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The Wisdom of Exeter
Richard Rawlinson Center Series
for Anglo-Saxon Studies

Editorial Board
Lindy Brady, University of Mississippi, USA
Kees Dekker, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, the Netherlands
Nicole Guenther Discenza, University of South Florida, USA
Helen Foxhall Forbes, Durham University, England
Timothy Graham, University of New Mexico, USA
Catherine Karkov, University of Leeds, England (Series Editor)
Rosalind Love, Robinson College, Cambridge University, England
The Wisdom
of Exeter

Anglo-Saxon Studies in Honor of Patrick W. Conner

Edited by
E.J. Christie
ISBN 978-1-5015-1782-2
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-1-5015-1306-0
e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-1-5015-1290-2

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020939022

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;
detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.

© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Cover image: Exeter Book 20v, © Professor Bernard Muir
Typesetting: Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd.
Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck

www.degruyter.com
Contents
List of Illustrations VII

E. J. Christie
Introduction 1

Elaine Treharne
1 The Conners of Exeter, 1070–1150 11

David F. Johnson
2 Winchester Revisited: Æthelwold, Lucifer, and the Place of Origin of
MS Junius 11 27

Thomas A. Bredehoft
3 Metrical Footprints and Pat Conner’s Exeter Booklets 63

Timothy Graham
4 The Early Modern Afterlife of Exeter’s Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts 77

Catherine E. Karkov
5 The Divisions of the Ruthwell Cross 131

Stuart D. Lee
6 Lagustreamas: The Changing Waters Surrounding J. R. R. Tolkien and
The Battle of Maldon 157

Bob Hasenfratz
7 The Curse of Sleep in Anglo-Saxon England 177

Thomas N. Hall
8 Andreas’s Blooming Blood 197

Thomas D. Hill
9 Guthlac as Potential Brigand: Guthlac A lines 114–40 221

Jill Frederick
10 Performance and Audience in the Exeter Book Riddles 227
VI Contents

Publications of Patrick W. Conner 243

Index 247
List of Illustrations
Figure 4.1 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 101, p. 449. Section of the
Parkerian transcript of the list of Leofric’s procurements, with marginal
notes relating to three of the books included in the list. By kind
permission of the Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge 83
Figure 4.2 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 190, p. 306. Portion of Ælfric’s
pastoral letter for Wulfsige, bishop of Sherborne, with underlining
probably by John Joscelyn. Note the parchment tab pasted to the edge of
the leaf. By kind permission of the Parker Library, Corpus Christi College,
Cambridge 89
Figure 4.3 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 190, p. 294, with Parkerian
addition of the Latin preface to Ælfric’s pastoral letter for Wulfsige. By
kind permission of the Parker Library, Corpus Christi College,
Cambridge 91
Figure 4.4 The Gospels of the Fower Euangelistes (1571), sig. D.iiiiv, with text from the
end of chapter 7 of St. Matthew’s gospel. Note the rubric before Matthew
7:28. By kind permission of the Parker Library, Corpus Christi College,
Cambridge 95
Figure 4.5 Cambridge University Library MS Ii.2.11, fol. 12v, with rubric for Matthew
7:28–8:13. By kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University
Library 96
Figure 4.6 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 441, fol. 11v. Note the Parkerian
addition of verse numbers and of the rubric preceding Matthew 7:28. By
kind permission of the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford 98
Figure 4.7 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 41, p. 85, with marginal note by
Abraham Wheelock commenting on the absence of this passage of the Old
English Ecclesiastical History from the University Library copy. By kind
permission of the Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge 102
Figure 4.8 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 41, p. 241. In the margin Wheelock
has supplied from CUL Kk.3.18 two portions of text omitted by the original
scribe of CCCC 41, keying them to the appropriate point in the text with
pairs of matching signes-de-renvoi. By kind permission of the Parker
Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge 103
Figure 4.9 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 419, fol. ivv. The S block of
Wheelock’s index notes for the volume. By kind permission of the Parker
Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge 108
Figure 4.10 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 421, p. 47. William L’Isle’s marking
of a scriptural quotation within Ælfric’s homily “In natale plurimorum
sanctorum martyrum.” By kind permission of the Parker Library, Corpus
Christi College, Cambridge 110
Figure 4.11 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 191, fol. iiv. Inscription by Matthew
Parker recording his belief that Archbishop Theodore was the author of
the manuscript’s Latin text and that Ælfric was the translator of the Old
English version. By kind permission of the Parker Library, Corpus Christi
College, Cambridge 114

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513060-203
VIII List of Illustrations

Figure 4.12 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 191, p. 127. A passage bearing on
clerical marriage within the Old English version of the enlarged Rule of
Chrodegang has here been underlined and glossed in Latin by John
Joscelyn. By kind permission of the Parker Library, Corpus Christi College,
Cambridge 120
Figure 4.13 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 191, p. 138. William Retchford’s
interlinear transcription of the faded title of chapter 76 of the enlarged
Rule of Chrodegang. By kind permission of the Parker Library, Corpus
Christi College, Cambridge 129
Figure 5.1 Ruthwell Monument, Original East Side. Photo: Author 131
Figure 5.2 Ruthwell Monument, Original South Side. Photo: Author 132
Figure 5.3 Ruthwell Monument, Original East Side. Photo: Author 136
E. J. Christie
Introduction
This interdisciplinary volume collects original essays in the fields of codicology,
paleography, metrics, history, art history, and literary criticism. Composed by
prominent scholars in Anglo-Saxon studies, these essays honor the depth and
breadth of Patrick W. Conner’s influence in our discipline.
Patrick W. Conner is Eberly Centennial Professor of Arts and Sciences
Emeritus at West Virginia University. He is author of Anglo-Saxon Exeter: A
Tenth-Century Cultural History (1993), editor of the reconstructed Abingdon ver-
sion of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (1996) for Cambridge’s collaborative edition of
the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and one of the acknowledged experts on the Exeter
Book of Old English poetry. He is a former Executive Director of the International
Society of Anglo-Saxonists (1991–1997) and was inducted as an honorary member
in 2011. He served on the editorial board of the Old English Newsletter and was
Chair of the English department at WVU (1994–2000) and director of the West
Virginia University Press (1999–2008). He also has the dubious credential of hav-
ing directed my doctoral dissertation. In my view, this last achievement was obvi-
ously the crowning one in a long and illustrious career. If it was only through me
that Pat’s legacy lived on, others might say, there would be some cause for
alarm. Thankfully, it is hard to assess which of his legacies is most profound. As
a scholar, teacher, editor, administrator, and innovator, Pat has been a leader in
the discipline of Anglo-Saxon studies for four decades.
He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Maryland (1975) with a dissertation
on the Exeter Book. After a brief stint at Goucher College, Pat made his debut at
West Virginia University in 1976. After 35 years of service the name of this
University is now, among Anglo-Saxonists, simply synonymous with Pat’s. His
influential “Booklet Theory” of the Exeter Book, first published in “The
Structure of the Exeter Book Codex” (1986), proposes on codicological and pa-
leographical grounds that the Exeter Book was completed as three originally in-
dependent booklets. Different forms of membrane, soiled outer leaves, as well
as the distribution of decorative initials and special letter forms, offer clear sup-
port for the hypothesis. Tom Bredehoft’s contribution to this volume offers fur-
ther, metrical support for the composition of the Exeter Book according to Pat’s
Booklet Theory. Conner further suggests that the paleographical differences
can be explained by a significant passage of time between the completion of
one booklet and the next. As a result of these findings, the “literary self-

E. J. Christie, Georgia State University

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513060-001
2 E. J. Christie

sufficiency” of each proposed booklet can be assessed: Booklet I is organized

around the incarnation, ascension, and second coming of Christ and the life and
death of St. Guthlac. Booklet III is unified by its collection of one hundred riddles
and the riddling nature of other poems in it. All of the poems that occur elsewhere,
furthermore, are from the third booklet. This part of the manuscript appears to
have its own literary integrity which, Conner argues, “suggests a textual history for
the third booklet which is not shared with the other two booklets” and may be
seen as further evidence of its unity.1 Finally, though the unifying feature of
Booklet II seems harder to explain, it may be explained as a miscellaneous collec-
tion of verse of the sort that Bishop Leofric’s inventory describes. The Booklet
Theory, as Pat recognized, provides a foothold for literary analysis of the Exeter
Book, since the themes and relationships of the poems within each booklet are
readily identified, while the codex as a whole appears—as it conventionally had
appeared—too diverse to be explained further. Pat’s interest in the Exeter Book
and its context persisted and culminated in the monograph, Anglo-Saxon Exeter: A
Tenth-Century Cultural History (1993), a book which Joyce Hill described as “revolu-
tionary.”2 In it Conner argues that the manuscript was in fact produced at Exeter
as opposed to Canterbury or Glastonbury as was previously supposed. It further
paints a picture of Exeter, in contrast to the traditional assumption, as a thriving
monastic center. Many of the essays gathered here thus gravitate towards the po-
etry, composition, and reception of the Exeter Book. Still others respond directly to
Pat’s recent interest in the social context for Anglo-Saxon literature in the parish
guilds.
Pat is also pioneer of digital medievalism, an early and active proponent of
technological applications to the study of Anglo-Saxon literature. His services
to the discipline in this capacity are too many to enumerate, but the highlights
of his work include founding (in 1985) the ANSAXNET e-mail discussion list,
one of the earliest such uses of BITNET to connect an international scholarly
community. Pat also founded the Center for Literary Computing at West
Virginia University in 1991, a center which continues to grow and supports doz-
ens of current projects exploring the intersection of computing and literature.3

1 Patrick W. Conner, “The Structure of the Exeter Book Codex (Exeter, Cathedral Library, MS.
3501),” Scriptorium 40.2 (1986): 241.
2 Joyce Hill, Review of Anglo-Saxon Exeter, by Patrick W. Conner, Medium Aevum 64.2 (1995):
313.
3 Center for Literary Computing. West Virginia University. http://literarycomputing.wvu.edu/
home.
 Introduction 3

In 1992, his Beowulf Workstation, a pedagogical tool designed using Apple’s

Hypercard programming application, won the Joe Wyatt Challenge to EDUCOM
for educational uses of Information Technology.4
Between 1999 and 2008, Pat directed the West Virginia University Press.
Since 2001, West Virginia University Press has published Essays in Medieval
Studies, the proceedings of the Illinois Medieval Association. Under Pat’s direc-
tion the press began a medieval series for which he served as Series Editor and
which to date has published over twenty titles especially focused on medieval
language, literature, and culture. WVU Press also publishes the widely used
Reading Old English textbook by Robert Hasenfratz, one of the authors who
honors Pat with an essay in this volume. In 2010, for his leadership in develop-
ing the once languishing organization into a productive university press, Pat
was recognized with the Ethel and Gerry Heebink Award for Distinguished and
Extended Service to the State of West Virginia.
As with all great teachers, Pat’s pedagogical influence extends far beyond
the sphere of his formal duties in the classroom. I have to think back more than
twenty years to remember my first encounter with him in Stansbury Hall on the
campus of West Virginia University, but it is as clear to me now as it was then. I
did not set out to be an Anglo-Saxonist but was won over in equal parts by the
subject matter itself and by Pat’s infectious enthusiasm, his apparent intent to
gather everyone under the roof of his mead hall to hear about Old English litera-
ture, his propensities both to reminisce and to burst spontaneously into song.
Pat seemed to me then to be part renowned scholar and part cabaret. His charac-
terization of his own career as a scholar is a clear index of the humor and humil-
ity he models as a mentor: “I’m still trying to answer a question I heard
mentioned when I was an undergraduate. ‘How was this poetry presented to its
audience and how did that audience think about it?’ After 50 years thinking
about it, I can speak cogently on that topic now for about twenty minutes.”5 As
Pat’s student, his colleague, and his friend, I am thus proud to offer him this vol-
ume in celebration of his twenty minutes and our twenty years. I envy those, like
the scholars who have here added their voices to this cabaret, who were singing
with Pat from the beginning.
The essays fall naturally into three groups, focusing on manuscripts, context
and reception, and literary criticism respectively. Essays by Elaine Treharne,
Thomas Bredehoft, and David Johnson focus on manuscripts. Following them,

4 The Hypercard stacks for this application can be downloaded from Woruldhord. University
of Oxford. http://poppy.nsms.ox.ac.uk/woruldhord/items/show/350.
5 WVU Today, October 5, 2011. http://wvutoday-archive.wvu.edu/n/2011/10/05/wvu-professor-
emeritus-selected-as-honorary-member-of-the-international-society-of-anglo-saxonists.html.
4 E. J. Christie

Timothy Graham examines the “afterlife” of the Exeter manuscripts and thus cre-
ates a bridge between the meaning of the Exeter Book to its Anglo-Saxon audi-
ence and its reception in later periods. Catherine Karkov’s essay on the Ruthwell
Cross likewise considers its reception, particularly in the popular “heritage” dis-
course. The final group of essays turn to more restrictively literary purposes.
Three of the first four essays are concerned specifically with Exeter or the
Exeter Book. Treharne presents compelling evidence showing that the Exeter
“manumissions,” so long assumed to indicate the freeing of slaves, actually
refer to the entry of freemen into the Exeter Guilds. Bredehoft provides new met-
rical analysis that supports Pat Conner’s foundational analysis of Exeter Book
codicology, showing how metrical patterns vary in accord with the three book-
lets defined by Conner, but also contributing to a growing body of his research
that radically re-imagines Old English meter. Far from the rigid and conserva-
tive body of rules modeled on the meter of Beowulf, Bredehoft argues that Old
English meter was “a living tradition, including a demonstrable degree of
change” and “a surprising range of metrical practices” (64). David Johnson’s
analysis brings forward new evidence that more concretely establishes the date
and provenance of the Junius 11 manuscript, which stands alongside the Exeter
Book as one of four prominent manuscripts of Old English poetry.
Elaine Treharne examines the post-Conquest legacy of Bishop Leofric and
the scribes who added short vernacular legal texts and annotations to Exeter’s
books. The varied calligraphy of these scribes is of paleographical interest, they
can be dated closely, and further testify both to the perstistent use of the vernac-
ular at Exeter for legal and corporate purposes (in contrast to other centers like
Leicester and York) and to the ongoing relationship between the religious center
and its secular community. Exeter Cathedral Library, 3501 (The Exeter Book),
Cambridge University Library, Ii. 2. 11 (The Exeter Gospels), and Oxford Bodleian
Library, Bodley 579, all contain groups of legal records suggesting that each per-
formed as a “municipal book . . . a public repository of legal materials” (14).
Following Pat Conner’s arguments about the use of Exeter’s manuscripts in the
context of Parish Guilds, Treharne re-examines the apparent manumissions that
form the bulk of the legal records in these books. She points out that their iden-
tity as manumissions in many cases rests on literal translations of legal terminol-
ogy that can be better understood, for example, by comparison with the Latin
terminology in documents describing the collective rights of guilds. Read in this
context, it is possible that these texts are in fact guild records that testify to the
payment of dues and the entry of members in the “liberty” or rights of member-
ship, rather than to the purchase of freedom for slaves or servants. Thus, these
additions to Exeter’s manuscripts demonstrate a great deal about the persistence
of a close relationship between the religious center and its secular community,
 Introduction 5

constituting what is potentially “the first major corporate or borough records to

survive from medieval England” (26).
David Johnson’s chapter revisits his argument—first made in his article “The
Fall of Lucifer in Genesis A and Two Anglo-Latin Royal Charters”—for a
Winchester provenance for Oxford, Bodleian Library, Manuscript Junius 11.6 As is
the case for the other Old English literary codices, a firm identification of time and
place of origin of Junius 11 has proved hard to pin down. After reviewing the
complex history of arguments for Canterbury, Glastonbury, Malmesbury, and
Winchester, and surveying the relevant catechetical and hexameral texts, Johnson
renews his case for Winchester based on a literary motif Junius 11 shares with two
securely dated and located royal charters. The distinct depiction of Lucifer’s fall in
Junius 11 parallels that in two Anglo-Latin charters, “King Edgar’s Privilege” and
the “Penniarth Diploma,” both of which “originate in Winchester in the last quar-
ter of the tenth century” (53). Johnson confirms that only these two sources evince
the “radical replacement doctrine” found in Genesis A. This doctrine, that the crea-
tion of the Earth occurs only after the angels’ fall as a way to replace their number,
represents a unique and extreme version of an idea in Augustine’s City of God. In
addition to this unique cosmology, Junius 11 is linked to these charters by the fig-
ure of Ælfwine whose portait appears in Junius 11, perhaps as the patron or in-
tended recipient of the book. An Ælfwine minister is listed as the recipient of land
in the Peniarth Diploma, and two men of the same name and rank witness Edgar’s
Privilege. Though the identification of these Ælfwines in Winchester documents
cannot be definitive, taken in concert with the cosmological parallels it is further
suggestive evidence of a Winchester origin for the Junius manuscript. The essays
in this section, then, all present fresh arguments and concrete evidence that help
to resolve longstanding scholarly debates. They are followed by a second group of
essays that examine the cultural context and later reception of Anglo-Saxon
literature.
Drawing on his previous arguments regarding Old English meter, Tom
Bredehoft offers metrical analysis of the Exeter Book. Rejecting the strict metri-
cal formalism that has animated much study of Old English meter, Bredehoft
demonstrates the degree of flexibility and innovation in Old English poetry,
and suggests that, because of this flexibility, metrical innovations can be used
as a means of dating poems as they diverge from inherited West Germanic
norms. Rules for alliteration, rhyme, and hypermetric verses, all demonstrate
conservative and innovative versions. Odd metrical types that have sometimes

