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Chapter III: Old English Poetry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2026

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Extract

This is part of the Offa passage, which may not be quite as old as the original Widsiđ (see Chambers 202), though certainly not a very late interpolation. No verb is expressed in this sentence, and the five words of line 40 permit of certain variations in syntax. From the predication that has preceded, however, something like ‘achieved’, ‘won’ or ‘had’ is understood, thus : ‘No man of the same age won greater valor in single combat than he.‘ I scan line 40a as type C. The word efeneald, whenever it is used as a adjective, may also govern the dative, but it does not govern the dative when used as a substantive, which function it undoubtedly has here. Only the genitive accompanies the substantive in OE : his efeneald, etc., and him would be superfluous if taken with efeneald.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 5 , Issue 4-Part2: Language Monograph No. 4: The Germanic Case of Comparison with a Special Study of English , December 1929, pp. 38 - 55
Copyright
Copyright © 1929 Linguistic Society of America

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References

page 38 note 1 Professor R. W. Chambers agrees that this interpretation suits the context and is grammatically correct. The inverted order and separation from the comparative are frequent in OE, as may be seen in the following pages.

page 38 note 2 There are many examples in OE, of the genitive with the noun efeneald, but no precedent for the dative with it, which would mean ' one equal in years with him ', or ' a contemporary with him'.

page 43 note 1 The syntax requires ođrum, which was first supplied by Ettmüller; or else other changes must be made, such as Thorpe's alteration to wundorlicne.

page 44 note 1 The Sprachschatz 418 construes leoman as dative (ablative). This cannot be correct.

page 46 note 1 Cf. J. A. Giles, Sancti Aldhelmi Opera 272 ff. Oxonii : Parker, 1844.

page 48 note 1 For examples and use of prepositions in comparison, cf. my Comparison of Inequality 29, 73.

page 48 note 2 Cf. J. D. Bruce, The A-S. Version of the Book of Psalms 120 ff., Baltimore, 1893.

page 48 note 3 Concerning the weakening of the ablative in Vulgar Latin, cf. Small, Inequality 49 ff. and 60 ff.

page 50 note 1 W. J. Sedgefield, Alfred's Translation of Boethius. Oxford : Clarendon, 1899.

page 50 note 2 Latin text from edition of R. Peiper, Boetii Philosophiae Consolationis, Leipzig: Teubner, 1871.

page 55 note 1 If it should be remarked that the largest number (18) of examples of the case occur in one poem, the Riddles, and that this may represent an unnatural condition, let it be noticed that the particle overlaps the case twenty-two times in the same piece of writing, so that the ratio within the Riddles itself is almost precisely the same as that in the rest of the poetry, and that if the Riddles were omitted from the reckoning the proportion would still be the same.