteenth century in British sources the Latin word also shows the sense ‘piece of timber or stone supporting the masonry above a fireplace’, and this is shown also by the Latin word’s AngloNorman and Central French reflexes from the fourteenth century, as also by the English word. Middle English thus has, not particularly unusually, a borrowed word showing polysemy which broadly reflects polysemy in the donor languages. For a dictionary on historical principles such as the OED the methodology for such a word is straightforward: an identical word-form which shows a range of senses of a common origin will be treated under a single dictionary entry. (This is not to disregard the problems that polysemy can pose for many models of both diachronic and synchronic linguistics, but simply to note that the traditional methodology of historical lexicography demands that such material should be treated under a single dictionary headword, thus ensuring an approach which is consistent, even if from the synchronic standpoint it may sometimes 3

It is doubtful whether there is any consistent corresponding distinction in the spoken form. To take a sample from pronouncing dictionaries, Clive Upton, William A. Kretzschmar, Jr., and Rafal Konopka, The Oxford Dictionary of Pronunciation for Current English, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, here followed by OED3, gives identical realisations in British English for both words, but for U.S. English gives 'mæn(t)ԥl for mantle but 'mæn(t)l for mantel, while Daniel Jones, English Pronouncing Dictionary, 15th edition, ed. Peter Roach and James Hartman, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, gives (regardless of variety) 'mæn.tƺ for mantle and 'mæn.tԥl for mantel.

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seem somewhat arbitrary.) The modern reflexes of Middle English mantel, mantle, however, pose a problem for the historical dictionary, as in the modern written language ‘loose sleeveless cloak’ and ‘ornamental structure of wood, marble, etc., above and around a fireplace’ and their related senses and compounds (e.g. mantelpiece, mantelshelf) are now usually distinguished in spelling, as mantle and mantel respectively. (A very few examples of the spelling mantle are still found in modern use for the ‘fireplace’ word, but they are hugely outnumbered by the spelling mantel, which must be regarded as the usual modern spelling in these senses.) They are thus treated as two distinct words by general dictionaries of the modern language (regardless of the extent to which their methodology is otherwise influenced by historical lexicography), albeit with cross-references or notes in some cases acknowledging that either spelling can still more rarely be found for each word.4 The situation is more difficult for a historical dictionary, especially for one with the time depth of the OED: a way must be found of representing Old English mentel, Middle English mentel, mantel, mantle, and the distinct (late) Modern English words mantel and mantle, together with all of the intermediate points and varied actual spellings represented by these abstractions. The solution for OED is determined by the policy of placing material under headword forms which are decided by the majority usage of modern standard written English (in so far as the materials available to us enable us to determine what this is). This suggests that the reflex of Middle English mentel, mantel, mantle yields two distinct modern word forms, mantel and mantle. The divergence runs along semantic lines, with the groups of senses related to or developed from respectively ‘loose sleeveless cloak’ and ‘piece of timber or stone supporting the masonry above a fireplace’ gradually coming to be distinguished in (written) form, and this divergence is therefore reflected in the structure of the two OED entries, with material being divided between the two entries on semantic grounds, regardless of the form of the word. Each entry shows historical examples with both -le and -el types, and each entry has a separate list of historical 4 Thus both Judy Pearsall (ed.), The Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 10th edition, revised, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, and Judy Pearsall (ed.), The Oxford Dictionary of English, 2nd edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, note that mantle also occurs as a spelling of mantel ‘mantelpiece’.

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spellings, compiled from the OED’s slip collections (including the fruits of targeted reading of historical sources for spelling variation as well as for semantic data), from the evidence of period dictionaries, and from an extensive diachronic sampling of electronic resources.5 The results may be illustrated by the variant form lists, extracts from the etymology, and the definitions of the first senses from each entry (for reasons of space, the illustrative quotations are omitted): mantle n. Forms: OE-ME mentel, ME mantal, mantille, manttell, mantyl, mantyle, mauntel, mauntell, mayntell, mayntelle, mentell, mentil, mentile, (perh. transmission error) manntel, ME-15 mantell, mantelle, ME16 mantel, mantil, mantill, mantyll, mantylle, mauntil, ME- mantle, 15 mauntelle, 16 mantoll; Eng. regional 18- mentle, 19- mantel; Sc. pre-17 mantale, mantel, mantell, mantill, mantyl, mantyll, pre-17 17- mantil, mantle. [Partly < classical Latin mantellum cloak (see below), and partly a reborrowing in early Middle English < its reflex Anglo-Norman mantel, mantelle, mantle cloak, Old French mantel (c980; Middle French mantel, manteau, French manteau). In Old English (as also in Old Frisian) showing imutation, prob. arising from suffix substitution (see -EL¹). With classical Latin mantellum cf. mantica (see MANTICULATE v.); further etymology uncertain (see below). Classical Latin mantellum is attested only in Plautus; in post-classical Latin a 4th-cent. grammarian has the form mantelum (citing the Plautus passage) by confusion with classical Latin mantƝle hand-towel: the two words are no longer thought to be etymologically related. Post-classical Latin mantellum is attested more freq. from 9th cent.; freq. in British sources from 12th cent. ... Cf. also MANTEL n. and MANTEEL n.1] I. A protective garment or blanket, and related fig. uses.

... 1. a. A loose sleeveless cloak. mantel n. Forms: ME- mantel, 15 mantalle, mantell, 15- mantle. [Orig. a variant of MANTLE n., now usu. distinguished in form in the senses below. Cf. Anglo-Norman mantle (1370 or earlier in sense 1a), Old French, Middle French mantel (1332 in sense 1a); post-classical Latin mantellum (from 13th cent. in British sources in sense 1a): see further discussion s.v. MANTLE n.] 5

For more detail on this area of the OED’s work see Philip Durkin, “Root and branch: revising the etymological component of the OED”, Transactions of the Philological Society, 97 (1999) 1-50, and again the online Preface to the Third Edition of OED, op. cit.

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I. Simple uses. 1. †a. A piece of timber or stone supporting the masonry above a fireplace; = MANTELTREE n. 1. Obs. Recorded earliest in mantel-stone, sense 3. b. An ornamental structure of wood, marble, etc., above and around a fireplace; the manteltree of a fireplace together with its supports. Cf. MANTELPIECE n. 1. c. A shelf formed by the projecting surface of a mantelpiece; = MANTELSHELF n. 1.

A similar split, in this case showing a distinction in both the written and the spoken form in modern English, is shown by the OED entries ORDINANCE n. and ORDNANCE n., where a Middle English borrowing of the semantically complex Anglo-Norman and Middle French ordenance shows a subsequent split, with the form ordnance coming to be associated solely with senses related to and developed from ‘military materials’, ‘artillery for discharging missiles’, ‘the government department responsible for this’, etc. A similar approach is thus adopted for OED to that shown at MANTLE n. and MANTEL n., with the historical material being divided on semantic grounds, with an etymology at ORDNANCE n. making clear that the two are originally the same word: “Orig. a variant of ORDINANCE n., now distinguished in form in the senses below”. (In a different category, and outside the scope of this article, are cases where the division of material between entries is on a formal rather than a semantic basis. This is commonly the case where developments of a word form in different varieties of English are treated in separate entries, normally where the form in another variety has come to have some currency (perhaps as a marked regionalism or colloquialism, or perhaps with a specific range of meanings) in standard (written) English, for instance in OED3 MA’AM n. and MARM n., or MAYBE adv. and MEBBE adv.) Turning now to mergers, the OED’s policy of listing material under its present-day reflex (if one exists) again determines the approach taken, and with mergers which have been completed in the past the procedure is thus relatively simple, even if the detail may be complex. For instance, the modern English word mare ‘female horse’ shows a semantic and formal blend of two originally distinct Old English words, mearh ‘horse’, which gives rise to the modern standard English form, and (West Saxon) mƯre, mýre, (non-West Saxon) mƝre ‘female horse’ (the reflex of a Germanic feminine

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derivative of the Germanic base of mearh), from which the modern sense has arisen. As there is a single modern output word, the full history of both words can be treated under a single dictionary headword, with a breakdown of the forms into their historical types, a full etymological account of the origin and subsequent history of each type, and (not shown here for reasons of space) a selection of illustrative quotations for each form type under each sense:6 Forms: Į. OE mearh, (rare) mearg, (Anglian) merh. ȕ. OE (West Saxon) mire, myre, (non-West Saxon) mere, (Anglian, rare) mære. Ȗ. ME maar, maire, ME-15 maare, ME, (18- Eng. regional) mar, ME- mare, 15 marre, mayre, 15-16 mayer, 16 maer; Sc. pre-17 maer, mair, mar, mayr, pre-17 17- mare. į. ME-15 mere, ME meere, mer, meyre, mure, ME-15 meare, ME, (18- Irish English (north.)) meer, 15 (Eng. regional (north.)) myer, 18 (Eng. regional (south-west.)) meäre; Sc. pre-17 meire, mer, meyr, meyre, miere, pre-17 17- mear, meare, meir, mere, 18- meer, 19- meere, mehr. [A merging of two distinct words: Old English mearh horse and Old English mƯre, mýre mare. (i) (Represented by the Į forms) Old English mearh (strong masculine, inflected forms mƝar- or, by analogical replacement, mear-) ‘horse’, whose surviving instances occur chiefly in poetry, is cognate with ... < a Germanic base, cognate with ...; further etymology uncertain: perh. ult. cognate with Sanskrit marya- young man, stallion (cf. discussion s.v. MARRY v.). (ii) (Represented by the ȕ forms) Old English (West Saxon) mƯre, mýre (weak feminine) ‘mare’, is cognate with ... < a Germanic feminine derivative of the base of Old English mearh. Whereas the masculine word has all but died out in the various Germanic languages, its feminine derivative retains its vigour. The Ȗ forms represent later reflexes of Old English mearh and (in inflected forms, with loss of -h and compensatory lengthening) mear- (giving ă and Ɨ respectively in Middle English); the į forms represent a mixture of reflexes from different sources: Old English mƝar- (the regular inflected form of mearh; giving long open Ɲ in Middle English); Old English (Anglian) merh and (in inflected forms) mƝr-, mer- (smoothed forms of mearh; giving Ɵ, long close Ɲ, and long open Ɲ respectively in Middle English); Old English (Anglian) mƝre (giving long close Ɲ in Middle English); and Old English (West Saxon) mýre (giving occasional spellings with -u- in Middle English). 6 An early draft version of this same material was included in Durkin (1999), op. cit., and the reader may be interested to compare the two to see an illustration of how OED3’s style and procedures have developed between the early stages of work for the new edition and the actual publication of revised material online.

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In current British regional use pronunciations with base vowel /(Ú/ are general in southern and central England (Surv. Eng. Dial. also records a few isolated examples with diphthongized /D,/ in Hampshire: perh. a reflex of Old English (West Saxon) mƯre), while in the north of England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland pronunciations with base vowel /LÚ/ are common. In Middle English, from at least the 13th cent., Ȗ forms occur in the sense ‘female horse’, while į forms occur in the generic sense ‘horse’. The latter sense (irrespective of form) died out at the end of the Middle English period (cf. note at sense 1 below). By the end of the 16th cent. the Ȗ form mare had wholly supplanted the į forms in standard English.]

Partial mergers are more difficult to reflect in a historical dictionary like the OED. Such a case is probably shown by OED’s MEAN a.¹ and MEAN a.² The first of these is the reflex of Old English m¼ne, an aphetic variant of gem¼ne, having senses grouped in OED under the branches “I. Held commonly or jointly”, “II. Inferior in rank or quality; unpleasant”, and “III. With approbative connotation”. MEAN a.² is a Middle English borrowing from AngloNorman (and hence ultimately from classical Latin mediƗnus “that is in the middle”), with senses grouped in OED under the branches “I. Intermediate, intermediary” and “II. Moderate, middling; average”. It is at branch II in each entry where difficulties arise. The senses at each, with dates of first attestation, are: mean a.¹, OED3, branch II, definitions and first dates: II. Inferior in rank or quality; unpleasant. 2. Of a person or body of people, a person's condition, etc. (In early use freq. in the comparative.) a. Of low social status; spec. not of the nobility or gentry. Cf. COMMON a. 12. Now rare exc. in the superlative (chiefly hyperbolically), as the meanest ʊ. a1375 b. Inferior in ability, learning, perception, etc. Now chiefly in the superlative and as in sense 4. a1387 †c. Poor, badly off. Obs. c1400 d. Of a political body, authority, etc.: weak; comparatively powerless. Now rare. c1524 †e. Abject or debased. Obs. rare. c1680 f. U.S. colloq. In low spirits; unwell or in a poor state of health. 1845 b. Petty, insignificant, unimportant; inconsiderable. Now rare. ?c1430

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c. Undignified, low. Of literary style, etc.: lacking in elevation or adornment; unambitious (not always with depreciative connotations). Now rare. c1450 d. Unimposing or shabby; characterized by poverty; humble. Used esp. of a building, place of habitation, etc. 1600 4. no mean ʊ: denoting something very good or noteworthy of its kind. Now used chiefly to express approval or admiration. 1580 5. a. Of a person, a person's character, etc.: lacking moral dignity, ignoble; small-minded. Now rare or passing into sense 6. 1665 b. U.S. colloq. Of a horse, etc.: vicious or hard to control. Sometimes also in extended use, of a person when drunk: uncontrollable, violent. 1835 c. U.S. colloq. to feel mean: to feel ashamed of one's conduct; to feel guilty of unfairness or unkindness. 1839 d. colloq. (orig. U.S.). Of a person, a person's actions, etc.: disobliging, uncooperative; unpleasant, unkind; vicious, cruel. 1841 6. Niggardly, miserly, stingy; not generous or liberal. 1840

mean a.², OED3, branch II, definitions and first dates: II. Moderate, middling; average. †7. Not much above or below the average; moderate, mediocre, middling. a. Moderate or middling in size, stature, or age. Obs. a1387 b. Moderate or middling in quality or strength. Obs. ?1440 c. Moderate in amount, or in degree of excellence; tolerable, mediocre. Later used only disparagingly (and so in some cases not readily distinguished from MEAN a.1). Obs. a1500 d. Of soil or land: moderately fertile. Obs. 1523 8. Math. a. Of a value: so related to a given set of values that the algebraic sum of their differences from it is zero; that is the arithmetical mean (MEAN n.3 9a) of a set of values; average. Hence used before the name of a variable quantity to express the mean average value of that quantity (as in mean diameter, distance, motion, temperature, etc.). Cf. MEAN PROPORTIONAL n. a1450 b. Mil. mean point of impact, the centre of a cluster or pattern of impact points made by bombs or bullets, calculated as an average of their coordinates (see quot. 1973). 1945 †9. Using moderation; temperate. Obs. rare. a1500

The semantic overlap is thus readily apparent, and both the nature of the problem and the solution arrived at are explained in the etymologies of the two entries:

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mean a.¹, OED3, etymology: [Aphetic < I-MENE a. Cf. Old Frisian mƝne shared, common (West Frisian mien). In Old English (and in the earlier stages of other Germanic languages) substantially the only sense of I-MENE a. and its cognates was ‘possessed jointly’, ‘belonging equally to a number of persons’; however, already in Old English there existed a spec. sense ‘of ecclesiastical orders: minor, inferior in degree’, which, although it did not survive into Middle English, may have informed the development of mean. The semantic development shown by the Old English spec. sense of IMENE a. was carried further with Middle English mene, mean (as with Dutch gemeen and German gemein; cf. COMMON a.), so that the word acquired the general senses of ‘ordinary’, ‘not exceptionally good’, ‘inferior’. In English this development was aided by the fact that the native word coincided in form with MEAN a.2, which was often used in a disparaging or reproachful sense. The uses in branch II might be referred almost equally well to the native or to the foreign adjective; the truth is probably that the meanings of two originally quite distinct words have merged. It has sometimes been supposed that the sense development of the word has been influenced by Old English m¼ne false, wicked (cognate with MAN n.2 and MAN a.); but this seems unlikely, as this adjective did not survive into Middle English, while the moral senses of mean only appear in modern English.]

mean a.², OED3, etymology: [< Anglo-Norman mene, men, meen intermediate, middle, middle-sized (cf. Old French meien (first half of the 12th cent.), moien (c1260), Middle French, French moyen (c1330)) < classical Latin mediƗnus (see MEDIAN a.2). Cf. Spanish mediano (1070), Occitan mejan (13th cent.), Italian mezzano (14th cent.), Portuguese mediano (17th cent.). Cf. MESNE a. and MOYEN a. Among parallel senses of the word in Old and Middle French are: ‘situated in the middle’ (first half of the 12th cent.; cf. sense 1a), ‘moderate or middling in size or age’ (c1260; cf. sense 7a), ‘ordinary, mediocre’ (1273; cf. senses 7b, 7c), ‘of a number in a proportion: that is a mean’ (1377; cf. sense 8a), ‘of a verb: middle’ (1530; cf. sense 5).]

