Ilmar Üle
From Horsa to my grandmother,
thoughts, facts, and ideas about the animal-related notions in Anglo-Saxon context
In this rather loose-structured piece of writing I am trying to put down my thoughts and ideas
of animals, English nouns they are and were called with, and any interesting notion I have
been able to notice or to think of. In a way it is a ‘stream-of-consciousness’ type of writing.
Being a student of Old English, I spent some time studying the linguistic, cultural, and social
relevance of animals in the early English society and linguistic environment. I have not been
trying to compile a scientific article, nor a proper essay. But it was interesting to write it, and I
still have some hope that some people may find it interesting to read.
The language and the time
The Anglo-Saxon period lasted from the fifth century until the second half of the eleventh
century. The language spoken during that period is the Old English. Scholars place Old
English in the Anglo-Frisian group of West Germanic languages. It was quite different from
the contemporary English, somewhat similar to Old Icelandic, Old Norse and the Gothic
languages. In many aspects, the present day German resembles Old English to a much greater
extent than present day English.
The most widely recognised date of the beginning of the Anglo-Saxon period in England
would be 410 AD, as this is the year the Roman army departed from Britain; and the period is
considered to end on the 14th of October 1066, when the battle of Hastings was fought
between the forces of Harold Godwinson and the Duke of Normandy. This ended the reign of
the last Anglo-Saxon king.
The course of battle is recorded in various Old English manuscripts, mainly the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle and the Bayeux tapestry. The latter one is a medieval embroidery depicting the
course of the battle, thus being a valuable source of history as well as a remarkable piece of
art.
1066 and the horse
It is quite interesting to observe the two armies’ relation to and use of the horse. The concept
of actually using the horse in a battle seems to have been totally alien to the Saxons. Horses
were used primarily as beasts of burden and for transport to and from battles. It was normal,
and was probably practised at Hastings, that the Saxon horses were dismounted and led away
from the scene prior to the conflict.
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The Norman's had a completely different approach to the horse. It became a fundamental part
of their battle tactics. It is thought that many of the tactics used by the Norman's were still
being practised right up until the end of the 19th century.
As a student of Old English it is my opinion that it was the cavalry tactics of the Normans
which led to the “breaking the backbone” of the language. By this expression I mean that if
such basic words as ‘dale’ and ‘woods’ became replaced by loaned ‘valley’ and ‘forest’, the
shift in the linguistic environment must have been enormous. The extensive use of cavalry in
this battle finally led to the seventy per cent of French loans in English language as we know
it today, it eliminated the West-Saxon dialect’s supreme position as a well established written
language. And this resulted in other dialects getting their chance, as the following centuries
witnessed the emergence of the Middle English dialects and Chaucer, and finally, Modern
English, London speech, and Shakespeare.
Oxen in place names and legal system
What is the connection between Oxford and Bosporus? At first glance, nothing. I have never
heard of ‘the University of Bosporus’ or the ‘strait of Oxford’. It may sound surprising, but
‘Oxenford1’ means the same as ‘Bos Porus’, literally shallow water that is no trouble for big
animals, such as the ox, to cross.
Little is known about the etymology of Oxford, but as it is situated at the banks of river
Thames, it may as well be that nearby was a suitable place for crossing the stream; whereas
Bosporus is traditionally connected with the legendary figure of Io, who in the form of an ox
crossed the Bosporus in her wanderings.
Leaving aside the Greek mythology and returning to the misty Albion of early times, one
might wonder, what the people of that time thought of animals, for example, the ox, the
sheep, or the horse. What was the value of a beast? Were they thought to be creatures with
mind or soul? Were they considered to be responsible for their own deeds? In order to get a
glimpse into the minds of the Anglo-Saxons, another source of information – lawcodes issued
by the ancient British kings – comes to be of invaluable assistance.
Issuing laws was the sole right of a king. Literally, this was about the only quality that
differentiated the king from noblemen of other ranks. Through its sentence structure and
expressions the early Anglo-Saxon law betrays its verbal origin and tends to make a much
better reading than the fuzzy wordpiles of the contemporary laws.
1
Possible Old English scribal variations include Oxnaford, Oxonford, Oxenford, Oxneford,
etc.
2
So, what about the ox? From the Ordinance respecting the 'Dun-Setas'2 we find out that an ox
should be paid for 30 pence, whereas the price of a horse is 30 shillings. The price of man is a
pound. After the Norman Conquest the pound was divided for accounting purposes into 20
shillings and into 240 pennies, or pence; there is little actual evidence about the value of coins
from the earlier period. But what seems to be certain is that a good horse tended to be of
greater value than an average slave, not mentioning the ox. Was it due to the practical value
of the animal or prestige, is a good topic for further study. It is sure that a horse was a very
valuable piece of property during that period, one might speculate, that this might have been
one of the reasons the British warriors did not want to take the animals to battle. But of
course, this seems a little too far-fetched conclusion and has to be treated with caution.
