[41]. lokie, consult, examine, refer to records for himself: comp. ‘þat yow tels sent Ieremi, | If yee wald lok his propheci,’ CM 9333.
[46]. leden, guide; usually with personal object.
[49]. he, resumes the subject clerek and knyht: a frequent construction in this poem, comp. 20/66-68, 21/98-105, 24/204, 5; similarly 24/209, 10 where the pronoun is explained by a noun. It is common in AR ‘þe wreche peoddare more noise he makeð to ȝeien his sope,’ 66/17. Borgström takes he as referring to eorl and eþelyng, l. 44, with clerek and knyht as object of demen, on the ground that clerks and knights did not exercise judicial power. The matter is not so simple. Clerek may include bishops, who sat in pre-Conquest shire-courts by the side of the Alderman, and lawyers generally. And demen is a word of wide meaning, comp. ‘Ne wandige ná se mæsse-preost no for rices mannes ege, ne for féo, ne for nanes mannes lufon, ꝥ he him symle rihte deme, gif he wille sylf Godes domas gedégan,’ BH 43/9; ‘Ne sceall nan godes þegn for sceattum riht deman,’ Ælf. Lives i. 430/244; ‘And he hæhte alle cnihtes; demen rihte domes,’ L 22115. Alfred meant that there should be no discrimination between rich and poor; discrimination between clerk and knight was not likely. demen riht is a phrase in which riht is a noun: comp. ‘Se rihtwisa dema sceall deman æfre riht,’ Ælf. Lives i. 430/239: sometimes, as in the quotation above, it means simply, to administer justice.
[52], 3. Comp. ‘Ech man sal eft mowen bi þan þe he nu soweð,’ OEH ii. 159/15; i. 137/31, 131/24; all referring to ‘Qui parce seminat, parce et metet,’ 2 Cor. ix. 6: here the reference is to ‘Quae enim seminaverit homo, haec et metet,’ Galat. vi. 8: l. 54 means that the judgment passed on each man is of his own making: comp. 36/115.
[55]. on to fone, may mean, to take on himself; its ordinary use is, to begin, 143/85. Skeat translates, undertake, but in the place referred to in support, L 31415, the meaning is, proceed. T, RJ have cnouen, cnowen; S. mowen: the former has been explained, to study, to know how to. I think these readings are substitutes for something the scribes did not understand, such as, keneliche to kepen, or keneliche him kepen.
[56]. T has, of here ⁊ of heregong, where of is remarkable: the simple dative in OE., wið, 48/321, 141/41, and later from are the usual constructions with werien, of the thing guarded against.
[57]. gryþ: ‘pax regia per manum data,’ Liebermann, Ueber die Leges Edwardi Confessoris, 28: here it means vaguely, protection, much as frið with which it is constantly associated; comp. ‘þonne nam man grið ⁊ frið wið hi,’ AS. Chron. 1011; ‘a þisse londe he heold grið; a þisse londe he hulde frið,’ L 9912; Orm 116/3380; 116/133.
[58]. Comp. ‘þe ælc cheorl eæt his sulche; hæfde grið al swa þe king sulf,’ L 4260.
[59], 60. Comp. ‘cornes heo seowen; medewen heo meowen. | al heo tileden; ase heo to þohten,’ L 1941.
[62]. bihoue: comp. 91/108: ‘to his awere bihoue,’ L 4565. T has bilif.