Nathan Bailey's Dictionary and "Harold, the last Danish king"

I have bought another dictionary, perhaps the most wonderful dictionary I will ever own.  It is Nathan Bailey's An Universal Etymological English Dictionary and Interpreter of Hard Words.  Despite the fame of Dr Samuel Johnson and his 1755 adaptation of Bailey's production, Bailey was the first to compile an etymological dictionary of the English language in the form still used today.  Earlier attempts at dictionaries just gave word meanings.  Bailey's dictionary was also the most popular of the 18th century. Bailey innovated many of the forms and practices that Dr Johnson (whose 1755 dictionary was actually the 21st dictionary of the English language) and others emulated.

I already value two things about the Bailey Dictionary that make it infinitely superior to Johnson's effort.  The first is that Bailey recognises the etymology of a word when it entered the English language.  For example, he refers to Teutonic or Ancient German, where Johnson misleadingly says German.  There was no Germany until the first Deutsche Bund in 1814, and certainly none in the 5th to 7th centuries when many words came into use in Britain with Saxon emigration.  It is misleading and inaccurate to say words came into English from German.  The loose German confederation that emerged in the 19th century amalgamated many earlier tribes and diverse linguistic traditions.  Bailey recognised that diversity of antiquity and respected it.  Bailey also recognises a lot more scope for Old French, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Belgic, Dutch and Syrian, and even has a separate styling for Sea Term to cover nautical dialects common among mariners from India to Eire.


Bailey also includes many words which were considered too common, uncouth or vulgar for inclusion in later dictionaries aimed at schooling the gentry.  Bailey gives words associated with specialist trades, manufacturing, sea-faring, body parts, and even swearing.


I didn't find the first word to come to mind when I checked for completeness, but I did find Shite: to ease Nature, to discharge the Belly.  No entry for shite in Dr Johnson.


When schooling of children became general during the Victorian era, the priggish governors opted to put Dr Johnson in school libraries and classrooms, thereby narrowing the English mind and denying the richness of English linguistic origins.  If schools had stocked Mr Bailey's dictionary rather than Dr Johnson's, then it is likely a lot more English boys and girls would have spent time consulting the dictionary to their betterment.  Kids like looking up rude and interesting words.  Later Victorian toponymists narrowed English place names even further, as Celtic, German and Latin, ignoring the richness of Nathan Bailey's enquiry.  That narrowing of the English mind is regrettable, and has led to a fair amount of misguided history too.


I can give an example of how the narrowing of the English mind rendered history less accurate, and it is the reason I bought the dictionary.  Nathan Bailey is the only source for the phrase "Harold, the last Danish king" of England, in his entry for Battle Abbey.  The Victorians, perhaps to please a very German royal family, altered Harold to Saxon, ignoring his Danish mother, Anglo-Danish father, and other obvious Danish preferences, like slave raiding along the coast in his ships. 
Because Harold was born in Sussex, Harold became Saxon.  I suppose the children of British parents building the British Empire who were born in Hong Kong became Chinese, or those born in Bombay became Indian, or those born in Johannesburg became African, right?  Historian Edward A. Freeman was delusional in suggesting Earl Godwin had any loyalty to King Aethelred or his sons, or that the Godwin family identified as anything but Danish.  Godwin fought for Danes, was made an earl among Danes, married the Danish daughter of Viking Thorkell the Tall, and gave all his eleven children Danish names, including Harold.
Godwin's daughter Gytha became Queen Edith when she married King Edward.  After his death when she commissioned the Vita Eadwardi, however, she omitted all discussion of her parents' heritage and ethnicity, even though the purpose of the first half of the book (written before Harold died) was to ennoble her family and justify Harold's seizure of the English crown.  If Harold had any noble Saxon connections, it seems likely she would have wanted this advertised.  So if Gytha the family historian was ashamed of her parents' heritage, then it is all the more likely that there was no noble blood to claim.  Her maternal grandfather was Jarl Thorkell the Tall, famed hero of the Battle of Assendun, her maternal uncle Ulf had married Cnut's sister and been regent of Denmark, her cousin was King Sweyn of Denmark, but she chose not to advertise these connections.  She was similarly silent on her father's heritage.  Arguably if Godwin was the son of Wulfnoth then his treason against King Aethelred, raiding and slaving the coast in 1008 with 20 ships, and burning of 80 kings' ships might not be seen as wholly patriotic.  The evidence for Wulfnoth being the son of Ealdorman Aethelmar of Wessex is very thin, but if he was, he was born of a handfast Danish woman, not a Saxon wife, as Wulfnoth is not a noble Saxon name.


