Mortgage is Old French mort gage, dead pledge: the pledge dies when the debt is paid or the property is lost. Medieval law French, adopted into English law, unchanged in meaning since the 12th century.
Assessment: Fully documented in legal records. The morbid poetry is official.
Interesting claims
The law speaks in code
Maxwell cited mortgage, dead pledge, as proof that legal language smuggles death and bondage into everyday contracts, part of his wider claim that courts run on maritime and merchant law hidden in plain sight.
Assessment: Half right for once, on this word. The grim etymology is real and undisputed, though it reflects medieval property logic, not a secret. His broader admiralty-law framework, however, relies on readings like govern-mente, which fail, and courts have rejected it every time it is argued.
Stories
The thirty-year death sentence
The folk reading every borrower invents independently: you sign the death pledge, spend your working life feeding it, and the joke writes itself. Stand-up comedians and mortgage brokers both tell it. The word invites gallows humor because the gallows is in the word.
Assessment: As a story about how the word feels, it is universal and unverifiable. As etymology it adds nothing to Littleton's account. It survives because it is the only honest thing borrowers get to say.
Sources and further reading
OED, mortgage, Law French mort gage, the dead pledge
Thomas Littleton, Tenures, 15th c., on the mort gage
Worth asking
Maxwell built lectures on words like this one. When the dark reading is the documented reading, who is hiding what, and does anyone need to?