I don’t know what prompted it, but I found myself thinking about the Hatfields and McCoys the other day. For those readers not born in the Stone Age, they were two Appalachian families who conducted a legendary feud from 1863. By the time the dust settled in 1891, more than 12 people from both families had been killed. Adding insult to injury, ownership of a hog was also hotly disputed and a scandalous affair took place between two young people from either side before the man ran off with the girl’s cousin after first getting her pregnant.
Those were the days.
The Hatfield clan and their weapons in 1897. Did no one inform them their feud with the McCoys was over?
It all got me wondering where the word feud comes from. It’s an odd little thing when you think about it. I can’t think of another four-letter word with eu at its centre, and my dictionaries are still packed in boxes from our recent house move so that’s that. What’s more, eu is an odd combination of vowels to give us the pronunciation that it does.
As with so many words relating to fighting, feud can trace its history right back to PIE, which tells us something about how humans are wired, I’m sure you’ll agree. It found its way under various guides into Old French, Proto-Germanic, Germanic, Old High German, Old English and, more recently, into northern English and Scottish where, around 1300, it was most commonly spelt fede. Why it later became feud is unrecorded, but if it was pronounced in 1300 the way it is today, people then were every bit as hopeless at aligning spelling and pronunciation as we are today.
For centuries, feud simply meant hostility. It wasn’t until the 1580s that its more specific meaning - “a state of hostility between families or clans” - took hold. But it can’t have taken hold very quickly: When Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet in the mid-1590s, he scattered words like grudge, mutiny, strife, quarrel, brawl, enemy and murder about like confetti, but thou shalt seek in vain, my friend, for that word we call feud. I say if Shakespeare, that master of neologisms, wasn’t using it, not many others were either.
For most of human history, feuding seems to have been an essential part of the social apparatus. Many pre-industrial tribes still practice it, as did the Ancient Greeks, Hebrews, Celtic tribes, Vikings and our forebears during the Middle Ages.
More sobering is that Wikipedia currently lists 40-odd locations around the world where feuding still takes place, and most are anything but pre-industrial societies. They include places you’d probably guess at, like New Guinea, Afghanistan, Iraq and Sicily. Also on the list, though, are France, Ireland, Britain and Georgia. Why it persists is a question best answered by anthropologists, but my limited research into the matter suggests that male stupidity - a subject with which I am intimately familiar - has a lot to do with it.
While it’s tempting to think of feuding as all out mayhem with weapons, it often comes with rules and rituals attached. For example, the Icelandic Vikings used to gather annually into bodies known as “Things”, where simmering disputes would be settled, often through the avenging of a wronged kinsman.
Feuds also tend to flourish in the absence of a centralised and effective legal system. You could argue that such a vacuum breeds mayhem. You could also argue, though, that such a vacuum calls for some ritualised means of discouraging your grumpy neighbour from bumping off your brother, stealing his pig and running off with your sister, and the threat of a feud would surely fit that bill nicely.
The biggest problem with feuds, however, is that once they start they’re notoriously difficult to stop. Who started things tends to get forgotten quickly, and in any case, the facts of that matter generally depend on which side you talk to. Once in full swing, feuds then become a matter not of balancing the scales, but of retaliating against the most recent violent act.
The world’s longest-running feud may be between Shia and Sunni Muslims. It originated in 632 after the death of Muhammad when the two groups could not agree on who should be his successor. Countless deaths ensued over the centuries, a pattern that continues to this day, with car bombs and death squads particularly popular means of despatching members of the other side.
Finally, a note on feudalism, the political system that ruled Europe through the Middle Ages. I was disappointed to learn that it has no connection with feuding. It comes from the Latin feudum, meaning land granted to someone lower in the pecking order than the one doing the granting. Generous as that sounds, we all know that it came with one or two small strings attached, such as having to pass on a significant portion of your crop each year even if that meant your family would starve, and also being required to fight complete strangers from time to time who wanted nothing more than to stave your peasant head in with a mace.
Thank heavens we are free to own the land on which we live (except for the 50-odd years the bank does) and no one can order us to fight (except when our governments, who always act in our interests rather than those of the overlords of war, conscript us).
Bits and specious
I’ve been reading Adam Grant’s latest book, Hidden Potential, and have been struck by one of its central tenets, that a willingness to be uncomfortable is critical to learning any new skill quickly. As a writing coach, I make a point of making my training as simple and safe as possible. While I don’t plan to change that, I’m now considering the possibility that for those clients who want to develop quickly, my job may be to challenge them a little more than I have been.
“Not in Small Heath it ain’t.” One of the laugh-out-loudest moments of the dark and wonderful Peaky Blinders, a series that knows a thing or two about feuding. Start around the 7’ 45” mark.
Quote of the week
I will not enter into a public feud with Madame Callas, since I am well aware that she has considerably greater competence and experience at that kind of thing than I have.
Rudolf Bing
"As with so many words relating to fighting, feud can trace its history right back to PIE, which tells us something about how humans are wired..."
Yes.
"मन्यु – Manyu. What does this mean? On one level, it is the ‘Mind’ and ‘Spirit’ Itself. On another, it is the ‘active expression’ of that Mind, and the raging forth of that Spirit... but the better representation – to my Mind – is as “Passion”, “Ardour” for those are the emotions to which ‘Manyu’ is most directly affixed. Anger, Wrath, Roaring Grief and Sorrow ..."
Manyu, a derivation of the same PIE article from whence comes 'man' and 'mind' has it's IE deific representation in Manyu - the ultimate War God.
Very similar concordances exist in the etymology of another - Nordic - Indo-European War God, whose name derives from PIE *weh₂t, which implies rage, turbulence, poetry and violence. (But also poetry)
The IE imagination seems to view consciousness as integrally intertwined with war.
https://aryaakasha.com/2020/02/22/mahashivratri-and-the-mytholinguistics-of-war-part-3-the-mind-the-mania-the-manyu/
Pushing harder is a standard part of good training. Patience at first until the basic skills are habituated, then throw the student into a job-like situation and expect quick results.