The solution adopted is etymological, placing at MEAN a.² those senses which closely parallel those of the Anglo-Norman and Old and Middle French words, while placing at MEAN a.¹ the main group of senses which can be put under the general heading ‘inferior in rank or

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quality; unpleasant’, citing as support for this the similar pejoration shown by cognates in other West Germanic languages, and also the apparent precursor sense ‘of ecclesiastical orders: minor, inferior in degree’ shown by gem¼ne in Old English. That this solution is a pragmatic one is however acknowledged by the explicit statement “The uses in branch II might be referred almost equally well to the native or to the foreign adjective; the truth is probably that the meanings of two originally quite distinct words have merged”. Thus far, the question has been where to assign in the larger structure what are nonetheless fairly coherent individual senses. The situation becomes more difficult still where the assignment of individual quotations to a particular sense is doubtful, and here recourse must be made to a note at the sense in question drawing attention to the difficulty: mean a.², OED3, sense 7c: c. Moderate in amount, or in degree of excellence; tolerable, mediocre. Later used only disparagingly (and so in some cases not readily distinguished from MEAN a.1). Obs. a1500 (a1460) Towneley Plays 12 My wynnyngis ar bot meyn, No wonder if that I be leyn. 1516 R. FABYAN New Chron. Eng. (1811) VI. cxciv. 197 She was..but of meane fayrenesse as other women were. 1546 Certificates Commissioners County of York (1895) II. 213 Of honest qualities and condicions, and meane lerenyng. 1551 R. ROBINSON tr. T. More Vtopia II. sig. Kivv, The resydewe they sell at reasonable and meane price. 1580 J. LYLY Euphues & his Eng. in Euphues (new ed.) f. 43v, Let thy apparell be but meane, neyther too braue.., nor to base. 1600 P. HOLLAND tr. Livy Rom. Hist. XLII. lxvi. 1155 The Consull contenting himselfe with a meane good hand..retired with his forces into the campe. 1604 E. GRIMESTON tr. J. de Acosta Nat. & Morall Hist. Indies IV. xxxiii. 299 In that countrie it is but a meane wealth. a1628 J. PRESTON New Covenant (1634) 24 It is better for thee..to have meane gifts, than to have high gifts. 1719 D. DEFOE Farther Adventures Robinson Crusoe 41 My own House..where I should see there had been but mean Improvements.

This is perhaps the most frustrating situation of all for the lexicographer, but is also perhaps the most interesting indicator of an area for further study by the specialist in historical semantics.

Of fæderan and eamas: avuncularity in Old English Andreas Fischer We begin with two aspects of Old English kinship terminology and Anglo-Saxon family structure. It is a well-known fact that the kinship terminology of Old English, like that of other early Germanic dialects, is of the so-called “bifurcate-collateral” type, which tends to have different words for maternal and paternal relatives: thus we have fadu ‘father’s sister’ and modrige ‘mother’s sister’, fædera ‘father’s brother’ and eam ‘mother’s brother’.1 It is equally well known that in early Germanic society families are held to have been of the “patrilineal extended” type, defined by Anderson as a “residential unit composed of the males of a paternal lineage, their wives, and the unmarried females begotten by the members”.2 When women married, they left this “residential unit” and joined that of their husbands. In families of this type, maternal uncles (in contrast to paternal ones), had a very special role: a woman who married “out” was potentially isolated, and if her husband’s family for some reason turned against her or her children she depended on the help of her nearest male relative, i.e. her brother. This ‘mother’s brother’ was thus expected to be a protector of his sister and her children, and there was a special bond of mutual obligation and affection between a maternal uncle (eam, avunculus) and his nieces and – especially – nephews. The name, in modern scholarship, for this phenomenon is “avuncularity”.3 1

The same goes for Latin, where we find amita ‘father’s sister’, matertera ‘mother’s sister’, patruus ‘father’s brother’ and avunculus ‘mother’s brother’. The Old English words are often, but not always, used as translations of the Latin ones. 2 R. T. Anderson, “Changing kinship in Europe”, Kroeber Anthropological Society Papers, 28 (1963), 1-48, 4. 3 Alexander Callander Murray, Germanic Kinship Structure: Studies in Law and Society in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, Studies and Texts 65, Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1983, pp. 60-64; S. Graf von Pfeil, “Avunkulat”, Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, Vol. 1, Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1973, pp. 525-27.

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Avuncularity, like so many features attributed to early Germanic culture and society, is based on a passage in Tacitus’s Germania,4 but its actual importance is a matter of doubt: there are literary examples showing the special position of the maternal uncle, but none of the surviving laws document it. Pfeil thus concludes his discussion by stating that the special position of the mother’s brother was probably a social reality, but had no legal basis.5 The two phenomena just sketched, bifurcate-collateral kinship terminology on the one hand and avuncularity on the other, are linked, if only loosely. Different terms for paternal and maternal relatives may, but need not, mean that these relatives play different roles in the extended family. As a concept, avuncularity is of course more tangible when it goes together with a special word for the maternal uncle, but it does not depend on it. This loose connection between kinship terminology and avuncularity could be re-phrased in the form of two questions: Do societies that have avuncularity always (or: usually) have a special word for the maternal uncle, and is the word for maternal uncle more prominent in these societies than the word for paternal uncle? The first question can only be answered through a comparative study of kinship systems and kinship terminology in different societies.6 It is, therefore, the second question which I shall address in this paper, by investigating the way in which the two words fædera ‘paternal uncle’ and eam ‘maternal uncle’ are used in Old English texts.7

4

Josef Lindauer (trans. and ed.), Cornelius Tacitus: Germania / Bericht über Germanien: lateinisch und deutsch, München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1975. 5 Pfeil, op. cit., p. 526. 6 See, for example, William A. Foley, “Kinship”, Anthropological Linguistics: An Introduction, Language in Society 24, Oxford and Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1997, pp. 131-49. 7 On kinship in Anglo-Saxon England and kinship terminology in Old English see, for example, Andreas Fischer, “Notes on kinship terminology in the history of English”, in Katja Lenz and Ruth Möhlig (eds.), Of dyuersitie & chaunge of language: Essays Presented to Manfred Görlach on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday, Anglistische Forschungen 308, Heidelberg: C. Winter, 2002, pp. 115-28; Lorraine Lancaster, “Kinship in Anglo-Saxon society”, British Journal of Sociology, 9 (1958), 230-50, 359-77; H. R. Loyn, “Kinship in Anglo-Saxon England”, Anglo-Saxon England, 3 (1974), 197-209.

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Healey and Venezky’s Microfiche Concordance8 and the entries for the two words in the Dictionary of Old English (henceforth DOE)9 reveal that fædera and eam appear to have been used with about equal frequency: according to the DOE the corpus of surviving Old English texts contains “ca. 40” occurrences of the former and “ca. 45” of the latter. Numbers are not everything, however, and it is necessary to examine the evidence in more detail. I shall do this by looking at some representative texts, moving from simple cases (seen from the point of view of the question to be studied) to more complex ones. A very simple case is constituted by glossaries, which are essentially lists of Latin words with Old English translation equivalents. Such glossaries document Old English lexis, but they do not reveal much, if anything, about life in Anglo-Saxon England. Two of these glossaries, Antwerp Glossary 610 and Ælfric’s Glossary11 contain lists of kinship terms with fædera as a translation of patruus and eam as a translation of avunculus. Unlike the glossaries, the Old English Orosius12 is a coherent text, but, the Latin original being a history of the world written by a Spaniard in the early 5th century, it is not concerned with AngloSaxon England either. If we look at its kinship terminology, then we do so mainly to check how successfully the translator has rendered the wording and the meaning of the Latin text. The Orosius contains two examples of fædera and eleven examples of eam. While the two examples of fædera mean ‘father’s brother’, eam does not consistenly render Latin avunculus ‘maternal uncle’, but also occurs in places “where the Latin has either no equivalent or the term avus ‘grandfather’; the immediate source [of these problematic instances] may be either a gloss or commentary, or a Latin MS with a scribal error, though carelessness or deliberate emendation on the part of the 8

Antonette diPaolo Healey and Richard L. Venezky, A Microfiche Concordance to Old English, Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1980. 9 Angus Cameron et al., Dictionary of Old English, Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1986- . 10 L. Kindschi, The Latin-Old English Glossaries in Plantin-Moretus MS. 32 and British Museum MS. Additional 32246, Stanford diss., 1955. 11 Julius Zupitza (ed.), Ælfrics Grammatik und Glossar, Sammlung englischer Denkmäler in kritischen Ausgaben 1, Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1880. 12 Janet Bately (ed.), The Old English Orosius, Early English Text Society ss 6, London: Oxford University Press, 1982.

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translator cannot be ruled out” (DOE s.v. eam 2). It is risky to draw conclusions from so little evidence, but the inconsistent use of eam in the Old English Orosius may indicate that it was a semantically less stable word than fædera. This difference in semantic stability may be connected with the etymology of the two words: Old English fædera is derived from fæder (compare Latin patruus < pater), i.e. a family member of the same generation, whereas eam (< West Germanic *awa-heim-) contains *awa ‘grandfather’ (compare Latin avunculus < avus ‘grandfather’), i.e. a member of the generation above.13 I will come back to this point at the end of my paper. We now turn to two texts concerned with matters Anglo-Saxon, namely Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Authors of fact-based, historical texts like these are, of course, constrained by the reality they record. If a person’s paternal, rather than maternal, uncle dies, for example, they will record this fact irrespective of the lesser role the fædera may have played in AngloSaxon society in general. At the same time it must be remembered that a chronicler or historian is free, within certain limits at least, to refer to a person, variously, as A’s son, B’s father, C’s husband, D’s fædera, E’s eam, F’s nephew, G’s cousin, and so on, depending on the relationship the writer wants to foreground. Differences in the use of words like fædera and eam, therefore, may be attributed to cultural or textual rather than strictly historical factors. Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica14 only contains one instance of eam, translating avunculus (hyre eames sunu < filius auunculi sui) and two instances of fædera translating patruus (his fæderan sunu < filius patrui eius, wið his fædran < contra [...] patruum suum).15 In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, however, eleven annals contain references to an uncle. I quote the respective passages from Swanton’s translation,16 but I have 13

Avunculus literally means ‘little grandfather’. Thomas Miller (ed.), The Old English Version of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, 4 vols., Early English Text Society os 95 and 96, 110 and 11, London: Oxford University Press, 1890-98. 15 The three passages are to be found, respectively, in book V, ch. 17 (Miller, op. cit., p. 452, l. 22), book III, ch. 1 (ibid., p. 152, l. 6) and book III, ch. 18 (ibid., p. 236, ll. 9-10). 16 M. J. Swanton (trans. and ed.), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, London: J. M. Dent, 1996. Swanton’s translation follows the layout of the comparative edition by Earle and Plummer (p. xxx). I have adopted his method of giving the scribal manuscript 14

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added the actual words used in the Old English annals from Earle and Plummer’s edition:17 E 737 Here [...] King Ceolwulf received Peter’s tonsure; and granted his kingdom to Eadberht, the son of his paternal uncle [fæderan sunu]; [...].18 A 901 [899] Then Æthelwold, his father’s [Alfred’s] brother’s son [fæderan sunu] rode and seized the manor at Wimborne and at Twinham without leave of the king [Edward] and his councillors.19 D 1049 [1048] Here [...] Harald, the paternal uncle [fædera] of Magnus, went to Norway after Magnus was dead [...].20 C 1046 [1049] But Harold, his relative [mæg], fetched [Earl Beorn] from there and led [him] to Winchester and there buried [him] with King Cnut, his uncle [eam].21 D 1050 [1049] [...] then Earl Swein came with treachery, asked Earl Beorn, who was his uncle’s son [eames sunu], [...]22 D 1050 [1049] He [Beorn] was [...] interred with King Cnut, his uncle [eam].23 E 1066 [T]he king gave to St Peter and him [Leofric, abbot of Peterborough] the abbacy in Burton, and that of Coventry which the earl Leofric, who was his uncle [eam], had made earlier, and that of Crowland and that of Thorney.24 dating first and, where necessary, the adjusted dating afterwards, in square brackets (p. xvi). 17 John Earle and Charles Plummer (eds.), Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel. A revised text, edited, with introduction, notes, appendices and glossary by Charles Plummer on the basis of an edition by John Earle, 2 vols., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892-99. I have normalised spelling and morphology. 18 Swanton, op. cit., p. 45. 19 Ibid., p. 92, also p. 93 [D]. Reference is to a conflict between the two cousins Æthelwold and Edward, Edward being the son of King Alfred and Æthelwold the son of Alfred’s elder brother and predecessor Æthelred I. 20 Ibid., p. 167. 21 Ibid., p.168, also p. 171 [E]. 22 Ibid., p. 169. 23 Ibid., p. 170. 24 Ibid., p. 198.

