England established its first official American colony in 1606, and shortly after Jamestown was established, England “became the major importers of African slaves to North America” (Hall).  However, England’s role in the slave trade did not start in the Americas; England had taken African slaves since the mid sixteenth century. Shakespeare wrote The Tempest shortly after the founding of Jamestown in 1607 and right before the Portuguese galleon, São João Baptista, brought the first twenty African slaves to British America in 1619 (Painter 24).  Before the slave trade official began in British America, Shakespeare created his own hermeneutical African slave in Caliban, and though Shakespeare never visited the Americas (or Italy or Greece), his hermeneutical slave encapsulates African American identity in American life.

Caliban’s African identity has been erased in many productions and renditions of The Tempest. For example, in Johann Heinrich Ramberg’s nineteenth century painting of Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo on the seashore, Ramberg features Caliban as a small, naked, and green fish-like creature while both Stephano and Trinculo are painted as white men (see fig. 1). Moreover, since 1960, Caliban has been portrayed by several notable white actors in Royal Shakespeare Productions of The Tempest: Roy Dotrice, David Suchet, Bob Peck, David Troughton, and Robert Glenister. Hugh Griffith, who the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his Role in Ben-Hur (1959), portrayed Caliban on recording for the Shakespeare Recording Society, and Patrick Stewart played Caliban for an audio production of The Tempest for BBC Radio in 1974 (“The Tempest [BBC Radio 1974]”). Caliban, of course, has been portrayed by black men, yet despite being played by black men, Caliban is still sometimes shown as having gills and monstrous deformities. Most telling, however, Caliban, as in the case of Frank Benson’s late nineteenth century into twentieth century portrayal, has been played by white men in black face (Smith).

There is no question, however, that Caliban is both black and African.  His mother, Sycorax, is “from Argier [Algeria]” (1.2.318), and “Caliban’s very name has significant early modern European geographical resonances with Africa, the Caribbean, and Blackness” (Hilb 150). Hilb notes in “In Defense of Caliban” that Caliban’s name could be anagram for can[n]ibal, or, possibly, a “variation of the African coastal town Calibia or the Romany word for Blackness, caulibon” (150). However, the other characters in The Tempest refer to Caliban by an assortment of curses and slurs rather than his actual name. For instance, Miranda calls him “A thing most brutish” (1.2.429), and Prospero refers to him as a “beast” (4.1.156). Similarly, like the Romany word caulibon, Michela Compagnoni suggests in “Steel Caliban: A New Etymological and Alchemical Inquiry into The Tempest” that Caliban comes from the Arabic Kalebon, which means vile dog. Slurs like beast or thing most brutish or vile dog are indictive of the early modern English view of Africans. Winthrop D. Jordan notes in his White Over Black that “English observers in West Africa were sometimes so profoundly impressed by the Negro’s deviant behavior that they resorted to a powerful metaphor with which to express their own sense of difference from him. They knew perfectly well that Negroes were men, yet they frequently described the Africans as ‘brutish’ or ‘bestial’ or ‘beastly’” (28). In an early modern example, Joannes Leo Africanus wrote A geographical historie of Africa in the first half of the sixteenth century, and Africanus’ text was translated into English in 1600 by George Bishop, who, as Burton and Loomba note in Race in Modern England, added “his own commentaries and fabulous accounts of African monstrosity” (153). Africanus writes in his history, “Likewise the inhabitants of Libya live a brutish kind of life; who neglecting all kinds of good arts and sciences, do wholly apply their minds unto theft and violence” (155). As Hilb notes, the dehumanizing language that Shakespeare uses in The Tempest to describe Caliban would have “intimately (though not exclusively) linked [him] to Africa” for Shakespeare’s English audience (151).

In addition to dehumanizing Caliban, the characters in The Tempest demonize him. Prospero calls Caliban a “thing of darkness” (5.1.330) and “A devil, a born devil” (4.1.211). Moreover, Prospero claims that Caliban was “got by the devil himself / Upon [his] wicked dam,” his mother Sycorax (1.2.384-5). Prospero refers to Caliban’s mother, Sycorax, as a witch three times within The Tempest: “The foul witch Sycorax” (1.2.309); “This damned witch Sycorax” (1.2.316); “His mother was a witch, and a strong one” (5.1.324).  As Jordan points out in White Over Black, Protestantism, particularly during England’s commencement into the slave trade, was a source of English patriotism (24).  For the sixteenth century English, “being a Christian was not merely a matter of subscribing to certain doctrines; it was a quality inherent in oneself and society” (Jordan 24). For example, Sir Thomas Herbert writes in his mid-seventeenth century travel text Some Years Travels, “the Devil has infused prodigious Idolatry into their hearts, enough to relish his pallet and aggrandize their torturers when he gets power to fry their souls, as the raging Sun has already scorched their cole-black carcasses” (7). Later, when Herbert is describing the people of Congo, he writes, “the people as in color so in condition are little other than Devils incarnate” (10). Similarly, nearly two-hundred years later in 1838 at a rape trial of a black man, a “white observer” called “the defendant a ‘monster in the shape of a black negro’ and a ‘vile devil’” (qtd. in Hilb 152). Much of characterization of Caliban—and black and African slaves—was brough to colonial American and became fundamental to the founding of the United States of America. 

The language used in Shakespeare’s play and early modern English texts would also intimately link Caliban to Africa and blackness for an (early) American audience. British audiences and critics even suggested that Caliban belonged in America. For example, an 1863 issue of Punch, or The London Charivari, a British weekly magazine featured in image titled Scene from the American “Tempest” (See Fig. 2). The image “depicts Caliban as a black ‘Sambo,’” and it contains the caption, “Caliban (Sambo). ‘You beat him ‘nough massa’ berry little time, I’ll beat him too.” – Shakespeare. (Nigger Translation.)” (qtd. in Hilb 152; see Fig 2).  Like Africanus’ statement that Africans “wholly apply their mind unto theft and violence,” Khalil Gibran Muhammad writes in his introduction to The Condemnation of Blackness, “violent crime rates in the nation’s [America’s] biggest cities are generally understood as a reflection of the presence and behavior of the black men, women, and children who live there” (1). Yet, as is in the case of The Tempest—and criticism of The Tempest—social scientists in the United States present “new crime data as objective, color-blind, and incontrovertible” (Muhammad 4). Therefore, “African American criminality became one of the most widely accepted bases for justifying prejudicial thinking” (Muhammad 4). Caliban, of course, is accused of a crime; a crime that carries with it a title. The same crime that the “monster in the shape of a black negro” and “vile devil” was accused of in 1838 North Carolina. Caliban is accused of being a rapist. 

The myth of the black rapist is uniquely American. As Sharon Block writes in Rape and Sexuality in Early America, in the United States, “early images of enslaved black rapists grew into a long-lasting myth of black men’s hypersexuality” (212). For example, “The index to a 1765 publication of the Laws of Maryland contained the following entry: ‘RAPE: See Negroes.’ Although the volume’s editor probably did not intend that directive literally, it encapsulates the end product of a legal system where racial ideologies structured every stage of the criminal process: when early Americans though about rape, they saw ‘Negroes’” (Block 207). However, as Sharon Block notes, “early Americans did not yet have the vocabulary of Foucaultian identities to label anyone a ‘rapist’” (244). Still, in the nineteenth century, the word rapist itself was born in America. The first use of the word rapist comes from an 1869 American newspaper, the Dallas Weekly Herald, where the authors of the newspaper claimed that Charles Bryant, a black delegate at the Texas Constitutional Convention of 1868-9, was a rapist. The authors of the Dallas Weekly Herald write, “Our Texas Convention had a while raft of such lumber, including Bryant, the rapist” (“Rapist, N.”). The second and third use of the word rapist come from an 1883 issue of the National Police Gazette where a story accuses a black man of being a rapist titled, “Fighting for Her Virtue: The Stalwart Resistance a Married Woman Offered a Would-be ‘Nigger’ Rapist” (“Fighting for Her Virtue”). Later in the newspaper, an image of the accused “rapist,” Henry William, is included with the caption, “The brutal colored rapist of Johnston, Rhode Island” (“Fighting for Her Virtue”). Hilb writes, “in the English language, the very origins of the designation rapist are patently racist,” and not only is rapist patently racist, but it is also patently American (156). 

If Caliban is accused of being a rapist, then, as Hilb asks in “In Defense of Caliban,” how “might one reread The Tempest in light of history?” (156). Prospero certainly accuses Caliban of attempting to rape his daughter, Miranda. Prospero says to Caliban, “thou didst seek to violate / The honor of my child” (1.2.416-17), and Caliban responds, “Oh ho, oh ho! Woud’t had been done! Thou didst prevent me” (1.2.419-20). It is precisely because of Caliban’s response that most readers assume that Caliban did try and rape Miranda. For example, Constance Grady, in a review Miranda and Caliban (2017), a retelling of The Tempest, writes that in the original play, “Caliban is a monster who tried to rape Prospero’s daughter Miranda before the play began…[Caliban] abuses Prospero…and plots to kill him, but Prospero took over Caliban’s island and enslaved him” (Grady). Most scholars also assume that Caliban tried to rape Miranda. For instance, Tom Lindsay concludes his article “’Which first was mine own king’: Caliban and the Politics of Service and Education in ‘The Tempest’” (2016) by writing, “the rape attempt is a central even in islander’s backstory and a crux of the play,” and postcolonial critics are guilty of “ignoring reality of the attempt and downplaying its importance (421). Similarly, Duke Pesta writes in his article “’Thou Dost Here Usurp the Name Thou Ow’st Not’: The Tempest and Intercultural Exchange” that the attempted rape did happen, and critics are attempting to “shift the responsibility for the attempted rape away from Caliban and onto colonialism itself” (139). However, Hilb, in his article “In Defense of Caliban,” ultimately argues that there is enough evidence to inject reasonable doubt in the accusations against Caliban. Like the black Americans who have been accused of rape—so much so that the term rapist was made to personify this myth—Caliban did not attempt to rape Miranda. In fact, Prospero, Miranda’s father is a far more likely culprit. 

Prospero, rather than use the term rape, says to Caliban, “thou didst seek to violate / The honor of my child” (1.2.417).  However, Prospero’s allegation is broad, and “Southern courts seemed willing to charge—if not convict—enslaved men who breached white women’s domestic space with rape” (Block 175). Therefore, it is possible that Caliban simply got too close to Miranda. Shakespeare uses honor in this sense in other plays, for example: 

Then weigh what loss your honor may sustain

If with too credent ear you list his songs

Or lose your heart or chaste treasure open

To his unmastered importunity. 

Fear it, Ophelia; fear it, my dear sister, (1.3.33-7)

In Hamlet, Laertes warns his siter Ophelia that simply listening to Hamlet’s songs could violate her honor, and by listening to his songs, she would be inclined to “open” her “chaste treasure” for Hamlet. Caliban sings within The Tempest, and when he does sing, it is for his freedom (2.2.183-93).  Perhaps Miranda simply heard one of Caliban’s songs. In fact, there is music all around Caliban’s island: “Be not afeard. The isle is full noises, / Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not” (3.2.148-9). It is possible that Prospero is accusing Caliban of having a mundane interaction with Miranda, and because of Caliban’s status as an African Slave, Prospero, as was the case for many enslaved and free black persons, is accusing a black man of getting too close to a white woman, a crime that is synonymous with rape in both early modern England and colonial America.

However, the crux of the accusations against Caliban come mostly from his response: “O ho, o ho! Would’t had been done! / Thou didst prevent me; I had people else / This isle with Calibans” (1.2.419-421). Caliban’s response is seen as an admission of his attempted rape. However, O ho, according to the OED, is an interjection “expressing surprise, mockery, exultation, etc. Also formerly used to attract attention” (“Oho, Int”). Therefore, Caliban is expressing surprise—and perhaps even mockery—at Prospero’s accusation. Caliban’s “O ho” is not the only time it is used The Tempest expressing both surprise and mockery. Trinculo, after seeing clothing, says, “O king Stephano, O peer, O worthy Stephano, look what a wardrobe here is for thee!” Caliban responds to Trinculo, “Let it alone, thou fool. It is but trash.” Trinculo jeers at Caliban’s response, “O ho, monster, we know what belongs to a frippery. O king Stephano!” (4.1.247-253). Trinculo’s O ho is clearly meant to mock Caliban’s response. Trinculo does not believe that the clothing he found is the trash that Caliban claimed; in other words, Trinculo is sarcastically saying Caliban, you are wrong. Then, Caliban’s response to Prospero’s accusation should be afforded the same sense that we give to Trinculo’s jeer.

