"Charles Harrison Wallace Translation: This one's very poetic, but not very faithful. Professor, sic, Wallace has taken an awful lot of liberties with the original text, all in the name of poetic effect." As elsewhere noted, this quote comes from a website apparently jestingly or jovially intended by semi-academics for deprived and benighted seven year olds. It features a massively misanalysed, misunderstood and misinterpreted account of The Seafarer. Who could object to having their poetics called poetic ? Who would not object to having their fidelity labelled faithless ? Who might reject an unmerited accolade ? These questions, coupled with the fortuitous discovery of a snippet of The Seafarer translated by another in a seemingly faithful fashion, inspire the investigation below. Further ribaldry from the Philistine boor of long years ago is not unexpected. Extracts to the left, notes to the right. Authorities consulted: Clark Hall, 1894; Stora Engelska Ordboken; Cassell Concise English Dictionary.. Bearwas blostmum nimaš, byrig fęgriaš, wongas wlitigaš, woruld onetteš; ealle ža gemoniaš modes fusne sefan to siže, žam že swa ženceš on flodwegas feor gewitan
25 words | bearwas = groves byrig; cognate byre, hut wongas = meadows, meads. wlitig = radiant, gleaming. fus = ready to depart; dying "Dying" is a highly revealing gloss (3) in Clark Hall. | The woods take on blossoms, towns become fair, fields grow beautiful, the world hastens on; all these things urge on the eager mind, the spirit to the journey, in one who thinks to travel far on the paths of the sea.
41 words | Not "woods"; not "towns"; not "fields"; not "eager"; not "spirit". Gemoniaš = not "urge", but "admonish". Semi-prosaic versions are bound to betray verse. | Then blossom decks the bower's bough the bothie blooms, the sea meads gleam the wide world racks the restless mind of him who on the full flood tide determines to depart
31 words: 25 + 6 add-ons | bower = arbour, grove bothie = cottage, hut flood-tide = flod (Sw.) Alliterating words to add and elucidate: bough, sea, wide, full, tide. Depart, not travel. žam že = him who |
Repeated credentials: Fluent in Swedish at an early age, my French and German was acquired by residence in both countries before the age of fifteen. Latin had been studied for seven years, starting at age eleven, which provided me with just about enough to pass the then requirements for entry to Oxford. Presumably Latin is no longer required. Before my schooling ended I had learned 200 lines of Ancient Greek verse, without understanding a single word.. Later I picked up a few words of Persian, by living some years in Iran. My knowledge of Swedish meant that my competence to understand Anglo-Saxon already well exceeded that of established Anglo-Saxonists, and others dependent on exclusively book-based learning. I well remember the extreme annoyance of my English tutor on his discovery that I knew what tho meant, in Chaucer. "I suppose it was written in", he expostulated, in a fit of intense anger. I came to the conclusion that there was nothing I could learn from him. He also remarked to me that I was "one of those people who seem intelligent, but are actually very stupid." Our relationship ended at my request. These incidents remind me of a statement by one interviewer at BNC, who explained that the college was "not a place of education, but of learning". See Floury Freshmen, page 231, Brian Miller. Miller, a kind man and an Anglo-Saxonist, was not the tutor of Chaucerian learning..
| | 

Sweden named East-Denamearc by Ohthere, 890. Or his scribe Map & note from Two Voyagers, 1984 William Sessions of York Route: Kaupang to Hedeby

|