Studies in English Philology: A Miscellany in Honor of Frederick Klaeber 0816659125, 9780816659128

Table of contents :
Four Footnotes to Papers on Germanic Metrics / W. E. LEONARD i
Old West Germanic and Old Norse / ERNST A. KOCK 14
Loss of a Nasal before Labial Consonants / EILERT EKWALL 21
Morphological Notes / F. A. WOOD 28
Concerning the Origin of the Gerund in English / MORGAN CALLAWAY, Jr. 32
Semantic Borrowing in Old English / SAMUEL KROESCH 50
Recurring First Elements in Different Nominal Compounds in "Beowulf" and in the "Elder Edda" / F. P. MAGOUN, Jr. 73
Notes on the Preverb 'ge-' in Alfredian English. LEONARD BLOOMFIELD 79
Terms and Phrases for the Sea in Old English Poetry / HELEN BUCKHURST 103
Epithetic Compound Folk-Names in "Beowulf" / W. F. BRYAN 120
The Daughter of Healfdene / KEMP MALONE 135
Hengest and His Namesake / A. G. VAN HAMEL 159
"Beowulf" and the "Saga of Samson the Fair" / W. W. LAWRENCE 172
"Beowulf" und die Merowinger / ALOIS BRANDL 182
A Note on the Psychology of the "Beowulf" Poet / J. R. HULBERT 189
Two Types of Scribal Errors in the "Beowulf" MS / E. PROKOSCH 196
Notes on "Beowulf" / SAMUEL MOORE 208
Noch einmal: 'enge anpadas, uncud gelad' / L. L. SCHÜCKING 213
Experiments in Translating "Beowulf" / H. C. WYLD 217
Caedmon's Dream Song / LOUISE POUND 232
The 'Vasa Mortis' in the Old English "Salomon and Saturn" / R. J. MENNER 240
A Putative Charter to Aldhelm / A. S. COOK 254
Die altenglischen Verzeichnisse von Glücks- und Unglückstagen / MAX FÖRSTER 258
Anglo-Norman Script and the Script of Twelfth-Century MSS in Northwestern Norway / G. T. FLOM 278
The Early English Loan-Words in Welsh and the Chronology of the English Sound-Shift / R. E. ZACHRISSON 288
King Arthur, the Christ, and Some Others / C. S. NORTHUP 309
"He Knew Nat Catoun for His Wit Was Rude" / AAGE BRUSENDORFF 320
Le Rire du Prophète / A. H. KRAPPE 340
'Somer Soneday' / CARLETON BROWN 362
Eine englische Urkunde aus dem Jahre 1470 / LORENZ MORSBACH 375
Shakespeare and Formal Logic / HARDIN CRAIG 380
A Specimen of Vulgar English of the Mid-Sixteenth Century / H. M. AYRES 397
"Woo't Drink up Eisel"? / HENNING LARSEN 401
The Etymology of "Yankee" / H. LOGEMAN 403
Harrington and Leibnitz / S. B. LILJEGREN 414
The Baroque Style in Prose / MORRIS W. CROLL 427
Alexander Hamilton and the Beginnings of Comparative Philology / R. W. CHAMBERS and F. NORMAN 457
Progress in the Teaching of Early English / A. G. KENNEDY 467
A Bibliography of the Works of Frederick Klaeber. STEFÁN EINARSSON 477
Vita 486

Citation preview

STUDIES IN ENGLISH PHILOLOGY

FREDERICK KLAEBER

STUDIES IN

ENGLISH PHILOLOGY A M I S C E L L A N Y IN H O N O R OF FREDERICK KLAEBER

E D I T E D BY

KEMP MALONE Johns Hopkins University

AND

M A R T I N B. R U U D University of Minnesota

MINNEAPOLIS

THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA PRESS MCMXXIX

COPYRIGHT 1929 BY THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TO

FREDERICK KLAEBER ON HIS SIXTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY WHICH MARKS ALSO THE COMPLETION OF THIRTY-FIVE YEARS OF SERVICE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

