Pagan Anglo-Saxons, Phonology, and Christian lexis 1

In this series of posts I will put forward the following set of ideas. They are not entirely new or original, but I think that there is a strong philological case to support them.

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. Christian lexis and pagan Anglo-Saxons.

It is generally agreed that the Germanic settlers of Britain from the fourth century to the sixth century were pagan. We can only infer what beliefs they had from the scraps of information to be gleaned from archaeology, place names, and earlier and later, but not contemporary, written sources. Obviously they had the common Germanic word god, though its original scope cannot be clearly discerned owing to its adaptation to Christian use (how did it relate to os, for example?). And the same problem applies to other linguistically Germanic religious terms which exist in the records as Christian in character, and may or may not derive from earlier pagan use. Since we are looking back at these through Christian spectacles, we can only state with certainty that they are Christian terms and we cannot assume a priori that any of them were in use, by pagans, before the Conversion period.

It is also a fairly safe assumption that communities of different faiths, when not in close everyday contact with each other, have very limited knowledge of, or indeed interest in, each other’s belief systems. Historically, a Christian community is likely to have an image of the beliefs of a non-Christian community, though this image may well be merely a stereotyped picture derived from Old Testament stories of idolatry and theological concepts of heresy. But even a Christian community coexisting in acknowledged tension with another faith community does not necessarily display great awareness of the real features of that faith, and in particular of its nomenclature.

So for example, despite the Crusades and centuries of medieval contact with Muslims, Middle English has little more to show for it than the following:

Alcoran (which is attested from the 12th century in Latin sources)

mosque (attested from the 14th century in French)

ramadan (15th century in French)

Mahound and mammet (Middle English)

These last two words witness to the erroneous but deeply ingrained belief that the Prophet Muhammad was worshipped as a god, and well illustrate the point about ignorance (perhaps wilful) of other faiths.

In the sixteenth century occur masjid (1594), muezzin (1568 in French), mufti (1546 in French), and shereef (1599); and only in the seventeenth century, when contact is at an altogether more sophisticated level, do we find a properly representative set of words: alfaqui, Al-Hajj, fakir, maghrib, Allah, hadji, imam, Islam, mullah, haram, madrasah,  fatwa, khatib, Koran, Muslim, Shiah, Sunni, salat, mihrab, minaret, minbar, jinn, and ulema.

Similarly the Judaic terminology in English (and other western languages) before the seventeenth century is largely what would be expected from the common dependence of both faiths on the Hebrew Bible. Only after 1600 (and more after 1700) does terminology distinctively relating to Jewish religious practice begin to appear. It appears that little familiarity with actual Jewish faith and practice was acquired during the two centuries that Jews lived in medieval England. In fact the reverse is the case, seeing that the medieval English propagated a version of the blood libel, which (it goes without saying) could never have been derived from first-hand acquaintance with the Jewish community.

How much less then would we expect non- or scarcely literate pagan Anglo-Saxon settlers to attest in their vocabulary to any familiarity with the Christian faith? (When we say ‘their vocabulary’, we mean the vocabulary inherited from common West Germanic that they brought with them as part of their language.) Especially when we consider that their homelands in northern Germany and southern Scandinavia did not immediately border on the Christianized Roman empire, and their migration routes to Britain are generally agreed to have passed directly across the North Sea. Even words denoting visible structures (such as church) require a reasonable period of sojourn in a district where such structures are frequent and where contact with the inhabitants is sufficient for the word to be acquired and retained for its usefulness.

A pagan community could only have begun to acquire Christian terminology when (i) they were in regular, relatively peaceful contact with some kind of Christian group, either a settled community or missionaries, and (ii) when this terminology had some practical use for them, either because they adopted Christianity or because they actively resisted it. For example, pagan Scandinavians in the tenth century found themselves living under the rule of assertively Christian kings, and amongst Christian communities. They could hardly have failed to acquire a reasonably active knowedge of at least rudimentary aspects of Christianity. We know that quite a lot of them practised syncretism, honouring both Thor and Christ. This is a very different situation from that obtaining in the homelands of the pagan Anglo-Saxons when they undertook their immigration into Britain.

