Introduction to La3amon's Brut

La3amon's Brut is an English translation of Wace's Roman de Brut, supplemented by numerous other sources and La3amon's own modifications and additions. It survives in two manuscripts from the mid to late thirteenth century, MS Cotton Caligula A.ix and MS Cotton Otho C.xiii, both in the British Library. Both manuscripts were damaged by a fire in 1731--the Otho manuscript severely--so that a complete text has to be reconstructed by comparison between the two. Neither manuscript represents La3amon's original text, but, as the language of the Cotton manuscript is older, it is probably closer to the original than the Otho manuscript. The major edition by Brook and Leslie, which is available online from the University of Virginia's Electronic Text Center (Caligula | Otho) prints the two manuscripts on facing pages. In order to present a readable text, the editors have supplied corrections through the use of brackets and other notations, as well as quotation marks (but no other modern punctuation).

In the text is divided into lines and half-lines with an upside down semi-colon (here represented as a semi-colon) in between half lines and a dot at the ends of lines. For example:

An preost wes on leoden; La3amon wes ihoten.
he wes Leouenaðes sone; liðe him be Drihten.

(A priest was in the land who was called La3amon;
He was Leovenath's son--the Lord be merciful to him.)

La3amon's English may be described as early Middle English--one of the earliest sustained instances of writing in early Middle English--but with an attempt to produce something that in language and style resembles that of poetry from before the Norman Conquest. (Scholars disagree about the nature and extent of this resemblance, as well as the intentions that lie behind it.)

These factors, as well as the linguistic flexibility of poetry, make La3amon's English extremely difficult to read today. Of the portions which we will be studying, we will read some in Middle English and some in the modern English translation by Rosamund Allen. For the most part, they keys to reading La3amon are patience, practice, and hard work. However, some training in the general features of his English will be helpful. Each section we will be studying can be accessed from the links below:

• Introduction to La3amon's English (HTML)
• La3amon's Proem (lines 1-37) (PDF)
• King Arthur at Loch Lomond (lines 10842-10876, 10912-11021) (PDF)
• The Round Table (lines 11285-11527) (PDF)
• Gregory the Great and Saint Augustine (lines 14695-14875) (PDF)
• The End of the Brut (lines 15900-16095) (PDF)

Introduction to La3amon's English

Pronunciation

• Pronouncing the word aloud and changing the vowels will often reveal that the word is familiar.
• In general, consonants are pronounced as in modern English. Consonants like k (often spelt c by La3amon) and w, which have become silent (e.g. knight, write) were pronounced in La3amon's time.
• The letter u often represents a v sound, and the letter v often represents a u sound.
• La3amon uses three consonant symbols of Anglo-Saxon origin:

• The letter h, especially after a vowel and before t is pronounced like the ch in German Bach and corresponds to our gh spelling.
• The letters sc correspond to our sh spelling.
• Vowels in stressed syllables are pronounced as in Spanish.
• The letter e is pronounced as in rider in unstressed syllables.
• The letter æ represents either an a or a stressed e sound.
• The spelling eo represents a sound similar to the u in pull or represents stressed e sound.

Grammar

• The ending -en indicates plural nouns, verbal infinitives, plural verbs, and past participles of verbs. It is frequently omitted from plural nouns or added to singular nouns. You must determine the meaning by context.
• The ending -e is the third person present tense ending (as in ‘he bringeth’, 'they bring'). However, it can also indicate command addressed to more than one person (e.g. Bringe ‘Bring!’).
• The words for ‘the’, ‘this’, ‘that’, ‘those’, ‘who’, and ‘which’ are generally confused. Common forms are e, a, eos, as, an, and occasionally others. You must determine the meaning by context.
• The unusual pronouns are as follows: ich ‘I’; u ‘thou’; e ‘thee’ (note the similarity to ‘the’); heo ‘she’; heo, heore ‘her’; him, hine ‘him’; hit ‘it’; his ‘his, its’; 3e ‘ye, you’; eouwer ‘your’; heo ‘they’; heore ‘their’; he(o)m ‘them’.
• Note that pronouns frequently have an implied ‘to’ in front of them; e.g. him = to him.
• The word a may mean ‘when’ or ‘then’ (as well as ‘that’, ‘who’, or ‘which’). The word er may mean ‘where’ or ‘there’. You must determine the meaning by context.
• The past tense of ‘come’ is com(en). The past tense of nimen ‘take’ is nom.
• The word me before a verb can mean ‘one’ but is generally best translated as a passive construction; e.g. me nom alle a dede ‘one took all the dead’, but better as ‘all the dead were taken’.
• The Middle English for ‘not’ is ne, but it frequently occurs in double negative or triple negative constructions with nan ‘none’ and ‘never’.
• The word on frequently means ‘in’. The word mid means ‘with’. The word wi frequently means ‘against’.

Note: It is extremely difficult to get and on Macintosh web browsers;, hence I have replaced them with images so that everyone can see them. However, this causes them to appear slightly above the rest of the letters.