Dansk Revisited

In my blog of 12 April 2016 A Danish Chest? Evidence from the Essex Wills, I discussed the likely meaning of the epithet Dansk,  applied to chests in early modern wills and inventories. The material below, taken from correspondence donated to the OED project by the editor of the Essex Wills, F. G. Emmison, shows the latter conducting enquiries into the likely meaning of the word back in 1975.

 

The letters.

1. 

The British Library
29th April 1975

Dear Mr. Emmison,

Dr. Wallis has passed your letter of 21st April 1975 to me for attention.

Although it might be helpful to see it in context, I have no doubt that at the time the letter was written “in Danske” refers to Denmark. I base this on the following:—

(i) In Hamlet, Act II, Scene 1 Polonius says to Reynaldo, “Inquire me first what Danskers are in Paris.” The edition of the play by H. H. Furness refers to Danske meaning Denmark; this usage also occurs often in William Warner Albion’s England (complete edition, 1612).

(ii) The Oxford English Dictionary gives several examples circa 1600 in which Dansk stands for Danish, including the one in Hamlet. Hence a Dansker means a Dane.

I am afraid there has not been time to look into the historical forms of the place-name, but it seems probable that as it was a Hansa town the German form would have been preferred. There is not much mid-sixteenth century cartography that is really useful. Ortelius Theatrum (1570) gives greater prominence to the Polish form and adds the German below it: Gedanum / Dantzick. Mercator (1595) gives the German only.

Yours sincerely,

E. J. Huddy

2.

Victoria and Albert Museum
1 May 1975

Dear Mr. Emmison,

I am delighted to know that you are pressing on with the publication of the Elizabethan Wills. I have long been an ardent admirer of your work and look forward to the publication of your Volume 3. I am afraid I can say nothing at all helpful about the term ‘ship chest’, but I do know something about ‘Danske chests’ which came, not from Denmark, but from Danzig (Gdansk in Polish). I wrote a little article about the latter, of which I am able to send you a copy. I am only too aware that it is inconclusive but I believe it sums up our knowledge as it stands at present. I am wondering whether the ship chests might be a verison of the cypress chests, some of which were embellished with galleons in full sail of with Venetian galleys. The patterns used for their decoration were somewhat standard and it may be that a version decorated with ships was favoured in this country. I do not know and maybe this is an over-fanciful guess.

Might I beg you to return the offprint when you have finished with it as I seem to have no other copy.

Yours sincerely,

Peter Thornton
Keeper
Department of Furniture

3.

5 May 1975

Dear Mr Huddy,

I am most grateful for your letter [ref] of 29 April.

Strangely enough, by the same post, I put a query to the Dept. of Furniture, V & A Museum, as to the meaning of a “ship chest”, which occurs frequently in Elizabethan wills but is not defined in O.E.D. I enclose the kind answer, which puts me in a quandary about the port from which my letter was written—“From Dansk”. Oh dear, Mr Huddy, what shall I do?! If, at your leisure (because the book does not go to the printer for another month) you can find this spelling in any English edition of a European atlas of late 16th century I should be most obliged for a further note. I enclose a xerox of the V & A letter.

Yours sincerely

F. G. Emmison

4.

5 May 1975

Dear Mr Thornton

It is extremely good of you to have written with such helpful information in your letter of 1 May. Thank you also for your encouraging remarks: Vo. 3 will be published about April 1976.

Strangely enough, by the same post, I asked Dr Helen Wallis, Supt. of the British Museuk Map Room and an old friend, about the identification of the port from which a letter was written back to England from an Essex sailor who was sick there. It ends “From Danske”. The reply, though a little guarded, plumped for Denmark, not Dansk, relying chiefly on O.E.D., which I own and had used, but ‘Dansk’ in the Dict. merely refers to the adjective, which is much better known.

I am most grateful for the temporary loan of your only remaining offprint, which I will return shortly after reading what looks like a stimulating article.

Yours sincerely

F. G. Emmison

5.

The British Library
13th May 1975

Dear Mr. Emmison,

Thank you for your letter of 5th May 1975.

I am very interested indeed to read Mr. Thornton's remarks about “Danske chests”, and I must confess it shakes my earlier conviction about the explanation of the place name in your original enquiry. Unfortunately Mr. Thornton's article is not available here at present. Clearly more information is required about the Elizabeth [sic] customs in respect of Baltic place names, but the problem seems less likely to be solved in the printed maps available here. The atlases and maps printed about 1565 were European and these appear to have used the German form “Dantzick” or the Latin “Gedanum”. The only English edition of Ortelius’s Theatrum was published in 1606.

So I should suggest that other examples must be found, possibly in the state papers and in the records of trade with the Baltic countries. I will certainly let you know if anything useful turns up.

