Wealh denotes SLAVE in a relatively small number of texts in Old English, stretching from the late tenth century to the end of the period: the simplex is used in the West Saxon gospels, the
Heptateuch, Ælfric’s Grammar and a single Ælfrician homily, the law code II Æthelred, the History of the Kentish Royal Saints, and the late fragment ‘The Soul to the Body’. In addition to these
simplex uses, it appears as an element in compounds with this meaning in the Rule of Chrodegang and glossary entries, as when ‘hundwæalh’ glosses the Latin ‘canum servitor’.286 These glossary
entries are not discussed further here, but they indicate wealh’s participation in formative processes, and thus hint at its wider currency in the language. Similarly, wilisc, while usually an ethnic term, appears once, in London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius A. III, describing the descendants of Ham, condemned to slavery.287 Pelteret’s analysis of the meaning SLAVE concentrates upon its use 284 Faull, ‘Wealh’, 2⒍
285 See ⒋⒊⒊
286 The Old English Version of the Enlarged Rule of Chrodegang together with Latin Original; An Old English Version of the Capitula Theodulf together with the Latin Original; An Interlinear Old English Rendering of the Epitome of Benedict of Aniane, ed. by A. S. Napier, EETS, o. s., 150 (London: Paul, Trench and Trübner, 1916), p. 68; Wright, Vocabularies, I, col. 111, (see also col. 128 where ‘weala win’ is used for crudum vinum); Faull, ‘Wealh’, 27; Pelteret, Slavery, p. 32⒈ Faull lists some additional forms which may have developed from this sense, but which may equally be an extension of the sense FOREIGNER or related to some other term (Faull, ‘Wealh’, 34).
in the works of Ælfric, and thus implies that it was not in common usage.288 However, as the
analysis below shows, the cluster of uses in one passage in Ælfric’s Grammar gives his works this appearance of prominence, while, by contrast, we find it in a variety of other southern texts which do not necessarily have a connection with this author.289 Moreover, it is used in the full range of
contexts in which we might expect to find a slave word, while its relationships with other lexemes, both Latin and Old English, indicate that it was a full participant in the complex system of synonymy between the various Old English terms.
The first appearance of wealh unambiguously denoting SLAVE occurs in the West Saxon version of Matthew 2⒋50, dated from the late tenth or early eleventh century290 and contained in a
variety of manuscripts including Hatton 38 and CCCC 140: ‘cymþ ðæs weles hlaford on þam dæge ðe he na ne wenþ & on ðære tide þe he nat’ [the lord of that wealh will come on the day when he does not expect him, and in the time which he does not know] (CCCC 140, p. 200). As the use of
wealh here is shared by all of the manuscripts to which Skeat refers, it is clear that it must have
been used in the original exemplar, and that, while occurring only once in this text, it was sufficiently widely accepted in the passive vocabulary that it was not replaced by any of the subsequent copyists. Faull compares the use of wealh here with the alternation between þegn for the ‘good’ slave and þræl for the ‘bad’ slave in Aldred’s version, arguing that both wealh and þræl may have been chosen here due to negative connotations attached to them.291 However, this is an
inaccurate observation both of Aldred’s semantic field of slavery which is characterised by complexity and multiplicity, and of the overall semantics of þræl, which can, in fact, be used in both positive and negative situations.292 Similarly, þeow is used elsewhere in this text with a variety
of moral statuses attached, as it is the only other term used to denote male chattel slaves in the
288 Pelteret, Slavery, pp. 320-2⒉
289 Pelteret appears to be correct that the development of this sense is an exclusively southern phenomenon (Pelteret, Slavery, p. 320).
290 Ursula Lenker, ‘The West Saxon Gospels and the Gospel-Lectionary in Anglo-Saxon England: Manuscript Evidence and Liturgical Practice’, Anglo-Saxon England, 28 (1999), 141-78 (p. 1).
291 Faull, ‘Wealh’, 2⒎ 292 See Chapters 2 and ⒌
West Saxon gospels. In the same parable, the Latin ‘malus seruus’, which refers more directly to the moral status of this individual, is rendered as ‘se yfela þeowa’ in the Corpus version and ‘se yfela þeow’ in the Hatton version [the bad þeow(a)] (Matthew 2⒋48, pp. 200-01). If wealh had any clear moral connotations here, we might expect it to be used in this more forceful instance. As wealh is used elsewhere in positive and neutral contexts, we cannot presume that it was chosen here for any specific connotations. Instead, it represents natural variation and diversity within the language. As discussed above, the West Saxon translator appears to have aimed for clarity in his vocabulary of social status, choosing to associate each Latin lemma closely with a single Old English term, although this was not the case in Old English overall. The appearance of wealh suggests that even in the late West Saxon of this translator, there was a greater variety of terms available, variety which he chose to sublimate for the sake of clarity. In terms of the meanings SLAVE and FOREIGNER, it is clear that the semantic development underway in the early West Saxon laws had been completed by this time. Here, wealh simply translates the Latin ‘serui’ with no hint of ethnic status attached.
