© 2015 Christopher Monk. The right of Christopher Monk to be identified as the author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All images from Textus Roffensis are
owned by the Dean and Chapter of Rochester Cathedral and are reproduced here by kind permission.
Reading Textus Roffensis:
The Old English documents
A
bout the year 1123 an anonymous scribe, who lived in the medieval priory
attached to Rochester Cathedral, copied and compiled a whole host of
Anglo-Saxon documents, including ancient laws written by kings Ethelbert,
Alfred the Great, and Ethelred the Unready.
Today these documents form the first part of the medieval book known as Textus
Roffensis (‘the text of Rochester’). The vast majority of these were written in what
we now call Old English, the language of the Anglo-Saxons which was first written
down in manuscripts as early as the year 600.
The script (the style of handwriting) which our scribe used is now referred to as
English Protogothic Book Script and is, with some practice, fairly straightforward
to read. There are, however, a number of peculiarities that can easily trip up the
beginner, especially as the Old English documents in Textus Roffensis preserve
several unfamiliar Anglo-Saxon letters.
The purpose of this online resource is to enable a complete beginner to identify
each letter and to read words and sentences that were originally penned by our
scribe nearly 900 years ago. It is not a grammar study, though I do give a few basic
grammar tips here and there. And neither does it provide an extensive Old English
vocabulary or glossary, though I do focus on a number of similarities between Old
English and Modern English words. If you do wish to learn Old English more
formally, there are numerous guides available. I have listed two of these at the end.
For me, part of the thrill of looking at very old manuscripts is being able to work
out what all the words mean, but that is rarely something a person can do without
a little help, and so that pleasure is often denied. Thus this guide will take you
through some short passages from three of the Old English documents in Textus
Roffensis in order to give you a foundation for reading this remarkable medieval
book.
As you may know, Textus Roffensis is available online as a digitised facsimile; the link
to this is on the cathedral website. So once you have learned the basics of reading
the script, you can go ahead and explore other documents, even zooming in to see
really close-up details. You will also find a link on the cathedral website to my
readings of the texts examined in this resource. So please enjoy!
Æthelberht’s Code
T
he very first document in Textus Roffensis is the only extant copy of what is
known as Æthelberht’s Code. (Æthelberht is the more ‘scholarly’ form of the
name Ethelbert.) This law code is the oldest surviving set of laws written in Old
English, dating to about the year 600, so what you see here is the very beginning
of English as a language of the book.
At the top of folio 1 (a folio has both a recto side and a verso side, i.e. front and back)
there is a title written in red ink, known as a rubric. This was not part of the
original law of Æthelberht but was first added much later by a scribe copying out
the law, possibly by the Textus Roffensis scribe himself. No doubt he thought it a
good idea to give a title since Æthelberht’s name doesn’t actually appear in the
document. We will look at the first few lines of the law code itself a little later, but
first let’s look at the rubric more closely:
You can probably recognise some of the letters quite easily, for example, the
vowels a, e, i, o, and u, though notice that i does not have a dot over it:
Other letters you may recognise are n, m, d, l, b, h, and c (note the curved
ascender, or upright, of the d, like this: ꝺ):
The letter s is written both as the short s:
... and the long s, which you see here at the end of the word domas:
Not to be confused with the long s is the long r, which you see here:
Less recognisable perhaps are the letters y (written with a dot overhead), g (which
has the characteristic Anglo-Saxon flat top), and t (which also has a flat top, and
here you see a pair):
The name Agustinus (Augustine) has been written with a mixture of lower case
and capital letters. It’s perhaps surprising that it is not the letter a which is
capitalised but rather letters G, V, S, and T. Why the scribe did this is not clear.
Finally, you may have spotted three Anglo-Saxon letters: þ, known as thorn...
... which is also written as a large letter in the first word of the rubric, Þis (it’s
rather faint)...
... and the letters æ and ð, known as ash and eth respectively, and which you see
here as the first two letters of æðelbirht (Æthelberht):
You need to be aware that the letters ð and þ (eth and thorn) both correspond to
Modern English th, and in our manuscript they are used interchangeably. It’s just
one of those peculiarities of Old English.
