1 00:00:06,370 --> 00:00:10,420 I'm going to reflect a little bit on the English language, first of all, 2 00:00:11,080 --> 00:00:19,510 and then I'm going to mention a few key dates and events which I think are relevant for Tolkien's interest in old English. 3 00:00:19,990 --> 00:00:24,070 And then I'm going to talk to you about old English. 4 00:00:24,610 --> 00:00:30,610 How many people here have actually learnt old English or taught themselves old English? 5 00:00:31,600 --> 00:00:42,880 There are some people in the room. It's always good to say. Well, I will be teaching you some old English today and that will take me down. 6 00:00:42,910 --> 00:00:54,520 Page two. You can say there's some vocabulary I'm going to teach you, and and then we'll will move onto page three, onto the poetry of old English, 7 00:00:54,850 --> 00:01:04,840 and we'll start looking at the old English influence on Tolkien's fiction and broaden it out into wider issues about old English. 8 00:01:05,920 --> 00:01:12,180 But if we think. First of all, then, about the English language and. 9 00:01:15,650 --> 00:01:26,030 Consider the fact that old English is really our language because old English is simply our language. 10 00:01:26,060 --> 00:01:32,270 If you go back down the generations far enough, it's not a separate language in that sense. 11 00:01:33,380 --> 00:01:41,570 But the fact of language is and people who sometimes write very indignant letters to the times, forget this. 12 00:01:42,020 --> 00:01:50,270 That language is changing all the time. I can even hear my students pronouncing certain words differently. 13 00:01:50,630 --> 00:01:54,200 Over the couple of decades, I've been teaching at this university. 14 00:01:54,620 --> 00:02:00,420 People used to say book that nowadays some younger people pronounce it slightly differently. 15 00:02:00,440 --> 00:02:03,650 Don't want to embarrass anybody here by picking on them. 16 00:02:03,920 --> 00:02:07,340 How do you say book? Do you say book? And now I'm a northerner. 17 00:02:07,370 --> 00:02:10,400 I mean, my dad says book, but that's irrelevant. 18 00:02:10,430 --> 00:02:15,110 No, there's book and there's. But there's book that's already changing, isn't it? 19 00:02:15,380 --> 00:02:25,310 If you listen to the Queen speaking English now, her accent seems to have changed ever so slightly from earlier recordings of when she was crowned. 20 00:02:25,730 --> 00:02:33,590 So all sorts of things are happening, phonetic changes, but also changes in meanings of words even in the 20th century. 21 00:02:35,090 --> 00:02:39,650 The shape of words has changed. Sentence structure has changed. 22 00:02:40,230 --> 00:02:45,110 And the other thing is that English is a borrowing language. 23 00:02:45,410 --> 00:02:52,250 It didn't used to be, and that's one of the reasons why old English looks so different among several others. 24 00:02:52,940 --> 00:03:07,100 So. If we have a look now at a token and you can see here he is in his study, probably speaking out English in that very picture. 25 00:03:09,470 --> 00:03:19,310 He was influenced by many things such as nature, folklore and his childhood memories of playing by his whole middle. 26 00:03:20,780 --> 00:03:24,140 His first attempt to write a story. 27 00:03:24,440 --> 00:03:30,200 He called it the Green Great Dragon and his mother, who was still around at the time. 28 00:03:30,440 --> 00:03:35,120 So you can't actually say green, great dragon. You have to say great green dragon. 29 00:03:35,990 --> 00:03:40,520 And it's got him thinking and probably turned him into a linguist and a philologist. 30 00:03:42,290 --> 00:03:43,910 He was fascinated by the sea. 31 00:03:45,170 --> 00:03:54,320 And before he went to university, he went on a big adventure, one of the few adventures apart from the terrible one serving in the First World War. 32 00:03:54,350 --> 00:03:59,720 This was his walking expedition through the Alps. 33 00:04:00,830 --> 00:04:08,030 It got into The Hobbit with the rock fall and again into the Lord of the Rings, with the falling rocks as they're crossing the mountains. 34 00:04:09,260 --> 00:04:14,360 But it's interesting to look at Tolkien style and thinking about him. 35 00:04:14,780 --> 00:04:20,149 Well, my reflections on language change more terrible. 36 00:04:20,150 --> 00:04:27,290 Still are thunder and lightning in the mountains at night when storms come up from east and west and make war. 37 00:04:28,200 --> 00:04:34,500 I say it's interesting because Tolkien was very concerned to to keep. 38 00:04:35,970 --> 00:04:40,260 The history of English alive. I say English as a borrowing language. 39 00:04:40,620 --> 00:04:49,290 There are political reasons for that because the royal court, after 1066, spoke French and Royal is a good example. 40 00:04:50,510 --> 00:04:53,870 Royal as an adjective. But what noun does it go with? 41 00:04:56,190 --> 00:05:01,410 It goes with the French. Now, why doesn't it? Because just we love where Joe my. 42 00:05:02,300 --> 00:05:10,920 Well I think he pronounces well I am the king and I am William and I speak French and I've tried to learn old English, but it's too difficult for me. 43 00:05:12,180 --> 00:05:19,530 And of course, so the courts was no longer promoting financing literature and culture, 44 00:05:19,530 --> 00:05:28,080 and English and French became and came into the mix of culture in medieval times. 