The Anglo-saxon Rune Poem Revisited

the anglo-saxon rune poem (note: i’m in a feeling about capitals and for the time being, i’m not willing to use them. it’s not hard to get used to discerning full stops and if you’re anything like me you’ll find the whole feeling of the text much gentler on your mind and psyche.)

the following sample shows the first verse of the anglo-saxon rune poem interlinear with a typical, fairly free translation. feoh byþ frofur fira gehwylcum; wealth is a comfort to all men;

sceal ðeah manna gehwylc miclun hyt dælan yet every man must share it freely,

gif he wile for drihtne domes hleotan if he wishes for honour in the sight of the lord.

the assumption is that the language is primarily germanic influenced by celtic and church latin. ‘feoh’ is assumed to be related to the english word ‘fee’, which once just meant money (in some old ballads for example). but spelling used to be phonetic, and while ‘fe’ might recall ‘fee’, what of the o and h. this spelling would have been based on a careful analysis of real pronunciation of speech, and would have represented every sound produced by the utterer and no sound that wasn’t, at least somewhere in the history of this spelling – except in rare events which i need not detail here. so feoh would have spelt a two syllable word ‘fe-oh’, with the h representing an audible breathing at the least. more like modern english ‘fair’, pronounced with what i as an australian would hear as a posh pommy1 accent. but frofur? they’ve had to guess, if not for this text, for some earlier text, and their guess has gone into the lexicons as official knowledge of the language, forever after to shape or distort all subsequent translation attempts. and in my opinion they’ve guessed wrong. if you have false teeth (or if you haven’t, just imagine it) take them out for a moment and letting your lips relax completely, try saying ‘proper’. ‘is that the proper goose or just the propaganda?’ ‘is the proper propper propping up the proper properties?’ ‘poppa’s purple popcorn parlour proposes the proper propaganda’. now look again at frofur. now read on. that drihtne means honour is also a guess, pure and simple. so are domes = lord, and hleotan = praise. they are guesses without foundation. worse still, ‘gehwylc’ which occurs also with a case-ending as ‘gehwylcum’ is translated as ‘comfort’ in one place and ‘freely’ in another, with total disregard for grammar, and both ‘fira’ and ‘manna’ are translated as ‘man’. 1

this word has no unkind connotations in most australians’ vocabulary, as poms are generally liked.

this is simply not an academically sound translation, but we seem to be stuck with it. every student knows that his/her career depends on agreeing with the existing scholarship and that it is exceedingly difficult for any alternative theory to get a hearing among the professionals. existing scholarship, conceited in its wisdom, is committed to the grammatical logic it has derived by guesswork and which it then tautologically invokes to make further translations. it’s often true that any historian with a knowledge of a couple of germanic languages (preferably dutch and danish), a couple of celtic ones, including irish, good english and some french, an ear attuned to dialect difference and a knowledge of how spelling sometimes reflects real speech and sometimes doesn’t and a feeling for when it’s likely to and when it isn’t can enable you to derive reasonable sense from the anglo-saxon texts using common sense alone, while the traditional scholar’s attempts based on unrealistically formalised grammar and lexicography based on such guesses as the above and worse are often unconvincing and sometimes down-right nonsensical. whether we err through excessive simplicity, or through over-sophistication, naively or ‘conceited in our wisdom’, i argue that we get more sense out of the simple method than the complex way. let’s try simple substitution of the english word nearest in sound to translate this poem. i’ll assume that the spellings are strictly phonetic. if there isn’t one, i’ll leave it unchanged for now. i won’t be right in every case: ge isn’t gay for example, but bear with me – things like that will be picked up and corrected at the end. feoh byþ frofur fir a ge hwylc-um; fair

be’s proper for a gay hwylc -um

sceal ðeah manna ge hwylc miclun hyt dælan sceal there many

ge hwylc

miclun

it

dælan

gif he wile for drihtne domes hleotan if

he will

for drihtne

domes

hleotan.

now i observe that three words, sceal, miclun, and drihtne are very close to irish words, and as i know from wider reading that irish words are as often to be found in old english texts as english ones are in irish texts, i’ll translate them without a qualm: feoh byþ frofur fir a ge hwylc-um; fair

be’s proper for a gay hwylc -um

sceal ðeah manna ge hwylc miclun hyt dælan story there many

gay hwylc

students it

dælan

gif he wile for drihtne domes hleotan if

he

will for druids

domes

hleotan.

now it becomes possible to look at words which are not quite so close to obvious english or irish equivalents: dælan and domes. these are still

recognisable english words if a dialect difference is noted: in some area the hard t is softened to a d. so substituting we get: and as for the rest, hwyl- can be while and mean ‘while away time’ or ‘a while’ and the –c is a plural ending, and hleotan can carry both senses, letters and loud, and mean ‘read aloud’. feoh byþ frofur fir a ge hwylc-um; fair

be’s proper for a gay times -um

sceal ðeah manna ge hwylc miclun hyt dælan story there many

gay times

students it

telling

gif he wile for drihtne domes hleotan if

he

will for druids

tomes

read aloud.