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D 1079 Here Robert, the son of king William [I], ran from his father to his uncle [eam] Robert in Flanders, because his father would not let him govern his earldom in Normandy [...].25 E 1094 Also in this year the Scots trapped and killed Duncan [II], their king, and afterwards for a second time took Donald [Donald Bán], his paternal uncle [fædera], as their king, through whose instruction and instigation he was betrayed to death.26 E 1126 In this same year the king [Henry I] had his brother Robert taken from the bishop Roger of Salisbury, and committed him to his son Robert earl of Gloucester, and had him led to Bristol and there put in the castle. That was all done through the advice of his daughter [Maud] and through her uncle [eam], David, the king of Scots [brother-in-law of Henry I].27 E 1137 This year the king Stephen went across the sea to Normandy, and was received there because they imagined that he would be just like the uncle [eam, i.e. Henry I] was, and because he still had his treasury; but he distributed and scattered it stupidly.28

All instances, four of fædera and seven of eam, are motivated by historical facts and not, it seems, by cultural preference or textual factors.29 When, for example, earl Beorn’s eam is mentioned in the annals for the year 1049 (D 1050), this is not because there is special emphasis on the relationship between nephew and maternal uncle, but because that uncle, Cnut, had been king. Nevertheless, two passages quoted may perhaps be seen in the light of avuncularity and its “opposite”, i.e. a hostile relationship between paternal uncle and nephew. In the first (D 1079) Robert, son of king William I, runs away from his father and seeks refuge with his eam (note that uncle and 25

Ibid., pp. 213-14. Ibid., p. 230. 27 Ibid., p. 256. 28 Ibid., p. 263. 29 The explicit complex expressions fæderan sunu (E 737, A 901) and eames sunu (D 1050) may have been chosen because single-word alternatives such as nefa may have been semantically ambiguous. On the meaning of nefa in Old English charters see Kathryn A. Lowe, “Never say nefa again: problems of translation in Old English charters”, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 94 (1993), 27-35. 26

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nephew here even have the same name!), while in the second (E 1094) Duncan II of Scotland is betrayed by his fædera Donald Bán. It should be remembered, however, that both passages refer to events in the 11th century, whereas avuncularity has been postulated for early Germanic society. I will devote the rest of this paper to the poetry, which yields two examples of fædera (in Genesis) and three of eam (two in Beowulf, one in Riddle 46).30 The two occurrences of fædera in Genesis (ll. 1900 and 2080) are unremarkable. Reference in both cases is to Abraham and to Lot, who according to Genesis 12.27 and 14.12 are (paternal) uncle and nephew. In ll. 1900-01 Abraham says, stressing the mutuality of their blood-relationship: “Ic eom fædera þin / sibgebyrdum, þu min suhterga” [I am your paternal uncle / through blood-relationship, you are my nephew]31 and in l. 2089 Abraham is referred to as “fædera Lothes”. The two instances of eam in Beowulf (ll. 889 and 1117) are much more interesting with regard to the way family relationships are referred to. I begin with the second, from the so-called Finn episode, which the scop recites in Heorot during the festivities following Beowulf’s victory over Grendel (Beowulf ll. 1063/68-1159). Hildeburh, a woman from the tribe of the (Half-)Danes has been given in marriage to Finn, leader of another tribe, the Frisians. On the occasion of a visit by her brother Hnæf and his men, enmity breaks out and both Hildeburh’s son and her brother, the boy’s eam, are killed. Later in the story, the Danes, now led by a man called Hengest, take revenge, kill Finn and finally take Hildeburh, who has lost her husband, her son and her brother, back to her own tribe. The passage in question describes the burning of Hildeburh’s son’s and Hnæf’s bodies:

30

Genesis is quoted from George Philip Krapp (ed.), The Junius Manuscript, The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records: A Collective Edition I, New York: Columbia University Press, 1936, Beowulf from Fr. Klaeber (ed.), Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg, 3rd edition with First and Second Supplements, Lexington, Massachusetts: D. C. Heath and Company, 1950, Riddle 46 from George Philip Krapp and Elliott van Kirk Dobbie (eds.), The Exeter Book, The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records: A Collective Edition III, New York: Columbia University Press, 1936. 31 My translation.

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Andreas Fischer Het ða Hildeburh æt Hnæfes ade selfre sunu sweolode befæstan, banfatu bærnan, ond on bæl don eame [emended, the MS. has earme] on eaxle. (ll. 1114-1117) [Then Hildeburh commanded at Hnæf’s pyre that her own son be consigned to the flames to be burnt, flesh and bone, placed on the pyre at his uncle’s shoulder;]32

Hildeburh’s situation is a prototypical example of a young woman in a society which has a family organisation of the “patrilineal extended” type. She has been married into a tribe which is not her own, and both she and her son might have to rely on her brother’s (his maternal uncle’s) support. Part of the tragedy of the Finn story lies in the fact that it is the visit of that very uncle which causes, or contributes to, the boy’s, his uncle’s and his father’s death. Note that eam in this passage is emended from earm,33 but it is undoubtedly the word intended by the Beowulf poet: the mentioning of eam here evokes what might be called “avuncularity ex negativo”: maternal uncle and nephew are united, but only in death, and the sister / mother is left without her brother and her son. The other passage in Beowulf where the word eam occurs is entirely different in nature. It is also part of a so-called digression, a story told by one of Hrothgar’s men during the ride back from Grendel’s mere (Beowulf ll. 875-900). Reference is made to Sigemund and his deeds, “his distant voyages / obscure, unknown to all the sons of men, / his feuds and crimes – except for Fitela, / when of such things he wished to speak to him, / uncle to nephew – for always they were, / in every combat, companions at need;”:34 [...] buton Fitela mid hine, þonne he swulces hwæt secgan wolde, eam his nefan, swa hie a wæron æt niða gehwam nydgesteallan; (ll. 879-882) 32

R. M. Liuzza (trans.), Beowulf: A New Verse Translation, Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2000, p. 87. 33 The obviously erroneous earme ‘arm’ in the manuscript may have been prompted by eaxle ‘shoulder’ in the same line. 34 Liuzza, op. cit., p. 80.

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In this passage the close relationship between Sigemund (l. 875) and Fitela (l. 879) is emphasized twice: they are called nydgesteallan ‘friends in need’ and they are explicity referred to as eam and nefa.35 This may not be the whole story, however. In his note, Klaeber points out that according to the version of the story in the VËlsungasaga, SinfjËtli (Fitela) is not only Sigmundr’s (Sigemund’s) nephew, but through incest also his son: “The fact that Fitela is referred to as Sigemund’s nefa only (881), might perhaps be held to betoken Sigemund’s own ignorance of their true relation, or it may be attributed to the Christian author’s desire to suppress that morally revolting motive.”36 There is even a third possibility, namely that the poet did not mean to suppress anything, but used eam and nefa as darkly ironic references to incest. This interpretation is not as farfetched as one might think when one looks at the third and last instance of eam in poetry, in Riddle 46: Wer sæt æt wine mid his wifum twam ond his twegen suno ond his twa dohtor, swase gesweostor, and hyra suno twegen, freolico frumbearn; fæder wæs þær inne þara æþelinga æghwæðres mid, eam ond nefa. Ealra wæron fife eorla ond idesa insittendra.37 [A man was sitting at wine with his two wives and his two sons and his two daughters, gracious sisters, and their two sons, freeborn and firstborn children. The father of each of these noble youths was in there with them, uncle and nephew. There were in all five men and women sitting within.38]

The solution of this riddle, by general consent, is Lot’s family, Lot’s two ‘wives’ being his own daughters. According to the story told in 35

Pfeil, op. cit., p. 526, mentions this passage as one of the literary examples which document avuncularity. 36 Klaeber, op. cit., p. 159 (Klaeber’s emphasis). 37 Krapp and Dobbie, op. cit., p. 205. 38 S. A. J. Bradley, Anglo-Saxon Poetry: An Anthology of Old English Poems in Prose Translation, London: Dent, 1982, p. 380.

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Genesis 19:30-38, Lot, having left Sodom before its destruction, fled into the mountains with his daughters, who subsequently had a son each by him through incest.39 This short text being a riddle, the phrase eam ond nefa is clearly used as a means to mystify the reader and may be decoded in two ways. As Williamson points out in his commentary, both Lot’s daughters and sons are “all by definition siblings. Taking one son as Ego 1, his mother’s brother (eam) is the other son or Ego 2. If each son is eam to the other, then each must also be nefa, as that is the reciprocal relation (son of ego’s sister)”.40 However, since Lot’s sons, as sons of his daughters, are also his grandsons, the phrase eam ond nefa may also conjure up eam meaning ‘grandfather’ and nefa meaning ‘grandson’.41 However eam and nefa may be understood in this passage, it is clear that the expression does not evoke the positive relation of avuncularity, but something darker and altogether less wholesome. The question asked at the beginning of this paper was whether in societies that have avuncularity the word for maternal uncle is more prominent than the word for paternal uncle, or, more specifically, whether in the surviving Old English text eam is used more frequently and/or more prominently than fæder. The answer, to a large extent, is no: Healey and Venezky’s Microfiche Concordance and the respective entries in the DOE show that fædera and eam are about equally frequent in the surviving corpus of Old English and my study of some selected, representative texts has revealed hardly any really unusual occurrences of the two terms in question, fædera and, especially, eam. The big exception are the three examples from Beowulf and Riddle 46: not only are they the only three passages in the whole corpus that emphasize the role of the eam and the special relationship between eam and nefa, but they do so in a peculiar, inverted way: in the Finn episode in Beowulf, Hnæf and his nefa are united (only) in death and in the other two examples there are intimations of an unnatural form of avuncularity. The evidence, admittedly, is scanty, but it suggests 39

Lot’s wife, it will be recalled, had looked back upon the destruction of Sodom and had been turned into a pillar of salt (Genesis 19:26). Note that the incest in Genesis 19 happens between father and daughters, whereas the incest in the VËlsungasaga happens between brother and sister. 40 Craig Williamson (ed.), The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977, pp. 283-84. 41 See my remark, above, on the etymology of eam and note 29 on nefa.

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that in the cultural memory of the Anglo-Saxons represented by Old English poetry avuncularity lingered on as a negative rather than a positive concept.

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$ho:fian{*}/vK2: a LAEME-based lexical study1 Roger Lass & Margaret Laing As well as its primary function as the basis for a linguistic atlas, the LAEME database can serve as a quarry for many other kinds of historical linguistic research. In a volume honouring Christian Kay, a scholar who appreciates more than most both the tribulations and the rewards of long-term and large-scale scholarly enterprises, we offer this extract from ours. In recognition of her thesaurean interests and expertise, we have chosen to illustrate LAEME’s utility as a source for historical lexicography and semantics. The paper is designed to show, in a modest way, how the Protean nature of the LAEME database enables interdisciplinary investigations: our sources are the LAEME Corpus of Tagged Texts and the Etymological Corpus and the Corpus of Changes2. 1. The data 1.1. The following quotations from the LAEME corpus contain a verb which we have lemmatised as $ho:fian{*}/vK23 equivalent to MED 1

LAEME = Margaret Laing and Roger Lass, in preparation, A Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English. This is one of the two major linguistic atlas projects being undertaken at the Institute for Historical Dialectology, University of Edinburgh. The other is Keith Williamson, in preparation, A Linguistic Atlas of Older Scots (cf. also the closely related Corpus of Scottish Correspondence, Anneli Meurman-Solin, University of Helsinki). The work of IHD is being supported by funding from AHRB for which we are very grateful. We are also grateful to Keith Williamson for very useful comments on this paper. 2 For descriptions of the different corpora (still in preparation) and the links between them see M. Laing and R. Lass, forthcoming, “Early middle English dialectology: problems and prospects”, in A. van Kemenade and B. Los (eds.), Handbook of the History of English. Oxford: Blackwell. 3 Our lemmatisations in the present LAEME-internal format have the following patterns. $ introduces the item being identified. The identifier may belong to a number of types. In this case the unattested OE item is qualified by the usual asterisk; though in this format, for internal computational reasons, it follows the item and is placed in braces. The / divides the lexical element of the label from any identifying

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hǀven v. The semantic range covered by this word is complex: it appears to be a verb with both locative and motional components referring to air, or sea or land. MED divides the senses of hǀven v. into three main clusters. The first involves suspension, hovering, being poised and other stationary or locational properties. The second, not entirely distinct, involves waiting, expectation, residing and standing still. The third is motional, consisting of the senses ‘move onward, proceed, go, ride’. This paper attempts to reassess these clusters at a finer level of semantic resolution. Our lemma choice, an unattested Old English Class II weak verb, is also suggested as a possible etymon by OED and MED. This raises some interesting historical questions. We will attempt first to establish the shades of meaning in this verb’s usage within the LAEME corpus; then we will examine its possible etymology, and relation to an interesting class of Old English deverbal formations. We will present as examples all instances of this verb occurring in the LAEME corpus so far. Our first three appear in London, British Library, Arundel 292: The Bestiary,4 which dates probably from the last quarter of the thirteenth century and has been assigned to West Norfolk. We will translate each quoted passage leaving our verb in its original form for reference. In each case we will discuss its possible meaning in relation to MED’s definitions for these particular passages and to what our independent readings elicit. 1.2. Our first quotation (fol. 4v) comes from a passage that describes the eagle seeking out and circling above a well before ascending through the planetary spheres to the heaven. A Ïelle he sekeÇ Çat springeÇ ai . boÇe bi nigt a bi dai . ±er-ouer he flegeÇ . a up he teÇ . til-Çat he Çe heue ne seÇ . Çurg skies sexe a seuene . til he cumeÇ to heuene . So rigt so he cunne . houeÇ in Çe sunne . Çe sunne sÏi

grammatical information: here, v = verb, K2 = class II weak. 4 See C. Brown and R.H. Robbins (eds.), Index of Middle English Verse, New York: Columbia University Press: 1943, 3413. For editions see J. Hall (ed.), Selections from Early Middle English 1130-1250, 2 vols., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1920: 1, XXI, 2, pp. 579-626, J.A.W. Bennett, G.V. Smithers and N. Davis (eds.), Early Middle English Verse and Prose, 2nd. edn., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968: XII, R. Morris, An Old English Miscellany, EETS OS 49, London: TrÝbner, 1872, pp. 1-25.

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deÇ al his fligt . a oc it makeð his egen brigt . Hise feÇres fallen for Çe hete . a he dun mide to Çe Ïete . FalleÇ in Çat Ïelle grund . Çer he ÏurdeÇ heil a sund . ‘A well he seeks that always springs both night and day. He flies over it and up he rises until he sees the heaven, through the sixth and seventh spheres5 until he comes to heaven. As straight as he can [he] houeÇ in(to) the sun. The sun burns up his wings and also it makes his eyes bright. His feathers fall because of the heat and he [falls] down with them to the wet. He falls into the bottom of the well where he becomes whole and sound.’

The citation of this passage in MED comes under the following list of definitions: “hǀven v. 1. (a) To remain suspended in the air; of birds: hover; be poised high in the air, soar” (cf. also OED s.v. Hove, v.1, sense 1). This choice of possible meanings for houeÇ does not suggest directional motion; we are forced into a translation of the type ‘soars/hovers in the sun’. Once the sun has burnt the eagle’s ‘flight’ (i.e. wings) his feathers fall, causing him also to fall to the earth. The obvious picture given by this contrast is two contrary directional motions — like Icarus, the eagle flies too high (albeit deliberately) and suffers a consequent fall. The question is, does the verb houeÇ indicate part of the upward journey? It is true that the eagle’s ascent through the “sixth and seventh skies” to the heaven has already occurred. He could be in a position “to remain suspended in the air” in the burning heat of the sun. But what are we to do with the introductory clause of our passage So rigt so he cunne? The simplest translation for this is ‘as straight/directly as he can’ which would

5

Here we follow MED’s definition s.v. skÄ (e n. 1, (b) a sphere of the celestial realm. This interpretation is similar to that of Hall (op.cit., p. 597) whose note explains that “he flies through seven to the highest eighth, heaven”, following an astronomical definition from the South English Legendary. Bennett (in Bennett, Smithers and Davis op. cit., p. 356) takes a different view. He notes that cosmologically speaking the sun was supposed to be in the fourth sphere. This leads him to gloss skies as ‘clouds’ and he then takes sexe a seuene as “probably a mere tag”, which he takes to mean “whatever clouds may chance to come his way”. This explanation takes no account of the exegesis in the Significatio following the allegory. Here it states quite clearly that the “sun” in the context of the story represents God and therefore His rightful location would be above the highest celestial sphere.