Now that we have identified all the letters in the opening rubric of Textus Roffensis,
let’s see how we might transcribe it:
Þis syndon þa domas þe æðelbirht cyning
asette on aGVSTinus dæge.
What does this sentence mean? Here’s a colour-coded breakdown:
Þis syndon þa domas þe æðelbirht cyning asette on aGVSTinus
dæge.
These are the judgements which Æthelberht king set in Augustine
day.
We might translate this as:
These are the judgements (or decrees) which King Æthelberht
established in Augustine’s day.
INFLECTIONS
Old English differs from
Modern English in its more
extensive use of word endings,
known as inflections.
So, for example, if God is the
subject of a sentence, it is
spelt God, but if someone
prays to God, then it is spelt
Gode, (because God is now
an indirect object of the
sentence). If we speak of
God’s love, then it becomes
Godes.
There are many more
examples of inflections,
including different endings for
nouns, verbs, adjectives and
adverbs. To complicate
matters, Old English uses
grammatical gender:
masculine, feminine, and
neuter. All of this means a far
larger range of inflections
than in Modern English.
For the purpose of this
resource, however, you should
just be aware that these
different endings exist, and
they may at first make it
slightly more difficult to
recognise words.
You may recognise similarities or connections
between some of the Old English words and Modern
English words.
For example, domas is the plural form of dom,
meaning judgement or decree. This word is found
in the title of the famous manuscript we call the
Domesday Book, which William the Conqueror
ordered to be written as a record of the lands and
liabilities in late eleventh-century England. (An
authoritative judgement on those matters, we might say.)
We also derive the Modern English word doom from
it. So when we speak of doomsday in a Christian
context, we are referring to the Day of the Last
Judgement.
Another word that may be familiar is cyning,
meaning king. It may also be spelt cyng, cing, or
cynig (Old English spelling was less fixed than
Modern English spelling). In this word, the letter c is
hard like a k. German speakers may recognise the
similarity to the German word for king, König.
The final word of the sentence, dæg, meaning day
(the -e ending in our passage indicates it is an indirect
object in the sentence; see INFLECTIONS) is more
recognisable once you hear it. The æ (ash) sounds
like the a in the Modern English word cat and the g
sounds like the letter y in the word yesterday.
You can hear the rubric being read out, along with all
the other texts discussed in this work: just follow the
link ‘Dr Monk’s Readings from Textus Roffensis’ on the
cathedral’s website.
Now let’s look at a few of Æthelberht’s laws. The code begins with a list of
compensations due from someone found guilty of theft or damage of property.
The first of these compensation clauses is highlighted below inside the white lines.
The large red letter is a decorated display capital, also known as littera notabilior (‘a
notable letter’). It is the letter G and forms part of the word GODES (meaning
God’s).
The letters ODES are in a smaller display script, written in black and red, as are
those of the rest of the first line: FEOH Ꞁ CI.
Let’s take a closer look at the last three characters on this line. The first of these is
the Anglo-Saxon equivalent to the sign &, and is known as the Tironian nota.
(When written out in full, the Old English word for and is spelt the same as in
Modern English.)
Here the Tironian nota is written in display script, and looks similar to the number 7:
Throughout the manuscript, the Tironian nota frequently appears in its lower case
form: ⁊. Here you see an example just a few lines further down in Æthelberht’s
Code, before the word cyninge:
Note how the scribe puts a punctuation mark (punctus) before the ⁊ and does not
leave a space after it. This is typical throughout the whole manuscript, and takes a
little getting used to. In fact, spacing between words is not always consistent, as
you will see in some of the examples below.
The second and third letters are the capitals CI (the C is quite square); these carry
over into the next line to form the word ciricean (meaning church’s):
The remainder of the first compensation clause is .xii. gylde (meaning [with] 12
compensation). The letter x is easily recognisable, though you should note that
sometimes the scribe takes one of the strokes of the x below the line (forming
what is called a descender). You can compare the two forms of x here for the
numbers .xii. and .ix.:
So the entire clause can be transcribed as:
GODES FEOH.Ꞁ CIricean .xii. gylde.
What does it mean? Here’s a colour-coded breakdown:
Godes feoh ⁊ ciricean xii gylde.