However, still, Caliban clearly says that Prospero prevented him from doing something. However, much like O ho, the meaning of prevent seems to have been lost to time (or criticism or perhaps a desire to see Caliban as guilty). Most readers and scholars believe that Caliban’s prevent means, according to the OED, “to stop, keep, or hinder (a person or thing) from doing something” (“Prevent, V”). However, there is another sense of the word prevent, a sense that Shakespeare uses in Twelfth Night and Pericles: “In an etymology sense…rather than a negative and reactive emphasis on the direct object of the verb, we get a positive and proactive emphasis on the subject of the verb” (Fleming 459). In other words, in the etymological sense, as Hilb writes, “If I prevent you from doing something…then I do it before you, ‘in your despite” (Hilb 164; Fleming 459). As Fleming notes, “This reading is totally opposed to modern expectations…but early-modern audiences simply heard this etymological meaning, will-nilly” (459). Therefore, Caliban’s response “thou didst prevent me” really means you [Prospero] got there first; Caliban is accusing Prospero of incest. 

Prospero certainly has the power to commit such an act, and Prospero regularly uses his power in nefarious ways, particularly on his daughter. For example, Prospero grows angry at his daughter for asking too many questions, and he says to her, “Here cease more questions. / Thou are inclined to sleep. ‘Tis a good dullness, / And give it way. I know thou canst not choose / [Miranda falls asleep. Prospero puts on his cloak]” (1.2.219-23). Hilb’s diatribe against Prospero’s abuse of power on his daughter encapsulates the issue: 

In an effort to control her knowledge and perception, Prospero literally forces Miranda to pass out. Is he to be trusted as a parent? Whatever one thinks of him, is it not pertinent, in a play whose character dynamics turn crucially on Prospero’s accusation of attempted rape, that compelling someone to sleep is itself in many cases connected with the crime of rape? (164)

Moreover, in addition to Hilb’s response, to then say to his daughter that she “canst choose,” especially given contemporary events, is it not itself an admission of rape or, at the very least, an abuse of power so close to rape that it cannot help but provoke the reader to consider the possibility of rape? 

Despite context, there is “tension between racial studies of Caliban and feminist studies of Miranda” (Hilb 167). For example, in a blog for the English Department of SUNY Geneseo, Spencer Iovoli concludes, “Today’s world is not forgiving to sexual predators, nor should it be. There is little difference between slavery and imprisonment, so it can be argued that Caliban’s punishment is justifiable. Making it indefinite may seem cruel, but…necessary for the safety of Miranda” (Iovoli). However, Miranda herself never accuses Caliban of violating her or her honor. She says to Caliban: 

vile race, 

Though didst learn, had that in’t which good natures

Could not abide to be with. Therefore wast thou 

Deservedly confined into this rock, 

Who hadst deserved more than a prison. (1.2.430-6)

Miranda is undoubtedly insulting Caliban, but as Hilb points out, “it does not clearly record Miranda’s stance on her father’s allegation” (169). That is not to say that we should not believe Miranda. However, just as Prospero directly benefits from Caliban’s enslavement so does Miranda, and, moreover, Prospero, as we have seen, holds great power over Miranda—though in a different context to Caliban—therefore it does nothing for Miranda to argue with her father’s accusation and insults towards Caliban, who, once again, Prospero repeatedly calls his slave. 

Hilb concludes his article “In Defense of Caliban” by writing, “the final three words of The Tempest are Prospero’s entreaty to us, readers and audiences to ‘set me free,’…I entreat us rather to set Caliban free, for he has long been and continues to be wrongfully convicted” (170). I concur with Hilb’s plea for Caliban. Caliban, much like Jews of European Medieval theology, functioned as a hermeneutical African for Shakespeare, and Caliban, and the accusations against him, served a particular functioned that Europeans and then American colonist could only perceive as to be enacted by a heathen African. Moreover, the language used by Shakespeare assists in providing a defense for Caliban, a defense that has gone over many reader’s heads. Caliban was not made for America, and yet he fits so perfectly within our turbulent history. 

Works Cited

Burton, Jonathan and Ania Loomba. Race in Early Modern England: A Documentary Companion. Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. 

“Fighting for Her Virtue.” The National Police Gazette: New York. 5 May 1883. 

Grady, Constance. “Miranda and Caliban is a lyrical, tender revisionist adaptation of The Tempest.” Vox, 21 Feb 2017, www.vox.com/culture/2017/2/28/14702152/miranda-and-caliban-jacqueline-carey-review. Accessed 28 Jul 2024. 

Herbert, Thomas. Some Years Travels into Divers Parts of Africa and Asia the Great. Everingham, 1677. 

Hilb, Benjamin. “In Defense of Caliban: The Tempest and the Myth of the Black Rapist.” Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 71, no. 3-4, 2020, pp. 143-170. 

Iovoli, Spencer. “The Continued Conversation on Caliban and The Tempest.” (Im)possibilities: A blog for SUNY Geneseo students and faculty interested in American Studies, 2 May 2018, morrison.sunygeneseoenglish.org/2018/05/02/the-continued-conversation-on-caliban/. Accessed 28 Jul 2024. 

Jordan, Winthrop D. White Over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550-1812. U of North Carolina P, 2012. 

Lindsay, Tom. “’Which came first was mine own king’: Caliban and the Politics of Service and Education in ‘The Tempest.’” Studies in Philology, vol. 113, no. 2, 2016, pp. 397-423. 

Painter, Irvin Nell. Creating Black Americans. Oxford UP, 2005. 

Pesta, Duke. “‘Thou Dost Here Usurp the Name Thou Ow’St Not’: The Tempest and Intercultural Exchange.” Renascence, vol. 67, no. 2, Jan. 2015, pp. 127–46. EBSCOhost, research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=0814a568-96de-3b7e-97ae-b6755439484e.

“Prevent, V.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford UP, July 2023, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/4307606803.

“Oho, Int.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford UP, March 2024, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/7375358165.

Ramberg, Johann Heinrich. The tempest, II, 2, Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo on seashore. 1800, Cornell University Library, Ithaca.

“Rapist, N.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford UP, July 2023, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/7672925589.

Shakespeare, William. “Hamlet.” Folger Shakespeare Library, www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/hamlet/read. Accessed 28 Jul. 2024. 

---. The Tempest. Simon & Schuster, 2004. 

---. “The Tempest (BBC Radio – 1974).” Internet Archive, 24 Mar 1974, archive.org/details/the-tempest-1974. Accessed 26 Jul 2024. 

Smith, Lizzie Caswell. Mr. F.R. Benson. 1910, Folger Shakespeare Library, London. 

Some of our earliest surviving texts contain ghosts’ stories, and even the Hebrew and Greek Bible contain its share of ghosts; not demons, but ghosts. For example, after Samuel dies, Saul attempts to speak to the Samuel’s ghost. Saul finds a medium and asks her to “consult a spirit for me” (1 Sam. 28:8). The medium is not immediately taken aback, which implies to the reader—or at least the writer—that requesting mediumship was not uncommon. The medium summons Samuel’s ghosts, which Saul identifies as Samuel, and Samuel asks, “Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?” (1 Sam. 28:15). Samuel, though a ghost, is truly Samuel, and moreover, he is still able to communicate with the living. In the Greek Bible, when the disciples see Jesus walking on water, they are terrified and cry out, “It’s a ghost” (Mat. 14:22). The disciples, rather than believe a man—even though that man is Jesus—can walk on water, they believe they are witnessing a ghost. Like the Hebrew writer of Samuel, the Greek writer of Matthew, at the very least, is willing to entertain the idea of ghosts. The writer of Matthew also differentiates ghosts and demons. Earlier in Matthew, Jesus speaks to demons, and Jesus drives the demons into a herd of pigs (Mat. 8:28-32). For the writer of Matthew, there is a difference between ghosts, who are human spirits, and demons, who are supernatural entities. Though ghosts are not a uniquely Christian invention, England adopted Christianity at the end of the sixth century, and with the adoption of Christianity and written and shared language, came documented ghost stories.

Ghost stories presumably existed prior to the Germanic invasion of England, and, once again presumably, the Germanic people brought their own tales of ghosts to England. The Romans certainly had their share of ghost stories, and though there is no evidence that Romans wrote about ghosts in England after their invasion of Britain in 43 CE, there were ghost stories written in Rome during the same period. For example, Pliny the Younger wrote in a letter to Sura in 50 CE: 

Erat Athenis spatiosa et capax domus sed infamis et pestilens. Per silentium noctis sonus ferri, et si attenderes acrius, strepitus vinculorum longius primo, deinde e proximo reddebatur: mox apparebat idolon, senex macie et squalore confectus, promissa barba horrenti capillo; cruribus compedes, manibus catenas gerebat quatiebatque. Inde inhabitantibus tristes diraeque noctes per metum vigilabantur; vigiliam morbus et crescente formidine mors sequebatur. Nam interdiu quoque, quamquam abscesserat imago, memoria imaginis oculis inerrabat, longiorque causis timoris timor erat. Deserta inde et damnata solitudine domus totaque illi monstro relicta.

[In Athens there was a spacious and capacious house, but infamous and pestilential. Through the silence of the night, the sound of a carriage was heard, and if you paid more attention, the noise of chains was heard first from afar, then from near. Suddenly, a phantom would appear, an old man dressed in gauntness and squalor, with a promiscuous beard and horrid hair; he wore shackles on his legs and chains on his hands and would shake. The inhabitants of the house were kept awake through sad and terrible nights by fear; the vigil was followed by disease and the growing fear of death. For even during the day, although the phantom had departed, the memory of the phantom lingered in the inhabitant’s eyes. Thence deserted and damned, the house and everyone who lived there abandoned the house to that phantom. (my trans. “Plin. Ep. 7.27”)] 

Pliny’s ghost story is eerily familiar even to modern readers, and ghosts of old and spectral men covered in chains has become a staple motif of ghost stories. We do not know a lot about the ghost in Pliny’s letter, but a play was written in the third century BCE by playwright Plautus titled Mostellaria (translated as The Ghost), which has been colloquially titled The Haunted House. Like Pliny’s letter, Mostellaria takes place in Athens, and though there is mention of a haunted house allegedly haunted by a murdered man, a ghost is not actually featured in the play. Mostellaria was written and performed nearly 250 years before Pliny wrote his letter to Sura, and it is unlikely that Pliny would have known about Mostellaria. However, because they both feature haunted dwellings in Athens, perhaps Mostellaria had unknowingly become part an oral folk tradition in the centuries after its release, and perhaps that oral folk story made its way to Pliny.

The Middle Ages encompasses nearly a thousand years of history, and the English language, both written and spoken, dramatically changed throughout the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages are subdivided between the Early, High, and Late Middle ages, and very few English texts exist from the Early Middle Ages. The texts that do exists from the Early Middle Ages in England are typically religious or written in Latin, and even popular texts from the Early Middle Ages like Beowulf were written on the cusp of the High Middle Ages. There are several reasons and theories as to why there is a massive shortage of English texts from the Early Middle Ages. First, English was not standardized during the Early Middle Ages, and if one were to be literate, then they were almost certainly literate in Latin and therefore wrote in a semi-standardized Latin, which became even more prevalent after the Christianization of England. Second, Old English speakers of England were dealing with a constant stream of raiders and colonizers from Scandinavia for nearly three hundred years. Third, England was split into different empires until Alfred the Great unified England for the first time at the end of the ninth century, and each empire was not only culturally different, but they spoke and wrote in different vernaculars of Old English. All these factors hindered the creation and dissemination of Early Old English and Latin texts in England, and more importantly, the process of creating these Early Middle Ages texts was incredibly slow.

Manuscript makers, which were usually monks—and only monks during the Early Middle Ages—created every part of the text themselves from the ink to the vellum. For example, an anonymous writer from around the beginning of the fifteenth century wrote in a small notebook a recipe for black ink: 

to make gode blak yngk as ony ys in ynglond take an vnce of gallys an unce of gumme and an unce of grene coperose brose all thyse togeder al most to pouder and put hit in a pott of erth þat ys ledyd wiþ in than put therto a pynte of reyne water or of stondyng water.

