1 2 3 4 5 THE FAMILIA IN ANGLO-SAXON SOCIETY: 6 ‘HOUSEHOLD’, RATHER THAN ‘FAMILY, HOME LIFE’ 7 AS NOW UNDERSTOOD 8 9 10 Abstract: Words used for societal units do not always translate well from one 11 language to another,and present difficulties within one language considered from 12 age to age. The family unit is ideally so overlaid with love and sentiment, so 13 fundamental to the sweetcontent of father,mother,children, and perhaps others 14 closely tied or loosely connected by blood or affinity that it is hard for us to believe 15 that there appears not to have been in Anglo-Saxon England anative word for ‘the 16 family’ as an ideal grouping. The Anglo-Saxonshad words for ‘household’, indeed with a pater familias very much at the head, and the unit including wife and children 17 of course, but equally as amatter of course, servants and slaves in the house and in 18 the fields, and cattle and sheep, often avery large unit. Many of the words used for 19 such aunit are derivatives and compounds of hiw,and that is related to hi(gi)d,the 20 word usedfor aunit of land, the ‘hide’. That unit is, however,not of some standard 21 land measure, but probably of avariable area one or more of whichwould be 22 sufficient to sustain ahousehold, large or small, including monastic households, 23 some of them very large with lands of many hides. One might wish to understand 24 their unit, the ‘hide’, as consisting of some definite number of acres. That does not 25 apply.There are several other Old English words for some kind of family unit, sibb, 26 aword for the ‘extended family’ and for ‘peace’, and cynn,aword for ‘tribe, race’, 27 and contained in post-Anglo-Saxon kith and kin.These words are not treated in this 28 paper,which has the complexities of hiw and derivatives and compounds at its 29 centre. 30 31 32 1. ‘Kith and kin’ Perhaps a Cold Comfort at Any Time in the English 33 Middle Ages, and Certainly not Going Back Linguistically to 34 Anglo-Saxon 35 36 Mrs Thatcher is reported as having said, “there is no such thing as ‘society’.” 37 What exactly she meant is not clear. Perhaps it was a political statement, that 38 socialism has no basis in the realities of the nation. Perhaps it was more 39 profound, that within the nation each one is alone, and that in a self-seeking 40 world there is no cohesiveness between individuals other than of insub- 41 stantial sentiment. Our notion of the family is similarly of a grouping, each 42 member of which is alone, and held together, if at all, by insubstantial 43 sentiment. The Anglo-Saxons seem not to have had a word for that group- 44 ing. We speak alliteratively of kith and kin, a phrase that looks as if it might 45 go back to the Anglo-Saxons; yet not all that alliterates is ancient, and the
DOI 10.1515/angl.2008.003
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1 collocation is recorded no earlier than Ancrene Wisse in the early thirteenth 2 century:1 3 Na swuch ing ne schule Ze Zeouen wi uten schriftes leaue, na mare en neomen 4 et Zeneseggen him fore, as of o re inges, kun o er cu e,huofte Zeun- 5 deruengen hu longe Zeedheolden. 6 7 No such thing (as articles of clothing) shall you give without the confessor’s 8 leave, no more than take what you have not told him of beforehand, nor of other 9 things, from kin or kith, without (telling him) how often you have received 10 things (or) how long you have retained them. 11 From this quotation it emerges that for areligious the ties of kin and kith 12 are to be put aside as worldly vanities, like articles of clothing made in the 13 solitariness of the anchor-hold to give to those outside, or things received 14 from those near and dear,kinsfolk and acquaintance:nowarm relationships 15 in this world for anchoresses. 16 It might be objected that to generalize about Anglo-Saxon usage from the 17 peculiar case of acoenobitical ideal designed for three young, well-born 18 ladies, who have chosen to cut themselves off from kith and kin, is mistaken 19 in respect of both date and non-secularity.The former is true, but not the 20 latter:the extant literature (in the widest sense of the word) of the Anglo- 21 Saxons was written largely by the religious for the religious, and transmitted 22 by religious scribes in religious houses. Where worldliness is asin, the 23 comforting warmth of agenerous kith and kin is afalse comfort. 24 In the recent Thesaurus of Old English there is hardly amention of 25 ‘family’.2 In Modern English, when one thinks of ‘family’, one thinks of 26 father,mother and children, and in an ‘extended family’ one thinks of 27 grandparents, and others related by ties of blood or affinity.Intwenty-first- 28 century Britain the notion of ‘the extended family’ survives chiefly in im- 29 migrant families or those descended from immigrants. 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 1 Ancrene Wisse,ed. Bella Millett,EETS o.s. 325 (Oxford, 2005) 160, lines 37 170–3.The quotations in this paper do not follow editorial details, including 38 punctuation;all translations are mine, unless the translator’s name is given.For 39 ‘kith and kin’ cf. Middle English Dictionary,ed. Hans Kurath et al. (Ann Arbor: 40 UofMichigan P, 1952–2001) s.v. kitthe,n.3. 41 2 AThesaurus of Old English,ed. Jane Roberts and Christian Kay with Lynne 42 Grundy,2vols.,King’sCollege London Medieval Studies XII (London:King’s 43 College, 1995). Walter W. Skeat, An English–Anglo-Saxon Vocabulary (Cam- 44 bridge:Cambridge UP,1879) 16, gives:“family,mæg , cynn, h red j family, 45 member of a,h wa”.
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1 2.Wedlock in the Middle Ages, and the Example of the Saintly 2 AbbotEugenia 3 4 It was different before the Great Warof1914–1918, when father went out 5 to work and provided for his wife at home looking after the children, and 6 making sure that grandparents and other dependants were warm and did not 7 go hungry.The aristocracy,the squirarchy too, lived in adifferent world, a 8 world which by alargely false sense of genealogical descent was affection- 9 ately traced back to earlier ages of knights in armour and perhaps even to the 10 heroes of Anglo-Saxon England, in whom their romantic descendants be- 11 lieved. The feelings of kith and kin in Anglo-Saxon England were not a 12 subject in Old English literature. The demands of the immediate family,of 13 father,mother,and children, are not anywhere at the centre of Anglo-Saxon 14 thought as far as we know it. That is perhaps aconsequence of the monastic 15 dominance in the transmitted literature of Anglo-Saxon England. 16 Unlike recent canonizations, the saints venerated in Anglo-Saxon Eng- 17 land were not much engaged in social work. Contemporary with Ancrene 18 Wisse,too late therefore even for the Legenda Aurea,StElizabeth of Hun- 19 gary is an almost unique medieval model of compassion with the poor.Other 20 than for her royal rank, her family is of little consequence in her saintliness. 21 Ælfric’shomilies on the lives of saints might seem agood place to look for 22 characterizations of saints. Of course in most of his writings he merely 23 follows his source.Inthese homilies we are not likely to find many accounts 24 of ‘family life’. The good bishop Helenus speaks to St Eugenia’sservants, her 25 familia as that Latin word is to be understood, but there is no sense of that in 26 Ælfric’saccount, and there is no mention of familia in the underlying words 27 of the Gospel:3 28 29 To hire twam cnihtum .hecwæ æt hi heoldan 30 æ elborennyss on mode . eah e hi mannum eowdon. 31 and cwæ æt hi Crist gespræce ysum godspellicum wordum: “Na hate ic eow na eowan .acgesynd mine freond.” 32 33 He said to her two servants that they should preserve their innate nobility of 34 mind though they served people;and he said that Christ spoke to them in these 35 gospel-words:“Icall you not servants, but you are my friends.” 36 37 3 Aelfric’sLives of Saints,ed. Walter W. Skeat, 2vols.,EETS o.s. 76, 82, 94, 114 38 (London, 1881–1900) I, 30, lines 84–7.The gospel-words are John 15:15, 39 Nouum Testamentum Domini Nostri Iesu Christi,ed. John Wordsworth, Henry 40 Julian White, et al.,3vols. (Oxford:Clarendon, 1889–1954), I, 612:“iam non 41 dico uos seruos j quiaseruus nescit quid facit dominus eius j uos autem dixi 42 amicos”, translated, The New Testament of Iesus Christ, Translated Faithfully 43 into English, out of the authentical Latin (Rhemes, 1582) 262:“Now Ical you 44 not seruants:for the seruant knoweth not what his lord doeth. But you Ihaue 45 called frendes.”