Yours sincerely,

E. J. Huddy

6.

The British Library
16th May 1975

Dear Mr. Emmison,

I asked a colleague in the Reading Room to look into your enquiry about Dansk, and the result has further weakened the case for explaining the name as Denmark. It seems that literary critics are not all in agreement either.

The references in Hakluyt are significant in the present context, I think. I am enclosing several extracts. Danske in these examples tends to confirm Mr. Thornton's thesis, but those Elizabethan merchants trading in the Baltic perhaps used the Polish or German forms according to personal preference.

The sixteenth century printed maps used the German form, but I have found an interesting hybrid, DANTZK, on Blaeu's maps of Poland and Prussia in the Theatre du monde (Amsterdam, 1635).

As for Polonius, he did get a bit confused sometimes; and the comment on Danskers, “Right or wrong, the result is very pleasing to British ears…” puts the case for poetic licence nicely.

Yours sincerely,

E. J. Huddy

7.

1 June1975

Dear Mr Huddy,

Danske

I very much appreciate your kindness in giving me further information in your letter of 13 May.

The problem remains, so I must be cautious in the identification.

Yours sincerely

F. G. Emmison


8.

The British Library

5 June 1975

Dear Mr Emmison,

Thank you for your letter of 1 June in reply to mine of 13 May. I am wondering whether you received my letter of 16 May also, with the enclosures. I should be very interested to know your opinion regarding the references in Hakluyt as these probably represent contemporary usage. I doubt whether the argument in “Notes and queries” covers sufficient evidence; and it would follow that the O.E.D.'s definition is not adequate.

Yours sincerely,

E. J. Huddy

The photocopies 

[the headings to nos. 5 and 6 were accidentally exchanged]

1. Richard Hakluyt The Voyages, Vol. II (ed. MacLehose, Glasgow 1903)

p. 396

A letter of Thomas Alcocke to the worshipfull Richard Gray, and Henrie Lane Agents in Moscouia from Tirwill in Polonia, written in Tirwill the 26. of Aprill 1558.
My duety premised unto your worships, with commendations &c. It may please you to be advertised, yt my last I sent from Smolensco, which I trust you haue receiued wt other letters to diuers of our English men, wherein I certified you of my long retayning there, as also of my departure from thence, and howe that I had hired a Totar to bring mee to Danske. We came to a certaine village on Satterday the sixe and twentieth of Februarie, and there remained that night and Sunday to refresh our horses, intending to haue gone away on Munday earely.

2. Richard Hakluyt The Voyages, Index (ed. MacLehose, Glasgow 1905)

p. 204/2

Danske, cable market at (1557) II. 382; Leonard Brian at, 387; wax market at, 389; Thomas Alcock at 396–399; and the Narva navigation, 485
Dantiske, Robert Elson at (1555) II. 296.

p. 205/1

Danzig, II. 8; Wolstan’s voyage to, I. 15; or Gdanum, II. 10; English merchants and goods seized in, 15–18; mercantile differences settled in, 22; ships of, despoiled by Hanse merchants, 70; Sir Jerome Horsey at (1584), III. 345; burgomaster of, and William Harborne (1588) VI. 58; customs in, 59; hulk with Spanish goods, captured by the English (1589) VI. 510.

3. Louis Zettersten, ‘Danskers in “Hamlet”.’ in Notes and Queries 6 February, 1926

p. 99/1

[States that according to Dr. Gosta Langenfelt, Shakespeare's "dansker" is the medieval name of Danzig; Shakespeare meant Danes but got hold of the wrong word.]

4. G. A. Gibbs,  ‘Danskers in “Hamlet”.’ in Notes and Queries 27 February, 1926

p. 157/2–158/2

[Aims to rebut the preceding. Points to Jamieson, Scottish Dictionary: Danskeine. Danskene, s. Denmark.]

5. Nares, Glossary of words…in Shakespeare (1905)

pp. 224/2–225/1

DANSKE, Denmark; and DANSKERS, Danes.

By chance one Curan, son unto
A prince in Danske, did see 

The maid, with whom he fell in love, 

As much as man might be.

Reliques of Anc. Engl. Poetry, 240.


Them at the last on Dansk their lingring fortunes drave,
Where Holst unto their troops sufficient harbour gave.

 
Drayt. Polyolb., xi, p. 864.



Enquire me first what Danskers are in Paris, 

And how, and who, what means, and where they keep, 

What company, at what expence.

Haml., ii, 1.