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imply continued linear motion6; in other words "in" may be illative not locative in this context and houeÇ would then be a verb of motion implying rising toward a goal. 1.3. The next two passages (fol. 8r) concern the whale. The first describes the whale tricking fish into becoming his prey. Çis fis Çat is vn ride . Çanne him7 hungreÇ he gapeÇ Ïide . Vt of his Çrote it smit an onde . Çe sÏetteste Çing Çat is o londe . Çer-fore oÇre fisses to him dragen . Ïan he it felen he aren fagen . he cumen a houen in his muÇ . of his sÏike he arn uncuð . §is cete Çanne his chaueles lu keÇ . Çise fisses alle in sukeÇ . ‘This fish that is monstrous, when he is hungry he gapes wide. Out of his throat there issues a breath, the sweetest thing that is on land. Therefore other fishes are attracted to him. When they sense it they are glad. They come and houen in(to) his mouth and of his trickery are unaware. This whale then locks his jaws, and sucks in all these fishes.’

MED places this citation in the following category: “hÉven v. 2. (b) to remain, stay, linger”. Although the context suggests that these definitions are indeed apposite8, the verb here is arguably also ambiguous with respect to illative and locative senses. Part of the interpretation depends on how the sequence “come and houen in” is to be bracketed. The question is whether the motional component inheres entirely in the verb “come” with “houen” providing a subsequent locative element, or whether “come” and “houen” together constitute an illative semantic unit. Which of the following forms should our interpretation take: [come and [houen in]] or [[come and houen] in(to)]? The MED classification appears to be semantically too tightly specified, though evidently the fish have 6

Note that the glossary to Bennett et al. s.v. rilt translates rigt here as “straight in front”. This appears to take no note of so...so and denies the possibility of forward motion which the construction most naturally implies. 7 MS him him 8 Though there seems no reason in principle why it could not equally well have been listed in MED s.v. “hÉven v. 1. (c) to float”; see the next quotation.

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stopped moving of their own volition by the time they are sucked from the whale’s mouth into his gullet. However, not all contexts are ambiguous. Our verb is used in connection with the whale a little later in a passage describing how he behaves when the sea is upset by storms. This usage strongly reinforces the claim for a locative component. Çis fis ÏuneÇ ÏiÇ Çe se-grund . a liueÇ Çer eure heil a sund . til it cumeÇ Çe time . Çat storm stireÇ al Çe se . Çanne sumer a Ïinter Ïinnen . ne mai it Ïunen Çer-inne . So droui is te sees grund . ne mai he Ïunen Çer Çat stund . oc stireÇ up a houeÇ stille . Ïiles Çar Ïeder is so ille . ‘This fish dwells on the seabed and lives there ever whole and sound, till the time comes that a storm stirs up the sea. When summer and winter struggle it may not remain there. So troubled is the seabed that he cannot stay there at that time, but moves up and houeÇ still, while the weather there is so ill.’

In MED, this citation is listed s.v. hÉven v. 1. (c) to float; also, rise to the surface of the water. The following stille makes it clear that ‘float’ is the correct interpretation. The deliberate contrast of stireÇ up and houeÇ stille accentuates the distinction in type between the two verbs here. 1.4. Our next set of quotations comes from Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 145 (C), a copy of the South English Legendary9, dating probably from the first quarter of the fourteenth century and placed in NW Berks. 1.4.1. The first passage (fol. 72v) is from the life of St Brendan10. The story describes how seafarers mistake the whale for an island and go “ashore”. They light a fire and begin to heat a cauldron whereupon the whale starts to move and they quickly depart. Our passage tells of their return visit to the whale. 9

C. d’Evelyn and A.J. Mill (eds.), The South English Legendary, EETS OS 235, London: Oxford University Press, 1956. 10 See IMEV 2868, M. Görlach, The Textual Tradition of the South English Legendary, Leeds Texts and Monographs 6, Leeds: The University of Leeds School

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Lass & Laing ¶is holymen wende uorÖ . and godes grace nome So Öat to Öe grete viss . wel sone suÖÖe hicome . And alond Öar hi houede . hor caudron hy fonde Öere As hi leuede uppon is rug . of Öan oÖer lere Louerd crist Öt such abest . houi ssolde so stille And soffri men Öer-uppe gon . and don al hore wille . ‘These holy men went forth and had god’s grace, so that to the great fish they came very soon afterwards. And on land where they houede, their cauldron they found there as they had left [it] upon his back the previous year. Lord Christ that such a beast should houi so still and suffer men to go upon him and do all their will.’

MED does not cite this quotation from the C text. Instead it uses the version of St Brendan in Oxford Bodleian Library, Laud Misc 108 (L)11. For LAEME the sample that has been tagged from L does not include the Brendan story. The two versions differ slightly, affecting the sense of the first example of our verb. The L text is quoted in MED as follows: “SLeg.Brendan (Ld) 373: To Öis grete fischse .. huy come, ¶at houede ase it were a lond. Ibid. 375: Louerd crist, Öat swch a best scholde houi so stille!”12 Both these contexts indicate a meaning that matches the locative sense (‘float’) in The Bestiary. The first instance in the C text above is, however, rather different. What does it mean? The context, alond, is something we have not met before. Whatever it means here, it cannot be either ‘soar’ or ‘float’. The sequence of events is that first the holy men approach the whaleisland, then they land on it and then they find their cauldron: hi come ... hi houede ... hy fonde. houede appears to mean ‘landed’ or ‘came of English, 1974, 167-68, d’Evelyn and Mill, op.cit., pp. 180-204. 11 C. Horstmann (ed.), The Early South English Legendary, EETS OS 87, London: TrÝbner, 1887, pp. 220-40. 12 Note that this passage is on fol. 106r of L. There are three other early 14th-century versions of SEL samples from which will in due course also be added to the LAEME corpus: Oxford Bodleian Library, Ashmole 43 (A), London, British Library, Egerton 2891 (E) and Harley 2277 (H). For the first citation in this passage, A, E and H all have: As alond Öt houede. For the second citation A has: houy scholde so stille but E and H lack our verb here. E has: hym scholde holde so stille; H has: scholde beo so stille. All these readings clearly carry the locative sense as does a further example (in L only) a few lines further on: And eueuere [sic] houede Ö is muche fichs = stille so eny ston. A, C, E and H all have simply was in this line.

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ashore’ and thus contains both motional and locative components, i.e. it is allative13. The second occurrence (as in the L version) is quite clearly consonant with the established meaning ‘float’. 1.4.2. Our next example (C fols. 92r-v) occurs in the Life of St John the Baptist14. The Baptist’s head has been hidden and the secret of its location lost. The Baptist wishes his head to be found and he comes to the Abbot Marcel in a dream and tells him where to find it.

¶

¶is godeman sone aros him up . a ne abod nolt forte day He openede is celle dore . a biheld aboute A sterre he fond biuore Öe dore. houi Öere-wiÖ-oute . ¶e cleroste Öt milte be[o] . [...] ForÖ wende Öe sterre forte he com . ouer Öulke place . ¶er Öis holy heued lay . Öoru oure louerdes grace . ¶o he com ouer Öulke place . he houede Öere astonde ‘This good man soon arose and did not wait until day. He opened his cell door and looked about. He saw a star houi there outside the door, the brightest that could be. [...] Forth went the star until it came over that same place where this holy head lay, through our Lord’s grace. When it come over that same place it houede there a while.’

Another version of the same text is found in L, fols. 33v-34r15: we include this because it gives a grammatical form of the verb not found in the other examples16. ¶is guode man a-ros up sone Ÿ and ne a-bod noult forto day Ake he openede is celle-dore Ÿ and bi-heold a-boute 13 Though it is arguable that houede here refers back to the previous sojourn of the holy men on the back of the fish. We have translated the verb leuede as a pluperfect because it unambiguously refers back to the abandonment of the cauldron the previous year. The verb houede could also have pluperfect sense: ‘and on land where they had stayed they found their cauldron as they had left it’. In this case houede would have to be categorised with the senses in MED s.v. “hÉven v. 2. (b) to remain, stay, linger”. 14 IMEV 2945, Görlach, op. cit., p. 176, d’Evelyn and Mill, op.cit., pp. 241-46. 15 Horstmann, op.cit., pp. 29-33. 16 Note that versions A, E and H match C’s text in this example.

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Lass & Laing Ane steorre he fond bi-fore Öe dore Ÿ houinde Öare-with-oute ¶e clereste steorre Öat milhte beoŸ [...] Forth wende Öe steorre forto huy comen Ÿ ouer Öat-ilke place ¶are his holie heue lay Ÿ ÖoruÑ ore louerdes grace ¶o heo cam ouer Öulke place Ÿ heo houede Öare ane stounde

MED lists only the second citation from the L version and places it under sense 1. (a) To remain suspended in the air. These usages relating to the star seem unproblematic. It is floating in the air, apparently at eye level (bi-fore Öe dore). First it is still, ‘waiting’ for the abbot, and then in motion (wende), as a guide to the location of the head, then still again (houede), marking the spot. This type of usage might be seen to form the basis for assigning the related senses of soaring in air or floating in water. 1.4.3. Our next example (Corpus fol. 87r) occurs in a miracle story of the Virgin Mary (the Miracle of Sir Emmery)17, told as part of the life of St Theophilus. The tale concerns a rich man fallen on hard times. The Devil tempts him with a promise of a return to his former wealth, and in exchange requires the knight to bring his wife to meet him. The knight, not realising it is the Devil, is delighted with the riches he has regained and duly brings his wife to meet his benefactor. On the way the wife (who is in ignorance of the agreement) asks to stop at Our Lady’s Chapel to pray. Here, unknown to the knight, Our Lady changes places with his wife and in her likeness goes with him to meet the Devil. Ac Öo Öe deuel oure leuedi sei . he gan to grede heie False trichour he sede to Öe knilt . wy bi-traistou me so . Ssel ich habbe Öis for me godhede . Öt ich habbe Öe ido Ne holde ich forward quaÖ Öe knilt . war-of destou mene ¶u luxt loude quaÖ Öe deuel . Öou brecst forward al clene ¶ou bringst mid Öe mi meste uo . a ssost me Öi wif lede 17 IMEV 59, Görlach, op.cit., pp. 173-74, d’Evelyn and Mill, op.cit., pp. 231-34. Note that the A version of SEL lacks the Life of Theophilus altogether and that the L version lacks the miracle story. The E and H versions of the relevant line match the C version except that H has al witles instead of as witles.

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¶is knilt houede as witles . he nuste hou he it sede ¶ou luÖer Öing quaÖ oure leuedi . wy wostou so fawe ¶t he Öe hadde is wif ibrolt . Öou wost it nere nolt lawe ‘But when the devil saw Our Lady he began to shout loudly. “False traitor”, he said to the knight “why do you betray me so? Is this what I get for the goodness that I have done for you?” “Do I not keep to the agreement?” said the knight, “What are you talking about?” “You’re clearly lying”, said the Devil, “You are breaking the agreement completely. You are bringing with you my greatest foe and you should be bringing me your wife”. This knight houede as if he were witless; he didn’t know how he [the Devil] could say it. “You wicked thing” said Our Lady, “Why did you think so readily that he would have brought his wife? You knew it would not be lawful”.’

MED places this citation in the same category as the fishes in the whale’s mouth, namely sense 2. (b) to remain, stay, linger. Here, however, there seems to be implied a behaviour associated with a specific state of mind. The knight is characterised as witless and unknowing. Given the previous usages we assume that this one is metaphorical: there is no indication that the knight’s feet are off the ground. Like the fishes with the whale or the whale in the storm, his situation has deprived him of the possibility of voluntary motion. ‘Remained’, ‘stayed’ or ‘lingered’ all seem a little colourless here. The sense needed is clearly ‘stood motionless’, ‘was paralysed’, ‘was unable to move’. If a metaphorical translation is preferred, perhaps the best would in fact be ‘floated’ or ‘hung there’. 1.4.4. Here it is worth mentioning another citation of our verb in MED s.v. hÉven v. 2. (c) ~ stilleliche, remain motionless, come to a stop. MED quotes from the L version of SEL’s Life of St Mary of Egypt18. This text has not yet been tagged for the LAEME corpus from any manuscript version. Here, meantime, we give a fuller context than MED, taking the text from the L version (fols. 119v-120r)19: A-non so heo bi-gan hire oresun Ÿ wonder men milten i-seo 18

IMEV 2990, Görlach, op. cit., 158-59, d’Evelyn and Mill, op. cit., pp. 136-48, Horstmann, op. cit., pp. 260-71 19 Horstmann, op.cit., p. 266.

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Lass & Laing Fram Öe eorÖe heo was op i-houe Ÿ Öe heilte of fet Öreo ¶are heo houede stilleliche Ÿ as Öei heo were with-oute breÖe Heo ne wawede leome non Ÿ bote hire lippene vnneÖe [...] ¶is Monek stod and bi-Öoulte him Ÿ gret wonder he hadde and fere He ne heold hire no womman Ÿ ake treouwede Öat hit sum gost were For heo houede so a-boue Ÿ ake after hire oresun ¶is holi Öing wel stilleliche Ÿ to Öe eorÖe alilte a-doun ‘As soon as she began her orison, men could see a miracle. She was lifted up from the earth the height of three feet. There she houede motionless as though she were without breath. She did not move a limb; except only her lips [...] This monk stood and pondered — he had great wonder and fear. He considered her not to be a woman but that she was some kind of ghost because she houede so above [the ground]. But after her orison this holy thing very quietly alighted down to the earth.’

The verbal collocations in this example are quite explicit: St Mary is “lifted up”20 to “the height of three feet” and remains “motionless”. Unlike the knight in the previous example, her feet are certainly off the ground — exactly three feet off. This example clearly belongs more properly under MED’s sense 1. (a), along with St John the Baptist’s star, and may be translated ‘hover, remain suspended in the air’. Given the commentary above, MED’s three sense clusters appear to have a different set-theoretical structure than the three separate definitions would suggest. There are two major independent sense clusters and also a significant overlap between the two. Confining ourselves here to the LAEME examples, we give to the locative sense the mnemonic “float” (whether in air, water or land), we assign to the motional sense the mnemonic “land”, and to the intersection of the motional and locational sets the mnemonic “soar”. In summary: MOTION ‘land’ ‘soar’ ‘float’ LOCATION

20 i-houe is a the strong past participle from OE hebban directly related to our verb – see the following discussion.

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Investigation of the etymology may give some indication as to why these apparently disparate senses co-occur. Indeed, OED lemmatises the two main sets of meanings separately under two homophonous but apparently historically unconnected head words, neither of which is provided with a firm etymology. The OED’s “Hove, v.1”, which is described as “derivation unknown” covers mainly the locational senses but also overlaps with the motional ones. Its “Hove, v.2” entry lacks any derivation and is given the primary sense “raise, lift”. In the following section we will attempt to connect the two senses and suggest a common etymology. 2. Etymology We can find no evidence for our verb in the standard Old English dictionaries or the Microfiche Concordance To Old English (R.L.Venezky and A di P. Healey, 1980). The only attempt to connect it with an attested Old English word is a suggestion in MED: “?OE *hÉfian; ?a new formation in ME based on hÉf(on, p. of OE hebban”. This etymology seems very likely to be right, but the supporting argumentation needs to be made explicit. Given the lack of attestation, why are we so sure (a) that there was an ancestral Old English verb at all and (b) that if there were it would have been a Class II weak verb? We need to ask question (a) because there are not only no pre-Conquest attestations, but there appear to be none before the early 13th century. The reason we assume an actual Old English verb rather than a Middle English secondary formation is the geographical distribution of the forms. Its occurrence in texts originating from places right across the country – Robert of Gloucester’s Chronicle21, The South English Legendary and The Bestiary – is less likely to be the result of convergent invention than of inheritance. This is essentially a methodological rather than a purely empirical argument. Assuming then that there was an ancestor why should we characterise it as Class II weak? Firstly, the ancestral verb must have been weak since there is no evidence of any strong forms but there are multiple instances of the weak past tense. That being the case, the verb must have belonged to Class II for the following reasons: 21

See the citations in MED s.v. hǀven v.

