hauberk

[prettygoodword]

hauberk (HAW-burk) - n., a shirt or tunic of mail.


Also called a byrnie. Sometimes claimed to be specifically one with sleeves and reaching to mid-thighs, in contrast to a haubergeon ("little hauberk") which might be shorter and with shorter or no sleeves, but you can pretty much find any form of mail shirt either term by those who wore it. Used since the late 13th century, from Middle French hauberc, from Old French halberc, of Germanic presumably Frankish origin *halsberg, from hals, neck + bergen, to protect -- the original form being a sort of collar for the neck alone.

---L.

Comments

warning: verbose

[thistleingrey.livejournal.com]

Mm, it's in OHG and ON (at least OIcelandic), too, so I'd doubt the specifically Frankish bit (Strasbourg Oaths?) unless there's additional support. What's called halsberc in the Oaths seems unlikely to be the same object as what's given that name in the later medieval romances, in which case, is it really the same word? (Early-mid C13 for MHG, more likely either to be straight from MF or a recoinage than to be a post-C9 survival. Even if the attested MF word is later, there was much importing of chivalric terms F -> G around then; Nibelungenlied is stuffed full of it.)

What I don't know--amongst the many things!--is whether or to what extent C12/13 NW Europeans may've distinguished between hauberk and byrnie. "Byrne" is in Beowulf, so C11 for this purpose (I go by MS dating); it's "brunia" in OHG and "brynja" in OIce, pretty well indicating Common Germanic by the fact that the OHG instance is in Hildebrandslied, one of the oldest extant OHG texts. And, well, a minor obsession with byrnies in Bwf eighteen years ago is an additional reason why I doubt that the Frankish attestation of halsberc has anything to do with the mail shirt of the so-called high middle ages....

p.s. I'll take Useless Knowledge for $400, Alex.

[prettygoodword.livejournal.com]

Only $400?

It is, indeed, a confusing soup of overlapping technical terms.

---L.