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The History of English Podcast
Episode 61: Earls and Churls
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During his reign as King of England, Canute established a new class of nobles who became known as earls. The authority of the earls was second only to the king himself. The king and the nobles ruled over the common … Continue reading →
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- [00:10]
Kevin Stroud
Welcome to the History of English Podcast, a podcast about the history of the English language. This is episode 61, Earls and Churls. In this episode, we're going to continue to look at the politics and culture of England in the first half of the 11th century leading up to the Norman Conquest. We'll explore the development of a new noble class in England, the earls. They were the most powerful nobles, second only to the king himself. And with England being ruled by a Scandinavian king who was often out of the country, those earls were in a position to play an even greater role in English politics. We're also going to look at the Anglo Saxon commoners, the peasants who worked in the fields and on the farms. These people were sometimes known as churls, and we're going to look at their life in the countryside. So we'll examine the many old English words associated with farming and their rural life in England. But before we begin, let me remind you that the website for the podcast is historyofenglishpodcast.com and you can always reach me directly@kevinistoryofenglishpodcast.com and I'm on Twitter glishhistpod. Now, this time we're going to continue to draw a little closer to the year 1066. And I want to begin by emphasizing that the Norman Conquest didn't just change England politically and linguistically. It also rearranged the social and economic system. The Normans brought the so called feudal system with them from France. That included many of the things which we associate with medieval England. Things like armored knights and massive castles, the code of chivalry and a highly regimented social structure. By this point in our story, that system was already in place in much of the old Carolingian empire, basically modern France and Germany. But the situation was a bit different in England. Now, from a modern perspective, the two systems look very similar. Both had a class of unfree slaves or serfs. Both relied upon peasants to do much of the hard work and labor. Both had a warrior class, the knights of the feudal system and the thanes of Anglo Saxon England. And they both had a class of nobles and lords. But if we look a little closer, we see that the English system was a little more flexible. It was a little easier to move from one class to another on that side of the channel. But it was still very regimented. And Anglo Saxon law treated people within each class differently. The were guild or man. Money that had to be paid for the commission of a crime varied depending on the victim's class. The penalty was much greater for killing a warrior or thane than for killing a lowly peasant. And the penalty was greater for a peasant than a slave. So those social classes mattered. And before we move on to the Normans and the feudal system, I want to take this opportunity to examine the Anglo Saxon system, when which was soon to be replaced. And I really want to focus on the people near the bottom rungs of that ladder. The peasants, they did much of the hard work in what was still an agricultural society. And that farming culture left English with a lot of common everyday words. So let's begin this episode where we left off last time with the reign of King Cnut, the Dane, who conquered England in 1016. So we begin about a half century before the Norman Conquest. But at this point, the Norman threat wasn't really on anybody's mind. Everybody's attention was focused on the new Scandinavian conqueror and king. As we saw last time, Cnut's reign got off to a rocky start. His Danish troops occupied the country, and he soon levied a massive Danegeld. But he smoothed over many of those problems with a great assembly at Oxford, where he basically agreed to rule England as an English king under English law. That compromise provided the stability which he needed, and he actually enjoyed a very long reign of almost 20 years. And during that time, he was generally regarded as a good king who oversaw a return to peace and prosperity. Now, early on, Canute made two decisions which shaped the future of England. The first concerned his wife, and the other concerned the administration of the kingdom. So let's start with his wife, because those developments really helped to set the background for the events of 1066. As you may recall, Cnut was a teenager when he came to England with his father, Sweyn Forkbeard. Sweyn had landed in the north of England, and he found some support there. To seal his alliance with the local nobles, Sweyn arranged a marriage between his son Cnut and the daughter of a local nobleman. Her name was Elgafue, and she and Cnut had two sons named Sweyn and Harold. But then Cnut became king. He was a Danish ruler on English soil, and he had brought an end to the Wessex line of kings, which had stretched back to Alfred the Great and really beyond that, all the way to the six hundreds. Athelred the Unready was now dead. But Athelred's wife, Emma of Normandy, was still living, and their two children were still living. And here is the problem for those young sons were in exile in Normandy with Emma's brother, the Duke of Normandy. Those two sons were half English and half Norman, half Aethelreds and half Emma's. The Duke of Normandy was their uncle and there was a real possibility that he might try to return his young nephews to the throne in England with his sister Emma as their regent. So how did Cnut deal with this problem? Well, simple. He decided to marry Emma himself. He would just step into Aethelred's shoes and make Emma his queen. That would probably satisfy the Norman duke. Of course, there was one problem with that plan. Cnut was already married. But that was a problem with an easy solution. The first wife was sent back to Mercia and Emma returned as queen for the second time. This type of arrangement wasn't really that unusual. In the Middle Ages, it was quite common for a conquering king to marry the widow of a deposed king. It provided a connection to the prior regime and a degree of legitimacy. And in this case, it solved the Norman problem. And Emma appears to have been receptive to the arrangement. Better to be the queen and retain her estates in England