ring-giver

Literary calque of Old English bēagġiefa, from bēag (“ring”) + ġiefa (“giver”).

ring-giver (plural ring-givers)

1. (historical, Old English literature) A ruler or chieftain who distributed rings or other valuable gifts to loyal warriors, thanes, or retainers as a means of rewarding service and reinforcing bonds of allegiance and mutual obligation.
   • 1837 May, The Gentleman's Magazine, London, page 500:

     This kind of money was probably used by the Anglo-Saxons long after their settlement in England; and the name of "ring-giver," as an epithet of princes, was preserved perhaps to the time of the Norman conquest.

   • 1855, Benjamin Thorpe, “Beowulf”, in The Anglo-Saxon poems of Beowulf, the Scôp or Gleeman's tale, and The fight at Finnesburg; with a literal translation, notes, glossary, etc., Oxford: James Wright, page 74:

     Then they confirm'd
     on the two sides
     a fast peaceful compact;
     [...] that there not any man.
     by words or works,
     should break the compact,
     nor through guileful craft
     should they ever lament,
     though they their ring-giver’s
     slayer follow'd,
     now lordless,
     as it was thus needful to them.

   • 1914 May, Anglia: Zeitschrift für englische Philologie, volume 38, Halle an der Saale, page 121:

     The opening prologue and the closing epilogue praise Gloucester lavishly by name, and he appears elsewhere in its long nine books as both lawgiver and ring-giver.

   • 1956, Margaret Deanesly, chapter 5, in A History Of Early Medieval Europe 476-911, New York: Barnes and Noble, page 300:

     The kings needed their support, and like the old Germanic ‘ring-givers’ were forced to secure loyalty by generous giving: in their case by lands and immunities.

   • 1999, Seamus Heaney, Beowulf, London: Faber and Faber, page 4:

     They stretched their beloved lord in his boat,
     laid out by the mast, amidships,
     the great ring-giver.

   • 2000, John Holmes McDowell, chapter 5, in Poetry and Violence: The Ballad Tradition of Mexico's Costa Chica, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, page 123:

     Another instance is the Anglo-Saxon scop, who sat close to the ring-givers and was much appreciated for an ability to transform action into narrative.