childe

views updated Jun 11 2018

childe archaic or literary word for a youth of noble birth, typically forming part of a name, as Childe Harold. The word is recorded from late Old English, and is a variant of child.
Childe Roland is the hero of a poem by Browning, ‘Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came’, the title deriving from a snatch of song recited by Edgar in Shakespeare's King Lear; in the poem, the narrator is a knight errant crossing a nightmare landscape who finally reaches the Dark Tower and sets the slughorn to his lips, but the outcome and the reason for his journey are unknown.

More From encyclopedia.com