[To make good black ink as any is in England, take an ounce of galls, an ounce of gum, and an ounce of green coppers. Crush all these together almost to powder and put it in a pot of earth that is lined within. Then add thereto a pint of rainwater or standing water. (my trans; Connolly 103-4)]

Despite this recipe coming from the end of the Middle Ages, this recipe of gall ink, or common ink, was in use since the fifth century, and this traditional ink is still made today for mass consumption by ink manufacturers today. However, ink is only as good as the paper that it is being written on. Medieval manuscripts and texts were written on vellum, and though we have synthetic plant-based vellum today, vellum was typically made from calfskin during the Middle Ages. The skin had to come from a young animal, and after removal, it was first soaked in lime for several days. After being washed, the skin would be shaved of any hair. After the skin was washed, shaved, and dried, makers would cut the skin into a leaf (or two pages). The entire process took days, and because of the time commitment and work required to create vellum, ink, and quills, medieval writers, when finally sitting down to write, were encouraged to focus on priority texts.

Priority texts for medieval writers were typically religious texts and texts for the wealthy and elite. Monks and the elite of medieval England were the only ones who could both read and afford the production of texts; the democratization of texts in England did not happen until the introduction of the printing press by William Caxton in the latter half of the fifteenth century. For example, one of our earliest examples of the word ghost (spelled gast in OE) comes from an English translation of Pope Gregory I’s Dialogues by Wærferð sometime in the ninth century. Even though many Old English texts that still exists were priority texts, there exists a few manuscripts outside of priority texts. For example, the Exeter Book of riddles was written in the latter half of the tenth century, and though it was most likely written in a religious scriptorium, the Exeter Book contains semi-secularly themed riddles. For instance, “Riddle 3” while being secularly themes also features ghosts: 

Famig winneð

20 wæg wið wealle,      wonn ariseð

dun ofer dype;      hyre deorc on last,

eare geblonden,      oþer fereð,

þæt hy gemittað      mearclonde neah

hea hlincas.      Þær bið hlud wudu,

25 brimgiesta breahtm,      bidað stille

stealc stanhleoþu      streamgewinnes,

hopgehnastes,      þonne heah geþring

on cleofu crydeþ.      Þær bið ceole wen

sliþre sæcce,      gif hine sæ byreð

30 on þa grimman tid,      gæsta fulne,

þæt he scyle rice      birofen weorþan,

feore bifohten      fæmig ridan

yþa hrycgum.

[The foamy water

20 struggles against the wall, a dark mountain

rises over the deep, dark in its track,

another goes, mixed with the sea,

so that they meet near the borderland,

the high banks. There is loud wood,

25 the breath of the sea-guests, the steep stone-cliffs

quietly await the watery war,

the wet conflict when the lofty tumult

crowds onto the cliffs. There the ship is in expectation

of a fierce fight, if the sea bears it

30 on that grim tide, full of ghosts,

so that it must be deprived of control

robbed of life, the foamy one ride

the backs of the waves. (Williamson 69)]

Despite mentioning ghosts, or spirits, “Riddle 3” is not about ghosts, and it certainly is not about the ghost, or spirit, of a particular deceased human. Also, despite appearing secular—and the content of the poem would lead the reader to believe that it is secular—the following riddles, and perhaps even the answer to “Riddle 3,” are based in Christian theology.

Medieval Christian theology is perhaps the greatest reason why ghosts, as specifically the earthbound spirit of a deceased human, do not appear in early medieval texts. Despite the Bible mentioning ghosts and the Christian recognition of the human spirit, medieval Christian theology makes it clear that when one dies, their spirit went to one of three places: heaven, hell, or purgatory. If a spirit were to be stuck on earth, then it would lead to questions of Christian theology. Moreover, pagans, including pre-Christian Romans and Celtic Britons, undoubtedly believed in ghosts and earthbound spirits, and therefore, desiring to separate itself from paganism, the church refused to give credence to the existence of ghosts. Yet, despite the Church’s theological stance, Augustine of Hippo, the most influential theologian of the Middle Ages , writes in “On the Care of the Dead”: 

Stories are told of certain appearances or visions, which may seem to bring into this discussion a question which should not be slighted. It is said, namely, that dead men have at times either in dreams or in some other way appeared to the living who knew not where their bodies lay unburied and have pointed out to them the place and admonished that the sepulture which was lacking should be afforded. (12) 

Simultaneously, however, Augustine makes it clear that because the living also appear in dreams, it is not necessarily the ghost that is consciously making itself known through dreams (12). In fact, though Augustine writes that it is a nice gesture to care for the dead, what a person does in life is of sole importance (1). Saints, however, at least for Augustine, were different from the ordinary folk, and though Augustine does not claim in this instance that the human spirit of a saint can visit ordinary people, he does write that we should bury saints at memorial locations so that we can visit their graves (10). Additionally, most early theologians, including Augustine, interpreted 1 John 4:1 literally: “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God” (1 Joh. 4:1). Spirits, in other words, were not guaranteed to be from God, and if they were not from God, then they were demons. Demons, unlike ghosts, according to Christian theology, were not the spirits of people, and they should be avoided by common folk. 

It is not until after the Norman Conquest in 1066 that ghost stories—and folk stories more generally—begin to be recorded across Britain. William of Newburgh, during the latter half of the twelfth century, set out to write his own history of England from 1066 to 1198 titled Historia rerum Anglicarum (History of English Affairs). William, in his introduction, laments England’s previous histories written by Bede and Geoffrey of Monmouth because he views them as inaccurate, unrealistic, and unfair to actual English people (“The Preface”). Instead, William, like modern day folklorists, embarked across England to speak to ordinary people about English stories and their view of English history. Despite desiring to create an accurate history of England, William was more interested in the Wonder Tales told in the various villages around England. For example, in a tale called “Of the Green Children,” William writes precisely like he is collecting folk tradition: “In East Anglia is a village…during harvest…two children, a boy and a girl, completely green in their persons, and clad in garments of strange color, and unknown material, emerged” (“Of the Green Children”). The villagers bring the green children to their village, and through feeding them everyday food, the children begin to look like the villagers. The children eventually learn English and are even baptized. William attempts to question the villagers about the stories, but the villagers have nothing more to tell him. More importantly, William writes, “These, and many other matters, are too numerous to particularize, they are said to have recounted to curious inquirers. Let everyone say as he pleases, and reason on such matters according to his abilities; I feel no regret having recorded an event so prodigious and miraculous” (“Of the Green Children”). In other words, the villagers tell this tale to a lot of people, and William could see how his readers might find the story implausible. However, William desires to record them anyway. William did not, and could not, know that he was collecting folktales.

William’s Historia rerum Anglicarum was written throughout five books, and though most of his books focus on twelfth century current events, he intersplices a few paranormal folk stories—like “Of the Green Children”—throughout. However, William admits that these stories are extremely common amongst ordinary folk, and one could write an entire book simply around these local folk tales. William, however, seems to be most curious about ghosts or the living dead, and because these stories were extremely rare in England for both religious and practical reasons (and quite popular in other parts of the world), William took it upon himself to record paranormal folk stories. For instance, while traveling in the county of Buckingham, William overheard a story that he later confirmed as true from an archdeacon. In the story, a man dies, and he is buried by his family. The very next night, however, while the man’s wife is sleeping, the man rises from the grave and walks into their bedroom and lays on his wife. The man comes back the following night, and on the third night, the wife decides to stay awake. Still, the man comes, and she yells at him to leave. The entire county witnesses the man wandering around. At first, he would only wander the county at night, but he later started wandering during the day. Eventually, the town contacted the local bishop, and the bishop went to the man’s tomb where he was lying peacefully. The bishop wrote a letter of absolution, and he placed it on the man’s body. After the bishop’s letter, “he was thenceforth never more seen to wander, nor permitted to inflict annoyance or terror upon anyone” (“Of the prodigy of the dead man”). Despite being solidly about ghosts, William writes that he verified this tale with an archdeacon, and, more importantly, William writes—or reports—that a bishop rescues Buckingham from the ghostly apparition. William, rather than separate ghosts from Catholic Christianity, instead ties them together, and though William does not give us a theological reason for the existence of ghosts, William’s “Of the prodigy of the dead man” suggests that these stories, of both Christian miracles and paranormal encounters, were popular amongst the ordinary folk of England and Scotland. 

William, while traveling in northern England in a city called Berwick, located near the border between England and Scotland, heard a story about the death of a wealthy man.  The wealthy man, though well-liked during his life, was secretly an evil man, and, therefore, the devil, according to William, would make him rise out of his grave at night. The corpse would be chased all through Berwick by a pack of barking dogs, striking fear into all the people of the city. The corpse would return to his grave when the sun rose. The upper- and middle-class folk of Berwick gathered to figure out how to stop the corpse from rising from the grave. Not only was the corpse striking fear into whoever saw him, but they were concerned about the spread of disease. According to William, the corpse would tell passerby that, “while being born about by Satan…as long as it remained unburned, the people should have no peace” (“Of a similar occurrence”). The people of Berwick, went to the corpse’s grave during the day, removed the body, cut it into pieces, and burned the pieces. The corpse never returned. However, a pestilence, which was caused from burning the corpse, killed off a portion of the Berwick population. William’s folktale of the wealthy man shares parallels with his “Of the prodigy of the dead man.” For instance, both stories are theologically based. Because the wealthy man was evil, the devil used his corpse after his death to torment the people of Berwick. However, that is still a far cry from the traditional theological tradition of heaven, hell, or purgatory. Still, because the people took it upon themselves to destroy the body of the wealthy man, they are punished with a pestilence that kills several people from Berwick. In “Of the prodigy of the dead man,” the local townspeople, who are not people of the upper- and middle-class, ask for the religious help of a bishop and are able to avoid the pestilence.

William is well aware that, because these stories are rare amongst the upper- and middle-class people of England and Scotland, his readers might have trouble accepting these paranormal folk tales, and he writes, “it would not be easy to believe that the corpses of the dead should sally from their graves” (“Of certain prodigies”). However, William argues that “there is abundant testimony” (“Of certain prodigies”). Moreover, William writes that these things must not have happened previously because “we can find no evidence of them in the works of ancient authors” (“Of certain prodigies”). Despite hearing dozens of these stories, William believes that these stories deserve to a part of his history of England. 

In the first of his final set of three paranormal folktales, while visiting Melrose Abbey in Scotland, William heard the story of a priest who had “little respect for the sacred order to which he belonged” (“Of certain prodigies”). In fact, some people called this priest “hundeprest” (dog-priest). After the priest died, he was still seen hovering around Melrose Abbey, groaning and murmuring around the bedchamber of his mistress. The mistress, scared, told a friar of Melrose of their cursed relationship, and eventually, she repented. William claims, that by God’s mercy, she was relieved of the haunting. The Melrose friar, who helped relieve the mistress of her curse, gathered a group of fellow friars to patrol the graveyard where the hundeprest was buried. However, after midnight, when no ghosts were seen, the friars left the Melrose friar alone in the graveyard. Once he was alone, the devil summoned the spirit of the hundeprest, and at first, the Melrose friar was scared. However, the Melrose friar stood his ground, and the spirit of the hundeprest charged the friar. The Melrose friar struck the hundeprest with an axe, causing the hundeprest to return to his grave. The next morning, the friars open the tomb of the hundeprest and witnessed the axe wound on the hundeprest’s chest. The friars removed the hundeprest from the graveyard of the monastery, burned his body, and threw the ashes into wind. William ends this tale by writing, “I myself heard [the story] recounted by religious men” (“Of certain prodigies”).