This being so, I believe that the following Christian terms, despite what has been written about them, cannot have been part of the vocabulary of Old English at the time of the settlement:

1. deofol ‘devil’
2. engel ‘angel’
3. abbod ‘abbot’
4. biscop ‘bishop’
5. preost ‘priest’
6. munuc ‘monk’
7. mynster ‘monastery’
8. cirice ‘church’

To take the first pair of terms, it is impossible to see what role Christian concepts of angels and devils could possibly have played in the belief system of the pagan Anglo-Saxon settlers, nor how they could have come by these concepts on the banks of the Elbe, in the Frisian marshes, or in the southern Danish peninsula.

The four terms for Christian functionaries are equally unlikely to have been picked up before the settlement. To acquire a working knowledge of their functions would have demanded a period of close acquaintance with a community in which they were exercised.

The final two institutional terms could conceivably have been picked up by migrants passing slowly through a landscape well furnished with ecclesiastical buildings. But there’s really no reason to think that the Anglo-Saxons did spend any significant time in such an environment before settling in Britain.

But if these words were not in their vocabulary at the time of the settlement (fifth–sixth centuries) when were they acquired? The obvious assumption is that they were borrowed in the course of, or soon after, the Augustinian mission to Britain at the end of the sixth century. It is indeed very likely that a collection of Latin religious terms was acquired at that time, as will be shown later. However, I believe that for these words—and some others which will be discussed later—this assumption is incorrect. On phonological grounds it seems to me inescapable that these words, and some others, were acquired between the settlement and the mission.

In the following post, I will offer some arguments in support of this contention.

Yiling and gyling

These words for the activity of making wort for beer present intriguing problems of form and history. 

The first thing to be said is that OED’s coverage of yiling and yil(e) is rather limited. It doesn’t mention the latter at all.

For yiling, n. it gives two fifteenth century examples (provenance unclear): 

c1440 yilyng fatte 

1448-9 yelyng tubbis 

three sixteenth century examples (all from wills or inventories  and all from Lancashire): 

1556 yilynge toobe 

1573 yailinge keare 

1588 yeleinge combe 

and one late seventeenth century example from a literary work: 

1688 yelling combe or tub

As definition and etymology combined, the OED simply says ‘variant of GYLING vbl. n.’ (of which more below).

The Middle English Dictionary extends our knowledge a little. 

It gives yel (noun (2)) which it says occurs only in combinations (i.e. compounds):

 yilfat and yiltonne, a container for fermenting wort 

yilhous, a room in which wort is fermented 

Its examples are mainly from London documents: 

1305 ȝilvates 

1335 yelfat 

1340 yilhuys 

1384 yeltunne 

1425 ȝelefate 

1425 ȝeeltonnys 

1455 yeletonnes 

1457 yeelefat 

?1474 ȝeel vatte

MED’s yeling (gerund) likewise occurs only in combinations: 

yeling fat  and yeling tonne, a tub or vat for fermenting wort 

There are only two examples: 

a1441 yilyngfatte (the same as OED’s first example) 

1471-2 yelyng tunne.

Sixteenth and seventeenth century wills and inventories from many parts of England show examples of these terms, and the Essex Wills in particular have many:

yellyng tub 1558 I. 279 (Matching) 

yelding vat 1561 VIII. 23 (Pebmarch), 1588 (XI. 140) 1 long great tub or yelding vat (Thaxted) 

yelding house 1567 (II. . 182 (Elmstead), 1597 XII. 167 (Little Waltham)

yealding tub 1570 IX. 111 (Thaxted), 1575 I. 292 (High Easter) 

yelding tub 1569 II. 243 (Harlow), 1572 III. 300 (Weeley), 1580 X. 225 (Great Dunmow), 1582 X.188 (Weeley), 1597 XII. 17 (Great Easton), no date (?1570) II. 97 (Stanford Rivers) 

yielding vat 1585 V. 197 (Great Sampford) 

yielding tub 1595 VI. 223 (High Roothing)

yeling tub 1603 X. 180 (Old [Great] Saling)

Also:

 yelde pot 1570 II. 209 (Colchester) 

 ‘a tub to yele in’ 1581 X. 46 (Stebbing). 

And from Gentry wills:

1582 in F. G. Emmison Elizabethan Life: Essex Gentry’s Wills (1978) 175 the yeald vat, the cowl vat, the mash vat and troughs. (Layer Marney.)

