Tawdry and Saint Etheldreda

Tawdry is one of those words that are fairly familiar but which have odd, even delightful stories in their etymologies. Tawdry is a synonym for gaudy, though the connotations of tawdry are slightly more negative than those of gaudy. The formal definition of tawdry is

1. Gaudy and cheap in nature or appearance. See synonyms at gaudy.

2. Shameful or indecent: tawdry secrets.

Tawdry is almost always used to refer, pejoratively, to clothing, or jewelry. Initially, it was used specifically to refer to lace, in the phrase "tawdry lace." Tawdry lace is a contraction; an altered form of Saint Audrey's lace. The lace in question was sold at the annual Saint Audrey's fair, in Ely, England. Saint Audrey, also known as Saint Etheldreda, was the queen of Northumbria who died in 679 of a throat tumor, a tumor that was supposedly divine retribution for her delight in fancy necklaces in her youth. Her story was recorded first by Bede, and after him, by Aelfric.

According to the OED, the first recorded use of Saint Audrey's lace was in Jehan Palsgrave's 1530 Lesclarcissement de la langue francoyse—"63/2 Seynt Audries lace, cordon." By the time Spenser was writing his Shepherd's Calendar, published in 1579, Seynt Audreis lace had become "tawdrie lace" in Spenser's poem for April

Binde your fillets faste

And gird in your waste,

For more finesse, with a tawdrie lace.

Saint Etheldreda, also known as AEthelthryth, Ediltrudis, and Audrey, died in
679. She was the daughter of Anna, the king of East Anglia, and was married while still very young to one Tondberht, an ealdorman of the South Gyrwas. She was a devout Christian, however, and despite her marriage, she remained a virgin; the official "saint's life" by Bede says she took a vow of chastity. When her husband died, c. 655, she moved to the Isle of Ely, which was given to her as part of her dowery. In 660 she was married for reasons of statehood and politics to Egfrith, the fifteen year old king of Northumbria. Initially he agreed that Etheldreda could remain a virgin, as in her previous marriage, but some twelve years later he changed his mind. Under the advice of Wilfrid, the bishop of Northumbria (not only extremely pious, but also extremely canny) who was her advisor and supporter, Etheldreda steadfastly refused all manner of blandishments offered by her husband Egfrith, if she would submit to his advances and surrender her virginity. Eventually, Etheldreda left him, and joined her aunt Ebbe in 672 at the abbey of Coldingham.

In 673 Etheldreda founded a double monastery (both a monastery and a nunnery) at Ely. She initially restored an old church at Ely, one that was ostensibly sacked by Penda, the pagan king of Mercia (roughly the same area as the modern English midlands). The site, restored by Ethelwold in 970, became the site of Ely Cathedral, and for a very long time was one of the wealthiest abbeys in England, second only to Glastonbury.

Etheldreda's reputation for piety only increased after her death. Some seventeen years later, as part of the process of canonization, her body was exhumed in the presence of Wilfred, later Saint Wilfred, and her physician Cynefrid. Etheldreda's body was found to be miraculously uncorrupted; even the tumor on her neck was discovered to have mysteriously healed. Her body was removed and re-interred in a Roman sarcophagus and re-buried.

Modern historians examining the records of Etheldreda's abbey and her fellow nuns have concluded that she and several of the other nuns died of the plague, and that she did not have cancer. St Etheldreda's Feast Day is 23rd June.