than than be a former queen in exile, dependent upon her family in Normandy. So the marriage was quickly arranged and that left England with a Danish king and a Norman queen. And that's really the key going forward. From now on, both the Scandinavians and the Normans will have claims to the English crown through Cnut and Emma. And those claims won't be resolved until back to back battles in the year 1066. Shortly after that marriage of Emma and Canute, a child was born to the marriage named Harthacnut. And being a child of this official union, Hartha Knut was considered to be his father's successor. Whenever Canute's reign came to an end, Harthacanut would just step right in as the new king. But as we'll see, it didn't work out that way. So if you're keeping track, we have five children here with some claim to the throne at Canute's death. We have Athelred the Unready's two children with Emma, who are still in exile in Normandy. We have Canute's new son with Emma Harthacnut, the presumptive heir. And we have those other two children from Canute's first marriage to Algufu, the Mercian noble's daughter. So five children, but notice just two fathers, Athelred and Canute, and just two mothers, Emma and Algafu. And Aethelred was already dead. So when Canute died several years later, that just left the Two mothers of those five children, and ultimately those two mothers fought each other behind the scenes to determine which of those five children would be the next king. But we'll deal with all of that intrigue next time. For now, we just need to know that the stage had been set for a battle royal when Canute died. Literally, a battle royal. Now, I noted that Cnut made two decisions early in his reign which were important to the history of England. One was his marriage to Emma, which left a lot of competing heirs. The other was a major change to the way England was administered. Up to this point, local government had been based on the old shire system. Each shire had an ealdorman who was the leading official in the shire. The term ealdorman still survives as the word alderman, which is typically a town or city official today. Most aldermen oversaw a single shire, but some had authority over more than one. There were usually about a dozen aldermen serving at any one time. And again, they were the leading nobles under the king. But now Cnut decided to change all of that. He divided England into four basic territories, and those territories were the traditional Anglo Saxon kingdoms. Wessex, Mercia, Northumbria and East Anglia. He then designated a local official to be in charge of each of those four regions. That person was called a jarl, an old Norse term. So England went from about a dozen ealdormen to just four jarls, and that meant those jarls had a lot more power and territory than than the traditional English ealdorman. Over time, that Norse term jarl became anglicized. It went from jarl to earl. That change was probably influenced by that older term ealdorman. But that means we are now officially in the era of the English earls. And each of those traditional kingdoms like Wessex and Mercia and Northumbria now became known as earldoms. So that very English term earl is actually a Norse term. Cnut then appointed the earls who would oversee those four earldoms. Northumbria and East Anglia roughly corresponded to the old Danelaw region. So Cnut appointed Scandinavians as the earls in those two regions. In Wessex, the traditional homeland of the English monarchy, Cnut appointed himself as the earliest, at least for the time being. He established his royal court in Wessex at the traditional capital of Winchester. And that left Mercia. And up in Mercia, an Anglo Saxon noble named Leofrich soon became the earl. Now, unless you're a fan of Anglo Saxon history, you've probably never heard of Leofrich of Mercia, but you probably have heard of his wife, especially if you're a fan of chocolate. So let me explain. His wife was known by a very common Anglo Saxon name, Godyevu, which was literally God's gift. But over time, that name evolved from Godyevu to Godiva. And this is the same Godiva, whose name and likeness was later appropriated by the famous chocolate company. And the legend of Godiva actually gives us a very common English term. So what is the legend of Godiva? Well, the legend itself didn't appear until the 1200s, a couple of centuries later, so historians doubt its validity. But according to the story, Leofrich had imposed heavy taxes on the people of Mercia. And this is in keeping with what we saw last time, where taxes were a heavy burden on people in the countryside. So Godiva appealed to her husband to repeal some of the taxes. Leofrich refused, but Godiva continued to beg him to drop the taxes. So he eventually relented, and he told Godiva that he would repeal the taxes if she would strip naked and ride through the streets of town on a horse. He apparently thought that would be the end of it, but Godiva took him up on the offer. She rode through town naked, and Leofrich held up his end of the bargain and repealed the taxes. Supposedly, during the famous ride, the people were ordered to stay inside and close their shutters so no one could leer at Godiva as she rode through town. But one man named Tom couldn't help himself. He looked anyway, and he was struck blind in the process. And Tom became known to history as Peeping Tom, the ultimate origin of our modern term, Peeping Tom, meaning a voyeur. Now, even though historians doubt that the real Godiva ever rode through town naked, the legend of Godiva captured the imagination of many people in the Middle Ages. But it's interesting that this famous legend is really a story about excessive taxes. Godiva wasn't an exhibitionist, not as far as we know. She just wanted to lessen the tax burden on the people. And that takes us back to the last episode where I discussed the heavy burden of taxation during this period. As I noted, those taxes contributed to the process by which many small landowners lost their independence, and they were forced to turn to a local lord for protection and support. Over the years, the Vikings had raided and they had killed peasants and burned crops, and there was the occasional bad harvest and famine. All of this had put a heavy burden on the peasants, especially the few who remained free landowners. In Old English, a peasant was sometimes called a churl, and that word still exists in Modern English, especially the English dialects of Britain. It exists today as churl, a somewhat pejorative term, and it also exists as an adjective. We might describe