tsuwm's worthless word for the day is esne

[obs. except Hist.]
OE designation of a class of domestic slaves

This doesn't satisfy. Which class?

http://home.mn.rr.com/wwftd/

perhaps you'd prefer this, from infoplease.com:
(in Anglo-Saxon England) a member of the lowest class; laborer.


(could be a serf)

It's a crossword puzzle word.

Thanks a bunch, fellas. [insert your own emoticon here]

i don't know if this helps, AsP, but i ran across
demesne in In The Wake of the Plague, The Black Death & The World It Made(by Norman F Cantor), which is a portion of property a lord might own, and that he could require his serf to work this land for him, in return for the rights to live and work other lands.. shares as it where...

Demesne is (from american heritage)
de·mesne
NOUN: 1. Law Possession and use of one's own land. 2. Manorial land retained for the private use of a feudal lord. 3. The grounds belonging to a mansion or country house. 4. An extensive piece of landed property; an estate. 5. A district; a territory. 6. A realm; a domain.
ETYMOLOGY: Anglo-French, respelling (probably influenced by French mesne, variant of Anglo-Norman meen, middle, in legal phrase mesne lord, lord who holds a manor of a superior lord) of Middle English demeine, from Anglo-Norman, from Old French demaine. See domain.


i don't know if esne and demesne are related... but...
Cantor makes the point, that after the plague, there was a labor shortage, and many serfs in effect became yeoman, and could now demand to paid to do what they had previously done as part of their 'duties' to the local lord. so no longer could a lord get his demesne worked for free..

it would seem the words are related-- tsuwm, faldage, you and others can work out how!

it would seem the words are related

AHD4 doesn't list esne but Clark Hall's Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary does and relates it to the Gothic aesnis.

I won't bore you with the reams that OED has to say about demesne, but this looks to be one of those incroyable coincidences.