About Villemann og Magnhild

Wed Nov 29 23:30:33 UTC 2006

Dear Llama and all,

  Lately I haven't had much time to read the messages in the list... I'm glad to see there are several about the Visigoths in Spain. I hope I have time the next week to read them.

  Concerning my "attempted translation" of Villeman og Magnhild, thank you for the comments and corrections!

  I agree with your suggestions of skauns* compared with fagrs. My choice was based in the similarity with Norwegian "fagraste". Using skáuns* would yield skáunosts as superlative, if I'm right. 

  So far, I have translated most of the song, although it is yet a rough translation. I have used your recommendations, which I find utterly correct and useful, as always. Thanks for that! One pending issue I have is trying a reconstruction for a Gothic verb "to play". Maybe I will review the OE plegian verb according to your comment about it.

  1. Villemann went to the river -
  Villemann(a) iddja (is) at ahvái -
  2. to the most beautiful of all linden -
  du skáunostamma lindabagma alláize -
  3. There he wanted to play the gold harp -
  thar wilda ei gulthaharpon slahan -
  4. Because the runes didn't augur well -
  unte runos ni brahtedun awi -
  5. Villemann went to stand up against the torrent -
  Villemann(a) iddja usstandan (gastandan?) withra rinnon -
  6. He could play the gold harp brilliantly -
  saruba (hadugba?) mahta (is) slahan gulthaharpon -
  7. He played it gently, he played it clever -
  ita sloh mith ---, ita sloh mith handugei -
  8. The bird calmed down on the green tree -
  fugls anaqal (?) ana gronamma bagma
  9. He played it gently, he played it loud -
  ita sloh mith --- , ita sloh mith thuta (?) -
  10. He played Magnhild free out of the arms of the troll - 
  sloh (is) Magnhild ut trolis arma -
  11. Then the troll rose up from the depth of the lake -
  Than thar usstod trol af diupei sáiwis -
  12. It rumbled in the mountains and crashed in the clouds -
  swogs in báirgam jah theihvo in milham -
  13. He hit the harp with all of his concentrated strenght -
  than sloh (is) harpo grimmithba ana allái motha
  14. And took away the troll's strenght and power.
  jah usnam swinthein ut trolis arm.

  Some notes on the verses:

    1. Villemann went to the river - Villemann(a) iddja (is) at ahvái.
  I wonder what a good translation for the names Villemann and Magnhild would be...

  3. There he wanted to play the gold harp - thar wilda ei gulthaharpon slahan -
  I have used the construction "wiljan ei" as it appears in some places of the corpus, meaning "want to".

  4. Because the runes didn't augur well - unte runos ni brahtedun awi -
  After considering using the verbes gahaitan, fauragahaitan used as "promise", I have decided using a construction of the type "because the runes didn't bring luck". For "luck" I have used *awi, sn. and for "rune", runa, sf. although maybe runastafs, sm. would be more correct.

  6. He could play the gold harp brilliantly - saruba (hadugba?) mahta (is) slahan gulthaharpon 
  Here I have formed the adverb saruba from #sarus, skillfull. Maybe it's more convenient to use handugba from handugs, clever, wise. I keep using slahan to mean hit in the sense of playing the harp by hitting the strings. "Is" would be emphatic and is used only for rhythmic purposes (although at this stage the whole translation is not very precise at rhythm).

  7. He played it gently, he played it clever - ita sloh mith ---, ita sloh mith handugei.
  I have used the structure "he played it with gentleness, he played it with cleverness" which is more akin to the original "han leika med lente, han leika med list". Another option for my translation would be using the subject instead of the object as I do, that is, using "is" instead of "ita". Anyway, I need a noun for "gentleness" or something similar. I have tried deriving a name from ·lintheis, gentle, nice, soft: would it be "·linthei"? Also, for "cleverness", I have derived "handugei" from handugs, clever, wise.

  8. The bird calmed down on the green tree - fugls anaqal (?) ana gronamma bagma.
  Used the past form of *anaqilan, sv.IV, become calm. Also the !groneis neologism invented by J.R.R.Tolkien, if I am not wrong.

  9. He played it gently, he played it loud - ita sloh mith --- , ita sloh mith thuta (?)-
  Same as above concerning "softness". I have used *thuts for "loudness".

  10. He played Magnhild free out of the arms of the troll - sloh (is) Magnhild ut trolis arma -
  A risky one. First, I replicate a syntactic structure found both in modern English and Norwegian that I'm not sure I have the "right" to use in Gothic. The original verse goes "Han leika Magnhild av nykkens arm" that can be roughly translated as "He played Magnhild out of the monster's arm". My second 'big one' is the neologism trols, which I consider particular risky :) I wait for your comments. I understand it is difficult to know if the Goths had an equivalent to the Nordic "troll", and if so, which was the word they might use (I know this topic may have been covered in any of the books that some of the members of this list has published, if it's so please tell! Another reason to order them -blush-)

  11. Then the troll rose up from the depth of the lake -Than thar usstod trol af diupei sáiwis -
  Let me remark how close this one sounds to the original "Men daa steig trolli upp or djupaste sjoe". 

  12. It rumbled in the mountains and crashed in the clouds - swogs in báirgam jah theihvo in milham -
  The original says "Det gjalla i berg of det runga i sky". That is, the impersonal is used. My translation would go simply "noise in the mountains and thunder in the clouds". It is ok this way for me, but I'd like to know any suggestion of how to do the impersonal, be it in a "there is" construction. I have looked for it but hadn't had the time to search deeper.