now we can interrogate the grammar: obviously ge is a prefix, not the english gay as first seemed possible. although it’s spelt like the germanic ge- it’s used like the irish go, since the –um ending of gehwylcum signifies a plural noun. it can be left untranslated, and so can the –um, which is implied by the preposition fir=for. the a is no longer a singular indefinite article since the following noun is a plural, so it must either be a’=all, or part of the preceding word – i.e., fira = for (see sp para). my guess is the latter. for, as in dutch voor, looks like before, or in front of, especially since fira means for. byþ can be is. and we can supply an indefinite article before the singular noun, story. finally, since miclun is plural (irish mac leine (s) mic leine (pl)) he must be they (and there’s nothing so variable from dialect to dialect as the pronouns, so it’s anybody’s guess, and this is mine!). so it now looks like this: feoh byþ frofur fira gehwylcum; fair

is

proper for

time-passings

sceal ðeah manna gehwylc miclun hyt dælan a story there many

gif he wile for

times

students it

telling

drihtne domes hleotan

if they will before druids

tomes

read-aloud.

let’s now consider the word-order. the first line is idiomatic enough. in the second, the word order is reminiscent of cornish word order. where the most interesting word in the sentence comes first: story, and it’s pronoun hyt refers back to it. it’s actually two sentences, one without a verb, with the verb to be understood: “a story there many times; students telling it, if they want to read tomes aloud before druids.

in defence of my technique, i might say that the use of rules for translation derived from texts written in a quite different dialect or even language, such as is currently in vogue, is utterly unsound. the languages of the time are very imperfectly understood and the chronology based on guesses as dubious as those that supply the lexicography. the land was evidently a

land of schools and colleges, universities and monasteries, win which learning from childhood to adulthood were prized. a diverse yet structured education system is evident, and it produced language change far more than modern schools do. it brought many children of different backgrounds together to be educated in isolation from the rest of the world, within a linguistic environment which is both artificial and idiosyncratic. yet despite that fact that a tiny minority are educated in any given population, one speaker can profoundly affect the speech of his generation. a very elite school which has on its teaching staff a single teacher with a speech defect, or who has a foreign accent, or no teeth, or even an affectation, who takes the scholars for classes given in the school’s preferred language, while other teachers teach in, say, latin, or in classes where language is not so vital such as equestrianism, dancing and fencing, may introduce a particular trait into the language such that the nobility learns it, their retinues affect it, and it begins to be a mark of superiority, such that the educated who use it begin to correct the ‘uneducated’ who still use the correct forms. try saying “the proper propaganda is propagated properly” with two fingers in your mouth. or if you have false teeth, take them out and letting your lips flop, try it then. or if you have your own teeth, try sucking in your lips in imitation of someone who has none and try saying it then. then, if you’re not hearing yourself say frofur, i’ll go he.

to test the hypothesis underlying this translation method, let’s look at some other verses of this famous poem (the anglo-saxon rune poem.) some comments first. from other texts as well as this i take ur to mean fur or hair. 7 is sometimes the spanish y, sometimes shorthand for that, and sometimes replaces the word seven or words pronounced like it, such as sewen and means here sewn. this leads me to think that when it means that, it was pronounced ‘ze wen’, or ‘the one’. as i take the n of hyrn to be a pre-vowel form of hyr, meaning their, preceding ed (’ead) in my father but mine uncle of not so long ago. ur byþ mod 7 ofer hyrn ed hair be’s mode the one over their head

felafrecne

deor feohteth mid hornum

fallow-freck(le)-any deer faredeth

maere mor stapa 7 mare

with horns

is modig wuht.

great-topcoat the one is modish white.

in the last line, mor=irish m/or, meaning great, english more, cornish meur, and stapa has the germanic s, remant of das, attached to tapa, which is the same as top(per), meaning top-coat. it is related to tapestry, and the french tapis, reflecting the weightiness and stiffness of the heavy furred animal skins which were worn as a top garment. fur is a fashion sewn over the head. freckled fallow deer (that) runs(fares) with horns. horse(-skin) great-coat that is fashionable white.

this verse has been translated as something like aurochs is ferocious with huge horns a very fierce beast, it fights with its horns, a well-known moor-stepper, it is a courageous creature. but the anglo-saxons wouldn’t have known about the aurochs. another verse? thorn byþ ðearle thorn

scearp degna gehwylcum

be’s thoroughly

anfeng

sharp

spikes with delays

ys yfyl, ungenetun reðe

bite

is evil,

un-ge-netun

rather,

manna gehwylcum ðe him mid rest. (for) many

times,

to them with rest

gewhylcum might mean delay. degna is related to tig, a stick-like projection, like the spine of a hedge-hog, which is still often called ‘tiggy’, and also to stick itself, and to twig and dig, with –na = -ne, as a plural ending related to the modern english “any”. so the translation is thorn(tree) is very sharp spikes, for delays, it’s bite is evil. unfavourable(not neat?) advice with many delays, to rest with them.

this poem is usually translated something like: thorn is very sharp, harmful to every man who grasps it, unsuitably cruel to every man who rests upon it. you will see by now that my translations are at least as probable as those currently in favour, and in many cases, much more so. you might like to try my technique on the remaining verses of the poem and see what you make of it. i don’t think existing versions can claim to have had the last word on it!