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Editor: Bertrand Lafont (CNRS, Nanterre)

Number 2

Title: “Introduction to Sumerian Grammar”

Author: Daniel A. Foxvog

Posted to web: 4 January 2016

INTRODUCTION TO SUMERIAN GRAMMAR

DANIEL A FOXVOG

LECTURER IN ASSYRIOLOGY (RETIRED)

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY

Revised January 2016

 CONTENTS

PREFACE 4

THE SUMERIAN WRITING SYSTEM 5

PHONOLOGY 17

NOUNS AND ADJECTIVES 22

THE NOMINAL CHAIN 27

PRONOUNS AND DEMONSTRATIVES 30

SUMMARY OF PERSONAL PRONOUN FORMS 37

THE ADNOMINAL CASES: GENITIVE AND EQUATIVE 38

THE COPULA 44

ADVERBS AND NUMERALS 49

THE ADVERBAL CASES 53

INTRODUCTION TO THE VERB 60

DIMENSIONAL PREFIXES 1: INTRODUCTION 68

DIMENSIONAL PREFIXES 2: DATIVE 73

DIMENSIONAL PREFIXES 3: COMITATIVE, ABLATIVE-INSTRUMENTAL, TERMINATIVE 78

CORE PREFIXES: ERGATIVE, LOCATIVE-TERMINATIVE, LOCATIVE 84

THE VENTIVE ELEMENT 91

RELATIVE CLAUSES: THE NOMINALIZING SUFFIX -a 97

PREFORMATIVES (MODAL PREFIXES) 104

THE IMPERATIVE 111

IMPERFECTIVE FINITE VERBS 119

PARTICIPLES AND THE INFINITIVE 130

APPENDIX 1: CHART OF VERBAL PREFIX CHAIN ELEMENTS 155

TABLE OF SYLLABIC SIGN VALUES 156

APPENDIX 2: THE EMESAL DIALECT 158

INDEX 159

EXERCISES 161
3
 PREFACE

Entia non sunt multiplicanda

praeter necessitatem

William of Ockham

This grammar is intended primarily for use in the first year of university study under the guidance of a teacher who can
describe the classic problems in greater detail, add current alternative explanations for phenomena, help the student
parse and understand the many textual illustrations found throughout, and provide supplementary information about
the history of the language and the culture of early Mesopotamia. A few exercises have been provided to accompany
study of the lessons, some artificial, others drawn from actual texts. Both require vocabulary lookup from the com-
panion Elementary Sumerian Glossary or a modern substitute such as the online Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary.
Upon completing this introduction, the student will be well prepared to progress to sign learning and reading of texts.
Konrad Volk's A Sumerian Reader (Studia Pohl Series Maior 18, Rome, 1997-) is a good beginning.

This introduction may also be of benefit to those who have already learned some Sumerian more or less inductively
through the reading of simple royal inscriptions and who would now like a more structured review of its grammar,
with the help of abundant textual illustrations, from something a bit more practical and pedagogically oriented than the
available reference grammars.

Cross-references have often been provided throughout to sections (§) in Marie-Louise Thomsen's earlier standard The
Sumerian Langauge (Copenhagen, 19872), where additional information and further examples can often be found for
individual topics. A newer restatement of the grammatical system is Dietz Otto Edzard's Sumerian Grammar (Leiden,
2003). An up to date quick overview is Gonzalo Rubio's "Sumerian Morphology," in Alan S. Kaye (ed.), Morpho-
logies of Asia and Africa II (2007) 1327-1379. Pascal Attinger's encyclopedic Eléments de linguistique sumérienne
(Fribourg, 1993) is a tremendously helpful reference but beyond the reach of the beginner. Abraham H. Jagersma's
revolutionary new and monumental Descriptive Grammar of Sumerian (2010) is now available for download on the
Web and will eventually be published by Oxford University Press.

For standard Assyriological abbreviations used in this introduction see the Abbreviations for Assyriology of the
Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI) on the Web. The standard academic online dictionary is the Electronic
Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary (ePSD). The chronological abbeviations used here are:

OS Old Sumerian period (2500-2350 BC)

OAkk Old Akkadian (Sargonic) period (2350-2150 BC)
Ur III 3rd Ur Dynasty (Neo-Sumerian) period (2150-2000 BC)
OB Old Babylonian period (1900-1600 BC)

For those who may own a version of my less polished UC Berkeley teaching grammar from 1990 or earlier, the present
version will be seen to be finally comprehensive, greatly expanded, hopefully much improved, and perhaps worth a
serious second look. My description of the morphology and historical morphophonemics of the verbal prefix system
remains an idiosyncratic, somewhat unconventional minority position. Jagersma's new description, based in many
respects upon a new system of orthographic and morphophonological rules, is now popular especially in Europe, and
it may well eventually become the accepted description among many current students of Sumerian grammar.

This will be the last updated, final, edition of this grammar.

Guerneville, California USA

January 2016

4
 THE SUMERIAN WRITING SYSTEM

I. TRANSLITERATION CONVENTIONS

A. Sign Diacritics and Index Numbers

Sumerian features a large number of homonyms – words that were pronounced similarly but had different
meanings and were written with different signs, for example:

/du/ 'to come, go'

/du/ 'to build'

/du/ 'to release'

A system of numerical subscripts, and diacritics over vowels representing subscripts, serves to identify
precisely which sign appears in the actual text. The standard reference for sign identification remains R.
Labat's Manuel d'Epigraphie akkadienne (1948-), which has seen numerous editions and reprintings. Y.
Rosengarten's Répertoire commenté des signes présargoniques sumériens de Lagaš (1967) is indispensible
for reading Old Sumerian texts. R. Borger's Assyrisch-babylonische Zeichenliste (AOAT 33/33a, 1978-) is
now the modern reference for sign readings and index numbers, although the best new signlist for OB
Sumerian literary texts is the Altbabylonische Zeichenliste der sumerisch-literarischen Texte by C. Mitter-
mayer & P. Attinger (Fribourg, 2006). Borger's AbZ index system which is used here is as follows:

Single-syllable signs Multiple-syllable signs

du (= du1) muru
Note that the diacritic
dú (= du2) múru always falls on the FIRST
VOWEL of the word!
dù (= du3) mùru

du4 etc. muru4

There is variation in the systems employed in older signlists for multiple- syllable signs, especially in Labat.
In the earliest editions of his signlist which may still be encountered in libraries, Labat carried the use of
diacritics through index numbers 4-5 by shifting the acute and grave accents onto the first syllable of multiple-
syllable signs:

murú (= muru2)

murù (= muru3)

múru (= muru4)

mùru (= muru5)

5
 This would not be a problem except for a number of signs which have long and short values. For example, the
sign túk can be read /tuk/ or /tuku/. Labat reads the latter as túku, which then does not represent tuku4, but
rather tuku2, i.e. túk(u)! Borger's system, used here and in later editions of Labat, is more consistent, placing
the diacritics on the first syllable of multi-syllable signs, but using them only for index numbers 2 and 3.

New values of signs, pronunciations for which no generally accepted index numbers yet exist, are given an "x"
subscript, e.g. dax 'side'.

Note, finally, that more and more frequently the acute and grave accents are being totally abandoned in favor
of numeric subscripts throughout. This, for example, is the current convention of the new Pennsylvania
Sumerian Dictionary, e.g. du, du2, du3, du4, etc. Since the system of accents is still current in Sumerological
literature, however, it is vital that the beginner become familiar with it, and so it has been maintained here.

B. Upper and Lower Case, Italics, and Brackets

In unilingual Sumerian contexts, Sumerian words are normally written in lower case roman letters. Upper case
(capital) letters (CAPS) are used:

1) When the exact meaning of a sign is unknown or unclear. Many signs are polyvalent, that is, they
have more than one value or reading. When the particular reading of a sign is in doubt, one may
indicate this doubt by choosing its most common value and writing this in CAPS. For example, in the
sentence KA-ĝu10 ma-gig 'My KA hurts me' a body part is intended. But the KA sign can be read ka
'mouth', kìri 'nose' or zú 'tooth', and the exact part of the face might not be clear from the context. By
writing KA one clearly identifies the sign to the reader without committing oneself to any of its
specific readings.

2) When the exact pronunciation of a sign is unknown or unclear. For example, in the phrase a-SIS
'brackish water', the pronunciation of the second sign is still not completely clear: ses, or sis? Rather
than commit oneself to a possibly incorrect choice, CAPS can be used to tell the reader that the choice
is being left open.

3) When one wishes to identify a non-standard or "x"-value of a sign. In this case, the x-value is
immediately followed by a known standard value of the sign in CAPS placed within parentheses, for
example dax(Á) ‘side’.

4) When one wishes to spell out the components of a compound logogram, for example
énsi(PA.TE.SI) 'governor' or ugnim(KI.KUŠ.LU.ÚB.ĜAR) 'army'.

5) When referring to a sign in the abstract, as in “the ŠU sign is the picture of a hand.”

In bilingual or Akkadian contexts, a variety of conventions exist. Very commonly Akkadian words are written
in lower case roman or italic letters with Sumerian logograms in CAPS: a-na É.GAL-šu 'to his palace'. In
some publications one also sees Sumerian words written in s p a c e d r o m a n letters, with Akkadian in either
lower case roman letters or italics. In other newer publications Sumerian is even printed in boldface type.

Determinatives, unpronounced indicators of meaning, are written with superscripts in Sumerological literature,
or, often, in CAPS on the line in Akkadian contexts: gišhašhur or ĜIŠ.HAŠHUR. They are also sometimes
seen written lower case on the line separated by periods: ĝiš.hašhur.

Partly or wholly missing or broken signs can be indicated using square brackets, e.g. lu[gal] or [lugal] ‘king’.
Partly broken signs can also be indicated using half-brackets. A sign presumed to have been omitted by the
ancient scribe is indicated by the use of <angle> brackets, while an erroneously repeated sign deleted by a
modern editor is indicated by the use of double angle <<angle>> brackets.

6
C. Conventions for Linking Signs and Words

Hyphens and Periods

In Akkadian contexts, hyphens are always used to transliterate Akkadian, while periods separate the
elements of Sumerian words or logograms. In Sumerian contexts, periods link the parts of compound
signs written in CAPS, and hyphens are used elsewhere, e.g.:

énsi(PA.TE.SI) 'governor'
kuš
gur21(É.ÍB)ùr 'shield'
an-šè 'towards heaven'

Problems can arise, however, when one attempts to formulate rules for the linking of the elements in
the chain formations characteristic of Sumerian. The formal definition of a Sumerian word remains
problematic (see J. Black, "Sumerian Lexical Categories," Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 92 [2002] 60ff.
and G. Cunningham, "Sumerian Word Classes Reconsidered," in Your Praise is Sweet. A Memorial
Volume for Jeremy Black [London, 2010] 41-52.) Consequently, we only transliterate Sumerian sign
by sign; we do not usually transcribe "words." Verbal chains consist of stems and affixes always
linked together into one unit. But nominal chains (phrases) often consist of adjectives, appositions,
dependent genitive constructions, and relative clauses beside head nouns and suffixes, and the linking
or separation of various parts of nominal chains in unilingual Sumerian contexts is subject to the train-
ing and habits of individual scholars. One rule of thumb is: the longer the the chain, the less likely its
parts will be linked with hyphens. The main criterion at work is usually clarity of presentation.

Components of standard nominal compounds and proper nouns are normally linked:

dub-sar ‘tablet writer’ = ‘scribe’

an-ki ‘heaven and earth’
en-mete-na ‘(the king) Enmetena’

Adjectives were always in the past joined to the words they modify, but most scholars now
write an adjective as a separate word:

dumu-tur or dumu tur 'child small' = ‘the small child’

Verbal adjectives (past participles) are now also less often linked:

é-dù-a or é dù-a ‘house that was built’ = ‘the built house’

The two parts of a genitive construction are today never linked unless they are components of
a compound noun:

é lugal-la ‘the house of the king’ {é lugal+ak}

zà-mu ‘edge of the year’ = ‘New Year’ {zà mu+ak}

` In the absence of a universally accepted methodology, one must attempt to develop one's own sensi-
tivity to how Sumerian forms units of meaning. Our conventions for linking signs and words are
intended only to help clarify the relationships between them and to aid in the visual presentation of the
language. The writing system itself makes no such linkages and does not employ any sort of punctua-
tion. One should take as models the usual practices of established scholars. One should also try to be
consistent.

7
Plus (+) and Times (x) in Sign Descriptions

When one sign is written inside (or, especially in older texts, above or below) another sign, the
resulting new sign may be described by writing both components in CAPS, with the base sign and
added sign separated by an "x":

KAxA MOUTH times WATER = naĝ 'to drink'

If the reading/pronunciation of such a sign also happens to be unknown, this, by necessity, will
actually be the standard way to transliterate it until a new reading is proposed:

IRIxA CITY times WATER = 'the city IRIxA'

Two signs joined closely together, especially when they share one or more wedges in common or have
lost some feature as a result of the close placement, are called ligatures. Signs featuring an archaic
reversal of the order of their components can also be called ligatures. The parts of ligatures are tradi-
tionally linked with a "plus" character, although some scholars will also use a period:

GAL+LÚ BIG plus MAN = lugal 'king'

GAL+UŠUM BIG plus SERPENT = ušumgal 'dragon'

SÌG+UZU HIT plus FLESH = túd 'to beat, whip'

ZU+AB = abzu '(mythical) subterranean ocean, abyss'

EN+ZU = suen 'Suen (the moon god)'

More complicated compound signs may feature a number of linked elements, with parentheses
marking subunits, e.g.:

DAG+KISIM5x(UDU.MÁŠ) = amaš 'sheepfold'

Colon

Especially in publications of archaic or Old Sumerian texts in which the order of signs is not as fixed
as in later periods, a colon may be used to tell the reader that the order of the signs on either side of the
colon is reversed in actual writing, e.g. za:gìn for written GÌN-ZA instead of normal za-gìn 'lapis
lazuli'. Multiple colons can also be used to indicate that the proper order of signs is unknown. Thus a

8
 transliteration ba:bi:bu would signify: "I have no idea which sign comes first, second or third!"

II. ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE SIGN SYSTEM

D. Schmandt-Besserat has demonstrated that cuneiform writing per se developed rather abruptly towards the
end of the 4th millennium from a system of counting tokens that had long been in use throughout the Ancient
Near East. Our oldest true texts, however, are the pictographic tablets that come from level IVa at Uruk (ca.
3100 BC). Other archaic texts come from later Uruk levels, from Jemdet Nasr, and from Ur (1st Dynasty, ca.
2700 BC). Many of these old documents are still difficult to read, but much new progress has recently been
made. By ca. 2600 BC the texts become almost completely intelligible and feature a developing mixed logo-
graphic and syllabic cuneiform writing system.

The term "pictogram (pictographic)" is used exclusively to refer to the signs

of the archaic texts, in which "pictures" were drawn on clay with a pointed stylus.
The terms "ideogram (ideographic)" and "logogram (logographic)" are more or less
interchangeable and refer to signs which represent "ideas" or "words" respectively,
as opposed to signs which represent syllabic values or mere sounds. Logogram is
the term used by modern Sumerologists.

Signs depicting concrete objects form the ultimate basis of the archaic system. They may represent whole
objects:

kur 'mountain'

šu 'hand'

še '(ear of) grain'

or significant parts of objects:

gudr 'bull, ox'

áb 'cow'

Other signs were a bit more abstract, but are still comprehensible:

a 'water'

ĝi6 'night'

Many other archaic signs, however, are either too abstract or, oddly enough, too specific and detailed, for us to
identify as yet. The large number of often minutely differentiated signs characteristic of the archaic texts
suggests that an attempt was made to produce one-to-one correspondences between signs and objects. This
system no doubt soon became unwieldy, and, moreover, could not easily express more abstract ideas or
processes. Therefore, alternative ways of generating signs were developed.

9
gunû and šeššig Signs

One method of generating new signs was to mark a portion of a base sign to specify the object intended. The
marks are called by the Akkadian scribes either gunû-strokes (from Sumerian gùn-a 'colored, decorated') or
šeššig-hatchings (due to the resemblance of the strokes to the early cross-hatched form of the Sumerian sign
for grain, še). Compare the following two sets of signs:

SAĜ KA

DA Á

In the first set, the base sign is saĝ 'head'. Strokes over the mouth portion produces SAĜ-gunû, to be read ka
'mouth'. In the second set, the base sign is da 'side' (i.e., a shoulder, arm and hand). Hatchings over the arm
portion produces DA-šeššig, to be read á 'arm'.

Compound Signs

New signs were generated by combining two or more signs:

1) Doubling or even tripling the same sign:

DU = su8(b) 'to come, go (plural)', the imperfective plural stem

DU of the the verb du 'to come, go'

AN
AN = mul 'star', using a sign which originally depicted a star,
AN but later came to be read either an 'sky' or diĝir 'god'

2) Combining two (or more) different signs to produce a new idea by association of ideas:

KAxA mouth+water = naĝ 'to drink'

KAxNINDA mouth+bread = gu7 'to eat'

A+AN water+sky = šèĝ 'to rain'

NÍĜINxA encircled area+water = ambar 'marsh'

10
 NÍĜINxBÙR encircled area+hole = pú 'well'

MUNUS+UR female+dog = nig 'bitch'

3) Adding to a base sign a phonetic indicator which points to the pronunciation of a word associated in
meaning with the base sign:

KAxME mouth+me = eme 'tongue'

KAxNUN mouth+nun = nundum 'lip'

EZENxBAD walled area+bad = bàd 'city wall'

` UD.ZÚ.BAR sun+zubar = zubar/zabar 'bronze'

Polyvalency

The most important new development by far was the principle of polyvalency, the association of semantically
related "many values" with a particular sign, each with its own separate pronunciation. This became a very
productive and simple method of generating new logographic values. For example:

apin 'plow' can also be read uru4 'to plow'

engar 'plowman, farmer'
àbsin 'furrow'

ka 'mouth' can also be read kìri 'nose'

zú 'tooth'
inim 'word'

pa 'branch' can also be read ĝidri 'scepter'

sìg 'to hit'
ugula 'foreman'

utu 'sun' can also be read ud 'light, day, time'

babbar 'shining, white'
àh 'dried, withered'

an 'sky' can also be read diĝir 'god, goddess, deity'

11
 Determinatives

To help the reader decide which sign or possible value of a polyvalent sign was intended by the writer, the use
of determinatives arose. A determinative is one of a limited number of signs which, when placed before or
after a sign or group of signs, indicates that the determined object belongs to a particular semantic category,
e.g. wooden, reed, copper or bronze objects, or persons, deities, places, etc. Determinatives were still basically
optional as late as the Ur III period (2114-2004). When Sumerian died as a spoken language, they became
obligatory. Determinatives were presumably not to be pronounced when a text was read, and to show that they
are not actually part of a word we transliterate them, in unilingual Sumerian context at least, as superscripts.
To use the example of the 'plow' sign above, the polyvalent sign APIN is read

apin - if preceded by a 'wood' determinative: gišapin 'plow'

engar - if preceded by a 'person' determinative: lúengar 'plowman', but

uru4 'to plow' or àbsin 'furrow' elsewhere, depending upon context.

Rebus Writing and Syllabic Values

At some point rebus writings arose, where the sign for an object which could easily be drawn was used to
write a homophonous word which could not so easily be depicted, especially an abstract idea. For example,
the picture of an arrow, pronounced /ti/, became also the standard sign for ti 'rib' as well as for the verb ti(l) 'to
live'. The adoption of the rebus principle was a great innovation, but it adds to the difficulty of learning the
Sumerian writing system, since meanings of words thus written are divorced entirely from the original basic
shapes and meanings of their signs.

With the expansion of the rebus principle the development of syllabic, or purely phonological, values of signs
became possible. For example, the logograms mu 'name' or ga 'milk' could now be used to write the verbal
prefixes mu- 'hither, forth' or ga- 'let me', that is, grammatical elements which were not really logograms, but,
rather, indicated syntactic relationships within the sentence. A regular system of syllabic values also made
possible the spelling out of any word – especially useful when dealing with foreign loanwords, for which no
proper Sumerian logograms existed.

Finally, a limited set of some ninety or so Vowel, Consonant-Vowel, and Vowel-Consonant syllabic values
formed the basis of the Akkadian writing system, modified somewhat from the Sumerian to render different
sounds in the Akkadian phonemic inventory and then expanded over time to produce many new phonetic and
even multiple-syllable values (CVC, VCV, CVCV).

The Sumero-Akkadian writing system was still in limited use as late as the 1st century A.D.; the last known
texts are astronomical in nature and can be dated to ca. 76 A.D. The system thus served the needs of Meso-
potamian civilizations for a continuous span of over 3200 years – a remarkable achievement in human history.

III. ORTHOGRAPHY

The fully developed writing system employs logograms (word signs), syllabic signs (sound values derived
from word signs), and determinatives (unpronounced logograms which help the reader choose from among the
different logographic values of polyvalent signs) to reproduce the spoken language. Some now speak of
the received system as logophonetic or logosyllabic in character.

12
Logograms

Many Sumerian logograms are written with a single sign, for example a 'water'. Other logograms are written
with two or more signs representing ideas added together to render a new idea, resulting in a compound sign or
sign complex which has a pronunciation different from that of any of its parts, e.g.:

KAxA > naĝ 'to drink' (combining KA 'mouth' and A 'water')

Á.KALAG > usu 'strength' (combining Á 'arm' and KALAG 'strong')

Such compound logograms should be differentiated from compound words made up of two or more
logograms, e.g.:

kù-babbar ‘silver' (lit. 'white precious metal')

kù-sig17 'gold' (lit. 'yellow precious metal')

ur-mah 'lion' (lit. 'great beast of prey')

za-dím 'lapidary' (lit. 'stone fashioner')

Logograms are used in Sumerian to write nominal and verbal roots or words, and in Akkadian as a kind of
shorthand to write Akkadian words which would otherwise have to be spelled out using syllabic signs. For
example, an Akkadian scribe could write the sentence 'The king came to his palace' completely syllabically:
šar-ru-um a-na e-ka-al-li-šu il-li-kam. He would be just as likely, however, to use the common Sumerian
logograms for 'king' and 'palace' and write instead LUGAL a-na É.GAL-šu il-li-kam.

Syllabic Signs

Syllabic signs are used in Sumerian primarily to write grammatical elements. They are also commonly used to
write words for which there is no proper logogram. Sometimes this phonetic writing is a clue that the word in
question is a foreign loanword, e.g. sa-tu < Akkadian šadû 'mountain'.

Texts in the Emesal dialect of Sumerian feature a high percentage of syllabic writings, since many words in
this dialect are pronounced differently from their main dialect (Emegir) counterparts and so cannot be written
with their usual logograms. For example, Emesal ka-na-áĝ = Emegir kalam 'nation', Emesal u-mu-un =
Emegir en 'lord'. We also occasionally encounter main dialect texts written syllabically, but usually only from
peripheral geographical areas such as the Elamite capital of Susa (in Iran) or northern Mesopotamian sites such
as Shaduppum (modern Tell Harmal) near Baghdad.

Syllabic signs are occasionally used as glosses on polyvalent signs to indicate the proper pronunciations; we
normally transliterate glosses as superscripts as we do determinatives, for example: èn ba-na-tarar 'he was
questioned'. An early native gloss may rarely become fixed as part of the standard writing of a word. The best
example is the word for 'ear, intelligence', which can be written three different ways, two of which incorporate
full glosses:

1) The sign ĝeštug is written: PI

geš-túg
2) The sign ĝéštug is written: PI

13
 geš
3) The sign ĝèštug is written: PItúg

Determinatives

Determinatives are logograms which may appear before or after words which categorize the latter in a variety
of ways. They are orthographic aids and were presumably not pronounced in actual speech. They begin to be
used sporadically by the end of the archaic period. While they were probably developed to help a reader chose
the desired value of a polyvalent sign, they are often employed obligatorily even when the determined logoram
is not polyvalent. For example, while the wood determinative ĝiš may be used before the PA ‘branch’ sign to
help specify its reading ĝidri 'scepter', rather than, e.g., sìg 'to hit', ĝiš is also used before hašhur 'apple (tree or
wood)' even though this sign has no other reading. Other common functions are to help the reader distinguish
between homonymous words, e.g. ad 'sound' and gišad 'plank' or between different related readings of a word,
e.g. nú 'to lie down, sleep' but gišĝèšnu(NÚ) 'bed'.

The following determinatives are placed BEFORE the words they determine and so are referred to as
pre-determinatives:

Determinative Meaning Category

I (abbr. m) one, (item) personal names (usually male)

lú man, person many male professions
munus (abbr. f) woman, female female names and professions*
diĝir (abbr. d) god deities
dug pot vessels
gi reed reed varieties and objects
ĝiš tree, wood trees, woods, and wooden objects
i7 (or íd) watercourse canals and rivers
kuš skin leather hides and objects
mul star planets, stars, and constellations
na4 stone stones and stone objects
šim aromatic, resin aromatic substances
túg (or tu9) garment (woolen) garments
ú grass grassy plants, herbs, cereals
iri city city names (previously read uru)
uruda copper copper and bronze objects (also read urudu or urud)
uzu flesh body parts, meat cuts

*An Akkadian invention, not actually attested in Sumerian texts

(so P. Steinkeller, Orientalia 51 [Rome, 1982] 358f.)

The following determinatives are placed AFTER the words they determine and so are referred to as
post-determinatives:

ki place cities and other geographic entities

ku6 fish fish, amphibians, crustaceans
mušen bird birds, insects, other winged animals
nisi(g) greens vegetables (the reading sar 'garden plot'
is now obsolete but still often seen)
zabar bronze bronze objects (often combined with
the pre-determinative uruda)

14
Long and Short Pronunciations of Sumerian Roots

Many Sumerian nominal and verbal roots which end in a consonant drop that con sonant when the root is not
followed by some vocalic element, i.e., at the end of a word complex or nominal chain or when followed by a
consonantal suffix. For example, the simple phrase 'the good child' is written dumu-du10, and it was presum-
ably actually pronounced /dumu du/. When the ergative case suffix -e 'by' is added, however, the same phrase
was pronounced /dumu duge/. We know this is so because the writing system "picks up" the dropped con-
sonant of the adjective and expresses it linked with the vowel in a following syllabic sign: dumu-du10-ge.
This hidden consonant is generally referred to by the German term Auslaut 'final sound', as in "the adjective
du10 has a /g/ Auslaut."

Our modern signlists assign values to such signs both with and without their Auslauts, thus giving both a
"long" and "short" value for each sign, e.g.:

dùg, du10 'good' kudr, ku5 'to cut'

dug4, du11 'to do' níĝ, nì 'thing'

gudr, gu4 'bull, ox' šag4, šà 'heart, interior'

In older academic literature the long values were generally used everywhere; the phrase 'by the good child'
would thus have been transliterated dumu-dùg-ge. But this has the disadvantage of suggesting to the reader
that an actual doubling of the consonant took place, and, in fact, many names of Sumerian rulers, deities and
cities known from the early days of Assyriology are still found cited in forms containing doubled consonants
which do not reflect their actual Sumerian pronunciations, e.g. the goddess Inanna, rather than Inana, or the
king Mesannepadda, rather than Mesanepada. After World War II, Sumerologists began to bring the trans-
literation of Sumerian more into line with its actual pronunciation by utilizing the system of short sign values
which is still preferred by the majority of scholars, although there is now a tendency to return to the long
values among some Old Sumerian specialists. Certainly it was the short values that were taught in the Old
Babylonian scribal schools, to judge from the data of the Proto-Ea signlists (see J. Klein & T. Sharlach,
Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 97 [2007] 4 n. 16). Eventually one must simply learn to be comfortable with both
the long and short values of every sign which features an amissible final consonant, though at first it will be
sufficient just to learn the short values together with their Auslauts, e.g. du10(g), ku5(dr), etc.

If hidden Auslauts create extra problems in the remembering of Sumerian signs or words, the rules of ortho-
graphy offer one great consolation: a final consonant picked up and expressed overtly in a following syllabic
sign is a good indication as to the correct reading of a polyvalent sign. For example, KA-ga can only be read
either ka-ga 'in the mouth' or du11-ga 'done', whereas KA-ma can only be read inim-ma 'of the word'.

Probably basically related to the preceding phenomenon is the non-significant doubling of consonants in other
environments. For example, the verbal chain analyzed as mu+n+a+n+šúm 'he gave it to him' can be found
written both as mu-na-an-šúm or mu-un-na-an-šúm, just as the phrase an+a 'in the sky' can be written an-a or
an-na. Despite the inconsistency, such redundant writings can again provide help in the correct reading of
polyvalent signs: AN-na can only be read an-na 'in the sky', while AN-re can only be read diĝir-re 'by the god'.

