Power of Words : Essays in Lexicography, Lexicology and ...preview.kingborn.net/475000/139ca8251b9c4e12924c20e914e121c6.pdf · started her on a research career in lexicography and

COSTERUS NEW SERIES 163

Series Editors:C.C. Barfoot, Theo D’haen

and Erik Kooper

The Power of Words

Christian Kay

Amsterdam-New York, NY 2006

The Power of WordsEssays in Lexicography, Lexicology

and Semantics

In Honour of Christian J. Kay

Edited by Graham D. Caie,

Carole Hough and Irené Wotherspoon

Cover photo: University of Glasgow

Cover design: Aart Jan Bergshoeff

The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents - Requirements for permanence”.

ISBN-10: 90-420-2121-7ISBN-13: 978-90-420-2121-1©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2006Printed in the Netherlands

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

This page intentionally left blank

List of Contents Introduction ix Old English colour lexemes used of textiles 1 in Anglo-Saxon England C. P. Biggam Slang terms for money: a historical thesaurus 23 Julie Coleman ‘Huv a wee seat, hen’: evaluative terms in Scots 35 Fiona Douglas and John Corbett Lexical splits and mergers: 57 some difficult cases for the OED Philip Durkin Of fæderan and eamas: avuncularity in Old English 67 Andreas Fischer $ho:fian{*}/vK2: a LAEME-based lexical study 79 Roger Lass and Margaret Laing The rhyme potential of Scots 91 Caroline Macafee Of politeness and people 103 Terttu Nevalainen and Heli Tissari ME douten and dreden 117 Michiko Ogura What did Anglo-Saxon seals seal when? 131 Jane Roberts Notes on the medical vocabulary of John Keats 159 Jeremy J. Smith

viii

‘Tell her to shut her moof’: 171 the role of the lexicon in TH-fronting in Glaswegian Jane Stuart-Smith and Claire Timmins Forces of change: are social and moral attitudes legible in this 185 Historical Thesaurus classification? Louise Sylvester Key word in context: 209 semantic and pragmatic meaning of humour Irma Taavitsainen Lexicographical Lyrics 221 James McGonigal Notes on the Contributors 225 Tabula Gratulatoria

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

the research materials assembled here. The largest work that has so far come out of the HTE project is A Thesaurus of Old English (1995, 2000), which is now about to be published again, this time in electronic form. Christian has written a large number of articles on the HTE, semantics and lexicography. She has edited six volumes of essays, which include collections of conference papers on historical linguistics. At the turn of the century she embarked with Jim McGonigal and other colleagues at Glasgow University on the ambitious LILT project (Language into Languages Teaching) which was commissioned by the Scottish Executive Education Department. After its completion Christian toured Scotland introducing the software to teachers who have found it a major benefit in language teaching. Christian has always been at the forefront of computer assisted learning, producing programs such as English Grammar: an Introduction, The Basics of English Metre and ARIES: Assisted Revision in English Style. She has been Director of STELLA (Software for the Teaching of English and Scottish Language and Literature and its Assessment), a project in the Computers in Teaching Initiative, for many years and along with Jean Anderson has helped the University of Glasgow remain at the forefront of CALL. She is also a prime mover in the highly successful project, the Scottish Corpus of Texts and Speech. Her administrative abilities, including fund-raising, are legendary. When I succeeded Michael Samuels to the English Language Chair in 1990 Christian graciously guided me in the mysteries of Higher Education in the UK and in even more complex topics such as the administrative workings of the University of Glasgow. She made a superb Head of Department in the periods 1989-92 and 1996-99, demonstrating her flair for financial management and her admirable common sense and no-nonsense approach to some of the illogical or irrational dictates of central university or government. She also has wide experience of examining at all levels in the university system and is much in demand at international conferences. Christian’s teaching has covered a wide range of topics in English language, from her own subjects of semantics and literary and linguistic computing to general linguistics, the history of English, pragmatics and spoken discourse. She is an extremely caring teacher and many scholars today have her to thank for the encouragement and

x

xi

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

This page intentionally left blank

Old English colour lexemes used of textiles in Anglo-Saxon England

C. P. Biggam

Introduction

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

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

C. P. Biggam2

archaeobotany and the chemical investigation of dye traces on surviving textiles.

