Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 16, 1905.djvu/146

 1 24 Reviews.

local nomenclature of the Danelaw, like the curious " hundredal " system to which Mr. Chadwick refers, demands much fuller consideration than it has obtained as yet.

We expect that students will hardly be able to agree with Mr. Chadwick in his somewhat indiscriminate use of the word " earl." The evidence to which he himself refers suggests very strongly that the word in its official sense is a Scandinavian importation into the language. This being so, and in view of the very small number of Anglo-Saxon titles to which it is possible to attach a definite meaning it seems a pity to abandon the old distinction between " ealdorman " and " eorl" and to put the latter word to a use which destroys its peculiar significance. On page 254 Mr. Chadwick also makes a rather difficult statement. He is describ- ing the administrative system of Oxfordshire, pointing out that 4-|- hundreds were attached to the royal manor of Bensington ; 2 to Headington ; 2\ to Kirtlington and so on. He then goes on to say, " Is it necessary to suppose that the system came into operation after the organisation of the hundreds? If that was the case one would hardly have expected to find a hundred divided between two royal manors." But surely we are not to suppose that when we read of a " half-hundred " an older hundred has in this case been divided into two. If this was so, what are we to make of such a division as the "hundred-and-a-half"? It seems much more probable that the term " half-hundred " was used to describe an administrative district which contained considerably less than the number of tribes which current opinion considered to be the complement of a full hundred.

One of the most interesting passages in the book is Excursus IV., in which Mr. Chadwick discusses the functions of the national council in Anglo-Saxon times with especial reference to the election of kings. In his treatment of this subject he joins company with a number of modern writers who, by laying stress on the vagueness and uncertainty of early political ideas, mark a very wholesome reaction from the somewhat facile dogmatism of the school represented by Mr. Freeman. Thus, by working through the cases in which the elective powers of the witan have been supposed to be exercised, ]\Ir. Chadwick is able to prove that in no case is its action so distinctly stated as to preclude the