6 Johnson, David F. “The Fall of Lucifer in “Genesis A” and Two Anglo-Latin Royal Charters.” The
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 97.4 (1998): 500–21
6 E. J. Christie

been dismissed as unmetrical nevertheless occur frequently enough that they

might be understood to represent purposeful differences in metrical practice. He
offers evidence that Booklet III of the Exeter Book, as Pat Conner described it,
differs systematically from the first two booklets: its hypermetric lines are always
clustered; it contains no examples of verse rhyme; and, finally, it contains no un-
expanded Type D lines. In other words, this part of the Exeter Book exhibits the
most conservative metrical practices. Bredehoft thus offers his metrical argument
as a supplement to Conner’s codicological analysis, particularly noting that the
metrical coherence of the second group of riddles (61–95) marks them out as the
likely core of Booklet III, to which other more varied texts later accrued.
Through careful examination of manuscripts associated with Exeter,
Timothy Graham reconstructs the important role they played in early modern
antiquaries’ construction of protestant precedents. This essay begins with the
interpolated first quire of the Exeter Book, a list of items Leofric procured for
Exeter Cathedral when he moved his see from Crediton. Graham makes the
compelling case that this list, originally part of a manuscript (Cambridge
University Library, MS Ii. 2. 11) containing an Old English translation of the gos-
pels, was added to the Exeter Book by Parker himself. Examining this list and
other documents removed from CUL MS Ii. 2. 11, Graham shows in fine-grained
detail the practices and decisions of Parker and his circle as they looked for an
Anglo-Saxon past with which to support their reforms. Parker’s markings found
in Exeter manuscripts, especially CCCC 190, demonstrate the extensive role
they played in the production of Parker’s A Testimonie of Antiquitie (1561)—the
first printed edition of Old English texts. Parker’s more ambitious edition of the
Old English Gospels (1571) also bears the mark of his examination of Exeter’s
CUL Ii. 2. 11. Parker’s edition is divided following this manuscript, in which the
gospel text is divided by rubrics as is no other surviving copy. Abraham
Wheelock’s edition of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History draws on CCCC 41, which
was one of the manuscripts presented to Exeter by Leofric. William L’Isle stud-
ied CCCC 419 and 421, marking passages in his own hand, for an edition of ver-
nacular scriptural and homiletic texts that he ultimately failed to produce.
Finally, Parker, his Old English expert John Joscelyn, Wheelock, and William
Retchford, all engaged with Exeter’s bilingual copy of the enlarged Rule of
Chrodegang (CCCC 191). This meticulous chapter thus demonstrates the long af-
terlife of Exeter’s manuscripts in the culturally important work of sixteenth-
and seventeenth-century scholars. Pursuing the antiquarian recovery of the
Anglo-Saxon past shows the importance of Exeter’s books in this recovery, and
demonstrates conclusively the direct role of Archbishop Matthew Parker in the
manipulation of these manuscripts.
 Introduction 7

Catherine Karkov’s essay, in focusing on the Ruthwell Cross, forms a bridge

between material and textual culture. Karkov offers this paper in recognition of
Pat’s own contribution to the study of this much-studied yet persistently enig-
matic runic monument.7 In it, she demonstrates that “far from a peaceful symbol
of ecclesiastical harmony and unification, the Ruthwell monument is and always
has been a monument that divides and establishes borders between and borders
around its audiences” (133). From the documentary record of the monument’s re-
covery to the pages of contemporary scholarship, Karkov demonstrates the many
points of division this monument elicits: cross or obelisk, local or foreign, Celtic
or Anglo-Saxon, spiritual or political, harmonious whole or inelegant fragment?
At almost any point imaginable this object provokes polar interpretations.
Challenging the logic of “heritage” in which such monuments must convention-
ally be seen as unifying, Karkov thus presents a compelling case for understand-
ing the Ruthwell Cross precisely by accepting its dissonance.
Stuart Lee’s chapter explicates Tolkien’s unpublished contributions to the
study of The Battle of Maldon. Drawing on Tolkien’s notes, Lee asserts that his
famously negative view of the poem’s protagonist (which emerged in his writ-
ing after 1950) was not immediately influenced by Tolkien’s own experiences in
World War I, as has sometimes been asserted. Early mentions of Maldon in the
unpublished papers show no condemnation of Byrhtnoth. Focusing on two sub-
stantial unpublished essays, “Alliteration on ‘g’ in Maldon” and “The Tradition
of Versification in Old English, with special reference to the Battle of Maldon
and its alliteration,” Lee goes on to show that for Tolkien the poem’s idiosyn-
cratic versification was not a sign of either a debased tradition in late verse or
poor craft on the part of the poet. Instead, Tolkien argued that Maldon’s style
represents a freer form of Old English verse that could well have existed along-
side the stricter, “classical” style of poems like Beowulf, rather than emerging
later as the language changed or the poetic tradition weakened; though this
sort of argument has gained more support in recent decades it was, like many
of Tolkien’s other conclusions, far ahead of its time. Closing with a brief consid-
eration of Tolkien’s fiction, Lee observes how many of the characters in The
Lord of the Rings fail a test of pride, as Byrhtnoth did. The evidence of Tolkien’s
unpublished papers demonstrates clearly that this Old English poem stayed
with Old English literature’s most famous critic throughout his career.
The essays that follow, by contrast to those in the first two groups, focus on
literature. Leading off the section, Robert Hasenfratz’s essay on Christ III specif-
ically discusses the literature of the Exeter Book—the book of Old English

7 “The Ruthwell Monument Runic Poem in its Tenth-century Context,” RES 59 (2008): 26–51.
8 E. J. Christie

poetry with which Pat Conner’s name is indelibly linked since Anglo-Saxon
Exeter (Boydell, 1993) if not before. Hasenfratz explores the curious, and per-
haps a little alarming, Anglo-Saxon condemnation of sleep as one of the earthly
evils, banished from Heaven. Like war and famine, sleep is associated with the
Fall. Sleep is condemned through association with sloth, disease, and moral
carelessness in Exeter Book poems like Christ III, The Phoenix, and Guthlac, as
well as in associated verse from other manuscripts. Hasenfratz traces the atti-
tude to sleep in these poems to liturgical reforms of the English Benedictine
movement. Although there was a tradition of suspicion towards sleep in the as-
cetic tradition, this suspicion was not universal, and the documents of the
English Benedictine reform demonstrate a heightened concern about the perils
of sleep. Both the Rule of Chrodegang and the Regularis Concordia, he demon-
strates, pathologize sleep as a disorder oppressing indulgent monks during
night offices. The nighttime, and the unguarded consciousness that comes with
sleep, thus represented dire moral peril. Hasenfratz’s article thus contributes
not only to our understanding of Old English literature, but also to the history
of ideas regarding sleep in medical and literary discourses since Aristotle.
Jill Frederick probes the identity of the Exeter riddles, which are generally un-
derstood in the context of a Latin literary tradition. Examining features of the rid-
dles rarely considered so systematically, Frederick argues that these texts contain
“vestiges of their own performance” (229). In addition to aural cues, such features
include the relationship of the speaker to the riddle object, semantic boundaries of
verbs, locative phrases, and alliterative patterns, all of which reinforce the identity
of the riddles as markedly Anglo-Saxon speech acts. First-person plural pronouns,
for example, consistently set the scene of riddles in a current moment and invite a
group to say, explain, or consider the identity of the riddle object. Textual as they
are, the riddles of the Exeter Book, Frederick demonstrates, dramatize an aural per-
formance so as to evoke their life beyond the page.
Thomas Hill contributes a note examining the depiction of Saint Guthlac in
the Exeter Book poem Guthlac A. This poem begins with an angel and a demon
offering Guthlac competing visions of his future: one in which he “accepts
grace thankfully” and another in which he “evilly fights for worldly goods.”
Suggesting that the contrast between a pious life and one of outlawry is a false
dilemma with more roots in literary models than in real Anglo-Saxon culture,
Hill points out that Guthlac’s conversion to the eremitic life is thus presented as
a choice between counselors on the model of Proverbs 1:7–16.
The Old English Andreas, Thomas Hall observes, diverges from its probable
Latin source as well as the overwhelming majority of versions of the apocryphal
Acts of Andrew and Matthias, insofar as it describes “flowering groves” emerg-
ing from his copiously spilled blood where other versions describe trees
 Introduction 9

growing from Andrew’s hair and flesh. Hall argues that the poet’s revision of
this scene aligns it with “a powerful concept of symbolic renewal” (202) found
in mythology and folklore. In similar scenes in these sources, plants grow from
the blood of a slain hero. While mythological and folkloric versions suggest the
enduring power of this cyclical imagery, even closer analogues for Andreas can
be found in Greek hagiographical literature like the fourth-century Martyrdom
of Philip and the martyrdom of St. Therapon as recounted in the Synaraxion of
Constantinople. The Old English Andreas can thus be seen not only to conform
to narrative formulae of hagiography, but also to participate in a mythic tradi-
tion that dates to as early as the thirteenth century B.C.
These essays chart the deep influence of Patrick W. Conner during his ca-
reer as an Anglo-Saxonist with a special concern for Anglo-Saxon Exeter and
the Exeter Book. They also testify to the deep affection he has inspired in his
colleagues. In this volume, some of the most influential scholars in our field
present groundbreaking essays that demonstrate the vibrant life of the mind
evoked by the oldest literature in English, a literature for which Pat Conner has
been a tireless advocate.
Elaine Treharne
1 The Conners of Exeter, 1070–1150
It is an immense privilege to have this opportunity to honor Professor Patrick
Conner and to focus on Exeter, its manuscripts, and its historical context, all areas
of research and scholarship in which he is a pioneer. Pat Conner’s contribution to
our understanding and appreciation of the Exeter Book, of the book collections at
Exeter Cathedral, and of the Benedictine movement more broadly, is, and will con-
tinue to be, of the greatest significance, and early Medievalists’ debts to him are
many. In particular, he is the exemplary professional, teacher, researcher, and col-
league, whose unwavering kindness and generosity is a model for others to emu-
late. It is thus with a sense of gratitude and pleasure that I offer this small note to
Pat. It is somewhat speculative, proposing an innovative reading of some key texts
from Exeter that seem, perhaps, to be of potential importance for Pat’s own work.
Further research will prove if the new readings I offer can bear the weight of inter-
pretation I shall place upon them.
The “Conners” of my title are offered in the spirit of Pat Conner’s academic
life, and his sustained examination of evidence and inspection of detail, for these
“conners” are persons who try, test, inspect, and examine.1 This note will thus ex-
amine some of the scribes who wrote English in the post-Conquest decades at
Exeter from ca. 1070 to 1140. These decades followed a period of immense impor-
tance for the diocese, when Bishop Leofric (d. 1072) expediently moved the see
from rural Crediton to urban Exeter in 1050, and oversaw what was the single
most important and rapid programme of manuscript copying in the late Anglo-
Saxon era. In this programme, as is now well documented, Leofric ensured that
both he and his, probably, small group of canons were supplied with core liturgi-
cal materials and a range of vernacular manuscripts for pastoral work throughout
the see.2 At some point during the 1050s and 1060s, then, dozens of books were

1 Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “conner”: “1467 in Eng. Gilds (1870) 382 ‘Ij ale conners . . . to
se that the ale be good’.”
2 For a summary of this programme, see Elaine Treharne, Living Through Conquest: The Politics of
Early English, 1020 to 1220, Oxford Textual Perspectives 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012);
Elaine Treharne, “Producing a Library in Late Anglo-Saxon England: Exeter 1050–1072,” Review of
English Studies n.s. 54 (2003): 155–72. On manuscripts of Exeter origin and provenance, see espe-
cially the indispensable Patrick W. Conner, Anglo-Saxon Exeter: A Tenth-Century Cultural History

Elaine Treharne, Stanford University

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513060-002
12 Elaine Treharne

written by a singularly well-trained cohort of scribes, whose generally expert

hands bespeak a keen sense of the significance of the task they were set.
Characterizing the English books in this group are a consistent calligraphic sensi-
bility, a defined sense of the essential desirability of interlinear and marginal
space in the mise-en-page, the dominance of legibility as the defining quality, and
a visual propriety that marks the vernacular out as a worthy medium of textual
transmission. This confident manuscript production might have extended some
years or it might have been concluded relatively quickly by this expert team of
scribes. Subsequently, there was no sustained vernacular textual facture and this
compellingly implies that this programme was centered around Leofric himself.
What legacy, then, did the work of his prelacy create?

“Where the Past Lives”

Caroline Steedman’s strange and compelling book, Dust, reminds us that

To enter that place where the past lives, where ink on parchment can be made to speak,
still remains the social historian’s dream, of bringing to life those who do not for the
main part exist, not even between the lines of state papers and legal documents, not even
in the records of Revolutionary bodies and fractions. . . .
In the practices of history and of modern autobiographical narration, there is the as-
sumption that nothing goes away; that the past has deposited all of its traces, somewhere,
somehow (though they may be, in particular cases, difficult to retrieve).3

(Woodbridge: Boydell, 1993); and Patrick W. Conner, “Exeter’s Relics, Exeter’s Books,” in Essays
on Anglo-Saxon and Related Themes in Memory of Lynne Grundy, ed. Jane Roberts and Janet
Nelson, King’s College London Medieval Studies 17 (London: King’s College, Centre for Late
Antique and Medieval Studies, 2000), 117–56. Also central to Exeter manuscripts are
T. A. M. Bishop, “Notes on Cambridge Manuscripts Part III: MSS. Connected with Exeter,”
Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 2/2 (1955): 192–99; Elaine M. Drage, “Bishop
Leofric and the Exeter Cathedral Chapter, 1050–1072: A Reassessment of the Manuscript
Evidence” (unpubl. D.Phil. dissertation, University of Oxford, 1978); and Pierre Chaplais, “The
Authenticity of the Royal Anglo-Saxon Diplomas of Exeter,” in his Essays in Medieval Diplomacy
and Administration (London: Hambledon Press, 1981), item XV with original pagination, 1–37.
Most recently, see Takako Kato, “Exeter Scribes in Cambridge, University Library, MS Ii. 2. 11,” and
Erika Corradini, “The Objects of Knowledge: Reconstructing Medieval Communities through a
Material Analysis of Manuscripts,” both in Producing and Using English Manuscripts in the Post-
Conquest Period, ed. Elaine Treharne, Orietta Da Rold, Mary Swan, New Medieval Literatures
13 (2011): 5–21, and 199–220, respectively.
3 Caroline Steedman, Dust (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), 70, 75–76. My
emphasis.
 1 The Conners of Exeter, 1070–1150 13

To search for substantial vernacular remains from post-Conquest Exeter is to

search in vain, since no codices are extant in English—no large number of homi-
lies such as we find from Worcester, Rochester, Christ Church Canterbury, and
Ely. But there are textual materials that survive to be studied with these central
premises in mind: that the ink on the parchment, and its in-between—between
the lines—can be made to speak; that the inscribed remnants of the past, like the
fragments of fabric clinging to resurrected bones, can be discovered and rewoven
into a patterned narrative that completes our currently partial picture of Bishop
Leofric’s legacy at Exeter. These materials testify to the profound impact Leofric
had on his diocese, particularly the explicit appreciation for the value of the ver-
nacular in pastoral and political activities, and the key role that seems to have
been carved out for English-speaking local and regional congregations at the ca-
thedral of St. Peter’s itself.
Scribes writing in English at Exeter ca. 1070–1140 left traces of their interac-
tion with the manuscripts in short legal documents and annotations written in
English. These now survive as additions to Exeter Cathedral Library, 3501 (the
Exeter Book), and Cambridge University Library, Ii. 2. 11, recently discussed by
Takako Kato,4 and Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 579. Without these brief
texts, we should have no evidence of literacy or cultural and social exchange
through the medium of English in the post-Conquest diocese of Exeter, despite
the prolific production of vernacular manuscripts during the episcopacy of
Leofric, up to 1072. These later scribes writing in the spaces of books created
earlier—and many of whom were employed to write legal documents—evince a
wide range of calligraphic ability, and a varied orthography in their crucial,
public work. This suggests they were unlike their highly trained and consistent
predecessors, who had written the corpus of manuscripts under Leofric. Their
more personal and idiosyncratic responses to the manuscripts in which they in-
tervene are apparent in the visual aspect and the mise-en-page of their stints.
Moreover, akin to the Mortuary Rolls and Episcopal Professions analyzed in
detail and used so effectively by Neil Ker in his English Manuscripts in the
Century after the Conquest,5 this succession of legal and ceremonial documents
written by these various scribes into Exeter books forms something of a cata-
logue of local vernacular script from the Conquest until the mid-twelfth

4 Kato, “Exeter Scribes in Cambridge, University Library, MS Ii. 2. 11.” See also Orietta Da
Rold, Takako Kato, Mary Swan, and Elaine Treharne, The Production and Use of English
Manuscripts 1060 to 1220 (Leicester: University of Leicester, 2010): http://www.le.ac.uk/ee/
em1060to1220/.
5 Neil Ker, English Manuscripts in the Century after the Conquest, The Lyell Lectures 1952–1953
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960).
14 Elaine Treharne

century. Indeed, some of the hands can be dated relatively closely, and can
thus be considered as anchor hands for developments in specifically southwest-
ern English paleography during these post-Conquest decades. All testify to the
continued use of the vernacular for specialized textual functions, particularly
those involving the laity in confraternity with Exeter Cathedral, and lay commu-
nities in smaller parishes closely affiliated with Exeter. And unlike so many
other documents and manuscripts from which we retrieve our fragments of
knowledge, these have all the appearance—both paleographic and prosopo-
graphic—of being near-contemporary records of then-current legal procedures.
The three Exeter manuscripts contain batches of legal records that extend
the function of the host volumes, though not all contemporaneously. Cambridge
University Library, Ii. 2. 11 contains the West Saxon Gospels, datable to s. xi3/4,
copied by one Exeter scribe; it also contains Leofric’s donation inscription, his
inventory, and a relic-list. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 579 is the tenth- and
eleventh-century sacramentary commonly known as the Leofric Missal. It also
contains the Leofric inventory. Exeter Cathedral Library MS 3501, datable to s. x2,
is, of course, the Exeter Book of Old English poetry. I am not concerned with the
manuscript per se, since it contains a number of displaced leaves that properly
belong to CUL Ii. 2. 11 and that can be discussed alongside these Gospel Book
leaves. Seven other manuscripts, listed and discussed by Pat Conner in Anglo-
Saxon Exeter,6 contain an inscription declaring their donation by Leofric to the
secular community at St. Peter’s, Exeter in 1072.
Reconstructing the quires belonging to CUL Ii. 2. 11, which can be done
thanks to Ker’s careful detective work, means it is possible to see two irregular
gatherings—one at the beginning of the Gospels, and one at the end—contain-
ing a number of unique documents copied deliberately into the Old English
Gospel Book. Their dates range from the contemporary inscription of ca. 1072
(Leofric’s death) to two Latin grants as late as ca. 1150. Some were entered ret-
rospectively, and others suggest a present immediacy, and that raises all kinds
of questions about the way this particular Gospel Book functioned after its crea-
tion as a municipal book, a public repository of legal materials sacralized by
their specific physical context.
From early in the medieval period, Gospel Books, and other volumes of sa-
cred writing, were used to deposit a multitude of writings; it is clear from this
that reliance on memory or the potential ephemerality of the single-leaf