It is noticeable how many of these forms have a d, not recorded as a variant in the OED, but attested elsewhere, e.g. 

yeld fat 1589 Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire Record Office Wills 159/4/4 

yelding 1586 (in Weiner 2004, p. 171)

Let’s now turn to OED’s etymological explanation (which is shared by the MED). 

It simply states that yiling is a variant of gyling, (verbal) noun (this explanation is considered further below). 

The entry for this word gives: 

1411 gylnghous (Finchale, Durham)  

1420 gilyng tubbes (Lincoln) 

1583 guylinge fatte (unspecified northern)

 as well as the c1440 and 1573 examples also given at yiling. 

To these MED adds: 

1408 gylefattis, gylyngmele (Jarrow) 

1409 gilingfath (Monkwearmouth) 

1444 Gilyngsat [read: -fat] (Norfolk)

In its turn, gyling is explained as a derivative of gyle (noun). 

MED gives (with the definition ‘wort in process of fermentation’):

1440 Gyylde [variant readings gile, gyyl, gyle]

1341 gylefatts (York), a1382 gylfat (Hatfield)

1400 gylefattes; ?c1430 gylefattes (York)

1449 gyelfattes (York)

?c1475 Gylefatt

1423 gylhowse (York)

a1451 Gilehous (York). 

The OED brings the story of the word down to the nineteenth century, showing that gyle-fat is found in many parts of the north, predominantly in this or similar form, but also as gailfat; gyle-ker, which seems to be predominantly from Lancashire, often has the form gail- or gal-. Gyle uncompounded seems to have become quite widespread, at least among brewers, as a standard term of art.

Note also:

1598 in F. G. Emmison Elizabethan Life: Essex Gentry’s Wills (1978) 255 my..brewhouse in Kings Street in Westminster..with the copper, brewing vessel, mill, washing tun, gyle tun, coolback and other utensils [a Walden will, but notice the location of brewery in Westminster].

The etymology of gyle is stated to be Dutch gijl, earlier ghijl, connected with gijlen to ferment. Now, if it really is a loanword from Dutch, then it is a very early one (fourteenth century). 

But more than this, if it is from Dutch, then yiling cannot be a variant of gyling. There is no known process whereby a Middle English word beginning with g- borrowed from Dutch could change that g- into y- (and there are difficulties with the vowel too, as we shall see). 

On the other hand, it is a well-established fact that several words which in Old English and southern Middle English had the initial sound of y- (written g in Old English but pronounced as y) developed an initial g- in northern Middle English and these forms spread south and became standard English. 

Examples of this process are OE giefan, ongean, forgietan, southern ME yeven, ayen, foryeten, modern English give, again, forget. The usual explanation for this phenomenon is that the ‘hard’ g was substituted under the influence of the Scandinavian dialects spoken in the north-east, which contained cognate words with g-.

The initial consonant of gyle would fit this pattern very well. The gyle forms are all found down to early modern times in areas of former Scandinavian settlement (or close to them), such as Yorkshire, Durham, Lincolnshire, and Norfolk, while the y- forms are found in the south. But if this is the correct explanation, the Dutch etymology is impossible. 

Moreover, the words in which this y-/g- variation is regarded as an established fact are all words that existed in Old English, before 1150, and therefore we would have to assume that the yil-/gyl- word is the reflex of an Old English word, of which no record survives.

The vowel, however, poses further difficulties. It is clear that the majority form of gyle has had the same pronunciation as the French loanword guile from the time of the earliest records. In other words, the vowel is ‘long i’. But it is far from clear what the original vowel of yil and yiling was. 

Several of the earliest spellings have an i, but was this ‘long i’? It would be difficult to reconcile such a vowel with the later spellings, which suggest either a ‘short e’ as in yell, or a ‘long e’, sounding in Middle English and sixteenth century English like ea in yeah, later like yea or ye. These two sounds and the ‘short i’ (as in ill) could all have been regional dialect variants of a single base form (something similar occurs in the early history of the noun chill), but a ‘long i’ pronunciation could not have been. 

Also, in late Middle English initial y- disappeared before long and short i: hence we have icicle (originally ice + yickle) and itch for earlier yicchen. The fact that y- is always present seems to imply that i was not the original sound in this syllable. In some regional forms of Middle English a short e can become i after initial y- (there are forms like yis for yes and yit for yet).

