Hrodulf readnosa hrandeor

[cosmolinguist]

Bit late, but here's something awesome I first saw this Christmas season.

“Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” in Anglo-Saxon meter, by Philip Craig Chapman-Bell. Via Etymonline on Facebook, who says “An Internet classic; but I can no longer find it where I first found it (Cathy Ball’s Old English reference pages).”
Incipit gestis Rudolphi rangifer tarandus

Hwæt, Hrodulf readnosa hrandeor –
Næfde þæt nieten unsciende næsðyrlas!
Glitenode and gladode godlice nosgrisele.
Ða hofberendas mid huscwordum hine gehefigodon;
Nolden þa geneatas Hrodulf næftig
To gomene hraniscum geador ætsomne.
Þa in Cristesmæsseæfne stormigum clommum,
Halga Claus þæt gemunde to him maðelode:
“Neahfreond nihteage nosubeorhtende!
Min hroden hrædwæn gelæd ðu, Hrodulf!”
Ða gelufodon hira laddeor þa lyftflogan –
Wæs glædnes and gliwdream; hornede sum gegieddode
“Hwæt, Hrodulf readnosa hrandeor,
Brad springð þin blæd: breme eart þu!”

Rendered literally into modern English:
Here begins the deeds of Rudolph, Tundra-Wanderer

Lo, Hrodulf the red-nosed reindeer –
That beast didn’t have unshiny nostrils!
The goodly nose-cartilage glittered and glowed.
The hoof-bearers taunted him with proud words;
The comrades wouldn’t allow wretched Hrodulf
To join the reindeer games.
Then, on Christmas Eve bound in storms
Santa Claus remembered that, spoke formally to him:
“Dear night-sighted friend, nose-bright one!
You, Hrodulf, shall lead my adorned rapid-wagon!”
Then the sky-flyers praised their lead-deer –
There was gladness and music; one of the horned ones sang
“Lo, Hrodulf the red-nosed reindeer,
Your fame spreads broadly, you are renowned!”

I was delighted when I first read this that it really is following Old-English rules of poetry, which didn't expect rhymes like modern English poetry but rather Anglo-Saxon meter, which has alliteration rather than rhyme and uses a lot of compound nouns (known as kennings).

My (sadly never finished, thanks nervous breakdown!) senior-seminar in college was about Old English riddles, which meant I had to read and write so much about kennings, clever/poetic ways of describing things (like "hoof-bearers" or "sky-flyers" in this). Often, it seems these clever constructions were not intended as solely poetic, artistic turns of phrase but created in order to keep to the rules about alliteration. Even if you don't know how the Old English is supposed to sound, you can probably see the alliteration in most of the lines about good old Hrudolf here.

From the same website, All Things Linguistic, where I learned about Hrodulf readnosa hrandeor, I also recently discovered the existence of the History of English podcast which goes into all this stuff in so much detail it's about thirty episodes before you get to anything recognizably English at all. I'm used to the history of English beginning after the Romans left Britain, and this is so much better, going all the way back to Proto-Indo-European and covering thousands of years of linguistic development as it affects English. It might be too detailed for a lots of people but I'm absolutely loving it.

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

Oooh! That podcast is right up my street, down my alley, and into my heart. Thank you.

(Speaking of English and how it changes: isn't "nervous breakdown" an interesting phrase? It has no clinical meaning. OED says 1870 for first use. I would have thought that between Freud and the demons of British psychiatry, somewhere along the way we'd have begun using a more precise term.)

[cosmolinguist]

What constitutes a "breakdown" is something I've been thinking about since Christmas Eve, when something happened I haven't gotten around to writing about yet but I hope to, where my mom described her sister's behavior as "kept having breakdowns" which I thought was pretty uncharitable since I'd have said something like "was overwhelmed/emotional/a bit teary." To me, a breakdown is much bigger deal than that. But you're right, it doesn't really mean one specific thing -- colloquially any more than clinically -- so maybe I'm being unfair.