6 Patrick W. Conner, Anglo-Saxon Exeter: A Tenth-Century Cultural History (Woodbridge:

Boydell, 1993). All of the guild material is printed in B. Thorpe, ed., Diplomatarium anglicum
ævi saxonici (London: Trübner, 1865), 605ff.
 1 The Conners of Exeter, 1070–1150 15

document were deemed insufficiently secure means of ensuring the perma-

nence of the record. Such writings include the famous inscription added to the
mid-eighth-century Codex Aureus (Stockholm, Swedish Royal Library, A. 35)
that surrounds the opening of the Gospel of St. Matthew. In Old English, the
ninth-century annotation records that the book had been stolen by the Vikings,
who first came raiding in England in 793, but had been ransomed back by
Ealdorman Alfred and his wife Werburg. The determination of Alfred and
Werburg to be remembered for their pious act is rendered through writing, a
textual act relevant to the appropriate volume, rightly sure that the book’s
glory would assist in its survival. This inscription and many others entered into
Gospel Books are interventions in the text that are directly related to the host
books; indeed, they become integral to the telling of the books’ history.
Less obviously integrated, perhaps, but still deliberately and meticulously
included in Gospel Books, are the legal documents and manumissions added
later to the eighth-century Llandeilo Fawr Gospels;7 to the late ninth-century
Bodmin Gospels (London, British Library, Additional 9381); and to London,
British Library, Royal 1 B. vii, which details the freeing of a certain Eadhelm by
King Athelstan.8 In these books, space is a precious commodity, often filled by
words considered as valuable in temporal terms as the salvific utterances of
Christ himself, ciphered through the Gospels. The intruding texts become uni-
fied with the main text, especially in the Bodmin or St. Petroc Gospels where
manumissions are squeezed into the bas-de-page of numerous folios, or even
written vertically in the margins. They share the same substrate, and, to the ca-
sual peruser, are often hidden from view, fitting into the extent of the writing
grid relatively unobstrusively.
This integration of ceremonial and legal writing into the secure environ-
ment of the sacred codex occurs, too, in Hereford Cathedral Library, P. 1. 2, a
Gospel Book dated to the eighth century, with two eleventh-century legal re-
cords inserted into blank space.9 These insertions, which I have discussed

7 Also known as the Lichfield, St. Teilo, or St. Chad Gospels, now kept at Lichfield Cathedral,
and digitally available: https://lichfield.ou.edu/
8 Simon Keynes, “King Athelstan’s Books,” in Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon
England: Studies Presented to Peter Clemoes, ed. Michael Lapidge and Helmut Gneuss
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 185–89.
9 For a brief discussion, see Simon Keynes, “Hereford Cathedral Diocese before 1056,” in
Hereford Cathedral: A History, ed. Gerald Aylmer and John Tiller (London: Hambledon Press,
2000), 3–20, at 16–18. See, too, Richard Gameson’s chapter, “The Hereford Gospels,” in that
same volume. The text is translated in D. Whitelock, ed., English Historical Documents I,
c. 500–1042 (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1955), no. 135, p. 556.
16 Elaine Treharne

briefly elsewhere,10 are fascinating, and relevant especially to the discussion of

the Exeter Gospels. At folios 134rv, the legal texts extend beyond the writing
grid, illustrating a response of authority that subsumes that of the originally
formatted page. A boundary of blankness provides an acknowledgement of tex-
tual individuation, and then the Old English text escapes the bounding lines,
filling the remaining space. It is permanence that these recordings of events
seek, and achieve through association with the Gospels. Here, though, the ex-
plicit recognition of the book’s function as public repository for the entire com-
munity is demonstrated by the account of a shire meeting during Cnut’s reign,
in which a woman, Enniaun, rejects her son as heir and bequeaths her land to
Leofflæd, wife of Thurkil the White instead. At the end of proceedings, we are
told:

Þa astod Þurcyll hwita up on þam gemote 7 bæd ealle þa ðegnas syllan his wife þa land
clæne þe hire mage hire geuðe, 7 heo swa dydon. 7 Þurcyll rad ða to Sancte Æðelberhtes
mynstre be ealles þæs folces leafe 7 gewitnesse 7 let settan on ane Cristes boc.

Then Thurkil the White stood up in that [shire]-meeting, and asked all the thegns to give
to his wife, clear from the claim, the lands which her kinswoman had granted her, and
they did so. And Thurkil rode then with the permission and witness of all the people to St
Ethelbert’s minster [at Hereford], and had it entered in a Gospel Book.11

In this example the Gospel Book is represented as a repository for a shire-wide

community, a book in which—for the regional secular elite, at least—the loosely-
termed “marginal” legal text becomes central; the ancient Gospels’ significance is
made contemporary and is about both the present recording of text, and the future
assurance of land ownership—presenting and re-presenting meaning across time,
within the public sphere. Such, too, was the fate of the York Gospels12 and, indeed,
the Blickling Homilies—communal volumes, public collections of memory in-
scribed. Jon Wilcox calls the Blickling Homilies, in its later urbanized context, an

10 Elaine Treharne, “Textual Communities (Vernacular),” in A Social History of England,

900–1200, ed. Julia Crick and Elizabeth van Houts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2011), 341–51, at 347–48. See also Clare Lees and Gillian Overing, Double Agents: Women and
Clerical Culture in Anglo-Saxon England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001),
72–75.
11 My edition and translation from manuscript, as are all the texts here, unless otherwise
stated. Italics indicate extended abbreviations; bold indicates lexical items of particular
significance.
12 York Minster 1, an early eleventh-century Gospel Book that was probably given to
Wulfstan, Archbishop of York, and into which various texts were subsequently copied. See
Elaine Treharne, Living Through Conquest: The Politics of Early English, 1020 to 1220, Oxford
Textual Perspectives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 22–29.
 1 The Conners of Exeter, 1070–1150 17

“oath book”;13 I think we can be rather more precise, and label it specifically a
Guild Book, a corporate codex.

Revealed in This Book

In his work over the last decade, Patrick Conner has built up a convincing argu-
ment for the public performance of Old English literary work at the ceremonial
feasts of Anglo-Saxon Parish Guilds. His work has focused chiefly on the Exeter
Book verse, and, most recently, on Cambridge University Library, Ii. 2. 11, together
with other Exeter manuscripts and documents from the tenth to the fourteenth
centuries that he is able to relate to the early guilds.14 It seems beyond doubt that
Exeter Cathedral was closely bound up with emergent guilds; that many entries in
books produced or maintained at the cathedral, and indeed whole books them-
selves, were, effectively, corporately owned. This is surely how we must regard
CUL Ii. 2. 11, the Exeter Gospel Book, which, like the Blickling Homilies, is remark-
able for its sacralized Englishness—that is, as a venerated vernacular book selected
by a corporate audience in the eleventh and twelfth centuries to include public,
documentary additions to record the procedures of the guild.
That Exeter had a vibrant guild culture is testimony to its wealth and status: it
was the sixth wealthiest city in England in terms of taxable income in the late me-
dieval period, even with a relatively small population. It was also one of the larger
cities in pre-Conquest England, rated alongside Canterbury, Winchester, and
Chester in The Cambridge Urban History of Britain: 600–1540.15 Evidence survives
to show that by the fourteenth century, at least, Exeter had a city council of twelve,
and men had long entered into the freedom of the city;16 mint-names show that it

13 Jonathan Wilcox, “The Blickling Homilies Revisited: Knowable and Probable Uses of
Princeton University Library MS Scheide 71,” in The Genesis of Books: Studies in the Scribal
Culture of Medieval England in Honour of A. N. Doane, ed. Matthew Hussey and John D. Niles
(Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), 97–115.
14 Patrick W. Conner, “Parish Guilds and the Production of Old English Literature,” in
Intertexts: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Culture Presented to Paul E. Szarmach, ed. Virginia Blanton
and Helene Scheck (Tempe, AZ: ACMRS, 2008), 255–71.
15 Alan Dyer, “Appendix: Ranking lists of English medieval towns,” in The Cambridge Urban
History of Britain: 600–1540, ed. Peter Clark and David Pallister (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2000), 748ff.
16 See Maryanne Kowaleski, Local Markets and Regional Trade in Medieval Exeter (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1995), esp. p. 97 for the table of men entering into the freedom of the
city of Exeter from the thirteenth century onwards. See Margery M. Rowe and Andrew M. Jackson,
eds., Exeter Freemen, 1266–1967, Devon and Cornwall Record Society, e.s. 1 (Exeter: Devon and
18 Elaine Treharne

was by far the most important of the southwestern cities, and on a par with
Canterbury in terms of its moneyers.17 It should be no surprise that Exeter’s guilds
had a long history; its Guild Statutes survive in London, British Library, Cotton
Tiberius B. v, folio 75, a leaf that originally belonged to an Exeter Latin Gospel
Book.18 The cathedral, under Leofric’s foundation, was certainly the focal point of
parish and diocesan pastoral care; it might even have been the center for craft
guilds’ activities—as perhaps the Exeter minster had been before it.
In Cambridge University Library Ii. 2. 11, the Old English Gospels written in
Leofric’s episcopacy were augmented with thirty or so English and Latin docu-
ments filling folios at the beginning and another set of folios at the end (now in
the Exeter Book), datable to ca. 1090–1150.19 These additional texts contain critical
information for establishing the history of the guilds at Exeter; they also change
the function of this Old English Gospel Book to an explicitly corporate codex. Most
obviously, the lists of guilds at folio 7rv, datable to the end of the eleventh century,
are an explicit statement of the links between guildsmen and the cathedral.20
Interestingly, these lists were written with an initial sense by the scribe or compiler
of a long-term commitment by Exeter Cathedral to the guilds: spaces were left be-
tween the village groupings, with the intention, then, to fill in more names as
guildspersons entered; present in this white space, though, is the absence of these
expected names, and it might be supposed that whatever relationship had been
fostered diminished or was inscribed elsewhere.
The predominant records in these pages are so-called manumissions, exam-
ined most recently by David Pelteret in the context of slavery in early Medieval
England.21 In total, from Anglo-Saxon England, 120 of these legal documents
expressing manumission are extant, nearly all of which come from the south-
west, probably as a result of Welsh influence, Wendy Davies argues.22 The most
important collections are those in the Bodmin Gospels (London, British Library,

Cornwall Record Society, 1973). On the medieval guilds, including a discussion of Exeter and
Woodbury, Charles Gross, The Gild Merchant: A Contribution to English Municipal History (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1890), is still useful.
17 Jayne Carroll and David N. Parsons, Anglo-Saxon Mint Names I: Axbridge—Hythe, EPNS e.s.
2 (Nottingham: EPNS, 2007), 134.
18 According to Whitelock, EHD I, no. 137, pp. 558–59, who translates the document. See,
more recently, Conner, Anglo-Saxon Exeter, Appendix 1, 165–70, with text at 168–69.
19 The reconstruction of these leaves into their correct sequence is complex; see N. R. Ker,
Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), Item 20, 28–31.
20 See Conner, “Parish Guilds and the Production of Old English Literature.”
21 David Pelteret, Slavery in Early Mediaeval England (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1995).
22 Wendy Davies, “Charter Tradition,” in Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia, ed. John
T. Koch (Oxford: ABC-Clio, 2006), 403–7.
 1 The Conners of Exeter, 1070–1150 19

Additional 9381, mentioned above), and the Exeter manuscripts. Notably, the
close association of manumission with the guilds is unequivocally witnessed by
the single leaf bound in with London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius B. v. The
leaf which contains the earlier tenth-century Exeter Guild Statutes also contains
two manumissions, one written in the eleventh century onto the partially blank
verso of the leaf; the other, datable to the mid-tenth century, squeezed onto the
recto that contains the Statutes.23 This scribe’s desire to have actual physical
proximity of manumission and Statutes suggests a deliberately intended mate-
rial and textual relationship. This relationship is worth examining in more de-
tail in the other Exeter so-called manumissions.
One example of an apparent manumission was written into the space origi-
nally left blank for the names of additional guildspersons to be entered, at the
opening folio of the first quire (now Exeter Book, folio 7r). Opening with a dis-
creet form of capitulum to indicate a new textual item in the third major block
of writing, this reads:

Her cyþ on þissere béc þæt Gedmer, Spernægles sune, hæfð alised Leofilde his maga ut of
Toppeshamlande mid iiii 7 xx penuge at Ceolrice, Heordinges gereua, Eadnoðes sune, 7
þærto is gewittnes Ælwine preost 7 Ailword Pudding 7 Heording 7 his broðras, 7 Wulford
at Iacobescircan, 7 Huga se reda 7 eall þæt hundred at Toppeshamme. 7 se þe þis undo,
habbe Godes curs 7 Sancta Maria efre butan ende.

Here it is made known in this book that Gedmer, Spernægl’s son, has released Leofilde, his
kinsman, out of Topsham with 24 pennies, at/from Ceolrice, Heording’s reeve, Eadnoð’s son,
and thereto are witness Ælwine preost and Ailword Pudding and Heording and his brothers,
and Wulford at St James’ Church, and Huga the advisor 7 all that hundred at Topsham, and
may he who undoes this have God’s and St Mary’s curse for ever, without end.

Quite what this account is doing written—almost undetectably—tucked into the

space of the guild-names is not immediately apparent. Frances Rose-Troup, who
offers one of the most comprehensive accounts of these records, deduces that as
there was no Topsham guild at this time, the scribe wrote it next to the Colaton
Guild entry.24 But the way in which the record, added sometime in the first ten or
twenty years of the twelfth century, is subsumed within the guildship section, de-
noted only by the initial capitulum, makes one wonder if this does not represent
the introduction of someone new into the Colaton Guild itself? Is Leofilde’s entry
into the Colaton Guild at the heart of this short document?

23 Ker, Catalogue, 256; Conner, Anglo-Saxon Exeter, Appendix 1, 165–70.

24 Frances Rose-Troup, “Exeter Manumissions and Quittances of the Eleventh and Twelfth
Centuries,” Reports and Transactions of the Devonshire Association 69 (1937): 417–45.
20 Elaine Treharne

The same scribe who wrote this Leofilde text, wrote another at the foot of
folio 6r:

Her kyþ on þissere béc þæt Liueger se bacestere on Excestre alysde an wifman Ediþ hatte,
Godrices dohter, Cocraca, ut of Clistlande at Gosfreige bisceope to xxx peningas æfre ma
freoh 7 saccles, heo 7 eal hire ofspring. 7 Gesfreige bisceop wæs hlaferd ofer Clistland on
þam dagum. 7 þærto is gewitnis Colswein, 7 Roger on Buin, 7 Hereberd on Clist, 7 Edric se
cipa. 7 se þe þis undo, hæbbe he Godes wræðe a butan ende. Amen.

Here it is revealed in this book that Liveger the baker in Exeter has redeemed/released a
woman called Edith, Godric Cockneck’s daughter, from Clist, from/at/before bishop
Geoffrey for thirty pence, evermore free and sackless—she and all her offspring. And
bishop Geoffrey was lord over Clist in those days. And thereto is the witness, Colswein,
and Roger at Buin, and Herbert of Clist, and Edric the merchant. And he who undoes this,
may he have God’s wrath ever without end. Amen.

Although this entry was written as the final five lines of this folio, it was not the
last to be written, since the three above it are particularly compressed and ex-
tend the line-length beyond the writing grid. This document indicating the re-
lease or redemption of Edith refers to Geoffrey, the bishop of Coutances, who
died in February 1093,25 and it’s clear that this document was written retrospec-
tively, since “Geoffrey was lord over Clist in those days.” This scribe is thus, it
seems, charged with bringing these records up to date where space is available
on these leaves: a living, long-term commitment from the cathedral to the guild,
then. Moreover, though, this apparent manumission may not be quite as clear-
cut as it may seem. The same Edith, apparently freed by Liveger the Baker also
appears elsewhere in the sequence of texts in a document datable to around
1110,26 which occurs in the middle of folio 4v (in the quire in CUL Ii. 2. 11, the
sequence of which was originally folios 5, 4, 6). In this later text, where Edith
is now the wife of the said Liveger, Liveger is called upon to defend his wife
from the unwanted attention of Hubert of Clist (perhaps the witness to the ear-
lier of the documents in which Edith was, to all intents and purposes, released
from servitude). Whatever complicated set of events is being recorded in this
text on folio 4v, there is no transparent translation and, indeed, a literal trans-
lation makes little sense. Benjamin Thorpe, in his Diplomatarium Anglicum,
has to fiddle with the language:

Her kyþ on þissere béc þæt Huberd on Clist cræfede anne wifman þe Edit hatte, Liuegeres
wif, mid unrihte, for þam Liueger hig alisde ut at Gosfreige bisceope ealswa man sceolde

25 Rose-Troup, “Manumissions,” 436.

26 Rose-Troup, “Manumissions,” 430.
 1 The Conners of Exeter, 1070–1150 21

freohne wifman, 7 ealswa hit hriht wæs on þam dagum ælcne freohne27 man wiþ xxx pen-
ingas. 7 Huberd wæs leosende þære wifmanne far his unriht cræfinge þáá 7 æfre má, hig
7 eal hire ofspring. 7 þærto is gewitnis Willelm de Buhuz, 7 Ruold se cniht, 7 Osbern
Fadera, 7 Unfreig de Tettaborna, 7 Alword portgereua, 7 Iohan se cniht, 7 Rau Folcard. 7
þeos spæc wæs innan Villelmes bure de Buhuz on Excestre gespæce.

