OE. RÆSN, REN ÆRN, HRÆN HÆRN.

It is customary to parallel OE. ærn 'house' and Go. razn 'house'. Not long ago it occurred to me that OE. ræsn 'ceiling', 'timber', must also be associated, and on looking it up I found that Ettmüller long ago suggested the equivalence of Go. razn and OE. ræsn but was not aware of the relation of OE. ærn to the other words. Now that the association of Go. razn and OE. ærn is generally accepted, Ettmüller's suggestion seems to have been largely lost sight of, though it is still to be found in Fick and Skeat (under ransack).

It is clear that we have to assume Gc. rás-na- : raz-na-. The former is preserved, so far as I know, only in OE. ræsn. The latter appears in Gothic as razn and in Old Norse as rann, with the regular assimilation of zn, rn to nn (Brugmann 2 I. p. 778, Noreen Altisländ. Gr. § 208). In Old English this assimilation is not normal, and we should expect *rearn <*rærn, *rarn, cf. leornian, Go. lais. But the word never appears with both r's and it is evident that this is due to the working of dissimilation. The case is nearly parallel to that of *hrærn (= ON. hrọnn < *hrarnō-, *hraznō-) which appears in Old English as hræn and hærn.

It will be necessary for us to consider carefully the form of the differentiation. It might be suggested that it was of the type r-r>r, that is, that the second r was dropped as in OE. cwearternes > cweartenes (Hpt. 513, JGP. II. 361), OHG. prart > prat, Lat. aratrum > Sp. and Prt. arado, and such names as Northrup > Northup, Purmort > Purmot, etc. This explanation would hold for OE. ærn, which is clearly due to metathesis (Sievers, § 179) of *ræn, older *rærn =

Go. razn, provided the dissimilation took place after a, a, became before a nasal and earlier than a became ea before r+ consonant. The dissimilation could not have had the form

r

-r>

r; for in that case the a would have stood before rn from the beginning and this early *ern would have broken to *earn. Though the dissimilation rr > r- might thus have taken place in ærn, it could not have taken place in hræn and ren, unless we assume, which we are not justified in doing, that the dissimilation took place later than the loss of -u and i after long syllables (Sievers, § 132). For hræn(n) is an ō-stem1) (= ON. hronn) and ren(n) is an i-stem. If *hrærnu had hecome *hranu, with the absolute loss of the second r, the final -u would not have disappeared after the short syllable and we should not find hræn(n). And had *rærni become *ræni with absolute loss of the medial r, the final would not have disappeared and we should not find ren(n) but *rene. We must, therefore, assume that the dissimilation was of the type r r>rn, that is, that one r changed to n, cf. OE. ortÿdre > ontÿdre. This is particularly likely to happen in words that (like *rærni and *hrærnu) already have a nasal; cf. Lat. meretrix > menetris (Lindsay, The Latin Language, p. 96, § 104), OE. grorn > gnorn, hordernum > hondernum (Vesp. Hy. 7, 51). This gives us as prehistoric OE. forms *rærna- > *rænna- and *hrærnō*hrænno. As we shall see directly that ren is an outgrowth of *ræn ærn, it is now incumbent upon us to assume the same form of dissimilation in the latter as in ren and hræn, namely, r -r> r n, and not the dissimilation (r r > r−) admitted above as possible in the case of ærn considered alone. That we have thus to deal with early *rænna- and *hrænnōis made even more certain by the metathesized forms arn

1) Sievers suggests (§ 89 A4) that ærn and hærn are from *ranni and *hranni with mutation checked at the a-stage by the metathesis. In the case of arn this would a priori be possible (it implies: *rarna- > *rarni

*ranni > *ronni > *rænni > *rænn > ærn); but I shall show directly that it is not necessary or likely. As much may be said of hærn; but, as there would be no reason for the checking of the mutation in the case of the unmetathesized form (cf. wrenna by the side of wærna), *hranni would give us a *hren(n), whereas we find hræn(n). There is therefore no reason to suppose that the word ever changed its feminine gender and ō-declension.

and hærn; for, as Sievers points out (§ 179), such metathesis of prevocalic r takes place before nn and before s-combinations (misprinted "r-verbindungen" in the new edition), but not before single n.1)

We have seen that *hrænno- became hræn(n) and by metathesis hærn; similarly *rænna- would regularly appear as *ræn(n), the a coming to stand before n after the change of a to g. One would infer from Sievers that both *ræn and ren were found in the glosses. We find, however, only ren(n). That this is an i-stem is clear. Moreover, we know (Sievers, § 267) that it was not unusual for neuter a-stems to become i-stems. In fact, the word we are considering throws light on the process by which this change of declension came about. Sievers has shown that the early form of the instrumental of a-stems in Old English ended in -i in contrast to the -c of the dative, and he suggests that this instrumental is really an old locative with i, Gc. 7, IE. ei, from the e of the stem and the locative ending i; PBB. VIII. 324, Angelsächs. Gram., § 237 A 2. cf. also Jellinek, HZ. XXXIX. 130, and Streitberg Urgerm. Gram., p. 229. The development of our word fits this theory perfectly. The old locative of the a-stem *rænnawould be *rænni. The locative of the word for 'house' or 'home' was, of course, much in use, and it was through this fact that the form became associated with the i-stems and that the rest of the inflection of the word ultimately came to accord with the i-declension. As I have shown in an article. on English beach, beck, pebble, a similar frequency of the use of the case (whether in its original function of a locative or in its later function of an instrumental) must be assumed as the cause of the passing of other nouns from the a-declension to the i-declension.