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1 Alittle later in the homily,Eugenia’scompassion with the poor shows 2 itself when she, dressed as aman and elected abbot, urges the rich widow 3 Melantia to distribute treasure to the poor and to beggars, yet that is not seen 4 in terms of kith and kin. As Melantia tries to seduce the handsome abbot 5 Eugenia, she uses the word gemæne (line 157) in connection with her rela- 6 tionship to her deceased husband. Skeat, if Iunderstand his translation 7 correctly,interprets that as the ‘communion’ of wife and husband, acom- 8 munion that might be regarded as that of an as yet childless family.There is 9 no sign that Ælfric so regarded it;and this interpretation is, Ithink, mis- 10 taken.4 The sense of the word is clear:ifitisanoun, it means ‘a sharing’; if it 11 is an adjective, it means ‘common’. The syntax of unc næs gemæne .man on 12 yssum lyfe is far from clear,less clear than Ælfric’ssyntax is usually.Dual 13 unc is in form accusative or dative, dative here;pronominal man is always 14 nominative, and the first half seems to mean ‘was not held in common by the 15 two of us’, or ‘was not common to (or shared by) the two of us’. In legal 16 terminology Blackstone’s communion of goods ‘joint ownership’ may be 17 involved, and that may be meant by Skeat’stranslation, ‘we two had no 18 communion’. Skeat’swords have been interpreted as if he had designed to 19 make ‘sexual intercourse’ acceptable to aVictorian readership of the lives of 20 saints, and Ælfric’swords (perhaps as glossed by Skeat) are interpreted by 21 Paul Szarmach as “evidently saying that she and her deceased husband have 22 had no intercourse”, where evidently means ‘inferentially’, not ‘evidential- 23 ly’.5 The four words that follow are vague in sense, and in syntax loosely 24 attached to what precedes:something like ‘as people in this life’.6 25 Melantia’smarital situation is described in the preceding lines. She had 26 been left substantial possessions, unlytle æhta,byher husband. While he was 27 alive she had no rights of possession, but was entirely under his authority: 28 they had nothing in common, no communion of goods. About ahundred 29 years after Ælfric composed the homily on Saint Eugenia, ahundred years of 30 momentous change, the Leges Henrici Primi give us some idea what prop- 31 erty rights awife and their children had then, and may have had in Anglo- 32 Saxon times (though of course they do not go back to the foreign world of the 33 34 4 35 The distinction between noun and adjective does not hold in Old English when 36 there is no distinction of form. Skeat interprets gemæne here as anounrather than an adjective, and that is apossible interpretation, though Ælfric seems not 37 to have used the word recognizably as anoun anywhere. His usual construction 38 is beon gemæne ‘to be common to, be held in common by’. 39 5 Paul E. Szarmach, “Ælfric’sWomen Saints:Eugenia”, New Readings on Women 40 in Old English Literature,ed. Helen Damico &AlexandraHennessey Olsen 41 (Bloomington/Indianapolis:Indiana UP,1990) 146–57, at 149. 42 6 Singular man is found with plural sense, allowing the rendering (impersonal) 43 ‘people’ for ‘one’. Apersonal pronoun, here unc,being taken up by impersonal 44 man is difficult to parallel, and the connection of the two halves of line 157 is 45 vague –Iuse ‘as’ without confidence.
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1 Romans under the emperor Commodus, AD 180–192, under whom Eu- 2 genia and her father lived):7 3 Likewise if aperson entrusts anything to, or exchanges it with, or hands it over 4 to, amarried woman or infant boy or infant girl without the permission of their 5 lord, it is not necessary for them or their lords, if they are resolved to deny 6 responsibility,tomake answer about these things while they are under authority. 7 8 It may be that Melantia, through her husband’sdeath no longer sub virga, 9 that is, no longer under his authority,was looking for anew man to wield the 10 rod over her,tohave authority over her,and Ælfric, far from commenting on 11 her marital sex life, says only that she wished to bestow on the lovely abbot 12 her worldly goods as well as her person. As awidow she enjoyed the rights of 13 ownership, in wedlock she had had no such rights;asawidow she was free 14 to give her person and her possessions in matrimony to whomsoever she 15 chose. The handsome abbot, innocent of course, tempted her to do just that. 16 She was in love with the abbot, and she may well have thought that the 17 prospect of enjoying her person and her goods might persuade the abbot 18 strongly.Itdid not. What may seem to amodern reader atale suitable for 19 farce or operetta defines, in amore pious reading, acoenobitic ideal un- 20 possessed of worldly riches. Ithink that is how Ælfric words the account. 21 The wedded life and vidual lusts of Melantia, leading to her behaviour at 22 St Eugenia’sabbey,are far removed from ‘family life’ as that is now un- 23 derstood. One thinks of the matron’swholesome words as whispered to her 24 neighbour and overheard in Queen Victoria’sreign during aquiet moment in 25 Act IV of aperformance of Anthony and Cleopatra:“How different, how 8 26 very differentfrom the home life of our own dear Queen!” Melantia’slife in 27 St Eugenia’s vita depicts no home life:family harmony –orrancour –isnot 28 for homilies on the lives of women saints. 29 30 31 32 33 34 7 35 Leges Henrici Primi,ed. L.J. Downer (1972;Oxford:Sandpiper Book, 1996) 36 154–5,c.45,3: Item si quis sponse uel puerouel puelle sine permissu domini sui quamcumque commendationem uel aliquam commutationemuel traditionem 37 fecerit, non opus est eos uel eorum dominos responderesuper hiis si complaceat 38 abnegarequamdiu sub uirga sunt. Iquote the editor’s translation. 39 8 For details of what appears to have been an excessive production, with Sarah 40 Bernhardt as Cleopatra violent in Act IV,see The OxfordDictionary of Quo- 41 tations,introd. Bernard Darwin, 2nd rev.ed. (London:Oxford UP,1954) 7, 42 quot. 2, which claims it is from Irvin S. Cobb, ALaugh aDay,but it is not in A 43 Laugh aDay Keeps the Doctor Away (London:Hodder &Stoughton, 1923), 44 and later editions of the OxfordDictionary of Quotations leave out the reference 45 to Cobb.
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1 3.The Anglo-Saxon Domestic Community; hiw and hired 2 3 How far is our idea of family relations to be understood as the Anglo- 4 Saxons’ idea of home life?Felix Liebermann’s Rechts- und Sachglossar is a 5 good place in which to search for Anglo-Saxon institutions, legal, political, 6 ecclesiastical, or social;but under the headword Familie the Glossar is un- 7 characteristically evasive.9 That headword is followed by adefinition of 8 what afamily is: h usliche Gemeinschaft,‘domestic community’. That 9 coincides with Dr Johnson’sspare definition of his first sense of the word 10 family:‘Those who live in the same house;household’, and that accords 11 with the central sense of Latin familia,which Lewis and Short express as, 12 ‘With the idea of house predominating’.10 Henry Bradley,editing this 13 part of what is now The OxfordEnglish Dictionary,begins his entry Family 14 with obsolete meanings of the word, before he gets to the two senses which 15 might be thought centrally relevant to 1894, when F–Fang was published:11 16 17 2. The bodyofpersons who live in one house or under one head, including 18 parents, children, servants, etc. … 19 20 3. The group of persons consisting of the parents and their children, whether 21 actually living together or not;inwider sense, the unity formed by those who are 22 nearly connected by blood or affinity. 23 By affinity Bradley meant arelationship by marriage, regardless of any 24 concomitant liking or disliking of the family members for each other.Lie- 25 bermann, after his two-word definition of Familie,bids the reader to look up 26 the following entries in vol. II/1, Wçrterbuch (1906): (1) hiwan,(2) hiwen, 27 (3) hiwisc,(4) hiered,words the meanings of which are summed up in Clark 28 Hall’sdictionary as (1) ‘members of afamily,household or religious house’, 29 (2) ‘household’, (3) ‘household’, (4) s.v. hired ‘household, family,retinue, 30 brotherhood, company’.12 31 32 33 9 Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen,ed. Felix Liebermann, 3vols. (1898–1916; 34 Aalen:Scientia, 1960) II/2 Rechts- und Sachglossar,397, col. 3. 10 35 ADictionary of the English Language,ed. Samuel Johnson (London, 1755), s.v. 36 family.ALatin Dictionary,ed. Charlton T. Lewis &Charles Short (Oxford: Clarendon, 1879) s.v. familia,II.,A. 37 11 ANew English Dictionary on Historical Principles,ed. J.A.H. Murray,Henry 38 Bradley,W.A. Craigie, &C.T.Onions, 10 vols. (Oxford:Clarendon, 1884– 39 1928), Bradley’s F–Fang (1894) was also published as the first part, F–Field,of 40 his vol. IV, F and G (1901). For some details of the complexities of publication 41 see Dispatches from the Front:The Prefaces to the OxfordEnglish Dictionary, 42 ed. Darrell R. Raymond,(Waterloo, Ontario:Uof Waterloo, 1987). 43 12 AConcise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary,4th ed.,ed. J.R. Clark Hall, with asup- 44 plement by Herbert D. Meritt (1960;Toronto, etc.:Uof Toronto Pfor the 45 Medieval Academy of America, 1984).
