Tag Archives: Ear

Life and Death

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

Stanza 29: The Grave

ᛠ byþ egle         eorla gehwylcun.
ðonn fæstlice         flæsc onginneþ.
hraw colian         hrusan ceosan
blac to gebeddan         bleda gedreosaþ.
wynna gewitaþ         wera geswicaþ ᛬᛫

It is grievous for everybody
When quickly the flesh of the corpse
Begins to grow cold.
The pallid one chooses the earth as its consort
Fruits fall, pleasures depart, covenants are betrayed.

 

Translating Ear

Old English uses very few words at a time, but in all the minimalism there’s a massive amount of meaning: often multiple meanings of the same word are intended, black is sometimes white, and frequently there’s a pun in there somewhere. To translate Old English we need to use more words than the original, and still it’s difficult to pack all that meaning back in. Translation fills graveyards of context and nuance, left behind to grow cold. What is lost by gaining? What do we kill dead? Alliteration and meter, the music makers of language. The beat, deceased, sounds abandoned. Look at this:

blac to gebeddan     bleda gedreosaþ

Now say it:

black to yeh-bed-an     blea-da yeh-dre-o-sath

There’s some sound in it, listen. Alliteration and beat. Three repetitions of B making a beat and there’s a pause in the middle: two parts sung as one statement. Or a call and response. Old English poetry has a … More

Everything is Temporary

I am so terribly sorry for your loss. I’ll be thinking about you and will light a candle. Please let me know if there is anything I can do for you in your time of grief, while you are in mourning, as you move through this tragic occasion, during your bereavement, it’s so hard to know what to say. You were alive for such a short time too. Eternity will feel much longer, trust me. What will you do now? Can you watch your people while they divide your stuff? Maybe you don’t want to see that. Making piles, what they keep for themselves or can sell, what they slip into a pocket when the other one isn’t looking. Donations by the door, lamps on the floor. Things going into garbage bags. It’s hard to watch. At least you seem to have people. So many die exiled in wretchedness and just imagine that clean … More

X≠Y≠Z: Rune Casting!

Y: This is our future? Ear and Feoh. Death and cattle? Are we going to kill a cow? Are we meeting some rich cattle?

Z:  Wealth. It means wealth.

Y:  Wealth? Like lots of cows?

X:  Portable wealth, not cows. Nobody pays in cow anymore.

Z:  Some do.

Y:  How is a cow portable? Imagine it. Pulling it behind you on a leash to go shopping. Loading it up into the car.

X:  The smell of the bank.

Y:  The smell of the bank! The wealth rune. Wealth!

X:  We’ll have money.

Y:  Yes! We will be rich! It’s so good to know it beforehand. Cows are big, right, this is big money, beyond our wildest fantasies rich. Yes. Fantastic. Yes. We’ll be swimming in it. Scrooge McDucking it through ducats! Plunging into property!

X:  Capering in capital!

Y:  Lounging in lucre, washing in wealth! Rolling in bankrolls, piling into pesos, current … More

Rune Casting: Ear

Tell me your future. Tell me, what do you hope will happen before you’re dead? And what is it you are afraid of? Never mind. Doesn’t matter what. The future is not in the what, it’s in the hope and the fear that you hold now, in the present. Whatever it is coming to you, or coming for you, is happening now. In here. In your mind. There is no other future. Well, there is the one thing that is going to happen, Ear says it for sure. It’s coming to you and it’s coming for you. You’ve got it coming. You’ll choose the earth as your consort and sleep together forever. Everything is temporary, except that. That’s carved in stone.

ᛠ

EA. Diphthong: a compound vowel. This one is deceased, we don’t use it any more. What did EA sound like? Maybe like EO, maybe like AU, emphasis on the E or the A because all Old English diphthongs fall down dead in the end: you pronounce both letters but not equally, let the second one drop away to its death, thirty two feet per second per second.

Maybe EA sounds like the E in second. Maybe EA sounds like ÆA, like a hybrid of what A is doing in gnaw and in mad. More like gnaw, but it’s still pissed off. Or it was, EA is dead and gone now, some sounds die. They get eaten up, don’t be mad about it. What chewed EA away? Everything is temporary.

Carve a W and make it look like a fresh mound of earth in a valley. Dirt piled over a grave. Put it on a stick … More