Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/264

 258 Klaeber sensus of opinion' regarding some happening or circumstance (as in Beow. 1598), or as is commonly the case in the examples under consideration it may look toward some action to be taken, thus involving the idea of ( decide,' 'determine.' Again, the phrase may denote an agreement between or among a num- ber of persons, or it may refer to a wholehearted decision by a single person: 'make up one's mind,' 'resolve,' 'determine/ cf. Middle High German enein werden 21 German mit sich eins werden 22 But the essential unity of meaning should never be lost sight of. As to construction, this geweorfian is most frequently found with the accusative of the person, sometimes in absolute use, once with an infinitive, and very often with the genitive of the thing or a />#/-clause, or with both; in a few cases prepositional phrases (with ymb, wifi, to) have taken the place of the (earlier) genitival construction. The idea of 'mutual agreement' is occasionally emphasized by the addition of betwih, betweonum and personal pronouns. In a number of instances, mostly late ones, the dative of the person is met with; in several cases of this type the two parties to the agreement are specified and joined by the copulative and. Whether the use of this dative is in part due to the influence of (ge^weorftan 'happen,' is a question possibly to be answered in the affirmative. Examples : 23 a) geweorfian used absolutely. cf. Franck-van Wijk, Etym. Woordenboek, s.v. lijken. (The use of lician and gelician in the following two passages is decidedly instructive: licade us efen- cuman, Bede 276.13 (=placuit con venire nos); eowrum Fader gelicode eow rice syllan, Luke 12.32 ( = complacuit Patri vestro dare vobis regnum.) 21 E.g., unz daz er aber einer vart / durch banekie eneine wart, Gotfr. Tristan 409. 22 Cf., e.g., mid hine gemyndgade, Bede 346.2 ( = rememorando secum). 23 A number of the examples here presented may be found in Professor Hubbard's admirable paper, "Beowulf 1598, 1996, 2026; uses of the impersonal verb geweorfyan, " in this Journal, xvii, 119-124, by which, in fact, the present study was first suggested. (Several of the passages were referred to by J. L. Hall in a brief note, Johns Hopkins University Circulars VI (1886), 32 f.) It was a happy idea of Professor Hubbard's to include analogous examples from other Germanic dialects. It will be shown, I hope, especially in the third division of this article, that this line of investigation can be still further extended.