Direction of Writing

A shift in the reading and writing of signs took place sometime between the end of the Old Babylonian period
(1600 BC) and ca. 1200 BC according to current theory, although at least one modern scholar places the onset
of the change as early as ca. 2500 BC.

In the archaic pictographic texts signs were written from the top to the bottom of a column, and the pictures of
objects represented by each sign are seen in their normal physical orientation. By 1200 BC signs were being
wrtten consistently left to right in a line, with the the orientation of signs thus now turned 90 degrees counter-
15
 clockwise. In a signlist such as Labat's one will see the shift shown as having taken place sometime between
the Archaic and Ur III periods, although a monumental inscription such as the law code stele of the later OB
king Hammurapi, ca. 1750, still clearly shows the original direction of writing. Modern practice is to continue
to publish cuneiform texts and to read cuneiform in the left to right orientation for all periods except for the
earliest, even though this practice may be anachronistic for the middle 3rd to early 2nd millennium texts that
form the classical Sumerian corpus. For a description of this phenomenon see S. Picchioni, "The Direction of
Cuneiform Writing: Theory and Evidence," Studi Orientali e Linguistici 2 (1984-85) 11-26; M. Powell, "Three
Problems in the History of Cuneiform Writing: Origins, Direction of Script, Literacy," in Visible Language
XV/4 (1981) 419-440; and M. Fitzgerald, "pisan dub-ba and the Direction of Cuneiform Script," CDLI
Bulletin 2003:2 on the Internet.

IV. READING CUNEIFORM

In summary, any particular Sumerian sign may have three kinds of uses:

1) It will usually have one or more logographic values, each with a different pronunciation. A single
value may itself have more than one meaning, just as an English word may have more than one
common meaning. Sumerian expresses the human experience with a relatively limited word stock;
one must continually strive to develop a feeling for the basic meaning of any particular Sumerian word
and how it can be used to convey a range of ideas for which modern languages use different individual
words.

2) One of the logographic values of a sign may function as a determinative.

3) One or more of the logographic values may function as a syllabic sign.

For example, the sign AN can represent:

- the logogram an in the meaning 'sky, heaven'

- the logogram an in the meaning 'high area'

- the logogram an in the meaning '(the sky-god) An'

- the logogram diĝir 'god, goddess'

- the determinative (d) for deities, as in den-líl '(the god) Enlil'

- the syllable an, as in mu-na-an-šúm 'he gave it to him'

- the syllable am6 (in Old Sumerian), as in lugal-am6 'he is king'

REMEMBER: A WORD WHICH FEATURES AN AMISSIBLE AUSLAUT DROPS ITS

FINAL CONSONANT WHEN IT IS NOT FOLLOWED BY A VOWEL.

16
 PHONOLOGY

What is known about the pronunciation of Sumerian has come down to us very much filtered through the sound system
of Akkadian, the latter itself determined only by comparison with the better known phonemic systems of other Semitic
languages.
A phoneme is a minimal speech sound (phone), or a small group of related sounds
(allophones), which is capable of signaling a difference in meaning. In English,
/b/ and /p/ are separate phonemes because they can differentiate two otherwise
identical words, for example "bit" versus "pit." A phoneme can have several dif-
ferent pronunciations (allophones, phonological realizations) and still be recognized
as "the same sound." For example, when spoken at normal conversational speed
English "ten" and "city" feature two different "t" sounds. "City" has a flapped "d" a
bit like the "r" in Spanish pero. Every language has a limited number of vocalic and
consonantal phonemes which together constitute its unique phonemic inventory.
Phonemes are indicated by slashes /b/, phones by square brackets [b].

The Akkadian scribal schools produced signlists and vocabularies which spelled out syllabically how Sumerian signs
or words were to be pronounced. These syllabic spellings are the basis of our understanding of the Sumerian sound
system, but they are essentially only Akkadian pronunciations of Sumerian vocables. Sounds or distinctions between
sounds which did not exist in the Akkadian phonemic inventory were spelled out as best as possible, as the Akkadian
speakers heard or understood them.

For example, the essential difference between the sounds that we transcribe as /b/ vs. /p/ or /d/ vs. /t/ and /g/ vs. /k/
might well have been one of minus or plus aspiration rather than a voiced vs. voiceless contrast as in English, i.e. [p]
vs. [ph].
Aspiration refers to a following slight puff of air. Voicing refers to the
vibration of the vocal cords. A "b" is voiced, a "p" is voiceless. Unlike
English, voiceless stops in French or Dutch, for example, are unaspirated.

But Akkadian, like English, probably featured only the latter phonemic contrast, and voiced vs. voiceless is how
Akkadian speakers no doubt distinguished and pronounced the Sumerian sounds. Our standard transcription of the
Sumerian sound system should thus be regarded as only an approximation of how Sumerian was actually pronounced.

VOWELS (§4-15)

Vowels definitely known to have phonemic status include /a/, /e/, /i/ and /u/. A few scholars, most notably S. Lieber-
man, have posited the existence of an /o/ phoneme, but this idea has not gained general acceptance. How the four
standard vowels actually sounded in all phonological environments will never be known. By convention we pro-
nounce them with roughly European values, as in Spanish or German; English speakers should by all means avoid
English long (alphabet) pronunciations:

/a/ always as in "father", never as in "day" or "bat"

/e/ as in "play" or "pet", never as in "she"
/i/ as in "tree" or "tip", never as in "lie"
/u/ as in "who" or "hood", never as in "use"

Sumerian apparently had no true phonemic diphthongs such as /aw/ or /oy/. but there are indications of /w/ or /y/
semivowel glides between vowels, e.g. written mu-e-a-áĝ possibly pronounced as /m(u)weyaĝ/. A /y/ representing an
/n/ before a root may lie behind writings such as ba-e-√ or ba-a-√ for ba-an-√ or ì-a-√ for in-√ in Ur III and OB texts.

When transcribing words Sumerologists will sometimes separate neighboring vowels with an apostrophe, as in the
personal name written a-a-kal-la but transcribed A'akala. This particular convention is only for legibility; it does not

17
indicate in this context at least the presence of a Sumerian glottal stop, a catch or hiatus produced at the back of the
throat, as between the two English words "I am" when pronounced slowly and distinctly.

Edzard, 2003 13f., claims the existence of vowel length within roots. See now a more nuanced discussion of vowel
quality and length by E.J.M. Smith in Journal of Cuneiform Studies 59 (2007) 19-38. Elsewhere, length usually seems
to be only allophonic, serving to take the place of another sound. In Pre-Old Babylonian periods compensatory length-
ening may exist, most often the lengthening of a vowel to compensate for the loss of a following /n/. Thus an Ur III
text might write in-gi-ì (presumably pronounced [ingi:] with or without nasalization) instead of in-gi-in (a colon [:]
indicates lengthening of a preceding sound).

Certain vocalic elements will undergo regular sorts of modifications in specific grammatical and phonological environ-
ments. For the pattern of i/e vowel harmony in Old Sumerian Lagaš verbal prefixes see Thomsen §7. In all periods
both progressive or anticipatory assimilation (conditioned by a preceding sound) and regressive or lag assimilation
(conditioned by a following sound) are common in many environments, generally following predictable patterns.

Thomsen's discussion of vowel "contraction" (§14f.) is inadequate. The phenomena she describes have never been
studied rigorously and as a whole, and will certainly turn out to be better described in terms of replacement or deletion
of vowels rather than contraction. Specific assimilation, elision, and deletion phenomena will be described individu-
ally as they are encountered throughout this grammar.

CONSONANTS (§16-30)

The consonantal phonemes of Sumerian are conventionally represented as follows:

STOPS Voiced Voiceless Nasal Uncertain

AND NASALS Articulation

Labial b p m
Dental d t n dr
Velar g k ĝ
Glottal (ɂ)

FRICATIVES Dental z s
Palatal š
Velar h = IPA [x]
Glottal (H) = IPA [h]

LIQUIDS l (l2) r

Stops

Stops are consonant sounds which feature an interruption or stopping of the air stream. As mentioned earlier, Sumer-
ian stops may originally have featured a contrast other than voiced vs. voiceless, probably unaspirated vs. aspirated.
This contrast is the source of some differing Akkadian spellings for the same Sumerian word, and since modern
scholarship is based heavily upon Akkadian lexical materials the student will consequently encounter transliteration
variations even in current Sumerological literature. In scholarly works one will find, for example, both gag and kak as
spellings for the noun 'peg' or both bàr and pàr for the verb 'to spread out'. P. Steinkeller maintains that "Sumerian
roots did not have (what is traditionally transliterated as) voiceless consonants in the final position" (Zeitschrift für
Assyriologie 71 [2001] 27; cf. I. J. Gelb MAD 22, 32f.). Accordingly the final stops permitted are thus only /b d g/ and
not /p t k/, and one should, for example, read gag rather than kak at least in older Sumerian texts. This (allophonic?)
rule is not rigorously observed in later periods, nor is it generally reflected in Sumerological literature.

18
The Phoneme /dr/

Most scholars now accept the existence of a phoneme currently spelled as /dr/, also spelled /dr/ or /ř/. Edzard 2003,
18f. proposes instead /r/ with a caret (^). The pronunciation is still uncertain. It was first thought to be a biarticulated
stop. More recently, Yang Zhi, in Journal of Ancient Civilizations 2 (Changchun [1987] 125) suggested that "The
presence of an /s/ in the spelling of this city name [Adab, properly pronounced as /udrubu/] – especially in texts outside
of Sumer (Ebla and Ugarit) – probably indicates that the consonant /*dr/ was a (retroflex?) fricative which was per-
ceived in these areas as /s/ or at least closer to /s/ than to /r/ or /d/." In §3.3.2 of his forthcoming new grammar, A.
Jagersma argues for an affricate of the shape [tsh], the aspirated counterpart of the phoneme we transliterate as /z/ but
which he claims was pronounced as an unaspirated voiceless [ts]. J. Black in RA 84 (1984) 108f., 117, summarized
previous scholars' views concerning /dr/ and concluded that the writings which illustrate it "may be evidence of a
sound change in progress (rhotacism) whereby intervocalic /-d-/ became /-r-/, or of synchronic alternation resulting
from allophony" and that "There is no need to assume an 'extra' sound which is neither [d] nor [r]."

/dr/ has been identified in final position in a dozen or so words, thanks to a special Sumerian orthographic convention.
When a word ending with /dr/ takes a grammatical suffix featuring a vowel /a/ or /e/, the combination of /dr/ and the
following /a/ or /e/ will properly be written with a DU sign, to be read either rá or re6 respectively. Thus {gudr+a(k)}
'of the ox' is written gud-rá while {gudr+e} 'by the ox' is written gud-re6. (If /dr/ is indeed an actual phoneme, we
should in fact probably be transcribing the DU sign as drá and dre6 in such cases, but rá and re6 remain the standard
writings.) In the Akkadian-speaking environment of the Old Babylonian school texts the phoneme usually resolves
itself ortho-graphically as a simple /d/ sound or occasionally as /r/.

The /dr/ phoneme may well occur in initial or medial position in other words, but at present there is no equally obvious
way to identify such occurrences with certainty. Candidates for initial /dr/ include dù 'to build', based on the existence
of its variant sign values dù/rú, also de5(g)/ri(g) 'to fall, fell', and du7/ru5 'to push, gore'. See Steinkeller, Journal of Near
Eastern Studies 46 (1987) 56 n. 5 and Journal of Cuneiform Studies 35 (1983) 249f.

The Velar Nasal /ĝ/

The velar nasal [ŋ], as in English "sing," is now frequently transliterated as a /g/ capped by a caret (^) symbol, a
composite character which can be found in the character sets of modern word processors. More ideal is a /g/ capped
by a tilde (~) symbol, but as yet this character is generally available only in typeset books and journals or in linguisti-
cally oriented academic word processing programs like Notabene Lingua.

The Akkadian sound system did not feature this phoneme, and the Akkadian lexical texts consequently spelled out
Sumerian signs or words containing it only approximately, usually rendering it with a /g/, sometimes also with an /n/
or /m/, also with /ng/ or /mg/. As a result, the existence of the phoneme /ĝ/ was deduced only a few decades ago, and
Sumerologists are only now beginning to use the symbol ĝ in close transliteration to distinguish the nasal /ĝ/ from the
stop /g/. The practice is still not yet universal, and so, for example, balaĝ 'harp' or saĝ 'head' are frequently still written
simply balag and sag, especially by Akkadologists. Note that in a number of Sumerian words now known to contain /ĝ/
the phoneme may also be found transcribed as an /n/ or /m/. For example, one finds the words kíĝ 'work', huĝ 'to rent'
or alaĝ 'figure' still generally written kin, hun, and alam or alan in current publications, including signlists, although a
sign value kíg, or even better proper kíĝ, is now beginning to be seen. Medial /ĝ/ is also seen regularly written ng or
mg in a few words, most notably dingir for diĝir ‘god’ or nimgir for niĝir ‘herald’. When learning Sumerian it is vital
to learn to write and pronounce correctly all words containing this phoneme, regardless of the older spellings encoun-
tered in the literature or in internet publications using only a limited ASCII character set. It is now clear that /ĝ/ is a
common phoneme in Sumerian, and that it can occur in any position in a word. In English, on the other hand, the
sound occurs only in medial or final position, and some practice may be needed to pronounce it smoothly when it
begins a word, as in ĝá-e 'I' or ĝuruš 'adult male'.

The presence of an /ĝ/ in final position is most clearly seen when the word is followed by a suffixed /a/ or /e/, in which
case proper Sumerian orthography employs the sign ĜÁ to write a syllable composed of /ĝ/ and the following vowel.
If the vowel is /a/, ĜÁ represents the sound /ĝa/ and we transliterate it as ĝá. If the vowel is /e/, the same sign is used,
19
but we must transliterate it as ĝe26 instead. Compare the participle {bùluĝ+a} 'nurtured' written bùluĝ-ĝá with the
infinitive {bùluĝ+e+d+e} 'to nurture' written bùluĝ-ĝe26-dè. The sign value ĝe26 is relatively new and is only now
coming into general use. In older literature one will find only the sign value ĝá, regardless of context. For complete-
ness one must also mention the rare value ĝe8(NE) seen in emesal dialect contexts.

