Old English Bird Names

St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 913: Vocabularius S. Galli (/en/list/one/csg/0913).

La transcription est:

Larum, hragra.
Adrianus dicit meum esse. Ibinen
id est screb qui mittit aquam de ore
suo in culum suum ut possit de
gerere indeque medici ipsam ar-
tem dedicerunt. Onocratulum,
quasi anata non eadem est tamen nec nos
habemus. Charadrion et ipsam
non habemus sed tamen dicitur et ipsam
volare per medias noctes in sub-
limitate cæli.

Gull (Greek laros): a heron.
Adrianus says that it is a gull. Ibis,
which is a shrew, which sends water from its
mouth into its anus so that it can
purge itself; and from it doctors
have learnt their art. Pelican:
almost like a duck, however it is not the same, and we do not
have it. Charadrios (from Greek; a yellowish bird): and we also
do not have this one, but nevertheless it is said that
this one can fly throughout the night in the
height of the sky.

The Glossary in Cod. Sang. 913 shows how medieval readers dealt – or tried to deal – with unfamiliar vocabulary and animals described in the Bible. The passage from Leviticus 11 identifies several birds, but some of them were evidently difficult to recognise, despite the explanations provided by the native teachers Theodore and Hadrian. The glossator therefore explains them through comparisons with more familiar animals, such as ducks, while also noting when particular birds were unknown in the writer’s own environment. Some of the uncertainty in the text could also reflect the process of recording information: a student may have misunderstood, omitted, or confused parts of the oral explanations given by their teachers.

Sources:

Lapidge, Michael. 2015. St Gallen and the “Leiden Glossary”. Anglia 133(4): 624-655.

Seiler, Annina. 2025. Mæw or meg (‘seagull’)? Mercian dialect features in an early Old English glossary from the Continent. In: Cultural Connections between the Continent and Early Medieval England, ed. by Thijs Porck, Kees Dekker and László Sándor Chardonnens. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer. 227-250.

Seiler, Annina and Studer-Joho, Nicole. 2025. Old English in Switzerland: Manuscripts, Texts and Libraries. Basel: Schwabe Verlag., Basel, 2025.