45 00:05:28,560 --> 00:05:37,530 But if you look at some Tolkien style in that chapter in The Hobbit, he uses the word terrific and terrible as synonyms. 46 00:05:37,920 --> 00:05:42,780 And it's a word which goes back to to French and Latin. 47 00:05:43,680 --> 00:05:47,670 What else? The word war came in with the Normans. 48 00:05:48,150 --> 00:05:53,910 It's the Norman French version of gear, just as William is the Norman French version of Gil. 49 00:05:54,420 --> 00:06:02,969 And but most of the other words that go back to old English, if you if you read the chapter, 50 00:06:02,970 --> 00:06:08,740 the king of the Golden Hall, this is really a rich mine for if you're interested in it. 51 00:06:09,000 --> 00:06:13,140 Old English influences from Tolkien on Tolkien. 52 00:06:13,860 --> 00:06:24,810 The King of the Golden Hall is the chapter where the three travellers Gandalf, Legolas and Gimli arrive at the Hall of the Riders of Rohan. 53 00:06:25,410 --> 00:06:33,030 And but even at the level of style, and this is my main point, first of all, if I just read you the beginning of the chapter, 54 00:06:33,360 --> 00:06:40,110 they rode on through sunset and snow, dusk and gathering night, when last they halted and dismounted. 55 00:06:40,350 --> 00:06:45,540 Even Aragorn was stiff and weary. Gandalf only allowed them a few hours rest. 56 00:06:46,110 --> 00:06:51,210 Legolas and Gimli slept and Aragorn lay flat, stretched upon his back, 57 00:06:51,510 --> 00:06:57,000 but kind of stood, leaning on his staff, gazing into the darkness, east and west. 58 00:06:57,330 --> 00:07:01,350 All was silent. And there was no sign or sound of living thing. 59 00:07:02,380 --> 00:07:13,390 I could go on, but most of those words go back to old English, silent as from French and dismounted, I guess must be from French. 60 00:07:14,050 --> 00:07:23,830 But most of those are the words of the core vocabulary of English, of old English and modern English is the same. 61 00:07:24,160 --> 00:07:27,310 It's changed its spelling. It's changed its phonetic form. 62 00:07:27,670 --> 00:07:34,140 But it's still with us. And the same with place names if you think of place names. 63 00:07:34,570 --> 00:07:36,660 I grew up in a place called Blackburn. 64 00:07:37,620 --> 00:07:48,720 Surprisingly, it might mean the Shining River or the Shining Stream rather than a dark stream, but is sitting standing now in a place called Oxford. 65 00:07:48,750 --> 00:07:53,550 It used to be called Oxenford, the place where the oxen couldn't cross the river. 66 00:07:53,970 --> 00:08:02,520 Most of our old names are old English, and so we're actually speaking old English all the time. 67 00:08:02,520 --> 00:08:07,620 When you say you're going to Woodstock. Just change it to Woodstock and you're back in old English. 68 00:08:09,060 --> 00:08:13,650 So there's that fact of of of language change. 69 00:08:13,650 --> 00:08:25,660 But old English is still with us. I'd like to talk now then, about how Tolkien became interested in this early stage of English. 70 00:08:26,560 --> 00:08:31,390 He went to school in Birmingham. As I'm sure you all know, King Edward School. 71 00:08:31,750 --> 00:08:35,500 He and school. Schooling in those days. 72 00:08:36,880 --> 00:08:41,830 Just after the Victorian period was still dominated by languages. 73 00:08:41,830 --> 00:08:45,160 But the two languages that most people learnt were Greek and Latin. 74 00:08:45,850 --> 00:08:55,210 And Tolkien was no exception. But he had a teacher called George Brewerton, who was very interested in English literature as well. 75 00:08:55,480 --> 00:08:59,620 And he noticed Tolkien's burgeoning interest in other languages. 76 00:09:00,310 --> 00:09:02,620 I'm sure if you've been to some of these other lectures, 77 00:09:02,620 --> 00:09:13,090 you have heard of Tolkien's interest in and Welsh inspired by looking at railway tracks and seeing the Welsh written on the side. 78 00:09:14,800 --> 00:09:21,030 George Burton encouraged Tolkien by giving him a primer. 79 00:09:21,040 --> 00:09:27,790 It might even be called a primer. In those days, probably Henry Sweet's Anglo-Saxon primer, 80 00:09:28,210 --> 00:09:39,190 or perhaps even Henry Sweet's first steps in Anglo-Saxon and which was published in 1897 and was probably still on sale in the shops. 81 00:09:39,610 --> 00:09:45,930 And this. Inspired Tolkien's first interest in the language. 82 00:09:46,290 --> 00:09:51,060 And it was a historical interest. It wasn't quite the aesthetic interest of Welsh, 83 00:09:51,330 --> 00:09:58,770 although he did enjoy the sounds of old English and one of the features of Old English, which I'm about to show you, is that. 84 00:09:59,740 --> 00:10:06,520 Even though a lot of the words and especially our everyday words go back to old English quite often. 85 00:10:06,520 --> 00:10:12,550 They were a little richer in their phonology in earlier times. 86 00:10:12,940 --> 00:10:19,360 So we say love or where I grew up, we say love. And the word for love in old English was love. 87 00:10:19,360 --> 00:10:26,540 Nouveau. Nouveau. And too like his like and so monosyllabic words. 