We now know that to render the syllable /ĝu/ the Sumerians used the sign MU, and so current scholars transliterate the
sign as ĝu10 when the value featuring the velar nasal is required. Unfortunately, in all but the newest Sumerological
literature the frequent 1st sg. possessive pronoun -ĝu10 'my' will still be found written -mu, and once again the student
must be aware of an older treatment of a sign while now carefully distinguishing between, and pronouncing properly,
its correct values; thus, for example, mu 'name', but mu-ĝu10 (written MU-MU) 'my name'. To complicate matters, the
writing -mu of the possessive pronoun is actually correct in some contexts. /ĝu/ is the proper pronunciation for the
word 'my' in emegir, the main dialect of Sumerian, while /mu/ is the pronunciation in emesal, the so-called women's
dialect, which is also used in Sumerian liturgical texts.

To spell out words containing the initial syllable /ĝi/ or /ĝe/ the Sumerians employed the MI sign, to which conse-
quently we have now assigned the values ĝi6 and ĝe6. To spell out words featuring the syllable /aĝ/, /eĝ/ or /iĝ/ the sign
used was ÁĜ, now given the values èĝ and ìĝ alongside áĝ. For the syllable /uĝ/ the sign used was UN, with the value
ùĝ. Thus, for example, the Emesal dialect equivalent of the Emegir dialect word /halam/ 'to obliterate' was pronounced
/ĝeleĝ/, and the latter was normally written out syllabically as ĝe16-le-èĝ. See the Table of Syllabic Sign Values on
p. 157 for an overview of the orthographic treatment of signs containing the phoneme /ĝ/.

Fricatives

We assume that the Sumerian sibilants /s/ and /z/ were pronounced approximately as in English, although A. Jagersma
now describes /z/ as an unaspirated affricate [ts]. The phoneme /š/ is the sound "sh" as in "wish."
.
Fricatives refer to sounds produced by friction of the air stream against parts of the mouth
or throat. A sibilant is a fricative produced in the front or middle of the mouth which has a
hissing quality, like "s" or "f." A velar or glottal fricative is produced further back in the
mouth or throat. An affricate combines a stop with a following fricative, like [ts] or [dz].

The phoneme usually transliterated as /h/ in Sumerological contexts is the sound written "ch" in German "doch," i.e. a
voiceless velar fricative [x]. In Akkadian contexts and in typeset publications it is usually transliterated as an h with a
breve below it /ḫ/, but in unilingual contexts, as in this grammar, the diacritic can be omitted since, until very recently
at least, the existence of a voiceless glottal fricative [h] phoneme, as in English "house," has not been accepted for
Sumerian. Note, however, that D.O. Edzard 2003 (pp. 19-20) has tried to build a case for the existence of a kind of
glottal "barrier" phoneme, perhaps a true [h] symbolized as /H/, which P. Attinger and a few others now describe as a
glottal stop [ɂ]. Jagersma 2010 now accepts both [h] and [ɂ], the glottal stop being a significant phoneme in Sumerian.

Liquids

The precise pronunciations of the liquids are uncertain. The /r/ phoneme could have been trilled or flapped, as in
Spanish perro or pero, or it could even have been a voiced velar fricative as is found in German or French. It was
certainly not pronounced like the English /r/ which is a retroflexed vowel rather than a consonant.

Sumerian may have had two kinds of /l/ phonemes. The primary /l/ phoneme was probably pronounced approxi-
mately as it is in English, but this is only an assumption; several types of lateral resonants occur among the world's
languages. The second /l/ phoneme may be evidenced thus far only in final position and in only a few words. If it truly
exists, there is little evidence of how it was actually pronounced. It is indicated orthographically by the use of the sign
LÁ rather than LA when a word ending with it is followed by an /a/ vowel as in líl+a(k) 'of the air' written líl-lá. This
second /l/ phoneme is never given any distinguishing diacritic in our literature. It occurs only rarely, primarily in the
words líl 'air', gibil 'new', pél 'to spoil', and di4(l)-di4(l)-lá/la 'little ones, children' (a specialized pronunciation variant of
*tur-tur-ra), and perhaps also in ul, túl, dul/dul4 and in a few more poorly attested roots. Palatalization [ly] is suggested
by writings such as é-ki-tuš-akkil-ìa(NI)-ni (Gudea 75 rev. 1) or perhaps lá(LAL)-ìa ‘surplus’. Note also the
20
(etymological) /l/ and /n/ variation in certain words, e.g. lú versus the old noun formative nu-, lagal versus nagal
‘vizier’; compare the sign LUM which can be read lum or núm. M. Yoshikawa, Acta Sumerologica 12 (1990) 339-
344, offers arguments discounting the existence of a second /l/ phoneme. Jagersma 2010 also denies its existence.

STRESS-RELATED PHENOMENA

Since J. Krecher's groundbreaking "Verschlusslaute und Betonung im Sumerischen," in AOAT 1 (1969) 157ff., little
further work has been accomplished on stress in Sumerian and its effects on word structure. Common pronunciation
modifications in Sumerian that may be stress related are instances of aphaeresis, syncope, or apocope, that is, deletion
of sounds at the beginning, middle or the ends of words. Compare the variants ù-sún/sún 'wild cow', or ù-tu(d)/tu(d) 'to
give birth'. Examples of deleted sounds within reduplicated words are the adjectives dadag 'pure' < dág-dág or zazalag
'shining' < zalag-zalag. P. Steinkeller (Third-Millennium Texts in the Iraq Museum [1992[ 47), following E. Sollber-
ger, has recently reaffirmed a nice solution to the problem of the proper pronunciation of the word for 'goat', which had
long been read ùz but currently is read ud5 to account for instances with a following -da sign. The long form of the
word can be understood as /uzud/, which, when followed by a vowel becomes /uzd/, e.g. {uzud+a} > /uzuda/ > /uzda/
written ùz-da. When no vowel follows, /uzud/ may well reduce to /uz/, whence the standard sign value ÙZ. A reading
ud5 would therefore not be strictly necessary, though it is attested in Proto-Ea 875 and so must be regarded as the
standard OB school value. A similar example may be the adjective commonly written kalag-ga 'strong', but which is
probably better understood as a syncopated form {kalag+a} > /kalga/, in which case we should now regularly
transliterate kal-ga. A slightly different phenomenon is the deletion of intervocalic nasals in pairs of sign values such
as sumun/sun 'old', súmun/sún 'wild cow', sumur/súr 'angry', nimin/nin5 'forty', umuš/uš4 'understanding', tumu/tu15
'wind', etc. The phenomenon of sound deletion, some of which may be due to stress patterns, could be much more
extensive in Sumerian than the conservative logographic writing system has led us to believe.

EMESAL DIALECT (§559-566)

In addition to the main dialect of Sumerian called eme-gi7(r) or eme-gir15 'native tongue', there existed a female dialect
or sociolect called eme-sal 'thin/fine tongue', used mainly for direct speech of female deities and in religious lamenta-
tions and liturgical texts recited by the gala priest recorded from the Old Babylonian to Late Babylonian periods. As
briefly indicated above, it is differentiated from the main dialect mainly by regular sound changes, occasionally also by
substitutions of different words altogether. See Manfred Schretter, Emesal-Studien (Innsbruck, 1990) for an exhaus-
tive treatment of the subject and R. Borger in AOAT 305 (2003) 622f. for a list of commonly attested eme-sal words.
See further Appendix 2 on p. 158.

21
 NOUNS, ADJECTIVES AND ADVERBS

NOUNS AND NOMINAL COMPOUNDS (§47-78)

Words that can be classed as nouns in Sumerian, which can function as heads of nominal chains (see next lesson),
include primary nouns like dumu 'child, son', or é 'house, temple', and certain verbal roots employed as nouns such as
bar 'exterior', u5 'cabin', ti 'life', bùru 'hole', or ba 'allotment'. The stock of primary nouns was relatively limited, and
the language relied in addition upon a large number of different types of nominal compounds to render experience,
including most notably:

1) Compounds formed by (asyndetic) juxtaposition of primary nouns such as an-ki 'heaven and earth', saĝ-men 'head
crown', é-kur 'house (that is a) mountain' (the temple of the god Enlil in Nippur), ka-làl 'mouth (that is) honey',
an-úr 'heaven base' = 'horizon', an-šà 'heaven center', kalam-šà 'country interior', é-šà 'house interior', iri-bar 'city
exterior' = 'suburb', é-muhaldim 'house (having a) cook' = 'kitchen'.

2) Compounds consisting of one or more nouns and a participle such as dub-sar 'tablet writer’ = scribe', za-dím 'stone
fashioner' = 'lapidary', balaĝ-di 'harp player', gu4-gaz 'cattle slaughterer', kisal-luh 'courtyard cleaner', ki-ùr 'place
(of) leveling)' = 'terrace', ki-tuš 'place (of) dwelling' = 'residence', sa-pàr 'net (of) spreading' = 'casting net', ĝír-udu-
úš 'knife (of) sheep killing', lú-éš-gíd 'man (of) rope pulling' = 'surveyor', á-dah 'one who adds an arm' = 'helper'.
Other examples can be found in the final lesson on participles.

3) Compounds consisting of a noun and a common adjective such as é-gal 'big house' = 'palace', dub-sar-mah 'chief
scribe', kù-sig17 'silver (which is) yellow' = 'gold'.

4) Abstract nouns derived by means of the abstracting prefix nam- such as nam-lugal 'kingship', nam-mah 'loftiness',
nam-ti(l) 'life', nam-úš 'death', nam-dumu 'children (as a group)', nam-um-ma 'old (wailing) women (as a group)'.

5) Compounds featuring the productive formative níĝ- 'thing' or the obsolete formative nu- 'person' (< lú), such as níĝ-
gi-na 'verified thing' = 'truth, law', níĝ-gig 'bitter/sore thing, sacrilege', níĝ-sa10 'buying thing' = 'price', nu-bànda
'junior (boss-)man' = 'overseer', nu-kiri6(-k) 'man of the orchard' = 'orchard-keeper', or nu-èš(-k) 'man of the shrine'
= 'priest', the last two being genitive constructions.

6) Words which are in origin actually short phrases but which function syntactically as nouns, such as the frozen
nominalized verbal forms ì-du8 'he opened' = 'gate-keeper' or in-dub-ba 'that which he heaped up' = 'demarcation
mound' (see Sjöberg, Or 39 [1970] 81), cf. ì-dub ‘it was heaped up’ = ‘granary’; or the frozen cohortative verbal
forms like ga-ab-šúm 'let me give it' = 'seller', gab-kaš4 ‘let me make them run’ = ‘coachman, wagoner’, or gan-tuš
'let me live here' = 'tenant'. Genitive phrases are common, e.g. gi-nindana(-k) 'reed of one nindan (length)’ =
‘measuring rod', or zà-mu(-k) 'edge of the year' = 'New Year'. Many terms for occupations are genitive phrases
such as lú-ur5-ra(-k) 'man of the loan' = 'creditor', or niĝir-sila(-k) 'herald of the street', as are many proper nouns,
for example dnin-ĝír-su(-k) 'Lord of Ĝirsu' (chief male patron deity of the capital city of the state of Lagaš).

7) Independent participles with clear verbal meanings used as substantives such as îl 'carrier, porter'.

Gender (§37)

Sumerian features a kind of grammatical gender which has nothing to do with the natural gender categories masculine
vs. feminine. Instead, nouns are viewed as either personal, referring to individual human beings, whether singular or
plural, or impersonal, usually referring to persons viewed as a group (collectives), animals, places, or things. Some
grammars use the linguistic terminology "animate" vs. "inanimate," which can be misleading, since the impersonal
category is used not only for lifeless objects, but also for animals, groups of persons, and "objectified" individual per-
sons referred to scornfully or dismissively such as slaves – all of which are certainly animate, living things.

22
The personal vs. impersonal distinction is made evident mainly in certain 3rd person pronoun forms, in the plural
marking of nouns, and in the case marking of dative indirect objects. In the pronominal paradigms where the distinc-
tion is maintained, the personal category is nearly always signalled by the presence of a consonantal element /n/, the
impersonal by the element /b/. The original difference between these elements was one of deixis (pointing, demon-
strating), /n/ designating near-deixis 'this one here', and /b/ far-deixis 'that one there'.

As in many other languages, the 3rd person pronominal forms probably developed from
demonstratives. The Sumerian pronominal suffix -bi, in fact, functions both as a posses-
sive pronoun 'its, their' and as a demonstrative 'this, that', and the demonstrative suffix –ne
'this' and independent demonstrative pronoun ne-e(n) are certainly related to the possessive
suffix -(a)ni 'his, her' and probably also to the personal plural locative-terminative verbal
infix -ne- 'by/for them' and the nominal personal plural marker -(e)ne.

Number (§65-77)

Sumerian nouns may be understood as singular, plural, or collective (referring to items or individuals viewed as a
group) in number. It is important to note that the language is flexible and does not always show a plural form where
we might expect it. In addition, Sumerian features a great deal of redundancy in the marking of grammatical rela-
tions, and so, for example, if a subject is already marked as plural by a verbal affix, an explicit nominal marker of the
plural can be omitted from the subject noun with no loss of meaning, and vice versa. To summarize the marking of
number on nouns:

No Mark The noun is usually singular, but may also be understood as plural or collective; information supplied
by the verb or by the context will help to clarify. A number of nouns are intrinsically collective, for
example érin 'workers, troops' or ugnim 'army'. In Old Sumerian texts collectives are very common,
varying with plural forms; compare the occupation written ugula íl (collective) varying with ugula
íl-ne (plural), both meaning 'foreman of porters'.

Reduplicated The noun is plural, and the notion conveyed is possibly something akin to "all individual persons
Noun or items," for example en-en 'all the lords, every single lord'.

Reduplicated Reduplication of adjectives may serve the same function as reduplication of nouns, as in diĝir gal-gal
Ajective 'all the great gods'. Such a form probably represents an abbreviation of an underlying doubly redupli-
cated form diĝir-gal diĝir-gal, a construction that is rare but definitely occurring.

