ᛗ byþ on myrgþe his magan leof.
sceal þeah anra gehwylc oðrum swican.
for ðam dryhten wyle dome sine
ꝥ earme flæsc eorþan betæcan ᛬᛫
In mirth they are loved by their kin
Though each and every one must depart from the other
For the gods will by their judgement,
That wretched body, entrust to the earth.
In Old English, a mann is a human being of any gender, translated into modern English as anyone, they, people, a citizen, a human. Mann is not a male person here, so when you see Mann as the name of this rune, it does not mean man as in male. Most correctly it can be either Person or Human but I need to pick one: Human. Person says more about ourselves as bodies. We carry things on our person, we are a person in a room. We are also a human in a room, but we do have a collective human nature, a human understanding, and human sensibilities. Human is a word that suggests the connection we have from our shared experience of being people in the world. It’s a choice that feels right to me as an answer to the riddle of the stanza. Maybe I’m wrong. As a person I’m only human.… More
Need‘s Rune poem partner is the Human stanza, but you can’t translate the Need stanza without keeping an eye on the Hail stanza next door. Need and Hail are so much alike. Hail comes suddenly and can destroy a crop, smash berries from bushes, fruit from trees, destroy a roof. Hail makes need. Need can come suddenly too. You know quickly when you are in need. The sky opens up and pummels you with it.
Both the Need and Hail stanzas are anomalies in the Rune Poem. They stand out for being only two lines each, when the others are three or four (five for the final one) and they stand out for having many more stressed words per line than is customary for Old English poetry. The effect when sung is a fast staccato beat. A rapid pounding of the heart. Sounds like hail feels like need.
Hail and need … More
You ok? You look a mess. Well, you knew this meltdown was coming. We all did. There were signals and patterns and that was a massive red flag back there, but no. Some people don’t listen. Well, don’t just stand there looking at everybody else’s better deal, you need to pay attention now before the next thing grabs you, and it will grab you. Like a fist around your heart, squeezing. So listen up. Hwat! Pay attention.
Pay attention in advance of what? What is it that’s coming? That’s the question. The answer depends on what the meaning of the word is, is. If is means is and never has been, that is one thing. If it means there is none, that is a completely true statement. If is means now, there is nothing in any one given teeny moment of now, none, there’s no time for it, so if you ask a question … More
Lord what fools these mortals be
Wondering at spectrality.
What is our modality?
Are we duality or plurality?
Or some sort of totality?
And where is our locality?
Ignoring their own finality
(Life is a fatality).
Why so much brutality?
What is this mentality?
Forgive me a legality
But life is for vitality.
Playing games with lethality,
How is this normality?
Better brush up on morality,
Find some commonality,
(Or at least some cordiality).
Wake up and smell reality,
Mortality is factuality.
Your hand hurts. Your non-ergonomically correct work station is giving you all kinds of scoliosis. You are low on ink and making more is a whole thing. That stuff doesn’t grow on trees. And you are the copy machine with a pile on your desk that won’t duplicate itself. Your work requires precision. You absolutely must stick faithfully to the originals, however wordy they may be. How do you get through it? There’s hacks and workarounds for speeding up the process and you know every alt. You erase parts of words, exile the vowels. When you take it down to just one letter you’ll spend less ink and stay as accurate as you like.
What’s that you’ve got there? Well that’s a word that shows up all the time. That’s in the Human stanza, and in Aurochs. Well it’s in the copy you’ve left us, the original to our copy burned up … More
Both the Need and Human stanzas say that life is guided and determined by the gods, and they both highlight two seemingly contradictory aspects of fate, its changeability and its certainty. Need sends a warning. Listening to omens can bring help when fate turns against us, so you’d better listen up. The Human stanza warns something else: we enjoy life with each other, but only until the gods decide our ultimate fate, the permanence of death, so let’s enjoy each other now while we can.
This is powerful stuff. The gods do not, however, have absolute power. In a world governed by fate (wyrd in Old English), it is not the case that the gods have sole and complete charge over every aspect of our lives. Even with deities such as the omnipresent ones (nosy, deeply involved in human business) belonging to the people of the Rune Poem, people have discernment. People are … More
The Rune Poem stanzas Wealth and Human have so much in common they ought to be a matched set, except they already have their own partners, The Grave, and Need. Here are Wealth and Human repeating themselves:
Wealth: Sceal ðeah manna gehwylc (though each of us must).
Human: Sceal þeah anra gehwylc (though each and every one must).
And look at how many words they share: byþ, gehwylcum/gehwylc, sceal, wile/wyle, ðeah/þeah, drihtne/dryhten, dome/domes, 7 not counting pronouns. The name of the Human rune, manna, appears in the Wealth stanza so let’s count that one too: 8 words in common is a large number, especially when you consider that the Wealth stanza has only 18 words and the Human stanza has 23 if you include ꝥ, which isn’t a whole word but a grammalogue for the … More
Star light, star bright,
First star I see tonight, I wish I may, I wish I might, have this wish I wish tonight. Not something big like a pony what am I going to do with a horse, it was just to get out of there and live my life already. But I didn’t mean all the way out, and me with my heart in my throat. Plenty of help and no support.
I know the one thing that ever shall be, we all know that one doesn’t matter who. I’ll recognize need next time I see it, and by god doesn’t matter who, I’ll help how I can if I can.
Need is mine and will be mine again.
Yours,
X
You look happy on the outside but I can still see you coming apart. It’s your whole vibe: you’ve got no zip, zero, nada, and look at you. Loved by your family, yes some of them love you very deep down in kind of a fuzzy way, but they are there holding strong nevertheless. They especially love you when you’re happy. Well, they like you more. Picture yourself out of the picture. Can you do that? Find a remove from which to stand and fulcrum yourself out, look at what that looks like. Not in a wonderful christmas carol life kind of way, I see what you want so stop it. You’ve been in the world, a messy person like you, yes? Messes leave stains. There’s going to be smears of you all over the place. Getting all up in everything. You’ve always been the red sock in the laundry, bleeding. So look now. … More
Listen up. As if from nowhere you will have nothing. Nowhere is where nothing comes from, did you not know? That pain in your chest will be your heart squeezing down two sizes too small. You’ll be in need and you will feel it. Pay attention to the gods on this one baby love, help will come if you shush, listen, and do what you’re told.
Be happy, your people love you, especially when you are happy. Enjoy each other now because everybody will die. When will you depart, one from the other? O I couldn’t tell you that. That’s not for us to know.
Voiced alveolar nasal. Vibrate some air through your vocal cords, stop it at the roof of your mouth with your tongue. Nope. No passage here. Never. Send that air out through your nose.
When N stands next to C or G both letters are pronounced together and sound a bit like Ing, the other nasal letter besides M, which is N’s Rune Poem partner. M and N are still close in modern English, next door neighbors, and together they are the only nasal letters left to us since Ing went east.
Carve a line straight down to rock bottom. Now constrict it with another line, right through the heart. Point that line down a bit too, but also point it up.
Send out some air and impede it a bit with your vocal cords, press your lips together and send that air through your nose. Smell that? Mmmmm. Delicious.
Carve the rune for joy and give it company: its spitting image, like looking in a mirror. Like the rest of us, they love to be happy together.