The greatest concentration of uses of wealh for SLAVE similarly occurs in a biblical translation, the Heptateuch. Richard Marsden’s edition is based on Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud Misc. 509; the text occurs in a number of manuscripts.293 Only two of the eleven instances of this
term occur in the parts which Ælfric translated, while the remaining nine occur in the anonymous portions.294 Pelteret notes both of the Ælfrician instances, but only one of the nine anonymous
instances, giving a disproportionate impression both of scarcity and of Ælfrician dominance. 295
Faull devotes less than a sentence to the Heptateuch, and does not make any distinction between the Ælfrician and anonymous sections.296 The denotations of wealh here are largely uniform. In every 293 Marsden, Heptateuch, I, xxiv-lxix.
294 Jost shows that, linguistically speaking, Ælfric only translated Genesis 1-2⒋61 and some of Numbers (Karl Jost, ‘Unechte Ælfrictexte [Forsetzung]’, Anglia, 51 [1927], 177-219 [218-19]); Raith suggests that only the text from Genesis may be genuinely Ælfrician (Josef Raith, ‘Ælfric’s Share in the Old English Pentateuch’, Review of English Studies, n. s., 3 [1952], 305-14 [pp. 309-10, 314]).
295 Pelteret, Slavery, p. 32⒈ 296 Faull, ‘Wealh’, 2⒎
instance except one, it translates the Latin servus. Where wealh glosses the first element in the
servus et ancilla collocation, the latter is always glossed by wiln, reinforcing the connection between
the two terms, and their usefulness as an alliterative pairing (Genesis ⒛14, Exodus ⒛17, 2⒈20, 2⒈26, 2⒈32, Leviticus 2⒌44; pp. 44, 116-18, 136).297 The translation of Leviticus 2⒌39-40 is the
exception, as wealh does not gloss servus here, reading ‘þeah þin nehxta for his yrmðe gange on þeowet, nafa þu hine for weal ac for medgildan’ [if your neighbour/next of kin falls into slavery on account of his poverty, you may not have him as a wealh or as a servant] (p. 135), for the Latin Vulgate ‘si paupertate conpulsus vendiderit se tibi frater tuus non eum opprimes servitute famulorum’ [if your brother, driven by poverty, has sold himself, you may not oppress him with the servitude of slaves] (Vulgate, Leviticus 2⒌39). The Old English is clearly not a literal translation of the Latin: the phrase ‘servitute famulorum’ corresponds to both of the Old English nouns, ‘weal’ and ‘medgildan’, and is not a precise counterpart of either. Nevertheless, while wealh does not gloss famulus elsewhere, famulus also denotes chattel slaves and is often glossed by the same Old English terms which gloss servus. Therefore, this does not disrupt our understanding of
wealh’s semantics. Moreover, the appearance of servitus here reinforces the connection between its
cognate servus and wealh.
In the Heptateuch, wealh occurs in both the narrative and legal sections, although it is more common in the latter. It is used of both insignificant slaves who serve as extensions of their master’s will, such as the slaves of Abimalech, and of important figures, crucially Joseph during the time of his slavery in Egypt (Genesis ⒛14, 2⒈25, 3⒐17; pp. 44-46, 69). Thus, there are no moral distinctions attached to it. In the version of the commandments contained in Exodus ⒛17, the ‘wyeles’ and ‘wilne’ are part of the list of the neighbour’s goods which should not be coveted (p. 116), and thus we see slaves in their role as pure chattels. On the other hand, wealh occurs multiple times in Exodus 21 and twice in Leviticus 25, both of which concern the appropriate treatment of slaves and means of acquiring them (Exodus 2⒈5, 2⒈20, 2⒈16, 2⒈32, Leviticus 2⒌39, 2⒌44; pp. 116-118, 135-36). Exodus 2⒈20 lays out the commandment ‘se þe his wiel slicþ mid girde, oððe his wilne, and hig deade beoð þurh his handa’ [he who strikes his slave or his female slave with a
rod, and they die by his hand] and sets out punishments for this behaviour (p. 117). This verse is included in the introduction to Alfred’s laws, where servus is rendered by esne.298 Its translation here
by wealh indicates the depth of synonymy which existed in this Old English semantic field. Equally, wealh is not the only term for SLAVE used in these parts of the Heptateuch: for instance,
servus in Exodus 2⒈6 is glossed by þeow, although it immediately follows 2⒈5, in which wealh is
used of the same individual (p. 116). This indicates that the terms were used interchangeably here. These verses concern the practicalities of owning human beings and seek to delineate the social norms and mores concerning them. Thus, as elsewhere, the use of wealh is not restricted to one aspect of the slave.
