Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/15

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S. III. JAN. 7, '99.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

vquld imply that each successive owner of a ihief house, or " hof," would be possessed throughout his tenancy of one or more 'haws," which would pass, on intestacy, to the younger son or sons. ^ Accordingly he uses the word " possess," which is too vague to be of scientific use, for we are not told how the ancestor himself became '"possessed," or whether the younger son or sons became " possessed " by inheritance or by grant. I can find no such custom in Grimm's 'Rechtsalter- thiimer.' There is nothing like it in the Icelandic Gragas. It is directly at variance with English customs as to inheritance. It does not resemble borough English, gavel- kind, or any other tenure known to me. As Prof. Vinogradoff has shown, the holding of the English villain was a fixed and indivisible quantity : " It does not admit of partition by sale or descent."*

As regards "the diverse Latin words by which hagusteald and its continental forms are glossed," I only find one Latin word used throughout the Wright- Wiilcker vocabularies, and that is coelebs. And it is remarkable that in a vocabulary of the tenth century, printed in the same volume, the words ""hegsteald men " are glossed by " colibates " (sic). Here a class of men is referred to, and "colibates" may denote either single men regarded as a class, or, as seems more likely, monks, or men who professed celibacy. As to the gloss "agricola," I find that in Grimm's 'Rechts- alterthiimer,' p. 313, haistaldi is explained in a document as " agricola liber qui non tenet hereditatem a curia." Here the word is not glossed simply as " agricola," but as " a hus- bandman who does not hold his inheritance from the court." Among the persons who, in England at any rate, did not hold their lands " from the court " were monks. I do not, of course, say that the " agricola liber " in the passage cited was a monk. Inhere were other persons besides monks whose lands were "free," and did not pass by surrender and admittance in the manorial court. But in English, if not in continental documents, monks are usually said to hold their lands "in libera et pura eleemosyna." The word augustalis, or its English or German equiva- lent, might easily have acquired the secondary meaning of " freeholder."

The Norse nickname or surname Hagu- staldaR, found in two runic inscriptions, does not by any means put my theory out of court, but, on the contrary, is a valuable piece of evidence in support of the theory. Assuming, as MR. STEVENSON does, that the dates of the


 * ' Villainage in England,' p. 246.

inscriptions are "somewhere between the years 500 and 700," there is nothing to show that the Norwegians were unfamiliar with bate." We know that on the first arrival of the Norsemen in Iceland in the ninth cen- tury they found papas or monks in the east of that country. If monks could settle in so distant a place as Iceland before the ninth century, they may have settled in Norway at a still earlier time. If the Norwegians had possessed an ancient literature like that of the Icelanders we might have heard some- thing about them. It is very significant that this case, described a man's condition in life. What was that condition ? I suggest that it was the condition of a monk or celibate, and the suggestion gains weight from the fact that, on ME. STEVENSON'S showing, hog stall and haugstall in modern Norwegian dialects mean "widower," for a widower is a celi- bate. What ground is there for believing that, according to Norwegian custom, a sessed " a " haw," whilst his elder brother inherited the "hof"? It lies on MR. STEVEN- SON to show the existence of such a custom.
 * hagustaldr in the sense of " monk " or " celi-
 * hagustaldr is a surname, a name which, in
 * hagustaldr was a younger son who " pos-

MR. STEVENSON thinks that the word Hexhain, which occurs as Hagustaldes-ham in the ' Chronicle,' may be derived from a per- sonal name, Hagustald. We are told in effect that this Roman town, with its magnificent basilica and its sculptured Roman tombs and altars,* may have taken its name from a petty crofter or cottager called Hagustald, or the descendant of such a crofter. It may have been so. It is within the infinite possibilities. But can we suppose that such places as Monkton, Monk Bretton, or Nun Staintpn took their names from a Mr. Monk or a Miss Nun who once lived there ? Is it not far more likely nay, is it not certain that these places were called after the monks and nuns who once lived there ?

MR. STEVENSON says that the brook-name Hextold or Hextild, to the west of the town of Hexham, " should clearly be added to the long list of bogus river-names evolved from local names." I quite agree with him. And why should we not also say that Hcegstaldes- cumb in the forged charter, Hagustaldces-ce in Eddi, Hagustaldes-ham in the 'Chronicle,' and Hehst'ealdes-ig in Simeon of Durham, are bogus place-names'? Is it likely that a valley, a river, a Roman town, and an island

quidem mpdica, et raro cultore habitata, sed, ut antiquitatis vestigia testantur, quondam ampla et magnifica" (Raines ' Hexham,' i. 8).
 * Prior Richard describes the town as "nunc