Æðelgyðe Ellendæda on Wundorlande

[Phyllis]

Just came across this today on Amazon and felt overawed that anyone might want and manage to do this

https://www.amazon.co.uk/%C3%86%C3%B0elgy%C3%B0e-Ellend%C3%A6da-Wundorlande-Adventures-Wonderland/dp/1782011129/ref=s9_simh_gw_g14_i1_r?_encoding=UTF8&fpl=fresh&pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_s=&pf_rd_r=97K8RW9HNJDMM24ZDKJY&pf_rd_t=36701&pf_rd_p=16f14aeb-bd11-4e9e-8c26-9ca0139074ee&pf_rd_i=desktop

Peter Baker, of "Introduction to Old English" fame, produced this. Perhaps you all knew already but I was delighted to find out! Another thing I may one day treat myself to.

[Eanflaed]

Hadn't heard of him (not having done OE course ), but checked him out - he's a professor in the English Department at the University of Virginia.

[David]

It is funny that you should mention this book as I heard about it for the first time last week. Unfortunately I cannot remember where. I have quickly checked my language books, including one by Peter Baker but could not find it. Maybe it was on Amazon when looking for possible book presents.


I feel that I should get ti sometime but that probably means also getting the modern English version.


Will you now do something like this?

[Phyllis]

Will you now do something like this?

Sadly I think Lewis Carroll is a bit beyond me for the foreseeable future! At the moment I'm thinking about a song, having been inspired by David H's carols.

[David]

I was interested that Phyllis said that I had inspired her to try translating a song. I intend to finish the year with one last carol. Then next year I want to translate a kiddies book, inspired by Phyllis. It will be good to add another of these stories into my bank of recitals.


For my own interest it would be nice to translate a slightly bigger book, probably for a slightly older child. I was not thinking of the size of the Lewis Carrol book. I think that members would soon get bored if I tried to do it on line.

[Eanflaed]

How about one of Dick King Smith's books? My children really enjoyed them and they are quite short. (e.g Dragon boy or Babe)

[Bowerthane]

Great scot, how fascinating.  May just treat myself to a copy of that, with Yuletide hoving into view.  If the clients’ cheques come in, anyway.

But hasn’t somebody translated Winnie the Poo into Old English, too?

( And I saw The Hobbit in Latin in Dillons a while back.)

What next?  My vote would be for The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett or Frost in May by Antonia White ( which isn’t really a children’s book, but it’s the most accomplished and bittersweet novel about childhood I know) but does anyone have any preferences?  I’d be a bit interested in how Stig of the Dump worked out in Old English too, only I fear such a thing would pander to the negative caricature the Anglo-Saxons have as smelly grunts in mud huts, amongst people who don’t know better and even some who should.  I suppose The Wind in the Willows and The Borrowers ( why do I think that would work?)  would also be candidates, but what about Ballet Shoes, The Silver Sword or Northern Lights?  Would any of Roald Dahl’s books work in Old English, or do you think he’s too idiosyncratic?   Or anything by Hans Christian Anderson?  The Brothers Grim?  Bet this Southern professor would make a good job of Mark Twain’s Brer Rabbit stories, too.   

Or if the film Whistle Down the Wind was based on a novel, that? 

And there’s always Fifty Shades of Grey for those who had one of those kinds of childhood ( Dad got religion/ works for the BBC/ had some shady past in the Liberal Party, or something)

( Anything but C. S. Lewis, grr!!! Don’t get me started...)


Eanflaed: have you checked your personal messages? I’ve been trying to get through to you all week, but I’m not sure I’ve got sense out of the PM function and Virgin emails is, yet again, playing up.

[Phyllis]

Ooh.

Brer Rabbit might be a go-er! One of my favourites is the one where he begs Brer Fox not to throw him in the bramble patch

[Eanflaed]

Blimey Bowerthane, who's going to translate all those tomes?? Tho I'd be interested to see someone try Fifty Shades of Grey (haven't met anybody yet who's admitted to reading it!).

Yes I have finally read your PM - sorry, been away at a funeral - and have replied. How did you get that part of your post in red Btw?

[cynewulf]

Why not Beatrix Potter. Relatively short and with enduring charm...

[Eanflaed]

Or How to Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell - it would be easy to turn a story of young Viking warriors into Anglo-Saxon ones. Some of the boys' names would be interesting to translate!

[Bowerthane]

__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Brer Rabbit might be a go-er! One of my favourites is the one where he begs Brer Fox not to throw him in the bramble patch

__________________________________________________________________________________________________



Welll... if my not 100% professional ability serves, “Just don’t throw me into that briar patch, over there!” works out as:

Ne lá wierp mé þǽm brémelsplotte, ġeond!


Though I dare say David can improve in that? 

But what would you do for ‘rabbit’?  Old English has no word for rabbits, since they are supposed to have been introduced by the Normans. 

The impression I’m under is that ‘coney’ either, a) existed in Old English but referred to a baby squirrel or, b) is another loan word, via French, from Latin that didn’t appear until Middle English as coni or conni.  ‘Rabbit’ itself seems to be a loan word from Dutch appearing first in Middle English as rabet, having picked up the French -et suffix.   

