Praefanda Anglosaxonica

Studia Neophilologica 75: 3–10, 2003

Praefanda Anglosaxonica JOSEPH P. McGOWAN We are dependent almost entirely upon the glossaries for what can be termed, in an archaic manner, the “low vocabulary” of Old English. This has the disadvantage of general – though not unconditional – loss of context for the glosses; the sources for the lemmata can restore the Latin context, but there remains the ambiguity of how closely gloss was meant to match context – important since the glosses employed may explicate only one particular sense of the lemma. Besides telling us what sorts of texts were read in Anglo-Saxon England, the glosses are of critical importance to an enterprise such as the in-progress Dictionary of Old English.1 Words occurring only or primarily in the glossaries always prove nettlesome to lexicography, words of that subset of the vocabulary once given the scholarly cover-term praefanda all the more so. The following praefanda, which have caused some difficulty for the Dictionary of Old English, will be considered: drisn, earsendu and other ears- compounds, feorting, fisting, gangfeormere and other gangcompounds, and goldhordhus. drisn(e) The form is recorded twice in the glossaries: the Antwerp Glossary A entry capillamenta: ruwe oðð drisne, and the Harley Glossary entry C300 capillamenta: rawe.drisne.2 What consideration the form drisn has occasioned sought its removal from the Old English lexicon; the only point generally agreed upon is that the two glossaries, the Antwerp and Harley, probably have the same source for their entries. Max Fo¨rster3 queried whether the form ruwe in the Antwerp entry was the nominative plural of an adjective and whether drisne was for ondrysne (“schrecklich”; “terrible, horrible”) and thus related to dryslic and ondryslic (Fo¨rster apparently conjecturing an earlier *ondrysnlic4). Herbert Dean Meritt more forcibly argued for the banishment of drisn. Robert Oliphant cites in a note to his edition of the Harley Glossary Meritt’s suggestion of reading anddrisne, meaning “frightful”, deriving from a confusion of l and 7 or a misinterpretation of Latin enclitic -que (Oliphant’s edition is based upon a doctoral thesis directed by Meritt). Two years after the publication of Oliphant’s edition Meritt addressed the problem of this gloss at greater length suggesting, quite plausibly, that the lemma belongs to a batch of lemmata deriving from Isidore’s discussion of gems (Etymologiae XVI.vi–vii5 and, ultimately, from the discussion of the same by Pliny in his Historia naturalis, upon which Isidore was in part dependent.6 The lemma, the nominative plural of second declension neuter capillamentum, can mean, in addition to “false hair, peruke, wig”, the fibers or hair-like veins found in plant leaves or extending from plant roots, and, most importantly here, the veinal filaments found in precious stones (Historia naturalis XXXVII.ii.10, XXXVII.v.18). The verbal parallels between Pliny XXXVII and Isidore XVI seem convincing; Meritt did, however, have to venture in support the idea that to explain capillamentum as used in the Etymologiae would require that “the passage was accompanied by some bit of glossatorial enlightenment”7 – namely, the gloss capillamentum sordesque, extracted from Pliny. Meritt then suggested that an adjectival ruwe (from ruh “rough, coarse, hairy”) glosses capillamenta in the sense of “hairy” (it is not uncommon in the glossaries for Old English adjectives to gloss Latin nouns); as Latin sordes is a near equivalent to faex (“dregs, sediment, filth, feces”), which is found glossed by Old English DOI 10.1080/00393270310012829

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drosna/drosne (“sediment, lees, dirt”), a natural gloss to the lemma would have been, in reconstructed form, ruwe 7 drosne (the abbreviation for ond lost in the Harley entry). The DOE presents another explanation: glossing capillamenta “hair, wigs; hair-like fibres or filaments in plants; fibrous growths; hair-like flaws in gems; tree-tops”. If these glosses pertain to Isidore Etym 16.7.3, a discussion of flaws in gems, drisne glosses MS capillamentis miswritten lapillamentis in all MSS of Etym collated by Lindsay. Lapillamentum is not otherwise recorded.8