Similarly, William writes that he met with an aged monk who lived at the Anantis Castle, and, according to William, the monk personally witnessed the following events.  An evil man from York came to Anantis Castle and was able to befriend the local lord. The Yorkshire man met and married a local woman, but after their marriage, he started to hear rumors that his wife was being unfaithful. The Yorkshire man pretended to leave on trip, but instead he stayed and hid in the rafters of his bedroom. Unfortunately, while hidden, he witnessed his wife invite a young man into their bedroom and start to bed him. The Yorkshire man jumped down from the rafter and accidently dazzed himself. The young man fled the room, and the wife helped the Yorkshire man to their bed. Once he awakened from his daze, he accused his wife of adultery, but his wife convinced him that he must be mistaken. The fall from the rafters mortally wounded the man, and the local bishop suggested that he do his last confession and “receive the Christian Eucharist in proper form” (“Of certain prodigies”). However, because the Yorkshire man was distressed, he decided to hold off his confession and eucharist until the next day. Unfortunately, he succumbed to his wounds during the night, and even though he was not able to receive last rites, the Yorkshire man was still given a Christian burial. The devil, according to William, forced the Yorkshire man to raise from his grave at night and torment Anantis castle and its surrounding villages. According to the aged monk who William received the story from, the constant torment from the ghost caused most of the citizens to flee. However, a few families stayed, and the children of the remaining families met at the local parish and planned to dig up the Yorkshire man and destroy his body. The children dug up the Yorkshire man, and despite being dead for an entire generation, when they started to stab his body, he began to bleed. William writes that the blood “flowed such a stream of blood that it might have been taken for a leech filled with the blood of many persons” (“Of certain prodigies”). Despite all the blood, the children cut the Yorkshire man’s body into pieces and burned them, and according to William, the burning of the man caused Anantis Castle and the surrounding villages to be cleansed. 

William’s Anantis Castle tale is a unique legend, especially in British folklore. Because of the description of blood, especially in reference to a “leech filled with the blood of many persons,” William’s Anantis Castle tale is essentially a vampire legend. Vampire legends have existed in eastern Europe, especially in modern day Romania, since the early Middle Ages (Jones 121). “A typical Wallachian belief,” writes Ernest Jones in On the Nightmare, is “that red-haired men appear after death in the form of frogs, beetles, etc., and drink the blood of beautiful girls” (121). Jones only writes of William, however, “in England we have several complete and typical accounts related by William of Newburgh in the twelfth century, but since that date hardly a trace of the belief is believed to be found” (121). In Ireland, there is the legend of the Dearg-due, or Red Blood Sucker, which features a woman who is forced into an arranged marriage, and after her marriage, she commits suicide. The Dearg-due rises from the grave, blood-thirsty, to take vengeance on those who wronged her (Griffiths 10). However, like William’s vampire legend, the Dearg-due “seems to have vanished at an early date” (Jones 121). England, because of centuries of Scandinavian invasions and Norman conquests, seemed to have experienced a plethora of Scandinavian folkloric influences.  The primary concern, however, is that the Vikings did not write their tales or histories in prose or verse until after they were Christianized, and therefore, it is nearly impossible to verify the influence of Scandinavian folklore on British ghosts and legends with complete certainty. However, Scandinavian sagas and folktales feature a type of ghost colloquially known as a draugr. Draugr are commonly described as a vampire—without the blood-sucking—or as a revenant, which are most common motif of ghosts featured in English ghost stories. 

For example, draugr, or vampires, are featured in the Icelandic saga Eyrbyggja Saga. The saga was written sometime in the thirteenth or fourteenth century, which is at least two centuries after William of Newburgh’s Historia rerum Anglicarum. However, the saga allegedly contains stories from ninth, tenth, and eleventh century Scandinavia folktales. Moreover, the Eyrbyggja Saga contains direct references to earlier sagas, written in the early part of the thirteenth century.  There is a story within the saga that begins with a shepherd in the town of Frodriver. Thorir, a local man, saw the shepherd blocking a door to a dwelling that he wished to enter. However, the shepherd would not let Thorir pass, and not wanting to cause problems, Thorir decided to leave. However, when Thorir’s back was turned, the shepherd charged and killed him. Later, the townspeople witnessed the shepherd and Thorir together. Townsfolk from across Frodriver started to fall ill, and when they would die, their ghosts would join the shepherd and Thorir. As people died, their band of ghosts grew and they would roam the town at night, tormenting the living. Eventually, a “priest carried holy water and sacred relics to every corner…and there were no more dead men haunting Frodriver after that” (Edwards 141). Despite the ghosts in the Eyrbyggja Saga avoiding blood, Armann Jakobsson writes, “the person that the ghost kills becomes a ghost himself, which may also happen with vampires” (310). Unlike contemporary ghost stories and legends, but very much like William of Newburgh’s legends, the ghosts in the Eyrbyggja Saga are physical beings. Though the Eyrbyggja Saga shares motifs with the stories in William’s Historia rerum Anglicarum—and the stories in Eyrbyggja Saga may share motifs with earlier Scandinavian folk stories—it is unclear whether the people of Northern England, who were certainly influenced by Scandinavian language, culture, and tradition, were aware of the Scandinavian stories that they seem to be sharing with William. 

Despite William of Newburgh’s vampire not being especially influential, there is a direct lineage to ghost legends and folklore in England dating back to William. William, while writing his Historia rerum Anglicarum, dedicates an entire chapter of his first book to the foundation of Byland Abbey. The chapter on the Byland Abbey does not contain any paranormal folktales or legends; this chapter, according to William, is a “return to the regular thread of history” (“Of certain prodigies”). The Byland Abbey, which William writes is “a mile distant from the church of Newburgh, where I was educated in Christ from a boy,” was especially interesting because it was dedicated to both men and women during its founding in the twelfth century (“Of the foundation of Byland”). William, in fact, praises the church and other churches like it that were created by King Stephen “for both sexes” (“Of the foundation of Byland”). Most importantly, it was located only a mile from the town that gives him his namesake. 

The Byland Abbey was in regular use until the sixteenth century. However, near the end of the Middle Ages, twelve stories “were written in the early fifteenth century on the blank pages of a manuscript containing a collection of rhetorical and theological works” about ghosts in or near the Byland Abbey (Jackson). Though we do not know the writer of the Byland ghost stories, it reads as the natural extension of William of Newburgh’s interspliced ghost folktales within his histories. For example, the first story was allegedly told to the writer by a servant from North Yorkshire. In the story, a man is walking on the road carrying a bag of beans when he sees a horse walking upright. The man rebukes the horse, and the horse follows him while walking as a normal horse. Later, the horse transforms into a “revolving bale of hay” with a “light in the middle” (“British Museum MS. Royal 15 A. xx. fo. 140 b”). Once again, the man rebukes it, and the hay transforms into a ghostly man. The ghost offers to help the man carry his beans, and the man accepts. However, the ghost cannot cross a river, and without the man knowing how, the beans are placed on his back. The man later goes to church and has the ghost absolved as a token of appreciation. 

Like William of Newburgh mentioned the Byland Abbey, a story within the Byland ghost stories mentions Newburgh. Interestingly, the name of the subject of the story was purposefully left blank from the manuscript because, according to the story, he was excommunicated from the church. As a man and his friend were walking in a field, his friend became terrified and ran away.  The man was then attacked by a ghost, and they began to wrestle. The ghost tore the clothes from the man’s body, but the man was able to “conjure” the spirit. The spirit admitted to the priest that he was excommunicated from the church because “of certain silver spoons which he hid in a certain place” (“British Museum MS. Royal 15 A. xx. fo. 140 b”). The ghost begged the man to find the spoons and bring them to his prior so that he could be absolved. The man did this for the excommunicated ghost, and the ghost was absolved. However, the man was sick for days because of the encounter.

Unlike William of Newburgh in his Historia rerum Anglicarum, the writer of the Bayland ghost stories creates—or adopts—a shapeshifting motif as in the horse and beans story. For example, in the writer’s eighth story, a man named William from Bradeforth heard something yelling outside of his window for three nights. On the fourth night, while walking outside, he heard the yelling again. After looking around, William saw a pale horse, which he immediately rebuked. The ghost, thankful for being conjured by William, turned into a canvas “with four corners and rolled away” (“British Museum MS. Royal 15 A. xx. fo. 143 a”). Despite never becoming humanoid, the writer of the story implies that human spirits, after death, can shapeshift. Moreover, the goal, and outcome, of several of the ghost stories in the Byland manuscript seems to be to conjure the ghosts, especially through Christian instruction. 

For example, in the ninth story of the manuscript, the ghost of man from Ayton in Cleveland once followed a man eighty miles so that the man would conjure him. Like the ghost from Newburgh, this ghost from Ayton claimed that he was excommunicated. However, the ghost from Ayton, after following the man for eighty miles, attacked the man by throwing “the living man on the other side of the fence” (“British Museum MS. Royal 15 A. xx. fo. 143 a”). The ghost, after harming the living man, said to him, “If you would have done thus [conjure me] in the first place, I would not have harmed you” (“British Museum MS. Royal 15 A. xx. fo. 143 a”). 

Christianity dominated the Middle Ages, and because the Byland ghost stories were written by monks, many of their ghost stories concern Christian exempla for a possible sermon. For example, in the eleventh of twelve stories written by the Byland monks, Richard Rowntree, a man from Cleveland, left behind his pregnant wife to go on a pilgrimage to the tomb of Saint James with a group of people. Each night they were away, one member would stay awake to keep watch. When it was Richard Rowntree’s turn to stay awake, he heard a loud noise, and then saw a very small ghost. Rowntree conjured the ghost. However, this particular ghost did not want to be conjured by Rowntree because it was Rowntree’s miscarried son, and the son was buried unbaptized and without a name. Additionally, the small ghost was inside of a sock. Rowntree removed the spirit of his miscarried son from the sock, and placed his own shirt onto his son and gave him a name. The ghost of the miscarried son jumped with happiness. Rowntree returned home to his wife, and he was very angry that his son was buried unbaptized and in a sock. He was so angry that he divorced his wife, which, the Byland monk writes, “this divorce was strongly displeasing to God” (“British Museum MS. Royal 15 A. xx. fo. 163 b - 164 a”). The divorce may seem odd to modern readers. However, burying a child before baptism was a great offense to both the child and to Richard Rowntree. Still, it was the opinion of the church that divorce was off limits unless Rowntree’s wife was a heretic, which, according to the Byland Abbey monks, she was not. 

Similarly, in the Byland manuscript’s final story, the sister of Adam de Lond died, and shortly after her death, she came back as a ghost. She was quickly caught by elder William Trower and conjured, and she admitted to the elder that she traveled as a ghost by night on account of property deeds that she gave to her brother Adam. After her death, her brother expelled her husband from his home, and so after William conjured her, she asked him if he could go speak to her brother. If elder William was unable to fix this, then she would not be able to rest before the day of Judgment. Elder William went to Adam to convince him to make it right, but Adam did not want to give the land back to his brother-in-law. The following night, however, elder William capture the ghost of Adam’s sister and brought her to Adam. Still, Adam did not want to give the land back to her husband. Adam’s sister was forced to roam the city tormenting its citizens until Adam’s son “made reparation of the inherited property after the death of Adam Senior” (“British Museum MS. Royal 15 A. xx. fo. 164 b”). 

The Byland manuscript created several motifs that still exists in folk ghost stories to this day, and variations of several of these stories are still told today in England. As Eleanor Jackson, curator of the Illuminated Manuscripts at the British Library, writes, “their clear local roots and lack of narrative structure gives them the feeling of folktales and hearsay” (Jackson). The ghosts within the Byland stories are not necessarily evil, though they have the propensity to harm people, and, for the vast majority, they are simply about people who have unfinished business. In other words, they did not die a “good death.” Figure 1, for example, features a medieval “good death.” In the manuscript image, death has come for a dying man, and the priest is asking God to save the dying’s soul. Meanwhile, Christ is promising to give him mercy. Many of these tales feature evil men, as is in the case of several of William of Newburgh’s stories, who have not repented or have not had the ability to receive last rites. Therefore, when they die, the devil can force these people to return to the living. However, in many of the Byland stories, many of the ghosts were those who did wrong, and through human communication, can repair the wrongs that they have committed in life. 

The Byland manuscript has become quite popular, and it is still studied contemporaneously. However, William of Newburgh’s Historia rerum Anglicarum might be the first documentation of English folktales from ordinary citizens. Many of the motifs featured in William’s text certainly influenced the writers of the Byland manuscript, and, moreover, the motifs that William documented (or created) are still in use over eight hundred year later by ordinary people and popular culture. Stories from the early Middle Ages, and therefore William of Newburgh, might have received influence from their Scandinavian invaders, but it is impossible to say how much the Vikings influenced the legends and folktales of England. Because writing required literacy and technology and money, which many early medieval English folk did not have, we simply do not have access to the lives of everyday citizen of the Early or even High Middle Ages. William of Newburgh, in many ways, was the first writer to democratize the importance of information in England. Not only did he create several English ghost motifs, but he knowingly created a text where the goal was documenting the lives of real, ordinary folk. 