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(1) It has a back root vocalism; this excludes weak Class I whose vowels are always front because of the ancestral *-jan suffix. (2) It does not have a geminate versus non-geminate alternation anywhere in the paradigm, which excludes the characteristic Class III type (libban, habban). (3) At least one of the Middle English forms show the characteristic marker of Class II: the -i- formative in the infinitive, houi. Let us assume OE *hǀfian to have existed. As a Class II verb, it was almost certainly derived, as Class II consists mostly of denominal, deadjectival and deverbal secondary formations. It is in fact historically the same class as that to which Latin denominal -Ɨre verbs belong, e.g. am-or > am-Ɨre22. The source suggested by MED is a reasonable one for a verb of this shape. Since Class II formations leave the root untouched, suffixation of the past root of hebban (strong Class VII) would give *hǀf-ǀj-an > *hǀf-jan > *hǀfian. The remaining problem is semantic: how do we get from the past tense of ‘heave’ to the rich collection of senses we have been discussing? As a Class VII strong verb the expected ablaut series for hebban would be a / ǀ / ǀ / a. The unexpected e-vocalism in the present is due to an original *i formative like that seen in its almost certain cognate Latin cap-i-ǀ. The best story of the complex semantic development, which is still incomplete, is outlined in the OED’s entry s.v. Heave v. Here it is with expansions where necessary: the IE root must be of the shape *kap-, which would by Grimm’s Law have given Gmc *xaf-; this, with following standard changes, is clearly the shape underlying hebban. According to the OED, the original sense “as evidenced by ... derivatives, as well as by L capƟre, was ‘take’, whence, through ‘take up’, came that of ‘lift, raise’, already developed in Com. Teut.” A similar sense development could very well take us from ‘lift’ to ‘float’ and thence to ‘float’ in the motional sense. The history and the attested senses would then account for why $ho:fian{*}/vK2 is both locative and motional. 22

For detailed discussion see R. Lass, “Old English -ian: Inflectional or derivational?”, Vienna English Working Papers 2.1, 1993.

The rhyme potential of Scots Caroline Macafee Some of my happiest memories of teaching at the University of Glasgow are of the course I shared with Christian, entitled “Meaning, Form and Style”. I particularly enjoyed, and learnt a great deal from, her handouts on formal poetics. This paper harks back to those days, and also picks up her interest in ripping out dictionaries and knitting them up again. It has always seemed to me a pity that there is no rhyming dictionary of Scots. A dictionary of rhymes is one of the standard reference tools available to the writer in English, but no such tool exists for Scots, despite writers more and more turning to reference books to remind them of the riches of the language, and to confirm and broaden their personal knowledge, as the language becomes less used in speech. A rhyming dictionary would be useful to poets and song-writers in Scots, and to teachers and students using Scots for creative writing in the classroom. It would also promote the appreciation and understanding of Scottish literature, by recovering poets’ intentions with regard to rhyme, and might even improve accuracy in the recitation and performance of Scots verse and song. The core material for such a dictionary already exists in the pronunciation entries1 in The Concise Scots Dictionary (CSD).2 At present, this material, which constitutes a considerable enlargement, revision and systematisation of the pronunciations in The Scottish National Dictionary (SND), is underused, because it demands an acquaintance with phonetic symbols.3 There is further relevant material in The Linguistic Atlas of Scotland, vol. 3 (LAS3),4 in Ulster 1

By A. J. Aitken. Mairi Robinson (ed.), The Concise Scots Dictionary, Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1985; now published Edinburgh: Polygon. 3 William Grant et al. (eds.), The Scottish National Dictionary, Edinburgh: Scottish National Dictionary Association, 1931-1975; now published Edinburgh: Polygon. 4 James Y. Mather and H. H. Speitel (eds.), The Linguistic Atlas of Scotland, vol. 3, London: Croom Helm, 1986. 2

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sources5 and in sources for Orkney and Shetland.6 Standard English overlaps with Scots; such material (words like cat, the, bus, narrative and ode) would also have to be included. Even with the addition of the shared material, a pocket dictionary would suffice to cover the active, current Scots vocabulary of most speakers. But the more comprehensive the dictionary was, the more useful it would be to writers of dialects whose rhyme potential is radically different from mainstream literary Scots. It would also be satisfying to give writers better access to the recessive and less wellknown vocabulary. Much of the impetus for a thoroughly inclusive treatment would really be scholarly, however, rather than utilitarian. A fuller rhyming dictionary would incorporate vocabulary back to 1700 (the starting date of SND), and would benefit scholars of Scottish literature by making it possible for the first time to see the relationship between a poet’s rhyme choices and the full rhyme potential of the language at a particular point in time. A rhyming dictionary could also be presented in such a way as to give it a valuable secondary function as a pronouncing dictionary. An analysis of the vocabulary by rhyme sets is, after all, precisely an analysis by phonemes. The general user (and the literature student) could be spared an engagement with the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), by identifying the pronunciation of a given word in terms of what it rhymes with. A full index (after the fashion of The Scots Thesaurus7 or the Penguin edition of Roget’s Thesaurus8) would be space-consuming, but very direct and reliable in use – were it not for the vagaries of Scots spelling. Alternatively, the user might be directed to work down a list of keywords, arranged in some quasi-

5

James Fenton, The Hamely Tongue. A Personal Record of Ulster-Scots in County Antrim, 2nd edition [no place of publication]: Ullans Press, 2000; Caroline Macafee (ed.), A Concise Ulster Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. 6 Such as Gregor Lamb, Orkney Wordbook. A Dictionary of the Dialect of Orkney, Birsay: Byrgisey, 1988; and John Graham, The Shetland Dictionary, Stornoway: Thule, 1979. Material unique to the Northern Isles was omitted from CSD as a spacesaving measure. 7 Iseabail Macleod et al., (eds.), The Scots Thesaurus, Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1990; now published Edinburgh: Polygon. 8 Robert Dutch (rev.), Roget’s Thesaurus, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966.

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alphabetical way by stressed vowel (echoing the arrangement of the rhyme lists themselves) in search of the right category of rhyme. It would be possible to extend the coverage backwards in time, because CSD does give pronunciations for obsolete vocabulary. The beginning of Modern Scots at 17009 is probably as far back as it would be reasonable to go. For one thing, Older Scots is too far back for the modern writer to go in search of rhymes: the literature is not well enough known to modern readers, whereas with the eighteenth century, we are into a Burnsian and ballad vocabulary (though I am perhaps being wildly optimistic in regarding these as common cultural reference points). For another thing, there are very few people who have occasion to read aloud in carefully reconstructed Older Scots, and those who would attempt it can no doubt handle IPA, and can therefore refer directly to CSD, and to other, more specialised, resources.10 The question arises of how accurate and complete our knowledge is of the pronunciation of words that did not survive into the era of modern dialectology. In fact, we can reconstruct the pronunciation of most words with some confidence, within a robust and detailed reconstruction, based on spellings (including dialect variants), etymologies, and knowledge of rhymes in Older Scots. The biggest source of uncertainty is the break in the written tradition at the end of the Older Scots period. On one level, there is the discontinuity in orthography; on another, there is the much narrower range of genres and registers being written in early Modern Scots. These changes make it look as if much of the variation that existed in Older Scots had disappeared by the eighteenth century. But many alternative forms, the results of minor sound-changes whose geographical spread is not always clear, may in fact have lingered on in speech. The study of 9

Also the dividing date between SND and A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue. In particular A. J. Aitken, “How to pronounce Older Scots” in A. J. Aitken et al. (eds.), Bards and Makars: Scottish Language and Literature, Medieval and Renaissance, Glasgow: Glasgow University Press, 1977, pp. 1-21; revised Caroline Macafee, incorporating material by the late A. J. Aitken, “The phonology of Older Scots”, in John Corbett et al. (eds.), The Edinburgh Companion to Scots, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003, pp. 138–169; and †A. J. Aitken, The Older Scots Vowels: A History of the Stressed Vowels of Older Scots from the Beginnings to the Eighteenth Century, ed. Caroline Macafee, Scottish Text Society, 2002, with its substantial index of Scots words with their stressed vowels indicated. 10

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early Modern Scots rhymes might even bring some of these to light. First of all, though, we need a set of expectations, a first approximation, such as a rhyming dictionary would provide. Any discrepancies from the expected patterns of rhyme warrant attention. To give a small example, it seems to have gone unremarked that the rhyming of joy as /ÙA;e/ is an anglicised rhyme (/ÙA;e/ being an alternative, now obsolete, form in English). The first instance mentioned in SND (s.v. joy) is Burns in “The Brigs of Ayr” (ll.219, 220), but he is in any case writing English at this point: “Then, crown’d with flow’ry hay, came Rural Joy, And Summer, with his fervid-beaming eye.” (The Scots for eye is, of course, ee.) The two subsequent nineteenth-century examples mentioned by SND may or may not derive from Burns. Burns also has an internal rhyme of joy with cry in “Song, composed in August”. But at least once elsewhere, he rhymes joy with expected /@i/: The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men, Gang aft agley, An’ lea’e us nought but grief and pain, For promis’d joy! (from “To a Mouse”11)

That /@i/ rather than /A;e/ is the expected vowel in joy is not noticed by SND, nor, surprisingly, by CSD. In current speech, it has been replaced by /oi/;12 but with its original vowel, Vowel 10 (to use Aitken’s numbering system), it should be /@i/ and indeed rhyme with word-final Vowel 8 as in agley.13 It is possible that /@i/ and /A;e/ were still phonetically close enough at this time to make a decent nearrhyme. A study of rhymes amongst Vowels 1, 8 and 10 in Burns and other eighteenth-century poets would be interesting.14 11

Quotations from Burns are from James Kinsley (ed.), Burns Poems and Songs, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969. 12 Perhaps itself a partial anglicisation, as being the Scots realisation of /OI/. 13 The diphthongal reflex of ai and ei word-finally. 14 It is remotely possible that Vowel 10 shared with Vowel 1 (as in Fife versus five, etc.) the split into /@i/ and /A;e/ according to the environments of the Scottish VowelLength Rule. There are so few examples in Scottish Vowel-Length Rule long environments that it is hard to draw any conclusions. However, poison has /@i/, suggesting that there was no such split in Vowel 10. That the split had already occurred in Vowel 1 is shown by the merger of the short alternative with Vowel 8.

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The Scots in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century texts presents the problem for the reader that it is often disguised by Standard English spellings. There are several examples in the early Burns piece, “Song, composed in August”. The spelling is almost entirely English, but swallow (read swalla) rhymes scottice with yellow (read yalla), and Nature (read naitur) with creature (read craiter); and there are good internal rhymes of winds (read wuns) with guns, and join (read jine) with combine; and a near-rhyme of bush (read buss) with thrush. (Recordings by the Voice Squad15 and by the Old Blind Dogs16 both closely follow the misleading spellings of the published text.) It would be pleasing to think that a rhyming dictionary could help scholars and performers of verse and song to recover the Scots rhymes in Burns, though there have been two attempts to enlighten the public with full transcriptions of the poems,17 and yet the horse will not drink. Perhaps accuracy in delivering rhymes is something that only matters to hopeless pedants. I have needlessly allowed my enjoyment of folksongs to be spoiled by noticing, for instance, that a singer of “My Harry was a gallant gay” rhymed gay and awa – why not sing away, perfectly good Central Scots variant? Or, in “True Thomas”, ahint : wind – if not the ballad Scots behind : wind (with /@i/) then surely ahin : win? And what has got into a singer of “Logie o’ Buchan” who normally gives awa the North-Eastern /A/ vowel but adopts a Central Scots /O/ every time she renders the chorus: “Think nae lang, lassie, though I’m far awa, An’ I’ll come back an’ see ye, in spite o’ them a’”? And I won’t even mention the effect it has on me to hear shoon rhymed as it is spelled, with moon or whatever. Perhaps it is too much to expect from the tradition bearers that they should direct their attention to pronunciation. The resulting selfconsciousness might be counter-productive. In an interview filmed by Doc Rowe,18 the late Willie Scott talked about giving words their ‘right expression’, by which he meant pronouncing them as spelled, and indeed in the same interview he sang “Hame fareweel” with disown us as /dIsVun Vz/. 15

Many’s the Foolish Youth, Tara Music Co, Dublin, 1987. New Tricks, Klub Records, Glasgow, 1992. 17 James Wilson, Scottish Poems of Robert Burns in his Native Dialect, London: Oxford University Press, 1925; Robert Pate, 120 Scotch Poems of Robert Burns in his own Dialect, Wigtown: G. C. Book Publishers, 1997. 18 Shown at the Songs and Singing event in Auchtermuchty, 17 October, 1998. 16

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Folk performers may feel comfortable with an unexamined compromise amongst their own Scots (if any), the Scots of the singer(s) they learned the song from, and the pronunciations suggested to them, naively, by any written versions that they have seen. Perhaps it does not matter that John Strachan, for instance, in his traditional rendering of “Clyde’s Water”19 sang: The horse that I’m to ride upon Cost me twice thirty poun’ An I’ll pit trust in ma ain horse heels An he’ll cairry me safe an soon … … Oh, Clyde, ye Clyde, ye rollin Clyde, Your waves are wond’rous strong; Mak me a wreck as I come back, But spare me as I gyang.

/pVun/ /sun/

/stroN/ /gjaN/

… … Willie’s brother stands on the bank: “Oh, how can Willie droon? Oh, turn ye tae your high horse heid An he’ll learn ye how tae sweem.” … … “Oh why could I turn to my high horse head An learn how tae swim? It’s the deepest pot in aw the Clyde, An here that I maun droon.”

whereas he could have rhymed poon : soon, strang : g(y)ang and, as a near-rhyme, droon : soom. In the ordinary way of things, a performer cannot be expected to revive an archaic pronunciation in order to mend a rhyme, and even moribund rhymes are an obstacle to comprehension, so we do not necessarily expect to hear, for instance, the Central Scots /I/ vowel in croon : afternoon : shoon : tune in a Burns Supper rendition of “The Holy Fair”. But as Aitken said about the pronunciation of Older Scots,20 we do expect scholars and students to prepare their readings carefully. 19

Scottish Tradition 5: The Muckle Sangs: Classic Scots Ballads, School of Scottish Studies, University of Edinburgh and Tangent Records, London, 1975. 20 Aitkin (1977), op. cit.

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The intended pronunciations in early Modern Scots works are knowable: the less readers need specialised training to get at that knowledge, the more chance, one hopes, of its being applied. As with Older Scots, there are decisions that have to be made, and problems that have to be thought out in advance of attempting a reading. So, for instance, in Burns’ “Song: Tibby I hae seen the day”, there is a rhyme moor : stoor : poor, which can only be made to work by reading moor and poor as English: Yestreen I met you on the Moor Ye spak’na but gaed by like stoor Ye geck at me because I’m poor But fien’ a hair care I. –

In “To the Rev. John McMath, Inclosing a copy of Holy Willie’s Prayer, which he had requested”, mouth and skouth must be given their Scots pronunciations, but truth and ruth, which would take /I/, must be given their English pronunciations: They take religion in their mouth; They talk o’ mercy, grace an’ truth, For what? - to gie their malice skouth On some puir wight, An’ hunt him down, o’er right an’ ruth, To ruin streight.21

There are times, however, when we must admit ourselves defeated by an eye-rhyme, as in: In thae auld times, they thought the Moon, Just like a sark, or pair o’ shoon, Woor by degrees, till her last roon Gaed past their viewin, Ah’ shortly after she was done They gat a new ane. (from Burns, “To W. S*****n, Ochiltree”)

21

The spelling suggests that a near-rhyme /wIxt : strExt/ was intended.

