Notes and Queries, Number 27, May 4, 1850 | Page 8

his Glossary;
but I think there can be no doubt that it should be rendered by _goods_,
_chattels_, or _wealth_, i.e., movable property.
This will be even more obvious from an extract given by Bishop
Nicholson, in the preface to Wilkin's _Leges Saxonicæ_ p. vii. It is part
of the oath of a Scotish baron of much later date, and the sense here is
unequivocal:--
"I becom zour man my liege king in land, _lith_[2], life and lim,
warldly honour, homage, fealty, and leawty, against all that live and
die."
Numerous examples are to be found in the M.H. German, of which I
will cite a few:
"Ir habt doch zu iuwere hant Beidin liute unde lant."
_Tristr._ 13934.
"Und bevelhet ir liute unde lant."
_Iwein._ 2889. {432}
"Ich teile ir liute unde lant."
_Id._ 7714.
And in the old translation of the Liber Dialogorum of St. Gregory,
printed in the cloister of S. Ulrich at Augspurg in 1473:--
"In der Statt waren hoch Türen und schöne Heüser von Silber und Gold,

und aller Hand _leüt_, und die Frawen und Man naÿgten im alle."
Lastly, Jo. Morsheim in his _Untreuer Frawen_:--
"Das was mein Herr gar gerne hört, Und ob es Leut und Land bethort."
Now, when we recollect the state of the people in those times, the
serf-like vassalage, the _Hörigkeit_ or _Leibeigenthum_, which
prevailed, we cannot be surprised that a word which signified
possessions should designate also the people. It must still, however, be
quite uncertain which is the secondary sense.
The root of the word, as Grimm justly remarks, is very obscure; and yet
it seems to me that he himself has indirectly pointed it out:--
"Goth. liudan[3] (crescere); O.H.G. liotan (sometimes unorganic,
hliotan); O.H.G. liut (populus); A.-S. lëóð; O.N. lióð: Goth. lauths -is
(homo), ju33alauths -dis (adolescens); O.H.G. sumar -lota (virgulta
palmitis, i.e. qui una æstate creverunt, _Gl. Rhb._ 926'b, Jun. 242.);
M.H.G. corrupted into sumer -late (M.S. i. 124'b. 2. 161'a. virga herba).
It is doubtful whether ludja (facies), O.H.G. andlutti, is to be reckoned
among them."--_Deutsche Gram._ ii. 21. For this last see Diefenbach,
_Vergl. Gram. der Goth. Spr._ i. 242.
In his _Erlauterungen zu Elene_, p. 166., Grimm further remarks:--
"The verb is leoðan, leað, luðon (crescere), O.S. lioðan, lôð, luðun.
Leluðon (_Cædm._ 93. 28.) is creverunt, pullulant; and 3eloðen (ap.
Hickes, p. 135. note) onustus, but rather cretus. Elene, 1227. 3eloðen
unðep leápum (cretus sub foliis)."
It has been surmised that LEDE was connected with the O.N.
hlÿt[4]--which not only signified _sors, portio_, but _res
consistentia_--and the A.-S. hlet, hlyt, lot, portion, inheritance: thus, in
the A.-S. Psal. xxx. 18., on hanðum ðinum hlÿt mín, my heritage is in
thy hands. Notker's version is: Mín lôz ist in dínen handen. I have since
found that Kindlinger (_Geschichte der Deutchen Hörigkeit_) has made
an attempt to derive it from _Lied, Lit_, which in Dutch, Flemish, and
Low German, still signify a _limb_; I think, unsuccessfully.
Ray, in his _Gloss. Northanymbr._, has "unlead, nomen opprobrii;" but
he gives a false derivation: Grose, in his _Provincial Glossary_, "unleed
or unlead, a general name for any crawling venomous creature, as a
toad, &c. It is sometimes ascribed to a man, and then it denotes a sly
wicked fellow, that in a manner creeps to do mischief. See Mr.
Nicholson's Catalogue."

In the 2d edition of Mr. Brockett's _Glossary_, we have: "Unletes,
displacers or destroyers of the farmer's produce."
This provincial preservation of a word of such rare occurrence in
Anglo-Saxon, and of which no example has yet been found in old
English, is a remarkable circumstance. The word has evidently
signified, like the Gothic, in the first place _poor_; then _wretched_,
_miserable_; and hence, perhaps, its opprobrious sense of mischievous
or wicked.
"In those rude times when wealth or movable property consisted almost
entirely of living money, in which debts were contracted and paid, and
for which land was given in mortgage or sold; it is quite certain that the
serfs were transferred with the land, the lord considering them as so
much live-stock, or part of his chattels."
A vestige of this feeling with regard to dependants remains in the use
of the word Man (which formerly had the same sense as _lede_). We
still speak of "a general and his men," and use the expression "our
men." But, happily for the masses of mankind, few vestiges of serfdom
and slavery, and those in a mitigated form, now virtually exist.
S.W. SINGER.
April 16. 1850.
[Footnote 1: It occurs many times in the Moeso-Gothic version of the
Gospels for [Greek: ptochos]. From the Glossaries, it appears that
iungalauths is used three times for [Greek: neaniskos], a young man;
therefore lauths or lauds would signify simply _man_; and the plural,
laudeis, would be people. See this established by