There is also the problem of the –d- which we observe not only in the majority of Essex examples (yelding, etc.) but also in the Oxfordshire one (yelde). Did it arise because the word was influenced by the verb yield, or conversely, to differentiate it from the verb yell (we have spellings from Essex showing identification with each of them)? If the original stem vowel had been –e-, a development *yel- > yeld- is quite possible as an alternative to *yel- > yil-

A further problem with the OED etymology is that while gyling seems to be based on the noun gyle, the forms yiling and yil- seem to have no noun equivalent, but rather point to a verbal root. And we have evidence of just such a verb from the one Essex Will of 1581 (X. 46) which speaks of ‘a tub to yele in’. 

So, for this word we can reconstruct an Old English verbal root ġel- (with a palatal initial, phonetically /jel/; like the base of Modern English yell, but with a single -l-). For gyle, whatever its origin, we have to posit a base gīl- /gi:l/. The two have the same meaning, but connecting them etymologically is extremely difficult.

Hebbing in Hessex or Ebbing in Essex?

This post is part of a series on the vocabulary of the sixteenth-century Essex Wills. For an introductory overview, see The Words of Sixteenth Century Essex Woman and Man.

I don’t want any readers of this blog to think that its entire purpose is to criticize the Oxford English Dictionary. The OED is my livelihood and my aim is to make it even better than it already is. And the fact is that some lexical items from the past are so scantily recorded that scholarship has been hard put to it to get a grip on them. And this is where non-literary documents like the Essex Wills are so helpful. 

The OED has an entry for a word ebbing n., the main sense of which is defined as ‘the action of flowing back or retiring’; no problem with this: several quotations pair the word with ‘flowing’ and we are clearly dealing with the verbal noun from the verb to ebb, describing what the receding tide does.

But I want to focus on the two compounds listed at the bottom of the entry,  ebbing-lock and ebbing-weir, defined as ‘a lock for detaining fish at the ebb-tide’ and ‘a weir for detaining fish at the ebb-tide’. I want to argue that like Dansk in my earlier post, the entry is a fusion of two unconnected words.

Despite the apparently obvious connection with the word ebb, there are good reasons to think that these compounds are not related to it at all. I think that it is very significant that, unlike any examples of the uncompounded ebbing, all examples of these words begin with h-: 

1539   Will of Thomas Samson (P.R.O.: PROB. 11/27) f. 253,   My Tyde bote..my Hebbing cocke [prob. read locke].
1590   Cal. State Papers, Domest. Ser. 692   Regulations for hooks, lamperne rods, and hebbing nets.
1472   Act 12 Edw. IV vii,   Ascuns..tielx..milledammez estankez de molyns lokkez hebbyngwerez, etc.
1475   Rolls Parl. VI. 159/1   Fishgarthes..Lokkes, Hebbyng weeres..and dyvers other ympedyments dayly been made.
1531–2   Act 23 Hen. VIII v. §2   Myldammes lokkes hebbynge weres heckes and fludgates.
a1642   R. Callis Reading of Statute of Sewers (1647) iv. 211   Locks and Hebbing weres.
1715   J. Kersey Dict. Anglo-Britannicum (ed. 2)    Hebbing-wears, nets or devices laid for fish at ebbing water.
1721–90   in N. Bailey Universal Etymol. Eng. Dict.  [the text, not given in OED, is: Hebbing-Wears, Devices or Nets laid for Fish at ebbing Water.]

Now, it is true that OED gives the verb ebb a sense (3a) ‘to hem in (fish) with stakes so that they cannot go back to the sea with the ebb-tide’; but it provides no examples, simply referring the reader to the entry EBBING n. which we are considering. It looks very likely that the editors inferred this sense of the verb from the verbal noun. 

The Middle English Dictionary gives an entry for ebbinge (ger.); like OED, it places under it the compound ebbing wer, ‘a weir for trapping fish at ebb tide’, where the headword has no h but the two examples have it (one of which is almost identical with one of OED’s):

(1472) Statutes Realm   2.441:  Fishgarthez, molyns, milledammez..lokkez, hebbyngwerez.
(1472-5) RParl.  6.159a:  Dyvers and many Weeres, Fisshgarthes..Lokkes, Hebbyng weeres.  

