NOTES

 

 

READING BEOWULF WITH ISIDORE'S ETYMOLOGIES

 

 

 

* Cet article a été initialement publié dans Old English Lexicology and Lexicography : Essays in Honor of Antonette di Paolo Healey, edited by Maren Clegg Hyer, Haruko Momma, Samantha Zacher, D. S. Brewer, Cambridge, 2020, p. 245-259. 

 

(1) Isidori hispalensis episcopi Etymologiarum siue Originum libri XX, (éd.) W. M. Lindsay, Oxford, Clarendon, 1911. A searchable version is at Intratext. com/y/LAT0706.htm. The translation by Stephen A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A. Beach, and Oliver Berghof, The ‘Etymologies’ of Isidore of Seville, Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 2006 has been used throughout.

 

(2) Fontes Anglo­Saxonici World Wide Web Register, http://fontes.english.ox.ac.uk/.

 

(3) Klaeber’s Beowulf and The Fight at Finnsburg (henceforth Klaeber 4), (éd.) R. D. Fulk, Robert E. Bjork, and John D. Niles, corrected reprint of 4th edn, Toronto,  University of Toronto Press, 2009, p. 185. See Andy Orchard, Pride and Prodigies : Studies in the Monsters of the Beowulf-Manuscript, Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 1995) esp. p. 71–75.

 

(4) See Loredana Lazzari, "Isidore’s Etymologiae in Anglo­ Saxon Glossaries", Foundations of Learning : The Transfer of Encyclopaedic Knowledge in the Early Middle Ages, (dir.) Rolf H. Bremmer Jr. and Kees Dekker, Leuven, Peeters, 2007, p. 63–93. See, too, the important study by Philip G. Rusche, "Isidore’s Etymologiae and the Canterbury Aldhelm Scholia", JEGP, n° 104 (2005), p. 437–55. On knowledge of Isidore (c. 560–636) in the age of Hadrian and Theodore, see J. D. Pfeifer, "Early Anglo ­Saxon Glossaries and the School of Canterbury", ASE, n° 16 (1987), p. 17-44 ; on the rapid diffusion of the Etymologies in the seventh century, M. Lapidge, "An Isidorian Epitome from Early Anglo­-Saxon England", Romanobarbarica, n° 10 (1988–1989), p. 443–483. Also Lapidge, "The School of Hadrian and Theodore", ASE n° 15 (1986), p. 45–72. Also David W. Porter, "Isidore’s Etymologiae at the School of Canterbury", ASE, n° 43 (2014), p. 7-44. Etymological content from Isidore has been tracked in Aldhelm’s riddles and his prose De virginitate. See Nicholas Howe, "Aldhelm’s Enigmata and Isidorian Etymology", ASE, n° 14 (1985), p. 37–59 ; also Mercedes Salvador-Bello, Isidorian Perceptions of Order : The Exeter Book Riddles and Medieval Latin Enigmata, Morgantown, West Virginia UP, 2015. For Aldhelm’s Isidorian vocabulary, see J. Marenbon, "Les sources du vocabularie d’Aldhelm", Archivum Latinitatis Medii Aevi n° 41 (1979), p. 75–90. For Byrhtferth’s indebtedness to Isidore, see Peter S. Baker and Michael Lapidge, (éd. et trad.)  Byrhtferth’s Enchiridion, EETS ss, 15, Oxford, Oxford UP, 1955, esp. p. LXXXI-LXXXII. For Ælfric’s, see Brandon W. Hawk, "Isidorian Influence in Ælfric’s Preface to Genesis", English Studies, n° 95 (2004), p. 357–636. On class­-glossaries containing Isidorian material, see The Antwerp-London Glossaries. The Latin and Latin-Old English Vocabularies from (Antwerp) Museum Plantin-Moretus 16.2-London British Library, Add. 32246, I :  Texts and Indices, (éd.) David W. Porter, Publications of the Dictionary of Old English, Toronto, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2011. Also D. W. Porter, "The Antwerp London Glossaries and the First English School Text", Rethinking and Recontextualizing Glosses : New Perspectives in the Study of Late Anglo-Saxon Glossography, (dir.) Patrizia Lendinara et al., Porto, Fédération Internationale des Instituts d’Études Médiévales, 2011, p. 153–177. The manuscript of the Leiden glossary, ch. 47, is later than Épinal-Erfurt but textually prior. Aelfrics Grammatik und Glossar. Text und Varianten, (éd.) J. Zupitza, Sammlung englischer Denkmäler in kritischen Ausgaben, 1, Berlin, Weidmann, 1880) ; Nineteen full or partial Anglo­-Saxon manuscripts of the Etymologies survive, at least eleven of which were in England before the Norman Conquest. See Michael Lapidge, The Anglo-Saxon Library, Oxford, Oxford UP, 2006, p. 311.

 

(5) I use the term "poet" and masculine pronouns throughout as shorthand for the unidentified author(s) of the poem. 

 

(6) Klaeber 4, p. 343.

 

(7) Lexicographical material for this essay was retrieved from the DOE Corpus, and from the DOE. On the dangerous practice of shunting Old English glosses into the category of prose, see Mark Griffith, "Old English Poetic Diction not in Old English Verse or Prose – and the Curious Case of Aldhelm’s Five Athletes", ASE, n°43 (2014), p. 99–131. Antonette diPaolo Healey, "Late Anglo­Saxon Glossography : The Lexicographic View", Rethinking and Recontextualizing Glosses, op. cit., p. 1–18 (p. 4), notes that Angus Cameron, when he constructed his "List of Texts" for the DOE, wisely treated the glosses as a genre apart from poetry, prose, and inscriptions:  see "A List  of Old English Texts", A Plan for the Dictionary of Old English, (dir.) Roberta Frank and Angus Cameron, Toronto,  University of Toronto Press, 1970, p. 25–267.

 

(8) See Robert Maltby, A Lexicon of Ancient Latin Etymologies, Leeds, Francis Cairns, 1991, p. 608, s.v. thesaurus.

 

(9) Ernst Robert Curtius, "Grundbuch des ganzen Mittelalters", Europäische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter, Bern, Francke, 1948, (trad.) Willard R. Trask, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, New York, Pantheon Books, 1953, p. 23.

 

(10) The Mirror of Mankind, l. 10,405, (trad.,)John Gower : Mirour de l’Omme, (dir.) William B. Wilson, East Lansing, MI, Colleagues Press, 1992, p. 143. 

 

 

(11) S. O. Andrew, Postscript on Beowulf, Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 1948, p. 145.

 

(12) The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots, Boston, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011, p. 94–95.

 

(13) The three OE words (beorh, byrne, breost) in this sentence are apparent cognates. (The concept of "root" was present in Sanskrit linguistic speculation more than a millennium before the Anglo-­Saxons reached England. See Alberto Zamboni, L’etimologia, Bologna, Zanichelli, 1976, p. 12–13. Cf. Old Norse brynja, Old  Saxon and Old High German brunnia, Gothic brunjo ; prob. IE *bhreus­ ‘to swell, a breast, a rounded hill or barrow’. Liquids (‘r’ or ‘l’) are mobile, shifting position with preceding or following vowels (metathesis) : brynja vs. byrne.

 

(14) "A grove (lucus) is a place enclosed by dense trees that keep light (lux, gen. lucis) from reaching the ground. It is also possible that the word is derived from the lighting (conlucere) of many lights, which were kindled there because of pagan beliefs and rituals". Or again : "A “sacred grove” (lucus) is a dense thicket of trees that lets no light come to the ground, named by way of antiphrasis because it “sheds no light”’(non lucere) (17.6.7). See also 1.37.24.

 

(15) See I. Cazzaniga, "Lucus a non lucendo", Studi Classici e Orientali, n°21 (1972), p. 27–29. Cf. the Indo­-European root *leuk­, lurking behind both lucus and lux.

 

(16) "Because they used to make breast­plates from thongs of rawhide" : Marcus Terentius Varro, De lingua Latina, (trad.) Roland Kent, Loeb Classical Library, p. 333–334. 

 

(17) Mark S. Griffith, "Convention and Originality in the Old English 'Beasts of Battle' Typescene", ASE, n°22 (1993), 179–99, notes (p. 189) that "two­thirds of the lines in the corpus given to this scene alliterate on vowels, h-, or w-", the initial sounds of earn "eagle", hræfn ‘raven’, and wulf "wolf".

 

(18) Cf. Exodus 58. See Alfred Bammesberger, "The Meaning of Old English anpæð", Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, n° 112 (2011), p.3-7. Note, too, the half­rhyme of –pað and –cuð (Beo1410).

