{"id":106961,"date":"2016-04-03T21:52:12","date_gmt":"2016-04-03T21:52:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2016\/04\/03\/elodieunderglass-janeymac-ie-englishable\/"},"modified":"2016-04-03T21:52:12","modified_gmt":"2016-04-03T21:52:12","slug":"elodieunderglass-janeymac-ie-englishable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2016\/04\/03\/elodieunderglass-janeymac-ie-englishable\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

elodieunderglass<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

janeymac-ie<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

englishable<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Old English just has some wonderful words and kennings. I mean, really: <\/p>\n

Their word for sea<\/i>? It was often swan-rad<\/i> or \u201croad of the swan.\u201d Spider<\/i> was gangelwaefre,<\/i> literally \u201cthe walking weaver.\u201d They had the simple and now-obsolete word uht,<\/i> which describes that time just before sunrise when mist still hangs heavy over all the fields and lakes and the last few stars are still out. <\/p>\n

\u2026Also, they didn\u2019t say body.<\/i> They said ban-cofan,<\/i> which means \u201cbone-cave,\u201d and if you don\u2019t think that\u2019s some hardcore shit right there then you need to get out of my face before I turn your skull into a mead-cup.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Disclaimer: this knowledge is from long ago and probably has holes and inaccuracies in it. I would appreciate correction if needed, and I would appreciate non-dickhead correction even more!\u00a0<\/p>\n

These kinds of kennings were probably not used in regular everyday speech, but were used in poetry to A) make the poem sound cool (because they do sound very cool,) and B) help with alliteration. Anglo-Saxon poets did not make their poems rhyme the way we do these days. Instead, there was alliteration within each line of the poem. For example, this is the opening of Beowulf:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Hw\u00e6t! We G<\/b>ardena \u00a0 \u00a0 in g<\/b>eardagum,
\u00fe<\/b>eodcyninga, \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00fe<\/b>rym gefrunon, <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

h<\/b>u \u00f0a \u00e6<\/b>\u00feelingas \u00a0 \u00a0 e<\/b>llen fremedon. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve bolded the alliterated words. As you can see, not every word had to be alliterative, and\u00a0\u201call vowels plus H\u201d counted. (Which seems legit. I\u2019m not gonna judge an Anglo-Saxon poet for taking a shortcut.)<\/p>\n

The name Beowulf (which is the name of the hero of the poem) is itself a kenning. It means bear and directly translates to bee-wolf. (Since bears would come and take honey from bees like a wolf taking livestock from people.)<\/p>\n

If you read some of the poems in LotR (the ones shared between Merry and Pippin and the Ents come to mind,) they\u2019re structured like this but written in modern English.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

*lays my head on @janeymac-ie<\/a>\u2018s chest* keep talking you\u2019re making me feel better<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

elodieunderglass: janeymac-ie: englishable: Old English just has some wonderful words and kennings. I mean, really: Their word for sea? It was often swan-rad or \u201croad of the swan.\u201d Spider was gangelwaefre, literally \u201cthe walking weaver.\u201d They had the simple and now-obsolete word uht, which describes that time just before sunrise when mist still hangs heavy … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[677,13119,4],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106961"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106961\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}