Here it is known, in this book, that Hubert at Clist demanded a woman named Edith,
wife of Liveger, with injustice, because Liveger had redeemed her [alysan ut] of bishop
Geoffrey as a man should [make] a free woman, and as it was right in those days [to
make] every free man for 30 pence. And Hubert lost the woman, for his unjust claim
[summons], then and evermore, her and all her offspring. And thereto are witnesses,
William de Buhuz, and Ruold the knight, and Osbern Fadera, and Humphrey de
Tettaborne, and Alword portreeve, and John the knight, and Ralph Folkard. And this
cause was argued in the chamber of William de Buhuz at Exeter.28

Problems with accessing these documents’ interpretation emerge from the literal
translation of key terms, such as the use of the phrasal verbs “alysan . . . ut”
(“released,” “redeemed,” or here, perhaps “paid the fine for”?), “bycgan . . .
at” (bought from, or here, perhaps “paid for in front of,” “sponsored”?); and
individual lemma, such as “freoh” (“free,” or here, perhaps “at liberty”?),
“saccles” (“without blame,” “guiltless,” or here, perhaps “unmolested”?), “cwæð
saccles” (“said [to be] without guilt,” or here, perhaps “declared should be un-
molested”?), “to cepe and to toll” (“price and toll” or here, perhaps “trade and
tax”?), “gespæce” (“argued,” or here, perhaps “guild-meeting”?), and “saccles of
elcre craefigge” (“sackless from every demand,” or here, perhaps “safe from any
summons”?). If the suggested interpretations are supplied in the documents, the
meaning begins to shift dramatically from the manumitting of the unfree to
something altogether different.
Indeed, supplementary evidence provided by these sets of texts does indicate
something other than their labeling as manumissions. Groups of documents are
closely related either by the people involved in the various transactions, or by
the lexis used, which tends to cluster, and which, as Pelteret points out in rela-
tion to its formulaic nature, might be a record of actual speech.29 In relation to
the shared persons, for example, Edith—wife of Liveger—appears in these two
quoted documents, written some years apart, the later of which involves a case
requiring William de Buz’s intervention in his chamber. This same William

27 This word, “freohne,” occurs twice in the corpus of Old English, both times in this docu-
ment. See s.v. “freohne,” Dictionary of Old English.
28 This translation is by B. Thorpe, ed., Diplomatarium Anglicum, 633–45, with bold added to
highlight problematic words and phrases. The Old English is my own edition.
29 Pelteret, Slavery, 146, following Florence Harmer’s view of the formulae in writs.
22 Elaine Treharne

appears again in a later document, this one written in Latin on folio 5r, in what
appears to be absolutely contemporary script, datable to the second quarter of
the twelfth century. Here, in this document, “William de Buz ab omnia seruitute
absoluit” one Edwine Spileman—a phrase which might indicate the freeing of
Edwin Spileman, but which is also reminiscent of the action of absolving benefi-
ciaries from military service, manorial service, or other obligations due. Even
more intriguingly, it is also the case that such absolution of services owed is one
of the many benefits accrued by guildsmen when they become a freeman of a
Craft or Merchant Guild in the Ceremony of Admittance. It is to this possibility of
the occasion of a Ceremony of Admittance as the cause for the creation of these
numerous documents that I now turn.
Given this interpretative leeway for a moment—that what is extant in all of
these Exeter documents represents a guild’s ceremonial admittance—we obtain
a different explanation for the so-called manumissions in CUL Ii. 2. 11: that is,
these are records of the admittance of freemen and freewomen of the Exeter
Guilds. This would elucidate conclusively why the guildspersons’ names are in
the Gospel Book, with what has appeared to be, to date, an eclectic mix of legal
materials: this book becomes a formal, corporate record, and the earliest in the
country, of the guilds’ business. It would also explain why, in our first example,
the insertion of the later text concerning Leofilde was made so seamlessly, in-
troducing another guild member, and his circumstances of admission, into the
group of those who already belonged. It would explain, too, why these records
cease in the middle of the twelfth century, when the actual Guildhall in Exeter
was built (perhaps),30 and when entry into the cathedral’s Gospel Book would
no longer be required. In addition, this explanation would, in addition, account
for anomalies detected in the records by commentators, records that appear to
deal with persons who clearly could not have been enslaved or in servitude or
in threat of such in any meaningful way, like Liveger the Baker’s wife, whose
status suggests she would be a freewoman; or, in another case on folio 5r, the
nephew of a Robert of Powderham, whom this Robert “cwæð saccles,” despite
the fact he could surely not have been enslaved.
To date, the published translations of the specialist lexis in the English
documents have potentially resulted in opacity, at best, requiring various kinds
of manipulation to make sense. The documents in CUL Ii. 2. 11 that appear to be
manumissions, might, in fact, testify not to the payment required for freeing a
slave, but to the customary dues paid when the guildsperson entered the

30 S. R. Blaylock, “Exeter Guildhall,” Devon Archaeological Society Proceedings 48 (1990):

123–78.
 1 The Conners of Exeter, 1070–1150 23

freedom of the guild by paying the membership fee—the fine. This freedom in
the guild involved various rights and privileges, collectively known as the “lib-
erty.” These enfranchised citizens included women and offspring and, indeed,
many customals from the later Middle Ages function through inherited franch-
ises and evince numerous examples of rights passed from father to son. The im-
portance of this inheritance is visible in the status of the witnesses of these
legal documents. In the following example from folio 4v of CUL Ii. 2. 11, though,
it is less the witnesses who are interesting and more the terms of the contract:

Her kyð on þissere bec þæt Willelm de la Brugere cwæð saccles Wulwærd ðane Webba,
inna tune and ut of tune of elce crafigge. 7 þarto is iwitnis, Rau Teodberhtes sune, 7
Teodberhtes his sune 7 Atsun se hwita, Hroðolf Alca sune, Hemeri cuta kig, Philippe
Pagenes sune, Ricard Alka sune, Gesfrei hoel, Herbð, 7 Gollein, Ailwerd faber 7 his broðer,
Rau de Salcei, Herlawine, Brihtmer uidic. Se þe þis mare undo, habbe he Cristes curs, and
Sancta Maria 7 ealle Cristes halgena a butan ende. Amen.

It is shown in this book that William de la Bruge called Wulfwaerd the Weaver “sackless”
of every claim within and without the town. And thereto is witness Ralph son of Teodberht,
and the son of Teodberht and Atsun the white, Hrothulf Alca’s son, Hemery Cutakig, Philip
son of Pagene, Richard son of Alke, Geoffrey Hoel, Herbth, and Gollein, Ailwerd Faber and
his brother, Ralph of Salsey, Herlawine, Brihtmer Uidic. He who undoes this, let him be
cursed by Christ, and Holy Mary and all Christ’s Saints without end. Amen.

Until now, this document has been translated as revealing another manumis-
sion, here of Wulfwaerd the Weaver, who was “called sackless” (whatever that
means) in and out of town. Bosworth-Toller translates this rare, and surely spe-
cifically legal, word as “without blame,” “without fault.”31 This would be an
odd claim to make of a slave if he or she were being manumitted. There is an
alternative definition, however: “unmolested,” or “safely.” In the contemporary
Leges Eadwardi, the Liberty of Cities states:

Liberty of Cities.
C.l. Be it known that within the space of three miles from all parts outside of the city a
man ought not to hold or hinder another, and also should not do business with him if he
wish to come to the city under its peace. But when he arrives in the city, then let the mar-
ket be the same to the rich man as to the poor.32

31 Joseph Bosworth, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary: Based on the Manuscript Collections of the

Late Joseph Bosworth, ed. Thomas Northcote Toller (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1898), s.v.
“sacleas.”
32 Benjamin Thorpe, ed., Ancient Laws and Institutes of England (London: Eyre and Spottiswood,
1840), 462, reprinted in Roy C. Cave and Herbert H. Coulson, A Sourcebook for Medieval Economic
History (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Co., 1936; repr. New York: Biblo & Tannen, 1965),
199–200.
24 Elaine Treharne

In the guild contract above between William de la Brugere and Wulfwærd, it is

possible to understand the document thus:

Here it is revealed in this book that William de la Brugere announced Wulfwærd the
Weaver should be unmolested, within town and without, by any summons. And thereto
is witness Rau, son of Teodberht, etc.

This rare, semantically specialized word, “saccles,” occurs most frequently in

these legal documents in collocation with “freoh” (“free”). This phrase is paral-
leled by a number of other, equally rare phrases that are also difficult to trans-
late. Comparing these Old English phrases with Latin charters of concession,
we find legal formulae, such as a grant made quod libere et sine omni impedi-
mento.33 Scholars’ ability to understand these earlier medieval legal or ceremo-
nial documents turns on formulaic phrases in Latin charters and in English;
this legal jargon seems transparent, but it is not. For example, within the legal
exchanges in these Exeter ceremonies, the phrase “to cepe 7 to tolle” is em-
ployed. “Toll,” or “payment due,” is used fifty and more times in Old English,
usually in a strictly legal context and in collocation with “team,” in respect to
the granting of privileges waiving the grantor’s right to toll. In the Exeter docu-
ments, though, this phrase occurs in the unique collocation, “to cepe 7 to
tolle,” rendered as “price and toll,” but its uniqueness begs the question of its
precise nuance, its specialist function in these post-Conquest texts. “Toll”
might be considered integral to the formulaic lexis of guild records, as a pay-
ment specific to the burgesses in their governing and being governed. A charter
of Henry II, for example, granted freedom from toll to cives mei Wintoniensis,
which suggests to James Tait that “the borough community and the gild were
only two aspects of the same body.”34 The same is the case with lexis that ap-
pears as mundane as “bohte . . . æt,” consistently rendered as “bought . . .
from,” and yet surely open to interpretation as “paid the price for . . . in front
of,” where “price” means “the fixed fine of entry.” Some of the formulae here
are undoubtedly legal argot, with a narrow semantic range that is not immedi-
ately equivalent to its literal meaning; but even with obvious words, in this reg-
ister, the complexity of ritual inevitably moves us away from literalism.
As Paul Hyams reminds us in his most recent work on legal documents and
their meaning in the post-Conquest period, “Charters [and by extension, the

33 In a later charter from King John to the Burgesses of Leicester, who should be able “to
come and go freely and without hindrance”: Mary Bateson, ed., Records of the Borough of
Leicester: 1103–1327 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1899), 7.
34 James Tait, The Medieval English Borough: Studies on Its Origins and Constitutional History
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1936; repr. 1999), 229.
 1 The Conners of Exeter, 1070–1150 25

kinds of material in the Exeter records] only allow us to receive the words they
contain; we must always recognize the possibility that their account of the acts
that do the real work is incomplete.”35 As such, interpreting these documents in
the light of twelfth-century analogous diplomatic materials potentially changes
the content and meaning of the exchanges in the Exeter Gospel Book from manu-
missions to something more closely resembling entry into freedom in the guilds.
Such an interpretation would parallel the procedure, as much as it can be
deduced, in the earliest Leicester Borough Records, where, as Bateson explains,
“The assembly, whoever was there, chose in all likelihood an alderman and col-
leagues to swear in and receive the entrance-money and the hanse (a toll) of all
those who should thereafter be known as the Gild of Merchants. In return for
these fees, the burgess or the stranger might buy and sell by wholesale and retail
within the borough and prevent all others from doing so.”36 The guild would
do its business at the “morgenspæce” overseen by the alderman or other offi-
cial. In the text discussed above and featuring William de Buhuz, who heard
the case of Edith and Liveger in Exeter, the reader was told “7 þeos spæc wæs
innan Willelmes bure de Buhuz on Excestre gespæce,” usually translated as
“this debate was heard in the chamber of William de Buhuz in Exeter.” I
should prefer to argue that the debate took place at the Exeter equivalent of
the Leicester Guild’s “morgenspæc”—the formal meeting of the guild. The ear-
liest Leicester lists show the guildsmen entering the freedom in a sequence with
their payments listed, together with their names and sometimes their village,
and always their witnesses or sponsors. Such a ceremony would account for the
rather strange so-called manumissions in the Exeter records that detail the appar-
ent “release” or “sale” of family members of the minor nobility.37 R. B. Dobson
explains the process of “urban ‘freedom’,” a term used in relation to later re-
cords of the York Guilds.38 In those York texts, those who were new freemen
were required to swear on the Freeman’s Register, as it is known now. Dobson
demonstrates that admittance to the freedom was by patrimony: that is, “the-
oretically the direct ‘heirs’ of the burgesses who benefited from twelfth- and

35 I am grateful to the author for allowing me to read a pre-publication draft of “The Joy of
Freedom and the Price of Respectablity”, since published as Paul R. Hyams, “La joie de la
liberté et le prix de la resplectabilité: Autour de chartes d’affanchissement Anglaise et d’actes
Français analogues (v. 1160 – 1307),” Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes 164.2 (2006): 371–389.
Fuller analysis is forthcoming in Hyams book entitled The Joy of Freedom and the Price of
Respectability.
36 Bateson, ed., Leicester, xxvii–viii.
37 Rose-Troup, “Exeter Manumissions,” 428.
38 R. B. Dobson, “Admissions to the Freedom of the City of York in the Later Middle Ages,”
Economic History Review (1973): 1–22, at 3.
26 Elaine Treharne

thirteenth-century charters” (thus the sons of freemen).39 This patrimonial ele-

ment might be illustrated by the insistence in the lists of witnesses and beneficia-
ries in the Exeter records, even to the point of inserting fathers’ names in the
interlinear space, as happens in the last example cited above from CUL Ii. 2. 11.
That there may well have been a formally organized guild in Exeter earlier in the
twelfth century than has been recognized is suggested by Tait in his discussion
of a grant of land to St. Nicholas, Exeter, by omnes cives Exonie in 1147. This was
delivered manu nostra by Theobald fitz Reiner, ut dapifer noster. Tait suggests
this demonstrates an early stage of the gilda mercanda, which is more explicitly
manifested by the end of the twelfth century.40 A major difference between the
Leicester or York records and those from Exeter, though, is that the former two
borough records are predominantly in Latin, smattered with English terms; at
Exeter, Leofric’s vernacular legacy and the Anglo-Saxon past is alive and well a
century after the see’s foundation, the English of the records underscoring the
close links between the cathedral chapter and the native English.
However speculative some of what is posited here might seem prima facie,
scholars would do well to remember that just as the Exeter legal documents
change the nature of the manuscript in which they were made permanent, so
too a closer examination of the form, linguistic detail, and function of these
documents might lead to a better understanding of the emergence of guild cul-
ture. From this might be gleaned a greater appreciation of what might be in this
Gospel Book the first major corporate or borough records to survive from medie-
val England, with significant repercussions for understanding ecclesiastical
and lay society and culture in Exeter from the tenth to the twelfth century, and
the important synergistic interactions between the religious and the secular.
This is just as Patrick Conner argued in his foundational study of Exeter
twenty-plus years ago: an argument that is as significant and pioneering now,
as it was when he first made it.

39 Dobson, “Admissions to the Freedom of the City of York,” 6–7.

40 Tait, Medieval English Borough, 227–28.
David F. Johnson
2 Winchester Revisited: Æthelwold,
Lucifer, and the Place of Origin of MS
Junius 11
Of the four major codices containing Old English literature, it is perhaps Oxford,
Bodleian MS Junius 11 that, until fairly recently, had most successfully thwarted
attempts to establish both its date and place of origin. They all have their prob-
lems: The Exeter Book (Exeter, Dean and Chapter MS 3501) is tenth century
(based on the paleography), but the place of origin has been a subject of some
debate, in which our honoree has played a central role. The Vercelli Book
(Vercelli, Biblioteca Capitolare MS CXVII) has been confidently dated to the
late tenth century based on its paleography, but where it was made is uncer-
tain. And while there is a consensus on the dating of the Beowulf manuscript
(London, British Library MS Cotton Vitellius A. XV) to the early eleventh cen-
tury, its place of origin is likewise unknown.1 The point is that there does not
seem to be any kind of real consensus on either the date or the place of origin

1 On the date, place of origin, and provenance of the Exeter Book, see George Philip Krapp
and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie, eds., The Exeter Book, Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records 3 (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1936), and the most recent edition by Bernard J. Muir, ed., The
Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry: An Edition of Exeter Dean and Chapter MS 3501, 2 vols.
(Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1994; rev. 2nd ed., 2000). On the place of origin, see espe-
cially Patrick W. Conner, Anglo-Saxon Exeter: A Tenth-Century Cultural History, Studies in
Anglo-Saxon History 4 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1993), 33–47. For an opposing view,
see Richard Gameson, “The origin of the Exeter Book of Old English Poetry,” Anglo-Saxon
England 25 (1996): 135–85. On the Vercelli Book, see G. P. Krapp, ed., The Vercelli Book, Anglo-
Saxon Poetic Records 2 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932) and D. G. Scragg, ed., The
Vercelli Homilies and Related Texts, Early English Text Society Original Series 300 (London:
Early English Text Society, 1992). Scragg suggests St. Augustine’s, Canterbury. For the date
and place of origin of the Beowulf manuscript, see the introductions to F. Klaeber, ed., Beowulf
and the Fight at Finnsburg, 3rd ed. (Boston: D.C. Heath, 1950), now revised by R. D. Fulk,
R. E. Bjork, and J. D. Niles as Klaeber’s Beowulf (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
2008). On the dating of the manuscript, see especially the contributions in The Dating of
Beowulf, ed. C. Chase (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981), and Beowulf and the
Beowulf Manuscript, 2nd ed. (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1996), as well as
D. N. Dumville’s “The Beowulf Manuscript and How Not to Date it,” Medieval Studies English
Newsletter (Tokyo) 39 (1998): 21–27.

David F. Johnson, Florida State University

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513060-003
28 David F. Johnson

for Junius 11. In fact, the safest description of this manuscript that the empirical
data seem to allow is the one that puts it ca. 1000, “somewhere in southern
England.” Yet the temptation to link the production of this manuscript to a cer-
tain place and time has proven no easier to resist than has been the case with
any of the other codices, and the discussion has generated nearly as much de-
bate as that surrounding the place of origin of the Exeter Book. Many scholars
have offered their solutions to this problem over the course of the last hundred
years or so and I will preface my own attempt to revisit the issues of provenance
and dating with a brief retrospective review of the theories previously proposed.
I hope it will be helpful to reiterate their most salient points, in the interest of
contextualizing the “new” data I would like to consider here. What I hope to
demonstrate in this article is that this data constitutes just cause for revisiting
Winchester as the possible place of origin for Junius 11.
The evidence for both date and provenance falls into four general categories:
the paleographical, the philological, the iconographical, and what may loosely be
termed external or circumstantial. To begin, then, with the paleographical evi-
dence. Wolfgang Keller dated the script of the first section of the manuscript
(Genesis, Exodus, Daniel) to the range 970–980.2 Israel Gollancz thought such an
explicit dating impossible and preferred “about 1000.”3 Ker authoritatively estab-
lished this compromise dating in his Catalogue, assigning the date x/xi to the first
section of the manuscript, and xi to the so-called book two (Christ and Satan). We
should do well to remember, as Ker himself reminds us, that x/xi means “either
at the beginning or at the end of the half century,” and so in this case we are
looking at a range of dates between 975 and 1025, though the paleographical cri-
teria would seem to favor the early end of this range.4 In a more recent study,
Leslie Lockett takes an integrated approach to the dating of the manuscript, ex-
amining the manuscript’s illustrations (style and color), decorated initials, script,
punctuation, and other codicological evidence, arguing authoritatively and con-
vincingly for a range of 960 × 990.5 The most recent—and thorough—treatment of
the paleography of Junius 11 is by Peter Stokes. He concludes that the work of the

2 Wolfgang Keller, Angelsächsische Palaeographie, vol. 43.1 (Berlin: Mayer & Müller, 1906).
3 A dating which Krapp then followed. Israel Gollancz, The Cædmon Manuscript of Anglo-Saxon
Biblical Poetry: Junius XI: In the Bodleian Library (London: British Academy, 1927), at xviii;
G. P. Krapp, ed., The Junius Manuscript, Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records 1 (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1931), at x–xi.
4 Ker, N. R. Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1957): xx.
5 Leslie Lockett, “The dating of Oxford, Bodleian Library, Junius 11,” Anglo-Saxon England 31
(2002): 141–73. On the letter forms of the square minuscule of the first scribe, she mainly fol-
lows Ker, rejecting Dumville’s assumptions of uniform employment of the phases he identifies
in royal diplomas from the mid-tenth century on as essentially groundless.
 2 Winchester Revisited: Æthelwold, Lucifer, and the Place of Origin 29

first hand (the subject of Lockett’s study and the one responsible for Genesis A)
might rather be dated to the later part of this range.6 Until very recently no one
had proposed a provenance for the manuscript based on an identification of the
Junius scribe’s hand with others known from Anglo-Saxon scriptoria. Lockett does
identify three manuscripts from Canterbury whose hands bear some resemblance
to Junius 11, but she is justifiably hesitant to conclude that Junius 11 must also be
a Canterbury product based on this evidence.7 “We need not assume,” she says,
“that Junius 11 came from the same scriptorium as the Trinity College manuscripts,
because scribes and books travelled, and a writing master could have used as his
teaching exemplar a high-grade manuscript from another house.”8 Stokes adduces
four additional manuscripts that share some features of the first scribe’s hand in
Junius 11, but of these, only one is a Canterbury product. One is possibly from
Glastonbury, another definitely from Exeter, and the last unattributed.9
Turning next to the philological evidence, we can be brief, as the linguistic
features of Genesis A, Exodus, Daniel, and Christ and Satan are of no help what-
soever in determining the date or provenance of the manuscript. Linguistic
tests, most recently those applied by R. D. Fulk (1989, 1990) have borne out the
traditionally early dating for at least the first three of these poems, rendering it
more than obvious that they predate the production of the manuscript.10
Of some potential interest in this context is the question of when the trans-
mission and transliteration of the interpolated Genesis B occurred. B. J. Timmer
dated the transliteration to shortly after Alfred’s reign, ca. 900, based on its
phonology and vocabulary, in which he detected Early West-Saxon features.11