 

(19) On possible heathen implications of fyrn-, see Fred C. Robinson, "A Sub-­Sense of Old English Fyrn-", Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, n°100 (1999), p. 471–475. Frea "lord", through metathesis, takes part in the rhyming sequence. For further examples of aural effects in the poem, see Andy Orchard, A Critical Companion to Beowulf, Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 2003, esp. p. 61–69 ; also Id., "Artful Alliteration in Anglo­ Saxon Song and Story", Anglia, n°113 (1995), p. 429–463, and id., "The World Made Flesh :  Christianity and Oral Culture in Anglo-Saxon Verse’" Oral Tradition, n°24 (2009), p. 293–318, esp. p. 299–303. 

 

(20) See now Megan Cavell, Weaving Words and Binding Bodies : The Poetics of Human Experience in Old English Literature, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2016, p. 51. Beowulf boasts more than eighty lines with cross alliteration (abab) and thirty with transverse alliteration (abba), as in verse 2615 above (cf. Klaeber 4, p. CIXI, footnote 1. For a partial list of the two types, see John Lawrence, Chapters on Alliterative Verse, London, Henry Frowde, 1893, p. 43–47. On verses perhaps featuring both double and cross alliteration (e.g., leoda landgeweorc laþum beweredon ‘protect the people’s stronghold from foes’ (Beo 938) ; isig ond utfus æþelinges fær ‘"cy and eager to set out, a nobleman’s vessel" (Beo 65)), see Eric Gerald Stanley, In the Foreground : "Beowulf’" Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 1994, p. 134–38. The terms "cross alliteration" and "transverse alliteration" are frequently confused or combined in our scholarship : see Jun Terasawa, Old English Metre : An Introduction, Toronto:,University of Toronto Press, 2011, p.18, n. 4. See esp. Oliver Farrar Emerson, "Transverse Alliteration in Teutonic Poetry", Journal of Germanic Philology, n°3 (1900), p. 127–37, and Charlton M. Lewis, "Notes on Transverse Alliteration", Modern Language Notes, n°16 (1901), p. 43–44.

 

(21)  Les Mots sous les mots : Les Anagrammes de Ferdinand de Saussure, Paris, Gallimard, 1971. 

 

(22) This is not in itself unusual : of the 903 substantive compounds that occur in Beowulf, 518 are peculiar to that poem ; see Klaeber 4, p. CXII.

 

(23) The skald Arnórr Þórðarson, reporting Cnut’s generosity to his hall­companions, appears to use the same term, armhrauð "arm­ornament’" a compound found nowhere else in Old Norse. The skaldic stanza in which this compound appears is edited by Diana Whaley in Poetry from Treatises on Poetics, Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages, III.1, (dir.) Kari Ellen Gade, Turnhout,  Brepols, 2017, p. 4.

 

(24) Armbaugr "arm­ring" in Lokasenna 13 : Edda : Die Lieder des Codex Regius nebst verwandten Denkmälern, (éd.) Gustav Neckel and Hans Kuhn, I. Text. 5th edn, Heidelberg, Winter, 1983. ON ‘armr’ in connection with "ring’"otherwise appears only in the kenning­type "fire [or snake, ice, brightn ess] of the arm"= bracelet. See Finnur Jónsson, Lexicon poeticum antiquæ linguæ septentrionalis : Ordbog over det norsk-islandske skjaldesprog oprindelig forfattet af Sveinbjörn Egilsson, Copenhagen, Møller, 1931, s.v., and the database of the project Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages: /skaldic.abdn.ac.uk/.

 

(25) See DOE, s.v. earmbeag. Also DOE and the DOE Corpus, s.v. beag, dextrale, armilla. 

 

(26) Mene (< Germanic *manjan) has cognates in Old Saxon, Old High German, and Old Norse, and is related to Latin monile "necklace" and Sanskrit manya "nape of the neck". See Ferdinand Holthausen, Altenglisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Heidelberg, C. Winter, 1934 ; Jan de Vries, Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Leiden, Brill, 1962 ; Vladimir Orel, Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden, Brill, 2003. See DOE Corpus, s.v. monile, lunula.

 

(27) The compound healsmene, healsmyne "neck­ring" occurs nine times, mainly in glosses to Aldhelm. See DOE, s.v. healsmene, healsmyne ; also DOE Corpus, s.v. monile, lunula, crepundium. OE sweorbeag "neck­ring" is found chiefly in glosses to Aldhelm, in the Antwerp­-London glossary, and in Ælfric’s prose. The compound healsbeag "necklace" (for a man, 2x) is found only in Beowulf. 

 

(28)  Þrymskviða 13, 15, 19, in Edda, ed. Neckel/Kuhn. Haustlöng 9, (éd.) Margaret Clunies Ross, in Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages, III.1, Poetry from Treatises on Poetics, (dir.) Kari Ellen Gade, Turnhout, Brepols, 2017, p. 444-445.

