Old and Middle and Early modern English (language change cont.

OLD ENGLISH
Texts taken from: http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/vorttxt.htm
The base text is the Winchester Manuscript (also known as The Parker
Chronicle, or MS A of The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle): Cambridge, Corpus Christi
College MS 173, ff. 1v-32r. This is the oldest surviving MS of the Chronicle and the
only one in which the dialect was not updated into Late West Saxon.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a generic term for the disparate collection of annals
that record the centuries-long history of the Anglo-Saxons, extending in some cases
even beyond the Norman Conquest of 1066. The Chronicle seems to have originated
from a body of historical writings now known as the "common stock." Even the
common stock is relatively late, however, and certainly does not extend back to the
arrival of the Anglo-Saxon peoples to England; this material dates back only to the
late ninth century, and was perhaps written at the request of King Alfred the Great (r.
871-99). The authors of the common stock retroactively devised entries for the dates
before their own time; for these entries, the authors mined existing sources like
Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People and various local annals. The
common stock spread quickly throughout England, and Chronicles in different places
took on a more local color.

The Adventus Saxorum, the traditional account of the coming to Britain of the
Germanic tribes. This account indicated that the Germanic peoples came to Britain in
a sweeping invasion that defeated and displaced the Romano-Celtic Britons; the
British cleric Gildas, writing in the sixth century, popularized this tale in his treatise On
the Ruin of Britain. Two centuries later, the Anglo-Saxon historian Bede borrowed
Gildas' account when he added this episode to his Ecclesiastical History. The
compilers of the common stock of the Chronicle borrowed their text from Bede. Thus
the Chronicle reiterates the Adventus Saxorum tradition, but the truth is that the
Germanic settlement of Britain was less a full-scale invasion and more a gradual
migration over the course of the fifth century.

According to the chronicles, Vortigern was the fifth-century British king who reigned
at the time of the Adventus Saxorum. Vortigern is said to have invited warriors from
Germanic tribes to Britain in order to help defeat the Picts and various other groups
that were harrassing the British people. After defeating the Britons' enemies, the
story goes, these Germanic mercenaries turned against their former employers and
sent word to their kinsmen that the island of Britain was ripe for the taking; the
Germanic peoples then came to Britain and seized the island for themselves, driving
the Britons into the land now called Wales. The Welsh, linguistic and cultural heirs of
the Britons, blamed Vortigern for the Germanic conquest of Britain.

Ultimately Vortigern became incorporated into the Arthurian legends because many
tales indicate that Arthur, the national hero of the Welsh, battled against the Saxons
who had seized the island from Vortigern. Writers in the High Middle Ages and
afterwards explicitly linked the story of Vortigern to the rapidly-expanding Arthurian
mythos.
 Listen to the TEXT fragment Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.wav on Sharepoint
Text & Translation AD 449

AN CCCCXLIX.
449.
Her Mauricius 7 Ualentines onfengon rice 7 ricsodon uii winter.
a)

7 on hiera dagum Hengest 7 Horsa, from Wyrtgeorne geleaþade, Bretta

kyninge, gesohton Bretene on þam staþe þe is genemned Ypwinesfleot -- ærest
Brettum to fultume, ac hie eft on hie fuhton.
b)

Se cing het hi feohtan agien Pihtas, 7 hi swa dydan, 7 sige hæfdan swa hwar
swa hi comon.
c)

Hi ða sende to Angle 7 heton heom sendan mare fultum, 7 heom seggan

Brytwalana nahtnesse 7 ðæs landes cysta.
d)

Hy ða sendan heom mare fultum.

e)

Þa comon þa menn of þrim mægþum Germanie: of Eald Seaxum, of Anglum, of

Iotum.
f)

Of Iotum comon Cantware 7 Wihtware -- þæt ys seo mæið ðe nu eardaþ on

Wiht -- 7 þæt cynn on Westsexum þe man gyt hæt Iutna cyn.
g)

Of Eald Seaxon comon East Sexa, 7 Suð Sexa, 7 West Sexan.

h)

Of Angle comon, se a siððan stod westi betwyx Iutum 7 Seaxum, East Engla,
Midel Angla, Mearca, 7 ealle Norðhymbra.
i)
Match the modern English translation to the Old English

1f These men came from the three races of Germany -- from the Old Saxons,
from the Angles, and from the Jutes.

