"Ich teile ir liute unde lant."
Id. 7714.
And in the old translation of the Liber Dialogorum of St. Gregory, printed in the cloister of S. Ulrich at Augspurg in 1473:—
"In der Statt waren hoch Türen und schöne Heüser von Silber und Gold, und aller Hand leüt, und die Frawen und Man naÿgten im alle."
Lastly, Jo. Morsheim in his Untreuer Frawen:—
"Das was mein Herr gar gerne hört,
Und ob es Leut und Land bethort."
Now, when we recollect the state of the people in those times, the serf-like vassalage, the Hörigkeit or Leibeigenthum, which prevailed, we cannot be surprised that a word which signified possessions should designate also the people. It must still, however, be quite uncertain which is the secondary sense.
The root of the word, as Grimm justly remarks, is very obscure; and yet it seems to me that he himself has indirectly pointed it out:—
"Goth. liudan[3] (crescere); O.H.G. liotan (sometimes unorganic, hliotan); O.H.G. liut (populus); A.-S. lëóð; O.N. lióð: Goth. lauths -is (homo), ju33alauths -dis (adolescens); O.H.G. sumar -lota (virgulta palmitis, i.e. qui una æstate creverunt, Gl. Rhb. 926'b, Jun. 242.); M.H.G. corrupted into sumer -late (M.S. i. 124'b. 2. 161'a. virga herba). It is doubtful whether ludja (facies), O.H.G. andlutti, is to be reckoned among them."—Deutsche Gram. ii. 21. For this last see Diefenbach, Vergl. Gram. der Goth. Spr. i. 242.