2. Scope of the Research

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

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

Old English colour lexemes 3

3. Textile Types

3.1 Silk

3.1.1 (seolc; geolu)In the tenth-century medical work now known as Bald’s Leechbook,jaundice (gealadl or geolwe adl) is said to cause the body of the patient to ‘turn yellow like good yellow silk’ (ageolwaþ swa god geolo seoluc).5

3.1.2 (godwebb; geolu)See Section 5.1.1 under Garments (Unspecified).

3.2 Wool

3.2.1 (wull; hæwen)See Section 4.2.3 under Straining-Cloths.

4. Textile Manufactures (Excluding Clothing)

4.1 Hangings and Coverings

4.1.1 (wagrift, stræl, hwitel, wæstling; brun, brunbasu)In his prose work De virginitate, the Anglo-Saxon scholar Aldhelm (died 709 or 710) stresses that purity is not sufficient, by itself, to achieve perfection, since it must be accompanied by other virtues. To illustrate his point he reminds the reader of hangings and coverings woven in diverse colours which please the eye much more than a monochrome product. Aldhelm, writing in Latin, uses the words cortina ‘curtain, wall-hanging’ and stragula (for stragulum) ‘bed- or couch-cover, rug, blanket’.6 In two manuscripts of this text, cortina is

Under these circumstances, it is not possible to interpret any context, which lacks further elucidation, as involving a particular colour. 5 Oswald Cockayne (ed.), Leechdoms, Wortcunning and Starcraft of Early England,Rerum Britannicarum medii aevi scriptores 35, 3 vols., London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts and Green, 1864-66, II, 1865, 10, 106. 6 Rudolf Ehwald (ed.), Aldhelmi Opera, Monumenta Germaniae historica: Auctorum antiquissimorum 15, Berlin: Weidmann, 1919, p. 244.

C. P. Biggam4

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

7 Arthur S. Napier (ed.), Old English Glosses Chiefly Unpublished, Anecdota Oxoniensia 4, part 11, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900, p. 28; Louis Goossens (ed.), The Old English Glosses of MS. Brussels, Royal Library, 1650 (Aldhelm’s Delaudibus virginitatis), Verhandelingen van de Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, Klasse der Letteren, Jaargang XXXVI, 74, Brussels: Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, 1974, pp. 218-19. 8 I must express my doubts about this dictionary sense of ‘scarlet’ for brunbasu. Both elements of this compound term need more research, but it is clear that basu denotes warm (red-based) colours which are vivid, rich and eye-catching. I suspect that the addition of brun- creates a darkening effect to such colours, indicating, perhaps especially, violet, dark purple and crimson. This would parallel the effect of blæ- inblæhæwen which darkens hæwen ‘blue (grey)’. (C. P. Biggam, Blue in Old English: an Interdisciplinary Semantic Study, Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1997, pp. 223-39.) Scarlet is not dark, and so appears to be in inappropriate company in the DOE’sdefinition of brunbasu.9 Roberts, Kay with Grundy, op. cit., I, 146.


brun to fulfil this function in a translation context suggests it may have had a close relationship with the more impressive warm colours even where translation was not involved.10

4.2 Straining-Cloths

4.2.1 (claþ; hæwen)A number of medical recipes in Old English call for a concoction to be strained or wrung through a blue cloth. In Bald’s Leechbook,treatment for ‘a broken head’ involves boiling some herbs in butter and straining them (seohhian) through a hæwen cloth (claþ).11 In Book 3 of the Leechbook, a treatment for palsy involves mixing coriander powder with a woman’s milk, and wringing it (awringan) through a hæwen cloth.12 Also in Book 3, the preparation of an ear-salve involves soaking several herbs in wine or vinegar, and then wringing (wringan) the resulting liquid through a hæwen cloth into the ear.13

The Old English colour word hæwen has been researched, and defined as ‘blue (grey)’ indicating that ‘grey’ is a less common sense than ‘blue’.14

