Said Hana Videen, author of "The Wordhord," quoted in "'The Wordhord' Review: Here Be Dragons/Old English words can be vaguely familiar and strangely evocative. They conjure a long-ago world of mundane worries and wild imaginings" (Wall Street Journal).
There was no Old English word for "nature"; one simply referred to "sceaft" (creation).
Ms. Videen explains that "when left untouched by humans, sceaft was wild, often incomprehensible, inspiring fear and awe rather than joy and admiration." Accordingly, a horse, instead of being seen to have intrinsic beauty, became attractive only once fitted with a fine saddle and gold ornaments. "Sceaft" was haunted by elves, nymphs and goblins....
A much-admired feature of Old English is the "kenning," a figurative phrase or compound noun that stands in for a familiar word: The mind is a "hord-loca," and instead of referring to a ship one might speak of a "flo d-wudu" (flood-wood).... The body is a bone-locker, flesh-hoard or life-house; the sun is a heaven-candle; the sea can be the wave-path, sail-road or whale-way. A spider is a weaver-walker. A battle is a storm of swords. A visit to a grave is a dust-viewing....
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This is all that most of us remember of Middle English:
Whan that Aprill with his shoures sote
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote
And maybe this, spoken by the Wife of Bath:
I woot wel Abraham was an holy man,
And Iacob eek, as ferforth as I can;
And ech of hem hadde wyves mo than two;
And many another holy man also.
Whan saugh ye ever, in any maner age,
That hye God defended mariage
By expres word? I pray you, telleth me;
Or wher comanded he virginitee?
I'm sorry I can't get past the paywall on this one. I love OE poetry and the compound words. Looks like an interesting read.
Thanks, I just ordered it.
Of course many of these Olde English words have recognizable cognates in modern German and Dutch. Wiki does a nice job for calendar terms in Germanic languages here. See especially the delightful Anglo-Saxon names for the months.
'Here be dragons.'
First recorded use of ebonics...
Old English is the best English, in the way it roots all later meaning. The thickets of sound and feeling that grow up around the first kernel are richer for the tracing-back.
If you can ever hear "Beowulf" recited in the original, it will curl your hair.
Old English is the best English, in the way it roots all later meaning. The thickets of sound and feeling that grow up around the first kernel are richer for the tracing-back.
If you can ever hear "Beowulf" recited in the original, it will curl your hair.
It was all poetry. Beautiful, evocative, horrifying, visceral. Thank you for this post!
Normally I'd be ready to tackle a discussion like this, but 1) it's late for me and 2) there's a cover of Brahms's Op. 38 that I have not heard on the radio. For me the one to beat is Maisky and Gililov's on Tootube.
Gute Nacht.
My favorite Anglo Saxon kenning is wordhord or vocabulary. It appears once in “Beowulf” when Beowulf speaks formally to, I believe, Hrothgar.
The Beowulf poet writes that Beowulf, “wordhoard onleac”; that is, Beowulf opened his vocabulary or lexicon. For years when I taught
Beowulf to undergraduates, I urged my students to spread this kenning far and wide, to make it a popular meme. They did that, and they used the term in class for the rest of the semester. Another great kenning was whaleroad, for the sea. They are amazingly creative.
When I took a seminar in “Beowulf” in grad school, we had to read the entire poem in Anglo Saxon, study the criticism, and interpret the poem, without the help of translations. It was a challenging experience, full of conundrums, linguistic puzzles, and so called cruxes. Anglo Saxon Literature deserves to be read in the original language, with an Anglo Saxon dictionary of course. However, their are many great translations of “Beowulf.” I prefer the Donaldson translation since it is very close to the orginal in meaning and style.
I don't need another book. But I'm ordering this one. It's got me intrigued. There is something about Old English and Middle English that brings our language to life.
Much more so than, say...'big oof'.
In case people don't know her work, the mediaevalist Eleanor Parker (@aclerkofoxford) writes delightfully about the Anglo-Saxon world and language; her Patreon page is /clerkofoxford. She is something or other at one of the colleges at Oxford and writes books that are gems of English prose, learned and clever but accessible to non-specialists.
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