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1 Alegal use of inhiwan,inthe Laws of Ine 50, clearly refers to the servants, 2 free and unfree, of aperson of rank, and these are not seen as his family 3 members as that term is now understood, not even necessarily members of 4 the staff living in the same house as the head of the family:13 5 Gif gesi cund mon inga wi cyning o e wi kyninges ealdormonnan for his 6 inhiwan o e wi his hlaford for eowe o e for frige, nah he ær nane wite- 7 rædenne, se gesi , for on he him nolde ær yfles gestieran æt ham. 8 9 If aman of the rank of gesith intercedes with the king, or with the king’seal- 10 dorman, or with his lord, on behalf of members of his household, slaves or free, 11 he –the gesith –has no right to any fines, because he had not previously sought to 12 restrain them from wrongdoing at home. 13 14 In the manuscript innhiwum is written in two words, as is its doublet inn 15 higum in the will of Badanoth Beotting, two uses that show that such terms 16 may refer to either those dwelling on asecular estate or members of a 14 17 religious community: 18 & onne ofer hiora dei wifes &cilda, ic bebeode on Godes noman æt mon 19 agefe æt lond innhigum to heora beode him to brucanne on ece ærfe swæ him 20 liofast sie. 21 22 And then after their day,of(my) wife and children, Ienjoin in the name of God 23 that that land be given to the members of the monastic house for them to enjoy 24 (its yield) at their common table in perpetual possession as it may best please 25 them. 26 The Anglo-Saxons’ understanding of compounds and derivatives of hiw 27 allowed them to use them without distinction of ‘membersofahouse’ sec- 28 ular or religious, servants, slaves, or monastics. Asense of ‘family’ as that 29 word is now understood was not part of their understanding. The etymology 30 of hiw and related words is no help:the words are polysemous in Old 31 English, and cognates in closely or distantly related Indo-European lan- 32 guages point in too many divergent directions to be of use in determining any 33 34 35 13 36 Liebermann 1898–1916, I, 110–13;III, 77 (annotations on Ine 50). The Textus Roffensis reading is for his innhiwum (dative plural), not (accusative plural) for 37 his inhiwan (CorpusChristi College MS 173, which Iquote). In my translation I 38 have made use of Dorothy Whitelock’stranslation, English Historical Docu- 39 ments,I,c.500–1042, 2nd ed. (London:Eyre Methuen, 1979) 404. 40 14 Textus Roffensis,ed. Peter Sawyer,2vols.,Early English Manuscripts in Fac- 41 simile VII, XI (Copenhagen:Rosenkilde &Bagger,1957, 1962) I, fol. 29ro lines 42 17–18, in fact inn hi [new line] wu¯ (with wynn, not
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1 underlying central meaning.15 It may be askewed procedure to search for 2 Old English meanings in the laws and legal documents of the Anglo-Saxons: 3 legal terminology may differ from non-legal usage. The writings of Wulf- 4 stan, however,manifest no such semantic distinctions;his legal style differs 5 little from his non-legal style. One might therefore begin with Wulfstan, but, 6 disappointingly,hedoes not make much use of these words. In Institutes of 7 Polity Wulfstan lays down that abishop is to promote and supervise useful 8 manual work in his household (hired), so that no one remains idle;and 9 further,itisfitting for bishops to ensure, wherever they may be, that in their 10 households wise teaching prevails, for every folly is to be regarded as un- 11 worthy of bishops and their establishments.16 Abishop’s hired is not the kind 12 of family where father is the head, and wife, children, and servants are 13 directed by him to busy themselves usefully,and avoid idleness and silliness: 14 it is agreat house over which presides awise bishop, celibate by rule. The 15 only other occurrence in Wulfstan of any of the words to which Liebermann 16 directs his readers is asingle use of hired in ahomily,inwhich Iacobes hired 17 & eal Israhela cyn renders domus Iacob et omnes cognationes domus Israhel 18 of Jeremiah 2:4.17 This biblical use, with ‘the house of Jacob’ in parallel with 19 ‘all the tribe of Israel’, is again not of afamily consisting of parents, their 20 children, and others closely connected by blood or affinity (and in former 21 times including the servants of the house). Wulfstan has no word for ‘family’ 22 in that sense;the concept is not in his language:his two renderings of domus, 23 both hired and cyn, well represent some of the semantic range of domus. 24 Ælfric provides aricher store of words that might be rendered ‘family’ in 25 Modern English, even when the underlying concept was not in Anglo-Saxon 26 England what family is today;that is, even if there were aword in Old 27 28 15 Cf. Indogermanisches etymologisches Wçrterbuch,ed. Julius7 Pokorny,2vols. 29 (Bern/M nchen:Francke, 1947–1969) I, 539–40, s.v. kei-,though it is ques- 30 tionable if every word listed is to be derived from this one single root. See 31 Andreas Fischer, Engagement, Wedding and Marriage in Old English,Anglis- 32 tische Forschungen 176 (Heidelberg:Winter,1986) 79–84. 33 16 Die “Institutes of Polity,Civil and Ecclesiastical”,ed. Karl Jost, Swiss Studies in 34 English 47 (Bern:Francke, 1959) 76 (II. Polity,80), 213 (Bodleian MS Junius ro 35 121, fol. 16 ,7). 17 36 In searching for words in Old English writings Ihave of course made use of A Microfiche Concordance to Old English,ed. Richard L. Venezky &Antonette 37 diPaolo Healey (Newark, Delaware:Uof Delaware, 1980);inthe Concordance 38 Old English spellings are not standardized, and Ihope Ihave not overlooked any 39 relevant spellings. The Homilies of Wulfstan,ed. Dorothy Bethurum (1957; 40 Oxford:Sandpiper Books, 1998) 219, lines 203–5;cf. Biblia Sacra iuxta 41 Latinam Vulgatam Versionem,18vols. (Rome:Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 42 1926–1995) XIV,54, Hieremias 2:4; translated literally The Holy Bible 43 Faithfully Translated into English, out of the Authentical Latin,2vols. (Doway, 44 1609, 1610) II, 549, Ieremie 2:4: “Heare ye the word of our Lord house of 45 Iacob, and al ye kinredes of the house of Israel.”
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1 English conveniently rendered by ‘family’ in Modern English it would not be 2 equipollent with Modern English family. In Ælfric there are many occur- 3 rences of the words to which we are directed by Liebermann. Irestrict my 4 selection to contexts involving parents and children (and perhaps servants), 5 or ahouse in which there are parentsand children (and perhaps servants), 6 not ‘household’, not ‘court’, not ‘dynasty’. Family membership is outside the 7 hired in the homily on St Apollinaris, lines 119–27:18 8 a blissodon a Cristenan on Cristes herunge . 9 and æt mæden wear gefullod ond hire modor samod . 10 and eall heora hired samod .sume reo hund manna . 11 and fela æra hæ enra fengon to geleafan . 12 Se fæder swa eah Rufus .for æs caseres re nysse . 13 ne dorste geopenian æt he on Drihten gelyfde . 14 ac he digellice lufode one geleaffullan bisceop . 15 and mid wistum him enode .and his dohtor wear gehadod 16 to Godes eowdome .and urhwunode mæden. 17 18 Then the Christians rejoiced in praising Christ, and the maiden was baptized, 19 and her mother too, and all their household too, some three hundred people, and 20 many of the pagans accepted the Faith. Her father Rufus, however,because of 21 the emperor’s severity,did not dare to disclose that he believed in the Lord, but in secret he loved the faithful bishop (Apollinaris), and served him with food, and 22 his daughter was consecrated to the service of God, and remained avirgin. 23 24 25 4.The ‘hide’, aVariable Land Measure, Sufficient to Sustain a hired, 26 a familia,ofVariable Size. 27 28 In the minds of many of those who write about Anglo-Saxon land measures 29 the notion of ‘family’ seems to me to be too close to their understanding of 30 hi(gi)d,‘hide’ (cf. the meaning of German Hufe). No doubt, they are in- 31 fluenced by Anglo-Latin usage, especially Bede’suse of the word familia; 32 two examples suffice (iv.16):19 Est autem mensura eiusdem insulae iuxta 33 34 18 35 Skeat 1881–1900, I, 478–80. The use of hyred,atline 59, is similar in thatthe 36 word explicitly describes members of the household other than family (476, lines 58–9): the Ravenna nobleman is being baptized mid his wife and cildum j 37 and eall his hyred. 38 19 Bede uses the word in the genitive (governed by anumber) no fewer than 39 seventeen times in Historia Ecclesiastica; AConcordance to the Historia Ec- 40 clesiastica of Bede,ed. Putnam Fennell Jones, Medieval Academy of America 41 Publication 2(Cambridge, MA:The Concordance Society,1929) 201. Bede’s 42 Ecclesiastical History of the English People,ed. Bertram Colgrave &R.A.B. 43 Mynors (Oxford:ClarendonP,1969) 382 (iv.16), 406 (iv.23);translated by 44 Thomas Stapleton, The History of the Church of Englande CompiledbyVen- 45 erable Bede Englishman (Antwerp:1565), quoted from the edition (slightly
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1 aestimationem Anglorum mille ducentarum familiarum;unde data est 2 episcopo possessio terrae trecentarum familiarum;and (iv.23) accepit 3 locum unius familiae ad septentrionalem plagam Uiuri fluminis, ubi aeque 4 anno uno monachicam cum perpaucis sociis uitam agebat. Stapleton at- 5 tractively translates familia as ‘tenementes’ (i.e. ‘holdings’) in the plural, and 6 as ‘Lordeship’ (iv.16): “The sayd Iland conteyned, as the English doo rate it, 7 m.cc. tenementes. Whereof was given to the byshop the possession of the 8 land of ccc. tenementes”; and (iv.23) “she had delivered her the landes of 9 one Lordeship at the north coast of the river Were, in which she lived also the 10 space of one yeare, and lead amonasticall lyfe with afewe other of her 11 companie.” The Old English translation is fairly literal for these two uses 12 (iv.16): Is æt ilcan ealondes gemet æfter Ongolcynnes eahte twelf hund 13 hida. & he a am biscope gesealde in æht reo hund hida & ær eahta to; 14 and (iv.23): a onfeng heo anes heowscipes stowe to nor dæle Wiire ære 15 ea, & ær efenlice an ger munuclif dyde mid feawum hiregeferum (‘That 16 same island measures twelve hundred hides according to the reckoning of 17 the English people. And he gave into the bishop’spossession three hundred 18 hides and possessions in addition’; and ‘then she received alocation to the 19 north of the river Wear for one household, and there she pursued in like 20 manner monastic life for one year with afew of her companions’). 21 What size is ahousehold –ahired?InChrist and Satan,the fallen Lucifer 22 and his crew think of establishing their court, hired,inheaven, yet God 23 maintained his court in heaven by right:20 24 Godes andsacan 25 hweorfan geond helle, hate onæled 26 ufan and utan him wæs æghwær wa. 27 Witum werige, wuldres bescyrede, 28 dreamum bedælde heofon deop gehygd, 29 a heo on heofonum ham sta elodon, 30 æt hie woldon benæman nergendne Crist 31 roderes rices, ah he on riht geheold 32 hired heofona and æt halige seld. 33 34 God’sadversaries wandered throughout hell, hotly scorched from above and 35 below they experiencedmisery from all sides. Worn down by torments, deprived 36 of glory,bereft of joys they wailed the grievous thought that, when they had their established home in heaven, they would take away from Christ the Saviour the 37 38 39 40 modernized in spelling) for the Shakespeare Head P(Oxford:Blackwell, 1930) 41 297, 318; The Old English Version of Bede’sEcclesiastical History of The 42 English People,ed. Thomas Miller,2vols.,EETS o.s. 95, 96 (London, 1890, 43 1891) II, 306 lines 28–30, 332 lines 20–2. 44 20 The Junius Manuscript,ed. George Philip Krapp, The Anglo-Saxon Poetic 45 Records I(New York:Columbia UP,1931) 146, lines 339b–47.
