The Remnant: Essays on a Theme in Old English Verse (review)

“[L]inguistic archaeology can assist in recovering the past” is the final line of advice given by Phyllis Portnoy in her book on the “remnant” motif in Old English poetry. Consisting of five essays rounded off by a short conclusion, the book discusses the multifarious significations of the motif as expressed by the multiple meanings of Old English lāf. The materials under discussion include various Old English Riddles, Beowulf, texts from the Bible, the Rabbinical tradition and several Church Fathers; three poems from MS Junius 11; and iconography, especially late-antique Christian wall paintings and Irish crosses. The purpose of the book is two-fold: on the one hand, Portnoy aims to offer fresh interpretations of the Old English poems discussed; on the other, she promises a “literary Sutton Hoo” (p. 5) in the uncovering of new information surrounding Old English lāf and the repercussions of these discoveries for our understanding of the “remnant” motif.

In the first essay, entitled ‘I’m Lost, I’m Dead, I’m English, What Am I? The Riddle of Old English Laf’ (pp. 6–73), Portnoy shows how the semantic diversity of Old English lāf is reflected by its use in riddle tradition, in particular Riddles 71, 5, 56, 20, and 91. The rather careless transcription of parts of these riddles is disappointing (Riddle 5: 10 Nefre] Næfre; Riddle 56: 2 with] wiht, 7 bindfæst] biidfæst; Riddle 20: 4 pone] þone, pe] pe, 6 ponne] þonne, 33 worn] wom, 36 compes . . .] compes ***; Riddle 91: 1 geđuren] geðuren, 7 P] w or, better, an explanation of the wyn rune), but the discussion is nonetheless interesting. Several meanings of lāf, such as ‘remainder,’ ‘survivor,’ ‘widow,’ ‘heirloom,’ ‘legacy,’ ‘treasure’ and ‘sword,’ occur in various combinations in each of the riddles, a type of punning which showed the Anglo-Saxon riddlers’ awareness of the semantic ranges in which lāf could be placed. Of particular interest are the lāf kennings meaning ‘sword,’ such as homera lāfe ‘remnants of hammers’ (Riddle 5: 7), because the meaning ‘sword’ occurs not only as the solution to a kenning containing lāf ‘remnant,’ but also as the translation of the simplex. This is considered problematic because in a kenning neither element is supposed to denote individually the solution of the kenning, while in ealde lāfe ‘old sword’ (Beowulf 795) the meaning ‘sword’ is obvious but there is no kenning. This is the reason for the second part of the first essay, in which Portnoy undertakes a lexical analysis of lāf with the help of the Dictionary of Old English Corpus and a further selection of dictionaries.

The conclusion that lāf cannot mean ‘sword,’ while at the same time being part of a kenning meaning ‘sword,’ is supported by the unlikely assertion that “[i]f laf ‘sword’ were a figurative extension of ‘remnant,’ one would expect to find a similar semantic development for a weapon in at least one other Indo-European language” (p. 25). In the subsequent discussion Portnoy refers to analogues in the Germanic languages only, while information from other Indo-European languages has to be gleaned from Appendix D (pp. 71–73). However, the absence of analogues has little relevance for Portnoy’s solution to the problem, which is purely etymological: Portnoy proposes the existence of a homonym of lāf ‘remnant’ in the form of a separate Old English word lāf meaning ‘blade.’ First Portnoy makes clear that Old English lāf ‘remnant’ derives from the Indo-European root *leip (p. 25), all meanings of which refer to matters to do with adhesion (p. 71). Then (p. 29) she states that there are other significant Indo-European roots: the reflexes of *leu ‘to cut off’ and of *lep, lop ‘flat of the hand,’ denote ‘long sharp things’ and ‘broad flat things,’ including blades and swords. There are two potential Old English reflexes of *lep...