Birds and Bird-lore in the Literature of Anglo-Saxon England

314 Pages·2014·1.93 MB·English

Birds and Bird-lore in the Literature of Anglo-Saxon
England

Mohamed Eric Rahman Lacey
Submitted for the degree of Ph.D., University College London
2013

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I, Mohamed Eric Rahman Lacey, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my
own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has
been indicated in the thesis.

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Abstract

This thesis presents an interdisciplinary approach towards understanding the ways in
which Anglo-Saxons perceived the birds around them and the cultural associations
with which we find them endowed in the literature. It focuses on closely examining
the entire range of primary sources available to us in order to build as accurate and as
complete a picture of Anglo-Saxon bird-lore as possible, and it stresses the
indivisibility of observational experiences of birds and their cultural associations.
As very little work has been done on birds in Old English, this thesis starts with the
fundamentals: how were birds categorised, identified and differentiated? Such
fundamental questions must be addressed if we are not to anachronistically impose
our own understanding on the Old English evidence. My examination reveals that
birds were primarily heard, rather than seen, and that this experience of birds is
reflected in the literature, where descriptions focus on their calls, instead of their
appearances.
This aural primacy is stressed throughout the thesis. In the first half of the thesis I
argue for remnants of an apparently ancient, and common Germanic, practice of
augury in the literature of Anglo-Saxon England, in which the vocalisations of birds
were held to contain prophecies and tidings of present import. I present arguments
for this belief being grounded in observed experience, stressing the connection
between bird-lore and the lived experiences of birds in the Anglo-Saxons’
environment. In the second half of the thesis, I demonstrate that Christian bird-lore
was quite different, being steeped in symbolism and scholarly tradition rather than
naturalistic observation, but that it had common ground in associating birds with
divine knowledge. I subsequently show how the Christian traditions of birds
interacted with pre-Christian bird-lore – both in terms of augury and in terms of
Anglo-Saxon proto-scientific classification.

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Contents
Acknowledgements 8
Abbreviations 9
Introduction 11
Birds and bird-lore 12
Problem and Method 16
Methodology: the comparative approach 17
Outline of thesis 19
A note on orthography 22
A note on texts 22
Part One – Pre-Christian Bird-lore 24
Chapter One: Semantics of bird names and Old English Taxonomy 25
Introduction 25
Theory and Method 27
Taxonomy and ‘science’ 27
‘Species’ and lexis 32
What’s in a name?: bird-names and their semantic fields 34
Overview of previous scholarship 38
Hroc, hrefn and crawe 43
The visual criteria 54
Pullis corvorum – and its implications for Corvid taxonomy 57
Corvid perception and taxonomy 59

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Ideophonic bird-names 60
Ule and ufe 61
Þrysce and þrostle 65
Higera and hraga 69
An Anglo-Saxon genus? The case of OE ganot 72
Ganot as attested in Old English 72
The ganot outside Old English 80
The semantic range of OE ganot 82
The Birds of The Seafarer – revisited 83
Previous identification 83
Ylfetu 84
Ganet 89
Huilpe 93
Mæw 93
Stearn 94
Earn 95
Geac and the anfloga 96
Chapter Two: Augury in Anglo-Saxon England 100
Beasts of battle 101
The supernatural aspect 103
The natural basis: analogous evidence and historical speculation 114
The religious aspects 120
Literary representations of augury 122
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Chanting birds 122
Talking birds 129
The talking birds of The Seafarer 136
Historical evidence for augury 144
Glossary evidence 151
The penitential evidence 154
Conclusion 164
Part Two – Christian Bird-lore 166
Chapter Three: Sparrows in Anglo-Saxon England 167
Problematising Bede’s account 167
The significance of the sparrow 174
Sparrows and the soul in Anglo-Saxon England 181
Conclusion 190
Appendix: Sparrows and biblical allusions in Old English 192
Chapter Four: Doves in Old English Literature 196
Old English words for ‘dove’: culfre and turtle 197
Dove-lore in Anglo-Saxon England 202
The Dove, white bills, and bilewitnysse 204
Corvidae and doves 213
Doves and augury 222
Doves and the Holy Ghost 233
Chapter Five: The Bird-Soul 250
Souls in dove-form 250
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Swans, souls and doves 259
Excluding the transformational tradition: the case of the swan-maidens
270
Conclusions 280
Summary 280
Future implications 281
Bibliography 283
Primary sources 283
Secondary sources 292