The author of the Glossary to Lyndsay considers this as an erroneous interpretation, and says that it means Dantzickers; but, if he had looked at the context, he would have seen that Polonius's speech would have been nonsense with that interpretation; for how were they to find out Hamlet by inquiring for Dantzickers? Also Danish:

It is the king of Denmark doth your prince his daughter crave,
And note, it is no little thing with us allie to have;

By league or leigure, Danske can fence or front you,
friend or foe.

Alb. Engl., iii, 16, p. 70.

So that he makes a noise when he’s on horseback,

Like a Danske drummer. O, ’tis excellent.

White Devil, O. Pl, vi, 264.

In that work, indeed, it is printed Dantzic, by mistake, or by way of correction to the text; but the true reading is Danske, as indeed the metre shows it should be.

6. Jamieson Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language, Vol. 2 (1880)

p. 14/2

DANSKEINE, DANSKENE, s. Denmark.

“At this feild the erle of Bothuell fled away with all hes company, and passed out of Scotland to Danskeine, where he deceissit miserablie.” Marioreybanks’ Annals, p. 19.

Formed, perhaps, without sufficient reason, by mariners, from the name which an inhabitant of that country takes to himself, Danske.

It is used, however, by Skene.

“The merchandis vsis to pay fraucht for their guds to Flanders be the sek [sack], to France, Spayne, and England be the tun: and to Danskene, and the Easter Seas, be the serplath.” De Verb. Sign. vo. Serplaith.

Archdeacon Nares has satisfactorily proved that Mr. Chalmers, in the Gl. to Lyndsay, has given “an erroneous interpretation” of the term Danskers, as used by Shakspeare, as if it meant Dantzickers; adding; “If he had looked at the context, he would have seen that Polonius’s speech would have been nonsense with that interpretation, for how were they to find out Hamlet by inquiring for Dantzicker’s?” After all, Mr. Chalmers, who is never at a loss to prove what he has once imagined, may be able to shew that Danskeine, mentioned above as the place to which Bothwell fled, was no other than Dantzic.

7. Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue, Volume 2.

p. 11/1–2

[Two entries are relevant: a small entry, ‘Dansk, n….= DANSKIN a.’, with one 1681 quotation, and a much larger one, ‘Danskin, -ene, a. and n…. f. Polish Gdansk Danzig, with adjectival ending…1. adj. Connected with, made in, bought from Dantzig.’ There follows a list of the nouns with which it is used, including kist, and quotations from 1492 onwards. Examples with kist: ‘Ane Danskin kist with ane sey kist; 1596 Fraser P. 228; Ane Danskyne kist in the nether chamber; 1630 Bamff Chart. 223; My meikill trunk or schyryn kist, being ane Danskein kist; 1627 Edinb. Test. LIV. 106’. ‘2. n. The town of Dantzig’, with examples from the 15th to the early 17th century.

Tree, leaf, and a few niggles

Walter S. Judd & Graham A. Judd Flora of Middle-earth Oxford University Press 2017

ISBN 9780190276317

This book is a labour of love. The authors evidently love both plants and the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, which is a great recommendation. Tolkien, of course, loved plants and knew a great deal about them, whereas most of us readers of his works do not, and thereby miss an important part of the richness of his narratives. Hence this book.

There are books that dig into the mythical or linguistic depths of Tolkien, and have the effect of sending you forth from him to discover subjects which, but for him, you would otherwise not know. This is such a book, but in the realm of plants. It should enable anyone whose interest in plants is sparked by their reading of Tolkien to immerse themselves deeply—as deeply as they wish—in the details of plant families, morphology, ecology, or human uses of plants.

Some aspects of the book are slightly eccentric. There are several tangential or incidental items included, such as barley, which happens to be mentioned in the context of beer, but doesn’t really feature in the stories, unlike, say larches. Or apples, which we all know well, and earn a place because Sam happens to chew one. There are numerous speculative articles about plants which aren’t clearly identified (the ones on roots and unnamed hollylike tree are interesting) and those which we know are inventions, such as mallorn, niphredil, seregon, and even the White Tree of Gondor (does this strictly belong to a species?). It’s quite fun that their possible affiliation is speculated on, but perhaps it would have been a good idea to group them into a separate section. There is generally a rather odd grouping of the subjects. No distinction is made between terms actually used by Tolkien, such as linden or nasturtian, and terms inferred from the narrative, such as Cyanobacteria, blue-green bacteria (for the ‘scum’ on the Dead Marshes). Then there are ragbag sections ‘Food plants of Middle-earth’, ‘Hobbit names’ (which are only personal names based on plants), etc. At times one feels that the barrel is being scraped. It might have been better to split the book into word studies covering items actually featuring in the text and an essay, or several essays, dealing with these more amorphous topics.

There is huge botanical erudition in this book. There’s a wealth of artwork, in a style that will appeal to some more than others: not all the scenes depicted correspond accurately to the narratives they pertain to. And there are several maps that I find iffy.