someone's boorish or bad behavior as churlish, but the ultimate meaning of churl was a peasant or a common farmer. And those peasants or churls lived a hard and difficult life, but they didn't occupy the lowest rung of the social ladder that was reserved for the slaves. Slavery was legal and there were specific laws which applied to them, so they represented a specific social class. And it was very easy to move from being a peasant down to a slave. Slavery was a punishment for certain crimes, so a peasant who committed one of those crimes would be forced into slavery. But beyond that, when circumstances became dire enough, some peasants sold themselves or their children into slavery because they had no other options. And the situation had gotten so bad during Aethelred's reign that more and more people had been sold in this manner. Now, I should note here that it was possible for a slave or a peasant to move up the latter as well. If you were a slave, you could theoretically buy your way out of slavery, or someone else could buy you out, and then you would move up to peasant class, where you enjoyed a few more rights and privileges. But it was actually pretty rare for slaves to move up in this manner. There weren't a lot of benefactors buying people out of slavery. Similarly, a peasant could also move up the social ladder. The next level up was the class of the thanes, or skilled warriors. So generally speaking, this class was similar to the knights in continental Europe. If a peasant acquired enough acres of land, he could make this move. But again, that didn't happen very often because peasants could barely survive. As it was, they were lucky to keep what they had, so they didn't tend to expand their holdings over time. Above the thanes was the noble class, which included the traditional eldermen and the new class of earls, created by Cnut. So that was the Anglo Saxon social and economic class system. But for now, I want to focus on those at the bottom of that class system, the peasants and the slaves. Even though peasants and slaves represented two different social classes, their actual lifestyles were often quite similar. They both worked the land, and by this point, many peasants had become beholden to a local lord. Those obligations to the lord were often overwhelming. Last time we looked at Alfrich's colloquy, which described the life of a plowman. Even though he may have been a peasant, he describes a life that wasn't much different. From that of a slave. He was still beholden to a lord, and he even remarked that his life was hard because he was not free. He was bound to the land and his lord in a state of bondage. In an earlier episode, we saw that the word bondage actually came from this situation. Bondage came from the word banda, which was an old Norse word for a peasant or a land dweller. It gave us husbanda or husband, literally a house dweller. And it also produced the word bondage, which was the state or condition of the banda, or peasant. At one time, there had been a lot more free peasants who farmed their own land. They had used primitive plows which barely broke the top layer of soil. But by now, in the early 11th century, all of that had changed. The heavy wheeled plow had made its way to Britain. It dug deep into the earth and it allowed for better yields, but it required a team of eight oxen to pull it, and no peasant owned eight oxen. It was also incredibly difficult to turn the plow at the end of a row, so it really required large open fields. So the Anglo Saxon peasants had started to pool their oxen and their land together. Cooperative or common fields were now the norm. The peasants would share their oxen and they would dig very long rows, so the plow didn't have to be turned as much, and each peasant would take a certain number of rows and he could keep the yield from that strip. In many cases, the farms were adjacent to a manor house where the lord lived, and this was increasingly the norm. The lord gave them protection from Vikings and other marauders. In those cases, the peasants kept what they produced from their own strip of land. But then they had to turn around and pay large sums to the lord in exchange for the right to farm the land and in exchange for the lord's protection. And they also had to work the lord's lands for two or three days each week, depending on the time of the season. So it was an incredibly tough life. The peasant may not have been a slave under the law, but he wasn't really free either. Despite the difficult circumstances, the peasants produced the food which fed the nation. So they played a very important role in Anglo Saxon society. In Alfrich's colloquy, the teacher asks a student playing the role of a king's advisor, what are the most important skills to have? The reply is, erth tilth forthum se yrthling fetis el, literally earth tilling, for the earthling feeds us all. First of all, note that Alfrich uses The word earthling for ploughman, it's literally an earthling, one who works the earth. In an earlier episode, I noted that plough was actually borrowed from Old Norse. So the word plough hadn't yet entered the West Saxon riding dialect which Alfreds used. So a earthling was a person who worked the earth or land, and notice what he calls that process, literally earth tilling. He didn't use the words farming or agriculture because those words weren't in the language yet. Farming is a French word, and agriculture came directly from Latin. So if you till the earth or till the land, you're using Old English, but if you farm, you're using French, and if you practice agriculture, you're using Latin. Now, I sometimes say that if you want to hear Old English talk to young children, that's because most of the core vocabulary which young children tend to use comes from Old English. As they get older and their vocabulary grows, they tend to add words which are borrowed from other languages. A good example of this is dirt and soil. Children play in the dirt and they get dirty. Dirt is an Old English word. But adults plant flowers and trees in the soil, a French word that came with the Normans. Since farming was such a basic and fundamental activity in Anglo Saxon culture, it's not surprising that many of our agricultural terms are Old English. The word harvest is Old English. Another Old English word for harvest was urn. Peasants worked and toiled the land in hopes of a plentiful urn. And when that urn finally occurred, they had earned it. And that's how we got the modern word earn, E, A, R, N, meaning to acquire through work. But it originally was a noun meaning harvest. The