Complete Old English

A Comprehensive Guide to Reading and Understanding Old English, with Original Texts

Mark Atherton

• Publisher: Teach Yourself
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781444104189
• eBook ISBN: 9781444132212
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Grammar & Punctuation
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This product is most effective when used in conjunction with the corresponding double CD.
- You can purchase the book and double CD as a pack (ISBN: 9781444104196)@font-face {
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- The double CD is also sold separately (ISBN: 9781444104202)Learn Old English (Anglo-Saxon) with this best-selling course from Teach Yourself - the No. 1 brand in language learning. Equally suited to general reader, historian and student of literature, this new edition teaches vocabulary and grammar through original texts, with audio support, traces the roots of modern English words, and explores the Anglo-Saxon cultural context through poems, prose and historical documents.Learn effortlessly with a new easy-to-read page design and interactive features: NOT GOT MUCH TIME?
One-, five- and ten-minute introductions to key principles to get you started.AUTHOR INSIGHTS
Lots of instant help with common problems and quick tips for success, based on the author's many years of experience.GRAMMAR TIPS
Easy-to-follow building blocks to give you a clear understanding.USEFUL VOCABULARY
Easy to find and learn, to build a solid foundation for understanding.TEST YOURSELF
Tests in the book and online to keep track of your progress.EXTEND YOUR KNOWLEDGE
Extra online articles to give you a richer understanding of the culture and history of Anglo-Saxon England.

1

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Here Edward was consecrated as king

This unit will cover:

texts

• the coronation of Edward the Confessor as reported in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

first steps in reading Old English

• word recognition

• pronunciation

• spelling

vocabulary

• introduction to personal names

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TR 1

Her wæs Eadward gehalgod to cinge
Here Edward was consecrated as king

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The use of English

In 1040 Edward the atheling – prince and heir to the throne – returned to England after twenty-four years of exile on the Continent. Two years later he succeeded to the throne of England and in the following year the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reports that Edward was consecrated king at Winchester on the first Easter Day with great honour.

Edward the Confessor, as he came to be called by his successors, ruled a stable and prosperous England for twenty-four years. Yet during his lifetime, the country became subject to a bewildering variety of cultural influences: from Norse and Anglo-Danish to Norman and French. One constant in all this period of change was the large and central role played by the Old English language in the political, literary and spiritual life of the country. Unlike most of Europe at this time, where Latin was the only written language in use, England had developed a considerable literature in the vernacular, and much of its everyday administration was also conducted through the medium of written English.

The C version of the chronicle

It so happened that a new version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was started around the time of Edward’s accession. The Chronicle was a year-by-year record of the nation’s affairs probably begun in the time of king Alfred in the ninth century. The new recension of the 1040s, known as version C, was made perhaps at Abingdon Abbey or at an ecclesiastical centre in Mercia, the Midland region of Anglo-Saxon England. The compiler copied the earlier Chronicle up to his own day and then began entering new records in the annual list of events. By adding his own stories, he was essentially acting as a contemporary observer of political events. The following short Old English text is his own, typically brief, account of the coronation of 1043.

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TR 1, 00:20
The year 1043

1043	Her wæs Eadward gehalgod to cinge on Wincestre on forman Easterdæig mid myccelum wyrðscype, and ða wæron Eastron .iii. Nonas Aprelis. Eadsige arcebisceop hine halgade, and toforan eallum þam folce hine wel lærde, and to his agenre neode and ealles folces wel manude. And Stigant preost wæs gebletsad to bisceope to Eastenglum.
AD 1043	Here Edward was consecrated as king at Winchester on the first Easter Day with great honour, and that year Easter fell on the third of the nones of April. Archbishop Eadsige consecrated him, and before all the people instructed him well, and for his own need and that of all the people admonished him well. And the priest, Stigand, was blessed as bishop to the East Angles.

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Insight

The phrase mid myccelum wyrðscype meaning with great honour is much closer to modern English than it might first appear. Remember that the letter ð (called ‘eth’) represents a modern ‘th’ and that sc is modern ‘sh’. The last word is therefore the compound worth-ship, the origin of the modern word worship.

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TR 2 [listen again with a translation]

Strategies for reading Old English

(a) The first strategy to employ when tackling a text written in an inflected language like Old English is to mark up (with hyphens or by underlining) the inflections, i.e. all the endings which the language uses to mark grammatical meanings in the text; it is useful also to highlight the root or stem of each word by marking any prefixes. An example of an ending is -e on cing king, a prefix ge- occurs before halgod hallowed, consecrated; in the same word the -od ending corresponds to the modern ending -ed.

(b) Try doing a literal word-for-word translation of the text. This helps to understand the structure of the language.

(c) Next, hear the text read out loud on the recording (or by someone familiar with the language); this will help with comprehension. Many words (e.g. Easterdæig) become instantly recognizable once they are heard and the connections between Old and modern English start to emerge. Using the guide to pronunciation (in the introduction) you can also try reading out loud on your own; it is possible to learn to pronounce the basics of Old English surprisingly quickly. At first, remember that ð, þ represent the modern ‘th’ sound in ‘thorn’. Next, careful attention should be paid to the letter–sound correspondences of æ, g, c, cg and sc.

(d) Start observing the patterns of the language: its frequent meaningful endings, its word order, its typical modes of expression and idioms. When reading texts from the Chronicle for instance, you will soon find that a typical word-order is Here was Edward… Here commanded the king…, Here came Cnut… etc. As you gradually acquire more knowledge of the rules of grammar, this may seem less necessary, but in fact a good habit of observation is always essential: it will strengthen your grasp of the language and enrich your knowledge of the resources of the language.

(e) One further option is to experiment with transcribing the text in a slightly modernized spelling, in order to become familiar with the form and shape of the words. An example would be transcribing Wincestre as Winchestre.

TR 3 [listen again, phrase by phrase, with a translation]

Reading strategies in practice

Taking a sentence at a time, we can apply the above strategies to our text from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

Highlight inflections and prefixes
Her wæs Eadward ge-halg-od to cing-e on Wincestr-e on forma-n Easterdæig mid myccel-um wyrð-scype.

Do a literal translation
Here was Edward hallowed to king on Winchester on former Easterday with mick...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Meet the author
• Only got a minute?
• Only got five minutes?
• Only got ten minutes?
• Introduction
• 1 Here Edward was consecrated as king
• 2 A king must hold a kingdom
• 3 Say what I am called
• 4 Here in this year
• 5 About the four seasons
• 6 I saw in a dream
• 7 King Cnut greets his archbishops
• 8 He promised her the land at Orleton
• 9 I seek my brothers, where they are keeping their herds
• 10 These are the bounds of the pasture at Hazelhurst
• 11 Here is declared in this document
• 12 I saw a creature travel on the wave
• 13 And they put him into the waterless well Þa hi hyne feorran gesawon When they saw him  from afar (the betrayal of Joseph in the Hexateuch)
• 14 The boy is not here
• 15 I always wanted to convert to the monastic life
• 16 It happened one night
• 17 And bishop Æthelnoth travelled to Rome
• 18 Archbishop Wulfstan greets king Cnut
• 19 How Wynflæd summoned her witnesses
• 20 Act like thegns, and deliver my message to the assembly
• 21 The tide went out
• 22 I was by the shore
• Bibliography
• Test Yourself answers
• Old English–English word index
• Appendices
• Copyright