The Tolkien knowledge is all that one would expect from attentive, devoted students of his works. But I’d say that there are gaps in the authors’ acquaintance with Tolkien scholarship, which shows up to their disadvantage. To declare a personal interest in this regard: there are no references to Gilliver, Marshall, and Weiner, The Ring of Words, which is not listed in the book’s bibliography, even though we are fellow OUP authors, and we discuss such plant names as Quickbeam.

I was delighted to find etymologies for all the terms: though of course an etymology of an item inferred from the narrative, like Cyanobacteria, is not really contributing to our understanding of Tolkien in the way that that of Quickbeam does. The etymologies are all derived from sources easily accessible on the web and don’t, on the whole, contribute anything new.

There are more than a respectable book’s fair share of typos, over which I will draw a veil; perhaps they will be corrected in a reprint. My feeling is that this is perhaps not a first-rank work of Tolkien scholarship, but it is an absorbing, informative, and useful handbook.

Pagan Anglo-Saxons, Phonology, and Christian lexis 11

Miscellaneous speculative matters appended to the foregoing posts.

In the preceding ten posts I put forward the following theory:

In southern Britain in the fifth century there was a significant Latin-speaking Christian British population. This is evidenced by pre-550 Latin loanwords in Old English and in particular by Christian terminology. The loanwords are most likely to be due to this population adopting Old English as their first language. This may be why there is also an important group of religious terms coined in Old English rather than borrowed from Latin. And it also explains why there are virtually no British loanwords in Old English.

1. hlaford and hlæfdige

Assuming that these two compounds were formed at the same time, or at least that hlaford is unlikely to be more recent than hlæfdige, we can tell that they must be very old formations within Old English. Hlæfdige shows i-umlaut, which makes it pretty early if this umlaut is to be dated in the first quarter of the 6th century. But to have qualified for umlaut, the word needs to have undergone accelerated sound changes beforehand. Practically no lexical compounds exist in Old English in which a second element containing /i/ has been sufficiently reduced in stress or prominence to cause i-umlaut in the vowel of the first element (Campbell §204 (2)). There are apparently a few proper names and a bunch of grammatical or semi-grammatical adjectives and adverbs in which this has occurred. The nearest parallels to hlæfdige are endlufon (< *aːnliv-, undoubtedly a Germanic compound) and enwintre (< *aːn-wintr-; early enough for /æː/ to be shortened to /æ/) (both share in the raising of /æ/ from i-umlaut before nasals). So in hlæfdige the second element must have been worn down and been brought into direct contact with the root syllable of the first very early indeed. So early is the compound that the second element went out of use before written records began (compare the first element of weofod).

Similarly *hlaf-weard, the putative original compound underlying hlaford, is scarcely recorded, unlike other weard compounds (there is one occurrence, in the Paris Psalter: which may be an etymologizing guess, or even a re-coinage of the compound). It was already in its worn-down form before written records.

What is most likely to have caused this more rapid phonological attrition in both words is, one might surmise, vocative use. The words must have been in frequent everyday use from very early times. They were the everyday words for ‘lord’ and ‘lady’ in contrast to those we find in poetic diction, frea, drihten, and so on.

On the other hand, we know that ‘early’ doesn’t mean West Germanic. There is no trace of these words in the related languages, not even Frisian. So the formations occurred at a time when the OE speech community was no longer in contact with its close Continental relatives, most likely in the early stages of settling in Britain.

If these were the everyday words for the people in authority, what kind of society would have coined them? One where the people in authority were the guardian or master of bread and the kneader or baker of bread. These express agriculture-related rather than military-related roles. They also suggest a society in which raising corn is the key activity rather than herding animals.

One other compound of hlaf may be relevant here: Lammas. OED: ‘The 1st of August (Festum Sancti Petri ad Vincula in the Roman calendar; see also gule n.2), in the early English church observed as a harvest festival, at which loaves of bread were consecrated, made from the first ripe corn.’ There seems to be no connection between this festival and the synchronous Roman church festival of St Peter ad Vincula. No other nation has this festival of the wheat harvest. It seems to spring from a society in which celebrating the harvest of wheat is especially and particularly important.

These speakers of Old English also relegated to relative unimportance the widespread lord and lady terms of the cognate languages: German Herr (OHG herro) has the Old English poetic counterpart hearra; German Frau (OHG vrouwe) has the rare Old English poetic counterpart freo. At some point, dryhten came to great prominence not only as a secular term but also in Christian discourse. I find it tempting to associate this term with the more militaristic societies that arose in the sixth century. Lord and lady, however, were never displaced.