peasants working the fields were grain farmers, and grain is actually a French word which came with the Normans. But in an early episode, we looked at the standard sound changes of Grimm's Law, and one of those changes was the shift of the Indo European G sound to a Germanic K sound. Under that change, the word which produced grain in Latin eventually produced corn in English. So grain and corn are actually cognate. Corn was originally a generic term for grain, so it retained that original Indo European sense, and it still retains that general sense in Britain. But American English uses the word to mean maize, or what was once known as Indian corn. One type of grain or corn grown by Anglo Saxon peasants was wheat. Wheat is an Old English word, and wheat is a very light colored grain. So you might not be surprised that the word wheat comes from the same root as white. Wheat was basically the white grain the peasants also grew oats and barley. And again, both oats and barley are Old English words. An oat was ate and oats were aten. Barley was bear. Something that was barley, like was barely originally an adjective, but over time, the adjective barely replaced the noun ber, and that produced the word barley. But before that happened, a place where you kept or stored cut barley was a barley house. It combined the words bear meaning barley, and ern, meaning house, and it produced the Old English word bear, ern. But over time, that compound word got compressed into a single syllable and ber ern became barn. So, believe it or not, barn was once a compound word meaning the barley house. Once those grains were harvested, they were sometimes ground into meal. Grind is an Old English word unrelated to grain. By the way, grind has an Indo European root which also gives us Old English words like grit and gritty, referring to small particles. Of course, in the American south, people eat grits, a type of ground corn. But grits goes back to Old English, where it was grutte. Ground grains were often used to make a thick porridge, which people ate. This same grainy Germanic root word was used by the Franks across the Channel in what became France. And their version of the word passed into French, where it produced the word gruel, a common word for that type of thick porridge. In the Middle Ages, the food also existed in Anglo Saxon England. The Old English version was gruta. And over time, English adopted the Frankish French version of the word, which was gruel. And the original English word gruta became grout. And we still use that term, grout, to refer to the thick paste or mortar which you use between tiles. This same grainy Indo European root word also passed into the Celtic languages spoken in Western Europe before the Romans arrived. And I don't get the chance to mention Celtic root words very often because there aren't very many of them in modern English. But the Celtic version of this root was graveau, and French borrowed that Celtic or Gaulish word and it became gravel. So all of that means that grind, grit, grits, gruel, grout and gravel are all cognate. In addition to that root word for grinding, there was another Indo European root word which meant to rub or grind or make soft. And that root is also common in modern English. That root was mela. In Old English, it produced the word meal, which meant ground grain. And we still have that sense in words like oatmeal and cornmeal. By the way, the word meal, as in we had a large meal, is unrelated to this word. For ground grain, the word meal, as in lunch or dinner, evolved out of another Old English word during the Middle English period. Since both words are pronounced and spelled the same way today, a lot of people think they're closely related or cognate, but they're not. Of course, if you need some oatmeal or cornmeal, you might go to a mill, a place where grains are ground. So a mill makes meal. M, E, a L. Both of those words are cognate. The word mill existed in Old English, but it originally came from the Latin version of that original Indo European root word. It was one of the earliest words borrowed from Roman traders by the Germanic tribes many centuries earlier. That Latin root also produced later English words like molar, the back tooth that grinds food. And it also produced the word mallet, a tool that's used to pound or grind materials into smaller bits. Now, when these grains were ground down, they were sometimes steeped in water. That produced the word malt, another Old English word, likely from the same root. If those malted grains were fermented, it produced ale, another Old English word. Now, Anglo Saxon ale didn't use hops. And hops are a specific type of plant which are added to the brewing process, and it tends to give beer its bitter flavor and also tends to make the beer stronger. Hops were introduced to England from the Germanic regions of Northern Europe in the 1400s, and that malted liquor made with hops became known as beer to distinguish it from the traditional ale. Today, all of it uses hops. So most of the old distinctions between beer and ale have been lost, Even though the word beer later came to mean the beverage made with hops. The word beer actually existed in Old English as beer. But during that earlier period, it was used much more generally to mean any type of strong or fermented drink. So it could refer to ale, or it could refer to mead, which was made from honeycombs. Now, during the Anglo Saxon period, if you just wanted to quench your thirst, you would probably drink ale, and that was because water was often unsafe to drink. It contained a lot of impurities, and it would make people sick. But the boiling and brewing process used to make ale actually took care of those problems. So ale was much safer to drink than water. So grain produced ale, which was a common beverage. But grain also was used to produce something else which no Anglo Saxon could live without, and that was bread. In prior episodes, we've seen how important bread was. People didn't have access to a lot of meat, so they really relied upon bread. And bread could be baked year round, even in the middle of winter, when there wasn't a lot of other food around. Now, going back to Alfrich's colloquy, he included a baker as one of his common people interviewed by the teacher, and the colloquy gives us a picture of how important the baker's job was in Anglo Saxon society. The teacher asks, bakara hoam fre muth oterhua veultanthe merchant lifa drehgan baker, how does your skill benefit us and how can we live our lives without it? The student playing the role of the baker replies, ge machen dir