When did the English discover the Anglo-Saxons? (2018)(etymonline.com)
etymonline.com
When did the English discover the Anglo-Saxons? (2018)
https://www.etymonline.com/columns/post/out-of-time
16 comments
And, how and why Old English was rediscovered. Fascinating piece.
It's good, isn't it. There are some stellar Reddit, Discord and Youtube communities forming around OE. All intertwined really. That crossover period is really understudied. At least by me. A great book is The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth, in a pseudo/shadow English about the English resistance to Norman incursion.
I had no idea how close we came to losing Beowulf. I wonder how many other Old English poems have been lost.
The great majority. In Anglo-Saxon times, England had a population of about 1 - 2 million and several percent were highly literate. There would have been hundreds or thousands of authors in each generation, tens of thousands of priests, bards, etc.
In the generations after, only the manuscripts that impressed, or writings that were the most celebrated as literature, were preserved or duplicated. Those not held in high regard were sometimes recycled for paper, or ultimately lost when the last copy fell apart. Cultural biases play a role too. There wasn't much interest in preserving pagan legends in newly Christianized England, and so much of the Anglo-Saxon literature we do have is from the later period and usually utilitarian or Christian in nature.
The scale of the loss is clearer further south. We have book lists from the Roman and Greek classical era. The playwright Aeschylus is thought to have written about 100 plays, of which 6 survive. Julius Caesar and Aristotle were prolific authors, and celebrated individuals almost continuously since their deaths, and yet the majority of their works did not survive.
In the generations after, only the manuscripts that impressed, or writings that were the most celebrated as literature, were preserved or duplicated. Those not held in high regard were sometimes recycled for paper, or ultimately lost when the last copy fell apart. Cultural biases play a role too. There wasn't much interest in preserving pagan legends in newly Christianized England, and so much of the Anglo-Saxon literature we do have is from the later period and usually utilitarian or Christian in nature.
The scale of the loss is clearer further south. We have book lists from the Roman and Greek classical era. The playwright Aeschylus is thought to have written about 100 plays, of which 6 survive. Julius Caesar and Aristotle were prolific authors, and celebrated individuals almost continuously since their deaths, and yet the majority of their works did not survive.
Keep in mind that a fair-sized codec was generally written on velum, not paper, and would have required a sizeable herd of sheep merely to provide the hides. The material cost of a book of such times could well approach or exceed 1 million dollars by present reckoning, even before labour of approximately 1 man year to copy it out by hand per copy was added.
Gutenberg's revolution hinged not only on moveable type, but on rag-based paper (wood pulp wasn't widely used until the 19th century), and reduced the cost of a book by about an order of magnitude, possibly two. Far less expensive than before, but still phenomenally expensive contrasted with a paperback or digital download.
That said, yes, the production, reproduction, preservation, and distribution of books was very highly limited. Much official practice relied strongly on individual memory and recollection, with minimal recordkeeping via media. See the use of tally-sticks used for recording and reconciliation of debts (and the burning down of Parliament, eventually), as an example.
As with most works of antiquity, a large part of the present ascribed value is due to the failure of most such works to survive.
There's also the historiography of early records, and how and in what form(s) early documents did survive, where and when they did. Often it's only through quotations or citations that any record exists at all.
I've found it delightfully ironic that one of the more tedious forms of online debate, popular with top-quoting users of Usenet and email lists, of citing passages and responding to them directly in-line, was apparently pioneered thousands of years ago, and that it is often the harshest and most strident critics of earlier works who are to be credited with even a partial survival of them, by virtue of their anacronistic Fisking.
Peter Adamson's History of Philosophy podcast addresses these aspects in several episodes, largely on earlier philosophers.
Gutenberg's revolution hinged not only on moveable type, but on rag-based paper (wood pulp wasn't widely used until the 19th century), and reduced the cost of a book by about an order of magnitude, possibly two. Far less expensive than before, but still phenomenally expensive contrasted with a paperback or digital download.
That said, yes, the production, reproduction, preservation, and distribution of books was very highly limited. Much official practice relied strongly on individual memory and recollection, with minimal recordkeeping via media. See the use of tally-sticks used for recording and reconciliation of debts (and the burning down of Parliament, eventually), as an example.
As with most works of antiquity, a large part of the present ascribed value is due to the failure of most such works to survive.
There's also the historiography of early records, and how and in what form(s) early documents did survive, where and when they did. Often it's only through quotations or citations that any record exists at all.
I've found it delightfully ironic that one of the more tedious forms of online debate, popular with top-quoting users of Usenet and email lists, of citing passages and responding to them directly in-line, was apparently pioneered thousands of years ago, and that it is often the harshest and most strident critics of earlier works who are to be credited with even a partial survival of them, by virtue of their anacronistic Fisking.
Peter Adamson's History of Philosophy podcast addresses these aspects in several episodes, largely on earlier philosophers.
If you look into medieval northern European history at all, one of the things that is striking is how incredibly fragmentary what has been discovered/passed down is. Large swaths of what we "know" are often based on one ecclesiastical book. Or a single archaeological discovery in a field somewhere like Sutton Hoo.
Gildas, Bede, Asser and to the people who duplicated and preserved their works we thank you.
Take Offa's Dyke for instance, very little is known about its purpose from historical records (though we can guess). A structure which ran the length of what is now the English and Welsh border.