Plural Suffix An explicit mark of the plural of personal nouns only (note that it features the personal gender deictic
-(e)ne element /n/); it never occurs with animals or things. The basic form of the suffix seems to have been
simply -ne; -e-ne properly appears only when a preceding noun ends in a consonant. This rule breaks
down by the Old Babylonian period, however, where the epenthetic /e/ vowel may appear even when
it is not needed to separate the initial /n/ of the suffix from a preceding consonant. Thus lugal-e-ne
'kings' and dumu-ne 'sons' are correctly written, while OB lú-ù-ne (< lú-e-ne) 'persons' is a common
but hypercorrect writing (the epenthetic vowel often assimilates to a preceding vowel). The converse
is true in Old Sumerian: -ne often appears where -e-ne is expected. Finally, -(e)ne may co-occur with
plural reduplication, for example: en-en-né-ne 'all the lords', lugal-lugal-ne 'all the kings'.

Adjectival A past participle meaning 'mixed'. Reserved usually for assortments or mixtures of animals or things,
Suffix -hi-a for example: u8 udu-hi-a 'assorted ewes and rams' or anše-hi-a 'various donkeys (of different ages or
sexes)'.

Several examples:

0.0.4 dabin àga-ús-ne gu4-da ì-da-gu7 {àga-ús+(e)ne}

4 (ban) barley meal was eaten by the guards with (-da-) the oxen
(Nik I 130 1:1-3 OS) (Here "guards" is written explicitly plural)
23
 0.0.3 dabin àga-ús é-gal-la ì-gu7
3 (ban) barley meal was eaten by the guards in (-a) the palace
(Nik I 131 1:4-2:1 OS) (Here "guards" is a collective)

lú šuku dab5-ba-ne {dab5+a+(e)ne}

The men who (-a) took subsistence allotments
(HSS 3, 2 1:2 OS)

ARTICLES

Sumerian has no articles, either definite ("the") or indefinite ("a"). Thus the noun lugal may be translated 'the king',
'a king', or just 'king' as required by the context.

ADJECTIVES (§79-83)

Forms of Adjectives

Simple adjectives like gal 'big', tur 'small', mah 'great', or ĝen 'ordinary' are basically verbal roots functioning as noun
modifiers: iri gal 'the big city', dumu tur 'the small child'. In form they are perfective participles (described in the final
lesson).

Another common kind of adjective, also in form a (past) participle, can be produced from verbal stems using the
nominalizing (relativizing) suffix -a, for example é dù-a 'the house which was built' = 'the built house'.

A third kind of adjective regularly takes a suffix -a, even though these seem to function as simple adjectives without
any recognizable past participial meaning, for example kalag-a 'strong, mighty'. Whether this -a is indeed identical
with the nominalizing suffix -a is still an open question.

Finally, simple adjectives may also occasionally take a suffix -a, but even after J. Krecher's major study (Orientalia 47
[Rome, 1978), 376-403, see Thomsen §80), it is ordinarily difficult to sense a difference in meaning between an
adjective with and without -a, for example zi(d) vs. zi-da 'righteous, faithful'. That the distinction may be one of lesser
or greater "determination" or "definiteness," for example lú du10(g) 'a good man' vs. lú du10-ga 'the good man', cannot
be convincingly demonstrated. If the adjectival suffix -a is truely identical with the nominalizing particle -a, then the
contrast may consist in whatever slight difference in meaning can be discerned between a simple adjective as a kind of
present participle 'good man' and a past participle lú du10-ga 'the man who is/was good', or the like.

tigi níĝ du10(-ga) Constructions

Related to the problem of adjectives marked with the suffix -a are appositional attributive constructions which employ
the term níĝ 'thing' between a head noun and a modifying adjective that often, though not always, features the suffix -a.
A good example is the poetic expression tigi níĝ du10-ga 'tigi-hymn which is a good thing' = 'the good tigi-hymn'.
Following are three examples featuring adjectival roots with suffix -a and a níĝ which seems to serve only a stylistic
purpose. The fourth example shows the same construction with kalag, which regularly takes the suffix -a:

dím-ma níĝ sa6-ga {sa6(g)+a}

excellent judgment
(Šulgi B 10 Ur III)

ĝišbun níĝ du10-ga mu-un-na-an-ni-ĝál {du10(g)+a}

He produced a fine banquet there (-ni-) for her (-na-)
(Iddin-Dagan A 204 OB)
24
 asila níĝ húl-húl-la-šè {húl+húl+a}
amidst very happy rejoicing
(RIME 4.3.7.3 Sumerian 74 OB)

uruda níĝ kal-ga {kal(a)g+a}

Strong Copper
(Debate Between Copper and Silver passim OB)

Multiple adjectives

A noun can be qualified by multiple adjectives (as well as other attributives), including participles (marked with -a),
within a nominal chain, for example:

anše tur mah

donkeys small and big
(Nik I 203 iv 1 OS)

sá-du11 kas gíg du10-ga-kam {du10(g)+(a)+ak+am}

it is (-am) a regular offering of (-ak) good black beer
(TSA 34 3:10 OS)

(lú) zu-a kal-la-ni {zu+a kal+a+(a)ni}

(persons) who were known and dear to him
(Lugalbanda and Enmerkar 5 OB)

Reduplication of Adjectives

Adjectives are often reduplicated, and it seems clear that this reduplication may signify either intensification of the
adjectival idea or plurality of the modified noun (as noted above). Thus diĝir gal-gal might indicate 'the very great
god' or more usually 'the great gods.' Many common adjectives reduplicate to indicate intensity, e.g. kal 'precious' vs.
kal-kal 'very precious', or šen 'clean', vs. šen-šen 'very clean, immaculate'. Occasionally one encounters such revealing
syntax as péš ĝiš-gi níĝ kun sù kun sù-da 'canebrake mice, things with very long tails' (Nanna's Journey 275 OB),
where one might otherwise expect just níĝ kun sù-sù-da. Since adjectives are basically verbal roots, the plural redupli-
cation of roots commonly seen in verbal forms is naturally to be expected also in adjectives. Cf. further the plural past
participle de5-de5-ga 'collected ones (dead animals)' or níĝ-gi-na 'right thing, law' {gi(n)+a} vs. níĝ-gi-gi-na 'all the
laws' (Gudea Statue B 7:38 Ur III). Some textual examples:

4 ninda-bàppir gal-gal 1 ninda-bàppir tur-tur

4 extra-big beer-breads, 1 extra-small beer-bread
(Genava 26, 53 3:2-3 OS)
Reference to a single bread makes the meaning unambiguous.

1 gišù-suh5 gal-gal
1 very large pine branch
(VS 27, 44, 1:1 OS)
Reference to a single branch makes the meaning unambiguous.

dim gal-gal ki-a mi-ni-si-si

Many (very) big mooring poles he sank into the earth
(Gudea, Cyl A 22:11 Ur III)
Verb shows plural reduplication, but the adjective is ambiguous.