List of figures:
1.1 Lexical hierarchies in Modern English 28
1.2 Intermediary taxonomic levels in Modern English 29
1.3 Lexical hierarchies in Modern English and Old English 30
1.4 Collected transliterations of crow (Corvus corone), rook (Corvus
frugilegus) and raven (Corvus corax) 46
1.5 Translations of pullis coruorum in Old English 57
1.6 Transliterations of jay and heron calls 70
1.7 Winter vocalisations of ganet candidates 91
3.1 Sparrows and biblical allusions in Old English 192

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my supervisors Professor Richard North and Professor Susan
Irvine for their guidance, support, wisdom and patience throughout the entirety of
this project. I am also grateful to those who have at some point in my academic
career steered my interests towards the fields of early medieval literature: Dr Chris
Abram who taught me Old Norse during my Master’s degree, and Dr Winfried
Rudolf and Dr Stewart Brookes, both of whom taught me Old English as an
undergraduate. My gratitude is also due to those with whom I have discussed
(sometimes at too great a length) various aspects of birds and bird-lore: Dr Alan
Thacker, Dr Anna Gannon, Professor Andrew Reynolds, Dr Carolin Esser-Miles, Dr
Sandor Chardonnens, Dr Mike Bintley, Dr Meg Boulton and Dr Kris Poole. Some of
these I also owe more personal thanks to for their friendship, honest feedback,
general administrative support and welcome distractions: Christine Twite, Alastair
Hemmens, Karina Jakubowicz, Phil Anderson, Adam Berlie and Melissa Herman.
Lastly, I would like to express my gratitude to my parents, David and Norma, and
my sister Camilla, and the many other friends and family members who have given
me food and support over the years.

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Abbreviations

ASC Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
BT J. Bosworth and T. N. Toller, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (London:
Clarendon Press, 1898)
BWP S. Cramp, et al., Handbook of the Birds of Europe, the Middle East
and North Africa: Birds of the Western Palearctic, 9 vols (Oxford:
OUP, 1977-1994)
CBG L. Svensson, et al., Collins Bird Guide: The Most Complete Guide to
the Birds of Britain and Ireland and Europe, 2nd edn (London:
HarperCollins, 2009)
CCSL Corpus Christianorum Series Latina
CH I Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: The First Series, Text, ed. by P. Clemoes,
EETS s.s. 17 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997)
CH II Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: The Second Series, Text, ed. by M.
Godden, EETS s.s. 5 (London: OUP, 1979)
CSASE Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England
CUP Cambridge University Press
DOE Dictionary of Old English A-G (Toronto: Dictionary of Old English,
2007) < http://www.doe.utoronto.ca/> [accessed 11/11/2013]
DOEC Dictionary of Old English Corpus (Toronto: Dictionary of Old
English, 2009) < http://tapor.library.utoronto.ca/doecorpus/>
[accessed 11/11/2013]
EETS Early English Texts Society
IEW J. Pokornoy, Indogermanisches Etymologisches Worterbuch, 5th edn,
2 vols (Bern and München: Frankes, 1959-1969).
MED Middle English Dictionary (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press, 1952-2001) <http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med/> [accessed
23/11/2013]
MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica
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OED Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: OUP, 2013) <www.oed.com>
[accessed 25/11/2013]
OEM Old English Martyrology
OUP Oxford University Press
PE I The Poetic Edda: Volume I: Heroic Poems, ed. and trans. by U.
Dronke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969)
PE II The Poetic Edda: Volume II: Mythological Poems, ed. and trans. by
U. Dronke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997)
PL Patrologia Latina, ed. by J.-P. Migne, 221 vols (Paris, 1844-64)
PMLA Publications of the Modern Language Association
S Indicates charter number from P. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters: An
Annotated List and Bibliography (London: Royal Historical Society,
1968)
Skj Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning, ed. by Finnur Jónsson, 4 vols
(Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1912-15)
Supp. Homilies of Ælfric: Supplementary Collection, ed. by J. C. Pope,
EETS 259, 260, 2 vols (London: OUP, 1967-8)
VGM Vita Gregorii Magni

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