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¹⁶ Æljric's Lives of Saints, ed. Skeat, W. W., 2 vols., EETS os 76, 82, 94 and 114 (London, 1881–1900) II, 402Google Scholar, line 69. With alteowe compare Gothic fulla-tojis (calque of Latin perfectus) Matt. V.48; Velten, H. V., ‘Studies in the Gothic Vocabulary with Especial Reference to Greek and Latin Models and Analogues’, JEGP 29 (1930), 332–51Google Scholar and 489–50, at 344.

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¹⁸ ‘Eight-cornered’ and ‘all of quadrangular marble stones’; Ælfric's Catholic Homilies: The Second Series, Text, ed. Godden, M., EETS ss 5 (London, 1979), 287Google Scholar, lines 264 and 266.

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²⁴ Three Old English Elegies, ed. Leslie, , pp. 69–70.Google Scholar

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²⁷ Lives of Saints, ed. Skeat, 11, 400–2Google Scholar, lines 38–9: ‘those who are cunning in stone, and approved of in wood, that they may erect his palace in the Roman fashion’.

²⁸ ibid. p. 404, lines 91–2, ‘Canst thou erect for me in the Roman fashion a royal dwelling?’; lines 100–1, ‘but it is not customary to make such work in England, and therefore we shall not tell their names clearly’.

²⁹ Samtuarium, seu vitae sanctorum, ed. Mombritius, B., 2 vols., 2nd ed. (Paris, 1910) II, 606–14Google Scholar. For an earlier Greek version, see The Apocryphal New Testament, ed. James, M. R. (Oxford, 1924), pp. 364–77Google Scholar, and Hennecke, E., New Testament Apocrypha, ed. Schneemelcher, W., trans. R. McL. Wilson, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1965) II, 442–58.Google Scholar

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³³ ‘Keep the door of my lips’; Der Lambeth-Psalter. Eine ae Interlinearversion des Psalters in der HS 427 der erzbischoflicben Lambeth Palace Library, ed. Lindelöf, U., 2 vols. (Helsinki, 1909–1914).Google Scholar

³⁴ See Burlin, R. B., The Old English Advent: a Typological Commentary (New Haven, 1968), pp. 123–4Google Scholar. For earlier background, see Hill, A. E., ‘The Temple of Asclepius: an Alternative Source for Paul's Body Theology’, Jnl of Biblical Lit. 99 (1980), 437–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁵ Exeter Riddle 29 in ASPR; no. 27 in The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book, ed. Williamson, C. (Chapel Hill, NC, 1977)Google Scholar. Gordon, R. K., Anglo-Saxon Poetry (London, 1926), p. 299Google Scholar, translates ‘over the mountain-top’. For ‘over the horizon’, see Old English Language and Literature, ed. Marckwardt, A. H. and Rosier, J. L. (New York, 1972), p. 198nGoogle Scholar., and Joyce, J. J., ‘Natural Process in Exeter Book Riddle 29: “Sun and Moon”’, Annuale Medievale 14 (1974), 5–8.Google Scholar

³⁶ Motz, L., ‘Burg – Berg, burrow – barrow’, IF 81 (1977), 204–20Google Scholar, has examined the linguistic evidence and proposed that IE *bhergh and zero-form *bbrgh have the basic sense of ‘enclosure [providing protection]’ rather than ‘elevation’ or ‘mountain’. She notes that generally the *bhergh derivatives apply to natural enclosures, and *bhrgh derivatives to manmade habitations, but the two forms often alternate.

³⁷ ‘The stone arches, secure on pillars, eternally held the earth-house within’ (Beowulf 2718b–19).

³⁸ ‘New by the headland, strengthened with cunning art’ (Beowulf 2243).

³⁹ The beorh was interpreted as a cave by Schücking, L., Untersuchungen zur Bedeutungslehre der angelsächsischen Dichtersprache (Heidelberg, 1915)Google Scholar, but his arguments were answered by Lawrence, W. W., ‘The Dragon and his Lair in Beowulf’, PMLA 33 (1918), 569–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see further his Beowulf and Epic Tradition (Cambridge, MA, 1928), pp. 208–12Google Scholar. Most subsequent commentators accept Lawrence's interpretation; see for example Sedgefield, W., ‘The Scenery in Beowulf’, JEGP 35 (1936), 161–9Google Scholar, at 164–7.