25
 Another Random Document on
Scribd Without Any Related Topics
 9. Internal Improvements.—David was both a good man and
a great king. He upheld the honour of his kingdom abroad, and did
so much for the welfare of his people at home, that most of the
social and political institutions of the later kingdom were afterwards
ascribed to him. It is true that he introduced a foreign baronage, for
he encouraged many Norman barons to come to his court, and by
the lands which he gave them induced them to settle in the country.
He thus gave great offence to the native chiefs; but he did not forget
the interests of the Commons, for he increased the number of the
royal burghs and granted many privileges and immunities to the
burghers. The life of David has been written by his friend and
admirer, Æthelred the Abbot of Rievaulx. He has drawn an attractive
picture of an able and virtuous prince, kindly and courteous alike to
high and low; ever ready to listen to the complaints of all his
subjects and to set wrong right, and never turning his face away
from any poor man. He tells us how the King himself dealt out
justice to his subjects, and in his progress through the several
districts of his kingdom, used, on set days, in person to hear the
suits and to redress the wrongs of the poor and oppressed among
his people. Six bishoprics—Dunblane, Brechin, Aberdeen, Ross,
Caithness, and Glasgow—were either founded or restored by him;
and many abbeys date their foundation from his reign. He carried on
the work of church reform by inducing the Culdees to conform to
more regular ways, on pain of being turned out of their monasteries.
His reign lasted twenty-nine years, during which time the country
continued to advance steadily in wealth, fertility, and civilization.
There is little doubt that, had his successor possessed the same
abilities, the future boundary of the kingdom would have been the
Tees instead of the Tweed.
10. Malcolm IV., 1153-1165.—Malcolm was not quite twelve
years old when he came to the throne: the fact that he retained
possession of it proves that the principle of hereditary succession
was gaining ground, and that his grandfather David had put down
the unruly spirit of the northern clans and had more firmly
established a regular government.
 11. Subjection of Galloway.—The principal event of Malcolm's
reign was the subjection of Galloway, which was now reduced to
direct dependence on the Crown. A rising, the object of which was
to dethrone Malcolm and to set up his brother William in his stead,
had been planned by some of the nobles while Malcolm was in
Aquitaine, helping Henry the Second of England in his war with
France. Soon after his return in 1160, they surrounded the city of
Perth where he was holding his court, and tried to take him prisoner.
But they were dispersed and routed, and though the chiefs fled to
Galloway, Malcolm followed them and reduced the district. Fergus,
the Lord of Galloway, ended his days in the monastery of Holyrood.
A few years later another dangerous enemy rose against Malcolm.
This was Somerled, the Lord of Argyle, who ruled the western coast
with the power, though without the title, of King. He landed near
Renfrew on the Clyde, with a large force, but was almost
immediately slain by treachery, and after his death his followers
dispersed and returned to their several islands without doing any
serious mischief. An increase of power was thus won for the Crown
within the limits of the kingdom, but on the other hand the northern
counties of England, which had been held by David, were lost, for
Henry of England obliged Malcolm to give up all claim to them at
Chester, where the two Kings met in 1157. At the same time
Malcolm was invested with the Honour of Huntingdon on the same
terms as those on which it had been held by David.
12. William the Lion, 1165-1214.—William surnamed the
Lion succeeded his brother Malcolm. He was eager to regain the
earldom of Northumberland, which his father had held and which his
brother had lost. As Henry of England refused it to him, he aided the
sons of that monarch in their rebellion against their father, and,
when Henry was absent in France, he invaded his kingdom and took
several strongholds. But by his own imprudence he was surprised
and captured, with the best of his nobles, while tilting in a meadow
close by the walls of Alnwick, and was sent for greater security to
Falaise, in Normandy, July 1174.
 13. Convention of Falaise.—In the end of the year William
regained his freedom by signing a treaty called the "Convention of
Falaise," the hard terms of which were most humiliating, both to him
and to Scotland. He was in future to hold his kingdom on the same
terms of vassalage as those by which he now held Lothian, and as a
token of further dependence his barons and clergy were also to do
homage to the English King, who was to be put in possession of the
principal strongholds. His brother David, Earl of Huntingdon, and
twenty-one other barons were to remain as hostages till the
strongholds were given up, and on their release each was to leave
his son or next heir as a warrant of good faith. The homage was
performed in the following year, when William met Henry at York;
and the King of Scots, with his earls, barons, free-tenants, and
clergy, became the liegemen of the King of England in St. Peter's
Minster. The clergy swore to lay the kingdom under an interdict, and
the laity to hold by their English over-lord, should William prove
unfaithful to him. This treaty remained in force till the death of
Henry in 1189, when Richard of England, who was in want of money
for his crusade, released William, for the sum of 10,000 marks, from
these extorted obligations and restored the strongholds, though he
refused to give up to him the coveted earldom.
14. Homage at Lincoln.—When John succeeded his brother on
the throne of England, William did such homage to him as the King
of Scots had been wont to render to the King of England before the
treaty of Falaise. He met John at Lincoln, whither he was escorted
by a brilliant retinue of English barons. But there was no kindly
feeling between the two Kings. John tried to build a castle at
Tweedmouth in order to spoil the trade of Berwick, the largest
trading city in Scotland, but the Scots drove away the builders and
levelled the castle, and for some time both Kings kept threatening
armies on the Border.
15. Independence of the Church.—At a great Council held at
Northampton in 1176, the Archbishop of York claimed Scotland as a
part of his province, and called on the Scottish clergy to
acknowledge their dependence. They protested and appealed to the
Pope, who forbade the Archbishop to press his claim. Clement III. in
1188 confirmed their claim of independence, on the ground that the
Church of Scotland was in immediate dependence on the Holy See.
16. Internal Troubles.—During William's captivity, Galloway
revolted. All the King's officers were either slain or expelled, and as,
after the submission at Falaise, Gilbert the chief of Galloway
considered himself a vassal of England, he let the Lothians have no
peace till his death in 1185. William's nephew Roland then seized
Galloway, drove out his opponents, and rebuilt the Royal castles.
William used his influence to induce Henry to confirm Roland in
possession, and thereby gained a devoted and faithful ally. It was
mainly by his aid that William was enabled to put down a formidable
rising in the north.
17. Social Progress.—During this reign the free towns began to
rise into notice. Their privilege of trade and right to govern
themselves was recognized by a charter granted to the city of
Aberdeen, in which William confirmed his burghers north of the
Mount, in their right of holding their own court or "free anse," as
they had done in the time of his grandfather David. Thus we see
that the towns of the north of Scotland were united for mutual
support a century before the rise of the great continental Hansa,
which bound together by a similar league the trading cities of the
Baltic. Some of the most important towns date their charters from
William, and he extended the influence of civilization in the north by
holding his court in such remote places as Elgin, Nairn, and
Inverness. The only religious foundation of this reign was the abbey
of Arbroath. It was dedicated to the newest saint in the calendar,
Thomas of Canterbury. William died at Stirling in 1214, leaving one
son, Alexander, who succeeded him.
18. Alexander II., 1214-1249.—Alexander's accession was
the signal for one of the usual risings in Moray; but as the power of
the Crown in that district was now stronger than it had been in
earlier times, this rising was more easily put down than any former
one had been. The great struggle between despotism and freedom
had just at this time set John of England and his barons at variance.
Alexander joined the barons in hopes of getting back
Northumberland. He crossed the Border and received the homage of
the northern barons, and the following year he joined his force to
those of the confederates, and marched to Dover, where he did
homage to Louis of France, who, at the invitation of the barons, had
come over to take the crown. The death of John and the victory of
his son, Henry the Third, at Lincoln, changed the whole state of
affairs, and in 1217 Alexander did the usual homage to Henry and
was invested with the Honour of Huntingdon. Four years later the
bond between them was drawn closer by the marriage of Alexander
to Joanna, Henry's sister. This alliance was followed by a lasting
peace, though Alexander still claimed Northumberland, and Henry
upheld the right of the Archbishop of York to supremacy over the
Scottish Church. In a council held at York in 1237, Alexander agreed
to compound his claim to the earldom for a grant of the lands of
Penrith and Tynedale, and, when Henry went to France, he left the
Border under the care of the King of Scots.
19. Settling of the Border Line.—In 1222 an attempt was
made to lay down a definite boundary between the two countries.
Six commissioners on either side were appointed, and though the
exact course of the line was disputed, from that time it continued
pretty much what it is now, though a wide tract on either side was
claimed alternately by both nations and belonged in reality to
neither.
20. State of the North.—A disturbance which happened during
this reign shows us something of the lawless state of the northern
part of the kingdom. Adam, bishop of Caithness, tried to enforce the
payment of tithes in his diocese, but his people came together to
consider the best way of resisting this exaction. While they were
thus holding council, it is said that a voice cried out, "Short rede
good rede; slay we the bishop." On this advice they acted, for
without more waste of words they attacked the bishop, and burned
him and his house to ashes. Shortly before this a former bishop of
Caithness had been seized and had his tongue cut out by the Earl of
Orkney. Alexander died on an expedition to the Western Isles, at
Kerrara, a small islet off the coast of Argyle. By his second wife,
Mary of Coucy, he left a son, who succeeded him.
21. Alexander III., 1249-1266.—Alexander, a child of eight
years, was crowned with great pomp at Scone, the ancient crowning
place, where the famous stone of Destiny was kept. The tradition
was that no one who had not been enthroned on this stone was
lawful King of Scots. The most striking part of the coronation
ceremony was the appearance of a Sennachy or Celtic bard, who
greeted Alexander as King by virtue of his descent from the ancient
Celtic Kings, and recited the whole list of the King's ancestors,
carrying them back to the most remote ages. This might serve to
remind him that after all his title of King came solely from those very
Celts whom his more immediate forefathers had slighted and
despised.
22. Alexander's Marriage and Homage to England.—On
Christmas day, 1251, Alexander was married at York, to Margaret,
daughter of Henry the Third, and at the same time he did homage
for the lands he held in England, but evaded Henry's claim of
homage for Scotland, pleading the necessity of consulting his
advisers before giving an answer on so difficult a matter. This
question was brought up again in 1278, when Alexander went to
Westminster to acknowledge and to do homage to Edward the First,
and he gave for answer that he did homage for his English fiefs
alone and not for his kingdom. Edward asserted his right as over-
lord of the kingdom, but he did not then attempt to enforce it.
23. Last Invasion of the Northmen.—In 1262 Hakon of
Norway came with a great fleet to visit the Orkneys and the Western
Isles, Sudereys or Southern Isles as the Northmen called them. The
fleet sailed down the Western Coast, levying black mail on the
islands and making divers inland raids. Among other exploits the
Northmen dragged a number of their ships across the narrow neck
of land that parts Loch Long from Loch Lomond, sailed down Loch
Lomond, and harried the Lennox, as the fertile tract which stretches
along its lower end is called. Hakon sailed up the Firth of Clyde, and
an attempt was made at a peaceable agreement between him and
the King, who was at first willing to give up all claim to the Hebrides,
but wished to keep the Cumbraes, Bute, and Arran. But the Scots
purposely delayed coming to terms, as they expected that the
autumn storms would soon help them to get rid of their enemy. Nor
were their hopes disappointed, for, in the beginning of October, a
violent tempest rose, separated the ships of the invaders, sunk
some, and stranded others. On the following day the Northmen who
had landed were easily beaten, near Largs, by a Scottish army
hastily got together on the coast of Ayr, in 1263. Hakon died in one
of the Orkneys on his way home, and his son, in 1266, agreed to
give up Man and the Isles for 1,000 marks down, and the promise of
100 yearly. An amnesty was granted to the Islesmen, and it was
settled that the bishopric should continue in the province of
Drontheim. In 1281 the King's daughter, Margaret, married Eric, the
heir to the throne of Norway. She died in 1283, leaving an infant
daughter, who, a few months after, by the death of Alexander, the
King's only son, became heir to the Scottish crown. Three years
later, in 1286, the King himself was killed by a fall from his horse
while riding by night along the coast of Fife, near Kinghorn.
24. Literature and Architecture.—No chronicles of this
period, written by natives of Scotland, have come down to us. But
there was one poet who was held in great repute, not only for his
verses, but for his prophecies. This was Thomas Learmouth of
Ercildoun, called "Thomas the Rhymer," and "True Thomas," from
the general belief in the truth of his predictions. He is said to have
foretold that great national calamity, the King's death, under the
figure of a great storm that should blow "so stark and strang, that all
Scotland sall reu efter rycht lang." Another Scotsman of note was
Michael Scot, the famous wizard. He travelled much in foreign lands,
and was greatly renowned in them, as in his own country, as a
scholar, an astrologer, and magician. The buildings of this period
were chiefly the churches and abbeys founded by Margaret and her
descendants. They were all in the same style as contemporary
buildings in England. There were as yet very few castles, that is
fortified buildings of solid masonry, in the kingdom. The great
strongholds, such as Edinburgh, Stirling, and Dunbarton, were steep
rocks, made so inaccessible by nature that they needed but little
strengthening from art. Dwelling-houses seem to have been
generally built of wood.
25. State of the Kingdom.—The second period of the national
history breaks off abruptly with the death of Alexander. It had begun
with the dethronement of Donald Bane, the last Celtic King, nearly
two hundred years before, and during that time the boundary of
Scotland had been extended by the annexation of Argyle and of the
Isles, while her two dependencies of Lothian and Galloway had been
drawn more closely to her, though they still remained separate and
distinct. Throughout this period the influence of England, though
peaceable, had been stronger than it was ever to be again. English
laws and English customs had been brought in, and had, in many
cases, taken the place of the old Celtic usages. The Celtic maers had
been removed to make way for the sheriffs of the Crown. But, as
Scotland was not divided like England into shires, the sheriffs were
not, as in England, the reeves of the already existing shires, but
officers who were placed by the King over certain districts. These
districts or sheriffdoms became the counties of later times.
Feudalism after the Norman model, with all its burthensome
exactions and oppressions, had been brought in and had taken
firmer root in Scotland than it ever did in England. The native chiefs
had been displaced by foreign nobles, so that a purely Norman
baronage held the lands, whether peopled by a Celtic or a Saxon
peasantry. In some cases the new owners founded families
afterwards known under Celtic names; for, while the Celts gave their
own names to the lands on which they settled, the Normans took
the names of the lands conferred upon them and bore them as their
own. The long peace with England, which had lasted unbroken for
nearly a century, had been marked by great social progress. The
large proportion of land that was now under the plough proves that
during this untroubled time husbandry must have thriven, roads and
bridges were many and in good repair, and the trading towns had
made great advances in riches and power. Hitherto no one town had
distinctly taken its place as the capital. Saint John's Town, or Perth,
had, from its connexion with Scone, some claim to the first place,
but the King held his court or his assize indifferently at any of the
royal burghs. These burghs were of great importance in the state,
and, as the burgesses of the royal burghs were all vassals holding
direct from the Crown, they acted in some sort as a check on the
growing power of the nobles. The burghers had the right of
governing themselves by their own laws, and were divided into two
groups. Those north of the Scots water or Firth of Forth were bound
together by a league like the great continental Hansa, and known by
the same name; while those in Lothian, represented by the four
principal among them—Roxburgh, Stirling, Edinburgh, and Berwick—
held their "court of the four burghs," which is still represented by the
"Convention of Royal Burghs" which meets once a year in Edinburgh.
Nor were the Scottish towns of this period in any way behind the
cities of the Continent. Berwick, the richest and the greatest, was
said by a writer of the time to rival London. Inverness had a great
reputation for shipbuilding. A ship which was built there called forth
the envy and wonder of the French nobles of that time. But this
happy state of things was brought to an end by the death of the
King, and the long years of war and misery that followed went far to
sweep away all traces of the high state of civilization and prosperity
that had been reached by the country in this, the golden age of
Scottish history.