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1 kingdom of heaven:but he maintained by right the court of heaven and that 2 sacred palace. 3 4 5 5.The HolyFamily; RoyalCourts;Christ and the Apostles 6 Seen as aUnit 7 8 For hired no grander context than hired heofona and æt halige seld was 9 imaginable in Anglo-Saxon England. In the visual arts, the Holy Family, la 10 Sacra Famiglia,with St Anne and St John, does not appear much in the early 11 Middle Ages, and in time the number of those participating in the scene 12 grows into representations of Virgin and Child and all their kindred, with St 13 Anne prominent – die heilige Sippe. All this is, however,long after the Anglo- 14 Saxons, and this paper is not concerned with the Old English words sibb and 15 cynn. 16 Aroyal prince’scourt was designated by the word hired in late Anglo- 17 Saxon England;thus in the Chronicle annal for 1041:21 18 & æs geres sona com Eadward his bro or on medren fram begeondan sæ, 19 Æ elrædes sunu cinges, e wæs ær for fela gearon of his earde adrifen, & eh 20 wæs to cinge gesworen, &hewunode a swa on his bro or hirede a hwile e he 21 leofode. 22 23 And soon in that year Edward, his brother on the mother’s side, came from 24 beyond the sea, King Æthelred’sson, who had been driven from his homeland 25 many years previously,and nonetheless was sworn in as king, and in that way he 26 dwelt at his brother’scourt as long as he lived. 27 28 Aroyal household with the king’sretinue is a hired;thus in MS Corpus 29 Christi College Cambridge 188 of the First Series of Ælfric’sCatholic 22 30 Homilies: Ne mæg nan eor lic cyning cynelic lybban, buton he hæbbe 31 egenas & swa gelogodne hired swa his cynescipe gerisan mæge (‘No earthly 32 king can live (as) royal, unless he has retainers and ahousehold so filled with 33 occupants as may be fitting for his royal rank’). 34 In the account of St Petronilla Ælfric refers to the holy company of the 23 35 apostles as Cristes hired (line 203), and afew lines later as his halgan hired: 36 On anginne middaneardes .cwæ se ælmihtiga God . 37 ‘Beo gemenigfylde .and gefylla as eor an’ . 38 and Crist wolde on his tocyme clænnysse aræran . 39 and his halgan hired .heold on clænnysse. 40 41 21 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,vol. 5, MS. C [CottonTiberius B. i],ed. Katherine 42 O’Brien O’Keeffe (Cambridge:Brewer,2001) 107. 43 22 Ælfric’sCatholic Homilies. The First Series,ed. Peter Clemoes, EETS s.s. 17 44 (London, 1997) 533, addition to Homily VIII, after line 165. 45 23 Skeat 1881 –1900, I, 232, Homily X, lines 211–14.
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1 In the beginningofthe world Almighty God said, “Multiply,and fill this earth”; 2 and Christ wished at his Advent chastity to be established, and his holy 3 household kept itself in chastity. 4 The court as aroyal institution is not designated a hired till after the 5 Conquest, thus at the end of the annal for 1075 (recte 1074):24 & se kyngc 6 Wyllelm mid micclan weor scype a hine underfencg, & he wæs ær a on 7 his hirede & toc swilce gerihta swa he him gelagade (‘and King William 8 received him with great honour then, and he was there then at his court and 9 took such dues as he established for him by law’). 10 In the Old English writings that have come down to us, in the charters 11 especially of the later Anglo-Saxon period (early charters, exemplified 12 below,more often have dative plural higum, hiwum, heowum), hired very 13 frequently refers to an ecclesiastical community,not to asecular household; 14 thus agrant of land to Christ Church, Canterbury,inacharter attributed to 15 1036:25 Ic ored geann æt land æt Horslege am hirede æt Cristes cyrcean 16 for mine sawle swa full & swa for swa ic sylf hit ahte (‘I, Thored, grant the 17 estate at Horsley to the community at Christ Church for the sake of my soul 18 as fully and completely as Iowned it myself’). 19 Though this ecclesiastical usage is very common, the Anglo-Saxons cer- 20 tainly used hired for secular households too. Job’shousehold, in his pros- 21 perity,isdescribed thus by Ælfric:26 Him wæron acennede seofon suna and 22 reo dohtra. He hæfde seofon usend sceapa and reo usend olfenda, fif 23 hund getymu oxena and fif hund assan and ormæte micelne hired (‘Seven 24 sons and three daughters were born to him. He owned seven thousand sheep 25 and three thousand camels, five hundred teams of oxen and five hundred 26 donkeys and an immensely great household’). This is aliteral translation of 27 the Bible, and ormæte micelne hired renders ac familia multa nimis.27 What 28 is clear is that familia is Ælfric’s hired,but not family in the restricted 29 Modern English sense.28 Ælfric’streatment of the Bible is less literal in the 30 31 32 33 24 34 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, vol. 6, MS D [Cotton Tiberius B. iv],ed. Geoffrey 35 P. Cubbin, (Cambridge:Brewer,1996) 86. The sentence shows Scandinavian 36 linguistic influence, toc and gelagade. 25 Anglo-Saxon Charters,ed. and transl. A.J. Robertson (Cambridge:Cambridge 37 UP,1939) 172, charter 88. 38 26 Ælfric’sCatholic Homilies. The Second Series,ed. Malcolm Godden, EETS s.s. 39 5(London, 1979) 260, Homiliy XXX, lines 9–12. 40 27 Biblia Sacra,IX(1951) 95, Liber Iob, 1:3. 41 28 The wording and afamilie exceding great in the Doway version (The Holie 42 Bible,I[1609],1061) is unidiomatic, for that version tends to use, even if 43 unidiomatic, English words closely related to the Latin of the Vulgate. The 44 Authorized Version, based on the Hebrew text, has “and avery great house- 45 hold,” and for household it has the marginal gloss, Or,husbandrie.
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1 following sentence from his Sermo Excerptus de LibroRerum,inwhich 2 hired is used with aprophetic reference to the dynasty or progeny of the 3 unrighteous king Ahab (nothing in the Vulgate corresponds to the first half 4 of the following sentence):29 ic adilegie inne hired and fordo inne ofspring 5 (‘I shall destroy thy progeny and extirpate thy ofspring’). 6 The glossed biblical books of the Anglo-Saxons sometimes provide evi- 7 dence not otherwise so clearly available, though that evidence may not 8 reveal Old English idiom so much as an Anglo-Saxon’swish for literalness in 9 giving an Old English equivalent of aLatin word. The Northumbrian 10 Gospels several times use hiorod to gloss familia in pater familias;thus at 11 Luke 13:25 it is glossed by Aldred in the Lindisfarne Gospels as se faeder 12 hiuuisc łhiorodes fæder łhigna fæder,and the Rushworth Gospels have 13 fæder hiorodes łhigna,perhaps dependent on Aldred’striple gloss;the West 14 Saxon Gospels (MS Corpus Christi College Cambridge 140) have se hiredes 15 ealdor ‘the lord of the household’.30 Probably Aldred’s faeder hiuuisc stands 16 for *hiuuisc-faeder,acompound, but the elements are in the order of the 17 Latin as he glosses pater familias element by element. The triple gloss may be 18 considered with Ælfric’sglossary entry, familia:hiwræden o e hired.31 19 Aldred and Ælfric, trebly and doubly,show the modernreader how an 20 Anglo-Saxon might have understood Latin familia,possibly revealing some 21 insecurity,and at the same time guiding us, correctly on this occasion, into 22 etymological relationships perhaps attended by subtle semantic distinctions 23 which we no longer understand fully.32 The idiom pater familias is differ- 24 ently rendered in the Old English Bede:33 a he a cwom to æm men e he 25 secan wolde a gemette he ær fæmnan, wæs nift æs higna aldres e he 26 27 29 Skeat 1881–1900, I, 396, Homily XVIII, line 211. Cf. Biblia Sacra,VI(1945) 28 199, Liber Malachim (III Regum 21:21), et demetam posteriora tua. 29 30 The Gospel accordingtoSaint Luke,ed. Walter W. Skeat (Cambridge:Cam- 30 bridge UP,1874) 142–3. 31 31 Ælfrics Grammatik und Glossar,ed. Julius Zupitza, Sammlung englischer 32 Denkm ler in kritischen Ausgaben, I(1880;1966;3rd ed. with anew intro- 33 duction by H. Gneuss, Hildesheim:Weidmann,2001) 300, line 3. The late 34 twelfth- or early thirteenth-century glossary in MS Bodley 730, transcribed by 35 Brian Merrilees and members of the staff of the Dictionary of Old English,and 36 included in the Microfiche Concordance,has the entry (412): familia glossed hywredden łhirt,and that is presumably the same entry.Cf. N.R. Ker, Cata- 37 logue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford:Clarendon, 1957) 38 379–80, no. 317. 39 32 The
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1 sohte, wæs mid longrea le legeres swi e gehefigad (‘When he came to the 2 person whom he wished to visit he found there a(young) woman, the niece 3 of the head of the members of the household whom he was visiting, who had 4 been burdened grievously with achronic paralytic disease’). The Old English 5 renders Bede’sLatin, Quo dum adueniret, inuenit puellam ibi neptem patris 6 familias longo paralysis morbo grauatam. Stapleton translates that, “Here 7 he found adamsell neece to the good man of the house of along time 8 deseased with agrevous palsey.” 9 10 11 6.OEhired (< *hiwræd), hiwræd(d)en 12 13 The Old English suffixes -ræd and -ræden form abstracts.34 Again, whether 14 there are shades of meaning is beyond our understanding. Both hiw- 15 ræd(d)en(ne) and hired (< *hiwræd)are not uncommon;atLuke 19:9 16 hiwræddene (in the dative) renders domus (domui)inthe West Saxon 17 Gospels in the sense of ‘family,tribe’, not ‘house’, i.e. the building (for which 18 the Northumbrian Gospels have huse):35 a cwæ se Hælend to him todæg 19 isse hiwræddene ys hæl geworden for am he wæs Habrahames bearn; 20 rendering the Vulgate, ait Iesus ad eum j quia hodie salus domui huic facta 21 est j eo quod et ipse filius sit Abrahae. That ‘house’ means ‘those who dwell 22 in ahouse’ may be clear,but, coming immediately after ‘house’ used in the 23 sense of the building, the change from hus to hiwræddene in the West Saxon 24 Gospels (Luke 10:5) is significant in Christ’ssending forth his disciples into 25 the world: On swa hwylc hus swa ge inga cwe a æryst, “Sib si isse 26 hiwræddenne!” rendering the Vulgate, In quamcumque domum intraueritis 27 j primum dicite, “Pax huic domui”.36 Biblical uses of house, as, for example, 28 in the house of Israel,may suggest that the greeting, Sib si isse hiwræd- 29 denne!,shall bless not only the present members of the household, it blesses 30 31 generations yet to come, the tribe, the progeny.Glossary entries are often 32 difficult to assess. Whether familia is really synonymous with familiaritas in 33 34 34 Cf. Charles T. Carr, Nominal Compounds in Germanic,StAndrews University 35 Publications 41 (London:Oxford UP,1939) 106, no. 14;Friedrich Kluge, 36 Nominale Stammbildungslehreder altgermanischen Dialekte,3rd ed. revised by Ludwig S tterlin &Ernst Ochs (Halle:Niemeyer,1926) §§ 149b, 162. The 37 form ræd is of course frequent as the second element of personal names, where it 38 is presumably to be understood as the noun, not as asuffix. 39 35 Skeat 1874, 182–3,with several spelling variants. For the Vulgate cf. Words- 40 worth &White. 1889–1954, I, 438. The Rhemes New Testament,193, has 41 “IESVS said to him, That this day saluation is made to this house:because that he 42 also is the sonne of Abraham”. 43 36 Skeat 1874, 106;Wordsworth &White 1889–1954, I, 376–7.The Rhemes 44 New Testament,166, “Into whatsoeuer house you enter,first say,Peace to this 45 house”.