God’s property & church’s XII
compensation.
As you can see, this isn’t really a proper sentence.
However, we might translate it as:
God’s property and the Church’s, [one
should compensate] with a twelve-fold
compensation.
You may recognise some of the correspondences
between the Old English words and their Modern
English counterparts. The word God is the same in
both. You should note that the Old English -es
ending appears often with many other nouns and
denotes possession. In Modern English, we have
simply lost the e and substituted the apostrophe (’).
Thus Godes means God’s or of God.
PUNCTUATION
The use of ‘points’ by the
scribe does not fully
correspond to modern
usage of punctuation.
For example, you can see
how in our passage the
scribe uses the punctus
mark (similar to our own
full-stop/period) to
separate off Roman
numerals: e.g. ∙xıı∙, ∙vı∙,
and ∙ııı∙.
However, he also uses
the punctus at the end of
each legal clause, like we
would use a full-stop at
the end of a sentence.
The word cirice (the -an ending in our passage above indicates possession)
actually sounds quite similar to church, as both letters c are pronounced as the ch
sound in the word chip. (Listen out for this in the reading.)
The word gyld (the ending -e in our passage above indicates with
compensation), which can also be spelt gield, is related to the Modern English
words yield and guild.
Once you understand the first legal clause of Æthelberht’s Code, the next few are
quite easy to work out, as they employ the same pattern.
The second clause begins with a red-and-black capital B. It also contains a letter
we have not yet identified but which looks quite similar to its modern counterpart,
f:
You should now be able to recognise the words in the highlighted passage above:
Biscopes feoh .xi. gylde.
The Old English letters sc are usually pronounced as sh in the Modern English
word ship. From that you may be able to work out that biscopes means
bishop’s. And so the meaning of the clause is:
A bishop’s property [to be compensated] with an eleven-fold
compensation.
The law continues in the same pattern. You will likely now be able to identify the
word Preostes and Diacones...
... which mean priest’s and deacon’s respectively. So these two clauses can be
translated as:
A priest’s property with a nine-fold compensation. A deacon’s
property with a six-fold compensation.
The final member of the clergy mentioned in the compensation clauses is the
cleric (a clerk in minor holy orders). As you can see, the word Cleroces, meaning
cleric’s, is split over two lines. (Splitting of words across lines is quite common in
the manuscript and is something of which you should always be aware.)
So this clause means:
A cleric’s property with a three-fold compensation.
Alfred’s Domboc
T
extus Roffensis contains a copy of the longest legislative text written in Old
English, namely Alfred’s Domboc, or ‘book of justice’. It was probably
written late in King Alfred’s reign, after 893 (he ruled from 849 to 899).
On folio 10 verso (on the left), you can see the final part of a two-columned list of
Alfred’s laws – in effect, a rather long contents page (actually written over four
pages). This continues for a few lines on to folio 11 recto before Alfred’s preface
begins with a rather large and elegant Anglo-Saxon ꝺ (d) painted in red. There
follows a further nine pages of the preface before Alfred’s own decrees finally
begin, these amounting to eighteen pages of laws in total.
Let us take a closer look at the opening to the preface. The large, decorated red ꝺ
is the beginning of a word; and, as you can see, the red-and-green display capitals
that follow are quite easy to identify: RYHTEN.
Thus together the word dryhten (meaning Lord) is formed. The first two letters
of the word that follows are perhaps less familiar:
The first is unique to Old English, known as the letter wynn. It corresponds to the
letter w, and is today rarely typed in editions of Old English texts, since it is easy to
confuse with the letter p. What you see above is the capital form of wynn. The
lower case form, which appears frequently in the manuscript, can be seen a little
further down as part of the word cwæð (spoke). I have enlarged the wynn:
The second letter in our word is the capital form of ash: Æ. So along with capital
S at the end, the word wæs (was) is formed. So what was the Lord doing?
You should be able to recognise all the letters of the next line and a half, which
provide our answer, though note carefully the letter p, the second letter in the first
word of the second line: sprecende (meaning speaking). As you can see, it is
readily identifiable, though, as already mentioned, it is easily confused with wynn.
(A further comparison is provided below in the discussion of the theft charm.)