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Moon, shoon, done will all rhyme, in /I/, but roon is an eye rhyme with the spellings. There is no combination of Scots and English pronunciations that will make all four of these words genuinely rhyme with each other. One of my own main interests in a rhyming dictionary is that it would make clear, for the first time, the different rhyme potentials of different dialects. Numerous sound-changes separate the Central, Southern, Northern and Insular dialect groups, some of which go back at least six centuries. The vocabulary may be shared, but the rhymesets have been extensively reshuffled, presenting poets and songwriters with quite different linguistic resources. Some dialects, including an eastern bloc that extends northwards from Fife, and parts of the South-West, have /e/ as the normal reflex of Vowel 3, as in meat, head, etc. For these dialects, as for the Fife makar, David Lyndsay, Vowel 3 rhymes with Vowel 4, as in mate, rather than Vowel 2, as in meet. Only the most conservative dialects, now mainly Orkney and Shetland, keep Vowel 7, as in spune ‘spoon’, use, puir ‘poor’, separate as a front rounded vowel. In most it has unrounded to merge with /I/ in the short enviroments of the SVLR, /e/ in the long ones, giving rhymes such as spune and tin, puir and hair. In Angus, the traditional reflex of Vowel 7 is /e/ even in SVLR-short environments – though this may now be moribund – thus spune ‘spoon’ would rhyme with stane ‘stone’. In Southern Scots, the diphthongisation of final /u/ leads in some localities to a merger with /Vu/, making you and pu ‘pull’ rhyme with growe ‘grow’, how ‘hoe’ etc. It is noticeable, however, that the word zoo, one of the test words in LAS3, was never given with a diphthong: evidently *zow would not be acceptable. There are other instances where English word-forms have, in effect, been borrowed into Scots, one of the earliest being boat, which existed alongside the expected bate (now obsolete) from the late fifteenth century (spelled ). Door is another very ordinary word that has been present in its English form since the sixteenth century (and dure is also now obsolete, without apparently having yielded a /der/ form to parallel flair, or flure, ‘floor’). The recent large-scale obsolescence of Scots word-forms in favour of their English cognates, is, of course, a phenomenon of language death, so there is a case for presenting the dictionary user with the historically ‘correct’ forms, giving the

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necessary indication, of course, that they are, or are believed to be, obsolete. But, despite the detailed coverage in CSD, there are items where the predictable dialect form might never have been attested, and might not, in practice, be acceptable to speakers, e.g. grue ‘melting ice on water’ is recorded as a lexical item, from Southern Scots, but with no record of a dipthongal form, in contrast to grue ‘shudder’, where the expected Southern form is attested. The North-Eastern dialect has had its rhyme potential enlarged by the falling together, as /i/, of Vowel 7 (as in puir ‘poor’, spune ‘spoon’) with the already merged Vowels 2 and 3 (like English as in meet and meat, and also, unlike English, as in heid ‘head’, pear ‘pear’) and Vowel 4 before /n/ (as in stane ‘stone’). This feature of the dialect is the subject of an anecdote told by Dieth: A rather fantastic story, associated with the name of a well-known Scottish judge of a former generation, is told of an Aberdeen woman who made a verbal will bequeathing her money to “the peer o’ Aiberdeen”. A legal decision was wanted as to what she had meant. The possible claimants were (I) the town authorities for the relief of the poor, (II) the Earl of Aberdeen, (III) Aberdeen Harbour authorities, then constructing a pier. It was wittily suggested that there was a fourth possibility, that she meant the money to be spent in encouraging the cultivation of a new kind of pear-tree to be called the “peer o’ Aiberdeen”. The four words, poor, peer, pier, pear are all pronounced alike.22

The North-Eastern poet, J. C. Milne, showed great facility with the rhyme potential of the dialect. In “Dominie Dandie (Two)”,23 for instance, he produced twelve different rhymes for skweel ‘school’.24 As a basis for comparison, The Penguin Rhyming Dictionary offers the following rhymes for ‘school’ in English:25

22 Eugen Dieth, A Grammar of the Buchan Dialect, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932, p. 19. 23 Quoted from Leslie Wheeler (ed.), Ten Northeast Poets, Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1985, pp. 101–02. 24 With a /w/ glide after the velar. 25 Rosalind Fergusson (ed.), The Penguin Rhyming Dictionary, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985.

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Caroline Macafee boulle (denoting type of marquetry) … Boole … cool, fool, ghoul, Goole …, joule, who’ll,26 pool, Poole, pul (Afghan coin), spol, rule, drool, shul (synagogue), tool, stool, yule, you’ll, mule, mewl, pule …, tulle, babul (type of acacia), Stambul … cagoule … ampoule … ferrule … spherule

and some others, mainly compounds of the words above, and many more ending in -ule. So we turn to Milne: I’ve been te skweel and college and hae ta’en a gweed degree, And noo I think I’m thinkin it’s a teacher I wid be! And in twa-three years I’se warrant, gin the warld’s waggin weel, They’ll mak me Dominie Dandie wi’ a couthy country skweel! … … And ilka Sunday mornin te the kirk I’d walk in style, Wi’ a muckle black umberella and a swagger and a smile, And I’d nivver miss a sermon for widder, sark or peel, Gin I were Dominie Dandie wi’ a couthy country skweel.

With no feeling of strain or recherché ingenuity, he goes on for sixteen stanzas in this vein, repeating only weel (twice) and chiel (once). To list his rhymes, they are: weel ‘well’, chiel ‘fellow’, peel ‘pill’, creel, tattie-dreels ‘potato drills’, reel (fishing), feel ‘fool’, Deil, reel (the dance), Eile ‘Yule’, queel ‘cool’, spiel ‘climb’, heel. Of these, only feel ‘fool’, Eile ‘Yule’, and queel ‘cool’ also figure in the English list. As with many aspects of the Scots language, its rhyme potential is in danger of being lost without ever having been fully appreciated. Sadly, a rhyming dictionary is a tool that might have been of more use a couple of generations ago, when a wider range of people knew a broader canon of Scots. Hugh MacDiarmid might have found inspiration in it, as he did Wilson’s The Dialects of Central Scotland.27 But at the end of the day, no lexicographer could anticipate

26 This would not work in Scottish English, as the vowel is long before a morpheme boundary. 27 James Wilson, The Dialects of Central Scotland, London: Oxford University Press, 1926.

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the flights of someone like George Bruce Thomson,28 steeped in the genuine idiom of a vibrant dialect, and with his own original genius for rhyme: He said that he was able for tae play at coup-the-ladle, Wi’ a laidder ower a tricle cask, an’ ca the churn forby; Anidder o his win’ers wis that sawdust mixed wi’ cin’ers Wis their spice for feedin’ hens at Birnieboosie. An educatit ostrich fae the wilds o’ Timbuctoo, He hid for scrattin’ up his neeps an’ hidna them tae pu’; I never heard the like o’ that come oot o’ ony mou’ But Macfarlan’s o’ the Sprotts o’ Birnieboosie. (from “Macfarlan o’ the Sprotts”29)

28

Thomson died young, and left only a few pieces, including the two marvellous comic songs, “Macfarlan o’ the Sprotts” and “McGinty’s Meal an Ale”. 29 Quoted from James Alison (ed.), Poetry of Northeast Scotland, London and Edinburgh: Heinemann Educational Books, 1976, pp. 98–99.

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Of politeness and people Terttu Nevalainen & Heli Tissari Introduction English speakers have not always been polite. The adjective was first attested in English around 1400 with reference to smoothed or polished objects, and it continued to be associated with materials like glass and stone until the eighteenth century. What interests us in this paper is the transition of polite from the material sphere to the social, and the ways in which this process can be contextualized. We shall begin by considering some corpus linguistic evidence in order to trace the process across time – how and when being polite became a human property. The information provided by the Historical Thesaurus of English shows the lexical company “polite” words keep, and gives us access to the metaphors associated with “good behaviour” and “courtesy”. We will conclude by discussing how this Thesaurus information could feed into scripts for typical polite behaviour in English between 1500 and 1800.1 1. Sources and uses of “polite” adjectives The present-day use of the adjective polite is restricted to humans, their actions, or the results of their actions. In the British National Corpus (BNC), polite typically collocates with nouns such as conversation, society, smile, applause, way, letter(s), interest, words and company, and takes human complements with the verb to be.2 Examples (1) to (4) illustrate these uses: 1

Our research for this paper was supported by the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence funding for the Research Unit for Variation and Change in English at the Department of English, University of Helsinki. We would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to Professor Christian Kay for the advice and support she has given VARIENG over the last six years. 2 The corpora referred to in this study include the following four collections: (1) the British National Corpus (BNC web online created at the University of Zurich, see ); (2) the Early Modern English section of the

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Nevalainen & Tissari (1) He could dance as well as fight, and he could make polite conversation. (BNC, EVF 354) (2) I have now received a polite letter from the B.T. together with a phone card worth 30 p. (BNC, CH5 3047) (3) I always had to be polite and caring. (BNC, AJK 131) (4) When they visit I expect my husband to be polite to them. (BNC, AC3 1592)

The adjective polite is more frequent than its near-synonym courteous but less frequent than civil. The most common noun collocates of courteous in the BNC are manner, letters, man, staff and way, partly overlapping with the principal collocates of polite. The polysemy of civil accounts for its overall frequency: its primary senses relate to the citizens or people of a country in contrast to military or religious institutions. The principal collocates of civil in the BNC are war, servants, service, rights, aviation, liberties, society, engineering, law and disobedience, none of which have the “polite” sense of the word. The three “polite” adjectives date from different periods and have different source domains. Courteous goes back to Middle English and is associated with courtly behaviour: “manners such as befit the court of a prince; polite, kind and considerate”. Civil, by contrast, pertains to citizens; dictionaries suggest its ‘civilized’, ‘educated’, and ‘wellbred’ senses appeared in the sixteenth century, giving rise to ‘polite’, ‘obliging’ and ‘uneffusively courteous’ in the early seventeenth century. Polite is the latest of the three; besides its literal sense, it had two extended senses at the turn of the sixteenth century: ‘cleansed’, ‘neat’, ‘orderly’ used with reference to material entities, and ‘refined’, ‘elegant’, ‘cultivated’ used about intellectual pursuits such as the arts. Helsinki Corpus of English Texts (for HCE compilers and lists of texts, see Matti Rissanen, Merja Kytö and Minna Palander-Collin (eds.), Early English in the Computer Age: Explorations through the Helsinki Corpus, Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1993); (3) the Corpus of Early English Correspondence (CEEC) and its 18th-century Extension (CEECE) (for compilers and lists of texts, see Terttu Nevalainen and Helena Raumolin-Brunberg, Historical Sociolinguistics: Language Change in Tudor and Stuart England, London: Longman, 2003, and Mikko Laitinen, “Extending the Corpus of Early English Correspondence to the 18th Century”, Helsinki English Studies Vol. 2, 2002, ); and (4) the English Drama collection in the Chadwyck-Healey Literature Online database (for LION, see [accessed January 2004]).

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The latter sense is attested with humans from the seventeenth century onwards. It was not until the mid-eighteenth century that it acquired its current senses ‘courteous’, ‘treating others with consideration’, ‘having or displaying good manners’. The noun politeness appears in the sense of ‘polished manners’ and ‘courtesy’ in the early eighteenth century, as in example (5) cited in the OED (politeness n3).3 (5) 1702 Eng. Theophrast. 108 Politeness may be defined a dextrous management of our Words and Actions whereby we make other people have better Opinion of us and them~selves.

2. Politeness in corpora 2.1 Early Modern politeness Electronic corpora largely confirm the dictionary information on polite: no instances of its ‘polite’ sense proper occur in the three Early Modern English corpora we examined. The Corpus of Early English Correspondence (CEEC, 1410–1680) has no instances of either polite or politeness. The noun does not appear in the Early Modern English section of the Helsinki Corpus (HCE, 1500–1710), and there is only one instance of the adjective, cited in (6). It comes from Thomas Elyot’s Gouernour (1531), which sets requirements for the pronunciation of nurses and other women attending on a nobleman’s son. The sense is ‘refined’ or ‘cultivated’. (6) Semblably the nourises and other women aboute hym, if it be possible, to do the same: or, at the leste way, that they speke none englisshe but that which is cleane, polite, perfectly and articulately pronounced, omittinge no lettre or sillable, as folisshe women often times do of a wantonnesse, (HCE, Thomas Elyot, The Boke Named the Gouernour, 1531, pp. 22–3)

Before 1700, the use of polite in the large LION English drama database is limited to the ‘elegant’ and ‘refined’ senses of the adjective. Apart from a single reference to a most neate fine street in 3

These dates are provided by The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, edited by Lesley Brown (1993), and the online version of the new edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (http://dictionary.oed.com/).

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Rome in the literal sense of polite, it is typically applied to nouns such as method or rules of courtship, oratory, conversation, phrase(s), way of expression, garniture and parts in the sense of ‘qualities’. Except the occasional polite companion and (most compleat) gentleman, it is the behaviour of people, and verbal behaviour in particular, rather than the people themselves that are characterized as polite. Philip Massinger’s comedy The Picture (1630) makes polite into an adverb in “She speakes well Polite, and courtly” (III.ii). Polished occasionally takes similar referents including thoughts, speech and poesie, but is mostly used in concrete contexts with reference to materials such as steel, stones and ebony. There are no instances of the adjective courteous in the HCE, but the sense appears in the noun courtesy, which is more frequent than civility. Courtesy and courteous lose ground with time in the CEEC, while civil and civility become more frequent. The early seventeenthcentury illustration in (7) describes the Japanese as “curteous people”. (7) They wear theyre hare longe, bownd upp like the Chines, with a bodkin thrust through, but it is made up on the right side of theyre heades, & are a very gentle & curteous people. (CEEC Supplement, Richard Wickham, 1614, p. 274)

The various modern uses of civil were already common in the Renaissance, but the polite sense was also prominent in all the three databases examined. The HCE has some thirty instances of civil, one third of the “polite” kind, as in (8). As an aside, the case in (9) is a sixteenth-century view of the civil service. (8) in some places beyond Seas, 2500. are taught in one Schoole) without any noise, in a pleasing & profiting manner, & in their playing years; not onely the English, Latine, and Greek Tongues, (together with the Duties of Piety, and civil behaviour) but also the Easterne, and other needful forreign Languages, (HCE, Charles Hoole, A New Discovery of the Old Art of Teaching Schoole, 1660, pp. 218–19) (9) he left soch a companie of fellowes and scholers in S. Iohnes Colledge, as can scarse be found now in some whole vniuersitie: which, either for diuinitie, on the one side or other, or for Ciuill seruice to their Prince and contrie, haue bene, and are yet to this

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day, notable ornaments to this whole Realme: (HCE, Roger Ascham, The Scholemaster, 1570, p. 280)