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1 Medieval Latin is unlikely,but cneoris ‘generation, tribe, posterity’ is close 2 to some denotations or connotations of hiwræden:tothat extent the entry in 3 the Harley Glossary makes sense:37 Familia .hiwræden .łfamiliaritas . 4 cneoris. 5 The word hiwræden occurs only once in Byrhtferth, translated ‘house- 6 hold’ by Crawford, ‘family’ by Baker and Lapidge, in adifficult context in 7 which the word refers to the inhabitants of ahouse, ahousehold in that 8 sense, and afamily only if that is understood to include all who are of the 9 household including servants, not only father,mother,children, and other 10 relations, that is, not ‘family’ as now usually understood:38 On am teo an 11 dæge issan mon es nime æghwylc hiwræden of ælcum huse an lamb, and 12 gif ær beon læs manna onne æt lamb mæge fretan, onne nyme he his 13 neahgebur, ehim gehendost sy, æt he mæge æt lamb clænlice fretan (‘On 14 the tenth day of this month let each one, the householder from each house, 15 take alamb, and if there are fewer people than can eat up the lamb, then let 16 him take his neighbour,who is nearest to him, so that he can eat up the lamb 17 entirely’). The word hiwræden,however,nowhere else in Old English means 18 ‘head of the household, householder’. The Commentary to the 1995 edition 19 (315) compares Byrhtferth’swording with that of the Hexateuch Exodus 20 12:3–5 in connection with the authorship of anonymous parts of the 21 Hexateuch.39 The crucially different wording for establishing the meaning of 22 hiwræden is in the Hexateuch, nime ælc man an lamb to his hywrædene ‘let 23 each one take alamb to his household’. The use of the third person singular 24 pronouns in Byrhtferth’swording, he ‘the householder’and his neahgebur 25 ‘his neighbour’have no noun to which they refer back. My translation, ‘each 26 one, the householder’, tries to make sense of the sentence;but the syntax is 27 unlikely and hiwræden means ‘household’ (not ‘householder’, as in my 28 translation). Byrhtferth, we are told (1995 edition, p. lxxviii), “here … 29 shows no interference from Old Latin readings”, but he used the Vulgate, 30 which reads vocavit autem Moses omnes seniores filiorum Israhel et dixit ad 31 eos j ite tollentes animal per familias vestras immolate Phase,unidiomati- 32 cally translated in the Doway Version as “And Moyses called al the Ancients 33 of the children of Is[r]ael, and said to them:Goe take alambe by your 34 families, and sacrifice the Phase.”40 35 36 37 The Harley Latin–Old English Glossary,ed. Robert T. Oliphant (The Hague/ 37 Paris:Mouton, 1966) 177, gloss F140. 38 38 Byrhtferth’sManual,ed. S.J. Crawford, EETS o.s. 177 (London, 1929) 134–5; 39 Byrhtferth’sEnchiridion,ed. Peter S. Baker &Michael Lapidge, EETS s.s. 15 40 (Oxford, 1995) 122–3,lines 7–10ofthe text. (Crawfordreads hys neahgebfflr.) 41 39 The Old English Version of The Heptateuch,ed. S. J. Crawford,EETS o.s. 160 42 (London, 1922) 243. 43 40 Biblia Sacra,II(1929), Libri Exodi et Levitici, 138, Exodus 12:21. Holie Bible 44 (1609), 185–6;Israel misprinted Isael. As has been pointed out, and the 1995 45 Commentary makes clear,the underlying version of the Heptateuch is not the
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1 7.Other Old English Words Based on the Element hiw -, and the 2 Phrase on hiwe. 3 4 Words derived from hiw- include words based on the notion of relationship, 5 thus hiwan and higan (often in the dative plural), hiwisc,and hiwscipe,as 6 well as hiwung when it relates to marriage. Examples of hiwan ‘community’ 7 occur in the early charters, thus in two charters referring to the same com- 8 munity:41 1. Ealhfer Bisceop & a higan on Wintaceastrehabba gelæne 9 hiora leofan friond VIII hida landes on EASTVNE riora manna deg, et is 10 CU RED dux & Wulfri e his wife & anan man erto suil him liofost sio him to 11 hæbbenne & to brucenne (‘Bishop Ealhferth and the community at Win- 12 chester have leased eight hides of land at Easton to their beloved friend for 13 the lifetime of three people, namely,toEarl Cuthred and to his wife Wulf- 14 thryth and in addition to one person such as is most agreeable to (Cuthred), 15 (for them) to hold and enjoy’). 2. Denewulf bisceop & a hiwan in Win- 16 tanceastreleton to Bearnulfa hiora landes XV hida æt Eblesburnan wi am 17 gafole e he wi bisceop & wi hiwan ared (‘Bishop Denewulf and the 18 community at Winchester leased to Beornulf fifteen hides of their land at 19 Ebbesbourne at the rent which he agreed with the bishop and with the 20 community’). There are afew verse occurrences, for example, in Genesis 21 A:42 22 Gewat him a mid bride bro or Arones 23 under Abimelech æhte lædan, 24 mid his hiwum. 25 26 Then the brother of Haran (i.e.,Abraham) went with his wife to bring under 27 Abimelech’scontrol his possessions, with members of his household. 28 29 30 31 Vulgate but the Old Latin;see Bibliorum Sacrorum Latinæ Versiones Antiquæ, 32 seu Vetus Italica,ed. Pierre Sabatier,3vols. (Reims, 1743) I, 156, Exodus 33 12:3–4,Loquereadomnem synagogam filiorum Isra l, dicens:Decim mensis 34 hujus sumat unusquisque ovem per domos familiarum, ovem per singulas 35 domos. Qu d si pauci erunt in domo, ita ut non sufficiant ad ovem, assumet 36 secum vicinum proximum suum, secund m numerum animarum, unusquisque, quod sufficiat sibi, computabit in agno. 37 41 1. Anglo-Saxon Charters,26, beginning of Robertson’s charter XIV.The 38 transaction took place in AD 871 877,but the charter is preserved in the 39 Codex Wintoniensis of the twelfth century.2.Select English Historical Docu- 40 ments of the Ninth and Tenth Centuries,ed. Florence E. Harmer (Cambridge: 41 Cambridge UP,1914) 29, beginning of her charter XVII. The transaction took 42 place in 902, but the charter is also preserved in the Codex Wintoniensis. 43 42 The Junius Manuscript,78, Genesis lines 2621–2623a. The edition by A.N. 44 Doane, Genesis A:ANew Edition (Madison:Uof Wisconsin P, 1978), has been 45 consulted for the quotations from this poem.
