Ælfred se Lytel and the Thanksgiving Tumble
A very Ælfred Thanksgiving…
Eala! I hope everyone has been well this holiday season, and has gotten a chance to step away from the pressures of everyday life. Among other things, I have been using my time away from my other academic endeavors to work on some more episodes of my Ælfred project, which I am just now getting around to sharing. I genuinely find it so fun to come up with incidents to write about. I have always loved revisiting my favorite childhood stories, and it is so lovely and cathartic to bring the nostalgia and sweetness of that simple and beloved genre into a field that I am also so excited and inspired by.
This week’s story posed a few compositional challenges; first of all, Thanksgiving is an inherently North American holiday, and therefore many of the traditional dishes were not known to (or reflected in the language of) the Anglo Saxon people. I tried to get around this as creatively as I could while entertaining myself (see: “large dry chicken” in place of turkey - I’m sure you could guess what my personal feelings are about that particular dish). Additionally, every time I begin writing in Old English, or later when I share my writing for proofreading with my mentor, I come across grammatical questions that I haven’t encountered or don’t have an easy answer to. One such instance was in line four, “He creeps out to look”, in which the phrase to look takes the form of an inflected infinitive. This is an verb that looks like a typical infinitive, but also takes the preposition to and the ending -enne. It is often translated as in order to or for the purpose of.
Moments like these are one of the reasons that I feel so strongly about incorporating sentence composition into Old English learning. I vaguely remember the inflected infinitive being mentioned when I first learned Old English, but more in a “you’ll know it when you see it” way, because that’s all I was expected to need. Traditional Old English curriculums teach students to translate, and do so very well, but they don’t prepare them to come up with their own writing or speech the way a modern language course would. This can leave gaps in understanding of the mechanical ways that the language works. And, also, writing and speaking in Old English is so much fun and so rewarding in the challenge that it poses to one’s knowledge of the language.
Ælfred the Small and the Thanksgiving Tumble
Ælfred se Lytel ond se þancol-ǣtwela feall
It is thanksgiving in the school
Biþ (p)ancol-ætwela in (p)am leornunghuse
All the joyful students are preparing the table
Eall (p)a dreamlice leornung-cnihtas beo(p) ge-gærwende (p)one beod
Ælfred the Small hears the clatter and is curious
Ælfred se lytel ge-hereþ (p)æt cleadur ond bi(p) feorwit-georn
He creeps out to look
He crypþ ut to wlitanne
The table is so big it touches the corner!
Se beod biþ swa great, hine hrinþ (p)one hwæm!
It is covered with food, and it smells lovely.
Hit biþ ahelled mid fodan ond hit ge-sweccþ æþele
Ælfred’s nose twitches and he scurries up the leg.
Ælfredes nasu twiccaþ ond he climmaþ up þam scancan
He sees a huge turkey, looking at him!
He gesiehþ an great dryge-cicen, wlitende him!
Run!
Irn!
A big eye…
An great eage…
“Is that a mouse?”
“Biþ þæt an mus?”
Ælfred the Small dives into the bowl.
Ælfred se Lytel dyfþ in þone disc
He swims through cranberry sauce
He fleotþ þurh read blæd broþ
And lands in mashed potatoes!
Ond hrerþ in hnysced-brun-radiscum
A hand pulls him out!
An hond lycþ him ut!
Ælfred is sad and scared
Ælfred biþ angmod ond ablyged
And hungry!
Ond hingriende!
A student says, “Join our feast, tiny mouse.”
An leornung-cniht ge-spricþ, “Hlec urne ætwelan, lytel mus.”
They put him on a thimble for a stool
Hie settaþ him on an þymele for an stole
And Ælfred the Small enjoyed his feast-
Ond Ælfred se Lytel gebreac his ætweles-
From a button-plate!
Fram an fifele-disce!