2. Possible substrate influence of the putative late Latin dialect on Primitive Old English.

The loanwords in which Old English has a palatalized (or affricative) consonant are also those in which Romance languages have a palatalized consonant in the same position. No other Germanic language with palatalization has it as early as this (perhaps circa 500 or earlier). Primitive Old English palatalization must be a post-settlement development, since it affects British place names (caito- > /kɛːd/ > ched, chet, etc., Archenfield, the River Churn, etc.). In West Germanic, only Frisian also has palatalization. How palatalization arose in Frisian is unclear to me (given the dating of the insular version, I don’t quite see how the two phenomena can go back to continental Anglo-Frisian). One could assume that palatalization was brought to Frisia by speakers of Primitive Old English returning to the continent, perhaps during the fifth-century settlement lull. But I am not competent to pronounce on any aspect of Frisian.

It seems a reasonable suggestion that palatalization in primitive Old English was a substrate influence from late Latin, carried over by Latin speakers of the south-east when they shifted to speaking primitive Old English in the fifth century, and subsequently spread to dialects of Old English outside the south-east.

This might offer an alternative explanation for the restricted incidence of palatalized consonants in northern and east midland dialects of Middle English. The received theory, by which Old Scandinavian, which lacked palatal consonants, caused Old English palatal consonants to be replaced by velars, seems shaky for several reasons. 

(1) By the time of the Scandinavian settlement (late 9th century) palatalization should have been established in Old English for 200-300 years. One would have expected affrication to have happened, i.e. palatalized /k/ and /g/ to have developed by then into the full affricates /ʧ/ and /ʤ/ and /sk/ at least into /sʧ/, if not into the fricative /∫/. One can envisage slightly palatalized velars being shifted back to fully velar articulation, but not consonants with alveolo-palatal articulation, which are more likely to be identified by non-native speakers with affricates of /s/ and /z/. 

(2) Scandinavian dialects might not yet have developed the palatals that we see in later Scandinavian, but the sequences /kj/, /gj/, and (more to the point) /tj/ and /dj/ existed and could have provided close substitutes for Old English palatal consonants, enabling those who adopted Old English speech to make the transition to the authentic English affricates. 

(3) There seems to be some evidence that words that would be expected to have shown palatalization lack it, even though they also lack Scandinavian parallels that could have ‘influenced’ the process of depalatalization.

On the theory that palatalization in Old English may have arisen from the Latin substrate, an alternative hypothesis about the restriction of palatalization can be advanced.

(1) The primary reason might be the spread of the second wave of immigration from eastern and northern areas. While, as has been suggested above, their hegemony over the whole of England brought about the diffusion of i-mutation throughout Old English, the spread of palatalized consonants, a reverse movement from the established variety of Old English into that of the later comers, may have been more limited: it was not, by this date, a living sound change; it would have been simply a substitution of one sound for another, lexeme by lexeme. 

(2) In the north of Britain there was little or no Latin substrate, and the British substrate would not have favoured the development of palatalized consonants.

If the blocking of palatalization is imagined to have occurred much earlier than the age of contact with Scandinavian settlers, i.e. from the sixth century onwards, it is easier to account for it. At this stage the palatalized consonants in lexical items spreading through Old English might well still have only been at the stage /kj/ and /gj/ (or /c/ and /ɟ/). Replacement of these by unpalatalized velars is quite explicable. The replacement of /kjir(i)kje/ by /kir(i)ke/, reflected by northern Middle English kirk(e) is straightforward.

3. At what stage did Palatal Diphthongization occur?

I suspect that there are sound reasons to question Campbell’s case arguing that palatal diphthongization occurred after consonant palatalization but before i-umlaut. It hangs virtually on the single case of the word cyse (< *ciese, in which it is supposed that æ1 would otherwise have remained unchanged through i-umlaut and been diphthongized to ea rather than ie > y). All other instances of palatal diphthongization can be equally well explained as arising after i-umlaut: e.g. /katil/ > /kjætil/ > (i-umlaut) /kjetil/ > (PD) /kjietel/ cietel is as good as (if not better than) the accepted transmission /katil/ > /kjætil/ > (PD) /kjeatil/ > (i-umlaut) /kjietel/ cietel.

But the case of words like sceað (< *skaiþi-) which require a second dose of palatal diphthongization later than i-umlaut, weighs against the argument from cyse: why not position all the PD at the same, later stage? To explain *ciese we only have to suppose that West Saxon æ1 was, like its equivalent in Anglian, originally narrower than later æ2 (i.e. /ɛː/ as against /æː/) so that following a palatal consonant it diphthongized to /iːe/, but in all other contexts, subsequently, it was lowered and merged with æ2, whereas in Anglian it was raised and merged with /eː/ (or perhaps became the raised vowel with which /eː/ of other origin merged). This does not seem inherently unlikely.

