I stumbled upon your postings on Beowulf and find them interesting.
I too, am enamored with Beowulf and am in year of four now of translating it from the original text found on the Electronic Beowulf, along with the two Thorkelin copies, which necessarily help to fill-in-the-blanks from those missing/damaged lines in the original manuscript. Being at the 75% mark of having translated the entirety of the poem, I have come to a few conclusions, which I thought I would share.
One: Spacing is erratic in the manuscript. Inconsistent at best and absent at the worst.
Two: All single-letter words are adjoined to another word (abbreviations are not single-letter words). In fact, many two-letter words are adjoined to to other words.
Three: The manuscript has three scripts: Old English, Runic (rune marks) and Letter Runes, letter(s) that represent the word for the rune.
Four: The Letter Runes are extensive throughout the manuscript (over 1,000). Absent the Letter Runes, the content of the poem is incomplete at best and simply not comprehended at the worst.
Five: Throughout the manuscript are 150 echo marks (lines over words or part of words) that are meant to repeat what is underneath the mark, either before or after the echo mark. These echo marks are clearly shown in the 1787 Thorkelin A copy, less clearly in the circa 1993 Electronic Beowulf, and noted in the 1882 Zupitza facsimile by the use of a chevron over the vowel in the word in question.
These five premises are the guidelines that I use in my Beowulf translation entitled "The Runic Beowulf." This translation is a verse translation, sticking close to the original content by translating half-line by half-line, which accentuates the connecting ties of alliteration.
Regarding the Fight at Finnsburgh, there are many examples that come into play which you might find of importance:
1) The hapax word of icge in "ond icge gold/7icge gold." in Line 1107b (MS 154r, 10) makes a lot more sense when you take into account the two factors of transposing the letters "ge" and the letter runes. On a few occasions the scribes do transpose letters. "7icge gold." is actually "On dīce, g, gold," meaning: "Within a dike, the gifts, the gold," were heaved out of the hoard." Being as they were in Frisia, only elevated lands along the North Sea would be in the dikes or the terps and would make a safe place to have a hoard of gold and gifts.
2) Another common emendation is used for Line 1128b in Fitt XVII (MS 154v, 11) for the phrase "mid Finnel." The mistaken assumption is that the scribe missed a letter or letters. While the two scribes (A & B) do make obvious mistakes at times, many times there is no mistake at all. Here, in this case, it is only because translators do not know or recognize the letter runes. "Wunode mid Finnel" is actually "wunode mid Finne l / lived with Finn by the sea."
So there is so much more here to convey, but I do not want to take too much of your time. However, if you are interested, I would be very willing to be in contact with you directly. There is quite a lot of misunderstanding about the Beowulf poem and most, if not all, of those issues are cleared up by using those five premises of "The Runic Method" that I mentioned earlier. There is actually a lot of Norse Mythology in Beowulf and they are to be found for the most part in the letter runes.
I am in agreement with you as well on two of the Beowulf translators you commented upon: Heaney and Headley. Heaney takes a great deal of liberty with the original, which ends up being his Irish version of Beowulf. Headley's translation is simply a feminist abomination that cheapens the poem with modern slang. I would hope that both translations in time will lose their current luster. As for Tolkien, Old English scholar that he was, there was a reason he never had his incomplete translation of Beowulf published. It is because he knew his Middle Ages version of the "knights" in Beowulf was not right. Something was amiss. One of the main missing components was that he could not see what everyone else could not see: the letter runes. It is very hard to unsee what you see, when the single-letter words are adjoined to other words.
P.S. Regarding King Hrothgar's wife, Wealtheow is not even a name (Line 612b, MS 144r, 5)!
Her actual name is Wynn, as there is a clear rune mark there in the manuscript for this hapax word. The name of Wynn meaning Joy or Hope carries a lot more irony in the poem than the oxymoronic meaning of wealh-þeow or foreign-slave, which is hardly a name for a foreign Queen.
Thanks for reaching out. I've always worked on a conventional understanding of the runes, according to which some represent whole words (like ᛟ, eðel) but most just represent a letter sound. (This makes some sense to me because it is similar to the mixed semantic and phonetic use of logographic characters in the Chinese and Japanese scripts.) I have never heard of runes represented by Latin letters, until now, and would be interested to hear more of what you have to say on that.
I'm going to be cracking on with my unfinished translations in the second half of this year so would certainly be willing to get in touch.
Like you perhaps, when I first wanted to read Beowulf for myself in Old English, it was simply to read the story directly. But after about 6 months, I began to realize that something was very much amiss in the original manuscript. While any copy will have scribal errors, there seemed to be way too many.
