Teach Yourself Complete Old English

369 Pages·2010·3.33 MB·English

by  Mark Atherton

Complete
Old English
(Anglo-Saxon)
Mark Atherton
For UK order enquiries: please contact Bookpoint Ltd,
130 Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4SB.
Telephone: [phone]. Fax: [phone].
Lines are open 09.00–17.00, Monday to Saturday, with a 24-hour
message answering service. Details about our titles and how to
order are available at www.teachyourself.com
For USA order enquiries: please contact McGraw-Hill Customer
Services, PO Box 545, Blacklick, OH 43004-0545, USA.
Telephone: [phone]. Fax: [phone].
For Canada order enquiries: please contact McGraw-Hill Ryerson
Ltd, 300 Water St, Whitby, Ontario L1N 9B6, Canada.
Telephone: [phone]. Fax: [phone].
Long renowned as the authoritative source for self-guided
learning – with more than 50 million copies sold worldwide – the
Teach Yourself series includes more than 500 titles in the fi elds of
languages, crafts, hobbies, business, computing and education.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data: a catalogue record
for this title is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: on fi le.
First published in UK 2006 as Teach Yourself Old English by
Hodder Education, part of Hachette UK, 338 Euston Road,
London NW1 3BH.
First published in US 2006 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
This edition published 2010.
The Teach Yourself name is a registered trade mark of
Hodder Headline.
Copyright © Mark Atherton 2006, 2010
In UK: All rights reserved. Apart from any permitted use under UK
copyright law, no part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopy, recording, or any information, storage and
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher
or under licence from the Copyright Licensing Agency Limited.
Further details of such licences (for reprographic reproduction)
may be obtained from the Copyright Licensing Agency Limited,
of Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.
In US: All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the
United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication
may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or
stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
Typeset by MPS Limited, A Macmillan Company.
Printed in Great Britain for Hodder Education, an Hachette UK
Company, 338 Euston Road, London NW1 3BH.
The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs
for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active
at the time of going to press. However, the publisher and the
author have no responsibility for the websites and can make no
guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content will remain
relevant, decent or appropriate.
Hachette UK’s policy is to use papers that are natural, renewable
and recyclable products and made from wood grown in sustainable
forests. The logging and manufacturing processes are expected to
conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.
Impression number 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Year 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010
Contents
Acknowledgements viii
Meet the author ix
Only got a minute? x
Only got five minutes? xii
Only got ten minutes? xiv
Introduction xvi
How to use this book xviii
Pronunciation xxiii
1 Here Edward was consecrated as king 1
The C version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 2
Cultural contexts: Edward the Confessor 7
Old English personal names 9
2 A king must hold a kingdom 13
The poem Maxims II 13
Cyning sceal on healle beagas dælan
A king in hall must deal out rings 17
Cultural contexts: the hall 18
Infinitives, auxiliaries, cases 19
Old English place-names 22
3 Say what I am called 25
Cultural contexts: Leofric bishop of Exeter 25
The Exeter Book 26
Ic eom mare þonne þes middangeard
I am more than this middle earth (Riddle 66) 27
Personal pronouns 31
Introduction to the present tense 33
Countries and people 34
4 Here in this year 37
Annals 1019 – 1031 from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 37
Cultural contexts: Descriptive titles 40
Talking about the past 43
Cultural contexts: The adverb here 47
Cultural contexts: The calendar 48
iii
Contents
5 About the four seasons 53
From Byrhtferth’s Handbook 54
The basics of the present tense 59
The nominative 60
Grammatical gender 61
From The Seafarer and The Wife’s Lament 64
6 I saw in a dream 70
Joseph and his brothers (from the Old English Hexateuch) 70
The Alfred Jewel 74
Uses of þa 76
The accusative 77
Comparison with Chaucer 79
From The Dream of the Rood 80
7 King Cnut greets his archbishops 84
From Cnut’s Proclamation of 1020 85
The relative pronoun þe 87
From The Battle of Maldon (lines 36 – 9) 88
The strong noun: a brief introduction 89
Plurals 90
From Cnut’s writ to archbishop Lyfing (S 985) 91
Thegns 94
The genitive 95
8 He promised her the land at Orleton 101
Marriage in Anglo-Saxon England 101
Declension of personal pronouns: the third person 102
Uses of the dative 105
A Worcestershire marriage agreement (S 1459) 106
From the Old English Life of Euphrosyne 110
From Beowulf (2016b – 2019) 115
9 I seek my brothers, where they are keeping their herds 117
Cultural contexts: The pastoral economy 117