 

(29) Lexicographers differ in their analysis of sigle n. "jewel, brooch, necklace" and sigel/sigil/sigl n. "'brooch, clasp, jewel", perhaps from Latin sigillum. In line with the Klaeber 4 glossary, I here treat them as one word.

 

(30) See Lexicon poeticum, s.v.

 

(31) Bede, The Old English Version of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, (éd.) T. Miller, os 96 (London, 1890–1898 (1959–63)), 4, 19, p. 322, l. 20 ; 4, 23, p. 338, l. 1.

 

(32) A. S. Napier, Wulfstan, Sammlung englischer Denkmäler, 4 (Berlin, 1883), repr. with app., K. Ostheeren (1967), no. 49 (Tuesday in Rogationtide), p. 250–265, at 253.23.

 

(33) See DOE Corpus, s.v. sigl, sigel, sigil.

 

(34) See especially Theodore M. Andersson, Early Epic Scenery : Homer, Virgil, and the Medieval Legacy, Ithaca, Cornell UP, 1976, p. 153–156. Speculation about Vergilian influence on Beowulf goes back more than a century. Among the major contributions : Frederick Klaeber, "Aeneis und Beowulf’" Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, n° 126 (1911), p. 40–48, 339–359 ; Alois Brandl, "Beowulf­ Epos und Aeneis in systematscher Vergleichung", Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, n°171 (1937), p. 161–173 ; Tom Burns Haber, A Comparative Study of the Beowulf and the Aeneid, Princeton, Princeton UP, 1931 ; and Alistair Campbell, "The Use in Beowulf of Earlier Heroic Verse", in England Before the Conquest:  Studies in Primary Sources Presented to Dorothy Whitelock, (dir.) Peter Clemoes and Kathleen Hughes, Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 1971), p. 283–292.

 

(35) Cf. tenuis semita […] angustae […] fauces (Aeneid, Book 11, ll. 524–25) = stige nearwe, enge anpaðas (Beo 1410). Waltharius and Ruodlieb, (éd. et trad.) Dennis M. Kratz, New York:,Garland, 1984. Cf. Aldhelm’s angustus trames ‘narrow course’ and angustus callis ‘narrow path’:  Aldhelmi opera, (éd.) Rudolf Ehwald, MGH, Auctores Antiquissimi, 15, Berlin, Weidmann, 1919, p. 408, ll. 1315–1316. 

 

(36) "Weapons in Beowulf:  An Analysis of the Nominal Compounds and an Evaluation of the Poet’s Use of Them", ASE, 8 (1979), p. 79–141 (p. 129).

 

(37) See DOE, s.v. eoforspreot. On the lemma from Vergil, see J. D. Pheifer, Old English Glosses in the Épinal-Erfurt Glossary, Oxford, Oxford UP, 1974, no. 1052 and p. 131. Cf. the related Old Saxon glosses : evurspiot, eburspiot, leburspiot "spear for hunting wild boars".

 

(38) Pointed out by Rusche, "Isidore’s Etymologiae", art. cit., p. 448. Rusche’s important essay came to my attention after I completed this section ; his relevant findings have been incorporated below.

 

(39) Rusche, "Isidore’s Etymologiae", atr. cit., p. 448.

 

(40) The Making of Textual Culture : ‘Grammatica’ and Literary Theory, 350–1100, Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 1994, p. 421. 

 

(41) Aldhelm’s Enigmata, éd. cit., p. 58.

 

(42) Auden, "In Memory of Sigmund Freud, d. September 1939’,  W. H. Auden : Collected Poems, (éd.) Edward Mendelson, New York, Vintage, 1991, p. 273–76.

 

(43) Laws of Ine of Wessex (688–94) and Wihtred of Kent (925) state that travelers must make their presence known by calling out or blowing a horn, if they don’t want to be taken for thieves (LawIne 20; LawW 28). See The Beginnings of English Law, (éd.) Lisi Oliver, Toronto:,University of Toronto Press, 2002, p. 179–180.

 

(44) Weiskott, "Old English Poetry, Verse by Verse", ASE, n° 44 (2016), p. 99–130, at 117–118

 

(45) See, e.g., Holthausen, Altenglisches etymologisches Wörterbuch ; Orel, Handbook of Germanic Etymology ; Watkins, The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots, 3rd edn, s.v.

 

(46) As Isidore said : "Mountains (mons) are the highest swellings of the land, so called because they 'stand out' (eminere)" (14.8.1).