Wæstm: Installment Number Four!
Sparkles abound…
Français 9342, fol. 164r.
Eala, welcome back to Modern Old English! I know this post is quite behind schedule; I’ve been ill for most of this week, but I’m back now and fully recovered!
For today’s section of the story, I have another transliterated onomatopoeia (which I discussed in this post) finishing the chapter. These are always a lot of fun to play with as you can be as inventive with the language and letters as you like.
I also have the word for “sunroof”, a thoroughly modern architectural staple and thusly difficult to equate with an Old English phrase. Here I used one of my favorite compound words, heofan-beacene, which literally translates to heaven-beacon, and is a particularly poetic way of saying sunlight. I combined this with hrōfe, meaning roof. Another similarly anachronistic word in this installment was sparkles (a lovely word and concept in any context) for which I used spircanum, to mean roughly “sparks” in the sense of fire. This is one of the great challenges and excitements of learning a seemingly outdated or obsolete language: the ability to stretch the limits of what might be “allowed” or found in original texts, to adapt words that are hundreds of years old to fit an achingly modern world. It is a constant effort to strike the perfect balance between respecting and being guided by the work of your predecessors who shaped the language in the first place, and to simultaneously leave your own mark, your own thoughts and flair and, I might say, your own spircanum.
I hope everyone enjoys this chapter, and the next installment will be up very soon!
Chapter The Fourth: A mysterious passage, a flying fruit, and excessive glitter.
He sees a small door, and he opens the door
Hē gesihð þā lytele duru, ond hē untȳnð þā duru
Behind it is a long passage!
Wiþhindan bið sum lang færeld
He rolls in the passage
Hē gewælteð in þām færelde
He is in a large tower with a sunroof
Hē is in þām micelum ture mid sum heofan-beacene hrōfe
With sparkles he bursts through the sunroof
Mid spircanum hē bærstð þurh þām heofan-beacene hrōfe
He flies across the land
Hē gefleogeð for-cuþlice þæm læðe
Wheeee!
Wiiiiiii!