A friwif locbore revisited

Abstract

Chapter 73 of the laws ‘þe Æðelbirht cyning asette on Agustinus dæge’ reads ‘Gif friwif locbore leswæs hwæt gedeþ, xxx sell' gebete.’ The sole manuscript evidence for the laws of Æthelberht is in the early-twelfth-century Textus Roffensis; since this is so late, the manuscript word division is not necessarily significant. For what it is worth, two of the three crucial words are written locbore and les wæs, but it is not absolutely clear whether friwif is intended as one word or two. The elements are divided by the smallest of spaces. Friwif and locbore do not occur elsewhere in the laws; les wæs occurs also at Æthelberht, ch. 3, written lyswæs. Comparatively recent texts and translations can be found in editions of the Anglo-Saxon laws by Thorpe, Liebermann and Attenborough, and, translation only, in Dorothy Whitelock's English Historical Documents (probably the most widely used and certainly the most readily accessible of the four). The earliest of these editors, Thorpe, avoids the difficulties by leaving certain problematical words in the original: ‘If a free-woman loc-bore commit any leswe let her make a bot of xxx shillings.’ Liebermann offers: ‘Wenn eine Freie, eine Lockenträgerin, etwas Unzüchtiges thut, büsse [ihr Schander ihrem Vormunde] 30 Schll’, where, as Attenborough subsequently and charmingly explains, ‘Liebermann understands as the subject of gebete not the woman, but the man with whom she misconducts herself.’ Attenborough's own translation agrees grammatically with Thorpe's: ‘If a freeborn woman, with long hair, misconducts herself, she shall pay 30 shillings as compensation.’ Whitelock has a minor variant: ‘If a freewoman, with long hair, commits any misconduct, she is to pay 30 shillings compensation.’

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