  13. He hit the harp with all of his concentrated strenght - than sloh (is) harpo grimmithba ana allái motha.
  The original says "Daa slo han si harpa til bonns i sin harm". My translation for that would be "Then played he his harp until 'bonns' in his anger". So I have used the ·grimmitha, sf. as "fury" in the construction ana allái "in all...", cf. ana allái náuthái, "in all our affliction", suggested by Llama's dictionary.

  14. And took away the troll's strenght and power - jah usnam swinthein ut trolis arm.

  Also a parallel of the original "og utvinner krafti av trollenes arm".

  Thank you very much on advance, again, for your attention, comments and suggestions.
  Best regards,

  Rydwlf

llama_nom <600cell at oe.eclipse.co.uk> wrote:

Hails, Rydwlf!

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, Rydwlf wrote:
>

> - For "fagraste" I have used Go. fagrs in superlative grade,
masculine gender (see later), vocative case. As it's an a-stem, it
could take both -iz -ist or -oz -ost for the comparative and
superlative. From comparison with other pure a-stem roots, I've chosen
-ist, but I don't know if there should be other factors to take into
account. For the moment, I have here "fagrists".

No way of knowing that Go. 'fagrs' didn't have this meaning too, as in
the other Germanic languages, but it's only attested with the meaning
"fit, suitable, useful": nih du airþai, ni du maihstau fagr ist "it
is fit neither for the earth nor the dungheap". The negative
'unfagrs' is also attested just once, meaning "ungrateful": unte is
gods ist þaim unfagram jah unseljam "for he is kind to the unthankful
and the evil". Instead, the adjective skauns* is used for
"beautiful". Probably an i-stem, cf. Finnish 'kaunis', but from the
forms attested in Gothic there's nothing to rule out the possibility
of its being a ja-/jo-stem: skauneis*.

On the question of -i- or -o- in comparatives and superlatives of
a-stems, the only tendency that I'm aware of is that with the
exception of 'hlasoza' (see Streitberg 188, Note 1 [
http://www.wulfila.be/lib/streitberg/1920/HTML/B131.html ]), all the
-o- forms have long roots:

frodozans
swinþoza
usdaudoza
lasiwostai
armostai

hlasoza

But given the small number of examples, this might be a coincidence. 
Not all a-stems with long roots take the -o- forms:

hauhistins
managizo
jûhiza

fawizo
raþizo? (positive unattested)

Your choice of 'fagrists' would be in keeping with Old Norse, which
shows i-umlaut.

> - For "lindelauvi" I have found in Tunstall: lindabaums (sm.)
"lime-tree, linden" (there's no entry in Wright's Glossary or
Streitberg's Dictionary for this). I think that the correct spelling
in Go. should be "lindabagms" if I'm not wrong. It is masculine so
that makes "fagrists" go in masculine.

I should have marked 'linda-bagms' as a reconstruction; sorry about
that. The simplex *linda, sf. is given in Gerhard Köbler's Gotisches
Wörterbuch, based on the Spanish personal names Lendo and Lentimil.

> - For "alle" meaning "of all", I have used the Gen.pl.m. of "alls" :
"alláize".
> 
> So the sentence would go "Sái fagrists lindabagms alláize".
> 
> 3. For the word "golden harp" that appears in some parts of the
song, I have come to the Go. translation "gulþaharpa". For this I have
based on "gulþ" (Wright: sn. "gold") and "harpa" (Tunstall: sf.
"harp"; not found in Wright or Streitberg).

*harpa is a reconstruction, not attested in the surviving Gothic
corpus, but appears as a loanword in Italian, Provencal, French,
Catalan, Spanish and Portuguese. Again, I must have forgotten to mark
it as a reconstruction. Thanks for drawing my attention to that! I
would have got it from Gerhard Köbler's Gotisches Wörterbuch, but by
comparison with forms in other Germanic languages, a better
reconstruction would probably be *harpo, weak f.

> From this, according to the word-formation rules and being "gulþ" an
a-stem, the final vowel of the first element should remain (see
Wright's "Grammar of the Gothic Language", par. 389), thus
"gulþaharpa" (also compare with "áiz", sn., "copper" -> "áizasmiþa",
"coppersmith").

Agreed.

> 
> 4. For the verb "to play", you know already that there is no
attested Gothic word for it, being the most similar the verb "swiglon"
(wv. 2) with the meaning "to play the pipe". I was thinking here in
trying to reconstruct a Gothic word akin to the one "play" comes from:
OE "plegian" (Bright's "Old English Dictionary": (w.II) 1. play. 2.
contend, fight"), but this proved too hard for me and I was not sure
if the meaning of "perform music" was already present in the OE word
or was a later added meaning. Then I turned to study the word used in
the song, "slå". In Norwegian, Danish, Swedish and Icelandic ("slá")
one of the common meanings is "to hit", and in a Danish dictionary I
even found "to beat", which I think can be related to the style of
playing the harp as "beating" or "pinching" the harp strings. Akin to
this both in meaning and sound I consider the verb "slahan" (sv.VI) a
good substitute.

OE 'plegian' is attested with the sense of to play a musical
instrument, with the instrument being in the instrumental case (or
later dative); according to the OED, it isn't till the 18th c. that
the earliest examples of 'play' used transitively with the name of an
instrument are found; Early Modern English has 'play on/at/of". 
'slahan' seems quite reasonable though, and might be a safer bet. 
Good luck with the rest of the song!

> 
> As told before, I'd like to read your opinions about this. If you
also want to propose a translation, that would be perfect for me...
Eager to read your comments, and giving thanks to you on advance,
> 
> Rydwlf
> 
> PS . There's a list of alternate versions and variations of this
song in
http://www.dokpro.uio.no/ballader/lister/tsbalfa_titler/tittel_314a.html
> (Documentation Project by the Universities of Norway)
> 
> 
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