[Image removed for formatting]

Figure 1: Source: The Carthusian Miscellany, England (Yorkshire or Lincolnshire) MS 37049, f. 38v

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The history of the word hell is more complex than its length suggests, and there are several folk etymological theories that have explained hell for centuries. Most common amongst folk etymologists is the idea that hell comes from the Hebrew שְׁאוֹל‎ (Sheol). Hell, or the biblical idea of hell, that exists in the Greek Bible does not exist in the Hebrew Bible. However, the Hebrew Bible mentions Sheol over sixty time. The first mention of Sheol in the Hebrew Bible is in Gen. 37:35 when Jacob says, “I shall go down to Sheol to my son, mourning” (NRSVUE). Outside of a place for the dead, the Hebrew Bible’s definition of Sheol has very little to do with modern Christian concepts of hell, and early Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible translated Sheol as ᾍδης (Hades). Desiring to connect the Hebrew Bible to the Greek Bible, Christian translators began to translate Sheol as hell, and the King James Version of the Bible translates Sheol as hell thirty-one times. The remaining thirty times are translated to grave or variations of  grave. For example, the KJV translation of Gen. 37:35 reads, “I will go down into the grave unto my son mourning” (KJV). For obvious reasons, the KJV translators could not write that Jacob went to hell to mourn his son Joseph. Hell existed prior the King James Version of the Bible, and English speakers have used hell since at least the eighth century. Hell has gone under minor phonological and morphological changes throughout its history in the English language. However, hell has semantically changed several times since the eighth century while retaining its original English meaning. 

Though our earliest recorded use of hell in English is in the eighth century, the word existed prior to the Christianization of England. For instance, Christianized Scandinavians who, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (AHD) claims, “preserved a good deal of pagan poetry revealing the ancient Scandinavian vision of the afterworld” describe the pagan Scandinavian hel throughout several texts (“Hell, n.”). The Scandinavian hel, unlike the Christian English hell, is cold. However, like hell, it is a placed reserved for evil people, and it is meant to serve as a stark contrast to Valhalla. Several modern Germanic languages share similarities to the Scandinavian and English version of hell. The German Hölle (hell), the Afrikaans hel, the Yiddish hel, and the Scottish Gaelic hel are clearly similar, and according to the AHD, they share the Indo-European root of *kel- (“Hell, n.”). 

The definition (or description) of the Indo-European root of kel- is “to cover, conceal, save,” and the oldest form of *k̑el‑ becomes *kel- in centum (or Western) languages (“Indo-European Roots Appendix”). Several modern words are derived from kel- including hall, hull (and hold ), hole, hollow, holster, helm (and helmet), housing, and, of course, hell. Nearly all these derivatives could be defined, at least partly, by their Indo-European definition. However, the Indo-European root definition of *kel- seems reductive for the rich existential and religious history associated with hell. 

The shift from Indo-European to Germanic saw the creation of the word Halja, which is “one who covers up or hides something” (Barnhart 474). A similar word exists in Old English (OE), helian, which means “to hide or conceal.” However, later, Halja saw cognates that exists not only in the OE helle (which is a separate word from helian though they are both rooted in the Germanic Halja) but also “in Old Frisian hele, hille, Old Saxon hellja, Middle Dutch helle, Old High German hella, and Gothic halja” (Barnhart 474). Robert K. Barnhart suggests, like the AHD, that hell and its cognates are “possibly borrowed, in part, from Old Icelandic Hel goddess of death and the underworld, as a transfer of a pagan concept to Christian theology and its vocabulary” (474). However, Winifred Philipp Lehmann’s A Gothic Etymological Dictionary complicates the Gothic halja as a cognate of Germanic Halja (and derivative of hell) when defined as the “nether world of the dead, infernal regions” (Barnhart 474). Gothic halja, according to Lehmann, simply means “hell” (174). However, the Gothic conjunction haliurunnas (previously written as haljos-runas) despite interpreting—Lehmann’s word—to hell-runners, means “sorceresses” or “female shamans” (174). Therefore, it is nearly impossible to tell how hell or its antecedents were used prior to the eighth-century. However, shift undoubtedly occurred, and prior to the shift, hell was certainly not created out of Christian theological needs. 

Despite hell not being created out of a theological need, Christianity dominated the West during the Middle Ages, and our first written record of hell comes from the Vespasian Psalter (c. 820-850), an Anglo-Saxon psalter, from the first half of the eighth century. The Vespasian Psalter contains the Book of Psalms with letters from Jerome, and it is written in both Latin and a Mercian dialect of OE (Kolasinska 36). The first appearance of hell in the Vespasian Psalter reads, “Veniat mors super illos et descendant in infernum uiuentes: cyme deað ofer hie & astigen hie in helle lifgende” (“[Latin] Let death come upon them and the living descend to hell: [OE] Let death come over them and let the living descend into hell”; Kuhn 51). This passage from the psalter is the same Bible verse (Psa. 55:15) in both Latin and Old English. The Latin translation, because it is from an earlier translation—that many, including Paulina Kolasinska, have called “the Latin original”—is of less note than the OE, which, to the best of our knowledge, is the first extended translation of Psalms into English (36). Contemporary translations of the same verse are strikingly similar, except one significant change, “Let death come upon them; let them go down alive to Sheol” (NRSVUE). Sheol, which was translated as infernum in Latin and then helle in OE, has reverted to a form that better represents the biblical description of the underworld or afterlife in the Hebrew Bible. However, there is little difference between infernum and helle. 

Helle’s pronunciation is similar to contemporary pronunciations of hell with an additional pronunciation of both L’s and a shwa at the end of the word (/hɛllə/), and there has not been very many phonological changes to the word hell throughout history, especially to the root of hel. Like its phonological changes, there has been very little morphological changes to hell throughout history and between OE and Middle English (ME) writers. Because there was no popular standardization of English during the Middle Ages, hell throughout its history, has been spelled as helle, hel, hellen, and hell. Moreover, writers continued to use both helle and hell well into the seventeenth century. Though not completely uncommon, several English words were standardized prior to the seventeenth century. For example, the earliest written record of the word king in English from 858 reads, “Se cyning sealde & gebocade Wullafe fif sulung landes” (“The king gave and booked Wullafe five sulungs of land”; Sweet 438). Cyning would have likely been pronounced as /kyniŋ/ during the ninth century. However, near the middle of the thirteenth century, writers began adopting modern spellings of king. For example, Robert of Gloucester writes in his metrical chronical (1260), “Hennin & Morgan…adde despit þat womman king ssolde alonde beo” (“Hennin and Morgan…had contempt that a woman should be alone as king”; Robert 64). Morphologically, ME writers would occasionally write king as kyng, but phonologically (/kɪŋ/), king and kyng are virtually identical to the modern pronunciations of king. Hell, on the other hand, had no morphological standard (or close standard) until nearly four hundred years after The Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester. Furthermore, unlike king, hell constantly gained semantics throughout history. 

Vespasian Psalter’s hell is a translation (of a translation) of Psalms, and therefore its semantics reflects a Christian theological place for the dead. Moreover, it is not a completely original use of hell. Later in the Middle Ages, within the Cleopatra Glossaries (c. 930s), under the section hound is, “Ex herebo, of helle” (“[Latin] from their heir, [OE] of hell”; Rusche 271). Like the Vespasian Psalter, the Cleopatra Glossaries is written in both Latin and OE, and despite being written nearly a century apart, they were both most likely composed in St. Augustine’s Abbey. The glossary is giving an example of a hound that is from hell, and because it is a glossary, it is simply an alphabetical list of terms. However, we can view this version of hell in use in The Old English Boethius (c. 880-950) that has been historically tied to King Alfred the Great, “Þa sceolde cuman þære helle hund, þæs nama…wæs Ceruerus” (“When he came thither, the hound of hell, men say, came towards him, whose name was Cerberus”; Alfred the Great's Boethius: Sedgefield's Modern English Translation). The Old English Boethius gives an example of a hell that has superficially very little to do with Christian theology (Godden 1). Cerberus is three-headed dog from Greek mythology that guards the gates to the underworld, and Cerberus is typically known for his capture by Heracles. However, from a Christian theological perspective, the Greek underworld, or Hades, would essentially be the Christian hell. Therefore, semantically, hell represents all afterlife, especially for a medieval Christian king (or monk or scribe). 

The first interpretive use of hell appears sometime in the ninth or tenth century in the Blickling Homilies, and though no author can be attached to the homilies, a homily is essentially a commentary that follows scripture readings. Homilies are especially common during sermons, making the Blickling Homilies one of the earliest surviving manuscripts of English sermons. Additionally, the Blickling Homilies are especially of note because of their potential ties to Beowulf. As Matthew Hussey notes in “The Possible Relationship of the Beowulf and the Blickling Homilies Manuscripts,” there is a “possibility that the two manuscripts were copies at different times in the same scriptorium” (2). The writers of the homilies mention hell several times throughout, and the text reads in hell’s first instance, “Se gifra helle bið a open deoflum & þæm mannum þe nu be his larum lifiaþ” (“The greedy hell is always open to Satan and the men who now live by his teaching”; Blickling Homilies). The hell featured in the homilies is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) as “The infernal regions regarded in various religions as a place of suffering and evil; the dwelling place of devils and condemned spirits; the place or state of punishment of the wicked after death” (“hell, n. & int.”). Semantically, this is amongst the earliest forms of hell in English that describe hell as a place where the devil lives and the condemned can be potentially punished to. This semantic of hell was widely used throughout history, and it is still used in this context today. For instance, it is written in the Old English Homilies (c. 1225), “From hwonne þe engles adun follon in to þe þosternesse hellen” (“From whence the angels fell down in the darkness of hell”; Morris 61). Like in the Blickling Homilies, hell in the Old English Homilies is a place where the condemned are sent. Similarly, and later, John Milton writes in Paradise Lost (1667), “Within the Gates of Hell sate Sin and Death” (230). Though this is perhaps the most widely used semantic of hell, especially in the context of Christian theology, hell is used several different contexts even today. 

Though hell’s semantic definition as an afterlife for condemned souls permeated the ninth century, hell first began to develop polysemous semantics in English within the tenth century. Paintings of hell in as early as the ninth century began to depict the Christian hell as beast unto itself, and by the tenth century, writers and theologians started to describe a motif known as the hellmouth. Ælfric of Eynsham was the first English writer to describe the hellmouth and to translate the Hebrew Bible into English. Ælfric writes in his Catholic Homilies (written in the latter half of the tenth century), “[Witodlice seo swearte nywelnyss þe ðu gesawe mid þam ormætum þeostrum and fulum] stence, seo is helle muð” (Truly, the dark depths that you saw amid the immense darkness and foul stench, that is the hell mouth”; 201-2). Hell, for Ælfric, was not simply in intangible or metaphorical punishment for the afterlife, instead he made hell palpable. Ælfric’s hellmouth lasted well into the fourteenth century. Early translation of the Bible into English featured the hellmouth motif. For example, in an early Wycliffite translation of Isaiah (1382), it is written, “Helle sprade abrod his soule & openede his mouþ withoute any terme” (Bodleian Library MS. Bodl. 959). Similarly, it is written in a poem about St. Balaam in the Altenglische Legend (1450), “þe ferful Dragun. is þe Mouþ of helle þat coueyteþ. men to deuoure” (“The fearsome dragon is the mouth of hell that desires to devour men”; Altenglische Legend). The hellmouth motif, though not as popular of a semantic definition in the twenty-first century, lasted well into the nineteenth century. For example, Rudyard Kipling writes in his poem “Tomlinson” (1892), “Till they came to the belt of Naughty Stars that rim the mouth of Hell” (“Tomlinson”). Kipling mentions the hellmouth another three times in “Tomlinson,” but Kipling uses the motif for a different semantical reasoning. Kipling’s hellmouth is signifier of physical danger, and though Ælfric describes the mouth of hell as being palpable, Ælfric’s hellmouth is still a punishment for sin. As secularism rose in the West, the semantics of hell changed, and the shift began after the Norman Conquest of 1066. 

