Calling the shots: the Old English remedy Gif hors ofscoten sie and Anglo-Saxon "Elf-Shot"

No abstract available

The Orality of a Silent Age: The Place of Orality in Medieval Studies

'The Orality of a Silent Age: The Place of Orality in Medieval Studies' uses a brief survey of current work on Old English poetry as the point of departure for arguing that although useful, the concepts of orality and literacy have, in medieval studies, been extended further beyond their literal referents of spoken and written communication than is heuristically useful. Recent emphasis on literate methods and contexts for the writing of our surviving Anglo-Saxon poetry, in contradistinction to the previous emphasis on oral ones, provides the basis for this criticism. Despite a significant amount of revisionist work, the concept of orality remains something of a vortex into which a range of only party related issues have been sucked: authorial originality/communal property; impromptu composition/meditated composition; authorial and audience alienation/immediacy. The relevance of orality to these issues is not in dispute; the problem is that they do not vary along specifically oral/literate axes. The article suggests that this is symptomatic of a wider modernist discourse in medieval studies whereby modern, literate society is (implicitly) contrasted with medieval, oral society: the extension of the orality/literacy axis beyond its literal reference has to some extent facilitated the perpetuation of an earlier contrast between primitivity and modernity which deserves still to be questioned and disputed. Pruning back our conceptions of the oral and the literate to their stricter denotations, we might hope to see more clearly what areas of medieval studies would benefit from alternative interpretations

Hygelac's only daughter: a present, a potentate and a peaceweaver in Beowulf

[FIRST PARAGRAPH] The women of Beowulf have enjoyed extensive study in recent years, but one has escaped the limelight: the only daughter of Hygelac, king of the Geats and Beowulf’s lord. But though this daughter is mentioned only fleetingly, a close examination of the circumstances of her appearance and the words in which it is couched affords new perspectives on the role of women in Beowulf and on the nature of Hygelac’s kingship. Hygelac’s only daughter is given as part of a reward to Hygelac’s retainer Eofor for the slaying of the Swedish king Ongentheow. Beowulf refers to this reward with the unique noun ofermaðmas, traditionally understood to mean ‘‘great treasures’’. I argue, however, that ofermaðmas at least potentially means ‘‘excessive treasures’’. Developing this reading implies a less favourable assessment of Hygelac’s actions here than has previously been inferred. I argue further that the excess in Hygelac’s treasure-giving derives specifically from his gift of his only daughter, and the consequent loss to the Geats of the possibility of a diplomatic marriage through which they might end their feud with the Swedes. A reconsideration of Hygelac’s only daughter, then, offers new perspectives on the semantics of ofermaðum, on Hygelac’s kingship, and on women in Beowulf

Folk-healing, fairies and witchcraft: the trial of Stein Maltman, Stirling 1628

'Folk-healing, Fairies and Witchcraft: The Trial of Stein Maltman, Stirling 1628' is the first full publication of a trial record which is particularly valuable in the history of Scottish popular belief, that of Stein Maltman, of Leckie, about twelve kilometres to the West of Stirling. Although our text has itself been edited from the original transcripts of depositions and confessions by the seventeenth-century scribe, it provides important information about folk-healing practices, maleficium, and the role of fairies in the construction of illness in early modern Scotland. The case seems to be representative of endemic rather than epidemic witchcraft-trials, and the mentions of fairies attributed to Stein and which he is himself recorded to make may closely reflect his professional construction of healing practices

Glosses, Gaps and Gender: The Rise of Female Elves in Anglo-Saxon Culture

It is difficult to detect lexical change within Old English, since most of our texts derive from a relatively short period, but lexical change can afford valuable insights into cultural change. The paper identifies changes in the semantics of the Old English word ælf (‘elf’) through a rigorous analysis of two textual traditions in which Old English words based on ælf are used to gloss Latin words for nymphs. Around the eighth century, it appears that Old English had no close equivalent to words for the supernatural, feminine and generally unthreatening nymphs: words for supernatural females denoted martial, monstrous or otherwise dangerous beings, while ælf seems not to have denoted females—at least not with sufficient salience to be used as a gloss for words for nymphs. Glossators instead found ways of altering ælf’s gender in order to create a vernacular word for nymphs. By the eleventh century, however, things had changed, and ælf had come to have the female denotation which was to prove prominent in Middle English. Tracing these lexical changes allows us to trace changes in Anglo-Saxon non- Christian belief-systems, and implicitly in Anglo-Saxon gendering more generally. overplayed, and the more general meaning of ‘otherworldly’ is to be preferred

On the Etymology of <i>Adel</i>

A light-hearted tour of the historiography of the etymology of Adel, a parish in North Leeds, resisting the twentieth-century concensus of Old English adela (‘filth, dirt, dirty place; foul filth; bilge-water’ and possibly even ‘sewer, privy’) in favour of *Eada-lēah ('Eada's lea')

The Etymology and Meanings of Eldritch

'The Etymology and Meanings of Eldritch' argues against the traditional derivation of eldritch from Old English *ælf-rīce (‘elf’ + ‘dominion, sphere of influence’), arguing that the etymology is rather *æl-rīce~el-rīce, the first element meaning ‘foreign, strange; from elsewhere’, and the whole therefore meaning ‘other world’. The key evidence is the variant spellings of eldritch in Older Scots texts cannot regularly be accommodated by *ælf- but can be accomodated by the prefix *æl-~el-. The article develops this point by showing that the putative origin of eldritch in ælf- seems to have influenced the definitions of eldritch given both in the Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue and in more recent scholarship: its connotations of elves and elvishness have in some circumstances been overplayed, and the more general meaning of ‘otherworldly’ is to be preferred

Old MacDonald had a Fyrm, eo, eo, y: two marginal developments of < eo > in Old and Middle English

'Old MacDonald had a Fyrm, eo, eo, y: two marginal developments of eo in Old and Middle English' uses the new possibilities for linguistic research afforded by the Dictionary of Old English Corpus to help show phonological developments in Old and Middle English

The images and structure of The Wife's Lament

No abstract available

Changing style and changing meaning: Icelandic historiography and the medieval redactions of Heiðreks saga

Sagas appeared on Scandinavian scholars' horizons around the seventeenth century, when their narratives were accepted as reasonably accurate accounts on past events. Subsequently, in the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, they were increasingly recognized as literary creations that could rarely be taken as reliable narrative histories; this shift was particularly deleterious for the study of the fornaldarsogur, which not only fell from grace sooner, but were not generally thought very good literature either. Here, Hall seeks to anchor these assumptions more firmly in the surviving evidence by analyzing the changing styles, techniques, and intentions of the medieval redactions of Heidreks saga