2i From Angeln, which afterwards stood deserted between the Jutes and
Saxons, came the East Angles, Middle Angles, Mercians, and all the
Northumbrians.

3b In their days Hengest and Horsa, invited by Vortigern, king of the Britons,
sought Britain on the shore called Ebbsfleet -- at first as protection for the
Britons, but later they fought against them.

4a Here Mauricius and Valentinian seized the empire and reigned for seven
winters.

5g From the Jutes came the Kentish people and the Wightish people -- that is the
race that now dwells on Wight -- and that race in Wessex that is still called the
race of the Jutes.

6c The king commanded them to fight against the Picts. They did so, and had
victory wherever they went.

7d Then they sent to Angeln and called on them to send more forces, and to tell
people about the worthlessness of the Britons and the merits of their land.

8h From the Old Saxons came the East Saxons, the South Saxons, and the West
Saxons.

9e Then they sent them more support.

OLD ENGLISH

Deor (9th or 10th century)

Deor is one of the few Old English poems with stanzas and a refrain. “The speaker,
Deor, is a scop who has been ousted from his lord’s favor by a gifted rival
Heorrenda.” We only find this out towards the end of the poem. “In the first five of the
poem’s six stanzas the poet alludes to well-known misfortunes recorded in Germanic
history and legend: the binding of Weland, the rape of Hild, the oppression suffered
by the Goths under the tyrant Eormanric. He concludes each stanza with the
statement, “þæs ofereode, þisses swa mæg.” (“That passed away, so may this.”) In
the sixth stanza he makes a generalisaion: God in His wisdom grants rewards to
some, but to others He dispenses “a burden of woe.” Only then does Deor feel
entitled to speak of his own sorrow, and he does so with a dignity and restraint that
leave no room for self-pity. Having seen his private disappointment in the larger
context of the pervasive mutability of human affairs in a universe governed by God,
the poet once more concludes, “That passed away, so may this.” (Zesmer 1961: 46)
See also Hamer pp. 87-93.
Information taken from: Guide to English Literature: From Beowulf through Chaucer
and Medieval Drama. David M. Zesmer. 1961

Fragment from Deor

Provide the Dutch translation – use the English modern translation by Seamus
Heaney to guide you.

Þæt ic bi me sylfum secgan wille

þæt ic hwile wæs Heodeninga scop,

dryhtne dyre. Me wæs Deor noma.

Ahte ic fela wintra folgað tilne,

Holdne hlaford, oþþæt Heorrenda nu,

Leoðcræftig monn londryht geþah,

Þæt me eorla hleo ær gesealde.

Þæs ofereode, þisses swa mæg!

English translation by Seamus Heaney from The Word Exchange: Anglo-Saxon

Poems in Translation. Edited by Greg Delanty an Michael Matto, 2011

Of myself, this much I have to say:

for a time I was a poet of the Heoden people,
dear to my lord. Deor was my name.
For years I enjoyed my duties as a minstel
and that lord’s favor, but now the freehold
and land titles he bestowed upon me once
he has vested in Heorrenda, master of verse-craft.
That passed over, this can too

Eddie Izzard buys a cow in Friesland speaking Old English

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeC1yAaWG34
MIDDLE ENGLISH

“One of the most significant changes between Old and Middle English was the
gradual decay of inflectional endings. (…) Inflectional loss shows up in:
(1) Loss of grammatical gender;
(2) Simplification (not so rapid in the South) of gender, number and case agreement
in adjectives, qualifiers, quantifiers, and demonstratives; and
(3) The general loss of dative and genitive plural cases.
In other words, the language contact situation in the Danelaw area, presumably with
widespread bilingualism, seems to have led to a grammatically unstable situation in
which speakers were uncertain about endings. (…)
The most important innovations were the introduction of the {-es} ending in the third
person singular, present tense, where the South continued to use {-eð}, which is
often spelled <-eth>. (…) (Gramley 2012: 54)