Freeman's history inspired Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton to a more transparent flight of fiction.  Harold the Last of the Saxon Kings may have been read by generations of English schoolchildren, but Sir Edward was as inaccurate and misleading as Mr Freeman in making an 11th century Anglo-Danish earl into a Saxon hero.  Harold and his family slaved Saxons to Danish markets to their great profit.  They would never have identified themselves with the subjugated tribe they exploited.  Harold's standard at the Battle of Hastings was the Dacian wolfskin of a Danish sea-warrior.

Dacian wolfskin standard from Trajan's column in Rome, Dacian wolfskin standard with King Harold Fairhair, and detail of Dacian wolfskin standard with King Harold Godwinsson, the last Danish king of England, from the Bayeux Tapestry.

Another Dacian wolfskin standard from Trajan's column in Rome paired with the death scene of King Harold Godwinsson in the Bayeux Tapestry.


I've been saying Harold was a Danish king for four years now, and it's nice to find that an English historian agreed with me.  It's a shame minds and dictionaries narrowed so much in the centuries since.


One notable fan of Bailey's Dictionary was Abraham Lincoln.  He kept his copy of Bailey to hand as he was schooling himself in Indiana from at least 1823.  Bailey's dictionary enabled Lincoln to comprehend works that would otherwise have remained beyond his grasp.  Lincoln's skills as a lawyer and orator are probably due to his fondness for reading Bailey's dictionary for pleasure.


When I was in secondary school I was teased for 'reading the dictionary' because I had a wider vocabulary than many of my peers.  Now I really am reading the dictionary, and am taking great pleasure in doing so.

Finding the 1066 Landfall: Pefnesea or Pevenesae at Lydd and Dungeness

On Saturday we made a sort of family pilgrimage to Dungeness Lighthouse.  It was erected in 1960 using several novel principles of engineering and construction innovated by the late Frank Hay.  Frank Hay's son and two adult grandchildren were among our party.  The grandchildren had not been to Dungeness before and they were captivated by the lighthouse scale, scenery, and seeming permanence.


The principal innovation was the use of pre-cast concrete rings, a very new technology in 1960.  These were fabricated in nearby Rye.  The rings were transported to Dungeness, stacked on a foundation on the shoreline, then interlinked by four internal vertical steel cables, tensioned by anchor points either end to hold the lightweight structure intact through all conceivable forces of wind, sea and shifting shingle that might test a lighthouse on the exposed coastal spur.  Today the lighthouse still stands proud, although the coastal shingle has since shifted gradually to leave the lighthouse some hundred metres or so further from the shore. 

Nothing manmade is permanent in that shifting, liminal landscape and seascape.  The image above was taken from the highwater line on the shore, where it is in 2017.  We know from eyewitnesses that when the lighthouse was erected in 1960 it was sited on the coastal waterline.  The vast shifting arcs of shingle that have accreted to separate the lighthouse and fishermen's cottages from the sea in the very few decades since led me to think again about the mystery of where the 1066 anchorage of Pefnesea/Pevenesae might be found.

Ða com Wyllelm eorl of Normandige into Pefnesea on Sancte Michæles mæsseæfen, 7 sona þæs hi fere wæron, worhton castel æt Hæstingaport - Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Manuscript D for 1066

Scene 38: 'Herein Duke William with a great fleet is crossing the sea and is coming to Pevenesae.'


Pevenesae was an anchorage reached on a single tide with a south wind, as we know from the detailed imagery of the Bayeux Tapestry and the description of the navigation in lines 100 to 116 of the Carmen de Triumpho Normannico - The Song of the Norman Conquest. 

But fearful lest dark night impose losses on your men, and wind roil the sea in contrary gusts, you order the ships to stations so the curved anchor might restrain their sterns.

In the middle of the sea you make a sea-harbour. 

You advise the sails be laid down pending the morning ahead in order that your exceedingly weary people might have rest.

The Norman Fleet clearly came to Pevenesae as a well-known anchorage in the seascape, and not a place in the landscape.  In the Tapestry, the ships are under sail, steersman are guiding by the leeboard, lookouts are scanning for defenders on the land, and the oarports on the ships are all closed.  No one steps out of a ship.  These are visual signals to the savvy mariners of the medieval age that the ships are still making progress toward the landfall which is detailed in the next scene.  At both the launch from Baie de Somme at Scene 36 the landfall at Hastinga in Scene 39, the sails have been taken in, the masts are struck, the steersmen guide ships to the strand with poles, and the oarports are meticulously detailed as opened when the bare boats line up on the strand.  In Scene 39 tousers are rolled only to the knee, and horses can walk on the firm strand.  There are no anchors in either scene, although massive anchors are prominent in Scene 6 when Harold lands at Ponthieu.

I was lucky enough to travel to many Nordic capitals while I was translating the Carmen for the first time.  While in Iceland I visited Viking World, where they have a replica, sea-worthy Viking ship.  Being able to actually walk the deck and inspect the craftsmanship was amazing.  The most striking thing for me was the swivelling oarports.  Touching the oarports and seeing how they close for sea travel and open for estuarine raiding by oarsmen changed my understanding of the Bayeux Tapestry.  Once you know about swivelling oarports, you cannot confuse Scene 6 (a coastal landing with anchors and closed oarports) with Scene 36 (an estuarine launch with open oarports) and Scene 39 (an estuarine landing with open oarports).