⁴⁰ Felix's Life of Saint Gutblac, ed. Colgrave, B. (Cambridge, 1956), pp. 92–4Google Scholar; Das angelsächsische Prosa-Leben des hi. Guthlac, ed. Gonser, P. (Heidelberg, 1909), p. 117Google Scholar. See Davidson, H. R. E., ‘The Hill of the Dragon’, Folklore 61 (1950), 169–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 175, for buildings on the sites of barrows.

⁴¹ Shook, L. K., ‘The Burial Mound in Guthlac A’, MP 58 (1960), 1–10Google Scholar; Wentersdorf, K. P., ‘Guthlac A: the Battle for the Beorg’, Neophilologus 62 (1978), 135–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Olsen, A. H., Guthlac of Croyland (Washington, 1981), pp. 34–5.Google Scholar

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⁴⁴ ‘Someone ordered me to dwell in a grove of woods, under an oak tree in the earth-hut; old is this earth-dwelling, I am full of longing. The valleys are gloomy, the hills steep, the sharp hedges overgrown with briars, the settlement bereft of joys … Then at dawn I must pace alone under an oak tree, in the earth-hut’ (The Wife's Lament 27–32a and 35–6, in Three Old English Elegies, ed. Leslie).

⁴⁵ Tacitus, , Opera minora, ed. Furneaux, H. and Anderson, J. G. C. (Oxford, 1900).Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Wentersdorf, K. P., ‘The Situation of the Narrator in the Old English Wife's Lament’, Speculum 56 (1981), 492–516CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 498–503. Identification of the eorôscraf as a barrow, or by extension the grave, has its advocates among critics who believe that the narrator in the poem is a revenant or wandering spirit, or, alternatively, a mourner singing a death-song. See Lench, E., ‘The Wife's Lament: a Poem of the Living Dead’, Comitatus 1 (1970), 3–23Google Scholar; Tripp, R. P. Jr, ‘The Narrator as Revenant: a Reconsideration of Three Old English Elegies’, Papers on Lang, and Lit. 8 (1972), 339–61Google Scholar; ‘Odin's Powers and the Old English Elegies’, in The Old English Elegies: New Essays in Criticism and Research, ed. Green, M. (Rutherford, NJ, 1983), pp. 57–68Google Scholar; and Johnson, W. C. Jr, ‘The Wife's Lament as Death-Song’, in The Old English Elegies, ed. Green, , pp. 69–81.Google Scholar

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⁵⁵ Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of Early England, ed. Cockayne, T. O., 3 vols., RS (London, 1864–1966Google Scholar; repr. with new introduction by C. Singer, London, 1961) II, 146, line 16.

⁵⁶ Grundy, G. B., ‘The Development of the Meanings of Certain Anglo-Saxon Terms’, Arch J 99 (1943), 86–8Google Scholar. For wicham, see Gelling, M., ‘English Place-Names Derived from the Compound wicham’, MA 11 (1967), 87–104.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ ‘There are some retired habitations surrounded with a rampart and forest, not far from the church of Hexham, that is, about a mile and a half; the river Tyne flows between. These buildings comprise an oratory and a church of St Michael the archangel, at which the man of God often stayed with a few brethren as his companions in retirement, to pursue his studies and holy prayer, especially at the season of the forty days’ fast before Easter.’ The Old English Version of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. Miller, T., 2 vols., EETS os 95 and 96 (London, 1890–1891) II, 388Google Scholar; for Bede's text, Bede's Ecclesiastical History, ed. Colgrave, B. and Mynors, R. A. B. (Oxford, 1969), p. 456.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ ‘And there is established a great forest-fastness; many wild animals live in its retreats, countless animals in (its) deep dales’ (Durham 6–8; ASPR VI, 27).

⁵⁹ Certainly it does not refer to Cuthbert's coffin, as proposed by Kendall, C. B., ‘Let Us Now Praise a Famous City: Wordplay in the OE Durham and the Cult of St Cuthbert’, JEGP 87 (1988), 507–21Google Scholar, at 520.