6 Peter A. Stokes, English Vernacular Minuscule from Æthelred to Cnut circa 990–circa 1035,
Publications of the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies 14 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer,
2014), 126–27.
7 Lockett, “The dating of Junius 11,” 167.
8 Lockett, “The dating of Junius 11,” 167.
9 Stokes, English Vernacular Minuscule, 127, n. 33.
10 See “West Germanic Parasiting, Sievers’ Law, and the Dating of Old English Verse,” Studies
in Philology 86 (1989): 117–38, and “Contraction as a Criterion for Dating Old English Verse,”
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 89 (1990): 1–16; Doane and Remley have argued, on
the evidence of the sectional divisions in Junius 11, that the three poems underwent “a minimum
of four stages in the transmission of the verse now preserved uniquely between its boards.” Paul
Remley, Old English Biblical Verse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 28. See also
A. N. Doane, ed., The Saxon Genesis (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), 12 and 240.
Doane accepts a range between 650 x 900, with the later date being the more likely (36–37), if
one assumes that Genesis A was revised at the time of the translation of Genesis B.
11 B. J. Timmer, The Later Genesis (Oxford; Scrivener Press, 1948), 17, 19–42, 44–45.
30 David F. Johnson

A. N. Doane, in his discussion of the unity of the two parts of Genesis A, notes
that differences in their language might indicate they were composed at different
times, though his conclusion is that the differences do not in the end warrant
this supposition. He follows Timmer in positing an Alfredian or immediately
post-Alfredian date for the transliteration of Genesis B.12 Ute Schwab reached
much the same conclusion in her work on Genesis B and its Saxon model.13
Gerould (1911) was the first to posit a later date for its transliteration, situating it
squarely in the tenth-century Benedictine reform, ca. 970, also based upon philo-
logical grounds, among others.14 Priebsch also concluded that the transliteration
was a product of the late tenth century.15 It seems, then, that the philological evi-
dence pertaining to the transliteration of Genesis B allows for a date anywhere
from the end of the ninth to the last quarter of the tenth century, though the cur-
rent consensus is that it should be situated at the early end of the spectrum.
In the interest of economy, I would like to consider the remaining catego-
ries of evidence—the iconographical and external—together, and to take as my
point of departure the four centers that have been proposed as the place of ori-
gin for Junius 11. These are, in the order I should like to consider them, Christ
Church, Canterbury; Glastonbury; Malmesbury; and Winchester.
The case for a Christ Church, Canterbury origin rests on two main pieces of
evidence. The first is M. R. James’s well-known identification of Junius 11 with a
manuscript appearing in Prior Henry of Eastry’s early fourteenth-century catalogue

12 A. N. Doane, ed., Genesis A: A New Edition (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978),
34–35. He maintains this position in his 1991 edition of The Saxon Genesis, cited above; he says
there (pp. 48–49) that “the early West-Saxon forms show that the late tenth century dating of the
‘translation’ of the Old Saxon poem into Old English put forward by Gerould . . . Priebsch . . .,
and Ohlgren is clearly wrong, and Timmer’s dating in the early tenth (or even ninth) century is
clearly right.” Doane adds the colorful remark to his speculations on when the transliteration oc-
curred: “Although it is likely that Genesis B represents just a visual ripple in a ceaseless two-way
flow of books between England and Germany, often mentioned as the actual agent or intermedi-
ary is the Saxon John, appointed abbot of Athelney by Alfred; Priebsch (38) adduces, among
others, Grimbald (d. 904), . . . first abbot of New Minster, Westminster [sic].”
13 Ute Schwab, Eine Beziehungen zwischen alsächsischer und angelsächsischer Dichtung,
Centro italiano di studi sull’ alto medioevo 8 (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’ alto medi-
oevo, 1988), 117–215.
14 Gordon Gerould, “The Transmission and Date of Genesis B,” Modern Language Notes (1911):
129–33, at 132. As Ohlgren notes, “he presents linguistic data to show that the use of early features
should be attributed to the scribe, or redactor, rather than the translator (Thomas H. Ohlgren,
“Some New Light on the Old English Caedmonian Genesis,” Studies in Iconography 1 (1975):
38–73, at 62).
15 R. Priebsch, The Heliand Manuscript: Cotton Caligula A. VII in the British Museum, A Study
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925), 40–41.
 2 Winchester Revisited: Æthelwold, Lucifer, and the Place of Origin 31

of Christ Church, Canterbury. But the description appearing there, “Genesis

Anglice depicta,” which James connected to the cataloguer’s title “Genesis in
anglico,” found on page 2 of Junius 11,16 might just as easily be associated with
the Old English Illustrated Hexateuch, BL MS Cotton Claudius B. iv, which re-
sided at St. Augustine’s, Canterbury, a possibility he first suggests, then re-
jects.17 Noteworthy here is that most proponents of the Canterbury provenance
seem to have adopted James’s position that “cause ought to be shown for as-
signing the Junius ms. away from Christ Church,” while I find little positive evi-
dence in discussions of the topic of anyone having read the rest of the relevant
paragraph in James’s description: “It is possible, by the way, to reconcile both
views [i.e. the Canterbury and Winchester provenances current at the time]
through the supposition that, like the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the Genesis was
sent from Winchester to Canterbury after the fire of 1067.”18 He is here making a
point that seems only recently to have been recognized, namely that the ascrip-
tion in the Canterbury catalogue, if it is indeed accurate, establishes only the
manuscript’s whereabouts in the early fourteenth century.
The second kind of evidence for Canterbury is iconographical and stylistic.
Homburger was among the first to posit a Canterbury origin on stylistic grounds,
based mainly on his assumption that painting was the norm at Winchester,
while outline drawings pointed to Canterbury, a view now regarded as overly
simplistic.19 Art historians have long noted similarities between the work of

16 M. R. James, Ancient Libraries of Canterbury and Dover (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1903), xxv, lxxxviii, 51. Henry of Eastry was prior of Christ Church from 1284 to 1331.
17 Gollancz, The Cædmon Manuscript, xxxvii; P. J. Lucas, “MS Junius 11 and Malmesbury,”
Scriptorium 34 (1980): 197–220, at 214. Rodney Thomson, “Identifiable books from the pre-
Conquest library of Malmesbury Abbey,” Anglo-Saxon England 10 (1982): 1–19, at 17. Barbara
Raw cites Clemoes and Dodwell on the theory that Cotton Claudius B. iv was not the only manu-
script of its kind. It was certainly not the first to combine the pictures it contains (“The Probable
derivation of the illustrations in Junius 11 from an illustrated Old Saxon Genesis,” Anglo-Saxon
England 5 (1976): 133–48, at 135).
18 James, Ancient Libraries, xxvi.
19 But a manuscript crucial to his theory, Harley 2904, has since been firmly attributed to
Winchester on liturgical and paleographical grounds. Otto Homburger, Die Anfänge der Malschule
von Winchester im X. Jahrhundert (Leipzig: Dieterich, 1912). For this assessment of Homburger’s
theory and the information on this manuscript, see Linda Brownrigg, “Manuscripts containing
English decoration 871–1066, catalogued and illustrated: A review,” Anglo-Saxon England 7
(1978): 239–66; at 246 and n. 2. See also her review of Wormald’s Drawings and his comments on
locating styles in the tenth century on p. 248 and n. 2, worth citing in full here: “The drawings of
the late tenth and early eleventh centuries do certainly divide conveniently into the two groups
which have just been discussed, but the matter is complicated by the fact that unlike some conti-
nental schools of illumination these styles cannot be associated with a particular locality.
32 David F. Johnson

the second artist in Junius 11 and that of the man who worked on the illustrated
Prudentius manuscript (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 23).20 That manuscript
was donated to Malmesbury in the mid-eleventh century, but the Canterbury
provenance of CCCC 23 would appear to depend on the Junius 11 artist having
been there, too, hence the circularity of the argument becomes clear.21 If recent
assessments are to be believed, all arguments that would remove the question
mark from a Canterbury attribution based on stylistic, iconographical evidence
are, in the end, inconclusive. Lockett has made the case that the iconographical
evidence on its own is not sufficient to be decisive, and Catherine Karkov pro-
vides an important cautionary caveat regarding this kind of evidence when con-
templating the place of origin of Junius 11:

The style of the drawings is unfortunately no help in establishing the origins of the manu-
script. Junius 11 has traditionally been attributed to Christ Church, Canterbury, although
attributions to Winchester, Glastonbury, and Malmesbury have also been posited. The
hand of the second artist has been identified in several of the drawings in the psychoma-
chia (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 23), also traditionally attributed to Canterbury,
though again the attribution has been questioned. Neither the Winchester style whose in-
fluence is evident in the work of the first artist, nor the more strongly Reims-influenced
work of the second artist can be linked to a specific location, as both were popular across
the south of England during the second half of the tenth century. Moreover, artists could
also travel from monastery to monastery, making the association of individual hands
with particular locales all but impossible to establish.22

Glastonbury was proposed for the first time by John Higgitt in his review of
Elzbieta Temple’s Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: 900–1066.23 Higgitt pointed to
Glastonbury as a rival book-producing center, despite the lack of significant

It is improbable that it will ever be possible to make a division of this kind . . .. Stylistic differ-
ences are much more likely to have arisen from the artist being influenced, in one way or an-
other, by his archetypes rather than by a definite training in a single local style” (35).
20 An identification not granted by all who have considered the question. Temple (Elzbieta
Temple, ed., Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts 900–1066, vol. 2 of A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated
in the British Isles, ed. J. J. G. Alexander (London: Harvey Miller, 1976)) and Lucas (“MS Junius
11 and Malmesbury”) find it convincing, but Rice (David Talbot Rice, English Art, 871–1100,
vol. 2 of Oxford History of English Art (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952), at 204) disagrees.
21 See Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts 900–1066, 70.
22 Catherine E. Karkov, Text and Picture in Anglo-Saxon England: Narrative Strategies in the
Junius 11 Manuscript, Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England 31 (Cambridge and
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 35. On this last point, Karkov cites R. Gameson,
“English Manuscript Art in the Mid-Eleventh Century: The Decorative Tradition,” Antiquaries
Journal 71 (1991): 64–122, at 67.
23 John Higgit, Review of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: 900–1066, by Elzbieta Temple, The
Burlington Magazine 119 (1977): 445.
 2 Winchester Revisited: Æthelwold, Lucifer, and the Place of Origin 33

manuscript evidence from before 1050. He expanded on this argument in a

follow-up article in 1979, where he makes much of the great debt Canterbury
owed to Glastonbury during the monastic reform.24 Higgitt makes an interest-
ing case, but as Richard Gameson has pointed out, “the manuscript art of that
house is an unknown quantity, and its potential influence on the scriptorium
of Christ Church in this respect as in other matters is imponderable.”25
One of the most thorough attempts to determine the place of origin of Junius
11 was published by Peter Lucas in Scriptorium in 1980 and ’81.26 In this interdis-
ciplinary study, Lucas makes the case for Malmesbury. It rests on several main
positive arguments, all of which, however, have proven susceptible to doubt.
Lucas adduces the stylistic similarities between Junius 11 and CCCC 23 already
mentioned as evidence that the two must have been produced at the same center,
to which Rodney Thomson, in his study of “Identifiable books from pre-Conquest
Malmesbury Abbey,” replies, not unreasonably, that the “peripatetic operations
of illuminators” is a well-known medieval phenomenon.27 Lucas offers stylistic,
iconographical grounds for a Malmesbury origin in the form of some close corre-
spondences between a number of the drawings in Junius 11 and “features of
some of the carved medallions”—dated 1170–1180—“on the entrance arch of the
south porch of Malmesbury abbey.”28 But as Thomson points out, the most this
can support is that Junius 11 was in Malmesbury in the twelfth century.29
A further piece of evidence adduced by Lucas to support his attribution is one
that turns up quite often in these arguments, namely the question of who that
handsome medallion portrait on page 2 of Junius 11, with the name “Ælfwine” as
identifying label, is supposed to represent.30 Like others before him, Lucas finds a

24 John Higgitt, “Glastonbury, Dunstan, Monasticism and Manuscript,” Art History 2 (1979):
275–90.
25 Richard Gameson, “Manuscript Art at Christ Church, Canterbury, in the Generation after
Dunstan,” in St. Dunstan: His Life, Times and Cult, ed. Nigel Ramsay, Margaret Sparks, and
Tim Tatton-Brown (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1992), 187–220, at 189, n. 8.
26 Lucas, “MS Junius 11 and Malmesbury”; and Peter J. Lucas, “Junius 11 and Malmesbury
(II),” Scriptorium 35 (1981): 3–22.
27 Rodney Thomson, “Identifiable books from the pre-Conquest library of Malmesbury Abbey,”
Anglo-Saxon England 10 (1982): 1–19, at 17. Thomson cites twelfth-century examples, such as the
“work of the ‘Alexis Master’ of the St. Albans Psalter or of the artist of the Lambeth Bible” as
cases in point; “one cannot assume,” he states, “a single scriptorium for two manuscripts simply
because they were illustrated by the same artist.”
28 P. J. Lucas, “MS Junius 11 and Malmesbury,” 215.
29 Thomson, “Identifiable books,” 17.
30 An illustration of the medallion may be found in Charles R. Morey, “The Drawings of the
Junius Ms.,” in The Cædmon Poems Translated into English Prose, ed. C. W. Kennedy
(Glouchester, MA: Peter Smith, 1965), 198. But see now Muir’s digital edition on CD-ROM
34 David F. Johnson

conjectural solution to the Ælfwine question, identifying him as the abbot of

Malmesbury by that name who held the position ca. 1043–1046. A crucial ele-
ment in identifying the Ælfwine represented here is the question of whether
the portrait was drawn by the first artist or added later. I am inclined to follow
those who maintain that the portrait was not added later. My own examina-
tion of the manuscript revealed nothing that would indicate that this portrait
and the name appearing in it was done by anyone other than the first artist.
More on the Ælfwine question below.31
The foregoing is meant to establish among other things that there are counter-
arguments to all of the attributions made for Junius 11 to date. The full survey of
arguments and evidence, of which this is necessarily but a pale reflection, has
driven home to me, at least, just how circumstantial much of the available evi-
dence is, and how speculative the conjectural narratives are that we weave around
that evidence. But this realization will not prevent me here from weaving my own,
so the moment has come to have another look at Winchester. What is the evidence
for a Winchester origin of the manuscript? At first blush, there doesn’t seem to be

(Bernard J. Muir, ed., A Digital Facsimile of Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Junius 11, software by
Nick Kennedy, Bodleian Library Digital Texts 1 (Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2004)), as well as
the online archive of the entire manuscript at http://image.ox.ac.uk/show?collection=bod
leian&manuscript=msjunius11.
31 Doane holds a different view: “My impression is that the medallion is a late entry to the
manuscript, perhaps late eleventh century . . .” but adduces nothing by way of evidence to
support such a claim and specific dating (A. N. Doane, ed., Genesis A: A New Edition, Revised
(Tempe, AZ: ACMRS, 2013), 34). Even more recently Peter Stokes has suggested that the in-
scription may have been written in a later “glossing hand.” See Peter A. Stokes, English
Vernacular Minuscule from Æthelred to Cnut circa 990–circa 1035, Publications of the
Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies 14 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2014), at 128. To para-
phrase Sir Israel Gollancz, it is with a sense of temerity that one contends any opinion on mat-
ters paleographical with Dr. Stokes, but it strikes me that there is some wiggle room in his
analysis of the “glossing script,” and elsewhere he follows others in attributing the medallion
picture to the first artist (see Peter A. Stokes, “Junius 11,” in The Literary Encyclopedia, ed.
R. Clark and R. Dance (London: The Literary Dictionary Company, Ltd., 2008), http://www.li
tencyc.com.php/stopics.php?rec+true&UID=5553: “The first artist is thought to have drawn
the main illustrations down to page 72 and the decorated initials to page 79, as well as a ‘por-
trait’ on page 2 and an initial on page 143”). The conclusion here would be that the medallion
portrait was already in place at the time of the manuscript’s illustration and compilation, but
that the inscription was inserted later. Naturally, the work of the first scribe cannot reasonably
be dated to the eleventh century, unless the paleographical evidence offered by Lockett (and
accepted by Doane) is way off. Complicating matters even further, Stokes does suggest that his
findings might show that the script of the first Junius 11 scribe [HN1] “may well have been writ-
ten during the later period” (i.e., 990 x 1035). If this be true, then it might have serious conse-
quences for any theory that would date the compilation of Junius 11 to the late tenth century.
 2 Winchester Revisited: Æthelwold, Lucifer, and the Place of Origin 35

much at all. And yet the case has been made. The Winchester attribution rested
first on perceived iconographical, stylistic similarities between Junius 11 and
other manuscripts executed in the same style. Gollancz and others have com-
pared the line drawings to those in other Winchester products such as Stowe
944 (the New Minster Liber Vitae) and the Lanalet Pontifical.32 Lockett also
notes stylistic similarities between the work of the first Junius 11 artist and that
found in the Benedictional of St. Æthelwold, as well as that in the work of the
New Minster Charter (i.e., “Edgar’s Privilege,” see below), both of which are
Winchester products.33 These comparisons remain suggestive, but are—on their
own—ultimately every bit as inconclusive as the stylistic parallels adduced for
Canterbury.
It was in 1923 that Gollancz identified the Ælfwine of the medallion on
page 2 as Abbot Ælfwine of Winchester (1035).34 This identification was refuted
first by Barbara Raw.35 Besides the abundance of candidates with the name
“Ælfwine,” the portrait represents a secular figure, seemingly borne out by the
lack of tonsure and shape of the figure’s garments. Again, this portrait has also
been identified as the abbot of Malmesbury, yet even if we take into account
the possibly stylized nature of the picture (some have seen the influence of coin
portraits here), one has to wonder why anyone would wish to portray an abbot,
or an abbot would allow himself to be portrayed, as an aristocratic layperson,
especially in a reformed monastery. Another objection to Gollancz’s identifica-
tion is the abbot’s dates, surely on the late side for a manuscript that was in
production as early as the late tenth century, and no later than the first quarter
of the eleventh century. This objection is strengthened by the assumption that
the portrait was part of the first artist’s initial work, and hence much too early
to refer to the later abbot of Winchester.36

