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Birds and Bird-Lore in the Literature of Anglo-Saxon England

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Birds and Bird-Lore in the Literature of Anglo-Saxon England Birds and Bird-lore in the Literature of Anglo-Saxon England Mohamed Eric Rahman Lacey Submitted for the degree of Ph.D., University College London 2013 1 I, Mohamed Eric Rahman Lacey, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 2 Abstract This thesis presents an interdisciplinary approach towards understanding the ways in which Anglo-Saxons perceived the birds around them and the cultural associations with which we find them endowed in the literature. It focuses on closely examining the entire range of primary sources available to us in order to build as accurate and as complete a picture of Anglo-Saxon bird-lore as possible, and it stresses the indivisibility of observational experiences of birds and their cultural associations. As very little work has been done on birds in Old English, this thesis starts with the fundamentals: how were birds categorised, identified and differentiated? Such fundamental questions must be addressed if we are not to anachronistically impose our own understanding on the Old English evidence. My examination reveals that birds were primarily heard, rather than seen, and that this experience of birds is reflected in the literature, where descriptions focus on their calls, instead of their appearances. This aural primacy is stressed throughout the thesis. In the first half of the thesis I argue for remnants of an apparently ancient, and common Germanic, practice of augury in the literature of Anglo-Saxon England, in which the vocalisations of birds were held to contain prophecies and tidings of present import. I present arguments for this belief being grounded in observed experience, stressing the connection between bird-lore and the lived experiences of birds in the Anglo-Saxons’ environment. In the second half of the thesis, I demonstrate that Christian bird-lore was quite different, being steeped in symbolism and scholarly tradition rather than naturalistic observation, but that it had common ground in associating birds with divine knowledge. I subsequently show how the Christian traditions of birds interacted with pre-Christian bird-lore – both in terms of augury and in terms of Anglo-Saxon proto-scientific classification. 3 Contents Acknowledgements 8 Abbreviations 9 Introduction 11 Birds and bird-lore 12 Problem and Method 16 Methodology: the comparative approach 17 Outline of thesis 19 A note on orthography 22 A note on texts 22 Part One – Pre-Christian Bird-lore 24 Chapter One: Semantics of bird names and Old English Taxonomy 25 Introduction 25 Theory and Method 27 Taxonomy and ‘science’ 27 ‘Species’ and lexis 32 What’s in a name?: bird-names and their semantic fields 34 Overview of previous scholarship 38 Hroc, hrefn and crawe 43 The visual criteria 54 Pullis corvorum – and its implications for Corvid taxonomy 57 Corvid perception and taxonomy 59 4 Ideophonic bird-names 60 Ule and ufe 61 Þrysce and þrostle 65 Higera and hraga 69 An Anglo-Saxon genus? The case of OE ganot 72 Ganot as attested in Old English 72 The ganot outside Old English 80 The semantic range of OE ganot 82 The Birds of The Seafarer – revisited 83 Previous identification 83 Ylfetu 84 Ganet 89 Huilpe 93 Mæw 93 Stearn 94 Earn 95 Geac and the anfloga 96 Chapter Two: Augury in Anglo-Saxon England 100 Beasts of battle 101 The supernatural aspect 103 The natural basis: analogous evidence and historical speculation 114 The religious aspects 120 Literary representations of augury 122 5 Chanting birds 122 Talking birds 129 The talking birds of The Seafarer 136 Historical evidence for augury 144 Glossary evidence 151 The penitential evidence 154 Conclusion 164 Part Two – Christian Bird-lore 166 Chapter Three: Sparrows in Anglo-Saxon England 167 Problematising Bede’s account 167 The significance of the sparrow 174 Sparrows and the soul in Anglo-Saxon England 181 Conclusion 190 Appendix: Sparrows and biblical allusions in Old English 192 Chapter Four: Doves in Old English Literature 196 Old English words for ‘dove’: culfre and turtle 197 Dove-lore in Anglo-Saxon England 202 The Dove, white bills, and bilewitnysse 204 Corvidae and doves 213 Doves and augury 222 Doves and the Holy Ghost 233 Chapter Five: The Bird-Soul 250 Souls in dove-form 250 6 Swans, souls and doves 259 Excluding the transformational tradition: the case of the swan-maidens 270 Conclusions 280 Summary 280 Future implications 281 Bibliography 283 Primary sources 283 Secondary sources 292 List of figures: 1.1 Lexical hierarchies in Modern English 28 1.2 Intermediary taxonomic levels in Modern English 29 1.3 Lexical hierarchies in Modern English and Old English 30 1.4 Collected transliterations of crow (Corvus corone), rook (Corvus frugilegus) and raven (Corvus corax) 46 1.5 Translations of pullis coruorum in Old English 57 1.6 Transliterations of jay and heron calls 70 1.7 Winter vocalisations of ganet candidates 91 3.1 Sparrows and biblical allusions in Old English 192 7 