sun fach bulten na langen. You can live without my skill for some time, but but not too long, nor too well. Sult cho butenkrafte mie non, because without my craft, elsch beat empty beute seouen, literally each board empty be seen. But it means each board or table will appear to be empty. So without the baker's skill, everyone's table will be empty and people will struggle to live. So bread was a fundamental part of the Anglo Saxon diet. We've seen before that the Old English word for bread was hlof, which became loaf. And that word produced the compound terms loaf guardian and loaf maiden, which became lord and lady over time. So, given our overall theme of earls and churls, here we see how grain and bread led through. The words which we use for lord, lady and loaf are all cognate. I can even make a connection between bread and the legend of Lady Godiva. I noted that she rode through town on a horse while she was naked or nude. By the way, naked and nude are cognate. They both come from the same Indo European root word. Nude is the version which came in from Latin, but naked is the word which came in through Old English. So, as is often the case, we have two different ways of saying the same thing, one Latin and one from Old English. The Old English version of naked was nakud, and just as today it meant bare or uncovered, well, that same Indo European root word passed into Sanskrit, where it became nagna. It was a common practice among the early Indo European settlers in Central and South Asia to cook meat by covering it in hot coals and ashes. But bread had to be cooked on top of the coals, so it was uncovered. And that Sanskrit word nagna, meaning uncovered, eventually produced the word naan for a type of bread prepared in India. So non is actually cognate with the words naked and nude. They all refer to some state of being uncovered. So that's the connection between Lady Godiva and bread. There's another linguistic connection between bread and nobility. If you think about it, those people at the upper echelons of society are sometimes called the upper crust. One theory about the origin of that phrase, upper crust, is that it was customary to serve a full loaf of bread and have people tear off pieces when they ate it. But commoners weren't supposed to touch the portion of the bread which the noblemen ate. So very often, the upper crust was sliced off and presented to the nobleman, and the nobles became known as the upper crust. Now, frankly, I'm a little skeptical about that theory, because the term upper crust as a synonym for wealthy or powerful people didn't occur in writing until the 1800s. So its origins are probably much more recent. But either way, we still associate bread with wealth and power. Think about our slang words for money, words like bread and dough. You got any bread on you? Well, let me borrow some dough. So there's still a connection between bread and money. Of course, if you get a good job and make some dough, that makes you a breadwinner. Now, I should note here that the term breadwinner also dates to the 1800s, but it uses the term winner in its original Old English sense. And that's why the term breadwinner may seem like an odd expression today. It didn't mean that you won some bread in a contest. The word win is an Old English word, and it originally meant to labor, toil, or work at something. So if you're a breadwinner, you're a person who strives or works hard for bread, both in its literal sense and in its figurative sense as money. Over time, the word win came to refer to the hard work or struggle associated with a fight or a contest with another person. And that led to the modern sense of win, meaning to be successful and achieve victory. So the Old English word for bread was loaf, but the word bread did exist in Old English. The history of the word bread has generated a lot of debate among scholars because a version of the word existed in both Old English and Old Norse, but the meanings were different in each language. The Norse word brod meant bread, but the English word bread meant a small bit or piece of something. It probably came from the same root as the word break. So it appears that English speakers mixed up those two words over time, and English bread or bread acquired that Norse meaning which we still use today. Now, I noted that some scholars think that the original English word bread came from the same root as the word break. And in fact, since the early Middle English period, English has had the phrase breaking bread to mean having a meal with someone. In fact, having bread together was a communal activity, and the people with whom you shared bread were your close friends. Again, this is reflected in several words in modern English. The original proto Germanic language had a word for a close friend, which combined the Germanic words for with and bread. So your close friend was your with bread. In other words, the person with whom you shared your bread. The word was rendered in Gothic as gahliaba. Now, that Germanic word for a close friend never made it into Old English, but it did make it into the Frankish dialects. And from there, the Romans picked it up. And very often the Romans would take a Germanic term and do a direct translation into Latin, and that's what they did here. The Germanic word meant with bread. So they took the Latin word for with, which was cum, and the Latin word for bread, which was panus, and they put those two together. The result was the word companion. And the Normans brought that Latin word with them to England, where it entered English shortly after the Norman conquest. So your companion is literally the person with whom you share bread. Of course, a group of companions is a company, using those same two root words. And again, company came with the Normans. In addition to that compound word which meant with bread, the original Germanic language had another term with a very similar meaning. This other term meant with food. So it's the same basic idea. It just used the word for food rather than the word for bread. The original Germanic term was ga maten. Ga was with, and maten was meal. Again, this was your friend or companion. But over time, the ga part at the front was dropped and that left matin, which became mate. So your mate is literally the person with whom you have food or have a meal. Now, this word came into English during the Middle English period from the Germanic dialects around the Netherlands and northern Germany. That same Germanic word did pass into Old English as the word meta. And in Old English, meta meant a meal. One type of food served