Ælfric uses wealh repeatedly to translate the neuter paradigm, mancipium, in his Grammar, alongside þeow for the masculine servus and wiln for the feminine ancilla (pp. 101-02):299
Table 17: Wealh and Mancipium in Ælfric’s Grammar
Singular Plural
Nominative weal (mancipium) wealas (mancipia)
Vocative weal (mancipium) þeowan (mancipia)
Accusative weal (mancipium) þeowan men (mancipia)
Genitive weales (<mancipii>) þeowra (mancipiorum)
Dative weale (mancipio) ðeowum (<mancipiis>)
Ablative weale (mancipio) þeowum mannum (mancipiis)
Ælfric’s choice to use wealh here likely represents the desire to use different terms to render each Latin paradigm, even though wealh and þeow are both strong masculine nouns in Old English. The use of both wealh and wiln in a didactic text of this sort suggests that, while Ælfric might possibly
298 See ⒋⒊⒋
299 It is most probable that Ælfric himself added the Old English glosses to these texts. If he did not, it is certain that a closely affiliated member of his school did so, and that they had shared lexical preferences.
have been indulging a penchant for uncommon words, it is more likely that these terms were sufficiently widely recognised to be useful glosses for the intended audience. Moreover, it is worth noting that Ælfric does not use other supposedly less common terms to denote chattel slaves, such as esne and þræl. His vocabulary in this area is otherwise a close match to the West Saxon norm, although this is in part because his works go some way towards defining what constitutes this norm. His use of wealh and wiln, therefore, is significant as his sole divergence from this pattern.
It is unusual to find any of the Old English slave words discussed here glossing mancipium, but this is a function of the latter’s comparative scarcity: for instance, mancipium does not occur at all in the version of the Vulgate used in the Lindisfarne Gospels. Its pairing with servus and ancilla indicates that it is used here primarily as a convenient Latin slave word which happens to belong to the neuter declension. Thus, as mancipium parallels servus, so, too, wealh parallels þeow. This equivalence is particularly obvious as wealh is replaced by þeow in all the plural forms except the nominative. Whatever the reasons for this switch, it clearly has no effect on the meaning. At a purely semantic level, the two terms are interchangeable. The sample sentences for wealh are less informative than those for wiln discussed below. Nevertheless, the phrase ‘mei <mancipii> filius mines weales sunu’ [my wealh’s son] echoes the filius ancillae stock phrase used repeatedly with wiln in Ælfric’s works. More strikingly, ‘mea mancipia arant mine wealas eriað’ [my wealas plough] recalls the unfree ploughman of the Colloquuy.300 Thus, as far as we can tell from a limited amount
of material here, the wealh is associated with the same stock phrases and servile activities as elsewhere in the extant corpus.
Wealh appears in Ælfric’s homily ‘Feria II Letania Maiore’: ‘we ðe næron wurðe. beon his
wealas gecigde. and we habbað swilce geðincðe. þurh ða gehyrsumnysse’ [we were not worthy to be called his wealas, and we have appeared as such, through that submission].301 This is a ritualistic
display of submission to the divine and an implicit evocation of the servus Dei trope. The
300 Ælfric of Eynsham, Ælfric’s Colloquy, ed. by G. N. Garmonsway, 2nd edn (London: Methuen, 1947), p. 2⒈ All references are to this edition and are given parenthetically in the body of the text.
301 Ælfric of Eynsham, ‘Feria II Letania Maiore’, in Ælfric of Eynsham, Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: The Second Series; Text, ed. by Malcolm Godden, EETS, s. s., 5 (London: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 180-89 (p. 181).
unworthiness and utter obedience of the speakers is framed by their self-description as unworthy even of the debased status of the slave. In conjunction with the use of wealh in the Grammar to denote ‘real’ slaves, its use here in a metaphorical construct of this type demonstrates that, for Ælfric at least, wealh could be used in all the contexts which required a slave word. As Ælfric also used þeow in such metaphorical contexts, this passage further demonstrates the extent of synonymy between the two terms in his works.