If ciepe from Latin caepa is an early insular loan (i.e. another of those later than the settlement but before i-umlaut) it would also support this argument. With replacement of intervocalic /b/ by Old English /p/, we could assume that insular Latin /kaepa/ or /kεːpa/ > */kjεːba/ > primitive Old English */kjεːpæ/ (with æ1) > */kjiεːpe/ > /kjiːepe/. This assumes that the relevant variety of late Latin kept the reflex of ae as a long vowel and distinct from the reflex of /eː/—for which I have already argued when discussing cerfille; if they had fallen together we would expect Old English */kjiːpe/ *cipe, like side.

In fact, it may be arguable that primitive Old English originally had no long close */eː/; the apparent (West) Germanic /eː/ in the small number of words like hēr, mē, etc., may be explicable in other ways, such as by lengthening of an inherited short /e/. Primitive Old English æ1 may have been the only long front vowel, which would explain how its development could be so variable between West Saxon and Anglian.

4. Failure of i-umlaut.

The form of primitive Old English which had developed among the earlier groups of settlers had no i-umlaut. This must be the case on anybody’s model. If i-umlaut was introduced from the continent by a second wave of settlers, it may not have spread consistently into all dialects. There may have been dialects that escaped it; there are quite likely to have been words and names that escaped it, which survived into literary Old English (and beyond).

There are several Latin loanwords in Old English in which a trailing /i/ or jod which would have been expected to leave a trace as the i-umlaut of the root vowel has not done so, e.g. dinor, solor, ostre, orc; and also the place names Eotol, Reculf. This is not to say that the explanation is necessarily the same in all cases.

Some of the various categories of failure listed by Campbell (§204) are unlikely to be related to this phenomenon. But names of peoples, which would be resistant to change, seem likely candidates: notably Cantware (Campbell §204 (1); his explanation ‘early syncopation’ seems the kind of argument that can be used to explain anything that doesn’t fit) as against Cent which as a place name would have been much more widely used; and Seaxe (Campbell §204 (5)), which seems a significant exponent of this failure as the name of the main people of the south and south-east.

In a future post, if I am spared, I hope to discuss the reasons why the Old English symbol y may have represented something other than a rounded high front vowel. Also perhaps some other important Christian terms in Old English.

Pagan Anglo-Saxons, Phonology, and Christian lexis 10

Pointers to the suggested pattern of settlement underlying the current theory.

Archaeology (I write as a complete non-specialist).

The archaeological evidence for the area of early settlement in the upper Thames valley begins in at least the early fifth century and comes chiefly from the Ock and Thames confluences. There is possible evidence of co-residence between  British and Anglo-Saxons at Queenford Farm, Dorchester. ‘The evidence from Dorchester for co-existence between the first Anglo-Saxon generations and the first post-Roman British ones is quite impressive.’ (Blair 1994: 6) [John Blair Anglo-Saxon Oxfordshire (1994) Chapter i. p. 6.] By the second half of the fifth century the upper Thames was quite thickly settled by people whose culture came ultimately from the coastal plain of Germany and the mouth of the Weser but whose immediate affinities were with settlers in Surrey, Essex, west Kent, and Sussex. (Dickinson 1976 415–17 cited in Blair 1994:8). The Thames was the likely route for these settlers. This in itself does not imply new waves of immigrants, though it might: it could simply point to population expansion. Towards the end of the century the dispersal of peripheral sites (up the Cherwell, Thames, Windrush, and into the Cotswolds) suggests not pioneers sent out by a military commander but either peaceful co-existence or Britons who had adopted Saxon culture (Blair 1994:9).

A more marked change seems to have occurred in the first part of the sixth century. Between 500 and 600 there was great expansion. By this time there were strong Anglian settlements on the other side of the Cotswolds from the upper Thames. During 500–550 there is evidence of much greater trading links and correspondingly more coherent communities. Place name evidence, Blair suggests, points to a more warlike culture. Eventually after 600: ‘The occupants of ‘princely’ tombs must be, in degree if not in kind, a new elite controlling new resources and aware of new horizons, acquiring theire attributes of status through Europe-wide exchange systems’ (Blair 1994:33) ‘In many cultures the appearance of planned, organised and regular structures has marked a key stage in social development; around 600 the English reached that stage.’ (Ibid.)

Härke 2011 [Heinrich Härke, 2011 ‘Anglo-Saxon Immigration and Ethnogenesis’ in Medieval Archaeology 55, 1–28] identifies three types of settlement:

1. The ‘kin group’, exemplified at Berinsfield from the late 5th to early 7th centuries, whereby Germanic immigrants and their descendants lived with native Britons in the same social unit, a large household, but did not intermarry because of a status difference between the immigrants and natives. 