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FOREWORD Thirty-five years ago Professor Frederick Klaeber, at the invitation of Dr. George Edwin MacLean, then head of the Department of English, took up his work at the University of Minnesota. The institution to which he came, fresh from his doctorate at Berlin, was small and all but unknown, certainly unknown beyond the limits of the Northwest. Professor Klaeber himself had never heard of it, and when he turned to his Konversationslexikon he came away little wiser. There was something there about Minnesota, less about Minneapolis, of the University nothing beyond the briefest mention. Since then the University of Minnesota has flourished in all material ways; and as he gazes upon the old campus, now so utterly changed, Professor Klaeber must frequently rub his eyes. Perhaps he has not always approved, though he is too wise and too catholic to condemn unthinkingly, and those who know him are aware how sensitive he is, for all his seeming detachment, to the multifarious American world about him and its needs. At all events, he has never allowed the bewildering complexity of a state university to trouble him, still less to distract him from that work to which a generation ago he set his hand. He might doubt, indeed, the value of this or that new discipline that forced its way into the curriculum and even threatened to crowd out the ancient liberal arts; but he could never dogmatize about it. The only thing he could be sure of was that he found in his own studies that intense satisfaction which is the last reward of the scholar. To generation after generation of Minnesota men and women Professor Klaeber has exemplified the genius of scholarship—devotion, patience, accuracy, and, more than all else, that light of the imagination by which all the disparate materials that it assembles are given life and meaning. No doubt many [vii]

FOREWORD have passed by not understanding, though not many, we think, without respect, but those who have come under his influence have learned what scholarship means. If the University of Minnesota has contributed something to philological learning, it is not least because he showed her students the way. And even more is it true that if the University counts for something in the world of her peers, it is in no small measure because Frederick Klaeber lived and worked in her halls. The University gratefully acknowledges her debt, and she has wished through the publication of this volume to do him honor on his anniversary. That the feelings of the University of Minnesota toward her distinguished teacher are shared by scholars everywhere, the number and variety of the articles here printed are evidence. They may serve to remind us of the words of the HdvamQl—words, we think, no less appropriate to Professor Klaeber than to that other great scholar, Ivar Aasen, on whose bauta they have been carved: Deyr fe, deyja frsendr, deyr sjalfr et sama. En orjjsdrr deyr aldrege hveims ser goj?an getr.

KEMP MALONE MARTIN B. RUUD MINNEAPOLIS July 1929

[ viii ]

CONTENTS PAGE

Four Footnotes to Papers on Germanic Metrics. W. E. LEONARD Old West Germanic and Old Norse. ERNST A. KOCK Loss of a Nasal before Labial Consonants. EILERT EKWALL Morphological Notes. F. A. WOOD Concerning the Origin of the Gerund in English. MORGAN CALLAWAY, JR Semantic Borrowing in Old English. SAMUEL KROESCH Recurring First Elements in Different Nominal Compounds in Beowulf and in the Elder Edda. F. P. MAGOUN, JR Notes on the Preverb^- in Alfredian English. LEONARD BLOOMFIELD Terms and Phrases for the Sea in Old English Poetry. HELEN BUCKHURST Epithetic Compound Folk-Names in Beowulf. W. F. BRYAN The Daughter of Healfdene. KEMP MALONE Hengest and His Namesake. A. G. VAN HAMEL Beowulfand the Saga of Samson the Fair. W.W.LAWRENCE .

