Adam lay ybounden: word geekery
Dec. 7th, 2012 09:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
necturusOne of the songs we'll be doing on Sunday has a fourteenth century Middle English text. According to Rolf Kaiser, it is from a manuscript called Sloane 2593, and runs:
Adam lay i-bowndyn, bowndyn in a bond,
Fowr þowsand winter þowt he not to long;
And al was for an appil, an appil þat he tok,
As clerkes fyndyn wretyn in here bok.
Ne hadde þe appil take be, þe appil taken ben,
Ne hadde neuer our lady a ben heuene qwen.
Blyssid be þe tyme þat appil take was!
Þerfore we mown syngyn: Deo gracias.
In eleventh-century (Old) English, it would have begun:
Adam laeg gebunden, bunden in anum bonde.
Feower þusend winter ne þohte he to lang.
In 1066, England was conquered by French-speakers, and English more or less ceased to be written for approximately three centuries. In the fourteenth century, it was just beginning to re-emerge as a literary language. The Old English spellings were long forgotten, many inflections had disappeared, and the vowels in unstressed syllables tended to be fairly random.
"I-boundyn" (Old English "gebunden"): past participle of "bindan" ("bind"), a Class 3 strong verb whose basic forms were: bindan ("to bind"), band ("I/thou/he/she/it bound"), bundon ("ye/we/they bound"), (ge)bunden ("bound").
"Bond" has the same relationship to "bindan" as "song" has to "singan" (another Class 3 strong verb).
"Winter": The medieval English reckoned time by counting winters. By contrast, Russians count summers: 25 лет ("лето", "lyeto" = "summer" ).
"Appil": Old English spellings were "appel", "aeppel", "apul", and even "apple". It is an old Indo-European word cognate with Russian "яблоко" ("yabloko"). "Appel" was grammatically masculine, but the Russian word is neuter.
"Not to long": "to" and "too" did not have distinctive spellings in Old English. "Lang" and "long" were pronounced the same, and both spellings occur.
"As clerkes fyndyn": "clerc" is a pre-1066 borrowing from Latin ("clericus"), meaning "a clergyman, generally a deacon or priest" (Bosworth-Toller). It was pronounced like "cleric" not "clark".
"Fyndyn": plural past tense of "findan" ("find"), yet another Class 3 strong verb. In Old English it was "fundon" ("we/they found").
"Wretyn in here bok": "here" is Old English "hiere" ("their"); "they" is a borrowing from Norse, and "hie" was the Old English pronoun it replaced.
"Ne hadde": "ne" was pronounced "neh" not "nay". "Ne...ne..." is a common Old English construction that can mean either "neither... nor...", or (as in this case) "if not... then neither...". Compare: "no bishop, no king."
"Hadde": originally "haefde", two syllables, with "f" pronounced as "v".
"Our lady": "lady" in Old English was "hlaefdige", "hlaf" (Modern English "loaf") + "dige" ("she who kneads") = "woman who kneads bread". "Lord" was "hlaford", originally "hlaf" + "weard" = "guardian of the loaves".
"heuene qwen": "heaven" was grammatically feminine, hence the possessive (genitive) ending in -e instead of -es (Modern English 's).
"qwen": An ancient Indo-European word with cognates in many languages. It originally meant "woman" or "wife". It occurs as Greek "γυνή" ("gyne"), Russian "жена" ("zhena"), Persian "zan", the "Jen-" in "Jennifer", and the "Guin-" in "Guinevere" (another form of the same name). There is another word in English from this root.
"Take/n": past participle of "tacan", a Class 6 strong verb ("tacan", "to take"; "toc", "I/thou/he/she/it took"; "tocon", "ye/we/they took", "(ge)tacen", "taken").
"Ben": The verb "to be" is probably the most bizarre word in the language, being a mishmash of forms from two verbs: "wesan" and "beon", both "to be". "Wesan" looks like an ordinary Class 5 strong verb ("wesan", "to be"; "waes", "I/thou/he/she/it was", "waeron", "ye/we/they were"...), but the present tense is totally unrelated: "ic eom", "I am"; "þu eart/bist", "thou art", "he is/biþ", "he is"; "we sindon/aron", "we are". File under "God ana wat" ("God only knows").
"We mown syngyn": "mown" (Old English "magon") is the plural form of "may" (Old English "maeg"). The past tense is "meahte" ("might"). This is a "preterite-present" verb; its present-tense resembles the past tense of a strong verb ("magan"), but its past tense is formed like that of a weak verb. There are twelve such verbs, and they occur in most Germanic languages.