Take Offa's Dyke for instance, very little is known about its purpose from historical records (though we can guess). A structure which ran the length of what is now the English and Welsh border.
I got partway through The Swerve; really should pick that back up.
further reading, How England got its name. https://www.persee.fr/doc/onoma_0755-7752_2009_num_51_1_1506
> They expanded the search to include other Germanic relatives, such as Icelandic and older forms of German, to shed light on Old English.
Interesting, is this 17th century German fandom the basis of Tolkien's work? His Middle Earth was so fleshed out, I guess it would make sense.
> By 1720 intellectual interest in England had turned to Druidry, Celtic heritage, Stonehenge, and the imaginary world of Phoenician Druids bringing the Abrahamic religion to Britain, complete with chariot races around Stonehenge.
Reminds me, of the Hindu Nationalists view of history. Maybe not in form but in motivation. State/Church wanting to found its origins in itself.
Interesting, is this 17th century German fandom the basis of Tolkien's work? His Middle Earth was so fleshed out, I guess it would make sense.
> By 1720 intellectual interest in England had turned to Druidry, Celtic heritage, Stonehenge, and the imaginary world of Phoenician Druids bringing the Abrahamic religion to Britain, complete with chariot races around Stonehenge.
Reminds me, of the Hindu Nationalists view of history. Maybe not in form but in motivation. State/Church wanting to found its origins in itself.
You don't have to go back so far for language to get tricksy. I'm 50, British and speak en_GB_en (lol etc) with a roughly RP accent. My mum also had a similar accent when I knew her, except she was a Devonian farmer's daughter born 1942. If she reverted her accent and language back to how her peers spoke in South Devon in the 1950s and 60s then she was quite hard to follow and that was my mum. Granny and Grandad (b. 1902) could really make themselves unintelligible if they wanted to. Mind you, Granny was from Manchester and Grandad from Totnes.
We also seem to have forgotten that quite a few other languages have been lost in the UK and far more recently. Cumbric and Cornish for starters. Both are Brythonic ie like Welsh, Scottish and Irish. Cumbric was spoken in Cumbria ie top left of England and Cornish in Kernow - Cornwall - bottom left, next door to Devon. It's not quite that simple but good enough. Cornish is being revived, Cumbric not so much although I'm sure I read somewhere that shepherds still count in Cumbric - someting like yan, tan, tithera, methera.
You have to be careful when you pin languages into your display cabinets. Unlike insects the bloody things persist to get up and tell you to piss off in a variety of amusing ways. Sadly what seemed routine and boring to our forebears was often not documented or obliterated and ultimately lost. Painstaking research gets us some of the way but it is absolutely that: painstaking.
We also seem to have forgotten that quite a few other languages have been lost in the UK and far more recently. Cumbric and Cornish for starters. Both are Brythonic ie like Welsh, Scottish and Irish. Cumbric was spoken in Cumbria ie top left of England and Cornish in Kernow - Cornwall - bottom left, next door to Devon. It's not quite that simple but good enough. Cornish is being revived, Cumbric not so much although I'm sure I read somewhere that shepherds still count in Cumbric - someting like yan, tan, tithera, methera.
You have to be careful when you pin languages into your display cabinets. Unlike insects the bloody things persist to get up and tell you to piss off in a variety of amusing ways. Sadly what seemed routine and boring to our forebears was often not documented or obliterated and ultimately lost. Painstaking research gets us some of the way but it is absolutely that: painstaking.
Even just the slang evolving can make the nominally-same language into something alien. My parents' '70s slang from a specific Italian city is full of funny words that don't mean anything anymore.
Quite. We can see SPQR on the manhole covers in Rome and know that the Senate and People of Rome own the place. That's a signature that is well over 2000 years old - it used to also appear on the "eagles" of the legions and in a fair few other places. That is a very well documented and understood message from the past. A few miles (mille passus) from me is Lendiniae - we call it Ilchester these days. The -chester name implies it was a Roman camp/town.
What we are talking about here is context and history. Please share where you lot are from and some examples of how slang has changed for you. I might not understand it but I will appreciate it and it gets documented somewhere.
There is a really good reason for the Internet Archive to exist. It remembers stuff. We've lost so much already but future generations will have rather a lot of data to pick over.
What we are talking about here is context and history. Please share where you lot are from and some examples of how slang has changed for you. I might not understand it but I will appreciate it and it gets documented somewhere.
There is a really good reason for the Internet Archive to exist. It remembers stuff. We've lost so much already but future generations will have rather a lot of data to pick over.
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> Cumbric and Cornish for starters. Both are Brythonic ie like Welsh, Scottish and Irish.
Small correction: Welsh is indeed Brythonic, as are Cornish and Breton, as they derive from the Celtic languages spoken in pre-Anglo-Saxon Britain. Scottish Gaelic and Irish, on the other hand, are Goidelic, as they come from the Celtic spoken in Ireland.
Small correction: Welsh is indeed Brythonic, as are Cornish and Breton, as they derive from the Celtic languages spoken in pre-Anglo-Saxon Britain. Scottish Gaelic and Irish, on the other hand, are Goidelic, as they come from the Celtic spoken in Ireland.
By which I mean to say that humanity sees the value of these cultural artifacts mostly in retrospect.