LL-L "Literature" 2005.03.31 (06) [E]

Thu Mar 31 20:39:14 UTC 2005

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A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian B=Brabantish D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian
L=Limburgish LS=Lowlands Saxon (Low German) N=Northumbrian
S=Scots Sh=Shetlandic V=(West) Flemish Z=Zeelandic (Zeêuws)
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From: Arthur Jones <arthurobin2002 at yahoo.com>
Subject: Gothic Poem for Lowlanders

Lieve Laaglanners,

I have sometimes ranted at y'all about the haunting similarities between
ancient Gothic and modern Lowlands. Even Lowlands colleague Mike Szelog
noticed how close the Gothic Wren tale was to his Old English version of the
same. In fact,one of the most thrilling and inspiring topics of all, to me,
is the nearness of that "Golden Chain" of Lowlands language from the time of
the gothic diaspora ---their flood-induced departure from what is now
Flensborg, Skane, Gotland, and solid land that until about 1-20 A.D. lay
between there and present-day Ruegen--- to the present.

The haunting similarities among all the children of that family is like
looking through a 19th Century photo album of ancestors, and is at least as
touching. There is a powerful argument here for preservation, for language
survival, and even for a family reunion, such as our Ron Hahn has been
conducting through the Lowlands-L 10th year Anniversary celebrations!

I have wondered for many years about some of the mysteries our departed
Lowlands ancestors, the Goths, left behind. Among them is the _Cantilena_, a
three-line fragment of a long-lost folk song. It was last recorded in
writing in 1562 A.D. by a Flemish diplomat at the Habsburg court, also
well-known traveler and linguist, Ogier Ghislain de Busbecq. Together with
two small lists of Crimean Gothic (Ostrogothic) words, totaling 86 in all,
these comprise the only remaining, formally designated or glossed Crimean
Gothic linguistic evidence.

And still, like peering at life two thousand years ago through a torn,
withered curtain, we see and almost hear this haunting tale that begins in
the same clarion, summoning style shared by Saxon bards, Norse Skalds, and
Low German Minnesingers:

Wara, Wara ingdalau
Sku te gifa aglithau
Haemysoeth forbitha ea...

Robin and I composed a poem incorporating these lines. Ron Hahn has agreed
to list it herewith, followed by our author/translator notes.
Hope you enjoy it.

Mith ailauth hails,

Arthur

***

     OTHMAR'S _Attila : A Soldier's Song_

     By Arthur A. Jones and Robin Wiseman

        Beware, beware the plunging blade,
          It shall bring you bitter anguish,
          Banished from your ancestral home.
          Attila, Attila.

          Wara wara ing-dalau
          Scu te gifa agliþau
          Hæmysoeþ forbiþa ea,
          Attila, Attila.

     My name is Othmar,
     My name is soldier.
     Hard the blood-oath,
     Soft the widow's tears,
     Attila, Attila.

     Once a proud smith and hunter,
     Grain fields, wife and strong sons three,
     On the gothic eastern marches,
     The dagger's blade in the perilous sea,
     Attila, Attila.

     Came the war-winds out of eastward,
     Leather men on little horses,
     Far as the eye could see,
     Attila, Attila.

     Masters of the South betrayed us,
     Took Goth gold but sent no soldiers.
     Little Father laughed and beckoned,
     Attila, Attila.

     Left we then our land of redwine,
     Into realms of fog and snow,
     Sworn to slay our Flood-folk brothers,
     Cast out from our bow-shaped sea,
     Attila, Attila.

     Manguth my first son to die,
     In a pine-wood by the Rhine,
     He had but full fifteen winters,
     Frankish arrow through the eye.
     Attila, Attila.

     My Wife took finger-gold from corpses,
     Caught by soldiers, she soon died,
     I found her frail and cold, wolf-feeding.
     After battles all had madness,
     Attila, Attila.

     Where no road was, one we made,
     With the axe and blood and blade,
     Followed we our Little Father,
     To Ravenna of the iron gates,
     Attila, Attila.

          Beware, beware the plunging blade,
          It shall bring you bitter anguish,
          Banished from your ancestral home,
          Attila, Attila.

          Wara wara ing-dalau
          Scu te gifa agliþau
        Hæmysoeþ forbiþa ea,
          Attila, Attila.

