n.
(1) (trauayle) ‘hard task’; (2) (toruayle) ‘hard task’, ‘difficulty’.
(Modern English )Two interpretations of the n. at Gaw 1540 (‘Bot to take þe toruayle to myself to trwluf expoun’) have arisen, depending on how the MS is read, but in either case ME travail is the most likely source: (1) If the MS is read <trauayle> (see Discussion by Text), this is simply an instance of the commonplace ME travail ‘hard physical labour, toil’, < AN, OFr travail (etc.) (see esp. AND’s senses (6) ‘toil, labour’, (7) ‘effort, exertion’), ult. prob. < Lat trepālium ‘an instrument or engine of torture’. (2) This possibility is overlooked by editors, who instead read <toruayle>, which is attested nowhere else and may well represent a ghost word. Nevertheless efforts have been made to make sense of it as a genuine reading: Kullnick (17) offers as etymon the ON n. represented by OIcel torveldi (fem. or neut.) ‘a difficulty’ (following the comparison in Madden and Morris to the related adj. OIcel torveldr ‘hard, difficult’). For the first element of these words (the frequent OIcel prefix tor-, cp. Go tuz-, OHG zur-, OE tor-), see tor. The second element seems to have begun life as a verbal adj. *waldi- (ON -veldr) formed on the stem of the str. VII v. *walðan- (as in OE wealdan, ON valda ‘to wield’, etc.). The second syllable bears a much closer resemblance to ME travail than to these ON words, however (and note that a VAN form of ON torveldi would have contained a /w/), and more recent commentators have all preferred to explain the Gaw form as deriving from ON torveldi but showing at least some input from OFr travail or influence from its ME reflex (thus TGD, GDS, McGee 353, MED). It may be more realistic to regard toruayle as a by-form of ME travail, with the first element remodelled using ME tor (which perhaps derives in part from ON tor-).
PGmc Ancestor
(2) *tor- + *waldi-
Proposed ON Etymon (OIcel representative)
(2) torveldi (fem. or neut.) ‘a difficulty’
(ONP (2) tor-veldi (1) (sb. f.); tor-veldi (2) (sb. n.))
Other Scandinavian Reflexes
(2) Far tor-, Icel tor-, Norw tor-, Sw dial tor-
OE Cognate
(2) tor- 'hard, difficult', cp. torcyrre ‘hard to convert’, tor-begete ‘hard to obtain’
Phonological and morphological markers
Summary category
DD2
(1) ME travail is common and widespread from the late 13c. incl. occurrences in the Gaw MS (incl. Gaw 2241 in the sense ‘toilsome journey’, and Pe 1087, Pat 505, meaning ‘labour’). (2) The form toruayle is a hapax legomenon. The simplex adj. tor is a N/EM and alliterative word in ME; MED cites it from Orrm and AW.T, but it is otherwise mainly found in later ME alliterative verse (disproportionately often in DT).
Occurrences in the Gersum Corpus
Gaw 1540
Variant readings have arisen as a result of the legibility of the MS here: Foster (1897: 54; noted by Kullnick (17) and followed by Knott (1915: 108)) reads <trauayle> at Gaw 1540, whereas all other editors since Morris read <toruayle> (Madden prints <tornayle>, but suggests <toruayle> in his glossary entry).