88 00:10:26,550 --> 00:10:32,340 Some of them have come straight into English grass mint grass shape meant [INAUDIBLE]. 89 00:10:32,790 --> 00:10:36,329 But some of the words, you know, were two syllables. 90 00:10:36,330 --> 00:10:39,990 And and so there's a certain richness to the vocabulary. 91 00:10:40,320 --> 00:10:45,240 And it was a very compact language. If you want to say friend, you said friend. 92 00:10:45,720 --> 00:10:52,710 And if you wanted to add a and a suffix to you, you would say friendship. 93 00:10:53,280 --> 00:11:02,999 And that word, friendship is still with us. But if you wanted to say royal, you didn't borrow from a foreign language as we do nowadays. 94 00:11:03,000 --> 00:11:09,900 We have you take the word king, which is cunning, and you change the ending to kin leech. 95 00:11:11,430 --> 00:11:16,169 And that was enough. So you didn't have to talk about the Royal Mail. 96 00:11:16,170 --> 00:11:21,240 If they had a postal service in those days, it would have been the kingly mail service. 97 00:11:23,110 --> 00:11:28,860 So so there's something much more compact and and logical about the way you form words in old English. 98 00:11:30,380 --> 00:11:33,790 And as a student at Oxford and. 99 00:11:34,930 --> 00:11:39,520 At first Tolkien was still studying and studying the classics. 100 00:11:40,000 --> 00:11:45,159 But again, he had this interest and he was an orphan by this stage. 101 00:11:45,160 --> 00:11:51,460 But his aunt seems to have been a kind of a catalyst for his interest in poetry. 102 00:11:51,730 --> 00:12:01,750 And he was staying at his aunt's farm in 1914, and he was reading a poem which is sometimes called Christ One from the Exeter Book. 103 00:12:02,060 --> 00:12:08,980 It's also known nowadays as the Advent lyrics and one section in it begins. 104 00:12:09,310 --> 00:12:12,570 Ella Arundel Angler Protest. 105 00:12:13,180 --> 00:12:16,870 Hail Ere and the Brightest of Angels. 106 00:12:18,250 --> 00:12:25,900 And he was fascinated by this word R and R, which is even unusual in old English and. 107 00:12:26,850 --> 00:12:31,050 This is one of the ways that Tolkien worked with old English afterwards. 108 00:12:31,070 --> 00:12:41,610 It inspired him to write a poem because he was concerned to work out where does this word Arundell come from? 109 00:12:42,150 --> 00:12:47,940 And you can go only so far by comparing old English with other Germanic languages. 110 00:12:48,680 --> 00:12:52,590 It does seem to have been a word which existed, and perhaps it meant the Morning Star. 111 00:12:53,190 --> 00:12:57,990 But why does it seem so different? Is it a vestige of something much older? 112 00:12:58,440 --> 00:13:03,530 This was a thought which often occurred to Tolkien in his spare moments. 113 00:13:03,540 --> 00:13:10,470 I'd say not when he was publishing, has learned articles on philology, but when he was writing his poetry. 114 00:13:10,710 --> 00:13:18,550 First of all, he wanted to be a poet originally. And and then later, of course, he started to write fiction. 115 00:13:18,570 --> 00:13:30,629 A few years later, in fact, he started. And so Arundell became then this figure, this saviour type figure from his legends, 116 00:13:30,630 --> 00:13:35,520 who sailed out into a boat and found the straight road across the sky. 117 00:13:35,970 --> 00:13:39,390 And you can still see his light. The light of his. 118 00:13:41,010 --> 00:13:46,170 His ship in the sky. It's them. It's the morning star and the evening stuff. 119 00:13:47,280 --> 00:13:55,530 So it's this concern with with unusual words, which helped him to create his mythology, this interest in old English. 120 00:13:56,140 --> 00:14:03,960 And he eventually switched her to English philology as a student and then served in the war. 121 00:14:04,680 --> 00:14:08,100 He got the first, of course, when he returned from the war. 122 00:14:08,400 --> 00:14:15,090 He was still wanted to be a poet, and he still wanted to carry on the work of some of his friends who died in the war. 123 00:14:15,810 --> 00:14:22,620 And that was his kind of mission. His first job his first real job was as working for the Oxford English Dictionary. 124 00:14:23,190 --> 00:14:28,110 He then became a reader in English language at Leeds University. 125 00:14:28,470 --> 00:14:34,680 And here again, we find a poem based on a line from an old English poem. 126 00:14:35,100 --> 00:14:41,130 This is number four on the handout if you wanna call the called or rapid wound. 127 00:14:41,160 --> 00:14:44,940 And it's a sentence from. 128 00:14:46,210 --> 00:14:52,030 From Beowulf. And you, Mona, are the men of long ago. 129 00:14:54,070 --> 00:15:03,730 Gold is gold. So the gold of men, of former times, of people from former times, gold wrapper, wound and boonton is the past participle. 130 00:15:04,030 --> 00:15:08,680 And it means wounds round, wounds round with magic and enchantment. 131 00:15:09,220 --> 00:15:21,330 And this is the this is the the. Key moments where there was achievement at the end of of the poem is kind of. 132 00:15:24,830 --> 00:15:31,879 Devalued ever so slightly payable thanks in dying to a bike and killing the dragon 133 00:15:31,880 --> 00:15:37,730 dying and in the fight he nevertheless has won a great treasure for his people. 