Although there a handful of rune marks in the poem (evidence of an understanding of the runes and their meaning), and just a few mentions of runes in the poem itself, there is no indication that there is a third script at all.
Yet, when one begins to examine many of the grammatical errors (wrong case endings, etc.) and a good many "so-called" one-time (hapax legomenon) words, you realize that they are not really words at all, but a compressed group of words and/or letter rune(s). It is the constant compression of space that seems to drive the writing to be able to fit within the margins.
Once I had my "ah-hah!" moment with Queen Wynn's name in Line 612b in Fitt VIIII then I began to not only re-examine what I had already translated, but also to keep that new tool in my toolbox going forward.
In short, there are way too many examples for this to be a random occurrence or a statistical error. Letter runes, where the transcribed letter that represents the word for the rune are found throughout the Beowulf manuscript. With a little over 75% of the manuscript translated so far, there are over 1,000 letter runes. Every one of those letter runes are attached to another word, as scribal practice would dictate that a single-letter word cannot be by itself. Tellingly, all of the rune marks in Beowulf stand for their word and not for the letter. Those letter runes may be in the front or at the end of a word and some of them (of the harder ones to find) are embedded in the middle of other words. It has been a dramatic and rewarding journey and now in year four, I still am not done.
Further complications arise when an actual Old English word can also be other words when considering the letter runes, such as: eald-gestrēonum, "with ancient treasures" is actually eal-d gestrēonum, "all of your days with treasures" in Line 1381a. Or "þurh, through" in Line 940a is actually "Þur, h!" , "Hail, Thor!"
The constant surprises that keep coming up and that help to not only expand, but enlighten the story, comes about from realizing this undiscovered script that has been there all along in plain sight!
Pardon the late reply to this, but are you planning on releasing any longer excerpts from your translation here on Substack? My own view on the scribal errors is that they are likely to be accidental (because I think the lost original MS was written in a deliberately archaizing way, and then copied a couple of centuries after its writing into a different dialect). But the true test of a theory is whether it makes more sense of the poem than the established way of reading it.
Dear Jack (your name or a pseudonym?),
I stumbled upon your postings on Beowulf and find them interesting.
I too, am enamored with Beowulf and am in year of four now of translating it from the original text found on the Electronic Beowulf, along with the two Thorkelin copies, which necessarily help to fill-in-the-blanks from those missing/damaged lines in the original manuscript. Being at the 75% mark of having translated the entirety of the poem, I have come to a few conclusions, which I thought I would share.
One: Spacing is erratic in the manuscript. Inconsistent at best and absent at the worst.
Two: All single-letter words are adjoined to another word (abbreviations are not single-letter words). In fact, many two-letter words are adjoined to to other words.
Three: The manuscript has three scripts: Old English, Runic (rune marks) and Letter Runes, letter(s) that represent the word for the rune.
Four: The Letter Runes are extensive throughout the manuscript (over 1,000). Absent the Letter Runes, the content of the poem is incomplete at best and simply not comprehended at the worst.
Five: Throughout the manuscript are 150 echo marks (lines over words or part of words) that are meant to repeat what is underneath the mark, either before or after the echo mark. These echo marks are clearly shown in the 1787 Thorkelin A copy, less clearly in the circa 1993 Electronic Beowulf, and noted in the 1882 Zupitza facsimile by the use of a chevron over the vowel in the word in question.
These five premises are the guidelines that I use in my Beowulf translation entitled "The Runic Beowulf." This translation is a verse translation, sticking close to the original content by translating half-line by half-line, which accentuates the connecting ties of alliteration.
Regarding the Fight at Finnsburgh, there are many examples that come into play which you might find of importance:
1) The hapax word of icge in "ond icge gold/7icge gold." in Line 1107b (MS 154r, 10) makes a lot more sense when you take into account the two factors of transposing the letters "ge" and the letter runes. On a few occasions the scribes do transpose letters. "7icge gold." is actually "On dīce, g, gold," meaning: "Within a dike, the gifts, the gold," were heaved out of the hoard." Being as they were in Frisia, only elevated lands along the North Sea would be in the dikes or the terps and would make a safe place to have a hoard of gold and gifts.
2) Another common emendation is used for Line 1128b in Fitt XVII (MS 154v, 11) for the phrase "mid Finnel." The mistaken assumption is that the scribe missed a letter or letters. While the two scribes (A & B) do make obvious mistakes at times, many times there is no mistake at all. Here, in this case, it is only because translators do not know or recognize the letter runes. "Wunode mid Finnel" is actually "wunode mid Finne l / lived with Finn by the sea."
