Richard Dance

Is the Verb Die Derived from Old Norse? A Review of the Evidence

Like a sizeable number of comparable lexical items that first gained textual currency in the writings of the early Middle English period, the verb die is a word whose etymology is, if not entirely shrouded in mystery, foggy enough to have elicited a significant amount of argument. Attempts to assess past discussions are nonetheless few and rather unreliable. This is all the more undesirable when it comes to such a crucial lexical item, the analysis of whose history has produced a number of unfortunate myths and errors that seem to have become ingrained in subsequent scholarship. It is therefore the main purpose of these notes to sketch out the likely details of the history of die and to offer a discussion of the evidence presented in the past, in the attempt to clarify the possible conclusions that can be drawn and the attitudes that bear upon them. This discussion must necessarily reflect a wide range of materials and approaches, from comparative philology to textual and literary studies, and therefore may stand in its own right as an indication of the breadth of matter that can be involved in formulating etymological hypotheses in complex instances. But more than this, I hope to highlight the types of decisions themselves that need to be made in order to express judgements of this kind; of particular importance are the nature and trustworthiness of the opinions upon which we often come to rely when trying to establish the case in the context of medieval English for regarding one or another word as either a foreign borrowing, especially derived from Old Norse, or a native item. These remarks are applicable to instances much more numerous than simply that of die itself.

Old English Enigmatic Poems and the Play of the Texts (Studies in the Early Middle Ages, 13)

These are two important collections of essays on Old English poetry by John Niles. The first volume (2006) treats the Riddles and certain well-known ‘‘riddle-like’’ pieces, approaching them and the ‘‘hermeneutic challenges’’ they pose as a microcosm of Old English verse at large, which is ‘‘a good deal more playful than is often acknowledged’’ (p. 4). The book offers a series of detailed readings of these texts in their historical contexts (including that of material culture) in order to pinpoint what Niles regards as their most ‘‘elegant’’ or ‘‘felicitous’’ interpretations. The first chapter, ‘‘Exeter Book Riddle 74 and the Play of the Text’’ (which first appeared in Anglo-Saxon England 27 [1998]), sets out the critical and methodological underpinnings for the essays as a whole, and argues that this much-debated riddle be solved as ‘‘ship (made of oak wood)’’ (or more precisely OE ac ond bat). Revised or extended solutions are likewise the aim of the next two chapters. In ‘‘Exeter Book Riddle 55: Some Gallows Humour’’, Niles accepts that the object in question is a receptacle for weapons of some sort but, on the basis of the imagery played with in the text, suggests a more precisely imagined shape for such a structure (an OE *wæpen-hengen). The next essay suggests ‘‘New Answers to Exeter Book Riddles 36, 58, 70 and 75/76’’. Of these, I found the proposal for number 58 neatest and most compelling; the others are more contentious (particularly when it comes to the suggestion of a deliberately ‘‘ambiguously drawn’’ rune in 75/76, which resurfaces in the subsequent chapter on The Husband’s Message). Chapter 4, ‘‘Answering the Riddles in their Own Tongue’’, extends this fascinating survey to the remainder of the riddle collection in the Exeter Book and establishes the principle of giving solutions in Old English wherever possible. This is a rewarding exercise in seeking out what can often be demonstrated as culturally the most apposite signifiers for the job, and English Studies Vol. 90, No. 1, February 2009, 112–126

Cause and Effect in Beowulf: Motivation and Driving Forces behind Words and Deeds

Martin Puhvel’s new critical reading of Beowulf draws for its justification upon his avowed feeling that the dramatic relations and ‘‘psychological’’ realization of the characters in the poem have been insufficiently scrutinized in recent years. His book hence aims to provide ‘‘an analytic consideration of the interaction of the characters in Beowulf, with the accent on discerning, scrutinizing, and attempting to elucidate what seem to me the motivating factors—societal, psychological, political, religious, etc.—behind their attitudes, words, and actions’’ (p. v). The phrase ‘‘what seem to me’’ is crucial here, since what we are offered is essentially a personal, and often an intuitive, interpretation, reading between the lines of the characters’ speeches and actions in order to make inferences based upon what Puhvel believes an audience would/could presume of their motivations and beliefs. The book progresses through fifteen quite short chapters, which treat the story largely in narrative order; important foci include the poet’s presentation in noble terms of apparently minor figures like the Danish coastguard and Wulfgar, and stress is placed on Beowulf’s diplomatic skill but also enormous ego, and upon the waning of his success as the three monster fights are played out. This critical survey of the narrative is leavened with two chapters that take a more thematic angle: Chapter 7 (‘‘The Pursuit of Glory’’) draws on a 1995 article by Puhvel to muse upon the high regard in which fame is apparently held in the poem, and suggests that beliefs in an afterlife won through courage may underlie this at some remove; and Chapter 14 (‘‘The Religious Duality’’) propounds the theory that ‘‘the story of Beowulf reflects societies of very rudimentary Christianity’’ (p. 91) but which show residual pagan beliefs, a ‘‘literary compromise’’ between the delineation of Christian virtue and pagan heroic values that reflects the mix of real-life attitudes at a time of religious transition. Throughout his discussion, Puhvel professedly offers only limited references to previous scholarship, when he regards these as of direct bearing upon his own points; otherwise, ‘‘The basic intent of this study is the presentation of my own ideas, observations, and impressions’’ (p. vi). In some ways this is an attractive approach, making for a spare, direct tour of the narrative of Beowulf that can English Studies Vol. 88, No. 6, December 2007, 724 – 741