134 00:15:38,420 --> 00:15:46,200 But alas, it is wound around with enchantment and it is useless and it is buried with him. 135 00:15:46,310 --> 00:15:56,840 And so Tolkien wrote a poem about greed and pride, and it's inspired him and his and the themes of his fiction. 136 00:15:57,020 --> 00:16:06,440 Later. In 1925, as I'm sure you all know, he became Rawlinson and Bosworth, professor of Anglo-Saxon. 137 00:16:06,710 --> 00:16:13,640 So from now on, old English, if not before old English from now on, was certainly top of the agenda. 138 00:16:14,180 --> 00:16:20,600 He and published in 1936 very famous lecture Beowulf, The Monsters and the Critics. 139 00:16:20,900 --> 00:16:24,380 If he hadn't published much else, people would remember him. 140 00:16:24,530 --> 00:16:28,160 We certainly remember him in old English studies for this lecture. 141 00:16:28,880 --> 00:16:37,160 Talk a little bit more about that later. But notice it also came out just about the time of the publishing of The Hobbit. 142 00:16:38,000 --> 00:16:46,610 And he was bringing up his family, telling stories, bringing his professional life home and turning it into stories for his children. 143 00:16:47,090 --> 00:16:51,710 And The Hobbit is the one that he published at the time. 144 00:16:52,850 --> 00:17:01,400 And then in 1939 came on fairy stories where he changed his mind slightly about the the value and the purpose of fairy stories. 145 00:17:01,880 --> 00:17:06,410 And when he started, he'd already started on the sequel to The Hobbit. 146 00:17:06,770 --> 00:17:11,390 He changed from writing children's fiction to writing adult fiction. 147 00:17:14,090 --> 00:17:17,720 By the time it took him a long time to write that sequel, as I'm sure you know, 148 00:17:18,080 --> 00:17:25,909 and 1940 and 1954, by which stage he was professor of nurse and professor of English language. 149 00:17:25,910 --> 00:17:36,610 He published The Lord of the Rings. But I like to turn now from Tolkien himself and focus on old English for 5 minutes or so. 150 00:17:40,850 --> 00:17:45,230 I'm going to read you Exeter Book Riddle 36. 151 00:17:45,620 --> 00:17:50,840 Or at least the first part of it. I need to point out. 152 00:17:53,190 --> 00:18:01,469 A couple of letters for you. If you're not familiar with old English, you can see in line to exit the riddle. 153 00:18:01,470 --> 00:18:05,760 36. The word was. It has this little. 154 00:18:05,880 --> 00:18:10,410 And they written together. What's that letter is called an ash. That's very straightforward. 155 00:18:10,410 --> 00:18:16,469 You just pronounce it a bit like the queen pronounces a rather than a northerner like me. 156 00:18:16,470 --> 00:18:20,520 But I try my best. West Routledge. 157 00:18:20,940 --> 00:18:25,649 It's not very open, as you can see. 158 00:18:25,650 --> 00:18:29,459 It's again in the word have have the in the next line, 159 00:18:29,460 --> 00:18:39,810 which means had the verb have had and so and and penultimate line can you say have to fit through 160 00:18:39,930 --> 00:18:46,829 now fit through the the letter which looks a bit like a p is a runic letter is not a P at all. 161 00:18:46,830 --> 00:18:54,990 It's a t h in sound in in terms of modern English, we use a t h for this sound. 162 00:18:55,440 --> 00:18:59,150 It's called a thorn. And you pronounce it the of. 163 00:19:00,880 --> 00:19:07,350 So you're almost ready to to read out English. There's one more letter, and I think it appears in the next riddle. 164 00:19:07,400 --> 00:19:13,030 Number eight, in the second line. Money on math. 165 00:19:14,020 --> 00:19:24,020 Uh. Mandela means endless in the assembly, and it's basically the letter in the middle of that word. 166 00:19:24,350 --> 00:19:35,630 There's also a t h. It is basically a D, a letter day with the the stem leaning slightly underlined through it. 167 00:19:36,740 --> 00:19:41,959 Some of my students sometimes think it's it's a cross on top on top of the letter. 168 00:19:41,960 --> 00:19:46,430 So it's not a cross on top of the letter. It's a basically a D with a line through it. 169 00:19:46,850 --> 00:19:51,800 And D is related, of course, to the the T h if you say duh. 170 00:19:52,190 --> 00:20:00,620 And then instead of stopping the the breath, let it come out through your teeth to the it's a related sound. 171 00:20:00,860 --> 00:20:09,679 So so that those were the two solutions for how to adapt to the Roman alphabet so they could use it to represent English. 172 00:20:09,680 --> 00:20:14,180 And basically, you old English, which was English for them, as they called it. 173 00:20:14,600 --> 00:20:20,780 So I'm going to read you number seven, Riddle 36. The first line means I saw a creature travel on the wave. 174 00:20:20,990 --> 00:20:27,740 Riddles were considered serious literature and Anglo-Saxon times. 175 00:20:28,730 --> 00:20:33,890 I just read it to you. So you get a sense of what the language sounds like each week to yourself. 176 00:20:34,160 --> 00:20:40,200 Wake up there and say was all right. Little wonder a million years would have to fail. 177 00:20:40,220 --> 00:20:51,510 Would I say it on the one on two where even on richer half to 2/5 through and 12 again and six have to saga what to were. 178 00:20:53,720 --> 00:21:01,290 Did you understand? The last line said Saga, what you tell me, say what it was. 179 00:21:01,980 --> 00:21:08,380 What I've just described to you. If you can't do that yet, you need a crash course in old English. 