32 Rouen, Public Library MS A.27 (368). See Gollancz, The Cædmon Manuscript, xxxvii–xxxviii,
where he associates it with two other manuscripts in the Rouen public library of Winchester ori-
gin—The Benedictional of Archbishop Robert (Rouen, Bibliothèque municipale MS Y.7) and The
Missal of Robert of Jumièges (Rouen, Bibliothèque municipale MS Y.6)—and compares the work
of its artist to that of Junius 11. For a recent reconsideration of the manuscript’s localization and
date, see Stokes, English Vernacular Minuscule, 53–57. The manuscript is now dated to the first
quarter of the eleventh century.
33 Lockett, “The Dating of Junius 11,” 154–55 and 155, n. 70.
34 Gollancz, The Cædmon Manuscript, xxxiv–xxxv.
35 Raw, “The Probable derivation,” 135.
36 Raw attributes the medallion portrait to the first artist, as well: “The first artist was respon-
sible for the drawings on pp. 1–68, including the portrait labelled ‘Ælfwine’ on p. 2, for the
frontispiece and for the ornamental initials which extend from p. 1 to p. 79; he also drew the
initial at the beginning of Exodus on p. 143.” (Raw, “The Probable Derivation,” 134.)
36 David F. Johnson

When Raw demolished Gollancz’s Ælfwine identification in her 1976 study,

the case for Winchester was made out to be lost. But there is more to that case
than just this medallion portrait. In 1975 Thomas Ohlgren published a study that
offered further iconographical and external reasons for suspecting a Winchester
provenance for Junius 11. As evidence, Ohlgren adduced continental models that
parallel illustrations in Junius 11, models that he is able to trace to Benoit-sur-
Loire at Fleury. There he identifies scenes on the capitals in the ambulatory of
the abbey so similar to some in Junius 11 that he concludes that there must be a
direct connection.37 But what would link these scenes to Winchester? He builds
his case on the close ties between Fleury and Winchester during the monastic
reform. While admitting that the external history seems inconclusive—that is,
both Canterbury and Winchester had such ties, though Winchester might have
had them earlier—Ohlgren nevertheless speculates on the significance of a num-
ber of salient and well-known points.38 For example, when Æthelwold ex-
pelled the secular canons at Winchester they were replaced by monks from
Abingdon, which, as tradition has it, was the first monastic house to receive a
copy of the Rule of St. Benedict from Fleury.39 Before he left for Winchester,
Æthelwold was replaced at Abingdon by Osgar, who had been recalled from
Fleury. Moreover, Fleury seems to have provided monks at Æthelwold’s request
to help him compile the Regularis Concordia. As Ohlgren points out, “it seems

37 Thomas H. Ohlgren, “Some New Light on the Old English Caedmonian Genesis,” Studies in
Iconography 1 (1975): 38–73. Ohlgren’s ideas concerning the underlying iconographical influ-
ences here—i.e., an illustrated Beatus Apocalypse—have never gained much traction. For ex-
ample, Karkov notes that “Ohlgren (‘Illustrations of the Cædmonian Genesis,’ 211–12, n. 18)
suggests the influence of Spanish Apocalypses on the Junius 11 page, though there is no con-
crete evidence for this.” (Text and Picture, 50, n. 14.) And yet Ohlgren’s analyses of the similar-
ities between the drawings of the Junius 11 artists and the capitals at Fleury are no less valid or
more far-fetched than any proposed by Gollancz, Herbert, Nicholson, Temple, Raw, Doane, or
Lockett. They are, moreover, close enough in date to Junius 11—ca. 1050—to suggest that com-
mon models, perhaps in the form of a pattern-book, lay behind both those and some of the
drawings in Junius 11.
38 Ohlgren, “New Light,” esp. 54–64. Strictly speaking, such a manuscript could just as easily
have gone first to Canterbury, though Ohlgren’s observation that the New Minster, Winchester
was already a reformed house before the time-frame of the manuscript’s dating (960 x 990),
whereas Christ Church, Canterbury was not reformed until 995–1005 (see Ohlgren, p. 64), may
carry some weight in deciding the issue. Doane posits that the manuscript could easily have
gone to St. Augustine’s, which was a monastic house at the time—though only reformed at the
same time as Christ Church—which remains a possibility (Doane, Genesis A: A New Edition,
Revised, 32).
39 Ohlgren, “New Light,” 57. See also Eric John, “The King and the Monks in the Tenth-Century
Reformation,” BJRL 42 (1959–60): 61–87.
 2 Winchester Revisited: Æthelwold, Lucifer, and the Place of Origin 37

plausible . . . that when the exemplar of MS Junius 11 came to England, it would

have gone to a reformed house with close ties to Fleury.”40 Ohlgren, following
Raw, further posits that the exemplar containing Genesis B (translated or not)
was already illustrated when it came to England from Fleury. This theory has
been questioned by some critics, but it does not follow that the iconographical
models did not then come from Fleury, nor that Winchester was not a very likely
venue for their first transmission.41 Text and image needn’t have resided in the
same manuscript for both to have found their way to Winchester. Veronica
Ortenberg, among others, has confirmed how close the contacts were between
the English reformed institutions and their counterparts on the Continent.42 If
Winchester emerges from that picture with a slight edge over Canterbury as far
as early contacts are concerned, we must admit that it’s not enough to decide the
issue between them one way or the other.
We may, though, finally pose the question: is there any other external or
internal evidence that would suggest that the manuscript had in fact been pro-
duced at Winchester shortly before or after the turn of the eleventh century? I
think there is.

***

In an article that appeared in JEGP in 1998, I discussed the unusual aspects of

the depiction of Lucifer’s fall in the first 115 lines of the OE Genesis A.43 As crit-
ics have pointed out, with the exception of these first lines of the poem, most of
Genesis A constitutes a relatively close paraphrase of Genesis.44 This section of

40 Ohlgren, “New Light,” 64. It is of course perfectly possible that when the iconographical
materials and the transliteration of Genesis B came to Winchester, they may have arrived there
via Abingdon.
41 Ohlgren (“New Light,” 60) argues that “the drawings of the Old Saxon Genesis were used
by the Anglo-Saxon artists to illustrate both ‘Genesis A’ and ‘Genesis B’”; “we must believe
that the whole of the Old Saxon Genesis, either in the original or in translation, lay before the
scribes and illustrators of the Junius manuscript.” Dissenting views have been expressed by
Lucas (“MS Junius 11 and Malmesbury”) and Broderick (Herbert R. Broderick, “Observations
on the Method of Illustration in MS Junius 11 and the Relationship of the Drawings to the
Text,” Scriptorium 37 (1984 for 1983): 161–77).
42 Veronica Ortenberg, The English Church and the Continent in the Tenth and Eleventh
Centuries: Cultural, Spiritual, and Artistic Exchanges (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).
See also the contributions in D. Rollason, C. Leyser, and H. Williams, eds., England and the
Continent in the Tenth Century: Studies in Honour of Wilhelm Levison (1876–1947), Studies in
the Early Middle Ages 37 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010).
43 “The Fall of Lucifer in “Genesis A” and Two Anglo-Latin Royal Charters.“ The Journal of
English and Germanic Philology 97, no. 4 (1998): 500-21.
44 Doane, Genesis A: A New Edition, Revised, 66, and 290 (commentary on ll. 18b–81).
38 David F. Johnson

the poem, its exordium, is without parallel in the surviving AS poetic corpus,
nor does it, unlike the rest of the poem, have its origin in the Vulgate or Old
Latin Book of Genesis. In this exordium the poet departs consciously from
the Augustinian view regarding when Lucifer and the angels fell, by placing
that fall well before the creation of the earth and the heavens (which occurs at
l. 112 in Genesis A).45
In the opening lines of the poem, then (ll. 1–20a), the poet first depicts the
angels dwelling in peace, joy, and happiness while they praise their lord, God.
Next he recounts the rebellion and strife caused by a portion of the host
(ll. 20b–34a); God’s subsequent anger and creation of Hell (ll. 34b–46b); and
His crushing and expulsion of the rebels (ll. 47–77b). Peace returns to the
Kingdom of Heaven, but the thrones of those who had rebelled are left empty
(ll. 78–91b). So God takes further action:

þa þeahtode þeoden ure

Then our Lord meditated

modgeþonce hu he þa mæran gesceaft,

in His mind how He might resettle

eðelstaðolas, eft gesette,

that glorious creation, its settlements,

95 swegltorhtan seld selran werode

bright heavenly dwellings with a better host

þa hie gielsceaþan ofgifen hæfdon

since the boastful enemies had quit them

45 Doane attributes the contents of the exordium to the hexameral tradition, arguing that the
poet arranged the elements drawn from that complex of texts and legends in his own way, but
in a “sophisticated and theologically informed way” (290). He fails to recognize that the spe-
cific tradition regarding the “location of the story” is in fact the one formulated by Origen, i.e.
that the physical world was not created until after the fall of the angels, making it, and the
creation of man in order to repopulate the empty thrones left by the fallen angels, contingent
upon the fall of the angels. See my “Fall of Lucifer,” 503–8; on Origen, 511–12. Judging by his
comments on ll. 18b–81, it seems he has misread my argument. Moreover, his claim that in
one of the charters I adduce there “it is implied that the angels fell after the fall of man” is a
puzzling one (Genesis A: A New Edition, Revised, 290). He fails to say which one, but the reader
may judge for herself, as I reproduce the relevant passages here. I have tremendous respect for
Doane’s learning and the accomplishments his editions of Genesis A and B represent, but we
shall have to agree to disagree on the reading of the fall of the rebel angels episode in the
exordium to Genesis A.
 2 Winchester Revisited: Æthelwold, Lucifer, and the Place of Origin 39

heah on heofenum. forþam halig god

high in the heavens. Therefore Holy God

under roderas feng ricum mihtum

under the orb of the heavens, with His mighty powers

wolde þæt him eorðe and uproder

willed that for Him earth and sky

100 and sidewæter geseted wurde,

and broad water should be established,

woruldgesceafte on wraðra gield

a created world in compensation for the adversaries,

þara þe, forhealdene, of hleo sende.

those whom, fallen, He banished from protection.

Ne wæs her þa giet nymþe heolstersceado

There was not as of yet anything but the shadow of darkness

wiht geworden, ac þes wida grund

come into being, but this wide abyss

105 stod deop and dim, drihtne fremde,

stood deep and dim, remote from the Lord,

idel and unnyt. on þone eagum wlat

empty and unused. Thereupon with His eyes

stiðfrihþ cining and þa stowe beheold,

He looked, the strong-minded king, and beheld that place,

dreama lease, geseah deorc gesweorc

devoid of joys, and He saw the murky darkness,

semian sinnihte sweart under roderum,

the perpetual night hovering black beneath the heavens,

110 wonn and weste, oð þæt þeos woruldgesceaft

black and desolate, until this created world

þurh word gewear wuldorcyninges.

came into being by the Word of the King of Glory.

Her ærest gesceop ece drihten,

Here the Eternal Lord, Lord Almighty,

helm eallwihta, heofon and eorðßan,

Protector of all creatures, first created heaven and earth,

rodor arærde, and þis rume land

raised up the sky and founded this vast land
40 David F. Johnson

115 gestaþelode strangum mihtum,

with His mighty powers,

frea ælmihtig. Folde wæs þa gyta

Almighty Lord. The earth was then not yet

græsungrene. garsecg þeahte

green with grass. Black, perpetual night

sweart synnihte, side and wide,

far and wide concealed the ocean,

wonne wægas.46
its dark waves.

God decides to fill the seats left empty by the fallen angels with “a better
host” (selran werode, l. 95b) and thus the Created World (earth, sky, and
waters, and in it man), is established to compensate for those who had fallen
(woruldsceafte on wraðra gield, “a created world in compensation for the ad-
versaries,” l. 101).
Now, part of the action depicted here (l. 95) constitutes what is known as the
“replacement doctrine,” a line of thought first formulated in Augustine’s De civitate
Dei. I observed earlier:

This essentially pessimistic vision of the human condition (man was created solely to
remedy a fault in the primal order) was widely current in the early Middle Ages, and it
continued to be current in popular religious literature throughout the Middle Ages—
though by the twelfth century scholastic theologians quickly dismissed it as untenable.47

What follows in the poem, however, constitutes a kind of radical replacement doc-
trine—the earth was created only after the angels had fallen and the need arose to
replace their depleted ranks—an extreme version of the theory that Augustine him-
self seemed unprepared to sanction, as he preferred to believe that the creation
and fall of the angels is reflected in the very first verses of Genesis, where the spiri-
tual and earthly realms are seen to come into being nearly simultaneously, the
rebel angels turning away from God and falling shortly after their creation.48 In
other words, according to Augustine, God did nothing before he created heaven

46 Text cited from Doane, Genesis A: A New Edition, Revised, 149. Translation and emphasis
mine.
47 Johnson, “The Fall of Lucifer,” 517.
48 On Augustine and the replacement doctrine, see my “The Fall of Lucifer,” 517. See as well
Dorothy Haines, “Vacancies in Heaven: The Doctrine of Replacement and Genesis A,” Notes &
Queries n.s. 44 (1997): 150–54, although she fails to remark on the radical nature of the form of the
motif in Genesis A.
 2 Winchester Revisited: Æthelwold, Lucifer, and the Place of Origin 41

and earth. The replacement doctrine had some currency in Anglo-Saxon England,
but in other instances the creation of the earthly realm, and man’s place in it, is
not explicitly contingent upon the fall of the rebel angels, and, so far as I know, it
never (except for the two specific instances to be discussed below) occurs in the
same scheme of creation as reflected in Genesis A.
Nor does this form of the motif of the Fall of Lucifer and his angels—with the
creation of the earth being contingent upon that fall—have any parallels in other
genres where one might expect to find them. In my previous discussion of this
motif, I had thought it unnecessary to survey in any detail the contents of relevant
texts from the catechetical narratio and hexameral traditions, as well as other Old
English poetic texts that had been adduced by others as possible sources or ana-
logues for Genesis A. I do so now to drive home a point: even a brief survey will
demonstrate that while the two main traditions adduced as most influential on the
exordium of Genesis A may well share many points of similarity with the contents
of the opening lines of our poem, they lack the most distinctive element present in
the Old English poem and the two charters discussed below.49
To this end I propose to survey briefly the texts listed by Virginia Day in her
1974 study of the influence of the catechetical narratives on Old English litera-
ture.50 When it comes to the catechetical narratives, Day formulates an impor-
tant caveat concerning our knowledge of this genre:

Presumably [the narrationes] would have been in the vernacular and mostly would not
have been written down at all. Catechism was always a predominantly oral activity. Our
evidence is likely to come from works of advice to those who would be carrying out this
form of instruction, from narratives in which teaching of this kind is reported and from
the influence of the narratio detectable in literature.51

Despite this caveat, however, it may be possible to discern patterns in the ar-
rangement of details in the surviving texts, so that, even within the seemingly
limited scope of the subject matter contained in these narratives, the inclusion
of some details and the exclusion of others may prove meaningful in terms of
the influence these models may have had on literary versions of this catecheti-
cal material, among them Genesis A.

49 I do so as well to avoid any misunderstanding of my previous argument. While Day has argued
for the influence of catechetical narratives on Genesis A, I argued in my 1998 article, as I do now,
that such narratives could not have been the source of the “radical replacement doctrine” identified
in Genesis A and the two charters discussed below. See my “The Fall of Lucifer,” esp. 510.
50 Virginia Day, “The Influence of the Catechetical Narratio on Old English and Some Other
Medieval Literature,” Anglo-Saxon England 3 (1974): 51–61.
51 Day, “The Influence of the Catechetical Narratio,” 53.
Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
 “Oh! potter chief ... what toil hath befallen thee!
The descendant of the Cora kings....
Hath gained the world of gods. And so
’Tis thine to shape an urn so vast
That it shall cover the remains of such an one.”

The legend concerning the origin of the potter classes is narrated in the article on
Kummaras. “It is,” Mr. E. Holder writes,74 “supposed by themselves that they are
descended from a Brāhmin father and Sūdra mother, for the sacrificial earthen vessels,
which are now made by them, were, according to the Vēdas, intended to be made by the
priests themselves. Some of the potters still wear the sacred thread, like the Kammālars
or artisan class. They are generally illiterate, though some of their class have earned
distinction as sound scholars, especially of late years. The women assist the men in their
work, chiefly where delicacy of execution is needed. On the whole, the potters are a poor
class compared with the Kammālar class, which includes jewellers, metal-workers and
wood-workers. Their occupation is, on that account, somewhat despised by others.”

The potter’s apparatus is described by Monier Williams75 as “a simple circular

horizontal well-balanced fly-wheel, generally two or three feet in diameter, which can be
made to rotate for two or three minutes by a slight impulse. This the potter loads with
clay, and then, with a few easy sweeps and turns of his hands, he moulds his material
into beautiful curves and symmetrical shapes, and leaves the products of his skill to bake
in the sun.” By Mr. Holder the apparatus is described as follows. “The potter’s
implements are few, and his mode of working is very simple. The wheel, a clumsily
constructed and defective apparatus, is composed of several thin pliable pieces of wood
or bamboo, bent and tied together in the form of a wheel about 3½ feet in diameter. This
is covered over thickly with clay mixed with goat’s hair or any fibrous substance. The
four spokes and the centre on which the vessel rests are of wood. The pivot is of hard
wood or steel. The support for the wheel consists of a rounded mass of clay and goat’s
hair, in which is imbedded a piece of hard wood or stone, with one or two slight
depressions for the axle or pivot to move in. The wheel is set into motion first by the
hand, and then spun rapidly by the aid of a long piece of bamboo, one end of which fits
into a slight depression in the wheel. The defects in the apparatus are—firstly its size,
which requires the potter to stoop over it in an uneasy attitude; secondly, the irregularity
of its speed, with a tendency to come to a standstill, and to wave or wobble in its motion;
and thirdly, the time and labour expended in spinning the wheel afresh every time its
speed begins to slacken. Notwithstanding, however, the rudeness of this machine, the
potters are expert at throwing, and some of their small wares are thin and delicate. The
usual manner in which most of the Madras potters bake their wares is as follows. A
circular space, about ten feet in diameter, is marked out on the ground in any convenient
open spot. Small pieces of wood and dried sticks are spread over this space to a depth of
about six inches, and a layer of brattis (dried cow-dung cakes) laid over the sticks. The
vessels are then carefully piled on top of this platform of fuel to a height of about five or
six feet, and the whole heap is covered over with straw, and plastered over with clay, a
few small openings being left here and there to allow the smoke to escape. These
arrangements being completed, the fuel at the bottom is fired, and in the course of a few
hours the process of baking is completed.”

