178 



NOTES AND QUERIES.' 



[No. 97. 



A SAXON BELL-HOUSE. 

 (Vol. iv., p. 102.) 



Your correspondent Mb. Gatty, in a late num- 

 ber, has quoted a passage of tlie historian Hume, 

 ■whicli treats a certain Anglo-Saxon document as 

 a statute of Atlielstan. As your correspondent 

 cites his author without a comment, he would ap- 

 pear to give his own sanction to the date which 

 Hume has imposed upon that document. In point 

 of fact, it bears no express date, and therefore 

 presents a good subject for a Query, whether that 

 or any other era is by construction applicable to 

 it. It is an extremely interesting Anglo-Saxon 

 remain ; and as it bears for title, " be leodgethinc- 

 thum and lage," it purports to give legal informa- 

 tion upon the secular dignities and ranks of the 

 Anglo-Saxon period. This promises well to the 

 archaeologist, but unfortunately, on a nearer in- 

 spection, the document loses much of its worth ; 

 for, independently of its lacking a date, its juris- 

 prudence partakes more of theory than that dry 

 law which we might imagine would proceed from 

 the Anglo-Sa.xon bench. Notwithstanding this, 

 however, its archasological interest is great. The 

 language is pure and incorrupt West Saxon. 



It has been published by all its editors (except 

 Professor Leo) as prose, when it is clearly not 

 only rythmical but alliterative — an obvious cha- 

 racteristic of Anglo-Saxon poetry. And it is this 

 mistake which has involved the further conse- 

 quence of giving to the document a legnl and 

 historical value which it would never have had if 

 its real garb had been seen through. Tiiis has led 

 the critics into a belief of its veracity, when a 

 knowledge of its real character would have in- 

 spired doubts. I believe that its accidental posi- 

 tion in the first printed edition at the end of the 

 " Judicia" (whether it be so placed in the MS. I 

 know not) lias assisted in the delusion, and has 

 supplied a date to the minds of those who prefer 

 faith to disipiisition. The internal evidence of 

 the document also shows that it is not jurispru- 

 dence, but only a vision spun from the writers 

 own brains, of what he dreamed to be constitu- 

 tional and legal chiu-acteristics of an anterior age, 

 when there were greater liberty of action and 

 expansion of mind. The opening words of them- 

 selves contain the character of the document : — 

 " Hit wa;s hwilnm." It is not a narrative of the 

 present, but a record of the past. 



The Icgitl poet then breaks freely into the da •- 

 ling ornament of Anglo-Saxon song, alliteration : 

 " On En";la lajium thast leod and lasura," and so on 

 to the end. As its contents are so well known and 

 accessible, I will not rpiote them, but will merely 

 give a running comment upon parts. " Gif ceorl 

 getheah," &c. It may be doubted whether, even 

 in occasional instances, the ceorl at any time pos- 

 sessed under the Anglo-Saxon system the power 



of equalising himself by means of the acquisition 

 of property, with the class of theguas or gentils- 

 honmies. But in the broad way in which the 

 poet slates it, it mny be absolutely denied, inas- 

 much as the acquisition of wealth is made of itself 

 to transform the ceorl into a thegn : a singular 

 coincidence of idea with the vulg.ar modern 

 theory, but incompatible with fact in an age when 

 a dominant caste o( gentlemen obtained. 



It is not until the reign of Edward III. that 

 any man, not born a gentleman, can be distinctly 

 traced in possession of the honours and dignities 

 of the country ; an air of improbability is thus 

 given which is increased by a verbal scrutiny. In 

 the words " gif thegen getheah thjet be wearth to 

 eorle," &c., the use of the word eorl is most sus- 

 picious. This is not the eorl of antiquity — the 

 Teutonic nobilis ; it is the official eoi-l of the 

 Danish and ^Hasi-Dnnisli periods. This ana- 

 chronism betrays the real date of the production, 

 and carries us to the times succeeding the reign 

 of Ethelred II., when the disordered and trans- 

 itional state of the country may have excited in 

 the mind of the disquieted writer a l()nd aspiration 

 which he clothed in the fanciful garb of his own 

 wishes, rather than that of the gloomy reality 

 which he saw before him. 



The use of the word crceft, for a vessel, like the 

 modern, is to be foiuid in the Andreas (v. .500.), a 

 composition ])robably of the eleventh century. 



The conclusion points to troubled and late 

 times of the Anglo-Saxon rule, when the church 

 missed the reverence which had been paid to it in 

 periods of peace and prosperity. 



I have said enough to show that this document 

 cannot rank in accuracy or truthful value with 

 the Kectitudines or the LL. of Hen. I. 



One word more. What is the meaning of burh- 

 geatf Burh lean understand; authorities abound 

 for its use as expressing the manoir of the Anglo- 

 Saxon thegn. The " gcneates riht" {Bectitudiues') 

 is " bytlian and burh hegegian." The ccorls of 

 Dyddanham were bound to dyke the hedge of their 

 lords' burh (" Consuetudines in Dyddanhamme," 

 Kemb , vol. iii. App. p. 450.) : " And dicie gyrde 

 burh heges." II. C. C. 



THE WHALE OF JONAH. 



Eichhorn (Eiuleitmig in das Alte Testament, iii. 

 249.) in a note refers to a pass.nge of Miiller's 

 translations of Linnanis, narrating the following 

 remarkable accident : — 



" In the year 1758, a seaman, in consequence of 

 stormy weather, unluckily fell overboard from a 

 frigate into the Mediterranean. A seal ( Seehund, not 

 Hai, a shark) immediately took the man, swimming 

 and crying for help, into its wide jaws. Other seamen 

 sprang into a boat to help their swimming comrade; 

 and their captnin, noticing the accident, had the pre- 