The possessive 119
Joseph follows his brothers (from the Hexateuch) 120
The conjugation of verbs 122
The weak verb lufian 123
The strong verb singan 124
Place names in -ley 126
iv
10 These are the bounds of the pasture at Hazelhurst 128
The Hazelhurst charter (S 950) 129
The definite article 131
The strong noun 132
The weak ending on adjectives 133
From Beowulf (724b – 727) 136
Place names 137
11 Here is declared in this document 139
Leofwine reada Leofwine the Red (S 1220) 140
Cultural contexts: Canterbury 141
Language and style: formulaic phrases 142
Rhythmical language 144
The demonstrative þes (this) 147
12 I saw a creature travel on the wave 151
The Fuller Brooch 152
Noun declension 154
Numerals 155
Names of birds and animals 159
From The Seafarer (18 – 26) 159
Numerals and parts of the body in riddles 36 and 86 165
13 And they put him into the waterless well 167
Þa hi hyne feorran gesawon When they saw him
from afar (the betrayal of Joseph in the Hexateuch) 168
Cultural contexts: Rivalry between royal half-brothers 170
Introduction to the subjunctive 171
The be- prefix on verbs 172
Metaphorical language 175
Ceap trade 176
Edward the Martyr
(from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle) 178
14 The boy is not here 181
The negative 181
Joseph: the father’s grief (from the Hexateuch) 183
Cultural contexts: manuscripts 188
Strong adjective endings 189
Rhythm 190
From Wulfstan’s Sermo Lupi 191
v
Contents
15 I always wanted to convert to the monastic life 194
The monks’ sign language 195
Comparing regular and irregular verbs 197
The pronoun man or mon 197
Verbs with a genitive object 199
From the Old English Life of Euphrosyne 200
The monastic dining hall at mealtimes 205
From the Exeter Book: Riddles 47 and 48 206
16 It happened one night 209
Se halga wer The holy man (from the Old English
prose Life of St Guthlac) 209
Comparing definite article and personal pronoun 211
Use of sum 213
Word order 215
From The Wife’s Lament (lines 27 – 32) 223
Mantat the Anchorite (S 1523) 223
The second ‘raven episode’ from the Life of St Guthlac 225
17 And bishop Æthelnoth travelled to Rome 227
Archbishop Æthelnoth 228
Adverbs 230
Æþelnoð biscop for to Rome (from the Chronicle D 1022) 232
Cultural contexts: Travels to Rome 233
Word order 234
St Alphege (from the Chronicle D 1023) 236
Eadsige 238
18 Archbishop Wulfstan greets king Cnut 241
The MacDurnan Gospels 242
Wulfstan arcebiscop gret Cnut cyning (S 1386) 243
The personal pronouns ic and ge 244
Archbishop Æthelnoth and Toki (S 1464) 246
Archbishop Eadsige and Toki (S 1466) 247
The rich variety of the definite article 248
The Lady Emma (S 1229) 249
Strong adjective endings 251
19 How Wynflæd summoned her witnesses 255
The lawsuit Wynflæd versus Leofwine (S 1454) 255
The Tironian nota 256
Names in the document 258
vi
Reported speech in the subjunctive 262
Grammar: modal verbs 264
Sites along the Ridgeway 266
Cwichelm’s Barrow and the Vikings (from Chronicle C 1006) 268
20 Act like thegns, and deliver my message to the assembly 271
The Herefordshire Lawsuit (S 1462) 272
Wulfstan’s Geþyncðo Promotion Law 275
From The Battle of Maldon (lines 286 – 294) 276
The changing English vocabulary 277
Reading a manuscript in facsimile 281
21 The tide went out 285
From The Battle of Maldon (lines 55b – 83) 286
Capitalization and punctuation in manuscripts 288
A page of the transcript 290
22 I was by the shore 291
Riddles 30b and 60 291
The Old English coronation oath 293
Bibliography 295
Test Yourself answers 310
Old English – English word index 320
Appendices 340
Appendix I: the seven classes of Old English strong verbs 340
Appendix II: map of southern Britain, with names in
Old English 341
vii
Contents
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the following people for their helpful
comments on sections of this book: Dr Stephen Baxter,
Ginny Catmur, Dr Catherine Clarke, Julie Dyson, Tony Harris,
Peter Jackson, Professor Barbara Raw, colleagues and students
at Regent’ s Park College, and the students who participated in the
Old English language classes and lectures at the English Faculty,
University of Oxford.
viii
Meet the author
A teacher at my school once wrote the Old English word c yning
( king ) on the board at the start of a lesson – and cyning is the
fi rst word in Unit 2 of this book. In its short form c ing , very like
modern English king, it appears in the fi rst Old English sentence
in Unit 1. Though I cannot remember the rest of that school lesson,
clearly the word must have stuck, for I work now as a lecturer in
English and the history of English. Just one word kindled a spark
of interest in languages and their literature: French, Latin and
German at school, then German, some Russian and Old English
at university. I taught English and translation studies, mainly
in Germany and Austria, and did teacher training in Wales and
Spain. With that came the realization that real learning is not only
about grammar and translation but also about developing skills
of contextual reading and comprehension, about doing things with
words and thinking in the language. These skills can be acquired
and practised: I see them as equally relevant whether you are
learning modern languages or a language of the past.
Mark Atherton
ix
Meet the author