i 14

21 28 32 50 73

79 103 120

135 159 172 182 Beowulf und die Merowinger. ALOIS BRANDL A Note on the Psychology of the Beowulf Poet. J. R. HULBERT 189 Two Types of Scribal Errors in the Beowulf MS. E. PROK.OSCH 196 208 Notes on Beowulf. SAMUEL MOORE Noch einmal: "enge anpaSas, uncuti gelad." L. L. SCHUCK.ING 213 217 Experiments in Translating Beowulf. H. C. Wyld . . . . Caedmon's Dream Song. LOUISE POUND 232 The Vasa Mortis in the Old English Salomon and Saturn. R. J. MENNER 240 A Putative Charter to Aldhelm. A. S. COOK 254 Die altenglischen Verzeichnisse von Gliicks- und Ungliickstagen. MAX FORSTER 258 Anglo-Norman Script and the Script of Twelfth-Century MSS in Northwestern Norway. G. T. FLOM 278 The Early English Loan-Words in Welsh and the Chronology of 288 t h e English Sound-Shift. R . E . ZACHRISSON King Arthur, the Christ, and Some Others. C. S. NORTHUP 309

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CONTENTS PAGE

"He Knew Nat Catoun for His Wit Was Rude." AAGE BRUSENDORFF Le Rire du Prophete. A. H. KRAPPE Somer Soneday. CARLETON BROWN Eine englische Urkunde aus dem Jahre 1470. LORENZ MORSBACH Shakespeare and Formal Logic. HARDIN CRAIG A Specimen of Vulgar English of the Mid-Sixteenth Century. H. M. AYRES "Woo't Drink up Eisel"? HENNING LARSEN The Etymology of "Yankee." H. LOGEMAN Harrington and Leibnitz. S. B. LILJEGREN The Baroque Style in Prose. MORRIS W. CROLL Alexander Hamilton and the Beginnings of Comparative Philology. R. W. CHAMBERS AND F. NORMAN Progress in the Teaching of Early English. A. G. KENNEDY . A Bibliography of the Works of Frederick Klaeber. STEFAN EINARSSON Vita

>]

320 340 362 375 380 397 401 403 414 427 457 467 477 486

FOUR FOOTNOTES To Papers on Germanic Metrics WILLIAM ELLERY LEONARD, University of Wisconsin

I

My notions on Germanic metrics have been set down in three monographs: Beowulf and the Nibelungen Couplet; the Scansion of Middle English Alliterative Verse; and La Metrica del Cid.1 The first attempted to explain how a four-beat scansion of the Old Germanic half-line actually sounds in my ears, as metrically far more satisfying than the orthodox two stresses; and suggested objective reasons for the historic validity of that scansion, based upon Germanic linguistics and on the linguistic and metrical phenomena of later Germanic verse (from Otfried to modern nursery rhymes), as well as upon the intrinsic nature of all verse as a metrical organism, and of oral or chanted verse as inevitably emphasizing an organic metrical pattern. The second showed that there are essentially no linguistic or metrical differences between such so-called "seven-stress long-lines" of poems like Gamelyn and the so-called "four-stress long-lines" of Piers Plowman, etc., the proofs being mainly in my experimental manipulations of lines from either in a context of the other. The argument was to establish the metrical conformity of Piers Plowman verses to the Gamelyn type—a type identical with that of the Nibelungenlied and not in dispute—without reference to earlier Germanic verse (in AS, OS, ON, and OHG). Then, with the alliterative verse in ME established as a seven-stress 1 "University of Wisconsin Studies in Language and Literature," No. 2 (Madison, 1918), pp. 99-152; ibid., No. ii (1920), pp. 58-104; and Remstade Archiws, Madrid (to be published in installments during the current year).