Wealh occurs once in the late laws in II Æthelred, the treaty between Æthelred and Ólafr
Tryggvason, dated from around 994:302 ‘& þæt naðor ne hy ne we ne underfon oðres wealh ne
oðres ðeof ne oðres gefan’ [and that neither they nor we receive the wealh of the other, nor the thief of the other, nor anyone involved in feud with them].303 The appearance of wealh for SLAVE in
such a significant piece of legislature indicates a wider recognition of its meaning. It is easy to assume from the limited range of texts in which wealh is attested that, as SLAVE, it was a strange and unusual term, more of a curiosity than a functional part of the lexicon.304 Its usage here
suggests that its limited range of attestations is misleading and that, although it is rarely used in the extant material, it was more widely understood. There is clearly no hint of a potentially confusing ethnic dimension here, and it is thus clear that context was sufficient to determine which sense of wealh was intended. Moreover, its appearance in a practical text of this kind shows that it was as applicable to social and political situations as it was to literary formulae.
In the History of the Kentish Royal Saints, the ‘stefen cearciendes wænes’ [voice of the creaking wagon] is contrasted with that of the ‘ceoriendes wales’ [complaining wealh].305 There has
been some considerable debate here on the question of whether ‘wales’ comes from hweol or wealh. While the contrast with the wagon might suggest that a wheel might be a more obvious reading
302 Richard P. Abels, ‘Paying the Danegeld: Anglo-Saxon Peace-making with Vikings’, in War and Peace in Ancient and Medieval History, ed. by Philip DeSouza and John France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 173-92 (pp. 189-90).
303 § ⒍2, ‘II Æthelred: Vertrag mit Olaf ’, in Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ed. by Liebermann, I, 220-24 (p. 224). All references are to this edition and are given parenthetically in the body of the text.
304 See for instance Faull, ‘Wealh’, 35-3⒍
305 Max Förster, 'Die altenglischen Beigaben des Lambeth-Psalters,' Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, 132 (1914), 328-35 (p. 335).
here, Faull accepts the latter on grounds of the orthography.306 Accepting this as the most probable
reading, we once again have evidence that wealh was in wider usage. This version of the text appears in the late eleventh-century manuscript London, Lambeth Palace Library, 427, and is written in a hand of the Exeter type, although the text was most likely composed in the South- East.307 The chiding slave here is a familiar figure, yet another manifestation of the anti-social and
unpleasant behaviour associated with chattel slaves. The alliteration between the two phrases which gives this passage its striking force may well have impelled the choice of wealh in place of a more common but less alliterative term. Its use here is yet another case in which wealh is used a single time in a non-Ælfrician text.
Wealh is used in a fragment of ‘The Soul to the Body’ in the thirteenth-century
manuscript Worcester, Cathedral Library, F. 174: ‘ond ic þin wale iwearþ, hu so þu <woldest>’ [and I became your wealh, however you wished].308 This manuscript contains Ælfric’s Grammar and
Glossary, but the fragment is now labelled as anonymous. The linguistic forms are Early Middle
English.309 It is difficult to assess the dialectal and idiolectal relationships of this text, and thus of
the use of wealh. At one extreme, we could assume that this is an Ælfrician text or one produced by
306 Faull, ‘Wealh’, 2⒎
307 Elaine Treharne, ‘London, Lambeth Palace Library, 427’, in The Production and Use of English Manuscripts 1060 to 1220, ed. by Orietta Da Rold, Takako Kato, Mary Swan and Elaine Treharne <http:// www.le.ac.uk/english/em1060to1220/mss/EM.Lamb.42⒎htm> [accessed 21st June 2014]; Pelteret, Slavery, p. 32⒈
308 Die Fragmente der Reden der Seele an den Leichnam in Zwei Handschriften zu Worcester und Oxford, ed. by Richard Buchholz, Erlanger Beiträge zur Englischen Philologie, 6 (Erlangen: Deichert’sche, 1890), p. ⒐ The form ‘wale’ for wealh in the nominative singular implies both a weak declension and the merger of final vowels in Middle English. While the usage of this term may represent mechanical copying, the appearance of Middle English phonological forms here may represent the continuing use of wealh in this sense into the thirteenth century, which in turn suggests wider currency. Neither Faull nor Pelteret discusses this instance, and, indeed, the text has received little or no scholarly attention since the editions of the nineteenth century. Here, therefore, the Dictionary of Old English corpus has proved invaluable in finding neglected material containing this term.
309 Elaine Treharne, ‘Worcester, Cathedral Library, F. 174’, in The Production and Use of English Manuscripts 1060 to 1220, ed. by Da Rold, Kato, Swan and Treharne <http://www.le.ac.uk/english/em1060to1220/mss/ EM.WorcCL.F.17⒋htm> [accessed 20th June 2014]. The Middle English Dictionary also cites this text (MED, s.v. ‘wale’ [accessed 20th June 2014]).
his school and therefore that this lexical choice depends entirely upon his usage; at the other we could assume that this is an entirely independent text with a concomitantly independent lexical choice. As the distribution of wealh is wider than Pelteret’s concentration on the Ælfrician material