The Yggdrasil Report

Saturday, April 14, 2007

I meant to post this earlier, but alas. I received an e-mail yesterday which seemed quite strange. It's definitely Chaucer, but the text is jumbled and makes little sense. Does it mean anything?

What with his wysdom and his chivalrie;
He conquered al the regne of Femenye,
Lete I this noble duc to Atthenes ryde,
How wonnen was the regne of Femenye
By Theseus, and by his chivalrye.

And God it woot, that it is litel wonder;
And as an angel ladde hym up and doun.

With mandementz for fornicacioun,
In scole-matere greet difficultee,
But atte laste he seyde unto the wyf.

And of my wyf the passyng crueltee,
Wepyng and waylyng, care and oother sorwe
Quod the marchant, "and so doon other mo
She sholde hym overmacche, I dar wel swere."
What sholde I yow reherce in special,
Were I unbounden, also moot I thee!
For wel I woot it fareth so with me.

Monday, April 09, 2007

Sorry for not posting in so long.

I've had a decent couple of weeks, without all this stuff to bother me. I'm back at home and I've been working hard at Heimdall. At first I was merely organising papers and the like, but then the CEO, Wilhelm Heimdall, asked me to tend to his personal library. The corporation primarily deals with construction, so finding a vast library of old Germanic and medieval texts was a pleasant surprise. We got around to discussing everything from Beowulf to the Volsunga Saga, and then he showed me several unique manuscripts that he has come across. He asked me to look at them and I was amazed. There were several abnormalities in the texts, which were in Old English, which I had never seen before. Indeed with the arrival of Viking invaders and the like some basic Old Norse words were introduced to the English language, but the amount here was far more than I had ever seen. Perhaps they originated in the Danelaw so there probably isn't much mystery here, but that doesn't make it any less interesting. In any case he was impressed by my display of knowledge on the subject and asked if I would like to review them again some time so I agreed, being the pseudo-philologist that I am.

In other news, I was nearly hit by a car on my way home. That was hardly pleasant.