[I]

STUDIES IN ENGLISH PHILOLOGY long-line, there is practically established the four-stress character of the Old Germanic paired half-line, of which it is, by common consent, the traditional descendant. But my presentation was incomplete in several particulars, especially as to the relation of a seven-stress long-line in ME to an eight-stress in AS, though there was a word on this in the Introduction to my Beowulf translation.1 The third was a far more exact analysis of verse of the Gamelyn-Nibelungen type (and, by implication, of the Piers Plowman type); and made clear, I think, the important distinction between eight metrical beats as all integrated with speech-material, and eight metrical beats integrated in part with speech-material and in part with rests (in my nomenclature, rest-beats}. The norm of the ME and MHG type is, of course, six speech-beats, three in each half-line, with a rest-beat at the end of each half-line, as in my Beowulf translation, Let us hasten yonder [^

to seek and see anew[x_;

but with occasional substitution of rest-beats within the halfline, as again in my Beowulf, either in the first half (p. 30), Remember (x thy glory, make known thy might to all, or in the second (p. 132), Be the bier ready, ordered h_ anon;

or in both, as in my "Pied Piper,"2 With a fifeli. of steel to puckeredb. lips.

That is, verse of the Gamelyn-Nibelungen type (as in my Beowulf) is metrically still an eight-beat line, varying in speechbeats from four to eight (though four speech-beats in the second half is commonest only in the Nibelungen). I regret that the policy of the Revista makes it impossible for me to republish this paper in English, for it deals with matters fundamentally 1

New York: Century Co., 1923. The Lynching Bee and Other Poems. New York: B. W. Huebsch, 1920; reprinted in my collected verse, A Son of Earth, Viking Press, 1928. 2

[2]

GERMANIC METRICS the same as those now beginning to be re-examined in our own discipline.1 My objective, however, was to present, and primarily for the Hispanistas, the solution of an outstanding puzzle in Old Spanish: The meter of the Cid is, like the substance of the Cid, Germanic folk-art, an inheritance from Visigothic Old Castile, a rougher, more oral form of the versification employed by the fellow-juglar of twentieth-century Midwestern America in the above-cited translation of Beowulf. But I have been grievously handicapped in being forced to have such exclusive recourse to the printed word, in trying to explain matters intrinsically of the ear, in an eye-minded age. My notions, product of both metrical experience and metrical analysis, seem to act persuasively upon those whose ears are within range; I have a few disciples among local colleagues and students, or visitors in Madison. But I cannot reach others by word of mouth, either in the annual sessions of the Modern Language Association or on troubadouring tours, because, for almost as long as I have been a university teacher, a neurotic disability has made all travel impossible. These papers have been an inadequate substitute, except in the case of those few scholars, in America or abroad, who have any particular aptitudes for metrics; they understand, even when they don't altogether agree—and that is all I would ask. My other brethren, reiterating mechanically in their classrooms or in their text editions the orthodox reiterations of the textbooks and manuals, remark (I have been told), if they remark at all, that "Professor Leonard, being a poet, has a poet's privilege to disport himself as whimsically as he will . . . . but the rest of us must tend to facts." It seems time to have a little talk on this. Literary criticism aside, the facts of metrical science (like some facts in phonetics) are generically unlike those of other departments of humanistic investigation. Other facts 1 See, for example, G. R. Stewart, "The Metre of Piers Plowman," Publications of the Modern Language Association (March, 1927).

[3l

STUDIES IN ENGLISH PHILOLOGY (bibliographical, textual, biographical, etc.) are simply there in impersonal objective existence, to be discovered by impersonal organs of industry and ingenuity. Interpretation there begins with the objectively given. But in metrics the facts are facts only in experience itself; one can't discuss a cadence without knowing it, and there is only one way to know it—which is to live it in consciousness. I am persuaded that many otherwise competent, even eminent scholars, simply lack the ability to experience rhythmically and musically—in other words, to collect—metrical facts at all. On the other hand, many minds intuitively sensitive to metrical facts can do nothing with them analytically. Thus metrics as a subject of investigation makes a double demand upon us; we must be something of the artist to collect the facts, and something of the scientist to analyze them. The moral is a little embarrassing all 'round. II Recent preoccupation with the analysis of the long-line in ME, MHG, OSp, and my own verse (itself composed with as little consciousness of metrical theory as that of the old fellows long ago) has latterly stimulated some supplementary insight into the versification of the AS, ON, etc., as I have been hearing it in my ears for fifteen years (ever since I gave up trying to make one meter out of the orthodox five types). The rest (between beats) and the rest-beat (as substitute for a beat on a syllable), both so common in later verse of Germanic structure (the so-called "asyllabic accentual"), as in the opening couplet of the "Pied Piper," The huge|_ Pied|_ Piper[^ in a giantlx danced Began|_ hisl_ pipingh_ on the fields|_ 6f|_ France^,