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1 Forms of the genitive plural occur with
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1 Old English genitive, arelationship that has no exact parallel in Modern 2 English syntax, so that in translating such Old English genitive constructions 3 amore exact relationship of the two nouns is required in Modern English.47 4 ‘A household of land’ makes little sense in Modern English, ‘a hide of land’ is 5 readily understood;but that does not mean, by some false syllogism, that a 6 household is ahide, even though hiwisc landes occurs in acontext closely 7 related to the legal context of hid landes. The understanding of the idiom is 8 bedevilled by the not unlikely etymology and recorded use of hi(gi)d as an 9 area of land sufficient to feed one familia.48 Ause in the Old English Bede 10 illustrates both the Old English phrase and the underlying terra familia- 11 rum:49 12 13 &for on e he hine Wilfri rihtgefremedne &wisne onfunde&gemette geaf he 14 him sona &sealde tyn hiwisca landes on ære stowe e cweden is Stanford, & 15 æfter medmiclum fæce sealde him mynster ritiges hiwisca on stowe seo is 16 gecyged in-Hripum. 17 And because he perceived and found Wilfrid to be sound and wise he gave and 18 bestowed on him at once ten household-units of land in the place that is called 19 Stamford, and after anot very long period he bestowed on him amonastery of 20 thirty household-units in the place that is called Ripon. 21 22 Bede’sLatin reads: Vnde et illi, quia catholicum eum esse conperiit, mox 23 donauit terram xfamiliarum in loco qui dicitur Stanford, et non multo post 24 monasterium xxx familiarum in loco qui uocatur in-Hrypum. Stapleton 25 translates that using Catholique in line with what appears to accord with his 26 27 47 Cf. Bruce Mitchell, Old English Syntax,2vols. (Oxford:Clarendon, 1985) 28 §§ 1288–95. 29 48 For an excellent account of the problems involved in attempting to establish 30 measurements for ahide, as well as providing asound etymology and mor- 31 phology for the word, see Klaus Grinda, “Die Hide und verwandte Landmaße 32 im Altenglischen”, Untersuchungen zur eisenzeitlichen und fr hmittelalterli- 33 chen Flur in Mitteleuropa und ihrer Nutzung,ed. Heinrich Beck et al.,2vols. 34 Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Gçttingen, Philologisch- 35 Historische Klasse 3, 115, 116(1979, 1980) I, 92–133. Grinda characterizes 36 the compounds based on Germanic *hı¯w as “Haushalt, Dienerschaft, Familie”, but he does not say in what sense Familie is to be understood. For asummary of 37 the scholarship and further literature, cf. D. H germann and U. Weidinger,in 38 Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde,2nd ed. rev.and enlarged 39 Heinrich Beck et al.,35vols. (Berlin/New York:deGruyter,1968–2007) XV 40 (2000), 186–92, s.v. Hufe. 41 49 Miller 1890 –1891, I/2, 456;Colgrave &Mynors 1969, 520;Stapleton 1565, 42 repr.1930, 414.Bede’sStanford has not been identified with certainty:Stam- 43 ford in Lincolnshire has been thought not unlikely;cf. The Cambridge Dic- 44 tionary of English Place-Names,ed. Victor Watts (Cambridge:Cambridge UP, 45 2004) 568.
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1 recusancy,“And for that he perceaved this Wilfride to be Catholique, he 2 gave him streytwayes aLordshippe, of x. tenements in Stanford:&within a 3 while after amonastery with xxx. tenements in Rhippon.” It may well be 4 thought that my translation ‘household-unit’ for hiwisc is clumsy,which 5 ‘hide’ is certainly not;Ihave chosen that clumsy term because Ibelieve it to 6 render familia well, and to correspond to Stapleton’s tenement,that is, 7 ‘holding’. 8 The derivative hiwscipe occurs less frequently than hiwisc. The ending 9 -scipe forms abstracts, sometimes collectives, as -ship still does. It is likely 10 that in Old English there was adifference in meaning between these two 11 words;ifso, it is irrecoverable. Perhaps the abstract hiwisc is more con- 12 nected with having and holding an establishment where the family,servants, 13 slaves, sheep, and cattle share life together,though togetherness implies no 14 equality.Perhaps hiwscipe is even more abstract. One thinks of Modern 15 English abstracts that might be possible translations;they all fail because 16 overlaid or undermined by distractions based on life in England in the last 17 two centuries. Thus domesticity is awell-regulated bourgeois residentiality, 18 and the word residentiality seems not to exist in the English language. If it 19 did, it might do when translating hiwscipe in some contexts for the secular 20 hiwscipe of the Anglo-Saxons. Anglo-Saxon society,ifthat, pace Mrs 21 Thatcher,isallowed to have had an existence, was an aristocracy and, less 22 grandly noble, asquirarchy,both with landownership;the head of each 23 household had authority,with his wife, children, other relations, servants, 24 slaves, cattle, sheep, etc.,coresident with him, but of no significance on the 25 26 estate during the life of the head of the establishment. Then there were the 27 monasteries and nunneries with their collective residential establishment, a 28 head, abbot or abbess, and free and pious men, the monks, and women, the 29 nuns, and agreat number of servants, especially to work in the fields and to 30 tend the animals:all these together form the coenobitic hiwscipe. 31 Like hiwræden,and unlike hid and hiwisc, hiwscipe never governs landes, 32 though one occurrence appears to be, like hid and hiwisc,aland measure. A 33 good example of hiwscipe used as acollective noun, ‘a group of people’, 34 comes in an inedited Paschal homily in Corpus Christi College Cambridge 35 MS 162, which Iquote from the Toronto Microfiche Concordance,s.v. 36 hiwscipum: Men a leofestan!On am dæge Drihten dem rym hiw- 37 scipum, æt is, heofonwareand eor wareand helware (‘Mostbeloved!On 38 that day the Lord will judge three groups, namely,those who dwell in 39 heaven, and those who dwell on earth, and those who dwell in hell’). 40 The Lambeth Psalter has hiwscype łhusræden Israheles glossing domus 41 Israel.50 The word as ameasure of land occurs in the will (dated 1008 42 43 50 Der Lambeth-Psalter,ed. Uno Lindelçf, 2vols.,Acta Societatis Scientiarum 44 Fennicæ XXXV/1 and XLIII/3 (Helsinki, 1909, 1914) I, 185, Psalm 113verse 9 45 [= 17].
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1 1012) of Ælfwold, bishop of Crediton, where the editors translate it as 2 ‘hide’, as does Dorothy Whitelock, whose translation Iquote here:51 3 is is Alfwoldes bisceopes cwyde, æt is æt he geann æs landes æt Sandforda 4 in to am mynstre in to Crydian Tune him to saulsceatte, mid mete &mid 5 mannum swa hit stent butan wite eowum mannum;&anes hiwscypes he geann 6 Godrice ærof, &ansylh e oxna. 7 8 In Whitelock’stranslation:“This is Bishop Ælfwold’s will:that is that he 9 grants the land at Sandford to the minster in Crediton as payment for his 10 soul, with produce and men just as it stands except for the penally enslaved 11 men;and he grants one hide of it to Godric, and aplough-team of oxen.” 12 The editors’ note on hiwscype distinguishes the ordinary sense of the word 13 from the sense here: 14 hiwscype,‘hide of land.’ Like familia in Medieval Latin,the OE. hiwscipe, 15 which ordinarily meant ‘family,household,’ could be used to denote ameasure 16 of land, ahide. Cf. OE. Beda,ed. Miller,p.332: a onfeng heo anes heowscipes 17 (v.l.hiwscipes) stowe = ‘accepit locum unius familiae.’ Cf. Also Schmid, p. 610, 18 s.v. hid.52 Similarly hiwisc could mean either ‘family’ or ‘hide of land’. 19 20 And they give examples. No attempt is made, nor could it be substanti- 21 ated, what exact measurement a hid represents. It has been suggested that 22 the quality of the land might be involved;mybelief is that what may be 23 involved also is the importance, and therefore the size, of the familia,de- 24 pendent on the importance of its head. 25 Some of the compounds with hiw- as first element show further that in 26 Old English the membership of ahousehold was more comprehensive than 27 our sense of membership of a‘family’. The following compounds or deriv- 28 29 51 The CrawfordCollection of Early Charters and Documents,ed. A.S. Napier & 30 W.H. Stevenson, Anecdota Oxoniensia series IV,part VII (Oxford:Clarendon, 31 1895) 23 (text), 127 (notes). Whitelock 1979, I, 581. 32 52 Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen,2nd ed. Reinhold Schmid (Leipzig:Brockhaus, 33 1858) 610–11, along entry,ofwhich, no doubt, Napier and Stevenson, have in 34 mind the reference to the Old English Bede quoted by them, as well as the 35 reference quoted above, p. 54, and note 49:“An einigen Stellen steht h wisc 36 oder h wscip f r h d”, ‘in afew places hiwisc or hiwscip stands for hid’; and further,“Der Sinn des Wortes h d oder h wisc scheint demnach zu sein, daß 37 damit ein Landcomplex bezeichnet werden soll, groß genug, eine Familie (h w) 38 zu ern hren”, ‘The meaning of the word hid or hiwisc appears therefore to be 39 that it denotes an area of land large enough to feed one family (hiw)’. Lieber- 40 mann 1898–1916, II/1, 114, defines hid as “Hufe (ein [durch Maass oder Ertrag 41 oder Besitz durch Eine Familie bestimmtes] Quantum) Landes” (‘hide (a 42 quantity of land [determined by measure or yield or possession of one family]’). 43 Liebermann (II/2, 513–15, near the beginning) has “Urspr nglichheisst das 44 Wort [higd]‘Wohnland’”, ‘originally the word higd means ‘inhabited land’. By 45 urspr nglich he meant ‘etymologically’; he did not mean ‘in early Old English’.