4.2.2 (claþ; linhæwen)Two further references of related interest to those in Section 4.2.1 occur in another medical text, the Lacnunga, at least part of which dates to the late tenth to mid eleventh century, but which contains much older elements. The first reference concerns a treatment for eyes that are ‘stopped up’, and which recommends taking specified herbs, and dripping (drypan) their juice into the eye through a cloth.15 The second reference is a treatment for ‘dimness of the eyes’ which involves soaking a part of wild teasel in honey, pounding it, and then

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

C. P. Biggam6

wringing (wringan) the resulting substance through a cloth into the eye.16 In both these cases the cloth is described as linhæwen. Lin can mean ‘flax’ or ‘linen’. It seems unlikely that a cloth would be described as ‘linen-blue’ (or ‘linen-grey’) since such a description would be redundant if the cloth were made of linen (‘linen-blue linen’) and confusing for other textiles (e.g. ‘linen-blue wool’). The flax-plant probably provides the answer, since the most common colour of its flowers is pale blue, so linhæwen is reasonably defined as ‘flax-flower blue’.17 (See also Section 4.2.3 below.)

4.2.3 (claþ; hæwen)In Book 3 of the Leechbook, a treatment is recommended for ‘small eye’ (æsmæl), and all pains in the eye. ‘Small eye’ has been variously interpreted as shrinkage of the eye, or contraction of the eyeball or pupil.18 The problem is to be treated by chewing wild teasel and then wringing (wringan) the juice through a blue (hæwen) and woollen (wyllen) cloth onto the eyes of the patient.19

Although several British plants can produce a blue dye, there is little evidence, either historical or archaeological, that anything other than woad (Isatis tinctoria L.) (OE wad) was exploited for this purpose in Anglo-Saxon England.20 The blue cloths used in medical treatments, therefore, were most likely to have been dyed with woad, and there may have been a very good reason for this. The woad plant has vulnerary and styptic properties, aiding the healing of wounds and the staunching of blood,21 and its appearance in certain Anglo-Saxon medical recipes suggests these properties were understood.22 It is clear, however, that wound-healing qualities are not especially helpful for some of the problems mentioned above, and it may be that certain

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


healers had come to consider a woad-dyed cloth as standard medical equipment.

4.3 Binding-Strips

4.3.1 (wræd; wrætt; read, wræteread)In Book 3 of the Leechbook, a treatment for migraine (healf heafod ece) is given which involves binding plantain roots around the head. The instruction reads bind þa moran ymb þ[æt] heafod mid wrætereade wræde. Cockayne interprets this as an instruction to bind [plantain] roots and wrætt (a plant) around the head with a red band (… reade wræde),23 but others have taken wræte read to be a compound term meaning wrætt-red.24 The latter interpretation would, of course, assume the binding-strips to have been dyed with wrættdye, and would exclude the presence of wrætt plants. Since the term wrætbaso ‘wrætt-red’ (or ‘-purple’, or ‘-crimson’) is extant, there can be no objection to the theoretical existence of wrætread. Another cure for pain in the head (heafodece), however, lends support to Cockayne’s interpretation. In this instruction, the physician is told to take the lower part of wrætt, put it on a red binding-strip, and bind it to the head (genim nioþowearde wrætte do on readne wræd binde þ[æt] heafod mid).25 In this second cure, wrætt is the only plant involved, and the binding-strip is an unspecified red. It would clearly be safer to interpret the first cure along similar lines, with the exception that two plants were involved in that case, plantain and wrætt, perhaps because migraine is a stronger pain than general head-ache. Both cures would then involve the plants being tied to the head with red binding-strips, but not specifically wrætt-red.

It is quite possible that the writer of these two cures was unconcerned about distinguishing between the wrætt plant and wrætt-dyed cloth, since it may have been simply the presence of wrætt, in any form, which was important. Schlutter makes a good case for the wrætt-plant being a source of red dye, by considering the evidence for the cognate word in Old High German, rezza or riza.26 This lexeme is

23 Ibid., II, 307. 24 For example, O. B. Schlutter, “Anglo-Saxonica”, Anglia, 30 (N. F. 18) (1907), 239-60, 248; Toller, op. cit., see Supplement, s.v. wræt-read.25 Cockayne, op. cit., II, 304. 26 Schlutter, op. cit., 249.

