--- title: "Erce and Other Possibly Keltic Elements In the Old English" description: "She then proposes three Keltic readings of Erce and lists the Keltic loanwords in the text. Among them: 3." authors: ["Audrey R. Duckert"] year: 1972 venue: "Names 20" source: "http://ans-names.pitt.edu/ans/article/view/710" doi: "10.1179/nam.1972.20.2.83" licence: "CC BY (journal licence per DOAJ; Names)" licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License" canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/duckert-1972-erce-other-possibly-keltic-elements/" --- [Elamur Research](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/duckert-1972-erce-other-possibly-keltic-elements/) [home](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/) / [1972](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/1972/) / Erce and Other Possibly Keltic Elements In the Old English Charm for Unfruitful Land # Erce and Other Possibly Keltic Elements In the Old English Charm for Unfruitful Land **Authors:** Audrey R. Duckert · **Year:** 1972 · **Venue:** [Names 20](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/names/) ([Names 1972](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/names/1972/)) · **Publisher:** [University Library System, University of Pittsburgh](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/publishers/university-library-system-university-of-pittsburgh/) · **Licence:** [CC BY (journal licence per DOAJ; Names)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) **Links:** [Publisher's page](https://doi.org/10.1179/nam.1972.20.2.83) · [PDF](https://ans-names.pitt.edu/ans/article/download/710/709) · [DOI 10.1179/nam.1972.20.2.83](https://doi.org/10.1179/nam.1972.20.2.83) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W1973204355) **Citations:** 3 citations (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14) ## Summary Duckert revisits a long-standing puzzle from "For Unfruitful Land", a charm written in Old English (Cotton Caligula A vii, edited by Dobbie in The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems). The puzzle is the identity of *Erce*, which is said three times at the start of the second metrical prayer. Scholars have read it as a goddess, a verb, or meaningless incantation. The dominant view, a Germanic deity tied to "Frau Herke", goes back to a speculative passage in Grimm, and even Hoops judged that derivation obscure. Duckert walks through the rite step by step and checks each element against the folklore motif indexes of Stith Thompson and Tom Peete Cross. These indexes had not been applied to the charms before. She finds Irish parallels for many details, including the magic sod, sun-wise turning, facing east in prayer, and magic salt. She then proposes three Keltic readings of *Erce* and lists the Keltic loanwords in the text. Her claim is cautious: a Keltic origin is at least as plausible as the Germanic one. This matters because Brittonic left almost no literary record, so Irish analogs help fill the gap. ## Key points - The charm survives in a single manuscript in an 11th-century hand. It was bound with the Old Saxon Heliand in the early 17th century. - The three Keltic options for *Erce* are: - a verb meaning "beseech", compare Welsh *erchi*, which would suit the opening of a prayer; - a word related to Irish roots for plowing and farmland, as listed in Pokorny; - a Keltic personal name. Irish inscriptions show forms like ERCAIDANA and MAQIERCIAS, and Ireland had women with related names linked to Saint Columkille. - In the charm's 82 lines, three words are almost certainly Keltic loans: *dry* "sorcery" (from Old Irish *drui*), *stor* "incense" (Förster's argument) and *trumme*. - Six further words have both Keltic and Germanic counterparts: *fira*, *lyb-*, *meolc*, *treow*, *drype* and *arim*. - In lines 10–12, Latin imperatives are glossed with Old English verbs. Duckert suggests the rite may once have been trilingual, built to suit both pagan and Christian users. ## Interesting ideas - Duckert traces the goddess reading back to one speculative passage in Grimm and shows that later scholars kept repeating it. Checking where a claim originated can expose a weakly grounded consensus. - She keeps three readings of *Erce* open (verb, common noun, name) and ranks them by plausibility instead of choosing one too early. - The prothetic vowel in *arim* is otherwise hard to explain, but the Keltic-loan hypothesis accounts for it neatly. A hypothesis that resolves an existing anomaly earns extra support. - Strings dismissed as gibberish may be worn-down foreign words, as Lake District sheep-counting rhymes preserve Keltic numerals. - Latin commands in the charm sit next to Old English glosses, giving a small built-in parallel text. ## For Mova How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests: - **I1** (world): Store a source for each compiled knowledge fact, so a widely repeated claim that rests on one shaky origin gets lower confidence. - **I2** (learn): Carry competing analyses of an unknown word, each with its supporting evidence, and let witness parsers or the teacher decide later. - **I3** (learn): Score repair-rule candidates higher when they fix a leftover error that no other rule explains. - **I4** (tokens): Before tagging an unknown token as noise, compare it against loanword or foreign-numeral patterns to see if it could be a degraded real word. - **I5** (back): Use glossed pairs inside a text as anchors for aligning meanings in translation through the meta-world. *Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.* 📚 Shelves (4): [🎭 Arts and Humanities](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/arts-and-humanities/) · 16,039 works · [🗣️ Language and Linguistics](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/arts-and-humanities/language-and-linguistics/) · 15,891 works · [📚 Literature and Literary Theory](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/arts-and-humanities/literature-and-literary-theory/) · 519 works · [🎭 Classics](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/arts-and-humanities/classics/) · 116 works 🧭 Topics (2): [English](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/english/) · 2,263 works · [⏳ Historical linguistics & language change](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/language-change/) · 249 works ## Cite Cite as: Audrey R. Duckert. 1972. Erce and Other Possibly Keltic Elements In the Old English Charm for Unfruitful Land. Names 20. The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. ```bibtex @inproceedings{duckert1972erce, title = {{Erce and Other Possibly Keltic Elements In the Old English Charm for Unfruitful Land}}, author = {Audrey R. Duckert}, booktitle = {Names 20}, year = {1972}, doi = {10.1179/nam.1972.20.2.83}, url = {https://doi.org/10.1179/nam.1972.20.2.83} } ``` - [next → Old English gārsecg — an Eke- Name?](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/cassidy-1972-old-english-garsecg-eke-name/) - [↑ back to papers of 1972](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/1972/) *Updated 29 October 2026*