And there, you have it: probably more than you ever wanted to know about an obscure Middle English poem.
Adam lay i-bowndyn, bowndyn in a bond,
Fowr þowsand winter þowt he not to long;
And al was for an appil, an appil þat he tok,
As clerkes fyndyn wretyn in here bok.
Ne hadde þe appil take be, þe appil taken ben,
Ne hadde neuer our lady a ben heuene qwen.
Blyssid be þe tyme þat appil take was!
Þerfore we mown syngyn: Deo gracias.
In eleventh-century (Old) English, it would have begun:
Adam laeg gebunden, bunden in anum bonde.
Feower þusend winter ne þohte he to lang.
In 1066, England was conquered by French-speakers, and English more or less ceased to be written for approximately three centuries. In the fourteenth century, it was just beginning to re-emerge as a literary language. The Old English spellings were long forgotten, many inflections had disappeared, and the vowels in unstressed syllables tended to be fairly random.
"I-boundyn" (Old English "gebunden"): past participle of "bindan" ("bind"), a Class 3 strong verb whose basic forms were: bindan ("to bind"), band ("I/thou/he/she/it bound"), bundon ("ye/we/they bound"), (ge)bunden ("bound").
"Bond" has the same relationship to "bindan" as "song" has to "singan" (another Class 3 strong verb).
"Winter": The medieval English reckoned time by counting winters. By contrast, Russians count summers: 25 лет ("лето", "lyeto" = "summer" ).
"Appil": Old English spellings were "appel", "aeppel", "apul", and even "apple". It is an old Indo-European word cognate with Russian "яблоко" ("yabloko"). "Appel" was grammatically masculine, but the Russian word is neuter.
"Not to long": "to" and "too" did not have distinctive spellings in Old English. "Lang" and "long" were pronounced the same, and both spellings occur.
"As clerkes fyndyn": "clerc" is a pre-1066 borrowing from Latin ("clericus"), meaning "a clergyman, generally a deacon or priest" (Bosworth-Toller). It was pronounced like "cleric" not "clark".
"Fyndyn": plural past tense of "findan" ("find"), yet another Class 3 strong verb. In Old English it was "fundon" ("we/they found").
"Wretyn in here bok": "here" is Old English "hiere" ("their"); "they" is a borrowing from Norse, and "hie" was the Old English pronoun it replaced.
"Ne hadde": "ne" was pronounced "neh" not "nay". "Ne...ne..." is a common Old English construction that can mean either "neither... nor...", or (as in this case) "if not... then neither...". Compare: "no bishop, no king."
"Hadde": originally "haefde", two syllables, with "f" pronounced as "v".
"Our lady": "lady" in Old English was "hlaefdige", "hlaf" (Modern English "loaf") + "dige" ("she who kneads") = "woman who kneads bread". "Lord" was "hlaford", originally "hlaf" + "weard" = "guardian of the loaves".
"heuene qwen": "heaven" was grammatically feminine, hence the possessive (genitive) ending in -e instead of -es (Modern English 's).
"qwen": An ancient Indo-European word with cognates in many languages. It originally meant "woman" or "wife". It occurs as Greek "γυνή" ("gyne"), Russian "жена" ("zhena"), Persian "zan", the "Jen-" in "Jennifer", and the "Guin-" in "Guinevere" (another form of the same name). There is another word in English from this root.
"Take/n": past participle of "tacan", a Class 6 strong verb ("tacan", "to take"; "toc", "I/thou/he/she/it took"; "tocon", "ye/we/they took", "(ge)tacen", "taken").
"Ben": The verb "to be" is probably the most bizarre word in the language, being a mishmash of forms from two verbs: "wesan" and "beon", both "to be". "Wesan" looks like an ordinary Class 5 strong verb ("wesan", "to be"; "waes", "I/thou/he/she/it was", "waeron", "ye/we/they were"...), but the present tense is totally unrelated: "ic eom", "I am"; "þu eart/bist", "thou art", "he is/biþ", "he is"; "we sindon/aron", "we are". File under "God ana wat" ("God only knows").
"We mown syngyn": "mown" (Old English "magon") is the plural form of "may" (Old English "maeg"). The past tense is "meahte" ("might"). This is a "preterite-present" verb; its present-tense resembles the past tense of a strong verb ("magan"), but its past tense is formed like that of a weak verb. There are twelve such verbs, and they occur in most Germanic languages.
And there, you have it: probably more than you ever wanted to know about an obscure Middle English poem.