⁶⁰ Mentioned by Symeon of Durham, The History of the Church of Durham, trans. Stevenson, J. (London, 1855), p. 673.Google Scholar

⁶¹ For the encomiastic tradition in Durham, see Schlauch, M., ‘An Old English Encomium Urbis’, JEGP 40 (1941), 14–28Google Scholar, at 23 (for rivers and forests).

⁶² ‘A dreary dwelling under a cliff’ (The Wife's Lament 50a and 48a).

⁶³ ‘A more pleasant settlement’ (52a).

⁶⁴ For sele as ‘dwelling’ rather than ‘hall’, see DeRoo, C. H., ‘Old English Sele’, Neophilologus 64 (1980), 113–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The idea is that the geong man must live without shelter, not that he lives in a sort of'anti-hall’. It should be noted that for the concept of'anti-hall’ in Old English poetry, in Hume, K., ‘The Concept of the Hall in Old English Poetry’, ASE 3 (1974), 63–74Google Scholar, at 68–70, most of the supporting examples are based on the view that sele means ‘hall’.

⁶⁵ Examples of such metaphorical interpretations of details abound in the critical literature. Gradon, P., in Form and Style in Early English Literature (London, 1971), p. 170Google Scholar, writes that the Wife ‘uses language so generalised and conventional that we do not know what is actual and what is image’. Wentersdorf, , ‘The Situation’, p. 514Google Scholar, who regards the eorôscrœf as a cave, writes, ‘One would expect the compound burgtunas, a hapax legomenon, to denote literally the defences (earthworks, ramparts, enclosures, walls) of a stronghold or settlement, and if so it may refer to the cliffs or beetling crags of the area… In the present context, a metaphorical interpretation of the hapax seems called for: “the confines of this joyless habitation are forbidding and overgrown with briars”.’ Green, M., ‘Time, Memory, and Elegy in The Wife's Lament’, The Old English Elegies: New Essays in Criticism and Research, ed. Green, , p. 125Google Scholar, regards the eorôscrœf as a cave and refers to ‘sketchy details of the surrounding landscape’ including ‘dim valleys and high hills that in the speaker's metaphoric association constitute a fortress (burgtuna, 31a)’. W.C. Johnson, in ‘The Wife's lament as Death-Song’ (ibid. p. 70), regards the eorôscrœf as a barrow and the burgtunas as ‘perhaps suggesting a group of burial mounds’ and evoking ‘an atmosphere of chthonic mystery’. Chase, D., ‘“The Wife's Lament”: an Eighth-Century Existential Cry’, Univ. of South Florida Lang. Quarterly 2A (1986), 18–20Google Scholar, comments that ‘the existential character of the poem is also evident, symbolically, in the setting’ (he interprets the eorôscrœf as a cave).

⁶⁶ ‘So that he may bind together many a fine wall and establish many a unique building.’ King Alfred's Version of St Augustine's Soliloquies, ed. Carnicelli, T. A. (Cambridge, MA, 1969), p. 47Google Scholar, lines 9–10. For a similar ‘house of learning’ metaphor, but without reference to geometric shapes, see Byrhtferth's Manual, p. 142.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ ‘It was firmly, skilfully constructed within and without with iron bands’ (Beowulf 773b–5a).

⁶⁸ ‘Around the helmet's crest as a head-protection, the ridge held outside, wound with wires’ (Beowulf 1030–1).

⁶⁹ ‘A courageous one intended, a swift purpose set in motion; a resolute (builder) skilled in rings bound the foundation together wondrously with wires. The buildings of the city were bright, the bath-halls were many, the gilded horn-gables were high, the martial noise great, many a meadhall full of the revelry of men, until powerful Fate changed that’ (The Ruin 18–24).

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⁷¹ ‘Some of the people ardently set stones far up at the top of the towers, joining the marble in solid slabs; others stand on the steps receiving in turn the loads that the porters bring, and with eager bands pass on the heavy stones … The busy throng comes and goes, scattered about the city, eagerly gathering material to build lofty Rome’. Karolus Magnus et Leo Papa, Ein Paderborner Epos vom Jahre 799, ed. Beumann, H., Brunhölzl, F. and Winkelmann, W. (Paderborn, 1966Google Scholar), lines 114–18 and 123–4.

⁷² ‘A wall wondrously high, ornamented with serpent-like [shapes]’ (The Wanderer 98).Google Scholar

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