The OED also has an entry for ebberman n. Again, the quotations all show h- in the headword:

1689   in J. Stow Survey of London (1720) II. v. xxviii. 383/2   No..Hebberman, shall..fish for Smelts between Good Friday and, [etc.].
1715   J. Kersey Dict. Anglo-Britannicum (ed. 2)    Hebberman, one that fishes below Bridge, commonly at ebbing Water, etc.
1720   J. Strype Stow's Survey of London (rev. ed.) I. i. vii. 33/2   A Number of Fishermen belonging to the..Thames, some stiled..Hebbermen.
1721–90   in N. Bailey Universal Etymol. Eng. Dict. [the text, not given in OED, is:  Hebberman, a Fisherman below London-Bridge, who fishes at ebbing Water. L.T.]

The etymology is given as from the distinctly fishy h-less agent-noun ebber, for which no evidence is forthcoming: it is said to be a derivative of ebb v. sense 3, which, as we have already seen, is probably artificial.

The OED also gives an entry hebberman n. ‘Variant of EBBERMAN n.’ with four examples:

1630   Order in R. Griffiths Ess. Jurisdict. Thames (1746) 75   No Hebberman shall fish for Smelts before the twenty-fourth Day of August.
1630   Order in R. Griffiths Ess. Jurisdict. Thames (1746) 76   No Hebberman shall work any higher for Whitings than Dartford Creek.
1670   T. Blount Νομο-λεξικον: Law-dict.   Hebber-man, a Fisherman below London-bridge, who fishes for Whitings, Smelts, &c. commonly at Ebbing-water, and therefore so called.
1839–40   Thackeray Catherine xiv,   The ferries across the river, and..the pirates who infest the same—namely tinklermen, petermen, hebbermen, trawlermen.

From the dictionary evidence, the word seems to belong especially to the Thames estuary. In complete accord with this, all four examples in the Essex Wills are either from Barking or Leigh-on-Sea, which lie on that waterway. 

Also in conformity with the OED evidence, the Essex Wills examples all begin with h-. They too chiefly include compounds, some new: 

hebbing cock 1558, 1589 (which two uses make OED’s  emendation of its 1539 quotation from cocke to locke unnecessary) 

hebbing boat 1587 

hebbing net 1588. 

But what is especially striking is that one example also contains the verb: 

‘my part of the boat that is to heb in’ (1588, XI. 213)

Here ‘to heb’ must be an activity that a person does from within a boat. This seems conclusively to disconnect the activity of hebbing from the action of the tide in ebbing. 

The idea that the two words were connected probably starts in Blount’s Law Dictionary (the 1670 quotation at HEBBERMAN), from which all the other sources which talk about fishermen fishing at ebbing water may well derive their information.

Early English Books Online provides two examples of the compound hebber-boat:

1577 J. Dee General and rare memorials pertayning to the perfect arte of nauigation [STC 6459] Wherin, the  Hebber-Boats, only, might sufficiently…

 1698 Jovis duodecimo die Maii 1698, annoque regni Regis Willielmi ... this day an order and report made by the Committee for Letting the Cities Lands, touching several duties taken by several officers and others at Billingsgate  [Wing  L2865F] Every Hebber-Boat or Smack 00 00 01.

This is very likely a boat from which hebbing is done, which makes it less likely to be the hemming in of fish with stakes.

So what is heb-? What is its etymology? My suggestion is that it represents a regional preservation of the former alternative present stem of the verb ‘to heave’, Old English hebban. MED shows heb- forms from Layamon, the Nero MS of Ancrene Wisse in the thirteenth century, and the Pepys MS of the South English Legendary (Gloucestershire), Sir Firumbras (Devon), and William of Shoreham (Kent) in the fourteenth century: the form receded to small areas of the south in later Middle English. The verb has ME senses to do with lifting things up, though nothing as specific as fishing.