are both possibly organic phenomena in the very early AS, ON, etc. Nay, the first is indubitably there. It is metrically a downright misstatement to say that in AS verse two accents [4]

GERMANIC METRICS (beats) may come together; they come together as little as they do in The hugel_ Pied[_ Piper;

there is the same rest between, e.g., even in the (orthodox) C type, in gear|_ dagum.

The time is kept either by unstressed speech-material or by a rest, precisely as in my own verse. The employment of the second (the rest-beat, as distinguished both from the rest and from the speech-beat) certainly often renders possible a better integration of meter with normal pronunciation of words in OG, even granting a more energetic articulation of secondary syllables in those days. I seem not to have had the wits to note this in my first monograph. It is primarily a question of linguistics; the meter remains the same whether I chant remember IN_ thy glory b_

or rememl_ her thy glor[_ y;

so, too, in the choice between sidralx sorgab_ and sid|_ ra|_

sor|_ ga|_-

I have noted a decided tendency in my oral reading of AS to such a handling of speech-material (in opposition to Kaluza's scansion, with which, in general, I agree), where the secondary beat would otherwise come on a following prefix of the next word, as in the second half (A type) of wrence(5 he ond blenc[_e3|_ • w°rrib_ gear vawcel is slight enough; ea and ae were often confused. 15 Other compounds with wee/- are wcel-jyr, 'deadly, murderous, destructive fire' (Beow., 2582); wcel-regn, 'deadly, fatal rain,' of the rain that caused the flood (Gen., 1350); wcel-sceaft, weel-spere, wcel-steng, 'deadly, destructive shaft, or spear'; and wcel-fah~8, 'deadly feud,' 'violent contest' (Beow., 2028). With this last noun I think we may connect the adjective in Beow., 1128: wselfa3ne winter

Her^est Sa 3yt wunode mid Finne.

If the two words belong together, Hall's 'the dead, forbidding winter' is an excellent translation. 16 OS heru-bendi, heru-sel, do not combine the ideas of 'sword' and 'bond' in any manner familiar to modern thinking. In rendering he/tun heru-bendiun handi tesamne (HeL, 4919) or hneg tho an heru-sel, an henginna, warag, an wurgil (ibid., 5169^) we resort to expressions like 'cruel fetters' or 'horrible halter.' OE heoru-jifre (Beow., 1498) means 'fiercely ravenous,' 'grimly greedy,' or the like. ABBREVIATIONS Beow. BeowulJ. Edd. E. A. KOCK, "Bidrag till eddatolkningen," Arkivjor nordisk filologi, XXXV-XXXVIII. Gen. Genesis. HeL Heliand. Int. E. A. KOCK, "Interpretations and Emendations of Early English Texts," Anglia, XXVII, 218 ff. JJJf E. A. KOCK, Jubilee Jaunts and Jottings. Lund, 1918. NNf E. A. KOCK, Notationes Norrcents. Lund, 1923 ff. Skj. . Den norsk-islandske Skjaldedigtning. Kjzibenhavn, 1912-15. Strz. E. A. KOCK, Kontinentalgermanische Streifzuge.. Lund, 1919. [201