The introduction of the Norman monarchy fundamentally changed the English language, and the shift from OE to ME began in the beginning of the twelfth century. The OED writes that ME is “characterized particularly by a reduced system of grammatical inflection, an increased lexical borrowing from other languages, especially French and Latin, and great dialectical diversity in writing” (“Middle English, n.”). However, the rise of Middle English did not include a standardization of English, and English writing still varied widely throughout England. Typically, the English featured in ME texts is much more readable for a modern English-speaking audience. For example, Geoffrey Chaucer writes in Anelida & Arcite (c. 1375), “The helle that suffereth fayre Annelida” (166). Chaucer is not only more readable than some of our OE examples, but he introduces a new form of hell. The rise of ME and print capitalism saw a new literary, or hyperbolic, form of hell that had very little to do with religion. This new version of hell became even more popular with the introduction of the printing press, and, for example, John Foxe writes in his protestant martyrology Acts and Monuments (1563): 

And this minister (at my comminge) desired to speake with me, and did greatly lament his owne infirmity, for that through extremity of imprisonment, he was constrayned by wryting to yelde to the byshop of London, wherupon he was once set at libertie, and afterward felte such a hel in his conscience, that he could scarse refrayne from destroying himselfe, and neuer could be at quiet, vntil he had gone to the byshops Register, desiring to se hys byl agayne, the which assone as hee had receyued, he tare it in peces. (Foxe)

Foxe’s hel is two-fold. Foxe certainly means for hel to have a religious undertone. However, Foxe’s hel can easily be changed to torment, affliction, or anguish without losing its syntaxial meaning. In other words, hell no longer is a physical place for the devil or condemned souls by the sixteenth century, even for Christian theologians. The OED defines Chaucer and Foxe’s use of hell as “a place, state, or situation of wickedness, suffering, or misery. In later use frequently hyperbolic” (“hell, n. & int.”). Shortly after Foxe’s Acts and Monuments—and the advent of the printing press—the spelling of hell began to become more standardized amongst predominantly literary writers, and by the seventeenth century, not only was the spelling of hell solidified amongst writers, but hell was no longer used for religious purposes. For example, Shakespeare writes in his “Sonnet CXX” (1609), “For if you were by unkindness shaken, / As I by yours, you’ve pass’d a hell of time, / And I, a tyrant, have no leisure taken to weigh how once I suffer’d in your crime” (l. 5-8). In other words, if Shakespeare’s fictional reader suffered like the writer, then they would have had a “hell of [a] time.” Like the example from Foxe’s Acts and Monuments, Shakespeare’s “hell of a time” could easily be replaced with “a really bad time.” Similarly, Milton writes in Paradise Lost (1667), “…a lower deep still threatening to devour me opens wide, to which the hell I suffer seems Heaven” (iv. 78). Once again, Milton uses hell as a synonym for a suffering, and this hyperbolic form of hell is quite common even throughout the twentieth century. For example, Rudyard Kipling writes in his cheeky poem “The Old Men” (1903), “Yes, we shall be perfectly pleased with our work, and that is the Perfectest Hell of it!” (l. 22). As Mary Hamer of the Kipling Society notes, “Kipling was still not yet forty” when he composed “The Old Men,” and “the speakers are presumably those officials in the War Office home…whom he blamed for the mismanagement of the Anglo-Boer war” (Hamer). Therefore, in Kipling’s “The Old Men,” the speakers are creating torment—or metaphorical hell—for others. 

Not only did hell become part of the literary and the metaphorical, hell became part of the everyday English-speaking lexicon in the sixteenth century. Hell became part of phrases, and therefore, lost much of its original semantics. For instance, in the anonymous sixteenth century comedy Misogonus (1577), Philogonus says to Eupelus, “Stay a while Eupelas I knowe our laboure we shall lose / but yet Ile tell the vnthrift of his detestable dealing / Calsta this honest company or is this an honest sporte / to be revelinge and bousinge after such a lewde fashion / I think hell breake louse when thou gatst ye this porte / foure such thou coudst scase fynde in a whole nashion” (Bond 215). Hell breaks loose’s phrasal semantic is based solely around hell’s earliest definitions as a place meant for the devil, demons, and condemned souls, and if hell were to break loose, then events would become chaotic. However, hell breaks loose is rarely—if ever—used to describe religious or existential events. Instead, it used as a synonym of chaotic. Lord Byron makes note of the phrase hell breaks loose in “The Vision of Judgment” (1821) by writing, “And varies cries were like those of wild geese, / (If nations may be likened to a goose), / And realised the phrase of ‘Hell broke loose’” (506). By the early nineteenth century, hell breaks loose had become such a part of the English-speaking lexicon that Lord Byron refers to it as a phrase, and moreover, he is essentially writing that “nations” will learn the true meaning of the phrase. Therefore, hell breaks loose had lost its semantic meaning for most English speakers and only an existential event would remind them of its true, original semantics.

Hell breaks loose implies that hell is place full of beings that we would like to avoid, but phrases like hell hath no fury like a woman scorned imply that hell is a being unto itself, much like the hellmouth motif. William Congreve, for example, writes in his late seventeenth century tragedy The Mourning Bride (1697), “Heav’n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn’d / Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn’d” (39). To compare hell to an angry woman implies that some sort of semantical bleaching occurred for the word hell in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. Moreover, in some instances in the early seventeenth century, hell went through complete grammaticalization. For instance, Ben Johnson writes in his comedy Poetaster (1601), “The hell thou wilt! What! Turn law into verse / Thy father has school’d thee…” (Johnson). The implication from Johnson seems to be that the speaker is metaphorically sending someone to hell for their actions. However, it is used in Poetaster as more of an exclamation, and we see this semantic phrase of hell still used in the twentieth century. 

Similarly, in the eighteenth century, hell underwent another semantic shift. For instance, John Leacock writes in The Fall of British Tyranny (1776), “Damn it, don’t let us kick up a dust among ourselves, to be laugh’d at fore and aft—this is a hell of a council of war—though I believe it will turn out one before we’ve done” (337). Though at first glance Leacock’s use of hell seems positive—as in this is a great council of war—contextually, The Fall of British Tyranny is a parody, and this instance of hell is coming from the enemies of the novel (the British). An early nineteenth century article from the Morning Post (1810) illustrates the early negative use of the original use of hell of a --: “They all knew what a hell of a row had been kicked up at the committal of their friend, because two or three fellows got killed” (Jones 274). Similarly, Mark Twain writes at the end of the nineteenth century in Following the Equator (1897), “It’s a charming town, with a hell of a hotel…it’s the worst hotel in Australia. Well, one may go further, and say in Australasia” (Twain). A hell of a -- was used to denote something as being terrible, perhaps a lingering lineage from the original ninth century sense of hell, however, a complete grammaticalization occurs near the end of the twentieth century: a hell of a -- is used to describe something very good. For example, Kurt Vonnegut writes in Bluebeard (1988), “If I do say so myself, I had become one hell of a good artist for a kid in any case. I was so conceited about my prospects” (82). In the twenty-first century, we are more likely to use a hell of -- in the Vonnegut context rather than previous contexts. 

However, prior to Vonnegut’s Bluebeard, a hell of a -- featured a phonetic erosion. Just as going to became gonna for some English speakers, a hell of a -- became helluva in the early part of the twentieth century. Unlike a hell of a --, helluva became a positive colloquialism shortly after its inception. For example, Clarence E. Mulford writes in his popular Western Hopalong Cassidy (1910), “I got money—helluva lot of money—an’ thersh more where it came from, ain’t that so, boys?” (272). Contextually, Mulford is writing a Western dialect that might include phonetic erosions like helluva to describe his cowboy as uneducated drunk. Still, helluva is meant to describe that Mulford’s character has a lot of money and has nearly nothing to do with hell’s original semantics. Similarly, and to avoid literary dialects, Ezra Pound writes in his “Canto XXXV” (1934), “as they hung their old huntsman friend to his chandelier / in his dining hall after the usual feasting and flagons / VIRTUSCH!!! It must be one helluva country” (l. 91-3). Helluva serves simply as an intensifier and a purposeful phonetic erosion without any singular meaning, and by the end of the nineteenth century, hell, in many contexts eroded meaning all together. 

Today, we often say hell without any meaning at all, and many times we use an intensifier like bloody hell or fucking hell. Hell in these instances serves as nothing more than an interjection or exclamation. For example, in The West Somerset Word-Book (1886) the editors, under the examples of “Oaths, Imprecations, and Exclamations,” write, “Nearly all the imprecatory verbs are, at times, used in conjunctions with exclamations such as— …‘Hell! Bloody hell!’…After any profane exclamation or oath…it is very common to add, by way of half apology…‘You’d let out too, nif you was me’” (529-30). To put The West Somerset Word-Book into perspective, Ian Wedde writes in his Symmes Hole (1986) nearly a hundred years later, “Fuckin’ hell Harry it’s the cops!’ (75), and he writes later in the same novel, “Oh fucking hell – just had to look over your shoulder didn’t you?…What a-bout, the immediate vicinity, bloody hell, can you see, any-one, any-where, near you?” (116). Hell serves nearly no syntactical function in Wedde’s examples, and they are nearly impossible to define outside of being exclamatory phrase. 

Like hell as exclamation or interjection, we often use hell as an intensifier. We say things are “good as hell” or we’re “sure as hell” or my ankle “hurts like hell” or we ask, “how the hell are you?” Hell as an intensifier is undoubtedly the most popular form of hell in our current lexicon, and outside of acting as an intensifier, hell has little to no actual semantics. Hell as an intensifier is older than our current use suggests, and, for example, according to the OED, the first use hell as an intensifier was sometime at the end the eighteenth century in a Sea Shanty (1768-70): “Got Drunk as all Hell” (“as all hell’ in hell”). Shortly after the Sea Shanty, in 1776, H. H. Brackenridge writes in his performance piece Battle of Bunkers-Hill, “With these rude Britons, wage life-scorning war, / Till they admit it, and like hell fall off” (261). We continue to use hell as an intensifier in the twentieth century. Just as the eighteenth-century Sea Shanty, Ice Cube raps in his “It Was a Good Day” (1992), “Drunk as hell, but no throwin’ up / Halfway home and my pager still / blowin’ up” (Ice Cube). Similarly, Fetty Wap raps in his three-time Platinum single “My Way” (2014), “The last single he put out / Didn’t even make it out / And he dumb as hell and I swear / his ass don’t think” (Fetty Wap). In her 2023 single “love is embarrassing” three-time Grammy Award winner Olivia Rodrigo sings, “My God, love’s embarrassing as hell” (Rodrigo). Contextually, hell as an intensifier seems synonymous with really: “Really drunk,” “he really dumb,” and “love’s really embarrassing.” However, hell, as word itself, seems semantic-less. Moreover, hell does not always denote a negative intensifier. Ice Cube, for example, does not seem particularly upset being “drunk as hell,” and Taylor Swift sings in “Wildest Dreams” (2014), “He’s so tall and handsome as hell” (Swift).

Although English speakers use hell as a simple intensifier, hell has not gone through a complete semantic bleaching or desemanticization. Hell, in certain contexts, still maintains its eighth century semantics, and certain modern phrases partially combine the original English semantics of hell with modern phrasal, or proverbial, tradition. For example, Agnes Newton Keith writes in Land Below the Wind (1939), “Too puny a voice mine to say, like Queen Victoria, ‘Let empires be built!’—and, come hell or high water, they build ‘em” (18). Despite phrases and interjections creating a sort of societal semantic satiation—where hell loses all meaning through repetition—hell or high water implies that hell is something to be overcome, and, therefore, hell, much like high waters, is an obstacle to be conquered. High waters certainly does not imply the same existential dread or sinful punishment that Ælfric writes about hell in his Catholic Homilies, however, hell—in the twentieth century—still has a general meaning of, at the very least, a life-threatening hurdle. 