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisors Professor Richard North and Professor Susan Irvine for their guidance, support, wisdom and patience throughout the entirety of this project. I am also grateful to those who have at some point in my academic career steered my interests towards the fields of early medieval literature: Dr Chris Abram who taught me Old Norse during my Master’s degree, and Dr Winfried Rudolf and Dr Stewart Brookes, both of whom taught me Old English as an undergraduate. My gratitude is also due to those with whom I have discussed (sometimes at too great a length) various aspects of birds and bird-lore: Dr Alan Thacker, Dr Anna Gannon, Professor Andrew Reynolds, Dr Carolin Esser-Miles, Dr Sandor Chardonnens, Dr Mike Bintley, Dr Meg Boulton and Dr Kris Poole. Some of these I also owe more personal thanks to for their friendship, honest feedback, general administrative support and welcome distractions: Christine Twite, Alastair Hemmens, Karina Jakubowicz, Phil Anderson, Adam Berlie and Melissa Herman. Lastly, I would like to express my gratitude to my parents, David and Norma, and my sister Camilla, and the many other friends and family members who have given me food and support over the years. 8 Abbreviations ASC Anglo-Saxon Chronicle BT J. Bosworth and T. N. Toller, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (London: Clarendon Press, 1898) BWP S. Cramp, et al., Handbook of the Birds of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa: Birds of the Western Palearctic, 9 vols (Oxford: OUP, 1977-1994) CBG L. Svensson, et al., Collins Bird Guide: The Most Complete Guide to the Birds of Britain and Ireland and Europe, 2nd edn (London: HarperCollins, 2009) CCSL Corpus Christianorum Series Latina CH I Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: The First Series, Text, ed. by P. Clemoes, EETS s.s. 17 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997) CH II Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: The Second Series, Text, ed. by M. Godden, EETS s.s. 5 (London: OUP, 1979) CSASE Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England CUP Cambridge University Press DOE Dictionary of Old English A-G (Toronto: Dictionary of Old English, 2007) < http://www.doe.utoronto.ca/> [accessed 11/11/2013] DOEC Dictionary of Old English Corpus (Toronto: Dictionary of Old English, 2009) < http://tapor.library.utoronto.ca/doecorpus/> [accessed 11/11/2013] EETS Early English Texts Society IEW J. Pokornoy, Indogermanisches Etymologisches Worterbuch, 5th edn, 2 vols (Bern and München: Frankes, 1959-1969). MED Middle English Dictionary (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1952-2001) <http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med/> [accessed 23/11/2013] MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica 9 OED Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: OUP, 2013) <www.oed.com> [accessed 25/11/2013] OEM Old English Martyrology OUP Oxford University Press PE I The Poetic Edda: Volume I: Heroic Poems, ed. and trans. by U. Dronke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969) PE II The Poetic Edda: Volume II: Mythological Poems, ed. and trans. by U. Dronke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997) PL Patrologia Latina, ed. by J.-P. Migne, 221 vols (Paris, 1844-64) PMLA Publications of the Modern Language Association S Indicates charter number from P. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters: An Annotated List and Bibliography (London: Royal Historical Society, 1968) Skj Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning, ed. by Finnur Jónsson, 4 vols (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1912-15) Supp. Homilies of Ælfric: Supplementary Collection, ed. by J. C. Pope, EETS 259, 260, 2 vols (London: OUP, 1967-8) VGM Vita Gregorii Magni 10 Introduction An Old English calendar from Sherborne, c.1061, makes the following observation under its entry for the eleventh of Febuary: her onginnað fugelas to singenne.1 It is endearing in its simplicity: ‘at this time the birds begin to sing’. This stands out from all the other entries in the calendar, most of which are records of different saints’ days; the other notes are on the lengths of days, for example. Animals do not feature in the calendar otherwise. The reference to bird-song clearly shows bird-song’s capacity to mark the passing of time, and the combination of there being less noise pollution, as well as birds specialising in projecting their voices as far as possible in their respective ecological niches, means these songs would have been very noticeable.2 This reference also betrays some subtle but significant aspects of the Anglo-Saxons’ experience of birds. One of these aspects is the primacy of aurality: the birds are not observed (and indeed, there are very few physical descriptions of birds in Old English), but their sounds are ubiquitous across the Anglo-Saxon landscape – both the literary landscape and the physical one.3 Another, though more implicit, aspect revealed by these calendar entries is that there is an informative aspect to bird calls.
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