LOSS OF A NASAL BEFORE LABIAL CONSONANTS EILERT EK.WALL, University of Lund

The problem to be dealt with in this paper has not been totally overlooked, but it has not been made the subject of special study. Loss of a nasal before w is assumed by Mr. Baddeley (Place-Names of Gloucestershire) for Stowell, which is derived by him from stan-wiella, and by Professor Mawer, dealing with Staward Nb.1 The phenomenon is, however, quite common, and a collection of material with a few notes may not be found without interest. The material does not claim to be complete. Very likely more examples will come to light as more material is made accessible. Some examples are placed here provisionally, as early material is not available or not sufficiently conclusive. Most examples are compounds containing as first element OE stan, 'stone.' OE stan-ford, 'stony ford,' appears frequently as Stoford or Stowford. It is true Stowfordmay in some cases go back to some other source, as stow-ford or even stoc-ford. However, the probability seems to be that the Sto(w)fords represent Stanford. A perfectly certain example is that placed first. For some examples, forms with a, later o, rule out any element containing OE o or short a (as stow, stocc, stcef, sleep). The base must have had OE a, and it is difficult to think of any other element than stdn, 'stone.'

Lr Stoford So (farm W. of Bishop's Lydyeard): Stanford 904 BCS 610. 1

A list of abbreviations appears at the end of this study (see pp. 26-27).

[21]

STUDIES IN ENGLISH PHILOLOGY Stoford So (ca. i| mi. S. of Yeovil): Stoford 1274 Ipm, Stanford 1284-85 FA (no doubt for Stanford), Staford 1316 FA. Stowford D (Bradworthy): la Stane Wrth, Stovorde 1279Stowford D (B Ipm, Stoneford 1303 FA, Stone 1346 ibid. Stowford D (West Down, Braunton hd): Eitaneforda ExonStowford D ( DB, Staveford DB (probably for Stane-).). Stowford D (NE. of Launceston): Estatforda Exon DB,Stowford D (NE. Staford DB, Stanford 1303 FA. The a must have been long. Stowford D (near Chittlehampton): Stafford 1284-86, Stouford 1303 FA. Stowford D (near Ivybridge): Estaforda Exon DB, StafordStowford D (n DB, Stanford 1303 FA.D Further cases are: Stowford W (seat near Bradford on Avon): Stowford 1458Stowford W (s BM. Stoford W (near Wilton): Stoford 1284 Ipm, Stouford 1352Stoford W (n Ipm. Stowford D (h. N. of Bulkworthy).Stowfor Stowford D (h. N. of Bratton Fleming). OE Stanford is probably the first element ofOE Staverton D: Stofordtun ca. 1060 KCD 940. It is doubtful if any other Stavertons belong here, as those in Gl, Np, Sf, and W. Stavordale So (S. of Bruton) may be a case in point. OE stan-weor]) is the source of S (award Nb: Staworthe 1271 Sc, Stannord 1290 Ipm, etc. (see Mawer). OE stanweg, 'stony road,' i.e., 'paved road,' is the source of Stowey So (par. 8 mi. S. of Bristol): Staweie Muchelny 87, Stawey 1290 QW, Staweye 1303, Staweie 1316 FA. Nether and Over Stowey So (W. of Bridgwater on the road from Bridgwater to Watchet): Stalvvei, Stawei DB, Estaluueia Exon DB, Scaweye, Stowey e, Nuthere-stoweye 1276 RH. Old Stowey So (Cutcombe): Holestoweye 1303, 1346, Holestowey 1428 FA, 'the hollow stony road.'

[22]

LOSS OF A NASAL OE stdnwiell(a), 'stony stream': Stawell So (par. E. of Bridgwater; on a tributary of the Parret): Stanwelle, Stawelle DB, Estanwella Exon DB, Stawell, Stanwelle 1276 RH. Stowell So (par. SW. Wincanton): Estawella Exon DB, Stawell 1276 RH, Stauwelle 1284-85, Stawell 1303 FA. Stowell' W (SW. Marlborough): Stowelle 1300 Ch. 6Vow«?// Gl (par. SW. Northleach): Stanuuelle DB, ,Sten;