at a meta was animal flesh. And by the 1300s, that word meta had come to describe the animal flesh consumed at mealtime. And that gave us the word meat. So if you have meat with your mate, you're just using two different versions of the same Germanic word, a word which originally meant a meal. Meat is the native English version, and mate is the version borrowed from the Germanic dialects of northern Europe. Since food was scarce in Anglo Saxon England, most people only ate one big meal a day. It was typically in the afternoon. So it was basically the equivalent of our modern dinner. In the periods between that large meal each day, people didn't tend to eat very much. They slept at night and worked most of the day. But they did usually have a small meal or snack to get the day started. This smaller morning meal was called the undermeete or the morgenmehte. It was literally the morning meal. Morgen was morning, and unden was just another word for morning. And again, we see meta being used as the word for meal. So this small morning meal broke up the long period between dinners when there wasn't much to eat. That meant that the people were basically fasting between those larger afternoon meals, and that morning meal broke up that daily fast. So by the 1400s, that morning meal became known as the break fast or breakfast. It literally meant the break in the daily fast. Now, as we've seen, grain farming was a basic activity of Anglo Saxon peasants, but they also raised livestock. Livestock not only provided meat, it also provided dairy products like milk and butter. And not surprisingly, milk and butter are both Old English words. Of course, larger animals were used as draft animals to pull wagons and plows. Those large animals included cows and oxen. Again, those are Old English words. We've seen oxen before. Cow was co, coo in Old English. Calf and bull were also Old English words. So you can see how these common words for animals were inherited from the Anglo Saxons. Another common animal kept by peasants was the pig. And during this period, pigs in England were dark and hairy. They actually resembled wild boars. The primary Old English word for a pig was sween, which is pronounced swine today. They also had the word sow. And just as a cow was coo, a sow was a Sioux. Interestingly, the most common modern English words for this animal are not attested in the surviving Old English writings. Today, we call this animal a pig or hog. Both words are attested in very early Middle English, but not Old English. However, most scholars don't think those words came in from French. They were likely words which existed in Old English, but they just didn't get captured for posterity in the surviving text. Now, the earliest use of the word hog in the 1100s includes references to not only pigs, but also young sheep and horses. So hog was originally a word for young animals of all types, especially farm animals, and it was later restricted to pigs. But that original sense of the word as a young animal survives in the phrase to go whole hog. The hog here is actually a young sheep. So let me explain. Peasants didn't really like having to shear young sheep or lambs because their fleece was short and it was difficult to cut. So a lot of times they didn't even bother to shear them when they were young. When they did decide to shear them, peasants would usually just keep it simple and remove what they could. But sometimes the peasant actually expended the time and energy and sheared all of the wool off the lamb. In that case, it was said that he went whole hog. So again, the word hog was being used in its original sense as a young animal, in this case, a lamb. Now, sheep were by far the most common animals kept by Anglo Saxons. England was famous for its production of wool. So not surprisingly, words like lamb and sheep were both inherited from Old English. A group of sheep was a flock, another Old English word likely related to the word folk. So a group of people were the folk and a group of sheep were the flock. A flock of sheep might also be called a herd. And the person who looked over the herd of sheep was the sheepherde or sheep herder. And over time, sheepherder was shortened to simply shepherd. As I noted, England developed a very lucrative trade in wool and textiles. So cloth and fabrics were common commodities within most households. The women and girls did the weaving and sewing. They couldn't just go to a store and buy clothing or other fabrics. They had to make it themselves. So, as we might expect, a lot of common knitting terms also go back to Old English. These include words like sew, weave, braid and yarn. Weave comes from the same root, which gives us web, as in a spider web. The root of weave also passed through Dutch and gave us the word waffle, a type of food with a back and forth pattern on it. The Anglo Saxons also gave us the word knit, which comes from the same root as the word not. And that silent k at the beginning of knit and knot was actually pronounced in Old English, and that's why it's still there in modern English. Speaking of knit and knot, we also get the word stitch from Old English. It derives from the word stick, just as today stick could be both a noun and a verb. You could stick someone with a stick. And the puncture wound was called a sticha or stitch. That type of puncture tended to create sharp pain, and that stabbing feeling was also called a stitch. Sometimes if you laugh too much, you get a pain in your stomach. And that led to the phrase he had me in stitches, which uses the word stitch as a type of pain in its original sense. Of course, the process of sewing requires A needle to puncture a piece of fabric. So the resulting loop or connection was called a stitch. And by analogy, it was later applied to a surgical suture. So today you might need stitches for a bad cut. Again, most of the fabrics produced by Anglo Saxons were dependent upon sheep. And as I noted, sheep were often allowed to roam in common pastures and fields. Fields. Grazing animals usually fed themselves, but sometimes the peasants had to cut down or mow the fields for hay. And of course, they had to cut down the crops when they were harvested. The original Indo Europeans had a word for this process of cutting grass or grains. It was called may, and it led to the Old English word mow. And it also led to a word for a pasture covered with grass, which is cut for hay. That word is meadow. So mo and meadow are cognate. Another related Old English word was math, but not the word meaning arithmetic. This was a different kind of math. It was