And just in case you have not quite remembered all the letter forms, here’s a
further look at three of the more unusual ones:
The first highlighted letter above is the long s. The second one highlighted is the
long r. (Note also the letter p between these two.) Below is highlighted the letter
eth: ð:
So we are now able to transcribe the first sentence:
dRYHTEN WÆS
sprecende ðas word to moy[-]
se. and þus cwæð.
What does it mean? Here’s a colour-coded breakdown:
Dryhten wæs sprecende ðas word to Moyse, and þus cwæð,
Lord was speaking these words to Moses, and thus said,
The translation is relatively straightforward:
The Lord was speaking these words to Moses, and said thus:
You will have probably noticed similarities between the Old English and Modern
English:
The past form of the Old English verb to be (wesan) is similar to Modern
English, and thus we have wæs and was, which also sound very similar when
pronounced.
Old English word can be either singular or plural; it is the word ðas (meaning
these) that helps us understand that in this sentence the plural – words – is meant.
The word þus and Modern English thus are in essence the same (remember, þ
equates to th), and are pronounced very similarly. Likewise, the Old English words
to and and also correspond neatly to their Modern English counterparts.
You may have noticed the link between Old English cwæð and our rather archaic
quoth. (The cw is actually pronounced just like qu).
Finally, German speakers may have quickly identified the connection between the
Old English verb sprecan (to speak) and the German sprechen.
Alfred’s preface to his Domboc continues with an Old English translation of the
Ten Commandments, though in fact Alfred actually misses out one of the
commandments! Let’s just read the beginning of the first commandment and so
find out what it was that the Lord actually said to Moses.
We have already seen at least one example of each of the letters you see in the
highlighted section above, so try working through them, identifying each letter in
turn. Things to watch out for include one of the words being split across two
lines, and an erased letter creating a gap in one of the words. See if you can spot
these.
Here’s how we might transcribe the highlighted section above:
Ic eam dryh[-]
ten þin god. ic ðe utt gelæde of egyptalande.
⁊ of heora þeow[-]dome.
The word split across two lines is dryhten (Lord). The word which contains an
erased letter is gelæde (meaning led; note the prefix ge-, which appears often in
Old English, but which actually lost its original sense of together, and so you can
in fact ignore it). Notice, too, that I have indicated that þeow and dome are really
one word (meaning slavery or, more literally, slave-dom).
What does it mean? Here’s a colour-coded breakdown:
Ic eam dryhten þin god. ic ðe utt gelæde of egyptalande ⁊ of
heora þeowdome.
I am Lord your God. I you out led from Egypt & from their
slavery.
We might translate this as:
I am the Lord your God. I led you out from Egypt and from their
thraldom [or slavery].
If you know German, you may recognise ic, the Old English word for I. (The c in
ic is pronounced like the ch in chip.)
If you’re familiar with archaic English, you may recognise þin from which we get
thine, and ðe from which thee is derived.
The word of in Old English has a broader range of uses than its Modern English
counterpart. As well as of it can also be used to mean from, out of, among,
about, by and other meanings.
You probably quickly identified Egyptaland as Egypt (the -e ending in our
passage means it is an indirect object in the sentence). You likely noted the -land
part of the word, which does indeed mean land in Modern English. So if we were
to translate Egyptaland more literally, we could use land of the Egyptians.
Finally, take note of the use of the suffix -dom which we see in þeowdom, the
word for slavery (the -e ending in our passage indicates an indirect object). This
doesn’t have the same meaning as the word dom (judgement), which we
examined at the beginning, but rather it is used to mean a state or condition, just as
we today use it in words like kingdom, officialdom, wisdom, or freedom.
(Because of this association, I decided to go with thraldom in my translation,
though this is simply a personal preference.)
A Theft Charm
T
extus Roffensis doesn’t just contain legal material. There are also, for example,
royal genealogies and lists of popes and archbishops. One particularly
fascinating document is a charm, or incantation, against theft, found on folio 95
recto. Let’s take a look at the instructions on how the charm was to be sung.
The large letters in this passage are all decorated capital Gs. The larger, green one
marks out the charm text from the surrounding texts. The two black-and-red Gs
are used to indicate where the different steps of the instructions begin.