Throughout its history hell has been mostly used as a noun and, by the end of the of the eighteenth century, an interjection as well. In addition to a noun and an interjection, hell has also been used as a transitive and intransitive verb since the middle of the fourteenth century. Richard Oliver Heslop writes in his dictionary Northumberland Words (1892) that hell and helle mean “to pour out in a rapid manner” (370). Hell and helle are both different spellings of hell in OE and ME. Though rare, Heslop’s sole definition of hell and helle is “to pour.” Hell has a complicated history as a verb beginning in the fourteenth century. Richard Rolle writes in the Psalter, or Psalms of David (c. 1340), “Grete haboundance of gastly comfort and ioy in god comes in the hertes of thaim at says or synges deuotly the psalmes in louynge of ihū crist. thai drope swetnes in mannys saule and hellis delite in thaire thoghtis and kyndils thaire willes with the fyre of luf” (“Great abundance of spiritual comfort and joy in God comes into hearts of those who say or devoutly sing the psalms in praise of Jesus Christ. They drip sweetness into many souls and pour delight in their thoughts and kindle their wills with the fire of love”; 3). Rolle’s spelling of hell as hellis is not indictive of the era, and it is the only instance of hellis in his psalter. Through his psalter, Rolle uses both hell and helle interchangeably, which is more suggestive of the ME period. For instance, he later writes, “we go not to gedir in to helle” (92), and shortly after that instance of helle, he writes, “suffire me noght forto fall swa that thou punyes me in hell” (97). Similarly, in a translation of Leo the Archpriest’s tenth century The Wars of Alexander (c. 1450), the translator writes, “Þan slike a comfurth þam enclosed for his kynd wordis, / As all þe watir of þe werd ware in þaire wambs hellid” (“Then such a comfort enclosed them for his kind words, / as if all the water of the world were in their bellies poured”; 217). Like Rolle, the translator of The Wars of Alexander uses hell as a noun in two other instances, but only uses hellid in this one instance (and they do not use helle). These writers were not using hell and helle interchangeably with hellis and hellid; hellis and hellid meant something completely different for them. It is possible that the -is or the -id acted as inflectional endings for hell or helle for the writers. However, pour was already part of the lexicon of ME speakers. For example, Chaucer writes in “Pardoner’s Tale” (c. 1390), “And borwed [of] hym large botelles thre, / And in the two his poysen poured he;” (l. 871-2). Moreover, it is not linguistic holdover from OE (geotan or feallan). Still, hell was used as a verb, but much later and much more obviously. 

Thomas Adams writes in The Diulls Banket (1614), “The dead to sinne are heaven’d in this world: the dead in sinne are hell’d here, by the tormenting anguish of an unappeasable conscience” (171). Adams, as a temporary anthimeria, uses both heaven and hell as a verb to mean go to heaven or go to hell. However, it is not a permanent transitive verb shift, and Adams uses both heaven and hell as nouns in his text. Moreover, though it is changed to a verb in this instance, it is not a semantic shift, and in order to understand what Adam is writing, one must have a general understanding of hell’s semantic noun meaning. Hell as an intransitive verb was not used until the end of the nineteenth century and in rare occurrences. For example, John Clare writes in his poem “Button Cap” (1864), “Theyd won the game—& then pell melling / As safes a button sent thee helling” (504). Like Adam’s example, Clare’s use of helling requires preexisting knowledge of the semantics of hell. Moreover, “Button Cap” is using poetic language, and helling did not become part of popular English lexicon, though it has occasionally appeared in literature after Clare. 

Hell is certainly not used as a verb with nearly as much frequency as the noun hell. However, hell has a history of being linguistically adaptable. While mostly known as signifier for the Christian afterlife, hell has a history of being used as an adjective, adverb, and interjection, which is a history unto itself. Today, for example, hell is used in our everyday lexicon as an intensifier meaning really, and we see examples of as hell in everyday speech, movies, books, and popular music. While hell’s meaning has evolved over time—never losing its original English semantics—the orthographic representation of hell has only slightly altered over the course of a millennia as hel, helle, and hellen in OE and ME texts. The precise etymological roots of hell are vague, and though we can trace hell to its Indo-European and Germanic roots, the original semantics of hell—as perhaps a pagan afterlife—are unknown to modern linguists and historians. Since its textual inception into English in the eighth century, hell has been used in its Christian sense in both biblical translations and homilies, but hell’s popular use was not revealed until the creation of the printing press when texts could be mass produced. Hell has undergone minor morphological and phonological changes throughout its long history, but the word has always been more complex than its length suggests.  

Works Cited

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Brackenridge, H. H. “The Battle of Bunkers-Hill.” Project Gutenberg, gutenberg.org/cache/epub/29225/pg29225-images.html. Accessed 30 Nov. 2023. 

Byron, George Gordon. The Works of Lord Byron: Poetry Vol. IV. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1901. 

Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Pardoner’s Prologue, Introduction, and Tale.” Harvard’s Geoffrey Chaucer Website, chaucer.fas.harvard.edu/pages/pardoners-prologue-introduction-and-tale. Accessed 1 Dec. 2023. 

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James Holt McGavran argues in his 1996 essay “Defusing the Discharged Soldier” that William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge are “affected by repressed but powerful homoerotic tensions” (147). McGavran points out that The Prelude (1805) contains “thousands of lines of discourse in order to become a strong, independent, masculine, heterosexual, but continually self-questioning male romantic poet” (163).  However, Coleridge’s response “To William Wordsworth” is “both masochistic and, in its very exaggeration of admiration, perversely resistant” (McGavran 163). In the twenty years since McGavran’s essay, scholars have noted the importance of Coleridge’s and Wordsworth’s friendship and professional collaboration, but none seem to connect them as intimately as McGavran does. For example, Keith G. Thomas historicizes the poets and their relationship by arguing that “to omit Coleridge [from Wordsworth] amounts in the end to telling half of Wordsworth’s story” (82). Thomas admits that there is a “recognizable Coleridgean context” to Wordsworth’s poetry, but he does not focus on the intimacy of their work or their friendship (82). Similarly, Lucy Newlyn analyzes Coleridge inside of Wordsworth’s poetry, and she argues that there are “two Coleridges in The Prelude: one mythologized beyond recognition … the other flawed and human” (166). However, Newlyn concludes “that The Prelude – is in fact a solitary quest, to which friendship itself is finally irrelevant,” and she does not argue for the intimate significance of Wordsworth’s mythologizing of Coleridge (166). 

Other scholars have analyzed intimate aspects of Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s work and friendship. For example, Julia S. Carlson argues that “the story of the composition of The Prelude cannot be told without reference to Coleridge’s and Wordsworth’s new-found absence from one another” (1). According to Carlson, The Prelude and “To William Wordsworth” is the result of “a history of intimate textual exchange[s] across significant geographical distance” (26). Though Carlson intimately links Wordsworth and Coleridge, she does not go as far as McGavran, and she primarily focuses on the poets’ new-found distance from each other as the catalyst for their intimate exchanges. Scholars have attempted to explain Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s collaboration as uniquely intimate, but they avoid connecting their relationship and work to a homosocial bond or homoeroticism. Instead, for example, Jasmine Jagger writes that there is a “medical link between Wordsworth and Coleridge during the composition of The Prelude,” and Wordsworth plays the role of “benign physician” while Coleridge plays the role of “wondering patient” (33). In a similar hierarchical structure, Rei Terada writes that, in “To William Wordsworth,” “Coleridge portrays himself in infantine thrall to absorptive pleasure at Wordsworth’s reading of The Prelude” (43). However, Terada concludes that, not unlike Jagger’s argument, “Coleridge subsumes Wordsworth’s influence into a world of his own vivification” (43). 

There is an abundance of scholarship on Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s work, friendship, and exchanges, and, though scholars have noted the intimate work between the poets, research into the homosocial bond between them is lacking. Though McGavran’s essay is formative for this research, by taking a cue from Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality, it is impossible to conclude that Wordsworth nor Coleridge were homosexual, as homosexuality was not defined as a “sexual sensibility” until 1870 (43). Furthermore, the rhetoric and language of queer studies has progressed over the past two decades, and, therefore, renders sections of McGavran’s essay outmoded. Ultimately, I argue, as did Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick in her seminal Between Men, that Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s homosocial bond resulted in exclusionary powers over the feminine Other. Though the feminine Other included fellow poets and wives, their homosocial desire—and need to prove their masculinity—resulted into the exclusion of the feminine Other within the self and each other. 

Outside of Wordsworth and Coleridge, an exterior analysis of Romantic Studies leads to homosocial results. For example, Harriet Kramer Linkin’s 1991 essay “The Current Canon in British Romantic Studies” lists the canonical powerhouses of Romanticism as William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats (548). However, she concludes that the canon “we invoke with a capital ‘C’ is no monolithic structure or commandment carved in stone but a shifting set of ideals that correspond to a culture’s Zeitgeist” (548). However, according to the more recent The Cambridge Introduction to British Romantic Poetry by Michael Ferber, the canonical powerhouses of Romanticism have not changed since Linkin’s essay. In addition to the same canonical lists, he writes that feminist scholars have “brought to light” a number of women poets who “were well known and much admired in their time” (6). Many of the women poets he mentions—such as Charlotte Smith—were well known, even to those men on the canonical list of British Romantic poets.

Charlotte Smith’s Elegiac Sonnets were influential and inspired several imitations and responses. Wordsworth and Coleridge were among those influenced by Smith’s sonnets, particularly by “Written in the Church-Yard at Middleton in Sussex.” Wordsworth owned the fifth, expanded edition of Elegiac Sonnets (1789), and he regularly annotated her published poems (Nagle 51). This, for example, is a copy of “Written in the Church Yard at Middleton in Sussex” with Wordsworth’s annotations: 

Press’d by the Moon, mute arbitress of tides, 

While the loud equinox its power combines, 

The sea no more its swelling surge confines, 

But o’er the shrinking land sublimely rides. 

The wild blast, rising from the Western cave, 

Drives the huge billows from their heaving bed; 

Tears from the grassy tombs the village dead, 

And breaks the silent sabbath of the grave! 

With shells and sea-weed mingled, on the shore

Lo! their bones whiten in the frequent wave;

[But In] vain to them the winds and waters rave[;][—]

They hear the warring elements no more:

While I am doom’d—by life’s long storm opprest, 

To [gaze with envy on their gloomy rest. envy their

insensible unrest.] (qtd. in Nagle 51-2)

Wordsworth does not make any changes until line 11, and he simply changes Smith’s “But” to “In” and he removes her semicolon in favor of a dash. However, Wordsworth changes the final line of the ending couplet, and is attempting to improve the poem. In the literal sense of the poem, “unrest” is arguably an improvement. However, as Christopher C. Nagle writes, “it comes at a cost, sacrificing a significant mode of indirection and rich irony in which Smith indulges” (54). In other words—as Nagle leaves out—it removes Smith from her own poem in several ways. Smith’s poetic persona—or speaker—is removed from “gazing” in the poem, and she is placed deeper within the context of the poem. This act is simply Wordsworth’s preference, which was later made evident through his body of work. However, more importantly, it illustrates Wordsworth’s privilege of being a part of a scene rather than gazing from a distance—a masculine entitlement that Smith (or her poetic person) is not afforded. Regardless of Wordsworth’s intention of his annotation, Smith’s poem served and helped develop young Wordsworth’s poetic style: a “full absorption of the poetic persona” (Nagle 54). 

Smith’s poetry was formative for young Wordsworth, but he did not recognize her before her death in 1806, instead it was “from the comfortable position of an established poet in the 1830s” (Nagle 54). Later, Nagle writes, “Wordsworth’s amnesia returns in the final, 1849 edition of ‘An Evening Walk,’ which removes the quotes that had previously identified his line from Smith’s ‘To the South Downs’” (54). It was only in a position of authority that Wordsworth would recognize Smith, and, even at the end of his life, disavowed any direct references to Smith in his own poetry. This act is a systematic attempt to rewrite the canon of poetry in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century where Smith’s work—along with other woman poets like Mary Robinson and Helen Maria Williams—is a threat even by association. The reality of Wordsworth writing poetry out of tradition—a tradition that included Smith—is enough to push her to the side as the feminine Other. Arguably, Wordsworth was successful, as even today Smith is relegated not to the canon of British Romanticism but to the footnotes of that same canon. 

Wordsworth and Coleridge, I argue, have committed a similar act on themselves—their own feminine Other—and, in certain circumstances, Wordsworth defines Coleridge as his Other. First, it is imperative we define our terms: homosocial desire and homosexual panic. Simply put, male homosocial desire is a “structure of men’s relations with other men” (Sedgwick 2). However, there are more societal implications. The structure in which men build relations with other men depend on and impact power relationships. In other words, patriarchal systems of male homosocial relationships define sexuality and gender structures. Male homosocial desire, however, is not paradoxically opposed to homosexuality. As Sedgwick points out for the ancient Greeks, “’men loving men’ and ‘men promoting the interest of men’ appears to have been quite seamless” (4). On the other hand, homosexual panic is simply the private and psychologized pressure of homophobic blackmail, or, in more clinical terms, it is a panic due to the pressure of nonnormative sexual yearnings (Sedgwick 89). However, for this research—before homosexuality was defined as a sexuality sensibility—homosexual panic is more akin feminine panic, where there is panic due to the pressure of feminine yearnings. Our analytical focus will begin with Wordsworth’s independent “The Discharged Soldier” in 1798. At this point Coleridge is still in the process of writing The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere (1789), and it is shortly before Wordsworth began revising “Book IV” of The Prelude (1805). 

