Online Old English courses may enjoy a new surge of interest from fans of J.R.R. Tolkien as they delve into the depth of the language through his latest book, Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary. Of course, Christopher Tolkien patched the book together from his father’s 1926-era translation of the poem into a prose modern English, two post-1940 compositions titled “Sellic Spell” and “The Lay of Beowulf”, and J.R.R. Tolkien’s own lecture notes written while he was teaching at Oxford.
Before I go too far into this, allow me to shamelessly plug my column on the Tolkien Society’s new blog, of which “In the Grokking of the Beowulf” is my latest contribution. I don’t know enough Old English to teach it, or comment on it very much, but I won’t allow that to get in my way if you don’t mind taking a ride down Speculation Lane with me.
Anglo-Saxon (Old English) scholars can be a contentious, curmudgeonly bunch of people (so can everyone else but we like to describe each other in gratuitous language, so Bob’s your uncle). In other words, they don’t always agree on everything there is to (potentially) agree upon with respect to Old English. Take, for example, the good, old-fashioned word Hwaet (if WordPress has a way for me to use the Anglo-Saxon alphabet, I am too lazy to find it).
For 200 years, according to this November 2013 article from the Independent, Anglo-Saxon scholars have been translating this word as “Lo!” or “Listen!” or DUDES! But in 2011 Dr. George Walkden from the University of Cambridge published a paper in which he argued that it should probably be translated to as “how” (Cf. The status of hwæt in Old English).
Now, in his own translation of “Beowulf” we know that J.R.R. Tolkien translated the word as “Lo!” (see page 13) and in his commentaries he wrote:
A genuine anacrusis — or a note ‘striking up’ at the beginning of a poem. Deriving from minstrel tradition: in origin a call for attention. It is ‘outside the metre’. It occurs at the beginning of other poems; but it is not confined to the beginnings of poems nor to verse.
Perhaps one of the key technical points here is that the word (as used at the beginning of “Beowulf”) is “outside the metre”. The Independent article says:
Dr Walkden said his conclusion – based on the positioning of the word relative to the verb within 141 other clauses studied – would put him at odds with the conventional wisdom on the subject.
Dr. Walkden’s comparative sources are Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, Aelfric’s Metrical Lives of Saints, and the Old Saxon Heliand.
The amount of Old English poetry that has survived to this day runs to about 30,000 lines and of those 30,000 lines some 4,000 of them are used in “Beowulf”. It’s a pretty big player in the Old English poetry field. Still, Dr. Walkden apparently found enough other literature for his comparative analysis. So I am sure that the scholarly community will have taken a look at what he says on the subject.
But I find it curious that Hwaet is also said (by the Online Etymology Dictionary) to be the root word for modern “what”. What? Two Old English words with the same spelling but meaning “what” and “how”? How interesting.
According to the Etymology Online Dictionary, we derive modern “how” from Old English hu. Confused? Surely I am, too. And professional linguists are often quick to point out that using online references like this is not always the most reliable path to enlightenment, so take these etymological notes with a grain of salt. The dictionary does trace both words back to the same proposed Proto-IndoEuropean root *kwo-, for what it’s worth (and how is that for a philological play on words?).
Dr. Walkden compares hwaet to Old Saxon huat so I hope I can be excused for not keeping my “hows” and “whats” clinically separate; I’m just a poor lay person walking in the fields of etymologists. I must be feeling cheeky, today.
Scanning through his paper, I see a few examples of how he proposes to translate the use of hwaet and I can sometimes see it working as “what” rather than “how” but I don’t have all the data and I certainly don’t have a working knowledge of the Old English and Saxon languages. I must be missing something, but using “what” instead of “lo” or “how” makes the opening line of “Beowulf” work better for me (I cannot possibly check all translations, of course).
Tolkien’s prose translation reads: “Lo! the glory of the kings of the people of the Spear-Danes in days of old we have heard tell, how those princes did deeds of valour.” That’s a mouth full jawbreaking line worthy of Gimli on a tour through Khazad-dum. It also doesn’t conform to the rules of modern English as I learned them.
Frances B. Gummere, whose translation can be found online in various places, translated the opening as: “LO, praise of the prowess of people-kings of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped, we have heard, and what honor the athelings won!”
Dr. David Breeden translated the opening as: “Listen: You have heard of the Danish Kings in the old days and how they were great warriors.”
Seamus Heaney translated the opening this way: “So. The Spear-Danes in days gone by and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness.”
Benjamin Slade translates the opening thus: “Listen! We –of the Spear-Danes in the days of yore, of those clan-kings– heard of their glory.”
You know, it sure looks to me like these translators are all forcing that opening to work. Of course, translating poetry is a very difficult craft. The translator must make some very important decisions, such as whether to mimic (as nearly as possible) the original structure of the poem, to preserve the literal meaning of words that may have been used metaphorically (or to substitute appropriate metaphors as much as possible), and to enhance readability for the target audience.
So there is no one right way to translate a poem from one language to another; hence, there is no one right way to translate “Beowulf”. Kevin Kiernen commented on the Tolkien translation, saying:
The lofty metre of Beowulf is lost even in admirable poetic versions like Seamus Heaney’s, which is recognised as a new poem, often called Heaneywulf. Prose translations such as Tolkien’s claim to be more “faithful”, but this fidelity refers to the literal translation of poetry, which captures only the facts of the story in unavoidably stodgy prose, struggling to sort out the word order while losing the grandeur of verse.
I left a somewhat snarky comment there, to which Professor Kiernen replied quite graciously. I deplore poetry snobbery in all its forms and mistook his remark as something of the sort; but I was probably just reading the article too quickly. Kiernan is Emeritus Professor of English at University of Kentucky and he has taught “Beowulf” courses in both translated and untranslated form. This is just one of those areas where I am out of my league. Professor Kiernan is also editor of The Electronic Beowulf, which is a pretty authoritative site. I am REALLY out of my league.
Still, being in the wrong league never stopped me from trying, or at least from asking questions. Frankly, I ask on behalf of all extra-league lay people everywhere: why can’t hwaet be translated as “what” in “Beowulf”? Or, rather, why do translators choose not to use that translation?
And so, finally, what led me to write all this (and to title this post as it is) was that I wondered if it was possible to learn Old English online. I have bookmarked and downloaded various Old English and Gothic dictionaries through the years to assist my Tolkien research, but I never looked to see how many online courses there are. The University of Texas offers one. And, I am not sure, but I think Professor Michael Drout mentioned in his “Beowulf” launch party chat that Mythgard Institute will be offering an Old English course in the Fall of 2014 (I’m sorry — I can’t listen to the whole 7 hours again just to confirm what he actually said — maybe it’s only a course in “Beowulf”).
I think more people will take up an interest in Old English (and learn it better than I have) because of the Tolkien book. Many Anglo-Saxonists in the Tolkien scholarly field have said they were inspired to study the language because of their love for Tolkien. So, while the book has been released to some controversy regarding its usefulness or necessity I think that if it helps to spur lay scholarship in Old English that will be a good thing. There may not be many jobs in Old English literature but there certainly are a lot of discussions about it — and, frankly, most of us could use some brushing up on our “hwaet”s and “hu”s.
Or, as they say in the forums, “DUDES!”