In his apparatus Lindsay does note to the MS reading lapillamentis “codd. (et Isid.?)”; but error seems likely with the MS reading lapillamentum. Besides being unrecorded elsewhere (not in and of itself necessarily an objection when dealing with glossaries), *lapillamentum would, like lapillus and lapillulus, have to do with “little stones”, “tiny stones” (the latter forms can refer in fact to “kidney stones”).9 Support for capillamentum is to be gained by corroboration from Pliny (HN XXXVII.28, XXXVII.199; Glare: “A thin streak or hair-like flaw in gems, etc.”, s.v.). That we have the lemma via Isidore rather than Pliny seems likely based on the grouping of batches of glosses in the Antwerp Glossary; the capillamenta entry in the Antwerp MS is preceded and followed, respectively, by the lemmata uile vendidit and polio and located amidst other words found at Etymologiae XVI.vi–vii (and deriving ultimately from Pliny, HN, XXXVII). Though Meritt was without peer in explicating, adding to, and sometimes paring down the lexicon of Old English, his argument here seems overly complex; and the DOE seems too cautious. The matter of Old English drisne seems to hinge upon the sense of capillamentum as “hair-like streaks on precious stones” (Lewis-Short, s.v.), especially when considered as impurities. The notion derives from discussion in Pliny and Isidore of gems and their vitia: both authors mention defects such as capillamentum (veinal or hairlike impurities often found shot through gems and crystals), sal (“a speck on precious stones shaped like a grain of salt”, Lewis-Short; cf. Pliny, HN, XXXVII.22, 117), and plumbago (Isidore has plumbo: “a leaden color in gems”, Lewis-Short). The gloss would then make sense as either the Antwerp or Harley glossaries have it: Antwerp with the connective oðð relating two senses of the same word and Harley with the two simply separated by a point in the MS. The sense of drisn(e) in this specific context is “hair-like impurity found in gems”; its more general sense seems “impurity, flaw, dross”. Some help with the semantics may come from the Eadwine Psalter; at Ps 74:9 one finds the gloss fex: dresten vel drosne, here one finding Latin faex glossed by two evidently synonymous words.10 The word dresten may derive, having undergone metathesis, from derstan/dærstan (OE dærste, “dregs, residue, sediment; leaven”; cf. DOE, s.v.), but with the sense “dregs, lees”.11 In its development Old English dærst metathesized to produce Modern English drast; when the Host Harry Bailly interrupts Chaucer’s Tale of Sir Thopas in the Canterbury Tales he refers to his drasty speche (VII.923) and drasty rymyng (VII.930), a Middle English adjective glossed as “crappy, worthless”.12 Lexically, Old English drisn(e), drestan, drosna are kindred forms connoting “filth, waste, dross.” In its two glossary appearances drisne is most likely best glossed as “imperfections, impurities, flaws”, such as those found in the gems and crystals of Isidore’s lapidary discourse.

ears- compounds Old English drisn(e) was no doubt put to technical use in glossing an Isidorean lemma; the precise semantic force of Old English derivatives and compounds beginning with ears(Modern, largely British, English arse-) is difficult to ascertain as the most frequent occurrences of the forms are once more as glosses:

Studia Neophil 75 (2003)

Praefanda Anglosaxonica

earsgang Aldhelm, De laude virginitatis, Brussels gloss 380913: latrinarum latrina est locus secessus: arganga Aldhelm, De laude virginitatis, Digby gloss 391714: latrinarum: arganga Chrodegang rule LVI15: þ æt meox his argangcges 7 his micgan gesamnige (p. 69) Leechdoms (Læceboc) contents, ch. II.516: Wiþ mon þ e mon þ urh his argang blod (p. 4) Leechdoms (Læceboc) ch. II.5: wiþ mon þ e mon þ urh hys argang blode utyrne (p. 82) earsendu Brussels Glossary17: nattes: earsendu [WW 292,23] Cleopatra Glossary (Quinn) p. 29, #818: nates: earsenda [WW 453,14] Cleopatra Glossary (Stryker) N6719: nates earsenda [WW 265,38] Collected glosses (DOE) 25,36620: nates: earsendu Lorica glosses (Grattan-Singer) l. 3121: nates: ða earsenda (p. 142) Lorica glosses (Kuypers) l. 522: nates: ersendu (p. 87) earsling Paris Psalter (Thorpe) 6:823 [= Ps 6:11]: Erubescant, et conturbentur omnes inimici mei; avertantur et erubescant valde velociter: sceamian heora forði, and syn gedrefede ealle mine fynd; and gan hy on earsling, and sceamian heora swiðe hrædlice Paris Psalter (Thorpe) 34:5 [= Ps 34:4]: Avertantur retrorsum, et erubescat, qui cogitant mihi mala: Syn hi gecyrde on earsling, and scamien heora, þ a þ e me ðenceað yfeles earslira Antwerp Glossary (Kindschi) B, p. 174, #1: nates: earslire earsode Antwerp Glossary (Kindschi) B, p. 181, #17: tergosus: earsode earsþyrel Antwerp Glossary (Kindschi) B, p. 174, #9: anus uel uerpus24: earsþ erl In the Harley Glossary entry fistulas. i. arterias: earþ yrel (F316; WW 238,29) the Supplement to Bosworth-Toller queried whether earsþ yrel were meant for MS earþ yrel: earþ yrel, “ear passage” or “ear opening” would be a hapax whereas the more suitable rendering earsþ yrel (“anus”, literally “arse-hole”: compare the Middle English glossary entry podex: arcehoole [WW 632,8]) is an attested compound. The DOE records the Antwerp Glossary occurrence of earsþ yrel and for the Harley Glossary entry notes that “the gloss [earþ yrel] has alternatively been taken as a miswriting of earsþ yrel”.25 Herbert Meritt defended the MS reading earþ yrel elaborately, positing a source in Prudentius, Peristephanon X.936: “Just preceding this passage a martyr, whose tongue has been cut out, describes the speech organs that the Lord has given man, and here adds that if the Lord willed it, He could make passageways of the throat resound with harmonious breath so that words would develop in these channels”.26 Meritt argues that fistulas faucium means “windpipe” here (as fistula can refer to “A naturally occurring tube, pore, cavity, or sim[ilar], esp. in the bodies of human beings or animals”; Glare, s.v.), noting that arteria is