Author/Translator Notes:
_Othmar's Attila: A Soldier's Song_ is based on the fragment of an ancient
Ostrogothic (Crimean Gothic) folk song. Known as the _Cantilena_, the first
three lines were sung to a Flemish diplomat, traveler and linguist, Ogier
Ghislain de Busbecq, in 1562. Together with two small lists of Crimean
Gothic words totaling 86 in all, these comprise the only remaining, formally
designated or glossed Crimean Gothic linguistic evidence.
The song reflects a number of musical and language developments that
occurred between the arrival of Goths in the Balkans and Black Sea area
about 200 C.E., and the second half of the 16th Century. Among them are: (1)
the superstrate influence of the Byzantine Empire; (2) the invasion of
Attila and the defeat and subsumption of the Ostrogothic kingdom at that
time; (3) The centuries of melding with the Tatars culturally and
linguistically, somewhat like the amalgam of Normans and Saxons in England;
(4) The introduction of rhyme scheme and quatrains into local folk music,
whether from Greek, Turkic, Genoese, or Ottoman influences.
Bible Gothic, being chiefly Bishop Ulfilas' translations of New Testament
Greek into Gothic in mid-fourth Century C.E., gives us one point of
comparison, although Ostrogothic in its Crimean form was probably already
separated from its more westerly sister at the time the Goths first left the
Baltic region (flooded out?) and entered their own diaspora in the first
Century C.E.
Add to these uncertainties the vagaries of poor recording and
transliteration techniques in the Busbecq 1562 entourage –not to mention
shifting orthographies among printers of the age—and our task of making
sense of the _Cantilena_'s mysterious three lines becomes desperate indeed.
These are a few notes to indicate our interpretation of the original, also
based on conversations with several historical musicians of the Crimea,
elders of the recently repatriated Tatar community in and around
Mangup-Kalé, Crimea, and other primary and secondary authorities.
Line One: "wara wara ing-dalau".
The Bible Gothic (hereinafter "BG") cites _warjan_ for "beware", cf.
Hochdeutsch "wehrt Euch".  _Ing-dalau_ is composed of "ing", or dagger,
blade, knife. Cf. Proto-Indo-European (PIE) _ensi_; Latin _ensis_; Old
Slavonic (к)инж, "inzh"; Vedic _ansa_; Old Norse _hung_; among other
cognates. The suffix "dalau" is down, downward. Cf. BG _dalaþ_, "downward".
Thus, "plunging blade."

Line Two: "Sku te gifa agliþau".
Lit., "shall thee give anguish". This phrase was subject to several
recording and/or transliteration problems as follows: (1) Busbecq's work on
the Crimean Goths, written by hand in Latin, was transcribed without his
authorization by an Antwerp printer working with the copied notes of an
intermediary. The printer sometimes confused "c" with "o" or "e" at other
places in the vocabulary listings, inadvertently transposed letters, or
failed to recognize certain symbols such as "þ" or thorn. Accordingly, if we
follow the printer's version without questioning, it appears that
Ostrogothic had no "th" phoneme such as in "thing". Being Flemish, the
printer could easily have overlooked the thorn, as it probably did not occur
in Flemish at that time. The print version features "zh", however, which may
have been an attempt to reproduce the voiceless inderdental fricative "th".
Obviously, we have raised more questions than we have answered. We refer the
reader to an excellent work that deals comprehensively with the phonetics
and spelling problems, MacDonald Stearns,Jr., _Crimean Gothic: Analysis and
Etymology of the Corpus_, at pp. 46-63.
As to the final word in line 2, "agliþau", compare to BG "agliþa"= anguish,
distress. The "au" endings of lines 1 and 2 appear to be an intentional
rhyming pattern. The similarity may have been solely for that purpose, and
one of the possibilities mooted here is that "ing-dalau" was correct as it
stood, the final voiceless consonant in "dalaf" of BG having turned silent
over the centuries, much as "toch" or "doch" grew into "though" in English.
Changing "agliþa" into "agliþau" is not, musically speaking, a major step:
cf. the English and Appalachian folk song "Pretty Peggy-o", in which the
subject lady is the "prettiest maiden in the aree-o".
Line Three: "Haemysoeþ forbiþa ea":
The first word, "haemysoeþ", is too close to the BG "haímisoþi" to be
ignored. It means "home inheritance", or "ancestral home". The Antwerp
printer apparently mistook the "o" for a "c". One is reminded of the unique
name of the U.S. Secretary of State, Dr. Condoleezza Rice, whose mother, a
music teacher, named her daughter after an Italian musical composer's
instruction, "_con dolcezza_", or "with sweetness" or mellow feeling. An "e"
was inserted in place of the intended "c". For the unintended meaning of
"condoleezza", we refer the reader to contemporary Italian slang.
"Forbiþa" = forbidden. See BG "forbiuþan". We are not familiar with the verb
form "ea" (Ancestral home(s) forbidden _are/will be_?).
The missing fourth line probably rhymed with "ea". We have forced it to live
with Attila, as were the Crimean Goths themselves.
Our Attila poem also needs a little clarification in places. "The dagger's
blade" is a metaphor for the Crimean peninsula, sometimes used in Turkish
and Tatar literature. "The perilous sea" was one of the Byzantine terms for
the Black Sea.
"Masters of the South" were the Byzantine emperors and prelates whose armies
turned and ran, leaving the Ostrogoths to their own resources. After being
soundly defeated by Attila between 445 and 450 C.E., Crimean and other
Eastern Goths joined his army, which indeed included more Goths than Huns,
and was accompanied by entire families and servants. After crossing the
Rhine, Attila was defeated near Metz in 451 C.E. by an army composed mainly
of Visigoths and Franks.
Thus, Ostrogoths faced off in battle against their near relatives, the
Visigoths. "Flood-folk brothers" refers to the term "Gutisk" = gothic,
probably from _gutan_ or "to flood, pour, drench" (cf. High German
"giessen"). There seems to be strong folk memory of the original Goths
fleeing the western Baltic when a great deluge burst through their homeland
and joined the North Sea to the Baltic, thus causing their tribal migration
that ended, several hundred years later, at the lower reaches of the Danube,
the Dnieper and the Don rivers. See William H. Bennett, _An Introduction to
the Gothic Language_, Modern Language Association of America, 1980.
The "bow-shaped sea", once again, is the Black Sea.
Othmar finds his wife "wolf-feeding", meaning she is already dead.
We make no claims of historical accuracy in _Othmar_. It is merely a poem.

Arthur A. Jones
Robin Wiseman
March 25, 2005.

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