CHAPTER III.
STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE.
The Regency (1)—the Interregnum (2)—Council
at Norham (3)—Edward's decision (4)—John (5)
—his coronation (6)—French alliance (7)—
 Edward's first conquest (8)—English government
(9)—Wallace's revolt (10)—surrender at Irvine
(11)—battle of Stirling (12)—battle of Falkirk
(13)—capture of Wallace (14)—attempted union
(15)—Bruce's revolt (16)—his coronation (17)—
Edward's proposed revenge (18)—Bruce's
struggles (19)—battle of Bannockburn (20)—
results of the victory (21)—Bruce's comrades
(22)—summary (23).
1. Margaret, 1286-90. The Regency.—Within a month from
Alexander's death the Estates met at Scone, and appointed six
regents to govern the kingdom for Margaret, the Maiden of Norway,
a child of three years old, who, on the death of her grandfather
Alexander, succeeded to the throne. Three of these regents were for
the old kingdom, the land north of the Scots Water, and three for
Lothian with Galloway. This division seems to show that the different
tenure of these provinces was still understood and acted on. The
Scots of the original Celtic kingdom and the Englishmen of Lothian
still kept aloof from one another. In the meantime Robert Bruce, a
Norman baron whose forefathers had settled in Annandale in the
twelfth century, made an attempt to seize the crown by force. He
laid claim to it by right of his descent from Isabella, the second
daughter of David Earl of Huntingdon, brother of William the Lion,
and appealed to Edward the First of England as over-lord to support
him in his supposed right. At the same time other appeals against
him were made by the seven Earls of Scotland, by Fraser bishop of
St. Andrews, and by the Community. Edward did not encourage
Bruce, but on the contrary he agreed to the proposal of the Estates
that the Lady Margaret should be married to his eldest son Edward.
By the treaty of Brigham, in 1290, this agreement was accepted by
the Clergy, Nobility, and Community of Scotland. This treaty provided
that the rights and liberties of Scotland should remain untouched;
that no native of Scotland was to be called on to do homage or to
answer for any crime beyond the Border; in short, that Scotland was
to keep all the rights and liberties which belong to a distinct national
life. This union, if it had been carried out, would have been the best
possible settlement for both kingdoms, but it was prevented by the
death of the Maid of Norway on her way to Scotland, in one of the
Orkneys, September 1290. Edward had himself sent a ship
handsomely fitted out to fetch home the Maid.
2. Interregnum, 1290-92.—Margaret was the last of the
legitimate descendants of William the Lion. The new King had to be
sought among the heirs of William's brother David, Earl of
Huntingdon. David had left three daughters, Margaret, Isabella, and
Ada, and they being dead were represented by their nearest heirs,—
Margaret by her grandson John Balliol, Isabella by her son Robert
Bruce, and Ada by her son John Hastings. Besides these there were
a host of smaller claimants whose pretensions were quite untenable;
but there was one other who, though his claim was very shadowy,
was first in power and position among the claimants. This was
Florence, Count of Holland, the great-great-grandson of Ada, the
daughter of David's son Henry, who was to have had Ross as her
dowry. Bruce, supported by his son, by James the Steward and by
other nobles, made a bond with Florence by which each pledged
himself, in case he got the kingdom, to give the other a third of it.
Edward, as over-lord, was appealed to to settle the matter, as it was
feared by the regents that Robert Bruce would seize the crown by
force, and all the competitors seem to have acknowledged Edward's
right of superiority.
3. Council at Norham.—Edward accordingly summoned his
barons, amongst whom most of the claimants could be reckoned, to
meet him in a council at Norham, on the northern side of the Tweed,
in June 1291, to decide this important case. The real contest lay
between Bruce and Balliol. Bruce, Balliol, and indeed nearly all the
claimants, were Norman barons holding lands of Edward. The family
of Bruce came originally from the Côtentin and had been settled in
Yorkshire by William the Conqueror, towards the end of his reign.
David, who had granted to them the great tract of Annandale, had
also granted to the Balliols a manor in Berwick. Bruce's plea was
that, though he was the child of a younger sister, still his right was
better than that of Balliol, as he was one degree nearer their
common forefather, and he brought forward many precedents to
prove that in such a case nearness in degree was to be preferred to
seniority.
4. Edward's Decision.—Edward decided with perfect justice,
according to the ideas of modern law, that Balliol, as the grandson of
the eldest daughter, had the best right to the throne. In early times
in Scotland no one would have thought of doubting Bruce's claim as
next in degree. As Edward refused to divide the dominions among
the heirs of the three daughters, it is clear that he looked on
Scotland as a dependent kingdom, and not as an ordinary fief, which
would have been shared among the three rivals. Judgment was
given at Berwick, November 1292, eighteen months after the first
meeting of the council. During this time the government had been
nominally in the hands of the guardians of the kingdom; but Edward
had the strongholds, twenty-three in number, in his own hands, and
seems to have looked upon the two countries as really united. At the
end of the suit he gave up the strongholds, and by so doing showed
that he meant to act fairly.
5. John, 1292-96. Policy of Edward.—The great scheme of
Edward's life was to unite Britain under one government, of which
he himself was to be the head. He had already added to England the
dependent principality of Wales. Hitherto his actions towards
Scotland had been perfectly fair and upright. In placing John Balliol,
the rightful heir, on the throne, he was doing no more than had been
done by the King of England, acting as over-lord, in the cases of
Malcolm Canmore and Eadgar: but his way of placing him there was
not strictly just; the conditions which he required were such as he
had no right to exact, nor John to accept. He made him do homage
for his kingdom as though it had been an English fief. Now, though
this was true as far as concerned Lothian, and partly true as
concerned Strathclyde, as concerned Scotland it was untrue.
Although Scotland had, since 924, been in some degree subject to
the King of England, this dependence was no more than was implied
by the "commendation," the very natural relation of the weaker to
the stronger. But it must be remembered that three centuries had
passed since that first commendation, and in that time the original
simplicity of the feudal tenure had been altogether changed and in
great measure forgotten. Edward looked on the three parts of
Scotland as fiefs, and therefore subject to the same burthens as his
other fiefs; the Scots knew that they were not thus subject, and they
therefore argued that their kingdom was in no way dependent on
England: thus both parties were partly right and partly wrong. Even
the amount of dependence implied in the original commendation
had, in the last reign, been refused by the Scottish King, and had
not been insisted on by the English one. But John Balliol was weak
and foolish, while Edward was wise, strong, and determined to rule
the whole country indirectly through his submissive vassal.
6. Coronation of John.—John was duly crowned and enthroned
on the Stone of Destiny, after which he renewed his homage to
Edward, in 1292. He then summoned the Estates at Scone. This was
the first meeting of the Estates which was called a parliament. John
was not popular with his subjects, who looked on him as a tool in
the hands of Edward. Before many months had passed Roger
Bartholomew, a burgess of Berwick, being dissatisfied with a
decision given against him in Scotland, appealed to Edward, who
named a council at Newcastle to hear the case. This was a direct
violation of the treaty of Brigham, and Edward obliged John to sign a
discharge and renunciation of this treaty and of any other document
then in existence which might call in question his superiority.
Another appeal was made a few months afterwards against the
decision of the Estates by a Scot of the old kingdom, Macduff, the
grand-uncle of the Earl of Fife, and this was followed by appeals
respecting the lands of the houses of Bruce and Douglas. John was
summoned to appear before the Parliament of England, was voted a
contumacious vassal, and commanded to give up the three principal
strongholds of his kingdom into the hands of his over-lord till he
should give satisfaction.
7. French Alliance.—In 1294 war broke out between France
and England, and John, with the nobles and commons of his
kingdom, entered into an alliance for mutual defence with Eric of
Norway and Philip of France against Edward. This was the beginning
of the foreign policy maintained in Scotland for several centuries,
until the Reformation, when religious sympathy got the better of
national hatred, and Roman Catholic France became more dreaded
than Protestant England. In compliance with this treaty a Scottish
army crossed the Border and swept and wasted the northern
counties.
8. Edward's first Conquest.—Edward's dealings with Scotland
now became those of a conqueror instead of a protector. The Scots
had, without gainsaying, acknowledged his supremacy. It was the
appeal of Scottish subjects which had tempted him to extend the
incidents of that supremacy beyond legal limits, and now it was the
Scots who began the war, and thus gave Edward the excuse, for
which he was waiting, for conquering their country. He at once
marched northwards with a great army, and besieged and took
Berwick, a large and wealthy trading town. Provoked by the
resistance and insults of the citizens, the King wreaked a fearful
vengeance on them, and Berwick was reduced to the rank of a
common market-town. While he was at Berwick, John's renunciation
of fealty was sent to him by the party of independence, who were
keeping their King in custody lest he should repent and submit.
When Edward had secured Berwick, he marched to Dunbar, took the
castle, and then went on to Edinburgh. He there took up his quarters
in Holyrood, laid siege to the castle, took it, seized the crown jewels,
and then passed on to Perth, taking possession of Stirling on the
way. To crush out all idea of an independent kingdom, and to let the
people see that they were conquered, he carried off from Scone the
Stone of Destiny, with which the fate of the Scottish monarchy was
supposed to be mystically joined. This stone was removed to
Westminster, and was placed under the seat of the coronation-chair.
He also took with him the Holy Rood of Queen Margaret, and obliged
all the nobles who submitted to him to swear allegiance on this
much valued relic. Edward did not go further north than Elgin, and
he returned to Berwick in 1296, having marched all through Scotland
in twenty-one weeks. All the nobles and prelates did personal
homage to him. John submitted himself to Edward's pleasure, and
was degraded and dispossessed. He was then sent as a prisoner to
England, was afterwards made over to the keeping of the Bishop of
Vicenza, the Pope's representative, and at last he retired to his own
estates in Picardy, where he died in 1315. Edward treated his
kingdom as a fief forfeited by the treason of the vassal who held it.
This notion of the thirteenth century, that the fief was forfeited by
treason, would not have occurred to anyone in the tenth century,
when probably John would only have been deposed, and some one
else set up in his stead. The seizure of Normandy from John of
England by Philip of France was a case of the same kind, and quite
as unprecedented.
9. English Government.—Edward at once took measures for
joining Scotland on as an integral part of the English kingdom. He
took care that the strongholds should be commanded and
garrisoned by persons without any Scottish connexion. He appointed
John, Earl of Warrenne and Surrey, Guardian, Hugh of Cressingham,
Treasurer, and Ormsby, Justiciar of the kingdom; sent them forms of
writs to be used in the re-granting of lands; took measures for the
establishment of Courts of Chancery and Exchequer at Berwick, and
summoned a council of merchants to consider the best measures for
the future conduct of the trade and commerce of the country.
Cressingham was enjoined to raise all the money he could, for the
maintenance of internal peace and order, and to put down the
wicked rebels, homicides, and disturbers of the peace, who swarmed
all over the land.
10. Wallace's Revolt.—The Celts in the North looked on this
change in the government with apathy. To them it probably made
little difference who sat on the Scottish throne, and Edward had not
entered their district. The Norman nobles quietly agreed to it, for
they were afraid of losing their estates in England. But it roused a
spirit of defiance and opposition where resistance was least to be
looked for, among the Lowlanders. They were the descendants of
the earliest Teutonic settlers, and had remained more purely English
in blood and speech than their kinsfolk on the southern side of the
Border. This latent feeling of discontent gradually ripened into
rebellion, and the standard of revolt was raised by William Wallace, a
native of Clydesdale, who, unlike most of his countrymen, had not
sworn allegiance to Edward. He surprised and cut to pieces the
English garrison at Lanark, and slew William Haselrig, the newly
appointed sheriff of Ayr. This outbreak was followed by similar
attacks on detached bodies of the troops in occupation. His little
band of followers gradually attracted more, and at length they
surprised the Justiciar Ormsby, while holding a court at Scone, and,
though he escaped out of their hands, they secured both prisoners
and booty. Anthony Beck, Bishop of Durham, was next attacked in
Glasgow, and forced to flee. After these successes Wallace was
joined by William of Douglas, a renowned soldier, and by Robert
Bruce, Earl of Carrick, grandson of the original claimant of the
crown.
11. Surrender at Irvine.—But there was a want of system and
of unity of purpose in the nation, and this noble effort on the part of
the people was not seconded by the nobles. A large army under
Henry, Lord Percy, was sent by Edward to put down the rising; those
of the nobles who had joined the popular movement deserted it, and
renewed their allegiance to Edward at Irvine, July 1297. But when
Edward, who believed the revolt to be completely crushed, was
absent in Flanders, Wallace mustered the people of the Lowlands
north of the Tay and made himself master of the strongholds in that
district.
12. Battle of Stirling.—The English army was now hastening
northward under Cressingham and Warrenne, Earl of Surrey. Wallace
resolved to give them battle on the Carse of Stirling, a level plain,
across which the river Forth winds in and out among the meadows
like the links of a silver chain. Wallace showed his skill as a general
by the choice of the ground on which he posted his men. He drew
them up within one of the links of the river, which swept round in
front between them and the English, while a steep rocky hill, called
the Abbey Craig, rose right behind them and protected the rear. The
English had to cross the river by a narrow bridge. Wallace waited till
half of them were over, and then attacked them. Taken thus at a
disadvantage, they were easily routed. The panic spread to those on
the opposite bank, who fled in disorder. In this action, called the
Battle of Stirling, which was fought September 11, 1297,
Cressingham was slain, and Surrey was forced to retreat to Berwick.
After this victory the Scots recovered the strongholds south of the
Forth, and Wallace acted as Guardian of the kingdom in the name of
King John, and with the consent of the commons. Unhappily the
Scots were not content with driving out the invaders, but carried the
war over the Border, and wasted the northern counties of England
with all the fierceness and cruelty of brigands.
13. Battle of Falkirk.—Edward returned from Flanders and
raised a large army for the subjection of Scotland, promising pardon
to all vagrants and malefactors who would enlist in it. The King
himself led the army. The Scots wasted the country and retreated
before him through the Lothians; and Wallace, who knew well the
weakness of his own force, tried to avoid a battle till the great army
of Edward should be exhausted from want of food. But tidings were
brought to Edward that Wallace was near Falkirk, and he marched
northward in haste and forced his enemy to give battle. At Stirling
Wallace had won the day by his happy choice of the ground; he now
showed still greater skill by the way in which he drew up his little
army. It was made up for the most part of footmen, who at that
time were held of no account as soldiers. The genius of Wallace
found out how they might be made even more formidable than the
mounted men-at-arms, in whom at that time it was supposed that
the strength of an army lay. He drew them up in circular masses; the
spearmen without and the bowmen within. The spearmen with
lances fixed knelt down in ranks, so that the archers within could
shoot over their heads. When his men were thus placed, Wallace
said to them, "I have brought ye to the ring—hop gif ye can;" that
is, show how well you can fight. But, though they fought well and
held their ground bravely, and the English horse were driven back by
the spear-points, the Scots were at last beaten down by force of
numbers, and the English won the day, 1298. After this victory
Edward returned to Carlisle, and Wallace resigned the Guardianship.
Edward held the country south of the Forth, but the northern
Lowlands seem to have maintained their independence until the
spring of 1303, when Edward marched north at the head of a great
army and again subdued the whole country. He made Dunfermline,
the favourite seat of the Scottish court, his head-quarters. Stirling
Castle alone, under Olifant the valiant governor, held out for three
months, but when it was taken the lives of the garrison were spared.
All the leaders in the late rising were left unharmed in life, liberty, or
estate, with the exception of William Wallace. He was required to
submit unconditionally to the King's grace.
14. Capture of Wallace.—Wallace had been on the Continent
ever since the battle of Falkirk. He now came back and was betrayed
by his servant Jack Short to Sir John Menteith, governor for Edward
in Dunbarton Castle, and was sent by him to London. He was there
tried, by a special commission, for treason and rebellion against
Edward. He pleaded in his own defence that he had never sworn
fealty to Edward. In spite of this he was found guilty, condemned to
death, and hanged, drawn, and quartered according to the
barbarous practice which was then coming into use in England. His
head was stuck up on London Bridge, and the four parts of his body
were sent to Newcastle, Berwick, Stirling, and Perth, by way of
frightening the people from such attempts in future.
15. Attempted Union.—Edward then set to work to complete
the union of the two kingdoms. In the meantime Scotland was to be
governed by a Lieutenant aided by a council of barons and
churchmen. It was to be represented in the English parliament by
ten deputies,—four churchmen, four barons, and two members of
the commons, one for the country north of the Firths, one for the
south. These members attended one parliament at Westminster, and
an ordinance was issued for the government of Scotland. John of
Bretayne was named Lieutenant for the King; justices and sheriffs
were appointed; the strongholds were put under governors for the
King, and an inquiry was ordered into the state of the laws in order
to take measures for their amendment. Edward's policy in all this
was to win favour with the people and the members of the council,
although many of them, such as Bruce and Wishart, Bishop of
Glasgow, had taken part in the last rising. The King's peace was now
offered to all rebels who would profit by it. But the great difficulty in
dealing with the Scots was that they never knew when they were
conquered, and, just when Edward hoped that his scheme for union
was carried out, they rose in arms once more.
16. Bruce's Revolt.—The leader this time was Robert Bruce,
Lord of Annandale, Earl of Carrick in right of his mother, and the
grandson and heir of the rival of Balliol. He had joined Wallace, but
had again sworn fealty to Edward at the Convention of Irvine, and
had since then received many favours from the English king. Bruce
signed a bond with William Lamberton, Bishop of St. Andrews, who
had also been one of Wallace's supporters. In this bond each party
swore to stand by the other in all his undertakings, no matter what,
and not to act without the knowledge of the other. The signing of
such bonds became a prominent and distinctive feature in the after-
history of Scotland. This bond became known to Edward; and Bruce,
afraid of his anger, fled from London to Dumfries. There in the
Church of the Grey Friars he had an interview with John Comyn of
Badenoch, called the Red Comyn, who, after Balliol and his sons,
was the next heir to the throne. He was the grandson of a younger
sister of Balliol's mother, and the son of Balliol's sister. He had also a
strong claim to the favour of the people in his alleged descent,
through Donald Bane, from their ancient Celtic kings. What passed
between them cannot be certainly known, as they met alone, but
Bruce came out of the church saying he feared he had slain the Red
Comyn. Kirkpatrick, one of his followers, then said, he would "mak
sicker," and ran in and slew the wounded man. By this murder and
sacrilege Bruce put himself at once out of the pale of the law and of
the Church, but by it he became the nearest heir to the crown, after
the Balliols. This gave him a great hold on the people, whose faith in
the virtue of hereditary succession was strong, and on whom the
English yoke weighed heavily.
 17. Coronation at Scone.—On March 27, 1306, Bruce was
crowned with as near an imitation of the old ceremonies as could be
compassed on such short notice. The actual crowning was done by
Isabella, Countess of Buchan, who, though her husband was a
Comyn, and, as such, a sworn foe of Bruce, came secretly to uphold
the right of her own family, the Macduffs, to place the crown on the
head of the King of Scots.
18. Edward's proposed Revenge.—Edward determined this
time to put down the Scots with rigour. Aymer of Valence, Earl of
Pembroke, succeeded John of Bretayne as Governor. All who had
taken any part in the murder of the Red Comyn were denounced as
traitors, and death was to be the fate of all persons taken in arms.
Bruce was excommunicated by a special bull from the Pope. The
Countess of Buchan was confined in a room, made like a cage, in
one of the towers of Berwick Castle. One of King Robert's sisters was
condemned to a like punishment. His brother Nigel, his brother-in-
law Christopher Seton, and three other nobles were taken prisoners,
and were put to death as traitors. This, the first noble blood that had
been shed in the popular cause, did much to unite the sympathy of
the nobles with the commons, who had hitherto been the only
sufferers from the oppression of the conquerors. Edward this time
made greater preparations than ever. All classes of his subjects from
all parts of his dominions were invited to join the army, and he
exhorted his son, Edward Prince of Wales, and 300 newly-created
knights, to win their spurs worthily in the reduction of contumacious
Scotland. It was well for Scotland that he did not live to carry out his
vows of vengeance. He died at Burgh-on-the-Sands, July 30th. His
death proved a turning-point in the history of Scotland, for, though
the English still remained in possession of the strongholds, Edward
the Second took no effective steps to crush the rebels. He only
brought the army raised by his father as far as Cumnock in Ayrshire,
and retreated without doing anything.
19. Bruce's Struggles.—For several years King Robert was an
outlaw and a fugitive, with but a handful of followers. Their lives
were in constant danger. Whenever an opportunity offered, they
made daring attacks on the English in possession; at other times
they saved their lives by hairbreadth escapes from their pursuit. The
Celts of the west and of Galloway, who had been won over to the
English interest, were against them, and the Earl of Buchan,
husband of the patriotic Countess, and his kinsman, Macdougal of
Lorn, were Bruce's most deadly enemies. At one time Bruce had met
with so many defeats that he left Scotland and thought of giving up
the struggle and going to the Holy Land. Tradition says that the
example of a spider stirred him up to fresh courage and endurance.
He was in hiding in the island of Rachrin, off the north coast of
Ireland. As he lay one morning in bed in the wretched hut in which
he had taken refuge, he saw a spider trying in vain to throw its web
across from beam to beam of the roof above his head. The insect
tried six times and failed. Bruce reckoned that he had been beaten
just six times by the English. He watched eagerly to see if the spider
would try again. "If it does," thought he, "so will I." Once more the
spider made the attempt, and this time it was successful. Bruce took
it as a happy omen, and went back to Scotland. He joined some of
his followers in the Isle of Arran. From the island they went to the
mainland, and from that time the tide of fortune seemed to turn,
and to bring him good luck instead of bad. Still he had to go through
many perils. The story of his exploits has been handed down to us
by John Barbour, Archdeacon of Aberdeen. As he was born soon
after Bruce's death, there may be some truth in the tales which he
tells, though it must be borne in mind that they are but tales. He
describes Bruce as a strong, tall man, so cheerful and good-
humoured that he kept up the spirits of his followers no matter what
mishaps befell them, always first in danger, and often owing his life
to his own wit and daring. One of his best known feats happened in
the country of John of Lorn. Three Highlanders, who had sworn to
take his life, set upon him when he was quite alone. One seized his
horse's bridle; another tried to take his foot out of the stirrup; the
third, leaping on him from behind, tried to unhorse him. Bruce cut
them all down and rode off triumphant. His brooch had come loose
in the struggle, and was ever afterwards kept as a precious relic in
the family of his enemy Macdougal of Lorn. The first decided success
of Bruce was the defeat of his old enemy, the Earl of Buchan, who
with his followers joined the English, and forced Bruce to right near
Inverary. Bruce won the day, and his followers so spoiled the lands
of the Comyn that this fray was long remembered as the "Herrying
of Buchan." At length the clergy recognized Bruce as their King, and
this virtual taking off the excommunication had a great effect upon
the people. The little band of patriots increased by degrees. The
strongholds were won back, till at last only Stirling was left to the
English, and it was so sorely pressed that the governor agreed to
give it up to the Scots if he were not relieved before St. John
Baptist's Day, 1314. Roused by the fear of losing this, the most
prized of all Edward the First's conquests, the English gathered in
great force, and marched 100,000 strong to the relief of the
garrison.
20. Battle of Bannockburn, June 24, 1314.—The Scots were
posted so as to command the plain or carse of Stirling, which the
English must cross to reach the Castle. They were greatly inferior to
the English in numbers, and had scarcely any cavalry, in which the
chief strength of the English force lay. Robert divided them into four
battles or divisions. Their leaders were Sir James Douglas; Randolf,
his nephew; James the Stewart, and Bruce's own brother Edward.
Bruce himself commanded the fourth division, which was placed
behind the others, as in it were the men he least trusted, and a
small body of cavalry. One flank of the army rested on the Bannock,
a small stream or burn, from which the battle took its name. Before
the battle joined, as King Robert was reviewing his line, he was
challenged to single combat by Henry of Bohun, an English knight,
and raised the spirit of his followers by cleaving his adversary's skull.
The English began the fight by a volley of arrows, but their archers
were dispersed by the small body of the Scottish horsemen whom
King Robert sent to charge them. The English cavalry then charged
the Scots, but they tried in vain to break the compact bristling
masses of the Scottish spearmen, and themselves fell into confusion.
Some Highland gillies and camp-followers just then appeared on the
brow of a neighbouring hill. The English took them for a reserve of
the enemy, were seized with terror, fled in wild disorder, and the
defeat became a total and shameful rout. The horsemen in their
flight fell into the pitfalls which the Scots had cunningly sunk in the
plain. King Edward and 500 knights never drew rein till they reached
Dunbar, whence they took ship for Berwick. Great spoil and many
noble captives fell that day to the share of the victors.
21. Results of the Victory.—By this battle, won against
tremendous odds, the Saxons of the Lowlands decided their own
fate and that of the Celtic people by whose name they were called,
and to whose kingdom they chose to belong. On the field of
Bannockburn they gave the English a convincing proof that they
preferred sharing the poverty and turbulent independence of that
half-civilized Celtic kingdom to rejoining the more wealthy,
prosperous, and settled country from which three centuries before
they had been severed. Three more centuries were still to pass
before Edward the First's great idea of a Union could be carried out.
Bannockburn is noteworthy among battles as being one of the first
to prove the value of Wallace's great discovery that footmen, when
rightly understood and skilfully handled, were, after all, better than
the mounted men-at-arms hitherto deemed invincible. Like
Morgarten and Courtray, the fields on which the Flemings and the
Swiss about the same time overthrew their oppressors, this victory
of the Scots stands forth as a bright example, showing how, even in
that age of feudal tyranny, a few men of set purpose, fighting for
their common liberty, could withstand a great mass of feudal
retainers fighting simply at the bidding of their lords.
22. Bruce's Comrades.—The faithful friends of Bruce, those
who had shared his dangers and helped him to win his crown, were
no way behind their leader in courage and heroism. The most
famous of them all was James of Douglas, son of that Douglas who
had been the friend and supporter of Wallace. His own Castle of
Douglas was the scene of one of his most daring deeds, hence called
the Douglas Larder. The English held his castle, but on Palm Sunday,
when the garrison were gone to church, Douglas attacked them
suddenly, killed some, and took the rest prisoners. He and his men
then went up to the castle, where they feasted merrily on the fare
that was being made ready for the English. When they had dined,
Douglas bade them bring forth all the provision of food and fuel and
pile it up in the castle hall. He then killed the English prisoners and
flung their bodies on the heap. Over them he poured their store of
wine, which mingled with the blood that still streamed from their
gaping wounds. The Scots then set fire to the whole and went off to
the woods again, for the free vault of heaven was more to their
minds than the constraint of castle walls. All these stories are only
tales; but, whether true or not, they show the spirit of the time.
23. Summary.—In this chapter we have seen how Scotland lost
her independence by the selfish quarrels of her nobles and the
weakness of her King John Balliol; how the rising of Wallace, the first
effort for regaining her ancient freedom, was confined solely to the
people without the nobles; how it came to nothing from the want of
unity of purpose in the nation; how Scotland, after the failure of this
attempt, had lost her separate national life and had been united to
England; how, when all hope seemed lost, the people rose under a
leader who was really a Norman baron, and therefore as much a
foreigner to them as any of the governors placed over them by
Edward; and how by one great effort they shook off the yoke of the
invaders and drove them from the soil.