Some support for this suggestion may be found in OED’s entry for heaving n. Here there is an item heaving-net cited from a 1584 quotation relating to Thames fishery: 

‘No Fishermen, Garthmen, Petermen..shall avaunce or set up any Wears, Engines..Heaving Nets, except they be 2 Inches in the Meish’

In order to elucidate this, OED cross-refers to quot. 1805 at sense a, which explains that 

‘A..mode of fishing, called heaving or hauling, is standing in the stream..with a bag or net fixed to a kind of frame... Whenever a fish strikes against the net, they..instantly haul up the mouth of the net above water’ 

It’s true that this is taken from a source dealing with Scotland, and that it doesn’t envisage the use of a boat, but it explains how the operation combines static nets or weir-like apparatus with immediately ensuing action on the part of the fisherman.

Essex: end of the road for an Old English Suffix?

This post is part of a series on the vocabulary of the sixteenth-century Essex Wills. For an introductory overview, see The Words of Sixteenth Century Essex Woman and Man.

The Oxford English Dictionary contains a curious little entry for the word endware. Here it is:

† ˈendware, n. ? perhaps some error; Old English *ęnde-waru (collect. singular) would mean ‘the inhabitants of an end’ (compare END n. and -WARE suffix). Halliwell gives ‘Endware, a hamlet, Linc.’; but it is not in the Linc. glossaries.
Obs. rare—1.

? = ENDSHIP n.

1577 W. HARRISON Descr. Eng. (1877) ii. xiii. i. 261 The moonkes were authors of manie goodlie borowes and endwares neere unto their dwellings..But alas..they wrought oft great wickedness and made those endwares little better than brodelhouses.

Here we have two question marks, but really three or four questions.

1. Is it really an error by a couple of antiquarians?
2. Does it mean ‘endship’ (which itself means ‘a small suburb, a township’, and is used by Bunyan and Defoe, and so was once perhaps well known)
3. Why is it not in Lincolnshire glossaries if Halliwell is right about it being found there?
4. Could it be a compound of end and the suffix -ware?

On the basis of the Essex Wills, I believe we can confidently answer ‘no’ to question 1. It’s a real word! And on the same basis, I think we can assume that Halliwell was right in his definition ‘a hamlet’ (question 2), right in entering it as a regional word (question 3), but somehow mixed up his counties, and should have put ‘Essex’.

The Essex Wills contain at least six examples of endware, dating from 1563 to 1599, the right period for Harrison’s mention. They are very clear in their meaning, for example:

 ‘the hamlet or endware called Duck Street in [Saffron] Walden’ (1563 I. 214) 

The actual townships referred to in this way are as follows: 

1. Duck Street near Saffron Walden (1563) (now lined with desirable detached houses)
2. Finchingfield (1571)
3. an unnamed place near Little Walden (1575)
4. Boyton End (probably the one near Thaxted; the one near Sturmer is in Suffolk) (1585) 
5. Beazley End near Wethersfield (1591, 1599). 

Now what is especially interesting is that these places are all within a small area, roughly north-west of Braintree. My map (from a 1950s road atlas) is by no means perfect (the large towns near the bottom left and right are Bishops Stortford and Braintree), but it should be possible to make out the pencilled boxes marking No. 1 to the left of the old A1, on the left, No. 3 on the B1052 near the top left of the map, Nos. 4 (on the B1051) and 2 (on the B1053) roughly in the centre, and No. 5 towards the right, near Halstead.

It is also worth pointing out that this part of Essex bristles with place names which end in end. Two of our endwares do, for a start, but there are the famous Audley End, Howlett End, Cornish Hall End, Duck End, Bran End, Puttock End, numerous Church Ends, and so on.

The next really gratifying thing is that William Harrison, the author of OED’s example, was Rector of Radwinter, in exactly the same area; on the map it’s on the B1053, just north of No. 4, and somewhat to the south-east of No. 3. In other words, writing in 1577, he was employing the same term for a small settlement that people living in the villages around him used in their wills. 

Now for question 4. The terminal element –ware meaning ‘inhabitants of–’ was not uncommon in place names such as Old English Cantware Kent. However it seems to have ceased to form new words after the Old English period, and the compounds in which it occurred all became obsolete:

earthware (†13th century)

heavenware (†13th century)

hellware (†14th century)

Romeware (†13th century)   

If the suffix ceased to be productive well before these words died out, *endewaru must have been coined in Old English. The word endware may be an unattested Old English word that survived for 500 years in a small corner of Essex.