On PIDGINIZATION
“In pidginization there is massive simplification including the loss of inflections and
the reduction of grammatical categories such as gender, case, number, tense, and
aspect. For example, in a purely fictitious pidgin made up solely for illustrative
purposes, a speaker might say something like no me buy book. This is ambiguous
due to the missing tense and aspect categories, and could mean the speaker doesn’t
ever buy books, didn’t buy a book on a particular occasion, or doesn’t want to buy a
book or books.” (Gramley 2012: 57)

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

“The Canterbury Tales contains a wide variety of subjects and literary genres, from
racy fabliaux to sober tales of Christian suffering, in accents that range from the
elegant opening sentence to the General Prologue to the thumping doggerel of Sir
Thopas and the solemn prose of the Parson. The whole is lent coherence and
verisimilitude by a framing narrative: a pilgrimage provides the occasion for
gathering a broadly diverse group of characters to tell a series of tales
intercalated with narrative links, in which the pilgrims argue, interrupt one
another, or comment on the tales that have been told as they move through the
fourteenth-century countryside to their common goal.
It is not known exactly when Chaucer began the Tales. The pilgrimage is traditionally
dated 1387… The composition of the Tales extended over a considerable length of
time, and perhaps the idea of the Tales evolved rather than originated in a specific
moment.” (p.3)

General Prologue
“The General Prologue was presumably written early in the Canterbury period,
though it was not necessarily the first part of the Tales to be composed and was
probably revised from time to time…
The portraits of Chaucer’s pilgrims … owe a great deal to medieval traditions of
literary portraiture, including the series of allegorical descriptions in The Romaunt of
the Rose. The hypocritical friar, the hunting monk, the thieving miller and others are
familiar types in medieval estates satires, in which representatives of various
classes and occupations are portrayed with a satiric emphasis on the vices
peculiar to their stations in life.” (p.5)
From: The Riverside Chaucer. / Third Edition. General Editor: Larry D. Benson, 1988.
http://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/

http://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/language.htm
Information on Middle English.

http://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/canttales/gp/
Information on the General Prologue of The Canterbury Tales

http://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/teachslf/gp-par.htm
Interlinear translation: Middle English into modern English

Underline in red all words of Germanic origin.

Underline in blue all words of Romanic (Norman French) origin.

1 Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote

When April with its sweet-smelling showers

2 The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,

Has pierced the drought of March to the root,

3 And bathed every veyne in swich licour

And bathed every vein (of the plants) in such liquid

4 Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

By which power the flower is created;

5 Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth

When the West Wind also with its sweet breath,

6 Inspired hath in every holt and heeth

In every wood and field has breathed life into

7 The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne

The tender new leaves, and the young sun

8 Hath in the Ram his half cours yronne,

Has run half its course in Aries,

9 And smale foweles maken melodye,

And small fowls make melody,

10 That slepen al the nyght with open ye

Those that sleep all the night with open eyes

11 (So priketh hem Nature in hir corages),

(So Nature incites them in their hearts),

12 Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,

Then folk long to go on pilgrimages,

13 And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,

And professional pilgrims to seek foreign shores,

14 To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;

To distant shrines, known in various lands;

15 And specially from every shires ende

And specially from every shire's end

16 Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende,

Of England to Canterbury they travel,

17 The hooly blisful martir for to seke,

To seek the holy blessed martyr,

18 That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.

Who helped them when they were sick.

19 Bifil that in that seson on a day,

It happened that in that season on one day,

20 In Southwerk at the Tabard as I lay

In Southwark at the Tabard Inn as I lay

21 Redy to wenden on my pilgrimage

Ready to go on my pilgrimage

22 To Caunterbury with ful devout corage,

To Canterbury with a very devout spirit,

23 At nyght was come into that hostelrye

At night had come into that hostelry

24 Wel nyne and twenty in a compaignye

Well nine and twenty in a company

25 Of sondry folk, by aventure yfalle

Of various sorts of people, by chance fallen

26 In felaweshipe, and pilgrimes were they alle,

In fellowship, and they were all pilgrims,

27 That toward Caunterbury wolden ryde.

Who intended to ride toward Canterbury