Introduction.

presented to us in the quiet and uneventful life of the and the Venerable Beda. Venerable Beda. We know, to say the truth, very little about him. All the facts, with the one exception of the account of his death, are gathered from his own short autobiography at the end of his history. Two lives are extant of him, but they neither of them appear to have had any materials to build upon further than this. One of these was written in the eleventh century—the other is of uncertain date¹.

Beda’s name has commonly been derived from ‘bidan,’ to bid to wait/endure; which may be taken either in an active or a passive sense—as meaning either a ‘master’ or ‘a servant,’ either ‘to command’ or ‘to pray.’ There is another stem, however, from which it seems likelier to have come. We find in Florence of Worcester’s Appendix a King of Lindsey named Beda, with a son Biscop; and it is impossible not to be struck with the coincidence that Hædde calls Biscop Benedict, the founder of Wearmouth and Jarrow, by the name of Baducing, or the son of Badoc. Here, it seems, among the Kings of Lindsey (who Kemble thinks were probably Mercians²), occurs the name of another Biscop Baducing. If Biscop Benedict was descended from the same stock, it would well suit Beda’s expression that he was ‘nobili quidem stirpe Anglorum progenitus’ begotten indeed of a noble stock of Angles. And we also have the name of Beda occurring as one of the same race. If this Beda is equivalent to Badoc, as seems not improbable, we are at once introduced to a new idea; for Beda, as a prefix, qualifies the word which follows it with the sense of ‘military’—Badudegn, ‘battle-thane;’ Baduwine, ‘battle-friend³.’

¹ Life of the Venerable Bede, priest and monk of Jarrow, written partly by Cuthbert his own disciple, partly by another who lived in the eleventh century. Smith, p. 791. ‘Life of Bede, by an anonymous very old author of uncertain date.’ Ibid. p. 815.

² Archæol. Inst. Proceed. 1845, p. 94.
³ It is curious to find a Mac Baedan, see p. 80, note 4, and a Macbeda (Macbeth), among the Gaels of Scotland.