The Wanderer (Old English recitation)
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- Опубліковано 18 жов 2024
- 'The Wanderer' has long been regarded as one of the finest poems of the Anglo-Saxon period, though there has been no general agreement on its theme, structure or genre. It is found on folios 76b-78a of the Exeter Book (Codex Exoniensis), an anthology compiled towards the end of the tenth century which contains the most varied collection of poetry that has survived from the Anglo-Saxon period.
'The Wanderer' is one of a group of Old English poems similar in elegiac tone and lyrical feeling. Without going too far into a scholarly interpretation of the poem's themes and content, it would be fair to say that the speaker is not so much saddened by what he sees in the world, but that he is cognisant of the fact that the things of this world are calculated to make him sad. All people depart. Creation daily decays. Dwellings are swept by snow and the ones we love are buried in holes beneath the ground, only to be forgotten. The personal elegy broadens and becomes an elegy for all. But amongst the all the trudging disintegration, hope beckons -- at the end of things, a fortress stands, offering succour to all who have attained the wisdom of self-control; self-knowledge.
Narrator: Stephen Clothier
Musical improvisation: Stephen Clothier
Modern English translation: Stephen Clothier
Mixing and mastering: Jamie Boorman
Recorded at Tūhura/The HIVE at Johnsonville Library, Wellington, New Zealand. With thanks to Wellington City Libraries.
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this poem reaches across time and connects me to my ancestors , thankyou for such a beautiful and haunting rendition.
I'm really glad the poem spoke to you :)
Amazing! I have wanted to read The Wanderer for a while now, and to finally read it while hearing it read (so expressively!) in the original Anglo-Saxon was beautiful. I can tell the translation is super precise, too, as so many kennings were preserved. I wish I could say thanks in Anglo-Saxon, but I hope a nordic "Takk," will be close enough. 😉
Wow, thank you for this lovely comment! I'm so glad you enjoyed this, it was a lot of fun to make :) It was definitely my intention with the translation to preserve as many of the OE poetic elements as possible, though it definitely impacts on the sense-making of the modern English in places as a result. Modern poetry often requires the reader to decode for sense, though, so I don't feel too bad to have done it that way!
Old english is so beautiful, i wish it was still spoken today
6:24 is the start of section that J.R.R. Tolkien's Lament for the Rohirrim is based on.
Beautifully done. This, and "The Dream of the Rood" are two of my favorites. Thank you for this.
Amazing, harrowing, haunting, mesmerising.
I just got a book of Old English poetry; it was amazing hearing the actual rhythm and sound of the language in this beautiful poem! Thank you!
Great recitation and music! Thank you for this.
Thank you for your kind comment! :)
I need to learn Old English!
Excellent pronunciation and articulation!
Just beautiful.
This is a fucking great poem.
It really is!
Agreed!
!Wundorlīċ , Wel-ġedōn
👏❤❤.Iċ ðæt lufie
Iċ þancie þē!
6:25 horse and the rider
In the OE, literally "young man / son"...it is implied that he would be the rider of the horse. The phrase "where the rider" is from Tolkien--but it is definitely hard to resist in modern English as it sound so poetic. In the OE, the existing word mago seems to flow the best juxtaposed to mearg ("steed").
my prof started playing this in class and i thought my brain wasn't working for a min, anyway great poem
What is that beautiful illustration/symbol in the opening slide?
Well done I say!
Wonderful
I didn't understand read the translation, I like it.
It’s hard to listen closely to other languages’ specific sounds when music is added.
@MacCallum Bennett its a song
@@connorleonard4047 Yes, but it was only accompanied by a 3-stringed instrument in the original days. I, too, wish the background music - as evocative as it is -- were "quieter."
nice!!!
It's crazy how some words if you look at the translation, can see how they haven't changed too much. For example maerg is horse, nowadays you call a female horse mare. Coincidence or did it evolve to describe a particular horse?
Influence from Norman French
0:19 is when speaking begins
Wow! That's *very* Ecclesiastes.
Oh, yeah, it actually really is! I didn't make the connection until you mentioned it but I would agree!
Here 'cwicra ' implies the sense of alive right?
Exactly :) It's cognate to the modern English word 'quick,' which has somewhat lost that meaning now except for in certain regions. I felt as though "none who quicken" was a suitable translation as it preserves more of the sound of the OE text. In general I've tried to use as many modern English cognates here as I can, even when it ends up slightly muddying the meaning for a modern reader, because I think that the poetic effect is quite interesting.
the music is kinda creepy👻
After I read this aloud, I had summon JRR Tolkien spirit...
Take you
Who else came from easy peasy home schooling
Mee🖐🖐
Scandinvaian accent?
I'm afraid not! I'm from New Zealand. The Old English language has a reasonable amount of lexical similarity with modern Icelandic due to the common (and fairly close, in linguistic terms) ancestor that OE and Old Norse have in the form of Proto-Germanic, as Icelandic preserves a lot of the forms found in ON that modern English has lost from OE. Perhaps this vestigial connection with a contemporary North Germanic language is what you're hearing as a Scandinavian accent of sorts :)
(By the way, I'm not a linguist, just an enthusiast, so I can't tell you exactly how much vocabulary is similar between OE and modern Icelandic. But a friend of mine once gave me a book of Icelandic poetry and I found that having a background in OE vocabulary and grammar helped me to get the gist of about half of what was going on without needing to refer to a modern English translation. Obviously a huge amount of specific meaning was lost, however.)
@@violavonschnitzel Well put! (It's also worth noting that he's not following all the standard Old English pronunciation rules: half his "g" sounds are incorrect, and the "y" is supposed to be like a *ü* in German.)
@@LauraMorland Haha, there are plenty of mistakes, you're right! I think I have improved a little since this recording, which to be honest I just slapped together on my lunch break at work, but I haven't had much time to do more recordings since. I do have a reading of The Dream of the Rood standing by to be made into a video though :)
I like it, but why this music?
Honestly? Pretty much because we partially made this video to test out the recording studio at the library where I work!
I love it but the music IS a bit loud. If I spoke Old English as well as the narrator it probably wouldn't matter, but as it is the volume is a little distracting. Just a thought.
@@jrcrawford4 Thanks! I'll bear it in mind if I make more of these (as I hope to!) :)
@@violavonschnitzel I'm subscribed and looking forward to them.
The music is a tad too loud, but not inappropriate. These poems were all originally sung or recited by bards .
solitude in the city of light and sin 1508197222342219
What's with the 10 seconds of wasted silence at the beginning? :-( Nice job with the recitation though.
This ain't English, what is this 😂
It is English, if you go back a thousand years or more
@@nicholassinnett2958 who spoke this type of English
@@stoopid5555 the Anglo saxons the people who led to the creation of england
@@stoopid5555 The Anglo-Saxons. The Jutes may have spoken a language similar to that of Anglo-Saxon, but I don't quite remember. This language would have been spoken by the Germanic tribes who invaded modern-day England and would have been spoken up until the early---mid 1200s. After that, the language would have been so heavily influenced by French that we would end up getting Middle English. According to my professor, the people of that day would not have been able to read their historical records from less than 100 years before with how quickly the language changed during that time.
ᛁᚾᛏᛖᚱᛖᛊᚨᚾᛏᛖ᛫ᛈᚨᚱᚨ᛫ᚨᛈᚱᛖᚾᛞᛖᚱ!!!
ᚨᛞᛖᛗᚨᛊ᛫ᛞᛖ᛫ᛁᛜᛚᛖᛊ,᛫ᚨᛜᛚᛟᛊᚨᛃᛟᚾ...