Entries in the Abingdon II Chronicle for the years 912 and 913 C.E. that refer to Æþelflæd, the Lady of the Mercians. An image of Old English script.
22 April 2021
The words lord and lady both come to us from Old English and stem from the cultural practice of the nobility providing sustenance and wealth to their court and their people. Lord is from the Old English hlaford, a blend of hlaf (loaf) + weard (guardian). And lady is from the Old English hlæfdige; that is hlaf (loaf) + *dige (kneader). Neither the word *dige or the verb *digan are attested in the extant Old English corpus, but digan means to knead in Gothic, and there is the Old English noun dag, which gives us our present-day word dough. So, it’s not a stretch to assume *dige and *digan existed in Old English. Therefore, a lord is literally a guardian of bread, and a lady is a kneader of bread, two etymologies that tell us something about gender roles in early medieval England.
Most of the senses of lord and lady that we use today existed in Old English, and the semantic development of the two words follows that of the Latin dominus/domina and French seigneur/dame, for which lord and lady have been commonly used in translations.
An example of hlaford in Old English is from the poem The Battle of Maldon, lines 314–19. The poem is incomplete, and this passage appears near the end of the surviving portion. (The manuscript was destroyed in the Ashburnham House fire in 1731—the same fire that damaged the Beowulf manuscript—but a transcript had been made several years earlier.) The battle was a historical but minor one, fought on either 10 or 11 August 991 C.E. between the English and Viking raiders. The poem was probably composed shortly afterward. The passage here is about the death of Byrhtnoth, the earl who commanded the English forces, and is spoken by Byrhtwold, one of his veteran retainers (all the Byrht[—]s can be a bit confusing):
Her lið ure ealdor eall forheawen,
god on greote. A mæg gnornian
se ðe nu fram þis wigplegan wendan þenceð.
Ic eom frod feores; fram ic ne wille,
ac ic me be healfe minum hlaforde,
be swa leofan men, licgan þence.(Here lies our ruler, all cut down, a good man in the dust. He who thinks to turn away from this war-play will always regret it. I am wise in life; I will not turn away, but by the side of my lord, by such a dear man, I intend to lie.)
Calling Byrhtnoth a hlaford or lord is just what we might expect of masculine gender roles of the era. But popular expectations of medieval gender roles are not always accurate, and some of the Old English uses of hlæfdige or lady demonstrate that. Women in early medieval England had more influence, power, and autonomy that many might think. That is not to say that there was anything close to gender equality in that period—early medieval England was very much a patriarchal society—but our concepts of powerless medieval women are largely based on gender roles as they existed after the twelfth century. During the early medieval period, English women could exert considerable power and influence, with the main limitation on their power stemming from social class rather than their sex. Noble and wealthy women sometimes wielded considerable political and economic authority, and abbesses not only governed their cloistered colleagues, but they often administered enormous estates.
Perhaps the most famous of these powerful women of the period was Æthelflæd, the daughter of King Alfred of Wessex and wife of Æthelred, the ealdorman of Mercia. Æthelflæd assumed power upon the death of her husband in 911 and ruled until 918, styled as Lady of the Mercians. When she died the title and power briefly passed to her daughter Ælfwynn—the only known example of secular rule passing from one woman to another in early medieval England—before Ælfwynn was deposed by her uncle, Æthelflæd’s brother Edward, the king of Wessex.
The following passage from the Abingdon Chronicle II makes reference to Æthelflæd fortifying a series of towns, indicating that she played a military role:
AN DCCCCXII. Her com Æþelflæd Myrcna hlæfdige on þone halgan æfen Inuentione Sancte Crucis to Scergeate & þær ða burh getimbrede, & þæs ilcan geares þa æt Bricge.
AN DCCCCXIII. Her Gode forgyfendum for Æþelflæd Myrcna hlæfdige mid eallum Myrcum to Tamaweorðige & þa burh þær getimbrede on foreweardne sumor, & þæs foran to Hlafmæssan þa æt Stæfforda.
(A.D. 912. In this year Æþelflæd, the lady of the Mericans came to Scergeate on the holy evening of the Discovery of the Holy Cross and there built the fort and also in this year the one at Bridgnorth.
A.D. 913. In this year, by the grace of God Æþelflæd lady of the Mercians and all the Mercians went to Tamworth & there built that fort at the beginning of summer & then before Lammas (1 August) the one at Stafford.)
The present-day location of the town of Scergeate is not known.
These two words present a case where assuming the etymology is an accurate guide to cultural mores can lead you to the wrong conclusion. The gender roles depicted in the etymologies may be broadly accurate, but early medieval gender roles were more subtle and complicated than these particular etymologies, and popular history in general, would have us believe.
Sources:
Abingdon Chronicle II, London, British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius B.i, fol. 140r.
“The Battle of Maldon.” The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems. Elliot Van Kirk Dobbie, ed. Anglo Saxon Poetic Records 6. New York: Columbia UP, 1942, 15–16.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2021, s.v. lord, n. and int, lady, n.
Image credit: London, British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius B.i, fol. 140r. Fair use of a portion of a digitized medieval manuscript to illustrate a point under discussion.