Sceaf

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A traditional unit of measurement for grain in early English society; a bundle or sheaf of cereal stalks tied after reaping; a legendary ancestral figure often depicted as arriving by sea with a sheaf of grain
2. A historical term denoting both a quantity of harvested grain gathered into a tied bundle and a mythical progenitor associated with such agricultural bounty; a sheaf as a stalk collection and the representation of origins in folklore
3. Referring to an ancient grain measure symbolized by bundled stalks; also the name of a mythic founder who is said to have come by boat bearing a sheaf; the term thus signifies both a physical crop bundle and an emblematic figure in early lore

Etymology: Old English "sceaf" simply meant a sheaf, the bundle of cut cereal stalks left to dry in the field. The word is cognate with Old Norse "skauf" and Dutch "schoof," all reaching back to a Germanic root for a bundled or gathered thing. The surprise is that the word also named a legendary king. In the Anglo-Saxon tradition, Sceaf (or Scyld Scefing, "Scyld, son of Sceaf") arrived as a small child alone in a boat, with a sheaf of grain at his head. The Old English epic "Beowulf" opens with this founder of the Danish royal line, who later sails away in a ship funeral. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle's royal genealogies also include a Sceaf, placed among the earliest ancestors of the West Saxon kings, which shows how the figure was woven into English royal descent. Whether the sheaf in the legend was a deliberate emblem of agricultural kingship or a later attachment is uncertain, and the surviving texts do not settle it.

Synonyms: sheaf, bundle