Iron being smelted
1 December 2023
Iron is a hard, magnetic, silvery-gray metal with atomic number 26 and the symbol Fe, which is from the Latin ferrum. Iron has, of course, been known since antiquity.
The word iron has cognates in the other West Germanic languages and in Gothic. Similar forms exist in the Celtic languages, such as the Irish and Scottish Gaelic iarann. The Celtic words may be cognate with the Germanic, but more likely the West Germanic words are prehistoric borrowings from the Celts. The North Germanic words, such as the Swedish järn and the Danish jern are probably borrowings from Early Irish.
In Old English, the word existed in three main forms. The oldest of these is isern, which became isen in the West Saxon dialect and iren in Mercian. We seen the older form in the copy of the Old English translation of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People contained in Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Kk.3.18, fol. 8v:
Hit hafað eac þis land sealtseaþas; & hit hafaþ hat wæter, & hat baðo ælcere yldo & had ðurh todælede stowe gescræpe. Swylce hit is eac berende on wecga orum ares & isernes, leades & seolfres.
(This land, it also has salt springs; & it has hot water, & and hot baths in various places suitable for all ages & sexes. Moreover, it is also producing in quantity ores of copper & iron, lead & silver.)
Another manuscript containing this work, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College Library MS 41, uses the form irenes, from which the modern form iron descends. Both manuscripts were copied in the eleventh century.
In antiquity and in the Middle Ages, seven of the elemental metals were each associated with a god and with a planet, with iron associated with Ares/Mars. We see this association in a variety of alchemical writings, including Chaucer’s The Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale:
I wol yow telle, as was me taught also,
The foure spirites and the bodies sevene,
By ordre, as ofte I herde my lord hem nevene.The firste spirit quyksilver called is,
The seconde orpyment, the thridde, ywis,
Sal armonyak, and the ferthe brymstoon.
The bodyes sevene eek, lo, hem heere anoon:
Sol gold is, and Luna silver we threpe,
Mars iren, Mercurie quyksilver we clepe,
Saturnus leed, and Juppiter is tyn,
And Venus coper, by my fader kyn!(I will tell you, as it was taught also to me,
The four spirits and the seven metals,
In the order as I often heard my lord name them.The first spirit is called quicksilver,
The second orpiment, the third, indeed,
Sal ammoniac, and the fourth brimstone.
The seven metals also, lo, hear them now:
The Sun is gold, and the Moon we assert silver,
Mars iron, Mercury we call quicksilver,
Saturn lead, and Jupiter is tin,
And Venus copper, by my father’s kin!)
Our understanding of iron as an element, in the present-day definition of that word, dates to the late eighteenth century.
Sources:
Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, vol. 1 of 4. Thomas Miller, ed. Early English Text Society O.S. 95. London: Oxford UP, 1890, 1.1, 26. HathiTrust Digital Library.
Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, vol. 3 of 4. Thomas Miller, ed. Early English Text Society O.S. 110. London: Oxford UP, 1890, 12. HathiTrust Digital Library.
Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Kk.3.18, fol. 8v, second half of eleventh century,
Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale.” The Canterbury Tales. In Larry D. Benson, ed. The Riverside Chaucer, 8.819–29, 273. Also, with minor variation in wording, at Harvard’s Geoffrey Chaucer Website.
Dictionary of Old English: A to I, 2018, s.v. isen, isern, iren, n. and isen, isern, iren, adj.
“Genesis A.” In Daniel Anlezark, ed. Old Testament Narratives. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 7. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2011, 80, lines 1082–89
Miśkowiec, Pawel. “Name Game: The Naming History of the Chemical Elements—Part 1—From Antiquity till the End of 18th Century.” Foundations of Chemistry. 1 November 2022. DOI: 10.1007/s10698-022-09448-5.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2013, s.v. iron, n.
Parker Library on the Web. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 041: Old English Bede, 30 of 504, p. 22. Stanford University Libraries.
Photo credit: P. Sakthy, 2003. Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.