CHAPTER IV.
THE INDEPENDENT KINGDOM.

Robert I. (1)—Chapter of Mitton (2)—Peace of

Northampton (3)—Robert's parliaments (4)—his
death (5)—David II. (6)—Edward Balliol's
invasion (7)—battle of Halidon Hill (8)—capture
of the King (9)—Robert II. (10)—the French
allies (11)—Raid of Otterburn (12)—Robert III.
 (13)—Clan battle on the North Inch (14)—
relations with England (15)—Albany's regency
(16)—battle of Harlaw (17)—Scots in France
(18)—death of Albany (19)—summary (20).

1. Robert I., 1314-1329.—The independence which Scotland

had lost was won back on the field of Bannockburn. She was to live
on as an independent kingdom, not to sink into a mere province of
England; but, as the English refused to acknowledge her
independence, the war was carried on by repeated invasions and
cruel wastings of the northern counties. Douglas, who was so
popular that he was called the Good Lord James, and Randolf, whom
Bruce created Earl of Moray, were the chief heroes of these raids.
Edward was attacked too in another quarter, in Ireland, whither, at
the call of the Celtic chiefs, Edward Bruce had gone, like his brother
Robert, to win himself a crown by valour and popularity. King Robert
himself took over troops to help him. Edward was crowned King of
Ireland, but he was killed soon after. Meanwhile the war on the
Border still went on. Each side was struggling for Berwick. The Scots
won it back, and the English did all they could to retake it, but in
vain.
2. Chapter of Mitton.—While the siege went on, the Border
counties were so sorely harried by the Scots that at last the
Archbishop of York and the clergy took up arms in their defence. But
they were thoroughly beaten, and this battle was called the Chapter
of Mitton, from the number of clerks left dead on the field. Edward
could have ended all this by acknowledging Robert as King, but he
would not. A two years' truce was made in 1319, but, as soon as it
was ended, he once more invaded Scotland with a large army. He
found nothing but a wasted country, for the Scots had carried both
provisions and cattle to the hills, nor would they come out to fight,
though they harassed the rear of the retreating army. At last the
people of the northern counties of England grew weary of the
constant struggle. They had suffered so much loss from the inroads
of the Scots that they at last resolved that, if the King would not
make peace for them, they must come to terms with the enemy on
their own account. Edward, who feared that he might thus lose a
part of his kingdom, agreed to a thirteen years' truce, which was
concluded in 1323. In this treaty Robert was allowed to take his title
of King, though the English would not give it him. But when a few
years later Edward was deposed and his son Edward the Third
placed in his stead, his government would not confirm the truce in
the form at first agreed on. The Scots upon this made another raid
upon England, swept the country, and carried off their spoil before
the eyes of a large English army. The Scots had in their plundering
expeditions a great advantage over the English in the greater
simplicity of their habits. They were mounted on small light horses,
which at night were turned out to graze. They carried no provisions,
except a small bag of oatmeal, which each man bore at his saddle,
together with a thin iron plate on which he baked his meal into
cakes. For the rest of their food they trusted to plunder. They burned
and destroyed everything as they passed, and, when they seized
more cattle than they could use, they slew them and left them
behind on the place where their camp had been.
3. Peace of Northampton.—As by this time Robert's title had,
after much strife, been recognized by the Pope and other foreign
powers, the English saw that they must acknowledge it too.
Therefore a treaty was confirmed at Northampton in 1328 between
Robert, King of Scots, and the English King. The terms of this treaty
were, that Scotland as far as the old boundary lines should be
perfectly independent; that the two Kings should be faithful allies,
and that neither should stir up the troublesome Celtic subjects of the
other, either in Ireland or in the Highlands. As a further proof of
good will, Joan, Edward's sister, was betrothed to Robert's infant
son. By this treaty the original Commendation of 924, and all the
subsequent submissions to England, whether real or pretended,
were done away with. It placed the kingdom on quite a new footing,
for now Lothian and Strathclyde were as independent of England as
the real Scotland had originally been. The long time of common
suffering and common struggles had done for the nation what the
good time before it had failed to do. It had knit together the three
strands of the different races into one cord of national unity too
strong for any outer influence again to sever. But during the long
war there had also arisen that intense hatred of everything English
which warped the future growth of the nation. This hatred drove
Scotland to seek in France the model and ally that she had hitherto
found in England, and the influence of France can from this period
be distinctly traced in the laws, the architecture, and the manners of
the people. Robert's treaty with France was the beginning of the
future foreign policy of Scotland. This was to make common cause
with France against England, which country Scotland pledged herself
to invade whenever France declared war against it.
4. Robert's Parliaments.—Two of the meetings of the Estates
or Parliaments of this reign deserve notice. That of 1318 settled the
succession to the crown: first, on the direct male heirs in order of
seniority; next on the direct female heirs; failing both, on the next of
kin. An Act was also passed by this parliament forbidding all holders
of estates in Scotland from taking the produce or revenues of these
lands out of the kingdom. This law acted as a sentence of forfeiture
on the so-called Scottish barons who had larger estates in England
than in Scotland, and who preferred living in the richer country. In
the parliament of 1326, held at Cambuskenneth, the third Estate,
that is, the members from the burghs, was first recognized as an
essential part of the National Assembly.
5. His Death.—King Robert owed his crown to the people and to
the clergy; of the nobles but few were with him. His reign made a
great change in the baronage, for with the forfeited estates of his
opponents he laid the foundation of other families, the Douglases for
instance, who in after-times proved the dangerous rivals of his own
descendants. This was partly owing to his mistaken policy in
granting royalties or royal powers within their own domains to
certain of his own kindred and supporters. This practice, though at
the time it strengthened his own hands, in the end weakened the
power of the Crown. He died at Cardross in 1329, leaving one son.
He was greatly mourned by the people, for he had won their
sympathy by the struggles of his early career, and had become their
pride by his final victories. They were justly proud of having a king
who was no mere puppet in the hands of others, fit only to wear a
crown and to spend money, but a brave, wise man, who had shown
himself as able to suffer want and to fight against ill-fortune as the
best and bravest among themselves. After King Robert's death,
Douglas, to fulfil his last wish, set out with his heart for Spain with a
gallant following of the best gentlemen in Scotland. In a skirmish
with the Moors, he was surrounded by the enemy, while hastening
to the help of a brother knight. When he saw his danger, he took
from his neck the silken cord from which hung the Bruce's heart,
cast it on before him into the thickest of the fight, crying out, "Pass
first in fight as thou art wont to do, and Douglas will follow thee or
die." True to his word, he fell fighting valiantly, and his body was
found near the casket, which held the heart of the friend and leader
whom in life he had loved so well. Douglas was tall and strong, and
his dark skin and black hair won him the nickname of the "Black
Douglas." The English hated and feared him, but his own people
loved him well and remembered him long after his death.
6. David II., 1320-1370.—David, who was only eight years old
when his father died, was crowned at Scone and anointed which no
King of Scots had ever before been, as this was considered the
special right of independent sovereigns only. The government was in
the hands of Randolf, who had been appointed Regent by the
Estates before the death of the late king. In the early part of the
reign the country was torn by a struggle which, as it was really a
civil war, was more dangerous to its independence and more hurtful
to the national character than the long war with the English had
been. This war was caused by those barons who, holding large
estates in England, had, by marriage or by inheritance, become
possessed of lands in Scotland, which they lost by the Act of the last
reign against absentees. Hitherto the so-called Scottish nobles had
been Norman barons, with equal interests in both kingdoms, but this
act forced them to decide for one or the other. Hence it was the
mere chance of the respective value of their lands that decided
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