2.2 Post-Restoration politeness The diversification of the notion of politeness appears from our eighteenth-century material, the Corpus of Early English Correspondence Extension (CEECE, 1680–1800). The “polite” senses of civil still outnumber those of polite in the corpus, but the proportion of polite and its derivatives increases noticeably. Personal correspondence closely reflects the cultural focus on politeness in post-Restoration Britain. “Polite sociability” became the hallmark of the Age of Enlightenment, raising self-consciousness about manners. This polite urbane lifestyle could be taught by education and learnt through practice, as shown by the personal letters of the upwardly mobile Verney family. Susan Whyman’s analysis4 of the forms of social interaction they engaged in includes financial and social favours, giftgiving and patronage, visiting and dining; visiting in London specifically meant social calls in a coach, which was interpreted as a symbol of power. The notion of politeness as refinement and elegance became common with human referents in the eighteenth century. In example (10), Eliza Pierce contrasts polite people and the beau monde with rustics, and Edward Gibbon regrets the degradation of the once polite Royal Court in (11). (10) when I want something pour passer le tems & beleive I shall find more entertainment in them then I even did in Mr. Fieldings Amelia. tho’ you probably and the rest of the polite people will laugh at the Rusticity of my Tast, but how can you expect a better from A Country Girl that has seen nothing of the beau Monde for allmost 7 Year ... (CEECE, Eliza Pierce, 1752, p. 65) (11) Every thing follows the example of the Court which from one of the most polite in Europe is become bigotted, gloomy and covetous. (CEECE, Edward Gibbon, 1764, p. 172)

4 Susan E. Whyman, Sociability and Power in Late-Stuart England: The Cultural Worlds of the Verneys 1660-1720, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

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This idea of refined politeness was often satirized in comedies of manners. David Garrick writes about his role in The School for Lovers (12): (12) I have Spoke the Prologue, & don’t appear in ye Play till the beginning of the 2d when Sr John Dorilant (that’s ye Name) makes his Entrance – and a fine, polite, Sentimental, Windling Son of a Bitch it is – a great favourite of ye Ladies … (CEECE, David Garrick, 1762?, p. 354)

Mary Wollstonecraft is more serious in her criticism of false politeness (13): (13) Vanity in one shape or other reigns triumphant – and has banished love in all its modifications – and without it what is society? A false kind of politeness throws a varnish over every character – neither the heart nor sentiments appear in their true colours. (CEECE, Mary Wollstonecraft, 1786?, p. 117)

As suggested by the seventeenth-century collocations of polite listed above, language made up an integral part of the refined sense of politeness. Lawrence Klein notes that “[i]n the ‘polite’ idiom, the standard for language was appropriateness to a certain social practice, the urbane conversation of gentlemen and ladies”5. Language is also included in the definition of politeness dating from the beginning of the eighteenth century in (5), above. A shift in emphasis can, however, be detected in the description of politeness William Pitt gives to his nephew Thomas in 1754: (14) Now as to politeness; many have attempted definitions of it: I believe it is best to be known by description; definition not being able to comprise it. I would however venture to call it, benevolence in trifles, or the preference of others to ourselves in little daily, hourly, occurrence in the commerce of life. A better place, a more commodious seat, priority in being helped at table, 5

Lawrence Klein, “‘Politeness’ as linguistic ideology in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth century England”, in Dieter Stein and Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade (eds.), Towards a Standard English, 1600-1800, Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1994, pp. 31-50.

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&c. what is it, but sacrificing ourselves in such trifles to the convenience and pleasure of others? And this constitutes true politeness. It is a perpetual attention, (by habit it grows easy and natural to us), to the little wants of those we are with, by which we either prevent, or remove them. Bowing, ceremonious, formal compliments, stiff civilities, will never be politeness: (CEECE, William Pitt, 1754, pp. 35–6)

This description downplays purely formal “stiff civilities”, and stresses the idea of positive acts of politeness being performed for others. We would hence like to suggest that this orientation towards others marks the semantic extension of polite to ‘considerate’ and ‘courteous’. In the CEECE data, polite begins to be associated with grammatical complements (prepositional and infinitive constructions) in the second half of the eighteenth century. There are also cases where the beneficiary of the polite action can be deduced from the context. These various uses of the ‘courteous’ sense of polite are illustrated by the letter excerpts (15) to (17). (15) I should have spoken louder, & concluded him to be deaf: but finding him very amiable & very elegant, & very polite to me ; & very unlike an old Man ; I never thought about his being deaf ... (CEECE, Hester Piozzi, 1779, p. 354) (16) I never saw Mr. Ferguson but twice, and know little of him, but as he was polite enough to ask my commands I recommended your Letter to his care. (CEECE, Mary Wortley Montagu, 1758, p. 152) (17) in respect to my last indeed, desiring you to sign your Consent to the Navigation, your fulfilling my Request was the politest answer you could give me. (CEECE, Erasmus Darwin, 1766, p. 38)

As a synonym of polite, civil can similarly take a prepositional complement indicating the beneficiary, as in (18). (18) I already understand almost all that is said and can ask for any common things I want. with regard to other things the people here are extremely civil to strangers and endeavour to make this town as agreable as possible. (CEECE, Edward Gibbon, 1753, p. 2)

We may conclude this brief survey of corpus evidence by noting that polite continued as a polysemous adjective throughout the eighteenth

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century. It lost its concrete sense ‘polished’, ‘smoothed’, but retained its abstract ‘elegant’ and ‘refined’ sense, which came to share the meaning potential of the word with the more other-oriented senses of civil and courteous in the course of the eighteenth century. But the source domain of politeness remained transparent to writers such as Anthony Ashley Cooper, the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, who summed it up by saying: “We polish one another, and rub off our corners and rough sides by a sort of amicable collision” (cited in Porter6). 3. Politeness in the Historical Thesaurus How do the adjectives polite, civil, and courteous and their corresponding nouns relate to other words in the lexical field of politeness? In the following we sketch a model for this field in the vein of Kövecses7, suggesting conceptual metaphors which help to construct the concepts of “good behaviour” and “courtesy”, as represented by data in the Historical Thesaurus of English.8 We provide a prototype for both “good behaviour” and “courtesy”, and a general script for “meeting people”, based on the same data, but more in the vein of Abelson.9 Our sample from the data is restricted to vocabulary dated between 1500 and 1800, including both new lexical material and older expressions still in use. 3.1 Good behaviour: metaphors and prototype Beginning with “good behaviour”, we suggest a central metaphor SOCIETY IS A STRUCTURED COMPOSITION, which implies that EVERY PERSON HAS THEIR OWN PLACE IN IT. Correspondingly, GOOD BEHAVIOUR IS STAYING IN ONE’S PLACE or, to provide more mobility, GOOD BEHAVIOUR IS MAKING THE 6 Roy Porter, Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World, London: Allen Lane, Penguin Books, 2000. 7 Zoltán Kövecses, Metaphors of Anger, Pride and Love: A Lexical Approach to the Structure of Concepts, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1986. 8 This data was kindly provided to us by Flora Edmonds on 16 February 2004. The data in the thesaurus was still incomplete in regard to both sections. 9 Robert P. Abelson, “Psychological status of the script concept”, American Psychologist Vol. 36, No. 7, 1981, 715-29. The two prototypes modelled on Kövecses (1986, p. 59, pp. 95–6, pp. 103–4) are also scripts, but of a slightly different kind.

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RIGHT MOVEMENTS. The latter idea can be further illustrated through a dance, such as the seventeenth-century favourite, minuet. One needed some patience to learn the right movements, including the small steps. Since models of behaviour spread from the court (in the case of the minuet, the French court10), it was no wonder that “good behaviour” had such near synonyms as punctuality and exactness. Consider also the phrases comme il faut and just so. Any government of or co-operation among people requires, at least to some extent, the idea that SOCIETY IS A STRUCTURED COMPOSITION. A good example is the Early Modern court, where everyone knew their place. One of the earlier senses of the noun civility, “civil organisation and government” (OED civility n5†), testifies to the close metonymic relationship between politics and “good behaviour”. There was a tension between the medieval belief that everyone was born to their right place and occupation, and the Early Modern opportunities for social aspirers. This tension is apparent in the concept of “good behaviour” as well. While the word manner(s) originally implies “distinct types or kinds” (OED, manner n1), such as the four estates, learning decorum suggested a way of resembling the nobility. Similarly, children could be brought up to behave like their own kind, or to achieve more than their parents. Such near synonyms of “good behaviour” as (good) breeding reflect the metonymy CAUSE FOR EFFECT.11 Metonymy is also at work if one’s poise or good looks are interpreted as signs of wealth, and consequently of nobility and good behaviour. In terms of conceptual metaphors, one might say that THE BODY IS THE INSTRUMENT OF GOOD BEHAVIOUR (which accords very well with dancing), and that GOOD BEHAVIOUR IS GOOD LOOKS. Consider such near synonyms for “good behaviour” as good abearance, carriage, comeliness, and handsomeness, or the phrase set/put a good/better face (up)on. The adjective polite and the noun politeness fall most naturally into this set of vocabulary, having their origins in shiny, smooth, good-looking objects. 10

See StreetSwing.com/Dance History Archives, 1999, accessed 30 June 2004, at http://www.streetswing.com/histmain/z3minuet.htm. 11 Günter Radden and Zoltán Kövecses, “Towards a theory of metonymy”, in KlausUwe Panther and Günter Radden (eds.), Metonymy in Language and Thought, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1999, 38.

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The first sense of the adjective proper in the OED is “Belonging to oneself or itself; (one’s or its) own; owned as property; that is the, or a, property or quality of the thing itself, intrinsic, inherent.” When proper is applied to behaviour, it seems to confirm that GOOD BEHAVIOUR IS STAYING IN ONE’S PLACE. It even seems to suggest that “good behaviour” may exist in someone as an innate, “permanent attribute or quality” (OED inherent a3), especially if they do not let themselves fall below their estate or attempt to rise above it. However, there is another tension between claims about people’s innate faculty of goodness (and good behaviour) and the necessity to regulate people’s actions evidenced by such words as civility (one cannot help thinking about Rousseau in this context, although many English names are relevant as well). This tension can be seen either in terms of humankind’s possessing or not possessing a free will (Erasmus, Luther), or in terms of form as against matter – consider the OED definition of ceremony (n1), another near synonym for “good behaviour” at the time (italics added): “An outward rite or observance … the performance of some solemn act according to prescribed form …” The metaphors THE BODY IS AN INSTRUMENT FOR GOOD BEHAVIOUR and GOOD BEHAVIOUR IS GOOD LOOKS allow for a difference between a person’s “real self” and the outward manifestations of the self. We suggest the following prototype for “good behaviour”:12 1. A person is born, or raised through either education or his/her own achievement (including marriage), to a certain place in society. This person knows what place s/he occupies in relation to other people. 2. S/he behaves and dresses according to his/her position. It looks good (everything is in order) and, in this way, s/he helps to construct a good society (an orderly composition). Caveat: People would often like to occupy a more important place in society.

12

We have freely adapted Kövecses’s idea of prototypes for emotion concepts (1986, p. 59, pp. 95–6, pp. 103–4), omitting physiological effects and adding the caveat. The same applies to the prototype of “courtesy” offered later in this study.

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3.2. Courtesy: metaphors and prototype Let us then move on to “courtesy”, paying special attention to distinguishing it from “good behaviour”. The interaction between these two concepts should be self-evident from the beginning, among other things because many ideas concerning “good behaviour” spread from the place that inspired the word “courtesy”. Our basic answer to the question of what the concept of “courtesy” adds to the model above is nevertheless that “courtesy” is something extra. Although this something may be a virtue, it also serves the caveat in the prototype for “good behaviour”. “Courtesy” is thus more on the value scale than “good behaviour” but it can also reach a critical point when it becomes too much (overcivility). The word civility is included in both sections of the Thesaurus, but in the context of “courtesy”, we might emphasize that it is not only associated with good order, but also with “freedom from barbarity”, “culture”, and “refinement” (OED civility n10–11). It is possible to interpret the near synonym of “courtesy”, humanity, in similar terms. The adjective urbane in its turn draws a line between cultural refinement and uncivilized vulgarity. Language is an important element of the cultural refinement inherent in “courtesy”. A near synonym of “good behaviour”, honesty, suggests that “good behaviour” requires that one speak the truth. “Courtesy” makes one speak well (fair-spoken, soft-spoken). In terms of conceptual metaphors, we suggest that whereas GOOD BEHAVIOUR IS KNOWING ONE’S PLACE, COURTESY IS MAKING OTHER PEOPLE MORE COMFORTABLE IN THEIR PLACES. A quote from Hobbes’s Leviathan touches the meeting point of the two concepts (OED complaisance n): “Compleasance: that is to say, That every man strive to accommodate himselfe to the rest.” One cannot know one’s own place without relating to other people. However, it is under “courtesy” that we find such expressions as management and accommodation for “conciliatory behaviour”, and moreover, agreeability, pleasance, douceur, plausibility, geniality, and affability. The OED defines comity as “kindly and considerate behaviour towards others” (comity n1). That such behaviour is associated with nobility is evidenced by the older nouns gentrice and hendeness/hendiness (also see MED entries for hend*). One’s high position allows one to stoop without losing one’s dignity and

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authority. The nouns easiness and ease underline the comfort provided by “courtesy”, while a person who makes other people comfortable is winsome and clever. A special case of “courtesy” which deserves to be mentioned here is gallantry, making women feel good about themselves. A more minor metaphorical aspect of the data could be phrased in the following way: while GOOD BEHAVIOUR IS THE NATIVE HABITAT, COURTESY IS THE CLIMATE. An example is make fair weather. We suggest the following prototype for “courtesy”: 1. A person A knows another person or certain people’s B (,C…) social status in relation to himself/herself. Motivated by either love or ambition, A wants to make B (,C…) feel more comfortable in their place(s) and, optionally, respond to A’s needs. 2. Consequently, A speaks very nicely to B (,C…) and accommodates himself/herself to B (,C…) more than required by the norms of good behaviour. Caveat: devaluation of courtesy: If courtesy is the norm, courtesy becomes (a form of) good behaviour. 3.3 A script for “meeting people” The Thesaurus data also allows us to offer a very general script for “meeting people”. The relevance of this script is that one needs to be familiar with it in order to behave in a polite, civil, or courteous manner. Abelson (op. cit., p. 715) defines “script” as “one type of schema”: “Scripts embody most of the conceptual issues raised by other types of schemata, but are simple and well-structured enough to permit more focused analysis and experimentation.” The following script, “meeting people”, is divided into three major stages. In the first stage, one acknowledges the presence of the other. In the second, one exchanges information, complements, and/or services, while in the third, one signals the approaching departure. The terms “equifinal” and “free behaviours” are borrowed from Abelson. The term “equifinal” “indicates that several different actions may accomplish the same result”, whereas “free behaviours” are “those activities that may plausibly and commonly intermix with the ongoing

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script” (op. cit., pp. 723–24). In a strict interpretation, free behaviours probably cannot form a stage in a script, but as regards the one below, we also have to take into account Abelson’s own remark that it is “probably naive” to “expect … a linear … process” (op. cit., p. 718). In other words, people meeting each other might also omit any stage in the script or change their order. Here is the script for “meeting people”: 1. Equifinal (/complementary) actions: greeting with words, by slight movement of cap, nod, bow, or handshake, welcoming. Addressing each other in “Courteous forms of address/title”. 2. Free behaviours (/optional?): remembrances/greetings sent, introducing someone else, (exchanging) compliments, kisses, (exchanging) courteous actions, services, information. 3. Equifinal (/complementary) actions: good wishes, leave-taking / bidding farewell. We have added the explanatory term “complementary” to suggest that the actions listed often go together rather than alone, and the term/question mark “optional?” to suggest that “good behaviour” or at least “courtesy” may require some of the actions listed as “free behaviours”. English has both words to be used in and words for (describing) the events and actions in the script.13 The former include how-d’ye do and au revoir, not to mention such courteous titles as signor, sir, and ma’am. The latter include reversion “return of a courtesy”, and wring, shrug, and hand-gripings for “hand-shake”. Polite, civil or courteous behaviour in Early Modern England and especially the eighteenth century required that one master not only this general script but also more specific scripts for all the important and even further situations. In a more focused analysis, which would require more data from the period than is possible to treat here, one could, for example, divide the more specific situations according to time (time of day, season, a person’s age), place (street, home, court,

13 We do not attempt to distinguish between “events” and “actions”. As can be seen in Abelson’s table 1 (op. cit., p. 716), this may get quite complicated.