Gif hwa forstele oðres oxan & hine ofslea oððe bebycgge, selle twegen wið & feower sceap
wið anum. Gif he næbbe hwæt he selle, sie he self beboht wið ðam fio3. Yes, this is the everchanging English language. The text is a law issued by a ruler many consider the greatest
British king of all: Alfred the king of Wessex (871–899). In this somewhat ambiguous code, a
man is of equal value with two oxen or four sheep. In this particular case, the value of oxen
seems a little too high; perhaps it was meant to be a harsh and unfair punishment for the
unjust deed of stealing and failure to follow the Ten Commandments.
Another code by Alfred the Great: If an ox gore a man or a woman, so that they die, let it be
stoned, and let not its flesh be eaten. The lord shall not be liable, if the ox were wont to push
with its horns for two or three days before, and the lord knew it not; but if he knew it, and he
would not shut it in, and it then shall have slain a man or a woman, let it be stoned; and let
the lord be slain, or the man be paid for, as the 'witan4' decree to be right.
So, the beast is to pay for its deeds. This indicates that the Anglo-Saxons considered oxen to
be animals with mind and free will, perhaps even soul. This particular fact, along with the
price calculations of man and horse, seem to support the idea that in the minds of the AngloSaxons the humans and animals were not so very different at all. Although during that time
Britain had already been christianised for quite a few centuries, the Christian ideas of all
animals existing just for the benefit of humans seems to be not so widespread as one might
have expected. For it was only a few centuries earlier when the legendary brothers Hengest
and Horsa landed at Ebbsfleet thus starting the Anglo-Saxon colonisation of Britain. The
2
LawDuns (7), B14.31, 11th century, the code regulated the order of village council as well as
everyday issues.
3 If any one steal another's ox, and slay or sell it, let him give two for it; and four sheep for
one. If he have not what he may give, be he himself sold for the cattle. B14.4.3 Alfred-Ine
(Introduction to Alfred).
4 also called Witenagemot, the council of the Anglo-Saxon kings.
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famous Horse-named leader and his brother were definitely not Christian and their way of
thinking seems to have been prominent even four hundred years later.
The ox was also used to measure the land. In the area of Danelaw (the northern, central, and
eastern region of Anglo-Saxon England colonised by invading Danish armies in the late 9th
century), the basic unit of land measurement was ‘carucate’, which was the area an eight-oxen
team could plough in a day. A very practical and quite precise way of measuring the land
without employing mathematicians.
The linking words
The terms denoting animals or the ‘names’ for them seem to be among the linguistically most
conservative ones, retaining their original forms even when the whole language around them
has gone through major changes. Oxoxen, sheep (singular)sheep (plural), goosegeese.
What might be the reason behind the irregularities? ‘Ox’, as well as ’child’ has simply
retained its original plural form and nowadays it seems a little awkward. But this is the Old
English background that shines through a millennium of constantly changing linguistic
environment. The word ‘geese’ is a good example of Old English way of forming the plural
through a phonetic device called the ‘i-mutation’. ‘O’, being a formed at the back part of the
mouth, is changed to ‘e’, formed at the front of the mouth. The plural of ‘sheep’ is formed in
a similar way, although the pronunciation does not change. The reason for this ‘zero change’
is the fact, that one possibly could not produce a sound in more front part of the mouth that it
is already done when uttering ‘e’. Theoretically, the i-mutation is still there in ‘sheep’,
although it is undetectable.
Loanwords are an interesting field of study. Loans indicate cultural contacts between
nationalities, cultures, and languages. They indicate the nature of the contacts, e.g. the subject
of trade. If starting to pursue the origins of many words in everyday use of our present day
language, on may come to interesting findings. What everyday word indicates the
Finnish/Estonian contacts with the Roman Empire? ‘Raha’! The present day meaning
‘money’ has gone through a slight semantic change. The original form of this word is
‘skraha’, meaning ‘fur’ in the Visigothic language, which is has been extinct for about 1600
years. As the Finno-Ugric languages did not tolerate double initial consonants, the ‘s’ was
dropped and the result was ‘raha’. The gothic traders, who have left their traces in placenames
such as ‘Göteborg’ or ‘Gotland’, were interested in receiving furs in exchange for their
weapons and jewellery of Roman origin. A similar phenomenon is illustrated by the Komi
language, where the word ‘ur’ still denotes squirrel skin AND a coin of five kopecks.
...and the venom toads shall devour your flesh…
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As small as the contemporary peoples’ knowledge of animals may be, it seems to have been
somewhat worse in the 16th-17th century. Namely, Shakespeare writes about the ‘venom
toads’. Toads were thought to be poisonous long time before Shakespeare, an especially cruel
Anglo-Saxon nobleman is said to have thrown people into a dungeon full of ‘pades’, toads.
Whether this kind of punishment was fatal, remains unknown.
I would like to conclude my train of thought by an interesting example of a loan. The Old
English word ‘pade’ reveals yet another Finno-Ugric - Anglo-Saxon contact. Namely, I
remember my grandmother using the word ‘padakonn’ instead of the proper Estonian
‘kärnkonn’. There it is. An Estonian Midland dialect speaker using the lexemes of the WestSaxon dialect. It’s a small world.
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