So there is so much more here to convey, but I do not want to take too much of your time. However, if you are interested, I would be very willing to be in contact with you directly. There is quite a lot of misunderstanding about the Beowulf poem and most, if not all, of those issues are cleared up by using those five premises of "The Runic Method" that I mentioned earlier. There is actually a lot of Norse Mythology in Beowulf and they are to be found for the most part in the letter runes.
I am in agreement with you as well on two of the Beowulf translators you commented upon: Heaney and Headley. Heaney takes a great deal of liberty with the original, which ends up being his Irish version of Beowulf. Headley's translation is simply a feminist abomination that cheapens the poem with modern slang. I would hope that both translations in time will lose their current luster. As for Tolkien, Old English scholar that he was, there was a reason he never had his incomplete translation of Beowulf published. It is because he knew his Middle Ages version of the "knights" in Beowulf was not right. Something was amiss. One of the main missing components was that he could not see what everyone else could not see: the letter runes. It is very hard to unsee what you see, when the single-letter words are adjoined to other words.
Enough for now. Hope to hear from you.
Regards,
Jim Buckingham, a/k/a
James the Howard of Buckingham
Translator of "The Runic Beowulf"
© 2022 by James Howard Buckingham
P.S. Regarding King Hrothgar's wife, Wealtheow is not even a name (Line 612b, MS 144r, 5)!
Her actual name is Wynn, as there is a clear rune mark there in the manuscript for this hapax word. The name of Wynn meaning Joy or Hope carries a lot more irony in the poem than the oxymoronic meaning of wealh-þeow or foreign-slave, which is hardly a name for a foreign Queen.
Thanks for reaching out. I've always worked on a conventional understanding of the runes, according to which some represent whole words (like ᛟ, eðel) but most just represent a letter sound. (This makes some sense to me because it is similar to the mixed semantic and phonetic use of logographic characters in the Chinese and Japanese scripts.) I have never heard of runes represented by Latin letters, until now, and would be interested to hear more of what you have to say on that.
I'm going to be cracking on with my unfinished translations in the second half of this year so would certainly be willing to get in touch.
Jack,
Like you perhaps, when I first wanted to read Beowulf for myself in Old English, it was simply to read the story directly. But after about 6 months, I began to realize that something was very much amiss in the original manuscript. While any copy will have scribal errors, there seemed to be way too many.
Although there a handful of rune marks in the poem (evidence of an understanding of the runes and their meaning), and just a few mentions of runes in the poem itself, there is no indication that there is a third script at all.
Yet, when one begins to examine many of the grammatical errors (wrong case endings, etc.) and a good many "so-called" one-time (hapax legomenon) words, you realize that they are not really words at all, but a compressed group of words and/or letter rune(s). It is the constant compression of space that seems to drive the writing to be able to fit within the margins.
Once I had my "ah-hah!" moment with Queen Wynn's name in Line 612b in Fitt VIIII then I began to not only re-examine what I had already translated, but also to keep that new tool in my toolbox going forward.
In short, there are way too many examples for this to be a random occurrence or a statistical error. Letter runes, where the transcribed letter that represents the word for the rune are found throughout the Beowulf manuscript. With a little over 75% of the manuscript translated so far, there are over 1,000 letter runes. Every one of those letter runes are attached to another word, as scribal practice would dictate that a single-letter word cannot be by itself. Tellingly, all of the rune marks in Beowulf stand for their word and not for the letter. Those letter runes may be in the front or at the end of a word and some of them (of the harder ones to find) are embedded in the middle of other words. It has been a dramatic and rewarding journey and now in year four, I still am not done.
Further complications arise when an actual Old English word can also be other words when considering the letter runes, such as: eald-gestrēonum, "with ancient treasures" is actually eal-d gestrēonum, "all of your days with treasures" in Line 1381a. Or "þurh, through" in Line 940a is actually "Þur, h!" , "Hail, Thor!"
The constant surprises that keep coming up and that help to not only expand, but enlighten the story, comes about from realizing this undiscovered script that has been there all along in plain sight!
Regards,
Jim Buckingham
Pardon the late reply to this, but are you planning on releasing any longer excerpts from your translation here on Substack? My own view on the scribal errors is that they are likely to be accidental (because I think the lost original MS was written in a deliberately archaizing way, and then copied a couple of centuries after its writing into a different dialect). But the true test of a theory is whether it makes more sense of the poem than the established way of reading it.