v1.0
Published 01/10/24
biafal . McDonald (2009, 341–42) lists EG birbell, birbill and SG berbell as likely loans from ON biafal, berfell, berfiall, berfjall . ON berfell is a variant form of bjarnfell m. ‘bearskin’, a compound of the stem form of bjǫrn m. ‘bear’ + fell m., also fjall, ‘hide, skin’; the distinction between ia and ja is allographic here: ja would be used in standardised Old Norse orthography. eDIL˄ (s.v. birbill) cites Marstrander 1915a, 31–32,
Most of which is translated into French in Sommerfelt 1922, 187–89.
in which he takes EG birbill (glossed brat (i.e. bratt) ‘cloak’) to be an oblique case form of EG *birbell, which he derives from ON berfell. For *birbell, Marstrander reads *birḃell, with a medial voiced bilabial fricative [βʲ] (palatalised before a front vowel), and describes medial f in ON berfell as [v]. However, as the initial of the second element of a compound we might expect ON f to represent a voiceless fricative [f], which would yield [f] regularly in Early Gaelic. That is not to say that a development of ON berfell > EG birḃell could not have occurred, only that if it did some additional factor must have been at work. Neither birbell, berbell or similar occur in Scottish Gaelic.
The word biafal ‘a type of garment’
Worn by two Scots in Eiríks saga rauða: the relevant text occurs in Chap. 8 [Skálholtsbók in handrit.is˄]: folio 33r, lines 7–8: 8; it is edited in Marstrander ibid., 31: þau váru svá búin at þau hǫfðu þat klæði er þau kǫlluðu biafal [Hauksbók: ciafal]. þat var svá gert ai hǫttrinn var á upp ok opit hlíðum ok engar ermar á ok knept í milli fóta. hellt þar saman knappr ok nezla en ber váru annars staðar; translated into French in Sommerfelt 1922, 188: ‘Ils étaient équipés de façon qu’ils portaient le vêtement qu’ils appelaient biafal. Ce vêtement, muni d’un capuchon et ouvert sur les côtés, n’avait pas de manches et était boutonné entre les jambes. Il y avait là pour le tenir un bouton et une attache. Pour le reste, ils étaient nus’; and into English in Sephton 1880: ‘They were dressed in such wise that they had on the garment which they called biafal. It was made with a hood at the top, open at the sides, without sleeves, and was fastened between the legs. A button and a loop held it together there; and elsewhere they were without clothing’.
appears in the early 13th-century Eiríks saga rauða, attested in that form in Skálholtsbók (c. 1420) and in the form ciafal in Hauksbók (1302–1310); the former text is considered to be the more original (Þorláksson 2001, 64), and ciafal is assumed by Marstrander to be in error.
Although NO unhelpfully lists kjafall as a variant of bjafall.
Marstrander takes biafal to be a Gall-Ghàidheal (Norse-Gaelic) confusion of ON berfell and ON bjalfi m. ‘a sort of fur garment, skin, hide’. In support, he notes the loss in some Norwegian dialects of retroflex l before labials, e.g. the man’s name Bjalfi m. appears as Biafi (MS: biafa acc.) c. 1000, in which original [ɭv] has become [v], although it seems questionable whether ON bjalfi had a retroflex rather than velarised l. The addition of final -l in biafal is unexplained.
If early-13th century biafal is a Gaelic word, it seems likely to represent an Early Modern Scottish Gaelic *[ˈbiəfəɫ] > *[ˈb̥iəfəɫ̪]. On the other hand, ON bjalfa acc. is likely to yield Early Modern Scottish Gaelic *bealbh(a) *[ˈbʲɑɫ͡ɑβ(ə)] > *[ˈb̥jɑɫ̪͡ɑv(ə)], which could have been interpreted as *bjalaf by speakers of Middle Norwegian. Rather than biafal representing an amalgamation of ON berfell and bjalfi by Nordic speakers in the West of Scotland, then, it may be simpler to assume – if indeed ON bjalfi was borrowed into Gaelic at all – that the l- and v-sounds of the Early Modern Scottish Gaelic reflex have been transposed in the Nordic written form in the process of transmission or copying, and that for biafal we should read *bialaf (*bjalaf).
This assumes that ON bjalfa was borrowed into Gaelic and that it was this Gaelic reflex that the scribe was attempting to represent. If the scribe’s biafal was really an attempt to represent what was a native Gaelic word or phrase, a form in EG bían ‘skin, hide’ (SG bian) might be considered.