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1 atives are involved: hiwcund, hiwcu ,and hiwgedal. Dative plural hiw- 2 cundum is the only occurrence of the nomen,glossing domesticis in the 3 Brussels Aldhelm, De Laudibus Virginitatis.53 Aldhelm is always difficult, 4 and the shade of meaning of domesticis glossed by hiwcundum requires 5 some violence of explication;the translators, learned in Aldhelm’sways of 6 thought and peculiarities of expression, have chosen ‘domestic comforts’, 7 which has the advantage of presenting aplural as in the gloss and its lemma. 8 The sentence comes in the passage figuring the parabolic monachism of the 9 bee. Amonk’s‘domestic comforts’ are spiritual, not bodily,and perhaps that 10 is what the translation is meant to convey;but that is far from clear.Alittle 11 earlier (fol. 3vo line 11)Aldhelm gives the details of amonk’s uoluntarie 12 seruitutis (genitive singular), glossed sel(f)willes eowdomes,and Ibelieve it 13 is the spiritual strengthening, an earlier sense of comfort,that comes from 14 this ‘voluntary servitude’ binding the monk to the harsh conventions of the 15 house of God that is meant by these domesticis,these hiwcundum:they are 16 not ‘domestic comforts’ –“home comforts” –inthe current sense of these 17 words.54 18 Old English hiwcu , hiwcu lic, hiwcu lice, gehiwcu lician, hiwcu nes, 19 20 and hiwcu raednys,several of them rare, appear all to enshrine senses of 21 domesticus or familiaris,often in glosses. The only occurrence of hiwcu in 22 23 53 The Old English Glosses of MS. Brussels, Royal Library,1650, Aldhelm’s De 24 Laudibus Virginitatis,ed. Louis Goossens, Verhandelingen van de Koninklijke 25 Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van Belgi , Klasse 26 der Letteren XXXVI, No. 74 (Brussels:Paleisder Academi n, 1974) 172, gloss 27 384. The sentence in Aldhelm reads: ita prorsus, ut multo libentius ob reuer- 28 entiam principis ad incolatum peregreproficiscantur quam domisticis adsuetæ 29 deliciis et uernacula contente quiete in cellulis commorentur,thus Aldhelm’sDe 30 Laudibus Virginitatis with …glosses Manuscript 1650 of the Royal Library in 31 Brussels,ed. George van Langenhove, Rijksuniversiteit te Gent, Werken uit- 32 gegeven door de Faculteit van de Wijsbegeerte en Letteren, Extra Series: Fac- 33 similes II (Bruges:Saint Catherine P, 1941) fols. 3vo –4ro.Cf. Aldhelmi Opera, 34 ed. Rudolf Ehwald, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 35 XV (Berlin:Weidmann, 1919) 233, lines 18–20. Aldhelm, The Prose Works, 36 translated by Michael Lapidge &Michael Herren (Ipswich/Cambridge: Brewer,1979) 63:“so much is this the case, in fact, that out of reverence for 37 their leader they set out for foreignparts (in search) of aresidence more willingly 38 than they would remain at home in their cells (where they are) used to domestic 39 comforts and content with subservient tranquillity”. On hiwcund,with -cund 40 taken to be an adjectival suffix, cf. Walter Hofstetter,“The Old English Ad- 41 jectival Suffix -cund”, Words, Texts and Manuscripts:Studies in Anglo-Saxon 42 CulturePresented to Helmut Gneuss on Occasion of his Sixty-fifth Birthday,ed. 43 Michael Korhammer et al. (Cambridge:Brewer,1992) 325–47, at 336, 338 44 and n. 60, 346 and n. 82. 45 54 Ehwald 1919, 233, line 8.
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1 verse is in Alfred’s The Meters of Boethius 10, 61 (there is no corresponding 2 use in his prose rendering of this metre):55 3 ac hit is wyrse nu 4 æt geond as eor an æghwær sindon 5 hiora gelican hwon ymbspræce, 6 sume openlice ealle forgitene, 7 æt hi se hlisa hiwcu e ne mæg, 8 foremære weras, for gebrengan. 9 10 but it is worse now that throughout this earth everywhere the like of them are 11 little talked about, some clearly altogether forgotten, so that Fame cannot bring 12 them forth, the familiar ones, men foremost in glory. 13 As if belonging to one’sown household, as if oneself were at home in the 14 knowledge of it, that is what familiarity means, and how its sense developed 15 from familia in Classical Latin. Boethius, like the Old English rendering with 16 well-known differences, had specified the household names, now forgotten, 17 he says –but, in effect, truly memorable and remembered.56 If there are 18 subtle differences in meaning distinguishing hiwcund from hiwcu we 19 cannot recover them. Outside glosses these words are rare. However, 20 hiwcu , hiwcu lic(e, hiwcu nes occur relatively frequently in Wærferth’s 21 translation of Gregory’s Dialogues,three times in the Life of Machutus, but 22 in the voluminous works of Ælfric twice only,both occurrences in his homily 23 on the Life of St Martin.57 An occurrence in aleechdom is worth quoting, 24 perhaps to show that ‘familiarity’ is perceived by an Anglo-Saxon author as 25 an experience of doves, not of humankind;but an earlier explication may 26 58 make better sense: BERBENA : eos wyrt, e man peristereon & o rum 27 28 29 30 55 The verse and prose are conveniently printed on the same page by Bill Griffiths 31 in Alfred’sMetres of Boethius,ed. Bill Griffiths (Pinner:Anglo-Saxon Books, 32 1991) 77, lines 57b–62. Idonot follow this edition (and other editions) in 33 italicizing (or indicating in other ways) where the damaged Cotton MS Otho 34 A.vi has been supplemented by Bodleian Library MS Junius 12. 56 35 Cf. Boethius:DeConsolatione Philosophiae, Opuscula Theologica,ed. Clau- 36 dio Moreschini, Bibliotheca Teubneriana (M nchen/Leipzig:Saur,2000) 53, Consolatio Philosophiae,IImet. vii. 37 57 Bischof Wærferths von Worcester bersetzungder Dialoge Gregors des 38 Grossen,ed. Hans Hecht, Bibliothek der angels chsischen Prosa V(1900, 1907; 39 repr., Darmstadt:Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1965); The Old English 40 Life of Machutus,ed. David Yerkes, Toronto Old English Series, 9(Toronto, 41 etc.:Toronto UP,1984);Skeat 1881–1900, II, 218–313, homily XXXI. 42 58 The Old English Herbarium and Medicina de Quadrupedibus,ed. Hubert Jan 43 de Vriend, EETS o.s. 286 (London, 1984) 110, lines 5–7, Herbarium LXVII. 44 The related Latin gives the name [?herba] columbina as from columbinus, 45 ‘dove-coloured’; thus MS Harley 6258B, dated authoritatively by Neil Ker,
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1 naman berbenam nemne , heo ys culfron swi e hiwcu , anun hy eac sum 2 eodscipe columbinam hate (‘VERVAIN :This plant, which is named peris- 3 tereon and by another name vervain, is very familiar to doves for which 4 reason some people call it also columbine’).59 The translation follows the 5 glossary entry,“hiwcu¯ …familiar”, in de Vriend’sedition, and Bos- 6 worth–Toller supports such areading, “doves are very fond of this plant.”60 7 Perhaps those who know about birds in Old English texts will tell me that 8 pigeons habitually sit on vervain or other plants of the order Verbenaceae, 9 and, if so, Ishall be content to believe that doves love such plants. The Latin 10 text underlying the standard interpretation is quoted by de Vriend (from 11 Montecassino MS V. 97?), Haec herba admodum columbis est familiaris, 12 unde hoc nomen habet,‘this plant is absolutely familiar to doves, whence it 13 has that name’.61 But the late MS Harley 6258 B, quoted by de Vriend, has a 14 different Latin text, without familiaris (which seems to correspond to 15 hiwcu ):62 hoc est berbenan uel ueruenam, hanc quidam columbinam uo- 16 cant propter colorem columbinam,which explains that the columbine is so 17 called because dove-coloured. The word dægcu comes to mind:“known 18 clearly as if by day,clear as day” are the renderings given in the Toronto 19 Dictionary of Old English,for the only occurrence of the compound, 20 namely,inJudgement Day II,line 40.63 The earlier editor of the Herbarium, 21 no doubt guided by the knowledge that the plant is dove-coloured, translates 22 23 Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon,xix, as “after 1200”, 24 though de Vriend argues for an earlier date (xxx). 25 59 De Vriend’stranslation follows An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Based on the 26 Manuscript Collections of the Late Joseph Bosworth Supplement,ed. T. 27 Northcote Toller (Oxford:Clarendon, 1908–1921) 728, s.v. e d-scipe a 28 people;and cf. OED,s.v. thede. The editors of Anglia,towhom Iamgreatly 29 indebted for aconsiderable number of corrections and improvements, plausibly 30 suggest that eodscipe here may be accusative and mean something like ‘species’ 31 and refer to the plant columbine. 32 60 Toller 1908 –1921, 546, s.v. h w-cffl II. 33 61 De Vriend 1984, 111. See Corpus Medicorum Latinorum,ed. Ernst Howald & 34 Heinrich E. Sigerist, IV Antonii Musae de herba vettonica liber,Pseudoapulei 35 herbarius, etc. (Leipzig/Berlin:Teubner,1927) 123, LXVI Herba peristereon, 36 line 10:the text as given by de Vriend. 62 De Vriend 1984, 111. 37 63 Dictionary of Old English,ed. Angus Cameron et al. (Toronto:Pontifical In- 38 stitute of Mediaeval Studies, for the Dictionary of Old English Project, 1986–), 39 s.v.;The Old English Poem Judgment Day II, ed. Graham D. Caie (Cambridge: 40 Brewer,2000) 86. The note (112) adds “literally,‘as well known as in daytime’. 41 This is another original compound and creates acontrast to dihle.”The contrast 42 with dihle ‘hidden, dark’ is certain in this line, but the suggested, literal ren- 43 dering is too precise for an Old English compound:the first element of Old 44 English poetic compounds is suggestive and associative rather than precisely 45 literal.
