caa a22 4500 388048565 CHVBK 20180307125044.0 cr unu---uuuuu 161130e199812 xx s 000 0 eng 10.1017/S0263675100004786 doi S0263675100004786 pii (NATIONALLICENCE)cambridge-10.1017/S0263675100004786 Oliver Lisi Louisiana State University Cyninges fedesl: the king's feeding in Æthelberht, ch. 12 [Elektronische Daten] [Lisi Oliver] The twelfth-century Textus Roffensis contains a collection of early English laws, of which the first is attributed to Æthelberht of Kent, who reigned c. 580-616. Although these laws remain to us only in a copy made some six centuries later, there are strong linguistic grounds, first proposed by Sievers and Liebermann, and recently elaborated on and expanded by myself, to assume that the text as we have it genuinely reflects a copy of an early original, albeit much changed by generations of scribal modernization. Yet problems of interpretation often arise, among them the difficulty in the definition of hapax legomena: words which occur in the corpus of Old English only in this text. One such term is contained in Æthelberht, ch. 12, which states: ‘Cyninges fedesl XX scillinga forgelde.' This is presumably formulated along the lines of Æthelberht, ch. 8, which reads: ‘Cyninges mundbyrd L scillinga.' There is basic agreement among scholars as to the meaning, if not the precise interpretation, of mundbyrd: most would agree with Bosworth's definition of ‘protection, patronage'. Along these lines, the clause can be interpreted as: ‘[For violating] the king's protection: 50 (of) shillings.' Using this as a template, one might translate iEthelberht, ch. 12, as: ‘[For violating] the king's fedesl: let [the perpetrator pay] 20 (of) shillings.' Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998 Anglo-Saxon England Cambridge University Press 27(1998-12), 31-40 0263-6751 27<31 1998 27 ASE https://doi.org/10.1017/S0263675100004786 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1017/S0263675100004786 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Oliver Lisi Louisiana State University NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Anglo-Saxon England Cambridge University Press 27(1998-12), 31-40 0263-6751 27<31 1998 27 ASE CC0 http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0 nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-cambridge