One might coin a kenning I suppose with *féol-hara, ‘burrowing hare’ or *holh-hara, ‘hole-hare’.  Yet ġesíþas might like to tell me what they think of *delf-hara ‘digging, burrowing hare’ since that’s as far as I’ve got with the lyric to White Rabbit, originally written and released by Jefferson Airplane in the 1960s. Emilíana Torrini's cover version of this supplies the backing music to the second of the science-fantasy action sequences in Sucker Punch.  The script of which I am still pegging away at.  The action scenes are somewhat skimpy on dialogue so I gave myself the lyrics of the music to do.

The first two verses are almost fit to be seen:

One pill makes you larger                                       
And one pill makes you small                                     
And the ones that mother gives you                 
Don’t do anything at all                                 
Go ask Alice                                                   
When she’s ten feet tall

And if you go chasing rabbits                                     
And you know you’re going to fall                             
Tell ‘em a hookah-smoking caterpillar           
Has given you the call                         
Call Alice                                                       
When she was just small                                 


Which are working out as:

An ǽlfcorn maciaþ þé micel
And án ǽlfcorn maciaþ þé smæl
And þá þá módor giefþ þé                                           
Lá ne dóþ náwiht
Gá ascian Alis
Ðonne héo béo tíen fét lang

And ġif þú gǽst delfharas éhtan
And þú cnáwest þú wilt feallan
Spell híe éþfæt-ǽþiende léafwyrm
Ǽr ġeaf þé clipunge
Cíeg Alis
Ðonne héo wæs ac lyttel


But this is a work in progress so please ( David!) don’t be too critical, just yet.  If memory serves posl has to replace ǽlfcorn if it wasn’t the other way round.  Also you’ll notice I plumped for spelling ‘Alice’ phonetically rather than risk being too clever, and introducing a cumbersome number of syllables, by looking into the etymology of the name. 

Yet now I can’t ignore Æðelgyðe, since Professor Baker has thought fit to use it!




                                                                                  BREAKING NEWS!!!


Guess what turned up on the doormat, this morning!  Yes, the clients’ cheques did come in, so I treated myself to a copy and, blimey, it’s here already.  I dunno… one minute I’m wondering which one of my teenage fan letters won Kate Bush over to the cause of civic patriotism, balanced budgets, competitive education and ‘middle of the road’ merchant capitalism: now this!  I swear I only ordered it from Amazon last Friday.  Even the illustrations are Old English-y.

Obviously I’m a bit excited but already I notice that the White Rabbit is simply the Hwíta Hara ( Baker uses acute accents instead of macrons, too) and you’re left to your general knowledge and common sense for how Alice ends up down his crypel.  The caterpillar is a tréowwyrm not the léafwyrm I plumped for, and Professor Baker’s appears to be sipping from a mead-horn, not the hookah I took trouble with ( have to check with the original!).  The Hwíta Hara has a scramaseax at his belt, too.

In the glossary for anachronisms I notice he’s got tídgemet for ‘timepiece’, which may be useful as I was struggling with that in the chapter from Dickens’ Great Expectations at which I am also pegging away.  Baker’s handling of the playing cards is going to be interesting for that, too. I notice that Mock-turtle soup becomes lygebyrdlingbroþ and the March Hare is, quite properly, the Hlýdhara.  Croquet is bíetlgamen, by the way.

Crumbs, what a lot to think about!  And I’m supposed to be working too; a new MS arrived in the same post, and having Before the Dawn to listen to has led me astray enough, already.  Cripes!  Look, would everybody mind terribly if I just shot off and enjoyed my !%£* ing self!? I seriously doubted this would arrive in time for Yule.

Thanks again Phyllis for telling us about this.


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The moral right of the author to be identified with those happy feet, I’ve got those happy feet, has been asserted.

[Bowerthane]

More news: the Cheshire cat is the Ceasterscíre Catt, the Mad Tea Party is Se Wóda Gebeorscipe, the Queen of Hearts is the Heortena Cwén ( in her Old English crown and robes), the Dormouse is the Sisemús, “Can you play croquet?” is Canst þú þæt bíetlgamen plegian?, “Off with his head!” is Ásléa him of þæt heafod! and “curiouser” is seldcúþlicor.


And seldcúþlicor…

[David]

More news: the Cheshire cat is the Ceasterscíre Catt, the Mad Tea Party is Se Wóda Gebeorscipe, the Queen of Hearts is the Heortena Cwén ( in her Old English crown and robes), the Doormouse is the Sisemús, “Can you play croquet?” is Canst þú þæt bíetlgamen plegian?, “Off with his head!” is Ásléa him of þæt heafod! and “curiouser” is seldcúþlicor.


And seldcúþlicor…

That all seems to make sense except I do not understand why “him of” is not “of him”
Then my dictionary says that “sisemūs” means “dormouse”. Now I know that “mūs” means “mouse” but what is this “sise”?

[Jayson]

I've read Paul Kingsnorth's 'The Wake' which is in 'Anglish' and great fun, but are there any other books we are likely to know such as Alice in Wonderland, which have been translated into Old English?