Adam lay ybounden: word geekery

One 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" ).

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Cheer, cheer for Thighs of a Virgin High

Kwazulu-Natal has some schools with unusual names.