Article published In:
NOWELEVol. 72:1 (2019) ► pp.1–10
The meaning of Old English folcscaru and the
compound’s function in Beowulf
Ever since
Kemble
(1840),
buton folcscare (
Beowulf,
73a) has been thought to mean ‘with the exception of the common land’. The Old
English compound
folcscaru is reliably attested in poetic texts
in the sense ‘tribe, nation’; secondarily the meaning ‘province, land’ may have
arisen, but nowhere does the compound convey the special sense ‘common land,
commons’. It can be shown that a meaning in the area of ‘tribe’ makes sense at
line 73 of
Beowulf as well, but the genitive
gumena refers to both
folcscare and
feorum. It is quite conceivable that the line provides a
distant echo of ancient Germanic customs concerning limitations of royal
authority as adumbrated in Tacitus’
Germania.
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Cited by (1)
Cited by one other publication
NEIDORF, LEONARD
2021.
THE BEOWULF POET'S SENSE OF DECORUM.
Traditio 76
► pp. 1 ff.
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