In his Erlauterungen zu Elene, p. 166., Grimm further remarks:—
"The verb is leoðan, leað, luðon (crescere), O.S. lioðan, lôð, luðun. Leluðon (Cædm. 93. 28.) is creverunt, pullulant; and 3eloðen (ap. Hickes, p. 135. note) onustus, but rather cretus. Elene, 1227. 3eloðen unðep leápum (cretus sub foliis)."
It has been surmised that LEDE was connected with the O.N. hlÿt[4]—which not only signified sors, portio, but res consistentia—and the A.-S. hlet, hlyt, lot, portion, inheritance: thus, in the A.-S. Psal. xxx. 18., on hanðum ðinum hlÿt mín, my heritage is in thy hands. Notker's version is: Mín lôz ist in dínen handen. I have since found that Kindlinger (Geschichte der Deutchen Hörigkeit) has made an attempt to derive it from Lied, Lit, which in Dutch, Flemish, and Low German, still signify a limb; I think, unsuccessfully.
Ray, in his Gloss. Northanymbr., has "unlead, nomen opprobrii;" but he gives a false derivation: Grose, in his Provincial Glossary, "unleed or unlead, a general name for any crawling venomous creature, as a toad, &c. It is sometimes ascribed to a man, and then it denotes a sly wicked fellow, that in a manner creeps to do mischief. See Mr. Nicholson's Catalogue."
In the 2d edition of Mr. Brockett's Glossary, we have: "Unletes, displacers or destroyers of the farmer's produce."
This provincial preservation of a word of such rare occurrence in Anglo-Saxon, and of which no example has yet been found in old English, is a remarkable circumstance. The word has evidently signified, like the Gothic, in the first place poor; then wretched, miserable; and hence, perhaps, its opprobrious sense of mischievous or wicked.
"In those rude times when wealth or movable property consisted almost entirely of living money, in which debts were contracted and paid, and for which land was given in mortgage or sold; it is quite certain that the serfs were transferred with the land, the lord considering them as so much live-stock, or part of his chattels."
A vestige of this feeling with regard to dependants remains in the use of the word Man (which formerly had the same sense as lede). We still speak of "a general and his men," and use the expression "our men." But, happily for the masses of mankind, few vestiges of serfdom and slavery, and those in a mitigated form, now virtually exist.
S.W. SINGER.
April 16. 1850.