2 November 2022
The portion of Exeter Cathedral Library MS 3501, fol. 90v quoted below. A tenth-century manuscript written in Anglo-Saxon Square Minuscule.
Churl is a word that isn’t used much anymore, although you will see the adjective churlish from time to time in present-day use, meaning boorish or rude. Churl has a rather straightforward etymology and it’s primarily interesting for its usage in the Old English period, when ceorl was a synonym for a male human.
We see this sense in the poem Beowulf, when Beowulf speaks of how one of Hrothgar’s brothers killed another of his brothers, how he was sentenced to death, and how their father grieved:
Swa bið geomorlic gomelum ceorle
to gebidanne, þæt his byre ride
giong on galgan. Þonne he gyd wrece,
sarigne sang, þonne his sunu hangað
hrefne to hroðre, ond he him helpe ne mæg
eald ond infrod ænige gefremman,
symble bið gemyndgad morna gehwylce
eaforan ellor-sið.(Thus, it is mournful for an old churl to live to see his young son swing on the gallows. Then he may tell a tale, a sorrowful song, when his son hangs as a benefit for the raven, and he, old and wise, cannot help to be of any use to him, he will always be reminded each morning of his son’s journey elsewhere.)
It is worth calling out that Hrothgar’s father was a nobleman, so ceorl here carries no connotation of rank. (Cf. earl)
It could also be used more specifically. A ceorl could be a married man, as we see in this passage from the poem that has been dubbed Maxims I. The poem is a collection of proverbs, and this one describes a sailor bringing his dirty clothes back home for his wife to wash:
Scep sceal genægled, scyld gebunden,
leot linden bord, leof wilcuma
Frysan wife, þonne flota stondeð—
biþ his ceol cumen ond hyre ceorl to ham,
agen ætgeofa, ond heo hine in laðaþ,
wæsceð his warig hrægl ond him syleþ wæde niew,
liþ him on londe þæs his lufu bædeð.(A ship should be nailed tight, a shield, the light linden boards, bound fast, a dear one made welcome by the Frisian woman, when the ship moors—his boat will have arrived and her churl, her provider, at home, and she leads him inside, washes his dirty clothes and gives him new attire, is gracious to him on land, this his love requires.)
There was a verb form, ceorlian, meaning to marry a man, to take a husband.
And unlike its use in the Beowulf passage above, ceorl could also specify a member of the lowest class of free men, a peasant. Here is a passage from the ninth-century translation of Gregory the Great’s Pastoral Care. The translator was King Alfred (perhaps with help from tutors):
Wietodlice se mæra landbegenga—ðæt wæs sanctus Paulus—he underfeng ða halgan gesomnunga to plantianne ond to ymbhweorfanne, sua se ceorl deð his ortgeard.
(Thus, the great husbandman—that was Saint Paul—he undertook to plant and cultivate the holy congregation, just as the churl does his orchard.)
Prior to the Norman Conquest, a churl was a free man, a respectable estate. But after the Normans took over, many churls were reduced to serfdom, and the word acquired a negative connotation. By the fourteenth century, it had come to mean a person lacking refinement, a boor, and the word was used as a term of abuse. From Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale, written in the late fourteenth century:
He nys nat gentil, be he duc or erl,
For vileyns synful dedes make a cherl.
For gentillesse nys but renomee
Of thyne auncestres, for hire heigh bountee,
Which is a strange thyng to thy persone.(He is not noble, be he duke or earl,
For a villein’s sinful deeds make a churl,
For nobility is nothing but renown
Of your ancestors, for their great virtue
Which is a thing apart from your character.)
That’s how churl moved from respectability to a low estate.
Sources:
Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale.” The Canterbury Tales. Harvard’s Geoffrey Chaucer Website, lines 1157–61.
Dictionary of Old English: A to I, 2018, s.v. ceorl, n., ceorlian, v.
Fulk, R.D., ed. The Beowulf Manuscript. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 3. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2010, lines 2444–51a.
———. The Old English Pastoral Care. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 72. Cambridge: 2021, Harvard UP, 3.40, 308.
Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. cherl, n.
Muir, Bernard J. “Maxims I.” The Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry, vol. 1 of 2. lines 93–99. Exeter Cathedral Library MS 3501, fol. 90v.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. churl, n., churl, v., churlish, adj.
Image credit: Exeter Cathedral Library and Archives. Public domain image as a mechanical reproduction of a public domain work.