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A churl ( Old High German ), in its earliest
Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
(Anglo-Saxon) meaning, was simply "a man" or more particularly a "free man", but the word soon came to mean "a non-servile peasant", still spelled , and denoting the lowest rank of freemen. According to the '' Oxford English Dictionary'', it later came to mean the opposite of nobility and
royalty Royalty may refer to: * Any individual monarch, such as a king, queen, emperor, empress, etc. * Royal family, the immediate family of a king or queen regnant, and sometimes his or her extended family * Royalty payment for use of such things as int ...
, "a common person". Says Chadwick: This meaning held through the 15th century, but by then the word had taken on negative overtones, meaning "a country person" and then "a low fellow". By the 19th century, a new and pejorative meaning arose, "one inclined to uncivil or loutish behaviour"—hence "churlish" (cf. the pejorative sense of the term ''boor'', whose original meaning of "country person" or "farmer" is preserved in Dutch and Afrikaans and German , although the latter has its own pejorative connotations such as those prompting its use as the name for the chess piece known in English as a pawn; also the word villain—derived from Anglo-French and Old French, originally meaning "farmhand"—has gone through a similar process to reach its present meaning). The of Anglo-Saxon times lived in a largely free society, and one in which their
fealty An oath of fealty, from the Latin ''fidelitas'' (faithfulness), is a pledge of allegiance of one person to another. Definition In medieval Europe, the swearing of fealty took the form of an oath made by a vassal, or subordinate, to his lord. "Fea ...
was principally to their king. Their low status is shown by their '' werġild'' ("man-price"), which, over a large part of England, was fixed at 200
shilling The shilling is a historical coin, and the name of a unit of modern currencies formerly used in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, other British Commonwealth countries and Ireland, where they were generally equivalent to 12 pence o ...
s (one-sixth that of a ''theġn''). Agriculture was largely community-based and communal in open-field systems. This freedom was eventually eroded by the increase in power of feudal lords and the manorial system. Some scholars argue, however, that anterior to the encroachment of the manorial system the ''ċeorles'' owed various services and rents to local lords and powers. In the North Germanic (Scandinavian) languages, the word has the same root as ''churl'' and meant originally a "free man". As " housecarl", it came back to England. In German, is used to describe a somewhat rough and common man and is no longer in use as a synonym for a common soldier ('' die langen Kerls'' of King
Frederick William I of Prussia Frederick William I (german: Friedrich Wilhelm I.; 14 August 1688 – 31 May 1740), known as the "Soldier King" (german: Soldatenkönig), was King in Prussia and Elector of Brandenburg from 1713 until his death in 1740, as well as Prince of Neuch ...
). ''Rígsþula'', a poem in the Poetic Edda, explains the
social class A social class is a grouping of people into a set of Dominance hierarchy, hierarchical social categories, the most common being the Upper class, upper, Middle class, middle and Working class, lower classes. Membership in a social class can for ...
es as originating from the three sons of Ríg: Thrall, Karl and Earl (, and ). This story has been interpreted in the context of the proposed
trifunctional hypothesis The trifunctional hypothesis of prehistoric Proto-Indo-European society postulates a tripartite ideology ("''idéologie tripartite''") reflected in the existence of three classes or castes— priests, warriors, and commoners (farmers or tradesme ...
of Proto-Indo-European society. Cognates to the word are frequently found in place names, throughout the Anglophone world, in towns such as Carlton and
Charlton Charlton may refer to: People * Charlton (surname) * Charlton (given name) Places Australia * Charlton, Queensland * Charlton, Victoria * Division of Charlton, an electoral district in the Australian House of Representatives, in New South Wale ...
, meaning "the farmstead of the churls". Names such as Carl and
Charles Charles is a masculine given name predominantly found in English language, English and French language, French speaking countries. It is from the French form ''Charles'' of the Proto-Germanic, Proto-Germanic name (in runic alphabet) or ''*k ...
are derived from cognates of ''churl'' or ''ċeorle''. While the word ''churl'' went down in the social scale, the first name derived from the same etymological source ("Karl" in German, "Charles" in French and English, "
Carlos Carlos may refer to: Places ;Canada * Carlos, Alberta, a locality ;United States * Carlos, Indiana, an unincorporated community * Carlos, Maryland, a place in Allegany County * Carlos, Minnesota, a small city * Carlos, West Virginia ;Elsewhere ...
" in Spanish, Karel in Dutch, etc.) remained prestigious enough to be used frequently by many European royal families - owing originally to the fame of
Charlemagne Charlemagne ( , ) or Charles the Great ( la, Carolus Magnus; german: Karl der Große; 2 April 747 – 28 January 814), a member of the Carolingian dynasty, was King of the Franks from 768, King of the Lombards from 774, and the first Em ...
, to which was added that of later illustrious kings and emperors of the same name. The Polish word for "king", , is also derived from the same origin. In her tragedy Ethwald (Part II), Joanna Baillie uses the spelling ''cairl'', and in Act 2, Scene II, the characters, First Cairl, Second Cairl and Third Cairl are found searching amongst the dead upon a battle field. This play is set in Mercia.


Current use

In most Germanic languages this word never took on the English meaning of "lowly peasant" and retains its original meaning of "fellow, guy"; fy, kearel, archaic , , nl, kerel, nds, Kerl (also borrowed into German), sv, karl, fo, kallur and so on.


See also

* Carlin stone *
Ceorl (disambiguation) ''Ceorl'' may refer to any of the following: * Ceorl, a rider of Rohan in J.R.R. Tolkien's fictional world of Middle-earth * Churl A churl (Old High German ), in its earliest Old English (Anglo-Saxon) meaning, was simply "a man" or more particular ...


References

{{Reflist Anglo-Saxon society Feudalism