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found as a gloss to fistula (at Antwerp Glossary [Kindschi] B, p. 169, #6: arteriæ: windæddran; WW 157,40).27 As earþ yrel still does not render fistula adequately, it must be the product of glossarial interpretation: “From the Latin context just quoted a glossator may well have understood fistulas to be passages – not where words were formed but where their meaning was revealed; so understood, the word is not ineptly glossed earþ yrel, ‘ear-passage’”.28 Though examining the supposed Latin context for a particular lemma is quite important, so too is the immediate glossary context the entry was culled from. Here is the Harley Glossary context: F315 fissa. diuisa F316 fistulas. i. arterias: earþyrel [WW 238,29] F317 fibra. i. uena iecors.intestina: liferlappa. þearm [WW 238,30]

A Prudentius source for the lemmata would not be inconceivable; scattered Prudentius lemmata occur in the Harley Glossary, as they do throughout the Latin-Old English glossaries. But another, more probable source for the lemmata may simply be a general anatomical glossary (such as the “class-glossaries”, given rubrics such as nomina piscium or nomina ventorum) drawn upon by glossators in compiling such loosely alphabetical glossaries as the Harley Glossary: the occurrences of batches or fasciculi of certain types of lemmata would not be all that striking considering the encyclopedic range of this glossary. Some other proximate entries in the Harley Glossary may help illustrate that the general drift of meaning fistula represented was rather lower than the “windpipe”: F252 fesiculatio: fisting [discussed further below; WW 237,28] F287 fedus. putre. uel luxurios. i. deformis. turpis uel: ful. uel pudor F291 feda. i. turpia. uel polluta: ful [WW 238,12] F294 feculent us. i. fece plenus: dræstig [WW 238,20; compare Chaucerian drasty cited above] F299 fex. i. uirus. uel: drosna [WW 238,25] F325 finistris: þyrlum [WW 238,36] F387 fither: snædelþearm [WW 239,14]29 F396 fimus. i. erimus. [eri]tis. uel letimen. stercus F397 fimen [fimum?]. i. meatus30

I think the frequency of words connected with feces and the digestive system rather more than coincidental; Isidore’s de homine et partibus eius (Etymologiae XI.i) seems the source to many of the lemmata scattered through this section of the Harley Glossary and the glossary context here argues for the likelihood of reading for F316 earþ yrel, “arse-hole”; moreover the most common medical fistula referred to is the fistula in ano. To that end the DOE ought to have not an entry for an “ear-passage” and an “arse-hole”, but simply two attestations of “arse-hole” in Old English. The Antwerp Glossary is the sole source for other ears- forms. Earslyre (= ears-lı-ra, plural of a weak masculine noun), glossing Latin nates, is glossed by Bosworth-Toller as “the breech-muscle, the breech”; Clark Hall-Meritt gloss simply as “buttocks, breech”31 and DOE as “buttocks, literally ‘arse-flesh/-muscle’”.32 Clark Hall-Meritt is probably closer to the mark simply with “buttocks”, though ears or earsendu is the more usual gloss to Latin nates (plural of natis, referring to “buttocks” or “rump”, as of animals). Ferdinand Holthausen connected lı-ra (