The detail from the Carmen about the 'sea-harbour' is one I am particularly proud of deciphering.  No previous editor has understood the line, and I might have missed its meaning too were it not for my Nordic travels and the scholarship of Chuck Stanton on Norman Naval Operations in the Mediterranean.  He illustrated the sea-harbour formation used by Venetian fleets to secure their warships and horse transports as below.  As soon as I saw the illustration I understood line 116 of the Carmen:  In medio pelagi litus adessus facis.  It had seemed nonsense, but once you have seen the sea-harbour formation it makes perfect sense.  Sterns are linked together so that archers on the bows of warships can defend against attack.  Horse and materiel transports are sheltered within the arc of sterns, safe from attack.

Ignorant modern landlubbers have equated Pevenesae with Pevensey, claiming the Normans landed at the mythical Pevensey Bay (named by Victorian real estate developers), but that is nonsense.  Pevensey did not exist as a named place in 1066.  The modern town was founded by charter of King John in 1207 after the burgesses' old port at portus Peuenesel closed to the sea from shingle drift.  There is no archaeological trace of a port at modern Pevensey, despite extensive exploration.  There is no geologic survey evidence for a navigable basin or channel at Pevensey (the west side of the bay would certainly be unsuitable, shallow, silty salt-marsh).  There was no fresh water, no fuel, no forage for horses, no food to be looted anywhere nearby, and no rational reason for settlement on the barren, sea-sprayed spur leading to the Roman-era fort.  The fort itself has yielded no archaeological evidence of sustained habitation during the Anglo-Saxon era.  Any channel through the Pevensey Levels in 1066 must have been toward the east, leading to the sheltered tidal anchorage between Hooe and Wartling. 


The nearest reference to any pre-Conquest site near modern Pevensey is a grant of Caestre near Eastbourne in a 1054 writ of Edward the Confessor.  The writ describes Caestre as having 12 cottages and salt-pan.  Notably there is no mention of a port, mill, market or church, or any other amenity of a town which would have been mentioned as revenue-earners in the writ if they had existed.   The commentary in the linked text speculates Caestre might be Hastings, but all other places in the writ are very close to Eastbourne, implying the abandoned and massive Pevensey Castle, and there was no castle at Hastings before the Norman Conquest.  The only pre-Conquest settlement near modern Hastings was a small Fecamp Abbey cell in Priory Valley to the west, convenient to Hooe.  Beyond Wartling was a tidal salt-marsh that extended more than 22 miles to Pevensey Castle, and more than 20 miles inland into the Weald.  The vast salt-marsh can still be seen on topographic maps, giving an idea of the extent of seascape and salt-marsh when the land was 2 or 3 metres lower.

The other recent breakthrough was realising Lydd, the nearest town to Dungeness,  was probably derived as a local placename from the Norse lith and Anglo-Saxon (mostly northern Anglian) Lyð.  Lith meant arm, limb or estuary, but I think it also meant tidal anchorage.  All the places associated with placenames from lith are liminal.  Lydd, Sussex, is on a shingle bar, a natural tidal anchorage in 1066 or thereafter for anchoring or beaching while awaiting the next flowing tide to enter the Rye Camber. 

Pevenesae, Pevenesel, Pevenessellum in accounts of the Norman Conquest were all references to a shingle spur or island at the gap leading to the Rye Camber, Hastingaport, Old Romney and other medieval harbours.  In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle too, all references to Pefenesea and Pevenesea make it clear that it is an anchorage for ships.  Ships shelter there, ships lay to there, ships muster there, ships are attacked and seized by Godwin there.  The only reference which indicates some land feature is in a 1087 entry, long after the Norman Conquest, when there was a castele there.  Castele can mean subsidiary fortlet or cell of an abbey, but it can also mean lighthouse or signal beacon in Old French.  A lighthouse at the anchorage to guide ships from the Gallic coast safely to shelter would make good sense.


In 1066 there would have been another shingle bar where Lydd is now, 'almost at the ness', so Peue (almost) nes (ness) sel (isle) or Peue (almost) nes (ness) sae (waters) would be apt, toponymic placenames well suited to guiding navigation.  The Norman accounts and Bayeux Tapestry all agree and make better sense once you know about liminal anchorages.
The Norman fleet crossed on one tide and anchored at Pevenesae/Peuenesel/Peuenessellum while they rested and awaited the next flowing tide which took them into Hastinge portus, the port of the cape of Hastingas in the Brede Basin.


Now that makes sense!  And I'm grateful to Frank Hay and Dungeness Lighthouse for helping me figure it out.