180 00:21:08,400 --> 00:21:14,680 So let's do that. Can you turn over the page and look at number nine? 181 00:21:15,310 --> 00:21:19,630 I'm going to teach you to count and I'll take it. This is great for cocktail parties. 182 00:21:20,470 --> 00:21:24,220 Can you count in Welsh? Yes. Can you do that? 183 00:21:24,220 --> 00:21:27,850 Sheep counting that they use in using? Yes. Can you count in holding? 184 00:21:27,880 --> 00:21:32,220 I know I can. Let's try it. 185 00:21:32,230 --> 00:21:42,400 If you want to repeat after me. Feel free to do so on ten, three, four, five, six. 186 00:21:44,080 --> 00:21:50,790 Six seven actor Negan. Ten and 11. 187 00:21:50,800 --> 00:21:54,540 12. Hey, you're brilliant. 188 00:21:54,540 --> 00:21:58,310 So you can speak English already. I'm going to do the parts of the body now. 189 00:21:58,330 --> 00:22:01,630 They haven't changed that much. Body is body. 190 00:22:04,090 --> 00:22:07,170 Body and head is Harvard. 191 00:22:07,420 --> 00:22:12,310 Have it perfect. And I'm going to do the face now. 192 00:22:12,640 --> 00:22:17,200 Hey, you know who moves era and what's. 193 00:22:20,900 --> 00:22:25,700 The neck is square or decker sway or a neck. 194 00:22:29,110 --> 00:22:33,790 Your back is your fridge or back? 195 00:22:36,910 --> 00:22:42,880 We didn't do air, did we? Air. Air and plural as airline air and. 196 00:22:46,450 --> 00:22:50,290 What's really got no shoulder is axle or shoulder. 197 00:22:50,920 --> 00:22:56,330 Axle shoulder. That's through the arms. 198 00:22:56,900 --> 00:23:02,690 Allen Bulger. Hand finger thumb. Allen Bulger. 199 00:23:02,890 --> 00:23:10,620 Hand finger. Boom. The index finger, of course, is the shooting finger, shooter finger. 200 00:23:13,180 --> 00:23:17,250 Scientist Cedar. And your stomach. 201 00:23:17,400 --> 00:23:23,220 That's a French word, actually. Stomach. But the old English word was one woman. 202 00:23:24,650 --> 00:23:31,400 And you can see that that's a bit of semantic change because that word has come into modern English with a slightly altered meaning. 203 00:23:32,810 --> 00:23:39,530 The leg was Shankar snail as foot and fate. 204 00:23:41,960 --> 00:23:46,370 So those are the numbers and there is the parts of the body. 205 00:23:46,400 --> 00:23:50,540 Let's go back to Riddle 36 and see if we can now read it. 206 00:23:52,490 --> 00:23:56,810 I'll help you a bit. It's with you. Saw I saw creature. 207 00:23:56,930 --> 00:24:01,400 Now, that second word wished is the word WAGA. 208 00:24:01,410 --> 00:24:05,059 Its. And you find it in Tolkien, don't you? 209 00:24:05,060 --> 00:24:09,500 The Barrow whites. You also find it in Thomas Hardy. 210 00:24:10,310 --> 00:24:13,380 It's in the Essex Dorset dialect. 211 00:24:13,410 --> 00:24:18,290 A white was a person. W i g. But these g h's. 212 00:24:19,760 --> 00:24:23,840 Which we have in modern English, are a reflex of the older pronunciation. 213 00:24:24,710 --> 00:24:29,030 They came in with Dutch printers in the 16th century. 214 00:24:29,390 --> 00:24:45,080 But it reflects the fact that the JH used to be pronounced like Scottish law and broadly so w IHT was pronounced WICT and IHT, 215 00:24:45,080 --> 00:24:49,580 which has come into modern English, has an IG h t was pronounced ness. 216 00:24:50,390 --> 00:24:57,130 And are there any Scottish people in the room? Do you say nicked? 217 00:24:58,300 --> 00:25:06,410 And your version of Scott's. Sometimes the first person I've met who who who does very well. 218 00:25:06,410 --> 00:25:15,770 I very pleased to meet you. So, yeah, so Scottish English sometimes preserves sounds, which modern English doesn't. 219 00:25:17,330 --> 00:25:27,990 So it's wish this I creature soul is the translation of that on where Faron Aung Waka means on the wave. 220 00:25:28,490 --> 00:25:32,260 Faron means faring travelling. It. 221 00:25:32,270 --> 00:25:37,130 The creature seal was rattle. It was marvellously. 222 00:25:38,340 --> 00:25:49,740 One term? YEARWOOD Yearwood means girded or equipped or equipped equipped wooden drum is its Hollywood wonder, 223 00:25:50,100 --> 00:25:56,310 and it's got an ending on it because old English used case endings much more than modern English. 224 00:25:56,700 --> 00:25:59,700 So one term is a data plural, if you know about that. 225 00:26:00,090 --> 00:26:06,120 If you don't, don't worry. We're still at in our first lesson, aren't we? 226 00:26:06,360 --> 00:26:11,459 But just believe me that it means with wonders and we're all already there. 227 00:26:11,460 --> 00:26:15,360 So I. So it creates a travel on the wave. It was marvellously equipped with wonders. 228 00:26:15,660 --> 00:26:21,360 And let's see if we can do the next bit translated. Have the failure of fate on the one wonder. 229 00:26:23,150 --> 00:26:38,890 It had four feet. Under it stomach and act two on two and 34567207 on fridge. 230 00:26:40,030 --> 00:26:43,750 MoveOn means up on its back on Rich. 231 00:26:45,940 --> 00:26:53,160 After two five through it had. Two because two is a variant of Twain. 232 00:26:53,180 --> 00:26:56,770 I forgot to mention that. But. But it's on the handout. Have two to feed through. 233 00:26:57,040 --> 00:27:00,520 Now what could feed through mean the singular is fever. 234 00:27:02,080 --> 00:27:07,389 It's related to fever. It means wings. 235 00:27:07,390 --> 00:27:13,270 In this case had two wings and 12, ergo 12 eyes. 236 00:27:14,590 --> 00:27:18,700 On six have to. Six heads. 237 00:27:19,830 --> 00:27:23,130 Saga. What you were saying was. It was. 238 00:27:24,380 --> 00:27:32,840 Have you got to know have to fail to fit on the one about four feet under its stomach and actor where you've been on average and eight on its back. 239 00:27:33,910 --> 00:27:37,330 And it had two wings and 12 eyes and six heads. 240 00:27:38,830 --> 00:27:42,070 Saga. What to wear. Saga. Saga. 241 00:27:42,550 --> 00:27:51,200 Saga. Plural. Anyone got any ideas for this? 242 00:27:53,050 --> 00:27:56,200 That's a good idea. But. 243 00:27:57,090 --> 00:28:04,740 And. Why do why does a flock of birds have four feet under its stomach? 244 00:28:04,830 --> 00:28:08,309 Oh, I think this is this is the great thing about riddles. 245 00:28:08,310 --> 00:28:11,549 And this I'm sure this is how they used to use them in old English times. 246 00:28:11,550 --> 00:28:16,470 They used them for teaching, for composing poetry and so on. 247 00:28:16,650 --> 00:28:21,860 And it always creates a discussion. And some of them are more discussable than others. 248 00:28:21,870 --> 00:28:25,259 And some of them, I mean, your solution very nearly works, doesn't it, 249 00:28:25,260 --> 00:28:31,530 apart from that one line, four feet under this stomach face or a fate under one. 250 00:28:34,020 --> 00:28:39,450 So let's do lateral thinking. What else might have wings apart from birds? 251 00:28:41,130 --> 00:28:44,530 It's. Okay. Dragon. 252 00:28:45,880 --> 00:28:51,040 So insects insects, insects almost face just that. 253 00:28:52,430 --> 00:29:00,409 But alas, time is pressing. And unless someone has a solution in the next 5 seconds while I suck my cough. 254 00:29:00,410 --> 00:29:08,330 Sweet. It's about. 255 00:29:11,080 --> 00:29:16,420 With full force, full oarsmen are in it. 256 00:29:17,140 --> 00:29:22,450 And of course, it's not a modern boat. It's an Anglo-Saxon boat. It has figureheads, probably dragon heads. 257 00:29:23,130 --> 00:29:28,510 That explains why it has six heads. And then you can count the 12 eyes, of course. 258 00:29:29,020 --> 00:29:34,470 And. And the two wings and you've got the rhythm. 259 00:29:35,910 --> 00:29:40,770 Okay, well done. You. You now know some old English, and you've just read a riddle. 260 00:29:40,770 --> 00:29:43,770 36. So you're making huge progress. 261 00:29:45,900 --> 00:29:51,970 I'd like to talk to you about some. They'll think it's poetic language ever so briefly. 262 00:29:52,300 --> 00:29:55,390 And we have to move on. Alas, we cannot linger. 263 00:29:56,770 --> 00:30:00,460 But some. If you look at number 11. 264 00:30:03,300 --> 00:30:05,970 And this is another kind of dinnertime conversation. 265 00:30:06,360 --> 00:30:16,870 You can count to 12 and I was English and you had this a dinnertime conversation once in a college having dinner opposite him, 266 00:30:17,300 --> 00:30:21,090 a novelist from Nigeria called Ben Okri. 267 00:30:21,390 --> 00:30:27,150 And he said, Oh, you do old English, so you know about Canning's. Do you know what Cannings are? 268 00:30:27,160 --> 00:30:35,440 The word is a Scandinavian word, because Scandinavian poetry in the early Middle Ages used a similar style of poetry. 269 00:30:36,380 --> 00:30:40,190 A canning is a compound, a poetic compound. 270 00:30:40,210 --> 00:30:44,600 In other words, you take two words and put them together to create a new idea. 271 00:30:44,620 --> 00:30:50,560 We do it in modern English, and a very modern example is the World Wide Web. 272 00:30:52,290 --> 00:30:59,160 So you put all these words together and you create an idea which is more that is not literally a web, is it? 273 00:30:59,340 --> 00:31:03,500 It's a metaphor which describes something different. 274 00:31:03,510 --> 00:31:06,930 This network of connections that we have in the modern world. 275 00:31:07,590 --> 00:31:16,469 So that, if you like, as a modern canning. Here are some to do with the body listed in number 11. 276 00:31:16,470 --> 00:31:19,980 A fail whose fail is a poetic word for life. 277 00:31:21,250 --> 00:31:24,610 They also had the word lief, which meant life but failed. 278 00:31:24,610 --> 00:31:34,720 House Whose is life? House and faith bold is life mansion or life dwelling place and Faith Hoard is life treasury. 279 00:31:34,990 --> 00:31:41,500 These are all words for the for the for the living body, the treasure, the treasury of your soul. 280 00:31:41,860 --> 00:31:45,790 Now the place where your soul dwells and leaf, bald and so on. 281 00:31:46,420 --> 00:31:56,170 And Seamus Heaney, his favourite old English canning, was born whose bones house again its its canning for for the body. 282 00:31:56,840 --> 00:32:07,040 Am I going to have to miss our 11 B 11 C this was one which I think Tolkien was, was very keen on it. 283 00:32:07,060 --> 00:32:13,990 Some from the comments on this are taken from his commentary on Beowulf, 284 00:32:14,110 --> 00:32:21,700 which is found in the recently published translation by Tolkien of Beowulf because the 285 00:32:21,700 --> 00:32:26,110 commentary is taken from the lectures that he used to give on Beowulf in the 1930s. 286 00:32:28,730 --> 00:32:33,610 And. The what? The word is wrong. 287 00:32:33,870 --> 00:32:43,100 Right. And from IS is a kind of poor voice in Tolkien's interpretation. 288 00:32:44,770 --> 00:32:52,440 There is a similar word while way while spelled h w is odd. 289 00:32:52,450 --> 00:33:01,749 W h is a whale. You know, a huge mammal that swims in the sea, say and wild way means the sea. 290 00:33:01,750 --> 00:33:06,220 Its the the path or the way which the whale takes. 291 00:33:07,120 --> 00:33:12,909 And so. And myself included, have taken from that to mean the same thing. 292 00:33:12,910 --> 00:33:16,600 Wrong means a whale. In our simple, simplistic way. 293 00:33:17,020 --> 00:33:20,400 We thought that and a means road. 294 00:33:20,410 --> 00:33:27,190 But no Tolkien is and was there in the 1930s to to tell us we are wrong. 295 00:33:27,550 --> 00:33:34,980 He says that wrong means dolphins. Unless the members of the whale tribe playing or seeming to gallop like a ride. 296 00:33:35,190 --> 00:33:43,620 A line of riders on the plains, a line of riders on the plains might be an echo of Tolkien's fiction that that is the pitch and 297 00:33:43,620 --> 00:33:51,359 comparison the canning was meant to evoke because Rod looks like road comes from that verb redan, 298 00:33:51,360 --> 00:33:57,300 which does mean to ride. And so Rod is the riding place rather than the road. 299 00:33:57,910 --> 00:34:01,350 It's not the the street or the path as such. 300 00:34:01,620 --> 00:34:04,650 It's the place where you ride the original meaning of road. 301 00:34:05,250 --> 00:34:06,989 And it doesn't like the translation. 302 00:34:06,990 --> 00:34:15,480 Wale Road, which suggests, he says, a sort of semi submarine steam engine running along submerged metal rails of the Atlantic. 303 00:34:16,110 --> 00:34:23,880 So I'm fortunate in my in my hobby as a musician, I've written a song called Whale Road. 304 00:34:25,020 --> 00:34:30,950 I don't know what I'm going to do about that. I have to think. Riddles, of course. 305 00:34:31,210 --> 00:34:40,400 And and we've we've done one riddle now are written in old English in the style of Beowulf they often use Canning's 306 00:34:40,730 --> 00:34:49,280 Canning's in themselves are a kind of riddle which you have to solve in order to come to the meaning of the compound. 307 00:34:50,120 --> 00:34:53,930 And so whole thing is fixed. 308 00:34:54,290 --> 00:35:00,020 Building is poetry, rather, is a special poetic language. 309 00:35:00,560 --> 00:35:07,639 It uses specialist terms, specialist words, it uses Cannings, it uses alliteration. 310 00:35:07,640 --> 00:35:14,000 It's very compact. It misses out the little words like the and R and his and her whenever it can. 311 00:35:14,810 --> 00:35:23,990 And it creates these and it's very sort of compact, architectural, architectonic type of poetry. 312 00:35:24,290 --> 00:35:32,330 And this is what Tolkien lectured on in his lectures and on Beowulf in the 1930s, forties, fifties. 313 00:35:34,200 --> 00:35:41,010 I don't have time to go into the Bible too much, but I'm sure you know the basics already. 314 00:35:41,400 --> 00:35:49,200 You may have seen some dreadful films. Well, they give you a rough idea that it's about monsters. 315 00:35:51,090 --> 00:35:57,990 Two halves, according to Tolkien in his lecture. I'm looking at number 14 and 15 now on the handout. 316 00:36:03,960 --> 00:36:07,230 So you can see the summary of the epic poem Beowulf. 317 00:36:07,500 --> 00:36:15,719 The young man, the young hero takes on a mission to to rid a kingdom of an affliction of monsters. 318 00:36:15,720 --> 00:36:19,320 Two monsters. The Grendel can Grendel and his mother. 319 00:36:20,980 --> 00:36:30,070 Then the scene 50 years and 50 years go by and Beowulf is an old man and he has to fight the ultimate enemy, the dragon. 320 00:36:32,100 --> 00:36:38,640 He's praised at the end, the mildest of men and the most gentle, the kindest to his people and most eager for fame. 321 00:36:39,660 --> 00:36:43,010 Tolkien emphasised this dual structure. 322 00:36:43,020 --> 00:36:50,370 Some critics nowadays don't agree, but they often start with Tolkien's essay. 323 00:36:50,380 --> 00:37:00,720 This is a starting point for the debate. And so 15 be on the talking says that there of is essentially a balance of possession and 324 00:37:00,720 --> 00:37:08,010 opposition of ends and beginnings and its themes are things like human courage in a hostile world, 325 00:37:08,100 --> 00:37:16,440 youth versus age, good versus evil, ambition versus pride, a hero and a monster, a hero and the king. 326 00:37:17,520 --> 00:37:21,690 Many of those themes, of course, have come into Tolkien's own fiction. 327 00:37:21,960 --> 00:37:28,800 And in a way, you can say that one of the driving forces of Tolkien's fiction, when he discovered his medium, 328 00:37:28,800 --> 00:37:39,720 which was the novel of creating for the modern world, an epic which draws not completely, of course, but to a certain, to a large. 329 00:37:40,170 --> 00:37:45,840 Well, I don't know how. That's a debate, isn't it? Because that the person who is lecturing to you in Welsh might disagree. 