This past year I’ve had the experience of hearing The Lord of the Rings with fresh ears, now that I’ve learned Old English. The first thing that jumps out differently is the names, like seeing “Haleth” in a list, and recognizing a word for “warrior”. At the Council of Elrond we meet Galdor, whose name means a magic charm.
In Rohan, the Old English echoes become louder. Merry is knighted as “Holdwine”, which I now see is a nice double entendre: sure, he can hold his drink, but also hold means “loyal” and wine means “friend”. Here’s another thing I would never have done before: I’ve searched the Old English corpus for historical figures named “holdwine”, just to see if there’s a reference I’m missing. (Can’t find any.)
Treebeard and Legolas like alliterative proverbs. So do I. Perhaps it’s a function of age. Even Gimli gets into the act: “indeed, sooner would I bear a horse than be borne by one.” The first word is modern English that could have been spoken by anyone in the book. After the first two words, though, the sentence turns into a good alliterative line. Now that I’ve read a lot of old English verse, Gimli’s motivation in saying this sounds different. It sounds like he began the sentence in his usual idiom, but when he got two words in he noticed that he could make a witty epigram in the Rohirric style.
That style permeates Book III. Gandalf, making introductions at Meduseld: “And here beside me is Aragorn son of Arathorn, the heir of Kings, and it is to Mundburg that he goes”. On first reading, that sentence sounded weird to a teen-aged idiosopher. Now I get it. Describing a character three different ways in a row is a technique that’s all over Anglo-Saxon poetry. It’s reinforced by the alliteration++ on “Aragorn”, “Arathorn”, and “heir”. (Is there a word for going beyond alliteration, matching the whole first syllable, like a modern English rhyme turned backwards?)
The ancient roots of that sentence go deeper, though. What really struck me when I first read LotR was that weird comma-spliced extra sentence at the end, with the second part just barely related to the first part. English teachers constantly correct their students for doing that. JRRT was an English teacher. What gives? It turns out Anglo-Saxons loved conjunction splices. For example, Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 888: “Queen Æthelswith who was King Alfred’s sister died on the way to Rome, and her body lies at Pavia.”
This is the first of several ways Gandalf is being more British than the Queen in this chapter. “It is the will of Théoden King that none should enter his gates, save those who know our tongue and are our friends,” says the guard, so Gandalf lays it on thick.
There was one disappointment. “Éomer” is in Beowulf. Where did Éowyn come from? Her name doesn’t exist in the corpus, but “Þeowen” does. It’s a common variant of “Þeow”. “Handmaiden” is the nicest translation of that word (the others all connote slavery). Not cool! However, that word is part of Queen Wealhþeow‘s name. Maybe there’s a positive meaning we don’t have in the surviving literature. It wouldn’t surprise me if Tolkien inferred an unattested name that must have existed somewhere.
Altogether, this has been a profitable exercise. It’s not easy to have a fresh perspective, the ~50th time one reads a book. When I signed up for Intro to Anglo-Saxon at Signum last winter, the universal reaction of my friends was, “Why?” Maybe now I know the answer.
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