basically the noun version of mow. So it was a mowing or cutting of grass in autumn. You had to get the math done. So it was sort of like the word harvest, which can be used as both a verb and a noun. So you can harvest the harvest. Well, mow and math kind of work the same way you might mow the pasture. And when you were done, the math was prepared for harvest. As I said, the math was usually cut in the autumn, but if it happened to be a mild autumn, a second growth of grass would occur later in the season after the first cut. So a second cutting or math had to be done. And that was called the aftermath. And that's where the modern word aftermath came from. Today, it means the fallout or consequences of some activity. But originally it meant the second mowing of a pasture. So, as you can see, modern English owes a lot to the Anglo Saxon commoners who worked the land and tended the animals and baked the bread and sewed the fabrics. So with that, I'm going to conclude this look at the culture of the peasants and churls. I'm going to take a quick break, but when I return, I'm going to turn the story back to the king and the earls. I'm going to look at the end of Cnut's reign as king of England, and I'm also going to examine the role of English during that period. In the second decade of the 11th century, King Canute began to consolidate his power over England. And that power soon spread beyond the shores of Britain. His brother had succeeded his father as the king of Denmark. But within a couple of years after Cnut became king of England. His brother died in Denmark without any children. Cnut was then selected as the new king of Denmark. So for now, England and Denmark were unified under the same ruler, and this was a crucial development. Cnut now ruled Denmark, where much of the Viking activity in England had originated. Since Cnut now ruled both nations, he put an end to those Viking raids. England soon enjoyed an extended period of peace, and that peace meant that the Dene gale didn't have to be raised on a regular basis. All of that contributed to a renewed period of prosperity in England. Despite his power and influence, Cnut wasn't content with just being the king of England and Denmark. Later in his reign, he added Norway to his kingdom, and he even ruled part of southern Sweden and a region of northern Germany south of Denmark. No Scandinavian leader had ever amassed that much power and prestige. This is actually an important point in our overall story for a couple of reasons. First, it meant that England was very much in the Scandinavian orbit at this point. Given all of the Viking activity in England over the past few centuries and the settlement of Danes and the Danelaw and the prominence of the Old Norse language, England was already within that Scandinavian sphere of influence. Despite the complicated history, the Anglo Saxons had a great deal in common with the Danes and other Scandinavians. Think about a poem like Beowulf. It wasn't about the Franks or the Germans. It was about the Danes and the Swedes. And think about that ship burial at Sutton Hoo. In the Scandinavian tradition, in many ways, the Anglo Saxons felt a closer connection to the people on the other side of the North Sea than they did the people on the other side of the English Channel. And that was certainly true in northern England, where Scandinavian influences were greater. Sweyn Forkbeard had been welcomed there from Denmark with little opposition. So the Anglo Saxons accepted a Danish king in a way that they probably wouldn't have accepted a French king or a German king. And we actually have some proof for that. Just a few decades later, William would arrive from Normandy and he had to brutally suppress opposition to his rule. But Canute was accepted as an English king and ruled as an English king with a large degree of popular support. There's no doubt that language was a factor here. Canute and his Danish supporters spoke Old Norse, but as we've seen before, they could probably communicate with the native Anglo Saxon nobles without too much difficulty, especially, especially in the North. Even though Canute was a Danish king, English continued to be spoken at his court. Again, this is in stark contrast to William. After William's conquest, he imposed the very different French language as the official language of England. So even though Cnut wasn't English, he was embraced in a way that William never was, and Canute embraced English culture. But that influence worked both ways. Over time, Scandinavian influences became more apparent in England, as the country was slowly integrated into Canute's Scandinavian empire. Now, that influence had always been strong in the north, but now there's evidence that it was moving south, well beyond the traditional limits of the Danelaw. As we saw last time, a gradual migration was underway within the country. Peasants from the countryside were moving from the farms to towns and cities like London, and that was bringing those Norse influenced dialects further south to places like London. I also noted that London had been loyal to the Wessex kings, so Cnut largely avoided the city early on. He maintained his royal court at Winchester, the traditional Wessex capital. Winchester is near the southern coast of England, far removed from the Danelaw region. But with Knut's court now settled at Winchester, we start to see evidence of Scandinavian influences there as well. At the Old Minster in Winchester, there's a grave marker which appears to commemorate a Scandinavian who died there during the time of Cnut's reign. And the inscription on that grave marker shows how far south some of those Norse words had spread during this period. The inscription reads, her leith guni er lis fealache. In modern English, it reads, here lies Guni, the Earl's companion. The first two words are hir lith, which is here lies. Those two words are Old English. But the phrase here lies on a memorial or grave marker isn't found anywhere else in Old English. However, that phrase was common in Latin and it was used on tombs and memorials which were inscribed in Latin. So it appears that this particular grave marker took that Latin phrase and translated it into English, producing the oldest known use of the phrase here lies on an English grave marker. The inscription says, here lies goony, and Gunni is an Old Norse name. It actually uses the same root as Gunnhilda, which we saw in the last episode. So it appears that Gunni was either a Dane or a descendant of a Dane. The second part of the inscription is erlis fealacha, literally earl's fellow or the