In King Alfred's version of Orosius, book ii. chap. iv. p. 68.,
Barrington, we have an account of an unsuccessful attempt made by one of
Cyrus the Great's officers to swim across a river "mid twam tyncenum,"
with two _tynkens_. What was a _tyncen_? That was the question nearly a
hundred years ago, when Barrington was working out his translation; and
the only answer to be found then was contained in the great dictionary
published by Lye and Manning, but is not found now in Dr. Bosworth's
second edition of his Dictionary: "Tynce, _a tench_."
How the Persian nobleman was to be supported by two little fishes, which
were more likely to land their passenger at the bottom of the river than
on the opposite bank, we are left to guess. But, before we proceed with
the experiment, let us see that we have got the fishes. That tench was
in the Gyndis we have no authority for denying; but, if its Anglian or
Saxon name was such as the dictionary exhibits, we have no trace of it
{400} in the text of Alfred; for under no form of declension,
acknowledged in grammar, will _tynce_ ever give _tyncenum_. We have no
need, then, to spend time in calculating the chance of success, when we
have not the means of making the experiment.
As either _tync_ or _tynce_ would give _tyncum_, not _tyncenum_, the
latter must come out of _tyncen_ (query, _tynkin_ or _tunkin_, a little
tun, a barrel, or a cask?). Such was the form in which the question
presented itself to my mind, upon my first examination of the passage
three or four years ago, but which was given up without sufficient
investigation, owing to an impression that if such had been the meaning,
it was so simple and obvious that nobody could have missed it.
An emergency, which I need not explain here, has within these few days
recalled my attention to the subject; and I have no reason to be
ashamed, or to make a secret, of the result.
_Tyncen_, the diminutive of _tunne_, is not only a genuine Anglo-Saxon
word, but the type of a class, of whose existence in that language no
Saxonist, I may say no Teutonist, not even the perspicacious and
indefatigable Jacob Grimm himself, seems to be aware. The word is
exactly analogous to Ger. _tönnchen_, from _tonne_, and proves three
things:--1. That our ancestors formed diminutives in _cen_, as well as
their neighbours in _ken_, _kin_, _chen_; 2. That the radical vowel was
modified: for _y_ is the _umlaut_ of _u_; 3. That these properties of
the dialect were known to Alfred the Great when he added this curious
statement to the narrative of Orosius.