2. The ‘warband’ model, exemplified by materials at Stretton-on-Fosse (Warwickshire) which suggest an influx of group of males who took control of community and married local women (a less frequent model).

3.  The ‘elite transfer’ model, whereby a small group took over a kingdom, which entailed greater native survival (especially found in the north).

He also suggests (p. 16) that acculturation, i.e. the adoption by natives of the material culture of the dominant immigrants, was a gradual process, likely to have started early. There is no 5th-century evidence for it. The materials at Wallingford suggest that it was under way by the 6th century: this was a native enclave that used Saxon dress items in the 6th century but was recognized as ‘Welsh’ in the 7th to 8th centuries.

Some kind of two-phase settlement seems to be archaeologically discernible in East Anglia. Anglo-Saxon settlement is evidenced there early, possibly from the last few years of the fourth century (cremation urn cemeteries outside Caistor by Norwich). Already by 500 there was substantial occupation in the Norwich area, north and west Norfolk, Breckland, and the fenland margins. Then there are new arrivals in the Ipswich area in the early sixth century; there is a theory that they were from Scandinavia; they controlled East Anglia by 550. Rædwald’s reign traditionally began in 590, and he was described as overlord of southern England till 624/5. Rhineland products began to arrive after 600 evidencing North Sea trade.

Dr Caitlin R. Green writes on her website Arthuriana (referenced 22 Feb. 2016):

There is now a significant body of evidence to suggest that the former Late Roman provincial capital of Lincoln retained its centrality into the post-Roman period, becoming the focus of a British polity known as *Lindes. This polity was eventually taken over by the Anglo-Saxon immigrants to this region to become the seventh-century kingdom of Lindissi (a name that derives from *Lindes), but as a British political territory it probably survived right the way through the fifth century and at least some way into the sixth. There is, for example, a remarkable quantity of British high-status metalwork of the fifth and sixth centuries now known from Lincolnshire, and the old Roman forum at Lincoln looks to have been used as the site for a British Christian church during the fifth and sixth centuries. Most importantly, this fifth- to sixth-century British polity appears to have been able to control the Anglo-Saxon immigrants who arrived in its territory, with this control only seeming to break down after the early sixth century.

(http://www.arthuriana.co.uk/historical.htm)

So, on the one hand, there is evidence of early settlement in most of the areas where later kingdoms emerged: 5th century or earlier in upper Thames valley; early 5th century at Mucking, etc. in Essex; 5th century between the Ouse and Cuckmere in Sussex; 450 in East Anglia around Caistor/Venta Icenorum; 5th century in Lindsey; 450 in Deira in East Yorkshire (as opposed to ?6th century in Bernicia); ?5th century in Mercia in the Trent Valley. On the other hand, the era of organized polities with traditional ruler-names (implying some kind of warrior elite), and the heightened trade contacts on which these would partly depend, seems to begin at the end of the fifth or beginning of the sixth centuries.

Written materials

If we turn to the Old English historical sources, with the possible exception of Kent they all point to the sixth century for the beginnings of a new kind of organized polity. In Wessex, Cerdic (with Celtic name), rules as king of the Gewisse, i.e. probably the upper Thames valley (not Hampshire as in the Chronicle legend legitimizing the later West Saxon heartland), 519–534, seemingly founding a princely dynasty continued by Cynric 534–560, and Ceawlin 560–591. Essex is supposed to emerge as a kingdom under Æscwine or Erkenwine (c527–c587), a semi-legendary settler from ‘Old Saxony’. In Sussex, Ælle (477–514) is supposed by the Chronicle to be king and first Bretwalda; his successor Cissa is only a co-ruler in 491 and king in 514 (d. 567); after which there is a gap till Æthelwealh, floruit c660–c685. In East Anglia there are three shadowy kings Wehha, Wuffa, and Tytila, the latter assigned to the 570s, before the emergence of the great Rædwald (c616–c627). Ælla of Deira appears in 559/560 with just the patronymic Yffing. Ida (547–559) is preceded in Bernicia by the little-known Esa (c500) and Eoppa (c520). Icel, the founder of the Mercian dynasty, led his people, according to tradition,  from Angel to Britain at some point from c515 or c527. He is followed by shadowy figures Cnebba and Cynewald. His great grandson Creoda (c584–c593), may have founded the royal fortress at Tamworth. In Kent, Hengest, Horsa, and Oisc are of course very early, but it is dubious whether they really imply the establishment of a fully fledged kingdom; this may be more securely suggested by their successors Octa 512/516–534/540, Eormenric, and the well-attested Æthelberht I (?560/?565–616/618). Eastern Kent seems in fact the only area that (a) was settled early, (b) had a tradition of early noble, warrior leaders, and (c) was well connected with the continent.