Toby R. Benis calls “The Discharged Soldier” an “episode” in the anthology William Wordsworth in Context (186). Within the same anthology, Simon Bainbridge calls the poem a “poetic fragment” (200). Paul Magnuson writes that “Wordsworth’s opinion of ‘The Discharged Soldier’ is difficult to determine,” as he did not publish it outside of The Prelude (94). Whether we want to call it an episode, a poetic fragment, or an incomplete singular piece, Wordsworth eventually incorporated “The Discharged Soldier” into “Book IV” of The Prelude. However, Wordsworth, when assimilating “The Discharged Soldier” into The Prelude, removed two distinct sections (among other changes). Interestingly, both sections seem to conceal sensual suggestions, and, moreover, their absence in The Prelude conceal a homosexual panic:

There was in his form

A meagre stiffness. You might almost think

That his bones wounded him. His legs were long,

So long and shapeless that I looked at them

Forgetful of the body they sustained. (43-47)

His face was turned

Toward the road, yet not as if he sought

For any living thing. He appeared

Forlorn and desolate, a man cut off 

From, all his kind, and more than half detached

From his own nature. (55-60) 

A shallow analyzation of the two segments reveal a descriptive excerpt of the Soldier—an excerpt nor description that was included in The Prelude. Though this passage is not featured in The Prelude, a similar reference to “forms” exists in “Book I”: “But huge and mighty Forms do not live / Like living men moved slowly through my mind” (425-6). Like the Forms in “Book I,” the Soldier is “in stature tall / A foot above man’s common measure tall” (“The Discharged Soldier” 41-2). It is also important to note that out of the thirty-seven references to “forms” within The Prelude (1805), this reference in “Book I” is the only one with a capital “F.” The two omitted sections are oddly connected and play off Wordsworth’s repressed poetic persona. Wordsworth is attracted to the Soldier’s damaged but stunning body in the first section, and in the second section we find that the soldier is separated from “his kind” and “his own nature.” Ironically, this separation from his kind—this reclusion—is what homosocially bonds the Soldier to Wordsworth. Some scholars have taken the bond further, and, for example, Jonathan Wordsworth argues that when Wordsworth sees the Soldier, he “comes upon a curious version of himself” (11). Similarly, Paul Magnuson argues, “when the figure appears by Wordsworth’s side, it becomes Wordsworth as well” (91). However, this attachment to the Soldier proves problematic for Wordsworth, and, in a moment of homosexual panic, McGavran asserts, Wordsworth “metaphorically emasculat[es] the veteran” (151).  I argue, however, that Wordsworth cuts off parts of the Soldier from The Prelude in a homosexual panic—metaphorically castrating the Soldier—and if we take J. Wordsworth’s and Magnuson’s analysis to be accurate, Wordsworth is, in turn, also ironically castrating himself in the process.

Magnuson calls “The Discharged Soldier” a response to Coleridge’s The Ancyent Marinere, and, because of its “responsive nature, it is “one of the most important things he ever wrote in the quest for his own voice” (93). However, unlike Wordsworth’s annotations of Smith’s poetry, Wordsworth is not challenging Coleridge’s proficiency as a writer, nor is he attempting to parody Coleridge’s The Ancyent Marinere. Instead, Wordsworth is creating a dialogue by feminizing or masculinizing the characters of the Soldier and the Marinere and, more importantly, their respective poetic personas. The homosexual panic in “The Discharged Soldier” is made even more apparent when we situate it in reference to the Coleridge’s The Ancyent Marinere. McGavran argues that if we are to situate these poems in reference to each other, then it proves that “Coleridge was unconsciously in love with Wordsworth … and Wordsworth was unconsciously disturbed by this” (152). Though there are curious and enlightening revelations, we cannot stretch the text to the emotion of “love,” instead “Desire” (or “bond”) is more appropriate. A Wordsworthian character appears in The Ancyent Marinere as the Wedding-Guest—a character who absorbs information rather than initiating interaction. The Wedding-Guest who is forced to listen to the Marinere’s story is arguably that same poetic persona as the narrator of “The Discharged Soldier.” However, the poetic persona in “The Discharged Soldier” does not care much for the Soldier’s story:

He told a simple fact: that he had been

A Soldier, to the tropic isles had gone,

Whence he had landed now some ten days past;

That on his landing he had been dismissed, 

And with the little strength he yet had left

Was travelling to regain his native home. (99-104) 

We—the readers—learn nothing of the Soldier from the speaker. The speaker has heard the story, but he refuses to tell the entirety of it. In other words, he is refusing to be a speaker for the Soldier, and thus the Soldier has little power over the speaker. However, the Marinere has complete control over the Wedding-Guest and, therefore, Wordsworth’s speaker displays a masculinity that the Wedding-Guest does not. At first Wordsworth’s speaker hides from the Soldier with “specious cowardice” (85). Once the speaker sees the Soldier, he “left the shady nook … and hailed the Stranger” (86-7). The speaker overcomes this moment of terror to confront the Soldier. The Marinere, on the other hand, can dominate the Wedding-Guest. Interestingly, Wordsworth momentarily concedes to Coleridge’s description of homosocial bond within The Ancyent Marinere. The Soldier’s final words of the poem read,” My trust in God of heaven, / And in the eye of him that passes me” (164-5), and the Marinere holds the Wedding-Guest with “his glittering eye” (17). Later, in “Book XIII,” Wordsworth refers to Coleridge’s Marinere as “the bright-eyed Mariner” (399). Wordsworth confirms the power of Coleridge’s bond, which Wordsworth had spent much of “The Discharged Soldier” in panic of. It is through the power of the gaze of men that a male bond is made. The same gaze, ironically, that Wordsworth tries to remove from Smith’s “Written in the Church-Yard at Middleton in Sussex.” 

Wordsworth, however, seems to require a homosocial bond in order to function as a poet once he transplants “The Discharged Soldier” into “Book IV” of The Prelude. Wordsworth addresses Coleridge throughout the entirety of The Prelude, and Coleridge’s address is particularly insightful in “Book IV.” Wordsworth addresses Coleridge twenty lines prior to meeting the Soldier and directly after what McGavran calls “the most overtly heterosexual passage in the entire poem” (156):

In a throng, 

A festal company of maids and youths, 

Old men and matrons, staid, promiscuous rout,

A medley of all tempers, I had passed

The night in dancing, gaiety and mirth— (316-20)

………………………………………

That mounted up like joy in the head, 

And tingled through the veins. (326-7)

Wordsworth then writes to Coleridge:

Ah, need I say, dear friend, that to the brim 

My heart was full? I made no vows, but vows

Were then made for me; bond unknown to me

Was given, that I should be, else sinning greatly,

A dedicated Spirit. On I walked

In blessedness, which even yet remains. (340-5)

Therefore, before the passage of “Book IV” where Wordsworth plants the Soldier, he momentarily introduces a heterosexual scene of dancing with women. However, he introduces it as a temptation just to ignore it as “dedicated spirit.” Wordsworth ignores “feast and dance and public revelry / And sports and games” because they were “less pleasing in themselves / Than a badge …  / Of Manliness and freedom” (274-7). Wordsworth refers to this temptation as “an inner falling-off” (270). Therefore, this introduction of heterosexuality (where “Manliness” is perhaps the reward) is, ironically, an “inner falling off” from his own self-dedication (which is finding poetic inspiration). Wordsworth continues by writing that “these did now / Seduce me from the habitual quest / Of feeding pleasures” (277-9). The seduction is of both sport and women—both which would further his heterosexuality. McGavran argues that these feelings “are not atypical for male adolescents in a patriarchy” on a summer vacation (157). However, the introduction of the Soldier shortly after this momentary lapse of dedication seems even more revealing. If “dancing maids” and “sport” are enough to seduce Wordsworth from his “habitual quest of feeding pleasures,” then the Soldier, in turn, seems to be a cure. The Soldier, with a “tone of weakness (476-7),” drives Wordsworth back to “feeding pleasures” with “a dedicated spirit” away from the seduction of heterosexual sport and dance, and, in turn, Wordsworth requires the recluse homosocial bond with the soldier where men can simply promote men. Or, as Monique R. Morgan argues in “Narrative Means to Lyric Ends in Wordsworth’s Prelude,” “the goal of the poem is to demonstrate his fitness to produce great poetry,” and not, ironically, to partake in heterosexual activities (298).

The most rejected male in The Prelude is not Wordsworth but Coleridge. Wordsworth addresses Coleridge throughout The Prelude, and Wordsworth seems to be striving for Coleridge’s recognition. However, at the same time, Wordsworth curtails Coleridge’s The Ancyent Marinere and Christabel in their sole direct reference: 

That summer when on Quantock’s grassy hills

Far ranging, and among the sylvan coombs,

Thou in delicious words, with happy heart,

Didst speak the vision of that ancient man,

The bright-eyed Mariner, and rueful woes

Didst utter of the Lady Christabel; (“Book XIII” 395-9) 

In 1806 Wordsworth “overwhelms Coleridge … with thousands of lines of discourse” of The Prelude (McGavran 163). The discourse includes a rejection to Coleridge’s feminine Other, but it also includes a recognition of his feminine-self. A self, I’ve argued, he is in constant panic (or anxiety) of, and, in turn, becomes more exaggeratively dismissive towards. Coleridge composes “To William Wordsworth,” and takes part in the “conversational genre of The Prelude” (Rajan 64). According to Tillotama Rajan, when composing “To William Wordsworth,” Coleridge “had begun to embrace masochistically the place assigned to him, in what seems a curious mimicking of and thus resistance to the joint narrative” (64). Whereas Rajan and McGavran argue that Coleridge began this resistance to the joint narrative with “To William Wordsworth,” I assert, like Newlyn, that The Prelude is a solitary quest in which Coleridge is mentioned to only be Othered. Sequentially, Wordsworth is attempting to Other his feminine-self, and, therefore, metaphorically—and ironically—castrating himself in the process. 

To an outsider, Romantic studies seems male-dominated. In fact, this particular research is of two men. However, by continuing this research there can be appeal towards the feminine, and, more importantly, a recognition of how male homosocial relationships and patriarchal powers have shaped British Romantic canon. Additionally, Romantic studies seems to have an aversion towards queer studies. As mentioned in the brief literature review, scholars have only touched on queer studies and Wordsworth (who is mentioned to be a hallmark of Romantic canon), and I have only briefly touched upon the subject within this research. More specifically, I have only touched and reported the tip of the iceberg of the relationship between Wordsworth and Coleridge. I have not included personal letters or any poetry outside of The Prelude (1805), “The Discharged Soldier,” The Ancyent Marinere, and, less so, “To William Wordsworth.” There is a wealth of analysis to be done on changes, omissions, and revisions between version Wordsworth’s The Prelude, references to Coleridge’s Christabel in The Prelude, and personal letters between Wordsworth and Coleridge outside of their work as poets. Moreover, there is perhaps work to be done on Wordsworth and Coleridge outside of each other. As I have, once again, briefly mentioned, Wordsworth owned and annotated poems by Charlotte Smith. I have only made a tertiary analysis of this in support of equating Gaze to the feminine and Wordsworth’s complex aversion to it. However, there is undoubtedly more beneath the surface. 

Works Cited

Bennett, Andrew, editor. William Wordsworth in Context. Cambridge UP, 2015. 

Carlson, Julia S. “Measuring Distance, Pointing Address: The Textual Geography of the 'Poem 

to Coleridge' and 'To W. Wordsworth'.” Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net, no. 61, 2012, pp. 1-26.

Ferber, Michael. The Cambridge Introduction to British Romantic Poetry. Cambridge UP, 2012. 

Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction. Vintage, 1990.

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2016. 

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Wordsworth, Jonathan. William Wordsworth: The Borders of Vision. Oxford UP, 1983. 

Wordsworth, William. The Major Poetic Works. Oxford UP, 2008. 

--- and Samuel Coleridge. Lyrical Ballads: 1798 and 1800. Broadview, 2008.