C. P. Biggam8

used to gloss several Latin words which can indicate red dyes, such as coccum ‘scarlet dye etc.’, murex ‘purple dye etc.’, sandix ‘red dye etc.’ and others. The Old English word wrætt also appears to be identified with madder, probably the best-known red-dye plant in England, in a herbal glossary.27 Wrætt-dye will be further discussed in a future paper (see Section 1).

4.4 Patches

4.4.1 (fihl, fogclað; read)In St Matthew’s gospel (9.16), Jesus is asked why his disciples do not fast regularly, and he offers a metaphor to explain. He says that one does not repair an old garment with a piece of “new cloth” (Authorized Version), as this just makes the split worse. The words used in the Vulgate for this phrase are panni rudis, and rudis has many senses, but usually indicates something unfinished or untried. The Old English gloss to rudis in the West Saxon gospels is niwe‘new’, but, in the Lindisfarne Gospels, the gloss to the phrase is fihles [ve]l fotclað reades. Fihl is defined as ‘cloth, rag’, and fogclað as ‘‘joining-cloth’, patch’ (fotclað is a manuscript error). It would appear that the glossator of the Lindisfarne Gospels mistakenly understood Latin rudis as meaning ‘red’, and has produced a puzzling sentence implying that a red patch makes a split in a garment worse. Clearly, his attention was on the sense of the individual words rather than the meaning of the sentence.28

5. Clothing

5.1 Garments (Unspecified)

5.1.1 (gewæd; geolu)The solution of Riddle 35 in the Exeter Book,29 and the almost identical Leiden Riddle30 is ‘mail-coat’.31 The mail-coat is the

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


narrator, and admits it is a garment (gewæd) but presents a series of statements which are intended to confuse those attempting to solve the riddle, one of which is that it is not made of any textile. The mail-coat further states that it has not been woven by worms which decorate, with great skill, the fine yellow (geolu) cloth (godwebb). Aldhelm’s Latin original of this riddle refers to ‘Chinese worms’ (Seres … vermes), making it sufficiently clear that silk is the fabric in Aldhelm’s mind.32

5.1.2 (hrægl, reaf; hasufag)Riddles use several ploys to mislead and confuse the listener, so that the solution to the riddle is more difficult to guess.33 Riddle 11 of the Exeter Book begins with the two lines ‘My clothing (hrægl) is hasufag; ornaments bright, red and shining [are] on my garment (reaf)’.34 Suggested solutions to this riddle include ‘night’, ‘gold’ and ‘wine’, but only ‘gold’ could result in the ‘garment’ being any form of textile, namely, a purse, although the purse could just as easily be made of leather.35 This riddle, has, however, been included in this paper solely on the basis of its deliberately misleading introduction, which encourages its audience to envisage a person’s clothes, before the later clues cause them to consider an alternative solution. Hasu usually means ‘grey’ but can also mean ‘grey-brown’,36 and fag indicates ‘particoloured, variegated; discoloured, stained, marked’, so the compound word suggests either a garment of various shades of grey and/or brown, or a garment stained with grey and/or brown marks. Anglo-Saxon sheep were not only white, but also brown, black

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

C. P. Biggam10

and grey,37 so particoloured garments of these colours could be produced relatively cheaply with no dyeing involved. Alternatively, the ‘discoloured’ sense of fag may be foremost in this passage. In either case, it would seem that the audience of this riddle gained a first impression of cheap clothes, or a working-garment, perhaps stained with dirty marks, and this image would have been immediately disrupted, in typical riddling fashion, by the following mention of apparently costly red and shining adornments. The third possibility is the only one which causes this reference to appear in this paper. The garment may be dyed brown to produce a sober-coloured item appropriate for church (see Sections 5.2.1 and 5.6.2). The following mention of shiny adornments would provide the same confusing contradiction as in the previous interpretation, since they are not appropriate for a religious context.