Kusavans.

When travelling in India, Dr. Jagor noticed that the potters of Salem communicated to
their ware a kind of polish, exactly like that seen on some of the specimens of antique
pottery found in cromlechs. It was ascertained that the Salem potters use a seed for
producing the polish, which was determined by Surgeon-General G. Bidie to be the seed
of Gyrocarpus Jacquini, which is also used for making rosaries and necklaces. Another
method employed for producing a polish is to rub the surface of the baked vessel with
the mucilaginous juice of tuthi (Abutilon indicum), and then fire the vessel again.

It is stated, in the Coimbatore Manual, that “the potter never begins his day’s work at the
wheel without forming into a lingam and saluting the revolving lump of clay, which,
with the wheel, bears a strong resemblance to the usual sculptured conjunction” (of
lingam and yōni). An old potter woman, whom I examined on this point, explained that
the lump represents Ganēsa. In like manner, the pan coolies at the salt factories never
scrape salt from the pans without first making a Pillayar (Ganēsa) of a small heap of salt,
on the top of which the salt is sometimes piled up.

Painted hollow clay images are made by special families of Kusavans known as pūjāri,
who, for the privilege of making them, have to pay an annual fee to the headman, who
spends it on a festival at the caste temple. When a married couple are anxious to have
female offspring, they take a vow to offer figures of the seven virgins, who are
represented all seated in a row. If a male or female recovers from cholera, small-pox, or
other severe illness, a figure of the corresponding sex is offered. A childless woman
makes a vow to offer up the figure of a baby, if she brings forth offspring. Figures of
animals—cattle, sheep, horses, etc.—are offered at the temple when they recover from
sickness, or are recovered after they have been stolen. The pupils of the eyes of the
figures are not painted in till they are taken to the temple, where offerings of fruit, rice,
etc., are first made. Even the pupils of a series of these images, which were specially
made for me, were not painted at the potter’s house, but in the verandah of the traveller’s
bungalow where I was staying. Horses made of clay, hollow and painted red and other
colours, are set up in the fields to drive away demons, or as a thank-offering for recovery
from sickness or any piece of good luck. The villagers erect these horses in honour of the
popular deity Ayanar, the guardian deity of the fields, who is a renowned huntsman, and
is believed, when, with his two wives Purna and Pushkala, he visits the village at night,
to mount the horses, and ride down the demons. Ayanar is said to be “the special deity of
the caste. Kusavans are generally the pūjāris in his temples, and they make the
earthenware (and brick and mortar) horses and images, which are placed before these
buildings.”76

For the following note on a ceremony, in which the potters take part, I am indebted to an
essay submitted in connection with the M.A. degree of the Madras University.
“Brāhmans of Vēdic times ate dogs, horses, bulls, and goats. The fondness for mutton
even in a raw state finds its modern counterpart in the bloody hecatombs that disfigure
some of their annual sacrifices. In these ceremonies called Pasubandha, Agnishtoma,
Vajapeya, Garudachayana, etc., a goat is tied to a post, and, after the usual mantrams
(prayers) and the service of frankincense, etc., is ablutioned in water mixed with
turmeric and taken to the slaughter-room. And the method of slaughtering is most
appalling. Two men appointed for the purpose, invariably men belonging to the pot-
making community, rush into the apartment. One catches hold of the fore-quarter of the
animal and keeps it from struggling, while the other squeezes the scrotum with so much
violence that the animal succumbs in a few minutes, after writhing in the most painful
fashion. The man in charge of the fore-quarter puts a handful of salt into the animal’s
mouth, and holds it tight, lest the animal should bleat, and make the ceremony
unsanctimonious. The carcase is now brought to the mailing shed, where, with crude
knives and untrained hands, the Brāhmans peel off the skin most savagely. Then they cut
open the chest, and it is a common sight to see these Brāhmans, uninitiated in the art of
butchery, getting their hands severely poked or lacerated by the cut sharp ends of the
ribs. Then portions of flesh are cut off from various portions of the carcase, such as the
buccal region, the cardiac region, the scapular region, the renal, the scrotal, the gluteal
and gastroenemial regions. The amount of flesh thus chopped comes to not less than
three big potfuls, and they are cooked in water over the slow fire of a primitively
constructed oven. No salt is put to season the meat, but the Brāhmans bolt it without any
condiment in an awful fashion.”

Aiyanar temple.
The services of the potter are required in connection with the marriage ceremonial of
many castes. At some Brāhman marriages, for example, the tāli is tied on the bride’s
neck in the presence of 33 crores (330 millions) of gods, who are represented by a
number of variously coloured pots, large and small. At a Lingāyat wedding, new pots are
brought with much shouting, and deposited in the room in which the household god is
kept. An enclosure is made round the bride and bridegroom with cotton thread passed
round four pots placed at the four corners of the marriage pandal. Among the
Patnūlkārans, on the occasion of a wedding, a number of small pots are set up in a room,
and worshipped daily throughout the marriage ceremonies. The ceremonial of breaking a
pot containing water at the graveside prevails among many classes, e.g., Oddēs, Toreyas,
and Paraiyans.

At the time of the Aruvaththimūvar festival, or festival of the sixty-three saints, at

Mylapore in the city of Madras, crowds may be seen returning homeward after attending
it, each carrying a new pot (chatty), which they purchase so as not to go home empty-
handed. At the festival of Tiruvottiyūr, stalks of Amarantus gangeticus are in like
manner purchased.

It is noted, in the Gazetteer of the Madura district, that “a Kusavan can claim the hand of
his paternal aunt’s daughter. Marriage occurs before puberty. The tāli is tied by the
bridegroom’s sister, and the usual bride-price is paid. The ceremonies last three days.
One of them consists in the bridegroom’s sister sowing seeds in a pot, and, on the last
day of the wedding, the seedlings which have sprouted are taken with music to a river or
tank (pond), and thrown into it. When the bride attains maturity, a ceremony is
conducted by the caste priest, and consummation follows on the next auspicious day.”

Among the Kusavans, divorce and remarriage are permissible on mutual agreement, on
one party paying to the other the expenses of the latter’s original marriage (parisam). A
case came before the High Court of Madras,77 in which a Kusavan woman in the
Tinnevelly district, on the ground of ill-treatment, repaid her husband the parisam,
thereby dissolving the marriage, and married another man.

The potters are considered to be adepts in the treatment of cases of fracture. And it is still
narrated how one of them successfully set in splints the broken arm of Lord Elphinstone,
when Governor of Madras, after the English doctors had given up the job as hopeless.78
“In our village,” it is recorded,79 “cases of dislocations of bones and fractures, whether
simple, compound, comminuted or complicated, are taken in hand by the bone-setters,
who are no other than our potters. The village barber and the village potter are our
surgeons. While the barber treats cases of boils, wounds, and tumours, the potter
confines himself to cases of fracture and dislocations of bones.” The amateur treatment
by the unqualified potter sometimes gives rise to what is known as potter’s gangrene.
For the notes of the following case I am indebted to Captain F. F. Elwes, I.M.S. A
bricklayer, about a month and a half or two months prior to admission into hospital, fell
from a height, and injured his left arm. He went to a potter, who placed the arm and
forearm in a splint, the former in a line with the latter, i.e., fully extended. He kept the
splint on for about a month and, when it was removed, found that he was unable to bend
the arm at the elbow-joint. When he was examined at the hospital, practically no
movement, either active or passive, could be obtained at the elbow-joint. The lower end
of the humerus could be felt to be decidedly thickened both anteriorly and posteriorly.
There had apparently been a fracture of the lower end of the humerus. Röntgen ray
photographs showed an immense mass of callus extending over the anterior surface of
the elbow-joint from about two and a half inches above the lower end of the humerus to
about an inch below the elbow-joint. There was also some callus on the posterior surface
of the lower end of the humerus.

Concerning potter’s gangrene, Captain W. J. Niblock, I.M.S., writes as follows.80 “Cases

of gangrene, the result of treatment of fractures by the village potters, used to be
frequently met with in the General Hospital, Madras. These were usually brought when
the only possible treatment consisted in amputation well above the disease. Two of these
cases are indelibly impressed on my mind. Both were cases of gangrene of the leg, the
result of tight splinting by potters. The first patient was a boy of thirteen. Whilst a
student was removing the dressings on his admission, the foot came off in his hands,
leaving two inches of the lower ends of the tibia and fibula exposed, and absolutely
devoid of all the soft tissues, not even the periosteum being left. The second case was
that of a Hindu man, aged 46. He was taken to the operation theatre at once. Whilst
engaged in disinfecting my hands, I heard a dull thud on the floor of the operation
theatre, turned round, and found that the gangrenous leg, as the result of a struggle whilst
chloroform was being administered, had become separated at the knee-joint, and had
fallen on floor; or, to put it tersely, the man had kicked his leg off.”

In connection with the Tamil proverb “This is the law of my caste, and this is the law of
my belly,” the Rev. H. Jensen notes81 that “potters are never Vaishnavas; but potters at
Srirangam were compelled by the Vaishnava Brāhmans to put the Vaishnava mark on
their foreheads; otherwise the Brāhmans would not buy their pots for the temple. One
clever potter, having considered the difficulty, after making the Saivite symbol on his
forehead, put a big Vaishnava mark on his stomach. When rebuked for so doing by a
Brāhman, he replied as above.” The proverb “Does the dog that breaks the pots
understand how difficult it is to pile them up?” is said by Jensen to have reference to the
pots which are piled up at the potter’s house. A variant is “What is many days’ work for
the potter is but a few moment’s work for him who breaks the pots.”

In the Madura district, the Kusavans have Vēlan as a title.

The insigne of the Kusavans, recorded at Conjeeveram, is a potter’s wheel.82

Kutikkar.—A name for Dāsis in Travancore.

Kutraki (wild goat).—An exogamous sept of Jātapu.

Kūttādi.—Described, in the Census Report, 1901, as an occupational name, meaning a

rope-dancer, applied to Dommaras, Paraiyans, or Koravas. Ārya Kūttādi is a Tamil
synonym for Marātha (Ārē) Dommaras. Kūttādi also occurs as the name of a class of
mendicants attached to Kaikōlans.

Kūttan.—A division of Toda.

Kūttina.—Recorded, in the Travancore Census Report, 1901, as a sub-division of

Nāyar.

Kuttiya.—A sub-division of Kond.

Kuzhal.—The name of the flute used by shepherds and snake-charmers. It occurs as an

exogamous sept of Toreyas, the members of which must not hear the sound of this
musical instrument when at meals.

Kūzhappara.—Recorded, in the Travancore Census Report, 1901, as a sub-division of

Nāyar.

Kuzhiyan.—A synonym derived from kuzhi a pit, for Thanda Pulayans, in reference to
the legend that they were found emerging in a state of nudity from a pit.
1 Madras Census Report, 1891.
2 Original Inhabitants of Bharatavarsa, 1893.
3 Account of the Primitive Tribes and Monuments of the Nilgiris, 1873.
4 Ind. Ant., II, 1873.
5 Aboriginal Tribes of the Nilgiri hills, 1870.
6 Tribes inhabiting the Neilgherry hills. By a German Missionary.
7 The Todas, 1906.
8 A Singular Aboriginal Race of the Nilagiris.
9 Tribes of the Neilgherries, 1868.
10 At Kotamalē there are three temples, two dedicated to Kāmatarāya and one to Kālikai.
11 Goa and the Blue Mountains, 1851.
12 Tribes inhabiting the Neilgherry hills. By a German Missionary.
13 Reise nach Süd-Indien, 1894.
14 Mysore Census Report, 1891.
15 Madras Census Report, 1901.
16 Ind. Ant., III, 1874.
17 Cf. Pendukkumekki and Valasu sub-divisions of the Idaiyan caste.
18 The present note is mainly based on the articles by the Rev. J. Cain in the Indian
Antiquary V, 1876, and VIII, 1879; and the Madras Christian College Magazine, V, 1887–
8, and VI, 1888–9.
19 Madras Census Report, 1891.
20 Calcutta Christian Observer, May and June, 1853, Second Edition, by the Rev. J. M.
Descombes and J. A. Grierson, Calcutta, 1900.
21 Gazetteer of the Godāvari district.
22 Gazetteer of the Godāvari district.
23 Notes for a Lecture on the Tribes and Castes of Bombay, 1907.
24 Manual of the Godāvari district.
25 Rev. W. Taylor. iii. 1862.
26 This account is taken from a note by Mr. N. Subramani Aiyar.
27 Ethnog. Survey of Cochin. Monograph No. II, Kshatriyas, 1906.
28 Gazetteer of the Vizagapatam district.
29 Monograph, Ethnog. Survey of Cochin, Kootan, 1905.
30 Manual of the South Canara district.
31 Indian Forester, XXXII, 1906.
32 This account is taken from a note by Mr. N. Subramani Aiyar.
33 Madras Mail, 1907.
34 Ind. Ant., IV, 1875.
35 Madras Census Report, 1891.
36 Manual of the North Arcot district.
37 Not collectors of art pottery, but Collectors or District Magistrates.
38 Madras Mail, 1903.
39 Manual of the South Canara district.
40 Mysore Census Report, 1901.
41 Mysore and Coorg Gazetteer.
42 Manual of the Salem district.
43 Ind. Ant., X, 1881.
44 Manual of the Madura district.
45 Madras Census Report, 1891.
46 Manual of Malabar.
47 Madras Census Report, 1901.
48 Manual of the North Arcot district.
49 Mysore Census Report, 1901.
50 Gazetteer of the Anantapur district.
51 Gazetteer of the Bellary district.
52 Manual of the North Arcot district.
53 W.F.S. Ind. Ant., VI, 1877.
54 Madras Mail, November 1905.
55 Manual of the North Arcot district.
56 Manual of the Nilgiri district.
57 Mysore Census Report, 1901.
58 Journey through Mysore, Canara, and Malabar, 1807.
59 Asian, 1902.
60 Manual of the Nīlgiri district.
61 Aboriginal Race of the Neilgherry hills, 1832.
62 Ind. Ant., VI, 1877.
63 Rude Stone Monuments.
64 Police Admn. Report, 1900.
65 Agricult. Ledger Series, No. 47, 1904.
66 Comptes rendus des Séances de la Société de Biologie, T. LVIII, 1019.
67 Gazetteer of the Malabar district.
68 Op. cit.
69 Manual of the North Arcot district.
70 Tennent, Ceylon.
71 Madras Census Report, 1891.
72 Gazetteer of the Madura district.
73 Journ. Roy. Asiat. Soc., 1899, 267–8.
74 Madras Pottery. Journ. Ind. Arts, VII, 1897.
75 Brāhmanism and Hinduism.
76 Gazetteer of the Madura district.
77 Ind. Law Reports, Madras Series, XVII, 1894.
78 A Native. Pen and ink sketches of Native life in S. India.
79 Madras Mail.
80 Trans. S. Ind. branch, Brit. Med. Association, XIV, 1906.
81 Classified Collection of Tamil Proverbs, 1897.
82 J. S. F. Mackenzie. Ind. Ant., IV, 1875.
 L

Labbai.—The Labbais are summed up, in the Madras Census Report, 1901,
as being “a Musalman caste of partly Tamil origin, the members of which
are traders and betel vine (Piper Betle) growers. They seem to be distinct
from the Marakkāyars, as they do not intermarry with them, and their Tamil
contains a much smaller admixture of Arabic than that used by the
Marakkāyars. In the Tanjore district, the Labbais are largely betel vine
cultivators, and are called Kodikkālkāran (betel vine people).” In the
Census Report, 1881, the Labbais are said to be “found chiefly in Tanjore
and Madura. They are the Māppilas of the Coromandel coast, that is to say,
converted Dravidians, or Hindus, with a slight admixture of Arab blood.
They are thrifty, industrious, and enterprising; plucky mariners, and expert
traders. They emigrate to the Straits Settlements and Burma without
restriction.” In the Census Report, 1891, they are described as “a mixed
class of Muhammadans, consisting partly of compulsory converts to Islām
made by the early Muhammadan invaders and Tippu Sultān.” As regards
their origin, Colonel Wilks, the historian of Mysore, writes as follows.1
“About the end of the first century of the Hejirah, or the early part of the
eighth century A.D., Hijaj Ben Gusaff, Governor of Irāk, a monster
abhorred for his cruelties even among Musalmans, drove some persons of
the house of Hashem to the desperate resolution of abandoning for ever
their native country. Some of them landed on that part of the western coast
of India called the Concan, the others to the eastward of Cape Comorin. The
descendants of the former are Navaiyats, of the latter the Labbai, a name
probably given to them by the natives from that Arabic particle (a
modification of labbick) corresponding with the English ‘Here I am,’
indicating attention on being spoken to [i.e., the response of the servant to
the call of his master. A further explanation of the name is that the Labbais
were originally few in number, and were often oppressed by other
Muhammadans and Hindus, to whom they cried labbek, or we are your
servants]. Another account says they are the descendants of the Arabs, who,
in the eleventh and and twelfth centuries, came to India for trade. These
Arabs were persecuted by the Moghals, and they then returned to their
country, leaving behind their children born of Indian women. The word
Labbai seems to be of recent origin, for, in the Tamil lexicons, this caste is
usually known as Sōnagan, i.e., a native of Sōnagam (Arabia), and this
name is common at the present day. Most of the Labbais are traders; some
are engaged in weaving cōrah (sedge) mats; and others in diving at the pearl
and chank fisheries of the Gulf of Manaar. Tamil is their home-speech, and
they have furnished some fair Tamil poets. In religion they are orthodox
Musalmans. Their marriage ceremony, however, closely resembles that of
the lower Hindu castes, the only difference being that the former cite
passages from the Korān, and their females do not appear in public even
during marriages. Girls are not married before puberty. Their titles are
Marakkāyan (Marakalar, boatmen), and Rāvuttan (a horse soldier). Their
first colony appears to have been Kāyalpatnam in the Tinnevelly district.”
In the Manual of the Madura district, the Labbais are described as “a fine,
strong, active race, who generally contrive to keep themselves in easy
circumstances. Many of them live by traffic. Many are smiths, and do
excellent work as such. Others are fishermen, boatmen, and the like. They
are to be found in great numbers in the Zamindaris, particularly near the
sea-coast.”