earl's companion. I noted earlier that the word earl is derived from the Norse word jarl. So here we already have the Anglicized version of that title being rendered as Earl. And the last word is feallache or fellow. Again, this is an Old Norse word. Feolache or fellow has a construction very Similar to companion and mate, which we looked at earlier. Remember that those two words originally meant with bread and with food, respectively. So it referred to the close friends with whom you share a meal. Well, the Norse word fellow was literally a fee layer. As we've seen before, feo meant money or property. So a fee layer was a person with whom you joined to contribute or lay down money or property for some enterprise. So it's basically your business partner. It was a close companion with whom you shared money or resources. So all of that means the inscription here Lies Guni, Earl's companion, is mostly written in Old Norse. Only the opening words here lies is in Old English, and that was apparently borrowed from Latin. So that inscription shows how English, Norse and Latin were mixing together as far south as Winchester during the time of Cnut. Now, notice that the inscription says that Goony was the earl's fellow or companion. So who was the earl? I noted earlier that Cnut himself served as the first Earl of Wessex. But it's unlikely that the inscription is referring to Cnut, because Cnut would have probably been referred to as the king, not the earl. So it was probably the man who succeeded Canute as Earl of Wessex, a man named Godwin. And get used to that name, because he's really the central figure. As we move forward to 1066, when Canute's brother died in Denmark in 1018 and Cnut became King of Denmark, he traveled there to assume the crown. Since he was increasingly out of the country, Cnut needed someone else to be the Earl of Wessex. So he designated a local noble named Godwin as the new earl. And presumably Godwin was the earl referred to on Guni's grave marker. Now, I mentioned earlier that the integration of England into Cnut's Scandinavian empire had two important consequences for our story. One was the continued spread of Norse influences throughout England. The other was the fact that Cnut now had obligations outside of England. He spent a lot of time in Scandinavia, running his territories there. He also made a pilgrimage to Rome. And all of that meant that he wasn't actually in England very much as his reign progressed. So in his absence, he turned over effective rule of the country to those four earls. And Wessex had been the traditional power base of Anglo Saxon politics. It was the wealthiest and most powerful earldom at the time. Its capital at Winchester was also the location of the royal court. So as the Earl of Wessex, Godwin quickly emerged as first among equals when it came to the four earls. His biggest rival was Leofrich of Mercia, Godiva's husband. But Godwin was very ambitious, and over time, he emerged as the most powerful man in England outside of the king. He was very close to Canute and even married a Danish woman in Cnut's court. With Cnut often out of the country, the earls were left in control of their respective territories. They were the top military leaders in their region and they were in charge of the local justice system. Technically, the king and Witan appointed the earls and they could remove the earls. But within a couple of decades, the office of earl had become largely hereditary. It passed from father to son or or to another immediate family member. So England was starting to look more and more like the old days with powerful regional leaders. But make no mistake, the earls didn't have independence. As long as Cnut was around, the interest of the king was always paramount. Of course, things changed after Cnut died, but for now, Canute kept those powerful earls in check. Everyone ultimately had to answer to Cnut. He was still the most powerful man in the kingdom, and apparently his courtiers were fond of reminding him of that. This is reflected in a famous story about Canute's reign, which is probably just a legend. According to the story, Canute's courtiers loved to heap praise upon him and tell him that he was the most powerful person in the world. One day, a courtier told Canute that he was so powerful that everyone and everything obeyed his commands. Even the waves would obey him if he commanded the tide to stay out. Canute apparently lost his patience with all that praise. And to prove those claims to be absurd, he led his courtiers down to the edge of the sea. As the tide was coming in, he sat down in a chair near the water and ordered the waves to retreat. But of course, the tide came in anyway. Cnut then turned to all of the courtiers and reminded them that even the power of a king was limited. And as powerful as he was, his power was nothing compared to the power of the tides, which had been set in motion long before he was king and would continue long after he was gone. It's said that Canute never wore his golden crown after that day. Now, this story was probably designed to illustrate that Cnut retained his modesty and humility in spite of being the most powerful leader in Northern Europe. But ultimately he was right. Those tides did continue after he died, and that death came at the age of 38 in the year 1035. While 38 wasn't exactly considered young at the time, he certainly could have ruled a lot longer. And it's always fun to speculate about what might have happened had certain events never occurred. And for centuries, scholars have wondered what England would look like today if Cnut had ruled for another decade or so, if his succession had been better planned, if the power of earls like Godwin had been kept in check after Cnut died, if all of that had prevented William from launching an invasion from Normandy. Of course, the answer is all speculation. But many scholars think England would have become much more integrated within Scandinavia over time, and it would have avoided all of its complicated entanglements with France over the next few centuries. All of those changes wrought by the Norman Conquest would never have happened, and England might very well be viewed today as a Scandinavian nation. And certainly the English language would be very different today. But of course, that's not what happened. Cnut did die at the age of 38, and his succession wasn't well planned. And all of that did lead to the ultimate invasion by William in 1066. So next time, we're going to see how all of that played out. Until then, thanks for listening to the History of English podcast.