5.1.3 ((ge)scierpan; read)Much of the content of the Late Anglo-Saxon homily sometimes known as Napier XLIX, concerns those who are wealthy, encouraging them to carry out charitable work, and reminding them of the temporary nature of earthly riches. The examples given of such riches are the brightest gold, the costliest gems and clothes of the reddest fine cloth (þeah we us scyrpen mid þam readdestan godewebbe)(Scragg’s edition).38 Nine versions of this homily survive,39 and two of them40 exhibit an interesting change of wording: ‘brightest gold’ and ‘reddest fine cloth’ have been altered to ‘reddest gold’ and ‘brightest fine cloth’. Scragg suggests that certain scribes thought gold was more likely to be red than fine cloth,41 but the phrase ‘red gold’ is, of

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


course, familiar from other Anglo-Saxon texts and may have come easily to mind.42

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

42 Earl R. Anderson, “The semantic puzzle of ‘red gold’”, English Studies, 81 (2000), 1-13.43 Ibid., 10-11. 44 C. P. Biggam, “Prototypes and foci in the encoding of colour”, in Christian J. Kay and Jeremy J. Smith (eds.), Categorization in the History of English, Amsterdam Studies in the Theory and History of Linguistic Science, Series IV: Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 261, Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2004, pp. 19-40.45 Brent Berlin and Paul Kay, Basic Color Terms: their Universality and Evolution,Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969. The lack of a basic term does not preclude the use of non-basic terms, such as compound terms, or of descriptive phrases, to denote a particular hue, but, in addition, such hues can usually be denoted by an existing basic term with broader coverage than its modern equivalent.

C. P. Biggam12

‘red’.46 The presence of rubeus is a little surprising, although it could be argued that the Anglo-Saxons would have understood this word was not ruber, the basic Latin term for RED, and might, therefore, have taken it to represent a mixed colour like the others in this glossary entry. The significant point, however, is that a mixture of red with yellow, while apparently included within the boundaries of the red category, was not at the focus of that category, or a compound hue term would not have been necessary. This may suggest that the reddest red for an Anglo-Saxon was an unmixed, fully saturated, or vivid red, as it is today.

5.2 Garments, Female (Unspecified)

5.2.1 (hrægl; brun)An Old English penitential text usually known as the Confessionalepseudo-Egberti, possibly dating to the late ninth century,47 includes in its list of sins and points of guidance for the use of confessors, a statement concerning the colour of clothes (hrægl) which women must wear to Mass, as decreed by St Basil.48 The colour word used is brun.As discussed above (in Section 4.1.1), brun can gloss Latin words meaning ‘purple’ and ‘red’, but, more commonly, it means ‘brown’ or ‘dark’, and the latter pair of meanings would be more appropriate for this context. Corroboration of this view comes from the Latin text of the Penitential of Theodore, one of the sources upon which the Confessionale draws.49 It states that women may receive the host under a veil, as Basil decided, and the Latin colour word used of the veil is niger, meaning ‘black’ or ‘dark’.50 It is debatable whether an

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


Anglo-Saxon reader who was not familiar with the Latin version, would interpret brun in this context as ‘brown’ or as ‘dark’ (of any hue).

5.3 Garments, Royal

5.3.1 (godwebb; tirisc)In Bede’s metrical Vita Sancti Cuthberti, he relates how, after the death of King Ecgfrith of Northumbria (685 A.D.), Aldfrith returned from his studies under Irish scholars to become the next king.51 Bede’s phrase for Aldfrith’s royal state is Tyrio …in ostro, and this has been glossed in Old English as in tiriscum godwebbe.52 The place-name refers to Tyre, now in Lebanon, and a location once famous for the production of so-called ‘Tyrian Purple’ (Latin purpura), a dye extracted from three types of whelk.53 Bede seems to be clearly echoing the Roman phrase for the accession of a new Emperor, namely, ‘taking the purple’, so it is possible that the phrase was not to be taken literally. The following discussion, however, presumes there was a real tirisc royal garment. The Old English glossator translated ostrum ‘purple garment’ (in this context) as godwebb ‘fine clothes’. Owen-Crocker defines godwebb as ‘something made of precious cloth, frequently purple, normally of silk; probably shot-silk taffeta’.54 Since the Old English phrase means something like ‘in Tyrian fine clothes’, the exact force of the qualifier, tirisc, is difficult to assess. It could simply mean that the fabric of the royal garment was believed to have come from the