Concerning the use of a Malay blow-gun (glorified pea-shooter) by the

Labbais of the Madura district, Dr. N. Annandale writes as follows.2 “While
visiting the sub-division of Rāmnād in the coast of the Madura district in
1905, I heard that there were, among the Muhammadan people known
locally as Lubbais or Labbis, certain men who made a livelihood by
shooting pigeons with blow-guns. At Kilakarai, a port on the Gulf of
Manaar, I was able to obtain a specimen, as well as particulars. According
to my Labbi informants, the ‘guns’ are purchased by them in Singapore
from Bugis traders, and brought to India. There is still a considerable trade,
although diminished, between Kilakarai and the ports of Burma and the
Straits Settlements. It is carried on entirely by Muhammadans in native
sailing vessels, and a large proportion of the Musalmans of Kilakarai have
visited Penang and Singapore. It is not difficult to find among them men
who can speak Straits Malay. The local name for the blow-gun is senguttān,
and is derived in popular etymology from the Tamil sen (above) and kutu
(to stab). I have little doubt that it is really a corruption of the Malay name
of the weapon—sumpitan. The blow-gun which I obtained measures 189.6
cm. in length: its external diameter at the breech is 30mm., and at the other
extremity 24 mm. The diameter of the bore, however, is practically the
same throughout, viz., 12 mm. Both ends are overlaid with tin, and the
breech consists of a solid piece of tin turned on a lathe and pierced, the
diameter of the aperture being the same as that of the bore. The solid tin
measures 35 mm. in length, and is continuous with the foil which covers the
base of the wooden tube. The tube itself is of very hard, heavy, dark wood,
apparently that of a palm. It is smooth, polished and regular on its outer
surface, and the bore is extremely true and even. At a distance of 126 mm.
from the distal extremity, at the end of the foil which protects the tip of the
weapon, a lump of mud is fixed on the tube as a ‘sight.’ The ornamentation
of the weapon is characteristic, and shows that it must have been made in
North Borneo. It consists of rings, leaf-shaped designs with an open centre,
and longitudinal bars, all inlaid with tin. The missiles used at Kilakarai were
not darts, but little pellets of soft clay worked with the fingers immediately
before use. The use of pellets instead of darts is probably an Indian
makeshift. Although a ‘sight’ is used in some Bornean blow-guns, I was
told, probably correctly, that the lump of mud on the Kilakarai specimen
had been added in India. I was told that it was the custom at Kilakarai to
lengthen the tin breech of the ‘gun’ in accordance with the capacity of the
owner’s lungs. He first tried the tube by blowing a pellet through it, and, if
he felt he could blow through a longer tube, he added another piece of tin at
the proximal end. The pellet is placed in the mouth, into which the butt of
the tube is also introduced. The pellet is then worked into the tube with the
tongue, and is propelled by a violent effort of the lungs. No wadding is
used. Aim is rendered inaccurate, in the first place by the heaviness of the
tube, and secondly by the unsuitable nature of the missile.” A toy blow-gun
is also figured by Dr. Annandale, such as is used as a plaything by Labbai
boys, and consisting of a hollow cane with a piece of tinned iron twisted
round the butt, and fastened by soldering the two ends together. I have
received from the Madura district a blowpipe consisting of a long black-
japanned tin tube, like a billiard-cue case, with brass fittings and terminals.

In connection with the dugong (Halicore dugong), which is caught in the

Gulf of Manaar, Dr. Annandale writes as follows.3 “The presence of large
glands in connection with the eye afforded some justification for the
Malay’s belief that the Dugong weeps when captured. They regard the tears
of the īkandugong (‘Dugong fish’) as a powerful love-charm.
Muhammadan fishermen on the Gulf of Manaar appeared to be ignorant of
this usage, but told me that a ‘doctor’ once went out with them to collect the
tears of a Dugong, should they capture one. Though they do not call the
animal a fish, they are less particular about eating its flesh than are the
Patani Malays and the Trang Samsams, who will not do so unless the
‘fish’s’ throat has been cut in the manner orthodox for warm-blooded
animals. The common Tamil name for the Dugong is kadalpūdru (‘sea-
pig’); but the fishermen at Kilakarai (Lubbais) call it āvillīah.”

Concerning the Labbais of the South Arcot district, Mr. W. Francis writes as
follows.4 “The Labbais are often growers of betel, especially round about
Nellikuppam, and they also conduct the skin trade of the district, are petty
shop-keepers, and engage in commerce at the ports. Their women are clever
at weaving mats from the screw-pine (Pandanus fascicularis), which grows
so abundantly along the sandy shore of the Bay of Bengal. The Labbais
very generally wear a high hat of plaited coloured grass, and a tartan
(kambāyam) waist-cloth, and so are not always readily distinguishable in
appearance from the Marakkāyars, but some of them use the Hindu turban
and waist-cloth, and let their womankind dress almost exactly like Hindu
women. In the same way, some Labbais insist on the use of Hindustāni in
their houses, while others speak Tamil. There seems to be a growing dislike
to the introduction of Hindu rites into domestic ceremonies, and the
processions and music, which were once common at marriages, are slowly
giving place to a simpler ritual more in resemblance with the nikka
ceremony of the Musalman faith.”

In a note on the Labbais of the North Arcot district,5 Mr. H. A. Stuart

describes them as being “very particular Muhammadans, and many belong
to the Wāhabi section. Adhering to the rule of the Korān, most of them
refuse to lend money at interest, but get over the difficulty by taking a share
in the profits derived by others in their loans. They are, as a rule, well-to-do,
and excellently housed. The first thing a Labbai does is to build himself a
commodious tiled building, and the next to provide himself with gay attire.
They seem to have a prejudice against repairing houses, and prefer letting
them go to ruin, and building new ones. The ordinary Musalmans appear to
entertain similar ideas on this point.”

Some Kodikkālkāran Labbais have adopted Hindu customs in their

marriage ceremonies. Thus a bamboo is set up as a milk-post, and a tāli is
tied round the neck of the bride while the Nikkadiva is being read. In other
respects, they practice Muhammadan rites.

Concerning the Labbais who have settled in the Mysore province, I gather6
that they are “an enterprising class of traders, settled in nearly all the large
towns. They are vendors of hardware and general merchants, collectors of
hides, and large traders in coffee produce, and generally take up any kind of
lucrative business. It is noteworthy, as denoting the perseverance and
pushing character of the race that, in the large village of Gargēsvari in
Tirumakūdlu, Narsipur tāluk, the Labbēs have acquired by purchase or
otherwise large extents of river-irrigated lands, and have secured to
themselves the leadership among the villagers within a comparatively
recent period.”

For the purpose of the education of Labbai and Marakkāyar children, the
Korān and other books have been published in the Tamil language, but with
Arabic characters. Concerning these Arab-Tamil books I gather that “when
a book thus written is read, it is hardly possible to say that it is Tamil—it
sounds like Arabic, and the guttural sounds of certain words have softened
down into Arabic sounds. Certain words, mostly of religious connection,
have been introduced, and even words of familiar daily use. For instance, a
Labbai would not use the familiar word Annai for brother, Tagappan for
father, or Chithammai for aunt, but would call such relatives Bhai, Bava,
and Khula. Since the books are written in Arabic characters, they bear a
religious aspect. The Labbai considers it a sacred and meritorious duty to
publish them, and distribute them gratis among the school-going children. A
book so written or printed is called a kitāb, rather than its Tamil equivalent
pustagam, and is considered sacred. It commands almost the same respect
as the Korān itself, in regard to which it has been commanded ‘Touch not
with unclean hands.’ A book of a religious nature, written or printed in
Tamil characters, may be left on the ground, but a kitab of even secular
character will always be placed on a rihal or seat, and, when it falls to the
ground, it is kissed and raised to the forehead. The origin of this literature
may be traced to Kāyalpatnam, Mēlapālayam, and other important Labbai
towns in the Tinnevelly district.” The following rendering of the second
Kalima will serve as an example of Arab-Tamil.

Ladāf.—Recorded, at the census, 1901, as a synonym of Dūdēkula. A

corruption of nad-dāf (a cotton-dresser).

Lādar.—It is noted, in the Mysore Census Report, 1901, that “the Lādars
are a class of general merchants, found chiefly in the cities, where they
supply all kinds of stores, glass-ware, etc.” I gather7 that the “Lād or
Suryavaunshi Vānis say that they are the children of Surya, the sun. They
are said to have come from Benares to Maisur under pressure of famine
about 700 years ago. But their caste name seems to show that their former
settlement was not in Benares, but in South Gujarāt or Lāt Desh. They are a
branch of the Lād community of Maisur, with whom they have social
intercourse. They teach their boys to read and write Kanarese, and succeed
as traders in grain, cloth, and groceries.”
Lāla.—The names of some Bondilis, or immigrants from Bandelkand, who
have settled in the North Arcot district and other localities, terminate with
Lāla. Lāla also occurs as a synonym for Kāyasth, the writer caste of Bengal,
immigrants from Northern India, who have settled in Madras, where there
are a number of families. “In Madras,” Mr. S. M. Natesa Sastri informs us,8
“the Mahrattas and Lālas—mostly non-Brāhman—observe the Holi feast
with all sorts of hideousness. The youngsters of the Lāla sect make, in each
house or in common for a whole street, an image of Holika, sing obscene
songs before it, offer sweetmeats, fruits and other things in mock worship of
the image, exchange horseplay compliments by syringing coloured water on
each other’s clothes, and spend the whole period of the feast singing,
chatting, and abusing. Indecent language is allowed to be indulged in during
the continuance of this jolly occasion. At about 1 A.M. on the full moon
day, the image of Holika is burnt, and children sit round the embers, and
beat their mouths, making a mock mourning sound. Tender children are
swung over the fire for a second by the fond mothers, and this is believed to
remove all kinds of danger from the babies.”

Lāligonda.—Recorded, in the Madras Census Report, 1901, as Lingāyats,

consisting of Canarese-speaking Kāpus or Vakkaligas.

Lambādi.—The Lambādis are also called Lambāni, Brinjāri or Banjāri,

Boipāri, Sugāli or Sukāli. By some Sugāli is said to be a corruption of
supāri (betel nut), because they formerly traded largely therein.9 “The
Banjarās,” Mr. G. A. Grierson writes,10 “are the well-known tribe of
carriers who are found all over Western and Southern India.11 One of their
principal sub-castes is known under the name of Labhānī, and this name (or
some related one) is often applied to the whole tribe. The two names appear
each under many variations, such as Banjāri, Vanjārī, Brinjārī, Labhāni,
Labānī, Labānā, Lambādi, and Lambānī. The name Banjāra and its
congeners is probably derived from the Sanskrit Vānijyakārakas, a
merchant, through the Prakrit Vānijjaāraō, a trader. The derivation of
Labhānī or Labānī, etc., is obscure. It has been suggested that it means salt
carrier from the Sanskrit lavanah, salt, because the tribe carried salt, but this
explanation goes against several phonetic rules, and does not account for
the forms of the word like Labhānī or Lambānī. Banjārī falls into two main
dialects—that of the Panjab and Gujarat, and that of elsewhere (of which
we may take the Labhānī of Berar as the standard). All these different
dialects are ultimately to be referred to the language of Western Rajputana.
The Labhānī of Berar possesses the characteristics of an old form of speech,
which has been preserved unchanged for some centuries. It may be said to
be based partly on Mārwāri and partly on Northern Gujarātī.” It is noted by
Mr. Grierson that the Banjārī dialect of Southern India is mixed with the
surrounding Dravidian languages. In the Census Report, 1901, Tanda (the
name of the Lambādi settlements or camps), and Vāli Sugrīva are given as
synonyms for the tribal name. Vāli and Sugrīva were two monkey chiefs
mentioned in the Rāmāyana, from whom the Lambādis claim to be
descended. The legend, as given by Mr. F. S. Mullaly,12 is that “there were
two brothers, Mōta and Mōla, descendants of Sugrīva. Mōla had no issue,
so, being an adept in gymnastic feats, he went with his wife Radha, and
exhibited his skill at ‘Rathanatch’ before three rājahs. They were so taken
with Mōla’s skill, and the grace and beauty of Radha, and of her playing of
the nagāra or drum, that they asked what they could do for them. Mōla
asked each of the rājahs for a boy, that he might adopt him as his son. This
request was accorded, and Mōla adopted three boys. Their names were
Chavia, Lohia Panchar, and Ratāde. These three boys, in course of time,
grew up and married. From Bheekya, the eldest son of Ratāde, started the
clan known as the Bhutyas, and from this clan three minor sub-divisions
known as the Maigavuth, Kurumtoths, and Kholas. The Bhutyas form the
principal class among the Lambādis.” According to another legend,13 “one
Chāda left five sons, Mūla, Mōta, Nathād, Jōgdā, and Bhīmdā. Chavān
(Chauhān), one of the three sons of Mūla, had six sons, each of whom
originated a clan. In the remote past, a Brāhman from Ajmir, and a Marāta
from Jōtpur in the north of India, formed alliances with, and settled among
these people, the Marāta living with Rathōl, a brother of Chavān. The
Brāhman married a girl of the latter’s family, and his offspring added a
branch to the six distinct clans of Chavān. These clans still retain the names
of their respective ancestors, and, by reason of cousinship, intermarriage
between some of them is still prohibited. They do, however, intermarry with
the Brāhman offshoot, which was distinguished by the name of Vadtyā,
from Chavān’s family. Those belonging to the Vadtyā clan still wear the
sacred thread. The Marāta, who joined the Rathōl family, likewise founded
an additional branch under the name of Khamdat to the six clans of the
latter, who intermarry with none but the former. It is said that from the
Khamdat clan are recruited most of the Lambādi dacoits. The clan
descended from Mōta, the second son of Chāda, is not found in the Mysore
country. The descendants of Nathād, the third son, live by catching wild
birds, and are known as Mirasikat, Paradi, or Vāgri (see Kuruvikkāran). The
Jōgdās are people of the Jōgi caste. Those belonging to the Bhīmdā family
are the peripatetic blacksmiths, called Bailu Kammāra. The Lambāni
outcastes compose a sub-division called Thālya, who, like the Holayas, are
drum-beaters, and live in detached habitations.”

As pointing to a distinction between Sukālis and Banjāris, it is noted by the

Rev. J. Cain14 that “the Sukālīlu do not travel in such large companies as
the Banjārīlu, nor are their women dressed as gaudily as the Banjāri
women. There is but little friendship between these two classes, and the
Sukāli would regard it as anything but an honour to be called a Banjāri, and
the Banjāri is not flattered when called a Sukāli.” It is, however, noted, in
the Madras Census Report, 1891, that enquiries show that Lambādis and
Sugālis are practically the same. And Mr. H. A. Stuart, writing concerning
the inhabitants of the North Arcot district, states that the names Sugāli,
Lambādi and Brinjāri “seem to be applied to one and the same class of
people, though a distinction is made. The Sugālis are those who have
permanently settled in the district; the Lambādis are those who commonly
pass through from the coast to Mysore; and the Brinjāris appear to be those
who come down from Hyderabad or the Central Provinces.” It is noted by
Mr. W. Francis15 that, in the Bellary district, the Lambādis do not recognise
the name Sugāli.

Orme mentions the Lambādis as having supplied the Comte de Bussy with
store, cattle and grain, when besieged by the Nizam’s army at Hyderabad.
In an account of the Brinjāris towards the close of the eighteenth century,
Moor16 writes that they “associate chiefly together, seldom or never mixing
with other tribes. They seem to have no home, nor character, but that of
merchants, in which capacity they travel great distances to whatever parts
are most in want of merchandise, which is the greatest part corn. In times of
war they attend, and are of great assistance to armies, and, being neutral, it
is a matter of indifference to them who purchase their goods. They marched
and formed their own encampments apart, relying on their own courage for
protection; for which purpose the men are all armed with swords or
matchlocks. The women drive the cattle, and are the most robust we ever
saw in India, undergoing a great deal of labour with apparent ease. Their
dress is peculiar, and their ornaments are so singularly chosen that we have,
we are confident, seen women who (not to mention a child at their backs)
have had eight or ten pounds weight in metal or ivory round their arms and
legs. The favourite ornaments appear to be rings of ivory from the wrist to
the shoulder, regularly increasing in size, so that the ring near the shoulder
will be immoderately large, sixteen or eighteen inches, or more perhaps in
circumference. These rings are sometimes dyed red. Silver, lead, copper, or
brass, in ponderous bars, encircle their shins, sometimes round, others in the
form of festoons, and truly we have seen some so circumstanced that a
criminal in irons would not have much more to incommode him than these
damsels deem ornamental and agreeable trappings on a long march, for they
are never dispensed with in the hottest weather. A kind of stomacher, with
holes for the arms, and tied behind at the bottom, covers their breast, and
has some strings of cowries,17 depending behind, dangling at their backs.
The stomacher is curiously studded with cowries, and their hair is also
bedecked with them. They wear likewise ear-rings, necklaces, rings on the
fingers and toes, and, we think, the nut or nose jewel. They pay little
attention to cleanliness; their hair, once plaited, is not combed or opened
perhaps for a month; their bodies or cloths are seldom washed; their arms
are indeed so encased with ivory that it would be no easy matter to clean
them. They are chaste and affable; any indecorum offered to a woman
would be resented by the men, who have a high sense of honour on that
head. Some are men of great property; it is said that droves of loaded
bullocks, to the number of fifty or sixty thousand, have at different times
followed the Bhow’s army.”
 Lambādis.

The Lambādis of Bellary “have a tradition among them of having first come
to the Deccan from the north with Moghul camps as commissariat carriers.
Captain J. Briggs, in writing about them in 1813, states that, as the Deccan
is devoid of a single navigable river, and has no roads that admit of wheeled
traffic, the whole of the extensive intercourse is carried on by laden
bullocks, the property of the Banjāris.”18 Concerning the Lambādis of the
same district, Mr. Francis writes that “they used to live by pack-bullock
trade, and they still remember the names of some of the generals who
employed their forebears. When peace and the railways came and did away
with these callings, they fell back for a time upon crime as a livelihood, but
they have now mostly taken to agriculture and grazing.” Some Lambādis
are, at the present time (1908), working in the Mysore manganese mines.

Writing in 1825, Bishop Heber noted19 that “we passed a number of

Brinjarees, who were carrying salt. They all had bows, arrows, sword and
shield. Even the children had, many of them, bows and arrows suited to
their strength, and I saw one young woman equipped in the same manner.”

Of the Lambādis in time of war, the Abbé Dubois inform us20 that “they
attach themselves to the army where discipline is least strict. They come
swarming in from all parts, hoping, in the general disorder and confusion, to
be able to thieve with impunity. They make themselves very useful by
keeping the market well supplied with the provisions that they have stolen
on the march. They hire themselves and their large herds of cattle to
whichever contending party will pay them best, acting as carriers of the
supplies and baggage of the army. They were thus employed, to the number
of several thousands, by the English in their last war with the Sultan of
Mysore. The English, however, had occasion to regret having taken these
untrustworthy and ill-disciplined people into their service, when they saw
them ravaging the country through which they passed, and causing more
annoyance than the whole of the enemy’s army.”

It is noted by Wilks21 that the travelling grain merchants, who furnished the
English army under Cornwallis with grain during the Mysore war, were
Brinjāris, and, he adds, “they strenuously objected, first, that no capital
execution should take place without the sanction of the regular judicial
authority; second, that they should be punishable for murder. The
executions to which they demanded assent, or the murders for which they
were called to account, had their invariable origin in witchcraft, or the
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