‘Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining: A Note on OE Sceo’

This essay deals with the Scandinavian loanword sky and its role in the configuration of the semantic field concerning ‘sky’, ‘air’, and ‘cloud’ during the transition between Old and Middle English. Firstly, the etymology and Germanic cognates of OE scēo ‘cloud’ and ON ský ‘cloud’ are discussed. Secondly, the context of the only occurrence of OE scēo in the Exeter Book Riddle 1 is explored and it is argued that this hapax could be explained as a lectio difficilior, that is as an archaism, even a relict word which had not established itself in common OE usage and which the learned, articulate poet of the Exeter Riddle retrieved in his ingenious search for ever diverse, nuanced vocabulary. It is therefore concluded both that OE scēo had already died out by the time ON ský was borrowed in the Middle English period, and that the former never really competed with the latter anyway, the most common OE terms for ‘cloud’ and ‘sky’ being wolcen, genip, lyft, and heofon respectively. Indeed, the ultimate success of Norse-derived sky over or alongside these native equivalents can be put down to a process of progressive semantic differentiation and specialisation within the semantic field in question.