*

WHAT IS THE MEANING OF "LAERIG?"

This _query_, evidently addressed to our Anglo-Saxon scholars by the
distinguished philologist to whom we are all so much indebted, not
having been hitherto replied to, perhaps the journal of "NOTES AND
QUERIES" is the most fitting vehicle for this suggestive note:--

TO DR. JACOB GRIMM.

Allow me, though an entire stranger to you, to thank you for the
pleasure I have derived, in common with all ethnological students, from
your very valuable labours, and especially from the _Geschichte der
Deutschen Sprache_. At the same time I venture, with much diffidence, to
offer a reply to your question which occur in that work at p.
663.:--"Was heisst _laerig_?"

Lye says, "Haec vox occurrit apid Caedm. At interpretatio ejus minime
liquet." In the Supplement to his Dictionary it is explained "docilis,
tyro!" Mr. Thorpe, in his _Analecta A.-S._ (1st edit. Gloss), says, "The
meaning of this word is uncertain: it occurs again in _Caedmon_;" and in
his translation of _Caedmon_ he thus renders the passage:--"Ofer linde
laerig=over the linden shields." Here then _laerig_, evidently an
adjective, is rendered by the substantive _shields_; and _linde_,
evidently a substantive, is rendered by the adjective _linden_. In two
other passages, Mr. Thorpe more correctly translates _lindum_=bucklers.

_Lind_, which Lye explained by the Latin _labarium_, _vexillum_, that
excellent scholar, the late lamented Mr. Price, was the first, I
believe, to show frequently signified _a shield_; which was, probably
for lightness, made of the wood of the _lime tree_, and covered with
skin, or leather of various colours. Thus we have "sealwe linde" and
"hwite linde" in _Caedm._, "geolwe linde" in _Beowulf_.

All this is superfluous to you, sir, I know--"_Retournons a nos
moutons_," as Maistre Pierre Pathelin says.

The sense required in the passage in _Brythnoth_ seems to me to be:--

"baerst bordes laerig=the empty (hollow concave) shields

"and seo byrne sang=and the armour (_lorica_) resounded."

And in _Caedmon_:--

"ofer linde laerig=over the empty (hollow concave) shield."

In Judith, _Th. Anal._ 137, 53. we have a similar epithet:--

"hwealfum lindum=vaulted (arched concave) shields."

We should remember that Somner has _ge-laer_, void, empty, _vacuus_; and
Lye, with a reference to the Herbarium, _laer-nesse_, vacuitas. In the
_Teuthonista_ we have _laer_, vacuus, _concavus_. In _He