"youth of gentle birth," used as a kind of title, late Old English, variant spelling of child (q.v.).
an archaic term referring to a youth of noble birth or a youth in training to be a knight. In literature the word is often used as a title, as in the character Childe Roland of Robert Browning's poem "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" and Lord Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage