heill Llama!

> > We may also have lost some ON inherited meters, due to the

faulty and incomplete preservation of the older tradition. For
example, Snorri quotes 2 lines from a poem called Heimdallargaldr
(níu emk moeðra mögr : níu emk systra sonr), which
meter I cannot identify. Perhaps Snorri could not, either.

> Or could it be the last two lines of a 'galdralag' strophe? The

metre fits, it has the characteristic repetition, and that would
agree with the name Heimdallargaldr.

The suggestion I've heard.

> > This syllable loss creates some exceptional effects in the

surviving ON material originating from PN times, such as the verse I
quoted in my last post. Its strange to think that so much of the
specifically ON and charming character of extremely short lines is
really just a result of syllable loss in traditional material,
causing speakers to re-analyze/re-interprete an old meter like
ljóðaháttr along new, and Germanically speaking, radical lines. It
works in ON, but its story must have been a long, slow trip through
the jungle ;)

> Interesting that all the other Germanic traditions tended to

develop the inherited verse form in the opposite way towards a
looser style with more unstressed syllables. Comapare also the long
line of the Middle English alliterative revival, which even allows
an optional extra beat in the first halfline. Another feature which
seems characteristic of ON verse in contrast to the West Germanic
tradition is the use of stanzas. Old English verse is often
impossible to divide like this because of long sentences,
enjambment, and so on, but Chambers in his study of Widsiþ took the
view that the few OE poems that do show end-stopped lines (with the
exception of some "monkish effisions written under the influence of
ecclesiastical Latin") are probably the most traditional and "purely
Germanic" of the lot, Widsiþ, the Rune Song, the Charms, Deor (the
other OE poem with a refrain):

> "...it can hardly be a coincidence that the four poems, the subject

matter of which carries us back to the most primative period, should
agree in the retention of a primative form. They may have been
modernised and interpolated: we know that the Rune Song and the
Charms have been largely rewritten: but all four seem to have their
roots in an age more primitive than that which rejoiced in the
rhetorical interlaced periods of Beowulf and Genesis: an age when
the tendency inherited from the strophic poetry, to make the
sentence end with the line, was still strong."

ON ljóðaháttr has next to no extant examples of an extra line. Here
is one from Hávamál:

þve,ginn ok me,ttr
riþi maþr þingi at
þót hann sé(i) vé,ddr til vel
skúa ok bróka
skammisk e,ngi maþr
né he,sts e,nn he,ldr
þót hann hafit góþan

My thinking is basically that occasional expansions could occur in
the oral tradition, and that they are acceptable to me. Here, one
can just drop the last line, but I prefer to just give the þulr the
extra line. On the other hand, I would drop the extra line in CR's
stanza 1 (following FJ's edition):

gáttir allar
áþr gangi fram
(*umb/of skoþask skyli)
of skyggnask skyli

It's just a variant with the same meaning, no import. Interestingly,
Snorri quotes it without as well. Incidentally, the form 'þót' above
is most correct here, over against 'þótt' and uncontracted 'þó at'.
The contracted form would occur here, as in verse generally, and the
form þótt is from þót, which form is overwhelmingly dominant in the
homilies, against rare þótt (a sound-analogical form) - it parallels
the correct 'þít/þvít' (þí/því at uncontracted). The difference in
citation 2 above from FJ's classic edition is double g in skyggnask,
gain confirmed by the homily language's non-contraction of triple
consonant clusters with at least one consonant different from the
other two - there are some exceptions, such as 'morni' (dative of
myrginn/morginn) and 'mart', but these also occur in inscription and
illustrate an isolated rule the g goes between r + n/g/k. The +i
in 'séi' above is correct, and known to be so (both historically and
confirmed by meter 10th cent.), but is invisible in runes, as runic
writers just show 'i' for 'éi'. The Homilies have only one isolated
example of +i: séim (1st pl. pres.subj.), against séþ, sé (3rd sg. &
pl.), etc., but it wouldn't occur at all if it had been completely
dead. Gutniska still has it throughout, as would 10th century Norse.
FJ was correct about this, as usual ;)

> Wulf and Eadwæcer, with its songlike and ljóðaháttr like features,

and Deor can both be divided into discrete stanza-like sections --
even if there was no refrain to mark them off. But in both of them
the sections aren't perfectly regular in length, although there are
patterns. Counting halflines here:

> Wulf and Eadwæcer: 4+1, 6+1, 8, 6, 2+1, 2+1.
> Deor: 12+2, 10+2, 6+2, 4+2, 12+2, 14+2.

> Alaric Hall divides another OE poem, the Wife's Lament more

regularly into sections of 10, 24, 24, 24 and 24 halflines. Does
the Old Norse evidence suggest that the regularly strophic 8 (half)
line verse arose out of a less rigid tradition, with sections of
only roughly the same length as in Ynglingatal?

Yes. The oldest fornyrðislag material, like Völuspá, etc. contains 4-
line stanzas, 10-12 line-stanzas, etc. It's not as strict, and does
clearly show the narrative use of the form inherited from the actual
oral tradition. It's not just faulty preservation that gives us all
the exceptions to the standard 8-line stanza. Furthermore, a total
regularization of the 8-liner is an invention of the literary age,
when men sat and composed stanzas pen-in-hand. Incidentally, the
poem Ynglingatal is not in fornyrðislag, but in a meter whose name I
do not know. It has pairs of alliterating lines throughout, the 1st
with 3 syllables and the 2nd with 4 - cleary, this must have been
one of the ways the master poets of the Viking Age varied/developed
their inherited fornyrðislag.

> > I suspect, but can of course not show, that Go. was very close

to ON in this respect, especially as relates to poetry. ungr vas ek
forþum is somewhat more poetic than ek vas ungr forþum, but still
far from being unnatural. One can say it that way, but it rings
differently.

> Yes, there's no doubt that Gothic was as free if not freer than Old

Norse in changing word order for style and emphasis. I was just
wondering here whether there would be any preference for putting the
subject pronoun immediately after the first fronted constituent, or
after the finite verb (juggs was ik faúrþis; juggs ik was faúrþis),
as there seems to have been a difference in syntax here between Old
English, on the one hand, and all the other reasonably well attested
early Germanic languages. This is one of the big issues in the
debate among syntacticians about the origins and significance of the
verb second word order in Germanic; so it would be amusing to learn
that it was no issue at all for actual speakers of the language.
The two best Gothic examples I know each follow a different
practice: þanuh biþê ût usiddjêdun eis; iba þank þû faírháitáis --
so, as I say, unless we find anything else to contradict it, you're
probably safe here to follow the Old Norse word order.

I certainly hope so ;) I very perfectionistic about correct form,
and for good reason, I think. I want to be sure that my Gothic is
correct, in as far as that is now possible.

> > *einn vrataþa (ek) could occur in ON, and hverfa can mean have

some meaning (in eddic verse, etc.) as in Go., but the fór
alliterates here with forþum, and fôr occurs in Go., meaning the
same thing

> Interesting... I assumed that the headstave was 'einn',

alliterating with 'ungr', making this Sievers type C.

> ungr vas ek forþum
> / x x / x
>
> fór ek einn saman
> X x / / x

Well, the actual situation in ljóðaháttr in it's real classics is
somewhat different than in the poetic tradition inherited from about
Snorri's time, which treats ljóðaháttr in a more simplified, modern
fashion. Apparently, it once had something of the poetic fire of
dróttkvætt in its golden age, which occasionally goes beyond rules
of höfuðstafr/stuðlar (the 3 alliterators in a pair) and assonance
in the 2nd to include things like extra alliteration in pairs, over
pair-lines, etc.. Artists are often good in ways that only other
artists, or their better critics, notice. The first rule of medicine
is 'first, do no harm'. While the headstaves/stress only description
of ljóðaháttr is true, the actual situation was more complex in the
golden age of ljóðaháttr. There are a lot of internal devices used
which, while not required, still occur. It shows mastery, indeed.
One of the most controversial, in view of the later rules about the
alliteration, is the 'extra' allitorators. Here are some examples
from Hávamál:

vin sínum : skal maþr vinr vesa : ok gialda gio,f viþr gio,f

Here both 2 and 3 have extra alliteration. There are many examples
of this kind of thing, not to mention the 'acceptable' alliterating
pair in line one (vó,pnum ok vinum, etc.etc. - very normal). How
about 3rd liners like: vinar vinr vesa, glík skulu gio,ld gio,fum.
Generally, extra alliteration in line 2 is most troubling to modern
interpreters. Usually, I think it accidental (óvíst es at vita :
né,r Verþr á Vegum úti : ge,irs of þo,rf guma) - here 4 times, 3
poetically, one accidental, I think. However, there are too many
examples for it to be coincidental in all instances. In fact, I read
dirrently than FJ here:

sá e,inn ve,it : es víþa (v)ratar

FJ drops the (v), which would be more correct later on, I suppose,
but in the stanza immeadiately before it, for example:

kópir afglapi : es til kynnis kømr

Here we cannot simply eliminate a 'k', as such change never occured
in the language, while loss of v before r did (but only in the West
Norse of Norway, Iceland, Faroes, where it was dominant, but some
dialects still had vr even there) - thus, we can get away with just
dropping it. However, vr is required many places in Hávamál, and we
cannot just pick and choose, I think, as an actual reciter would
have had vr or not. Theoretically, he could have said just r, but
known where to alliterate vr based on old poetry/other speakers who
still had it (Jón Helgason is right about this); on the other hand,
and as regards Hávamál, the extant redaction itself is from a vr-
dialect (e,n at virþi vrekask, etc.), giving us no other option but
full implementation of vr. This is one of the few places where I do
amend FJ's text, even if I agree that if the standard taken is, say,
the 1st grammarian's language, then vr is dead, but used in poetry
where required by alliteration (this would be an acceptable rule for
that time, not an arbitrary invention/solution about what to do with
vr that is inconsistent in one and the same text). But looking at
the 10th and earlier, when some speakers of West Norse did have true
and universal vr, we must implement it throughout in all cases where
the speaker had it (such as in Hávamál, Eddic material, etc.).

> A Gothic line 'fôr ik áins samana' would I think have the same

structure, but with resolution of -ana in the last dip. I guess
another alternative might be 'jah fôr ik áins' (Sievers type B, with
crossed alliteration--Vowel F, F, Vowel--is that the right name for
it?). That keeps the vocabulary the same but avoids the unattested
idion. But point taken: we certainly don't know enough about Gothic
to rule out the possibility that the idiom *'áins samana' was alive
and well there, either in everyday speech or poetry.

This one reason why I would just leave it. If it works poetically,
and there is no other way of saying 'all alone' that works with the
meter here, then I would just let my Gothic translator render it in
that way for his Gothic audience, regardless if they thought it odd
or natural. On the other hand, if a natural equivalent of the *áins
samana can be found, I would be willing to change it accordingly.

> > Another eery similarity is the +/-wisan/wesan - essentially, you

can jsut add it whenever you want to, or if the meter works better
with it. But about -dative mis: hmmmm... Go. has another similarity
when it comes to verbs and the cases they steer - I've never hit the
wall on this issue, as there is hardly a wall to hit. Without any
doubt, verbal case-governance, and the survival of reflexives in -
sk, is one of the most conservative features of ON, which goes
amazingly far when trying to translate to Go. - but again, the devil
is in the details. Here the detail is is Go. can omit the dative,
passive subject with þûhta or not. About the +/-ik/ek and
wisan/vesa: these are implied in the ON, and þóttumsk is somewhat
ambiguous here, as it was early levelled into the first person in ON.

> Yes, Old Norse and Gothic agree on most of the fundamental things.

Just a few quirks such as 'hilpan' + gen. in Go. and in OE, versus ON
'hjalpa' + dat. Don't quote me on this, but I think the genitive was
possible in older forms of German, although the dative has taken over
now. The middle voice in Gothic works in very much the same way as
in ON except that the reflexive pronouns aren't assimilated to the
verb endings, and Go. also has the inherited morphological passive
which sometimes encroaches on the role of the ON middle voice. The
biggest devil in the detail here is exactly this question of how the
reflexive works in expressions like "I think myself to be..." There
are a couple of really curious examples in Gothic where, unlike ON,
the reflexive pronoun seems to be added to the end of the
*infinitive* verb, rather than the finite verb that it's
subordinated to. This is the clearest:

> wenja...swikunþans wisan uns = EPIZW...PEFANERWSQAI = Lat.
> spero...manifestos nos esse `I trust we are made manifest' (2Cor

5:11).

This is curious...

> > Do we have any examples of full mis/þis/etc. þûhta?
>
> Oh yes, this is very common (or as common as anything can be in the

limited corpus), except that in main clauses at least the rule seems
to be that oblique experiencer pronouns always follow immediately
after the verb in those instances where there is no Greek model to
immitate. The one example I know of where a dative experiencer
pronoun precedes the verb is in a subordinate clause: in þizei mis
galeikaiþ in siukeim = DIO EUDOKW EN ASQENEIAIS `therefore I take
pleasure in infirmities' (2Cor 12:10).

So perhaps 'áudags þûhta mis' is correct after all. PN would have
rendered 'mis galeikáiþ' the same: *mez galîkêþ. It wouls also agree
on non-suffixing of the reflexive pronouns, of course, being even
that much more like Gothic in view of the above.

> >> I'm fairly sure the dative pronoun would be left out even though

that's potentially ambiguous with the meaning "to
seem".

> > I think so, as to whom is it seeming?

> Yeah, to whom it seems or who considers this to be so. One way to

express the idea of thinking something about oneself unambigiously is
to use the passive subjunctive and the relative particle 'ei', e.g.
þugkeiþ im ei in filuwaurdein seinai andhausjaindau DOKOUSI GAR hOTI
EN THi POLULOGIAi AUTWN EISAKOUSQHSONTAI `they think that in their
verbosity they will be heard' (Mt 6:7). So maybe: 'ik þûhta ei ik

> áudags sijái' -- hmm, so much for the poetry ;-)

;) ok, ON has 'at' were Go. has 'ei' - ON at is here generalized
from a PN used of *þat, *î and *þatî that would have matched the Go.
þata, ei and þatei, and 'at' was taken for *î after its loss. This
really helps us in translation, removing a major hurdle, I think. I
still suspect that *áudags þûhta mis (ik/ik wisan) might be correct -
it certainly seems simpler and more natural than *ik þûhta ei ik
áudags sijái, and, as you mention, there goes the poetry. And the
medical rule was: first, do no harm (here to the poetry).

> Would Old Norse ever use this sort of construction: mér þykkir at

ek sé?

No. If you want to see some very 'incorrect' ON that still mostly
makes perfect sense, then Jón Helgason translated some lines into ON-
archaized Modern Icelandic direct from Wulfila. Actually, I find the
examples absolutely wonderful, and have even thought about actually
continuing them further. While 'wrong', they really give us insight
in ON, Go. and the whole issue of their relationship, history and
the language changes involved. Facinating stuff. In fact, I'll post
some examples next.

> I just looked on Google and found a grand total of two examples of

Modern Icelandic 'mér þykir að ég' + subjunctive -- compared to 18
300 examples of 'ég þykist'!

Well, I think 'mér þykir að ég...' is still 'incorrect', even if it
may become 'correct' in the future. 'ég þykist' is 'correct'. (but
note that the ON form of the verb has 2 k's: þykkiask)

> > On the other hand, do we have examples to the contrary where

dative, passive subject is clearly implied? ON also has some
implication habits: es ek annan fann (where the relative particle es
implies elliptical þá - in fact, one could just as well say 'þás ek
annan fann' - but Go. is too old for this kind of playing around
with the particle, which is still 'î/ei in Go. and is he, where ON
shows hann, replacing PN ez, which just becomes the relative). One
side note for langauge-history interested is that at least one other
case of *ez survived in ON - in fact, its still lurking in Modern
Icelandic even: þareð (eð < et, the neuter of the obsolete
*ez 'he' ;) Go. þarei. I think this one very odd and unusual,
as 'þar es' is typical in ON, but *þar et, lurking in the spoken
language somewhere looks to have made a comeback after es > er
rendered the awkward **þarer....

> Contrariwise, in Gothic the relative particle can be ommitted with

'þan(ei)' (see Streitberg: Gotische Syntax, para. 359: "...so ist
dies ein wetrvoller Beleg, dass auch im Gotischen wie in den übrigen
germanischen Sprachen die Demonstrativa allein in relativischer
Geltung vorhanden waren"), compare OE þá "when" which is
distinguished from OE þá "then" by the fact that the relative
particle doesn't trigger verb second word order.

The relative-issue is pretty clear, I suppose.

> > > For the sake of the metre, maybe either: 'áudags ik þûhta' or

change it to a B line with the pronoun and finite verb unstressed at
the beginning: 'ik þûhta áudags wisan'?

> > I want the idioms as close as possible, and do not want to change

the position of áudags, as it hurts the poetry, I think. I'll take
the consequences after áudags, if need be: *þûhta mis/ik þûhta/þûhta
ik/ik wisan - whatever is good and natural Go.

> In that case, I guess the simplest way would be 'áudags ik þûhta'.

The Gothic Bible has no qualms about adding the dative pronoun where
no such pronoun is found in Greek, so I think this must be
significant, the fact that it was omitted.

Ok, if the Gothic Bible has no qualms about adding the dative
pronoun, even where no such is found in the Greek, why should we not
have *þûhta mis/mis þûhta, then? Perhaps it was natural for Go. to
state _to whom_ 'it seemed', as seems natural enough. Another option
is 'I seemed blessed/wealthy to others/others (menn) thought me (to
be) wealthy/blessed', where 'menn' is often implied in ON, but this
does not fit the contruction here, and the speaker clearly seems
more blessed to himself, and others' seemings are nowhere implied.
Ok, so I guess what I am asking is why:

*áudags ik þûhta (which does sound very good, by the way)

instead of:

*áudags ik þûhta mis (wisan)
*áudags þûhta mis ik (wisan)
*áudags þûhta mis wisan (where 'ik' is implied)

What about the *mis (to whom it seems)? Actually, venturing a guess
from the gut:

*áudags þûhta mis ik (wisan left implied) - option 3 above (of 4)

That one feels rights. A parallel 5th option is:

*áudags þûhta mis wisan (where 'ik' is implied)

But that one doesn't match the previous, at least in my ears. But it
is Gothic ears that matter here, so I'll take the consequences if it
needs to be changed somehow.

> > I examined gaman, discovering that OHG OS OE all agree with ON

here, essentially, which lead me to: 1)the Go. meaning 'joy' is
unattested or 2)the ON meaning 'comrade' is unattested, or was lost
during the transaition PN>ON in favour of just 'joy' or 3)the Gothic
meaning developed from an older meaning attested in the other
languages, if the orignal one ever were lost. I elected to solve the
problem by allowing by imaginary translator to stay idiomatic, as
usual - in the worst case scenario, gaman can only mean 'comrade' in
Go., in which case the line makes just as much sense anyway, and it
still carries the same meaning, I think. I think the reader will
agree.

> This is a good excuse to post a couple of links I came across

recently on the subject of translation between closely related
languages. They're both by Pétur Knútsson.

>
> http://www.hi.is/~peturk/INDICES/Intimations.pdf
>
> See especially the sections comparing the Old English and Old Saxon

versions of Genesis and Halldóra B. Björnsson's Icelandic translation
of Béowulf. We actually have Eysteinn to thank for inadvertantly
sending me in this direction, as I came across it while searching for
stuff on Steinn Steinarr's poem 'Ég geng í hring', of which it has an
English translation.

The link is dead, I think.

> http://www.hi.is/~peturk/INDICES/index.htm (1984 Um þýðingu

Halldóru B. Björnsson á Bjólfskviðu. Skírnir, tímarit Hins íslenska
bókmenntafélags: 223-244).

> This covers some of the same ground, but deals more specifically

with the Icelandic translation of Beowulf, as the title suggests.
He gives examples of Halldóra and the anonymous Old English
translator/adapter of the Old Saxon poem Genesis each adopting
exactly this strategy you descibe with 'gaman' (well, the back up
strategy in the event that it would have been interpreted as a
different word by a Gothic audience!), of matching the sound and the
spirit and the poetic style sometimes at the expense of the precise
meaning of a particular word.

Yes. It is interesting that this how such near-language translations
actually did often occur in the past. I have thought this situation
through in the context of my Goth from Wulfila's time living in the
North-West and wording *Hauhan mâlu in Gothic. I think it would end
up very idiomatic and literal.

> It's also interesting to see how uniquely suited Icelandic is to

matching the style of Beowulf, compared to say Modern English where
there have been so many changes in vocabulary and idiom.

Well, inflection helps, too. Still, one can render an archaized
Modern English version that has a truely great sound, if one is not
afraid to write things like 'me thinketh', 'thou sayest', and use
old, inherited vocabulary in modern form against any criticism,
simply giving critics the finger and marching ahead with a pure,
inherited-forms-version. I've seems some fine pieces done this way,
and the only consequence for average, non-germanically interested
readers, is that it ends up sounding archaic, obscure very or high-
flown. That's no problem, depending on the audience. I certainly
have no problem with it - in fact, I really love the sounds, forms,
etc. of the inherited ME vocabulary.

his fathers' wain
in word keepeth
would a man wise be

There, a ME ljóðaháttr, 100% Germanic, using alliteration and even
using 'wain' ;)

-K

> LN
>