Why did the first English reference talk about six or seven skies?

SPONSOR: GotoMeeting Hold your meetings online for just $49/mo. Try GoToMeeting FREE for 30 days.

Today if you walk into a book store or visit one online, their offerings are classified into a mind boggling number of genres.  In fact there are plenty of bookstores that specialize in only one genre.

Back in the time of Chaucer this diversity of publication themes was not quite so extensive, but even then there were different genres in medieval bookstores.  One of these has now become known as the bestiary—about beasts.

International travel was the privilege of very few people in those days and just as we moderns still eat up shows about nature and flock to movies such as March of the Penguins, in medieval days people were also interested in tales of strange and wonderful creatures.

Of course these included dragons and mythical beasts along with flesh and blood animals.

Our forebears felt it necessary to attach human values, morals and meaning to the characteristics of the animals portrayed.  The lion is regal, the phoenix rising from its ashes is Christ’s resurrection.

There lying in the handwritten pages of one of these bestiaries, written around the year 1220, we find the first use in English of the word sky. The entry describes how the eagle, when old and feeble revives itself—almost phoenix-like—by flying up through skies six and seven to burn its feathers on the sun and fall into a spring of fresh water.

True to form this old bestiary goes on to liken the revival of the eagle to the refreshment of man’s soul when attending church.

But it is the sky that interests us here.

What’s this about six or seven skies?

When I think of the sky it is a blue dome arched over me although I suppose it is a grey sky on a cloudy day.  The Oxford English Dictionary tells us the meaning of sky at its first appearance didn’t mean “the clear blue” but meant particularly “the clouds.”

The phrase at sixes and sevens means “by chance” so that our eagle is flying through whatever clouds chance threw in his way.