III, 1871, 196; John T. McNeill and Helena M. Gamer, Medieval Handbooks of Penance: a Translation of the Principal libri poenitentiales and Selections from Related Documents, Records of Civilization: Sources and Studies 29, New York: Columbia University Press, 1938, p. 205. 51 Werner Jaager [ed.], Bedas metrische Vita sancti Cuthberti, Palaestra 198, Leipzig: Mayer & Müller, 1935, p. 99. 52 Herbert Dean Meritt, Old English Glosses (a Collection), The Modern Language Association of America: General Series 16, New York: Modern Language Association of America, and London: Oxford University Press, 1945, p. 17. 53 John Peter Wild, “The Eastern Mediterranean, 323 BC – AD 350”, in David Jenkins (ed.), The Cambridge History of Western Textiles, 2 vols., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, I, 102-17, 115-16. 54 Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Dress in Anglo-Saxon England, revised and enlarged ed., Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2004, p. 334.

C. P. Biggam14

Levant, but the fame of Tyrian dye makes it more likely that it combines semantic features concerned with the high quality and colour of that dye. The final hue resulting from dyeing with Tyrian Purple varied, as has been mentioned already (see Section 4.1.1), according to the particular species of whelk used, whether and how their dyes were mixed, and how long the dyed cloth was exposed to the light when drying.55 The colours most usually associated with this process are those that were the most highly prized in the Classical world, namely, violet, purple, crimson and scarlet, and this range, or part of it, may have been included in the semantics of OE tirisc.

5.4 Garments, Monastic (Inappropriate)

5.4.1 (brunbasu)The scholar Aldhelm wrote both a prose and a metrical Latin text in praise of virginity, and presented the prose version to the nuns of Barking. He makes very clear his disapproval of those nuns who wear colourful and ornamented clothes, describing certain fine garments as ‘coloured with precious dyes of purple tincture’.56 Aldhelm uses the Latin phrase purpureae tincturae,57 and purpureus has been glossed with OE brunbasu.58 Basu ‘purple, red, crimson’ is especially associated with vivid and deep (i.e. darkened vivid) varieties of these hues, occurring in much-admired contexts such as phoenix feathers, illuminated manuscript letters, luxury fabric, and gem-stones. The DOE defines the compound term, brunbasu, as ‘dark purple, purple; red-purple, scarlet’. I have suggested (in footnote 8) that the sense of ‘scarlet’ is the least likely, since the force of brun- in the compound term is probably to add darkness, just as the blue element in the colour purple is seen to have a darkening effect on the red element. It seems, therefore, that purple, violet,59 and possibly crimson,60 are the most likely colours of the garments disapproved of by Aldhelm.

55 Wolfgang Born, “Purple in classical antiquity”, Ciba Review, 4 (Dec. 1937), 111-17, 112-13. 56 Michael Lapidge and Michael Herren (trans.), Aldhelm: The Prose Works, Ipswich and Totowa, NJ: Brewer, 1979, p. 124. 57 Ehwald , op. cit., p. 314. 58 Goossens, op. cit., p. 468; Napier (1900), op. cit., p. 130. 59 By violet, I mean a mixture of red and blue in which blue is perceived as dominant.


5.5 Copes and Chasubles

5.5.1 (mæssehacele; grene)The Visio Leofrici is a short text which recounts several vision experiences of the pious Leofric, Earl of Mercia (died 1057). On one occasion, Leofric was praying in Christ Church, Canterbury when he saw himself standing in the middle of the floor, with arms outstretched, and dressed for taking Mass, including a green (grene)cope or chasuble (mæssehacele). The garment is described as brightly shining (beorhte scinende) but this may be a feature of the vision rather than a realistic depiction of a fabric he had seen.61