We thus have in the OE. hræn hærn, a primitive *hrarno(= ON. hro̟nn); in OE. *ræn ærn, a primitive *rarna- (= Go. razn); in OE. ren, an i-stem that arose out of the locative of *rarna-; and in OE. ræsn, a primitive *rasna-.

It is natural to ask: Does the co-existence of rás-na- and

1) Sievers suggests that cornuc may be for *cronuc and thus constitute an exceptional case of metathesis before single n; but, as I shall show in detail elsewhere, cornuc is from *cronnuc.

raz-ná- in Old English throw light on the question of the original existence of free accent in a-stems? The answer is: No. If Osthoff, Kluge, etc. are right, we may explain the rás-na- seen in OE. ræsn as the accusative, and the raz-náin Go. razn, OE. ærn and ren, as the locative (Morph. Unt., II. 12 etc., Paul's Grundriss 2, I. 456). But if Hirt, Streitberg, etc. are right, the form *raz-ná- may be explained as having arisen in the second member of compounds (Indogerm. Accent, p. 258 f., Urgerm. Gram. p. 197). That this word was frequently used in such compounds is certain. In fact, in a similar way, a reduction of arn to -ern took place in Old English in such cases, thus hordærn > hordern etc. (Sievers § 43, 3).

=

=

It is well known that the stem ras seen in these words is also found in *ras-tō- Go. rasta, Ger. rast, etc., and in *ras-ti- OE. rest. The same stem in the form las, appears also in Skt. las 'play', 'give one's self up to pleasure', Lat. lascīvus 'playful', 'wanton', lar (< las) 'home', 'house', 'household god' (Vaniček, Gr. und Lat. Eti. Wörterbuch, p. 769).

Of course, this ras las is only an s-extension of the root ra la, just as ram is an m-extension of it, cf. Skt. ram 'take pleasure in', 'take one's ease', 'rest', 'stop', Gr. -peu-la 'rest', voo-λeμ-és 'without stopping'. It is generally assumed (cf. Fick, Vaniček, etc.) that the original meaning of the root ra la is 'to stop. This is an error: the primitive meaning is clearly 'be happy', 'amuse one's self', and from this simple notion branches out into:

(1) play, not work, (a) rest, stop.

(b) resting place, home, house. (2) be wanton, desire, long for, etc.

The ultimate origin of the root is to be sought in the root ra la 'to sound', found in countless words imitative of the human voice (cf. Vaniček, p. 771 etc.), and to this day the usual form of wordless song in all parts of the world (t)ra-la-la-la-la-la-la. And here, perhaps, we find an illustration of that form of speech-origin that Jespersen advocates in his refreshing book Progress in Language.

ANN ARBOR, March 1901.

GEORGE HEMPL.

ZWEI EBEN VERSTORBENE ANGLIKANISCHE BISCHÖFE UND HISTORIKER.

I. Mandell Creighton.

Nur wenige persönlichkeiten des öffentlichen lebens, vielleicht noch weniger fachgelehrte im heutigen britischen reiche gehören, sei es mit wort oder schrift ihres berufs, sei es durch handhabung der feder, die sie nebenbei ausüben, der litteratur an. Ja, seltsam, englische geschichtsforscher und sogar geschichtsschreiber der gegenwart haben durch ihre veröffentlichungen weder in der lesewelt ihres vaterlands, noch gar auf dem europäischen festlande namen und ruf erlangt, der sich mit der berühmtheit von vertretern anderer, litterarischer wirksamkeit weit mehr entrückten gelehrten fächer nur annähernd messen könnte. Ein allerseits anerkannter historiker, der bei den fachleuten ebenso hohes ansehen genoss wie in weiten kreisen geschichtsfreundlicher leser, im auslande als geschichtsschreiber wie in England als führende gestalt der 'church of England', war dr. Mandell Creighton, der am 14. Januar 1901 verstorbene (anglikanische) bischof von London. Am festesten sitzt sein andenken zweifellos durch seine geschichtlichen darstellungen für die breitesten schichten der bevölkerung: so ist es angebracht, ihm hier eine kurze erinnerung und würdigung zu widmen.

Mandell Creighton war am 5. Juli 1843 zu Carlisle geboren. Er studierte zu Oxford vornehmlich theologie und geschichte, wurde 1866 lehrer der letzteren daselbst, 1875 pfarrer zu Embleton (Northumberland), 1879 dekan in Alnwick, 1882 kanonikus in Newcastle, 1884 professor der kirchengeschichte in Cambridge, 1885 kanonicus in Worcester, 1891