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1 ys culfron swi e hiwcu as “is very near akin in colour to culvers or doves.”64 2 The simplex hiw commonly means ‘colour’,65 though this meaning is not 3 considered by me in the present study,which is about senses connected with 4 familia ‘household’. Cockayne’stranslation is not to be as lightly dismissed 5 as lexicographers and editors have done. 6 The past participle gehiwcu lucud occurs, as A.S. Napier noted, in the 7 Vercelli Book, the only occurrence of this weak verb of the second class.66 8 One may wonder why is gehiwcu licud (+ dative) was thought preferable to 9 hiwcu (lic),and the editors give the variant (ge- erased) hiwcu licost from 10 Corpus Christi College Cambridge MS 162. The answer may lie (as Donald 11 Scragg’sglossary suggests) in awish to render closely familiare…est (+ 12 dative) of the source: Bro or mine, for an is eallum geleaffullum mannum 13 to wacienne, for am e sio estfulnes ærewæccan is gehiwcu lucud eallum 14 halgum,‘My brethren, for this reason it is (right) for all faithful people to be 15 watchful, because the devotion of that vigil is made familiar to all saints’. 16 One compound remains to be considered: hiwgedal,which occurs in the 17 glossaries, most fully explained in the Harley Glossary:67 Diuortium .i. 18 discidium .diuisio coniugiorum .hiwgedal,‘divorce, that is, separation, 19 division of consorts: hiwgedal’. Other than as glosses, the compound occurs 20 only in the phrase hiwgedales boc (rendering libellus repudii,‘document of 21 repudiation’), twice in the West Saxon St Matthew,5:31 and 19:7, and once 22 in St Mark, 10:4. This compound is one of agroup of words based on hiw, 23 where the compounds appear to refer to ‘marriage’ (even though hiw alone 24 25 64 Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of Early England,ed. Oswald Cock- 26 ayne, 3vols.,Rolls Series 35 (1864–1866) I, 171–2;Cockayne knew MS 27 Harley 6258B,with the Latin explanation of the plant name, but he did not 28 collate the manuscript thoroughly (see lxxxiv–lxxxv). 29 65 Angus F. Cameron, “The Old English Nouns of Colour:ASemantic Study” 30 (unpublished B.Litt. Dissertation, UofOxford, 1968), discusses hiw (and de- 31 rivatives and compounds), systematically (see especially 146–50) when the 32 sense is ‘colour,form, shape, kind’, but regards hiwan ‘family’ as belonging to a 33 semantic field different from the colour words he is considering. 66 34 Arthur S. Napier,“Contributions to Old English Lexicography”, Transactions 35 of the Philological Society 1906 (1906): 294 (= 30 of the separate), “*gehı¯w- 36 cu¯ lician,tomake known or familiar to”. Die Vercelli-Homilien,ed. Max Fçrster,Bibliothek der angels chsischen Prosa XII (1932;repr.Darmstadt: 37 Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1964) 62, homily III, lines 95–6;his ap- 38 paratus gives the same past participle from the same text in Corpus Christi 39 College Cambridge MS 198;the editors give the variant ihiwcy licod,in 40 Twelfth-Century Homilies in MS. Bodley 343,ed. A.O. Belfour ,EETS, o.s. 137 41 (London, 1909) 44, line 25. Similarly, The Vercelli Homilies and Related Texts, 42 ed. D.G. Scragg, EETS, o.s. 300 (London, 1992) 78, homily III, lines 84–6, 43 with, in the apparatus, amore complicated record of the variant from MS 44 Bodley 343 and from CCCC MS 198. 45 67 Oliphant 1966, 142, D737.
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68 See Herbert D. Meritt, “Studies in Old English Vocabulary”, Journal of English and Germanic Philology 46 (1947): 413–27, at 420, no. 33. 69 Fischer 1986, 79–84. 70 Sprachschatz der angels chsischen Dichter,2vols.,Bibliothek der angels ch- sischen Poesie, III, IV,ed. C.W.M. Grein (Kassel/Gçttingen:Wigand, 1861, 1864) II, 78, s.v. hiv;the edition revised by J.J. Kçhler (Heidelberg:Winter, 1912–1914) has not changed the wording quoted. 71 For the text cf. The Phoenix,ed. N.F.Blake (Manchester:Manchester UP,1964) 47. His notes (68) have areference to Else von Schaubert, “Zur Erkl rung Schwierigkeiten bietender altenglischer Textstellen”, Philologica:The Malone Anniversary Studies,ed. Thomas A. Kirby &Henry BosleyWoolf (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins P, 1949) 31–42. At 31–3she discussed The Phoenix,lines 71– 80a;Ihave used her translation for lines 75b–80a:“sondern wundersamer- weise prangen dort best ndig, in alle Ewigkeit im Gr n an den B umen auf der Grasflur (frucht-)beladene Zweige, neues Obst, da der schçnste aller Haine durch des Heiligen Macht freudevoll geschm ckt ist”. Her translation is diffi- cult because of the difficulty of the text, and Iamnot sure if it is convincing in every detail. My concern, however,ison hiwe (two half-lines after the passage she discusses), and its context.
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1 groves is joyfully adorned by the Holy One’spowers:never shall be destroyed 2 the grove on hiwe. 3 The phrase on hiwe is variously translated;and the following are among 4 significant examples of that variety:72 “in aspect”, Thorpe;“im Haine” (‘in 5 the grove’), Grein 1854;“in dem Haine”, 1857;“an Schçnheit (ge- 6 schw cht)” (‘weakened in beauty’), 1864 ;“die Erscheinung, Gestalt, Farbe, 7 habitus” (‘appearance, stature, colour;condition, character,disposition’), 8 Leo;“in all its beauty”, Gollancz;“in [seiner] Schçnheit” (‘in [its] beauty’), 9 Schlotterose;“beauty”, Cook (glossary);“beautiful appearance, beauty”, 10 Toller;“colour,appearance, beauty”, Blake (glossary);“in appearance”, 11 Ashley Crandell Amos et al. 12 Scholarly opinion is overwhelmingly in favour of translating on hiwe as 13 ‘appearance, beauty’ and the like, that is, placing this use in The Phoenix 14 unequivocally within the orbit of those uses of hiw which Ihave disregarded 15 in this study.The simplex never means ‘household, home’. But then 16 (ge)hiwian, hiwung, hiwlic only exceptionally refer to marriage, hiwgedal to 17 ‘divorce’ in documents of repudiation. Grein’srendering, in the 1850s, of the 18 phrase as ‘in the grove’ is not to be forgotten, though in the 1860s he gave up 19 that rendering and fell into line with what was to become the only under- 20 standing. It may be argued that in his alliterative translations he was driven 21 22 to using aGerman word beginning with
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1 the place where the grove has its home, and the household, the familia, 2 uniting husband and wife (before he repudiates her), hiw is not to be strictly 3 confined to asingle semantic branch of the word. 4 5 6 8.The Anglo-Saxon Conception of ‘family’ 7 8 Perhaps the only safe conclusion to be drawn from my selective survey of so 9 polysemous an element as hiw,its derivatives and compounds, is that these 10 Old English words are for members of ahousehold or residents on an estate: 11 if secular,the servants and slaves rather than the head of the household and 12 his immediate family;ifreligious, the community on its estates. Often such 13 Old English words render Latin familia,the sense of which is not that of 14 Modern English family. Shades of meaning in Old English are beyond our 15 reach, and instead of asking ourselves, does it belong to this semantic branch 16 or that, we should incline to consider if aparticular use may not belong to 17 more than one branch. 18 We may be sure that in some uses of hi(gi)d the sense ‘a unit of land 19 ownership’ is uppermost, but the unit is too variable to be converted into so 20 many acres or hectares. Though standardization of weights and measures 21 came to the United Kingdom and the United States only in the nineteenth 22 century,wenow expect any unit of land to be expressed in standard land 23 measures. Reasons for variability have been sought by some as depending on 24 the quality of the land for arable use, rocks or loam, and therefore the size of 25 the holding required to sustain ahousehold, asmallholder,acotter,sus- 26 tained by asingle unit, and agreat estate, with its inhabitants of many 27 buildings, needing much land for adequate sustenance. Similarly amonastic 28 establishment of many monks or nuns and their servants in the monastery or 29 convent and on the lands belonging to the establishment, bequeathed to 30 them in pious hopes for eternal rewards. 31 The unit of land is variable. An estate, ahousehold, ahouse, in Modern 32 English as in Old English, differ in sense, but overlap often blurs meaning in 33 usage;inusage demarcation does not always define meaning neatly.The 34 same words were used by the Anglo-Saxons for such realia in both religious 35 and secular contexts. What defines ‘family’ is definite only in not being 36 anchored in the paterfamilias and those closely related to him by blood or 37 affinity.The Anglo-Saxons seem not to have understood any of their words 38 in terms of close relationship tied by blood or affinity,and seem not to have 39 succumbed to the sentimental belief –contrary to evidence from Anglo- 40 Saxon times to the present day –that this group of close relatives is always 41 held together by love:blood is thicker than water.That some notion of 42 unified form or shape, and of some such unit underlies hiw and its deriva- 43 tives and compounds is shown by the use of some of these words for mar- 44 riage and divorce. The Anglo-Saxons understood and expressed marriage 45 and how to break it. Houses, households and the servants and slaves on the
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1 estate formed asocietal aspect the Anglo-Saxons understood. They had a 2 sense of the size of land holdings and of what such lands might yield, and 3 they considered and expressed their ideas about secular and monastic estates 4 in identical terms. If we could interview aleading Anglo-Saxon, and tell him 5 (her would not be appropriate for an Anglo-Saxon leader) about our family, 6 Isuspectthat he might shrug his shoulders (if the Anglo-Saxons had that 7 gesture), and say,there is no such thing as ‘family’. 8 9 Oxford Eric G. Stanley 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45
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