I'm using it here to mean, basically, my life did actually break down (dropping out of college was the worst but not the only manifestation of this) but if I were being technical I'd just say that years of undiagnosed and untreated depression had taken their toll on me.

[jesse_the_k]

My goodness, your mother's use of the term is so different form my understanding. That wide range in definition may actually increase the stigma of mental illness: nervous breakdown as a huge vague cloud rendering a person untouchable (if not unlovable).

My sister was in a psych hospital for two years from when I was 12, which sensitized me to the language. Back then, I assumed n.b. meant "in the bin." In my adult life "n.b."s were when I couldn't work anymore.

[cosmolinguist]

That wide range in definition may actually increase the stigma of mental illness

I think you have a point there. There's definitely something distancing about it. Not that my family/the local culture have ever done any better when it comes to even normal levels of stress/anxiety/etc, never mind anything at clinical levels... :(

[haggis]

I have subscribed to that ;-) I love the history of language although I find a lot of the stuff about different sounds really confusing!

Frex, you pointed out the difference in sounds between thigh and thy and I can see/hear/feel they are different but I am still mystified by it!

[cosmolinguist]

That kind of difference is mechanical. It's about how our bodies make the sounds. The sounds at the beginning of those two words are the same linguistically, except "thigh" is unvoiced (or voiceless), and "thy" is voiced -- which means you use your vocal cords to make the sound.

The part of my Grammar & Language class that involved us learning stuff like this necessitated a lot of "making weird sounds and paying way more attention to them than usual" and I'm happy to demonstrate that with you if you'd like. :)

You'll hear a lot about voiced/voiceless sounds in the podcast, and about the similarities between how we say different letters (or variations on the same letters) that are due to the mechanics of how we speak.

[sfred]

I like this post very much :-)

[sfred]

I think Scottish (and Northern Irish) accents have this a bit different from English accents, which could add complications? Scottish/N Irish more likely to pronounce "with" (frex) with an unvoiced "th" while English accents give it a voiced "th".

[sfred]

I want to go back to uni and do the rest of a Linguistics degree. (I did one elective module of it in my first year.)

[cosmolinguist]

I'm glad. :)

[po8crg]

I've been listening to that podcast since it only had about five episodes in it, and I'm now feeling guilty I didn't mention it to you two years ago!

I currently have >100 podcasts on my feed, and my history filter alone is into the twenties, and I could easily listen to twice as much - I use them instead of music to drown out open-plan noise at work.

[cosmolinguist]

Don't feel guilty; it's not your responsibility to always think of which of your friends might like the things you like! :)

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

This is amazing! Thank you for sharing.

[cosmolinguist]

It brought me such joy, I'm just glad that sharing it has shared some of that. :)

[theapink.livejournal.com]

Wow! That's brilliant. I miss studying language

[cosmolinguist]

Me tooooo. I've tried a couple of times with foreign languages but not when my life/personality was in a very good space to get anywhere with them. I still daydream about going back to university to do linguistics though it'll never happen!

[theapink.livejournal.com]

I'm not so great with foreign languages, but I almost did Linguistics at Uni and I have a degree in Human Communication

[mockduck.livejournal.com]

Woo, thanks for the educational foray!

[meepalicious.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link to the English history podcast! I think I'll give it a listen - always looking for something I can listen to at work while I shelve books - and I sent it to my friend who's into this stuff, too.

[k425.livejournal.com]

Thank you - I have subscribed to the podcast, which is for my favouritest subject in ever.

[cosmolinguist]

It's my favorite I've found on the subject. I hope you like it too!

[cosmolinguist]

Cool! Hope you both enjoy it. :) I really do.

[cosmolinguist]

I'm interested in foreign languages but never learned enough of any one to be competent at it. I'd have loved to do Lingusitics but I went to such a small school it wasn't an option, so the degree I left unfinished was just in English. But I didn't like the literature nearly as much as the language. :)