Note † — II. THE FIGHT AT FINNSBURH:
Reading edition
l. 372. Cf. l. 535 for a similar use; and l. 1220. Bede, Eccles. Hist., ed. Miller, uses the same expression several times. "Here, and in all other places where cniht occurs in this poem, it seems to carry that technical sense which it bore in the military hierarchy [of a noble youth placed out and learning the elements of the art of war in the service of a qualified warrior, to whom he is, in a military sense, a servant], before it bloomed out in the full sense of knight."—E.