" Ongean sceal ic beon
an beorn
swa swa wæs ic a geboren "
Welcome to my Old English pages. These are a few pages devoted to the Old English tongue, and in particular to the noble (foolhardy?) band who have gone beyond the existing Old English texts. They have struck out to write new works in the old tongue, wedded to authenticity but where necessary inventing words for which the English of a thousand years ago had no words.
Stede ("Places"); British Place Names,
and Scire ("Counties")
Linked to Stede is
a map of Englaland and eall Breten in his scirum.
Land Þisra Worulde ("Lands of this World") (with links to places within certain lands).
Underfierdstemmgerefa Timoþeus Collins æt Guþæfen (Lt-Col Tim Collins on the eve of Battle)
Some Old Poems in Older English
Macbeoðen; Macbeth in Old English.
Others have other projects. (What else could I do: Amleð, Dena Æþeling? Perhaps Midsummer Nihta Swefn? Too ambitious, for now, but if anyone better at this than I am would like to lend a hand...
There is plenty out there on the web. There is even an Englisc Wicipædia being built.
Why do things like this? Why Not? There are many who still insist on setting things into Latin when Latin has been dead far longer than Englisc. The Roman Pontiff even employs a raft of scholars dedicated to doing just that, and to inventing old words for new things. I have no taste for Latin. My home speech is English, a good, steadfast speech born from the woods, wastes and islands of the Angles and Saxons, grown into loveliness among the sea-girt fields of the most blessed land of them all. There are many who somehow feel that a thing is more official if put in Latin or French. Is it a race-memory of forced submission to French-speaking Norman lords, or the grand authority of the law, with its technical terms in Norman-French and Latin? Is it the dead hand of Latin dominating scholarship in past ages, or the siren mystery of Latin used in the idolatrous ceremonies of the Church of Rome? Is it Linnæus? Is it a wish to carve ones words in stone rather than in speech which turns in its shape over the many years? Is it after all only a game, to hide ones words in a code and make it look like a grand statement carved in marble when it might be no more than a a bland phrase?
Perhaps it is all these things. Then again the Romans used Greek tags as we use Latin. In the Commonwealth where native languages survive, the English of the Empire is used the same way. Thus each nation looks back to the last culture it admires.
My reaction to unnecessary latinism is to hold Old English up to the light and say "Here is a tongue as great as any, as sweet and lovely from the tongue and the pen; a bard's tongue, a warrior's tongue, a king's, a learned man's and a farmhand's tongue. Homer and Æschylus, Publius Vergilius Maro and his fellows all charm the head senses (at least in translation). However Cynewulf and Ælfric and the nameless writers of Beowulf and the Seafarer also hit the chest and yell "Here is life, and not in a dreamworld but home!" Shakespeare is their heir, not Virgil's. Let us then celebrate Englisc.
The pages here are not scholarly. I produced them for amusement more than
anything. If I have got the grammar or other things wrong then do let me know:
Rupert Barnes