Reading for School 2
Old books on olds books on old books. I look for an old book of Old English poems, in the old basement of King's College Library: The Exeter Book. Collected with other big, old books. I'll just read my two assigned poems in here, in Krapp and Dobbie's collection of six old books:
Nope, they are written in Old English. Incomprehensible.
I find two other books, in English this time, in Killam Memorial Library & Halifax Public Libraries: The Earliest English Poems & Old English Poetry: An Anthology. Each have different translations of "The Wanderer" & "The Wife's Lament".
A few lines from The Wanderer
"Wyrd(1) is fully fixed." (Stanza 1, Line 5)
(1) Old English word for Fate, a powerful but not quite personified force. It is related to the verb weorthan, meaning roughly "to occur." Its meanings range from a neutral "event" to a prescribed "destiny" to a personified "Fate"; it is useful to think of wyrd as "what happens," usually in a negative sense. In a poem so preoccupied with puzzling over the nature and meaning or wyrd, it seemed appropriate to leave the word untranslated.
—Old English Poetry: An Anthology
"Wierd [sic] is set fast." (Stanza 1, Line 5)
—The Earliest English Poems
A few lines from The Wife's Lament
I make this song of myself, deeply sorrowing, my own life's journey. (Stanza 1, Lines 1-2)
—Old English Poetry: An Anthology
I have wrought these words together out of a wryed existence, the heart's tally... (Stanza 1, Lines 1-3)
—The Earliest English Poems
A definition from A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, Volume X Part II, V to Z — one of 13 books, more than a metre thick
Weird:
(O[ld] E[nglish]) The principle, power, or agency by which events are predetermined; fate, destiny.
The Fates, the three goddesses supposed to determine the course of human life.
That which is destined or fated to happen to a particular person; what one will do or suffer; one's appointed lot or fortune, destiny.












