> "He cut the throat of the goat with a knife, which is the most kind way to do it,"
Not everyone with a homestead does that though. I know it's the traditional Jewish and Islamic way of doing things but it's cruel to drown an animal in its own blood or letting it die slowly from blood loss when you could just disable the brain in an instant.
As with many other archaic words in English, I'm guessing that "Swind" and "Swynde" came from Scandinavia and Germany where they've kept their old meaning to this day:
Indeed - the Vikings (Danes) brought their language to the north of the British Isles and it spread and persisted to today.
As I can no longer edit my comment above I should mention that the original text by Bede was written by him in Latin circa AD 731, but the O.E.D. references version translated in early | middle English by other authors in the centuries that followed.
It's from one of those that the OED quotes the first written use of Swind | Swynde in <cough> "English" </cough>.
( not so much a language as a kitchen sink full of dregs )
Not everyone with a homestead does that though. I know it's the traditional Jewish and Islamic way of doing things but it's cruel to drown an animal in its own blood or letting it die slowly from blood loss when you could just disable the brain in an instant.