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club, theatre etc), and even form (letter-writing as against meeting in person).14 4. Conclusion The corpus data on polite(ness) discussed in this article agreed with historical dictionaries in first-dating reference to humans in the seventeenth century. Corpora also provided more detailed information on the semantic diversification of polite. In the Corpus of Early English Correspondence Extension (CEECE, 1680–1800), the adjective polite gained ground at the cost of the “polite” senses of civil, showing that the notion of politeness as refinement and elegance in people and their behaviour predominated in the eighteenth century. The syntactic patterning of polite in the corpus data however also suggested that, from the mid-eighteenth century onwards, politeness was increasingly motivated by consideration for others. Returning to our examples (13) and (14), it is now possible to note a correspondence between the prototypes for “good behaviour” and “courtesy” and the corpus data: people tend to differentiate between outward forms of good behaviour (“bowing, ceremonious, formal compliments, stiff civilities”, “false kind of politeness”) and the sources of “true politeness” (“the heart”, “sentiments”, “sacrificing ourselves”). Our study suggests that the Historical Thesaurus of English could be used to model many other concepts as well, and even behavioural patterns, such as “meeting people”, while the scripts presented above could be checked against more data, such as contemporary conduct books, novels and diaries.

14 For conventions of letter writing, see Terttu Nevalainen, “Continental conventions in early English correspondence”, in Hans-Jürgen Diller and Manfred Görlach (eds.), Towards A history of English as a History of Genres, Heidelberg: C. Winter, 2001, pp. 203-224.

ME douten and dreden Michiko Ogura The Oxford English Dictionary cites two major senses of doubt (v.), i.e. ‘to doubt’ and ‘to fear’. For the latter sense, part of the etymological explanation reads: “Branch II ‘to fear, to be in fear’, a development of the verb in OF, was an early and very prominent sense of the vb. and its derivatives in ME”.1 We find the same sense in redoubt (v.) and †adoubt (v.). Dread (v.), on the other hand, shows a sense ‘to doubt’, though obsolete and rare.2 The noun dread also has a sense ‘doubt, risk of the thing proving otherwise’.3 Phrasal expressions are also ambiguous: e.g. withouten dout ‘undoubtedly’ or ‘without fear’; without dread means ‘without doubt, doubtless’ but no dread ‘no fear’ or ‘no doubt’. This paper aims at investigating the semantic and syntactic overlapping of a native verb dreden and a loan verb douten, together with their prefixed cognates and their synonyms and Old English counterparts. OE ondrædan is the most ordinary verb denoting ‘to fear’, often occurring with a coreferential dative pronoun. In the Gospels it translates Latin timere, though Ru1 chooses forhtigan,4 e.g.: (1) Mt 10.31 [nolite ergo timere multis passeribus meliores estis uos] Li: nellaÇ ge forÇon ondréde of monigum Çrowungum Çy betro 7 Çy sellra gebiÇon iuh Ru1: ne forþon forhtigaþ mongum ge sindun bettra þonne þas spearwas

1

OED, s.v. doubt v., II. 5 OED, s.v. dread v., 2 †c. 3 OED, s.v. dread sb., †3 4 Editions used for this survey are listed with abbreviated titles in the references. For Old English poetry see under Krapp and Dobbie (eds.), ASPR. Examples of those works with editions not given in the references are cited from OED, MED and MC. 2

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WSCp: Ne ondræde ge ge synt selran þonne manega spearuan WycEV: Therfore nyle e drede; e ben better than many sparwis. (AV: Feare yee not therefore, ye are of more value then many Sparrowes.) When used as renderings of other Latin verbs of fear, other words are chosen from among the Old English synonyms. In the next example an infinitive timere and two passive infinitives conturbati and conterriti are rendered by different lexemes, i.e.: (2)

Lk 24.36-37 [pax uobis ego sum nolite timere conturbati uero et conterriti existimabant sé spiritum uidere] Li: sibb iuh ic am nallað ondrede efne-gestyredo woeron uutedlice 7 gefyrhtedo weron wóendon á hine gást ote hia gesego Ru2: sib iowih mið ic am nallað geondreda efne-gistyrede werun wutudlice 7 fyrhtede werun woendun hine gast o gisege WSCp: sib sy eow ic hit eom ne on-dræde ge eow Ða wǙron hig gedrefede 7 afærede 7 hig wéndon o hig gast gesawon WycEV: Pees to ou; I am, nyle e drede. Sothli thei troublid and agast, gessiden hem to se a spirit. WycLV: Pees to ou; Y am, nyle e drede. But thei weren affraied and agast, and gessiden hem to se a spirit. (AV: Peace be vnto you. But they were terrified, and afrighted, and supposed that they had seene a spirit.)

In the Psalter we find a similar choice in rendering timere, as in (3) where PsG1E has ondrædan with a coreferential pronoun, and in (4) where a noun timor is translated ege.

ME douten and dreden

(3)

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Ps 48.17 [Ne timueris cum diues factus fuerit homo. et cum multiplicata fuerit. gloria domus eius] A: ne ondred ðu ðonne weolig geworðen bið mon 7 ðonne gemonigfaldad bið wuldur huses his D: ne andræd þu þonne weli eworden bið mann þonne emænifyld bið wuldur huses. E: Ne ondred þu þe þonne welyg geworden bieð mon 7 þonne gemonifalded bið wuldor hus his. WycEV: Ne thou shalt dreden, whan riche a man shal be maad; and whan shal be multiplied the glorie of his hous. WycLV: Drede thou not, whanne a man is maad riche; and the glorie of his hows is multiplied. (AV: Be not thou afraid when one is made rich, when the glory of his house is increased.)

(4)

Ps 118.120 [Infige timore tuo carnes meas. a iudiciis enim tuis timuí] B: efæstna mid ðinum ee mine flæsc from domum soðlice þinum ic ondred D: onfæstna ee þinum flæsc mine fram domum soþlice þinum ic adræd F: onfæstna ege þinum flæsc mine fram dome soðlice ðinum ic adræde WycEV: Pricke with thi drede my flesh; forsothe fro thi domes I dradde. WycLV: Naile thou my fleischis with thi drede; for Y dredde of thi domes. (AV: My flesh trembleth for feare of thee: and I am afraide of thy Iudgements.)

Ondrædan frequently occurs with a coreferential pronoun and often in a negative construction. Typical are such poetic formulas as

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Jul 210 Ne ondræde ic me domas þine ‘I do not fear thy judgments’5 and GenA 1037 Ne þearft ðu þe ondrædan deaðes brogan ‘Thou needest not fear the terror of death’.6 Forhtian and afæran, on the other hand, are often used in the past participle, as in And 1339-40 wurdon hie ða acle on þam ofenge, forhte, afærde, ond on fleam numen ‘then they became dismayed by the defence, terrified, afraid, and put to flight’7 and JDayII 125-6 stent hergea mæst heortleas and earh, amasod and amarod, mihtleas, æfæred ‘the greatest of troops will stand disheartened and timid, confused and confounded, powerless and afraid’.8 No conflict or rivalry seems to be found among these synonyms in the Old English period. Another prefixed synonym ofdrædan is used distinctively, often in the past participle, showing no obvious conflict with ondædan: e.g. CP(H) 35 239.6-7 Ĉæt is ðonne ðæt hie eallneg ræswað & ondrædað ðæt hi mon tælan wille, & beoð eallneg mid ðæm ymbeðoncan abisgode & ofdrædde ‘That is, then, that they always suspect and fear that one should intend to blame them, and are always occupied with the thought and afraid’. OE tweo(ga)n is used with or without ge-, showing no dialectal conflict with other verbs, as seen in the Gospel, i.e.: (5)

Mt 28.17 [quidam autem dubitauerunt] Li: sume ðonne getwiedon Ru1: sume þonne tweodun WSCp: Witodlice sume hig tweonedon WycEV: sothli summe of hem doutiden (AV: but some doubted)

Boethius, Gregory’s Dialogues and some homilies use this verb rather often, especially in negative constructions. Here are some examples:

5

Also in Jul 134 Næfre ic me ondræde domas þine, but cf. JDayII 15 Ic ondræde me eac dom þone miclan. 6 Also in ChristB 779 Ne þearf him ondrædan deofla strælas. 7 Also in ChristC 892a forhte afærde. 8 The translation is quoted from Graham D. Caie (ed.), The Old English Poem Judgement Day II, Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000, p. 91.

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(6)

Bo 16.38.3, 5 Hwæt, we gen[og georne] witon ðæt nanne mon þæs ne tweoð o se sie strong on his maegene þe mon gesihð o stronglic weorc wyrcð; ne þon ma, gif he hwæt bið, ne tweoð nænne mon o he hwæt ne sie. ‘Lo, we understand very well that no one will doubt this, that he is strong in his might who is seen to do a strong deed; no more than that, if he is able, no one will doubt that he is able.’

(7)

Bo 34.93.25 Ne þearft ðu no tweogan [ymbe o] þe þu ær tweodest, o is be [Ö¸ ge]sceaftum þe nane sawle n[abbað]; ‘Thou needest not doubt about what thou had doubted, that is about these creatures which have no soul.’

(8)

Bo 37.113.21 Forðæm ne þearf nænne wisne mon tweogan o ða yflan næbben eac ecu edlean hiora yfles; o bið ece wite. ‘Therefore no wise men need to doubt that the evil also have the eternal reward of their evil, that is, eternal punishment.’

(9)

HomS14 (BlHom4) 58 Forþon ne þearf þæs nanne tweogean, þæt seo forlætene cyrice ne hycgge ymb þa þe on hire neawiste lifgeaþ. ‘Therefore no one needs to doubt this, that the forsaken church will not think of those who live in the neighbourhood.’

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HomU11 (VercHom7) 72 Nu sio idelnes swa swiðe þam lichoman dereð, ne tweoge þe na þæt hio þære sawle ne sceððe, ‘When the idleness will harm the body so greatly, do not doubt that it will not injure the soul’

(11)

HomU3 (Belf12) 94 Ne þearf us na tweogean þæt he us næle eft þare læna munegiæn þæs þe he us her on weorlde to forlǙt. ‘We need not doubt that he will remind us again of the loans of what he allowed us here in this world.’

As seen in the examples, tweo(ga)n often takes a þæt-clause, as well as the genitive þæs and a coreferential pronoun þe in the imperative construction. Still the negative particle ne in (6) (in the o-clause following the second tweoð), næbben in (8) and næle in (11) are not necessary. A verb of negative import often takes a þæt-clause which contains an expletive ne, as explained by Mitchell (OES, § 2044): e.g. ÆHom 9.182 and him swiðe forbudon þæt hi nan ðing ne bodedon be þam Hælende nahwær.9 ME tweonen occurs in the same syntactic environment of negative constructions, and at times an ‘expletive’ negative appears in the subordinate clause. (12)

9

Vesp.D.Hom.Fest.Virg. 137.27 (Warner) Ne tweonige nane mæn, o seo gedrefde moder nolde beon gescild wið þære (ge)drefednysse

Bo 37.113.21 is quoted in Mitchell (OES, § 2039) as an example of the ‘expletive’ negative. The noun tweo also occurs in a similar context as he quotes: e.g., GD 213.20 7 ne Öuhte nanum men Öæs tweo, Öæt gif Öæt stanclif feolle, Öæt hit ne ofsloge Öæt scræt.... He asks whether “the idiomatic piling up of negatives” can be a factor of the occurrence of the ‘expletive’ negative. I have no doubt that the excessive use of negatives may trigger the occurrence of an ‘expletive’ ne, but we should also be mindful of the fact that this happens at times only with nouns or verbs of the negative import in the subordinate clause following and appears only too unpredictably.

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‘No one doubts that the troubled mother would be protected from the trouble’ (13)

Bod.Hom.Dom.2 Quadr. 52.21 (Belfour) ne sceal he him tweonigæn ðæt he ne mage Godes mildheortnesse bigitæn ‘he shall not doubt that he can obtain God’s mercy’

A coreferential pronoun occurs in (13), which was not an Old English feature. Another new trend of the verb is an ‘impersonal’ construction, which is also found in Vespasian D.XIV and Bodley 343 homilies. (14)

Vesp.D.Hom. 76.31 ac us tweoneð hweðer ge mugen mare deopnysse þær on þearlice tocnawen ‘but we doubt whether ye can recognize much profundity therein strictly’

(15)

Bod.Hom.Evang. 16.2 7 gyf him na ne tweonæÖ o he þæs tyðe béo, ac ilyfð on heortan, swá hwæt swa he cwæð hit bicymeð 7 iwurð ‘and if he has no doubt that he is granted of this but believes in his heart, whatever he says will come true’

Tweogan means ‘to doubt’ and ondredan ‘to fear’, and the two verbs show no conflict in sense.10 But one may fear because one doubts. Doubt bears fear, hence Satan’s speech: (16)

10

Vesp.D.Hom.Nicod. 84.12 Sathanas þa, þære hellen ealder, andswerede 7 cwæð, “Hwæt tweonest þu of þe? Hwæt ondrædest þu þe þone Hælend to onfone, minne wiðerwinne?”

In TOE, ondrædan appears mostly under 8. Emotion and tweo(ga)n under 6. Mental Faculties.

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‘Then Satan, the prince of hell, answered and said, “Why doubtest thou about thyself? Why fearest thou for taking hold of the Lord, my adversary?”‘ Ondrædan, ofdrædan and adrædan do not simply give way to the non-prefixed dreden. Through the transitional period to early Middle English, ME adreden takes two syntactic environments, i.e., constructions with a coreferential pronoun (e.g. PMor(Lamb) 6 ful sare ic me adrede) and the ‘be + past participle’ (e.g., Lag Brut(C) 27962 for heo weoren adradde). ME dreden shares the first feature (e.g. Orm 151 Ne dred te, Zacarige, nohht, Noff me, noff mine wordess!), but the second feature is shared with ofdreden, which is found in the variant reading of the following context: PMor(Jes-O) 94 Hwat schulle seggen oþer don, þer engles heom drede [vr. beð ofdrade]. In the course of Middle English, the non-prefixed dreden keeps taking a coreferential pronoun, especially in verse (e.g., Cursor (C) 3665 I dred me sare and Gen & Ex 767 He dredde him to leten is lif), but at the same time comes to be used as an alternative of or in parallel with be(n) dredful or be(n) afered (e.g. Wycl.Lantern 16/6 I quake, I drede, & vgli I am aferde). Adjectival forms and nouns can also be found as manuscript variants, as in the following: (17)

Cursor 17665 C: And war we for þe dredand sare G: And war we for þe dred-ful sare F: And for the dred we alle in care

ME aferen (< OE af¼ran) is used in two major constructions, i.e., with direct object (e.g., Lag Brut (C) 25553 feorlic wes þat sweouen; þene king hit auerde ‘marvellous was the dream; it frightened the king’) and in the past participle (e.g., Lag Brut (C) 26084 and neoðeles næs ic nauere; of Ardure afæred sære ‘and nevertheless I was never afraid of Arthur sorely’). ME affraien (