5.5.2 (mæssehacele; brun)A writ of Edwin, a monk of New Minster, Winchester includes details of an agreement between the Old and New Minsters in the town. The text is not authentic in its present, probably late twelfth-century form, but Keynes believes it “incorporates some convincingly circumstantial information”.62 The writ purports to date from 1031-1032, since it claims to have been written when Ælfwine was abbot of New Minster (1031-1057) and Ælfsige was bishop of Winchester (1012 x 1013-1032), and it refers to an earlier agreement which it claims took place while Æthelwold was Bishop of Winchester (963-84). This agreement is said to have been ratified by Bishop Æthelwold’s gift of a bruncope or chasuble (mæssehacele) to each monastery. Harmer translates this colour as ‘brown’.63 This is a rather sombre colour for a prestigious, and intentionally impressive garment, so it may be that its

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

C. P. Biggam16

common alternative meaning of ‘dark’ should be understood here, perhaps indicating a colour similar to violet or crimson.

5.5.3 (mæssehacele; geolu)The will of Bishop Theodred of London and Suffolk (died c.952) survives in a much later manuscript, and it includes four copes or chasubles (singular: mæssehacele).64 Theodred bequeaths a geolu‘yellow’ mæssehacele, which he bought in Pavia, to Odgar. Pavia, in Lombardy, sold Byzantine silks, and was well-known to Anglo-Saxon merchants,65 but there is no information on the fabric of Theodred’s garment. He leaves another yellow (geolu) mæssehacele to Gundwine, and this garment is further described as ungerenod ‘unornamented’.

5.5.4 (mæssehacele; read)Bishop Theodred (see Section 5.5.3. above) also mentions a read ‘red’ mæssehacele, and this sentence contains an unfamiliar word (spracacke) which has been interpreted as the name of a beneficiary. Whitelock, however, finds no similar name in any Germanic language, and prefers to consider the passage corrupt.66

Theodred’s position in the Church, and his ability to buy items in Pavia, suggest that his vestments are of the highest quality, but it may not be so in all cases. The four bequests involving these garments appear to be listed in descending order of value: thus another Theodred receives a white mæssehacele from Pavia (not discussed here), a chalice and a massbook; Odgar receives a yellow mæssehacele from Pavia; Gundwine receives an unornamented yellow mæssehacele, and, finally, the red mæssehacele is mentioned. It is noteworthy that the last garment is probably not in the admired colours of purple, scarlet, violet or crimson, since, if that were the case, I would expect a more specific colour term, such as basu or brunbasu. Read, the basic term for RED, seems to constitute an unenthusiastic description which may indicate the use of a locally-obtained fabric and dye, in contrast with luxury goods from southern Europe.

64 Dorothy Whitelock (ed.), Anglo-Saxon Wills, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1930, p. 4. 65 Dodwell, op. cit., pp. 149-52. 66 Whitelock, op. cit., pp. 4, 103.


5.6 Dresses

Modern English dress is used here to indicate ‘a one-piece garment for a woman or girl that covers the body and extends down over the legs’.67 The Old English garment terms appearing in this section are cyrtel and tunece. Old English cyrtel probably originated as a word for a short garment (OE *(ge)cyrtan ‘to cut off, shorten’) and it is certainly used of a man’s short tunic, but Owen-Crocker identifies it with the long, and sleeved woman’s dress seen in manuscript illustrations, and suggests that the semantics of the word had extended to include this long dress, worn by secular women on most occasions.68 I have avoided the use of ModE gown as the COD defines it as a dress for formal occasions only. Old English tunece, as a woman’s garment, occurs very rarely. Owen describes it as similar to a cyrtel, but she presents evidence that suggests it had religious associations and was, therefore, likely to be dull and/or dark in colour.69 As a woman’s garment, the Modern English definition of OE tunece is not tunic since that cannot be longer than the knee (COD).

5.6.1 (cyrtel; blæwen)Æthelgifu was a late tenth-century Englishwoman of considerable wealth. Her will survives, dated to 980-90, and, in it, she disposes of large estates, gold, slaves, horses and garments. She leaves to Beornwynn her dark blue (blæwen) dress (cyrtel) which is untrimmed at the bottom (neaþene unrenod).70 Whitelock translates blæwen as ‘blue’, but I have suggested there is sufficient evidence to prefer ‘dark blue’.71

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