The Meaning Of Reiff

Reif

Three languages produce twenty variant spellings of reiff. The German reif means “ripe or complete," the borrowed Scandinavian reif "to plunder,” and the English, rife, “frequent occurrence.”

“Reiflich" in German means a deliberate judgment, a decision which gradually takes shape in the mind. A mature man is ein gereifter Mann. Wine matures with age, reift durch langes Lagern. Reif (raif) denotes ripeness and roundness in fruit and grain, maturity in wine and cheese. Reife prufung is meiosis, reif graupeln a meteor, Stirnreif a circlet, Armreif a bracelet, reifen heber, an automobile tire. Mit dem Reifen spielen means playing with a hoop.

All these involve the circular, thus the poet is also a ring maker. Es reift, means frost. Completion and maturity of the ring symbolize completion in the seasons of a year, whiteness of age, winter crowned with hoar frost on the ground, Reif a circle of life well lived, whitened to a grandfather's head at rest, effort satisfied, timely completion echoing in progeny and ancestry, thus also a ring, life eternal.

Reiff

Its Scandinavian cousin reif (reef) is an anachronism in English meaning plunder. Tolkiens’s glossary of Sir Gawain and The Green Knight (Oxford, 1925, l. 2046) gives "ryue" or "rife" as “abundant,” translated as "great," but at line 1341, "to rip or cut open.” Reif is also spelled reaf, reiff, rieff, reife. In it we see Norse pirates plundering the coasts of Europe and Britain in the 8th to 10th centuries. Reif has linguistic affinities as diverse as from the Common West German reif to Old English reaf, Old Frisian raf and Old High German roub, or roup, which becomes the German raub.

The first appearance in English of the Scandinavian reif is the Lindisfarne Gospel’s (950 A.D.) translation of Luke 11.22, naturalized in Old English as, "alla woepeno his zenimeth. . .& reafo his todaelde" (OED). Reafo his todaelde means “plunder his entire house.”

In the context Jesus had been charged with casting out demons by the power of demons, viz. Beelzebub. Remnants of the story yet exist in public memory. He says that if Satan casts himself out his own kingdom will fall, “but if I with the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is come upon you (v. 20). Thus reafo his todaelde implies a spiritual plundering, for when "a strong man armed keeps his palace, his goods are in peace: but when a stronger than he shall overcome him, he takes from him all his armor wherein he trusted, and divides his spoils.” Reif despoils the strong man with a stronger.

Scandinavian plundering had wide usage: "the King gert be de partit then / All hail the reif among his men" (1375). "Through cowatice gud Alexander was lost; And Julius als, for all his reiff and bost" (1470). "Let richt, not reif, my pensioun bring againe" (1585).

In seventeenth century Scottish ballads "John Armstrong was executed, for he did great robberies and stealing in England, maintaining twenty four men in household every day upon reiff and oppression." So “Dick of Dryup is complained of, with others, for reif and burning." (The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. Edited by James Child, Vol. III, (1618-1635) 365, 47). Dover, 1963. 365, 47)

So when we ask what is the outcome of all these "reiffs, spulzeis, oppressions, slaughters, allegit to have bene committit" (OED, 1546), as late as 1815 Sir Walter Scott persisted, "Saint Michael and his spear/ Keep the house from reiff and wear.” Conundrums of it would include: be reiff to prevent reiff so reiff shall be no more; and, there is a Reiff deliverance rife with peace.

Rife

The English rife in common use today is mostly confined to rumor and frequency.

Gerard Manley Hopkins says, “wars are rife” (“To Seem the Stranger”), that Andromeda “hears roar / A wilder beast from West than all were, more / Rife in her wrongs, more lawless, and more lewd” (“Andromeda”).

The English rife begins to occur in southern England after 1120 A.D., "native in English, rather than an adoption from Scandinavian" (OED). Derived from the four related languages, Old Norse (rifr), late Old English (ryfe, rife), Middle Low German (rif, riv(u)e, ryue) and Low German (rife), ryfe, rif, riffe, rief (riefe) means frequent, widely known, often harmful rumors, "rife and catching" (1705).

So "King Pelleus…Helde a feste, as hit is ryfe" (1407) and "fools are so rife in this nation"(1732); "this great world is all too rife with calamity" (1787); "the reports which they circulate…grow more rife than ever “(1792). Suddenness is implied in its translation of Psalm 94.21, "they are rife to shed the guiltlesse blood" (1549), and "the highest tree in all the woode is rifest rent." (1552)

Should we want to explain the interrelations between the German, Scandinavian and English we would trace the first presumed instance of the word to riew or rife in Low German. This is a survival from the so-called Ingvaeonic, the oldest known form of English, Frisian and Old Saxon. The Ingvaeonic rife precedes the German and the other early forms of the word, but when it survives in Low German it branches into the English and Scandinavian forms.

Reifen in Low German means "hoop;" it coexists with the Middle High German reif and with the verb "rifen," to ripen ( R. Priebsch and W. E. Collinson. The German Language. London: Faber & Faber, 1968.193, 251). Low German forms also include reif, reifen, rifen, and rife, but the Ingvaeonic rife links the opposed meanings of the German and Scandinavian. Before "rife" and after "rife" we might say.

A sound change occurs when Old English breaks from Old Saxon and Old High German that helps explain these opposites of war and peace. The German reif, shortened into rife and reif, emigrated to England, but the earlier dipthong of the Anglo-Saxon stayed home in Germany.

That is, in sounds shortened from a dipthong toward a single syllable, the dual sound ai changed to single e (Priebsch 40-41), called a monophthongization,which emigrated. The German diphthong ei (which sounds like ai) kept its suggestion of completeness while the shortened English ie (e) that crossed the water took the suggestion of plunder.

English rife typically never occurs with e following r and the Scandinavian reif never occurs with i following r, but both forms occur in the German. The German reif and the English rife sound the same and share with the migrant Scandinavian reif their spelling. These spellings are so closely intertwined they may be indistinguishable in origin. But reif and reif, closest in form, often spelled identically, are pronounced differently and have virtually opposite meanings, yet all three are thought to have a common origin in the Ingvaeonic reif, complexities which more or less coexist together in the widest sense of the Germanic Languages East, North and West, Goth, Norse and Saxon.

Other relevancies in the Ingvaeonic blogs here consider futhorc here and discussions here

Note: In regard to the Nordic origins see also Full text of "Runic and heroic poems of the old Teutonic peoples"

THE ANGLO-SAXON RUNIC POEM

13. Bad (Salz. AS. rada, Goth, reda), as in other alphabets. It is most satisfactory on the whole to take rad as " riding," cf. rseiif, reiff of the Norwegian and Icelandic poems. "Biding seems an easy thing to every warrior while he is indoors, and a very courageous thing to him who traverses the high-roads on the back of a stout horse," though it is doubtful whether byf> can mean "seems," and neither hw&t nor any of its compounds are used of things. Professor Chadwick has, however, suggested to me that the proper name of this letter is rada of the Salzburg Codex, corresponding to the ON. reiffi, "tackle (of a ship)," " harness," hence "equipment" generally. Here it would be used in a double sense, in the first half as "furniture" (cf. ON. reiffustol, "easy-chair," AS. rsadesceamu), in the second as "harness."