None of this dating is very secure, but if it can be accepted in very general terms it does seem to point to the rise (and in some cases, the arrival) of ‘aristocratic’ warrior elites, and rulers looking to continental models of kingship, in about the second decade of the sixth century. (Is it significant that the early names are all of the form root + -a or –e, and that the conventional two-element names appear only from the mid sixth century onwards?)

Looking at literary sources, the narratives in Beowulf constitute a brief and allusive summary of a number of the semi-legendary histories of the heroic or migration period (call it whichever you like). Scholars have assigned a rough chronological framework to the kings and heroes celebrated in these histories. The time span is roughly from the mid fourth to the early sixth century. Ermanaric, whose death is recorded as 376, and Offa of Angel, also fourth century, come at the beginning of the period, before the Germanic peoples had entered the Roman Empire in force. Hrothulf, the equivalent of Hrolf Kraki, and the contemporary kings of Sweden, come at the end. The fall of Hygelac, almost certainly recorded by several historians including Gregory of Tours as circa 520-530, and quite possibly the associated fall of the Geatish kingdom, come near the end. The more mythical 50-year reign of Beowulf (though he himself was not necessarily completely so) is fitted in to a fictional time slot after that.

Now these stories could not have been encapsulated in song until after the events, obviously; so as a body of legend and heroic song they date at earliest from the early sixth century or perhaps the mid sixth century. They may have been brought to Britain at any time between then and the composition of Beowulf itself, which may have been any time between 700 and 1000. But many of the same stories are reflected in the catalogue-like poem Widsith, which we have no reason to believe has any direct textual connection with Beowulf. It seems more than coincidental that two of the stories given extended mention in Widsith are the prowess of Offa of Angle and the Hrothgar-Hrothulf-Ingeld debacle. We know that the Ingeld story was popular in England from Aldhelm’s Quid Hinieldus cum Christo? And this story, like the downfall of Hygelac, belongs near the end of the chronological period covered by the heroic legends.

So it seems that there was probably a package of stories, culminating in the Dane/Heathobard conflict, forming a native tradition. The ‘warrior’ society which passed the legends down were the people who brought them to Britain. But as the stories could only have come together in the early sixth century they are most likely to have been brought here in or after the early sixth century, rather than by anyone who settled here before about 525.

Chambers’s views support this: ‘We must conclude then that all this Scandinavian tradition probably spread to the Angles whilst they were still in their old continental home, was brought across to England by the settlers in the sixth century, was handed on by English bards from generation to generation, till the poem of Beowulf as we know it was formed in England’ (Chambers 1963:101) [R. W. Chambers, Beowulf, 3rd edn. with Supplement by C. L. Wrenn, Cambridge, 1963, Part I, Chapter iii, p. 101]. And again, ‘It is noteworthy that, whereas there is full knowledge shown in our poem of those events which took place in Scandinavian lands during the whole period from about 450 to 530—the period during which hordes of Angles, Saxons and Jutes were landing in Britain—there is no reference, not even by way of casual allusion, to any continental events which we can date with certainty as subsequent to the arrival of the latest settlers from the continent. Surely this is strong evidence that these tales were brought over by some of the last of the invaders, not carried to England by some casual traveller a century or two later.’ (Chambers 1963: 104) [R. W. Chambers, Beowulf, 3rd edn. with Supplement by C. L. Wrenn, Cambridge, 1963, Part I, Chapter iii, p. 104].

It is notable that the heroic legends of the English people do not concern England. They are all based on the Continent. In other words, the Anglo-Saxons’ heroic age took place on the Continent. Moreover, the centre of that heroic age seems to have been southern Scandinavia, not Germania. Of course they clearly knew about the peoples who settled in Gaul, but the centre of gravity seems to be further north. The oldest legend which seems to be about themselves is the story of the first Offa, centring on the River Eider in Schleswig-Holstein.

The evidence of early settlement is found in existence before 500 in all the areas that were later to become the nucleus or a part of future kingdoms, apart perhaps from (Deira and) Bernicia, but the people who formed these settlements were not the purveyors of heroic legend. Most of the events were only then happening and had not yet been elevated to the status of poetic legend. These settlers were not organized as kingdoms or proto-kingdoms and there is no real reason to think of them as independently organized at all, except perhaps in very local groups in Kent, Sussex, and perhaps the upper Thames valley. They were just settlers. They may have been settled among or in close proximity to British inhabitants, as seems possible at Dorchester from the archaeology, and in places like Deira and Lindsey, judging from the persistence of the British district name.