330 00:37:46,110 --> 00:37:50,100 But the influence of old English medieval literature on him. 331 00:37:50,970 --> 00:37:57,660 I'd like to finish now by for two or 3 minutes then, and we can broaden the discussion if you like. 332 00:37:57,990 --> 00:38:02,640 But how does this all this? How is it? 333 00:38:04,340 --> 00:38:09,080 Evident in his fiction, The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. 334 00:38:10,740 --> 00:38:14,950 I can only point out a few things because we really are pushed for time. 335 00:38:15,330 --> 00:38:20,610 But if you think of the maps, I mean, if you've been to this wonderful exhibition, you must have seen some of the maps. 336 00:38:21,810 --> 00:38:31,110 He drew a map of the shire after he'd finished The Hobbit. But if you look at some of the names, you get a name like book Boro. 337 00:38:31,140 --> 00:38:37,500 Well, Boro is, of course, goes back to old English book, which means a fortified place now. 338 00:38:38,340 --> 00:38:45,670 So it's not that Boris took Boro, isn't it? I got that right. So that's where the took family have their family mansions. 339 00:38:47,970 --> 00:38:55,140 This is so. So the mapping of his world is very often drawing on old English. 340 00:38:56,640 --> 00:39:01,730 There's another one. Buckland. 341 00:39:01,850 --> 00:39:08,290 BUCKLAND This is where they that. The Brandy books have the family seat. 342 00:39:08,510 --> 00:39:18,319 But it's also a kind of playfulness on Tolkien's part, because Buckland is a real place name in England, and it goes back to book land. 343 00:39:18,320 --> 00:39:19,280 Book Land. 344 00:39:19,700 --> 00:39:28,430 And Book Land was land, which was being registered and put into a charter and was written in a book so you could prove that you owned this land. 345 00:39:28,850 --> 00:39:37,370 The charter is now in the book, so that is an example of how Tolkien reuses an old English word playfully. 346 00:39:37,580 --> 00:39:41,330 Sometimes you have to know a bit of other things to get the joke with Tolkien. 347 00:39:42,830 --> 00:39:49,190 The same goes for the King of the Golden Hall, which is the two towers. 348 00:39:49,580 --> 00:39:58,760 Book three of the Lord of the Rings, chapter six. And that whole scene, the arrival at Meadows settled, which means it's an old English word. 349 00:39:58,760 --> 00:40:02,120 It's a compound. It means Mead Hall. 350 00:40:02,660 --> 00:40:12,170 And we're immediately in the world of Beowulf there, or Hatteras is as the precincts the area around the hall. 351 00:40:12,470 --> 00:40:19,190 And again, this is an old English word, actually, in in in the old English that we mostly read. 352 00:40:19,520 --> 00:40:32,270 West Saxon, southern old English. It would have been male to settled with it with an extra diff song there instead of the e eo instead of mead EOD. 353 00:40:32,810 --> 00:40:38,750 So Meadows old is the old mercian form of Meadows settled. 354 00:40:39,860 --> 00:40:44,089 And this is another, if you like, private. It's hard to call it a private joke, 355 00:40:44,090 --> 00:40:53,809 but it's Tolkien putting a bit of his personality and his personal interests into his writing because of course he came from 356 00:40:53,810 --> 00:41:04,460 the West Midlands and he admired the middle English of that region and he also like preferred old Mercian to Old West Saxon. 357 00:41:07,190 --> 00:41:18,920 And so so we get that. Then in the whole scene of the King of the Golden Hall is really a translation, an adaptation of the scene in Beowulf, 358 00:41:19,160 --> 00:41:30,530 where Beowulf and his men arrive at Hare at the hotel, the meat hall in Denmark, where he is going to fight the monster Grendel. 359 00:41:32,520 --> 00:41:35,640 Lastly. We could. 360 00:41:35,880 --> 00:41:49,860 You could probably write a whole book on Rowan and how it reflects old English culture, customs, even the way they speak the word they use. 361 00:41:51,250 --> 00:41:57,690 Wimmer crafted a vocabulary they sometimes use when they're describing wizards and strange places. 362 00:41:57,690 --> 00:42:04,020 Two women dying to Emma Beg Arthur lost not her, which Aragorn uses. 363 00:42:04,740 --> 00:42:07,440 That goes back to an old English word, which means noble. 364 00:42:07,860 --> 00:42:14,820 And in Gondor they don't use the word as unless they use the word king's foil, which is a mixture of old English kings. 365 00:42:15,060 --> 00:42:18,570 And foil, comes in from French into the English language. 366 00:42:18,570 --> 00:42:21,930 It's from the word V, which means a leaf, the king's leaf. 367 00:42:22,950 --> 00:42:26,010 When characters introduce themselves, they say. 368 00:42:28,170 --> 00:42:31,470 And by all of this, he says, there was this misnomer. 369 00:42:32,040 --> 00:42:41,910 So even the word order comes into the into the English that he uses in the chapter on the king of the Golden Hall and Rolling Hammer. 370 00:42:42,180 --> 00:42:46,230 His my name is, says one of the characters when he introduces himself. 371 00:42:48,400 --> 00:42:59,710 Mark Atherton. This number you can now go to your dinner or your cocktail party and even introduce yourself in old English. 372 00:43:00,850 --> 00:43:03,400 On that note, I do have to stop. Thank you very much.