This passage also contains, on line four, the letters p and wynn (w) in fairly close
proximity, and it is worthwhile to compare them again so that you can see how
similar they are, and hence how easy it is to misidentify both. Below, the p is the
last letter of the word dryp (meaning drip); and the wynn is the first letter of the
word wæx (meaning wax). I have swapped the words around from the order in
the manuscript so as to make the comparison clear:
You should now be able to identify each individual letter in this passage because
you have already seen at least one example of each letter. In fact, except for the þ
(thorn) and the rarely used k, this passage contains every lower-case letter you need
to know for reading other Old English documents in Textus Roffensis. Here’s a
transcript of the first section.
Gif feoh sy under[-]numen. gif hit sy hors sing
on his feotere. oððe on his bridels.
What does it mean? Here’s a colour-coded break-down:
Gif feoh sy undernumen: gif hit sy hors sing on his feotere, oððe
on his bridels.
If livestock be stolen: if it be horse sing upon his fetter or upon
his bridle.
The translation is straightforward, following the word order of the Old English
text:
If livestock is stolen: if it is a horse, sing upon its fetters or upon
its bridle.
You will no doubt recognise the Old English words his and sing which directly
correspond to their Modern English counterparts, but also you probably can see
the similarities between Old English hors and Modern English horse, and Old
English bridels (usually spelt without the s) and Modern English bridle.
Even gif (the g is pronounced like the y in yesterday) and hit are not a million
miles away from their Modern English counterparts, if and it.
The Old English word on has various uses depending on the context, including the
meanings on, upon, in, and within among others.
You should note, if you haven’t already observed it, that Old English doesn’t have
the equivalent of a (the indefinite article), and so in the example above it has to be
provided by the translator.
We have already come across the word feoh in Æthelberht’s Code. It can be
translated variously depending on the context. Here livestock makes the most
sense. As with translating any language, there are always choices to be made.
Let us now take a look at the next section of the charm:
Here’s a transcription:
Gif hit
sy oðer feoh. sing on ðæt hofrec. ⁊ ontend ðreo
candela.
What does it mean? Here’s a colour-coded breakdown:
Gif hit sy oðer feoh, sing on ðæt hofrec, ⁊ ontend ðreo candela,
If it be other livestock, sing on the hoof-track, & light three
candles,
We can translate this exactly as the word-for-word
breakdown.
Note the correspondence between Old English oðer
and Modern English other (remember ð is equivalent
to th), which are pronounced similarly.
The Old English word ðæt, translated here as the can
also be used for Modern English that, and is in fact
pronounced quite similarly to the latter.
You may recognise the similarity between hof, the first
part of the word hofrec and Modern English hoof.
Old English does not use oo but rather has a long
vowel o which works in a similar, though not exact, way
when pronounced. (See VOWEL LENGTH). Listen
out for it in the readings.
The word ðreo is a variant spelling of the more usual
ðrie and means three. The vowel sound eo is a
diphthong, which means you do not pronounce the
vowels separately but glide them together (see
DIPHTHONGS). This is quite difficult to master, so
listen out for the sound in the readings.
The word candela, meaning candles, is borrowed
from Latin.
VOWEL LENGTH
Old English has both
‘short’ and ‘long’ vowels.
Long vowels are
pronounced much the
same as short ones but
are held slightly longer.
To illustrate: the word
god (meaning god) has
a short o, and is
pronounced similarly to
its equivalent in Modern
English; whereas the
word gōd (meaning
good) has a long vowel.
You wouldn’t, however,
pronounce the latter as
if it had an oo sound
but would simply hold
the same o sound of
god (god) for longer.
In dictionaries, long
vowels are marked with
a macron overhead, for
example, āc (oak), fēt
(feet), īs (ice), hōf
(hoof), and fūl (foul).
Now let’s look at the next part of the charm.
Here’s a transcription:
⁊ dryp on ðæt ofrec. wæx ðriwa ne mæg
hit ðe manna forhelan.
What does it mean? Here’s a colour-coded breakdown.
⁊ dryp on ðæt ofrec wæx ðriwa. ne mæg hit ðe manna forhelan.
& drip on that hoof-track wax thrice: not may it you man hide.
The punctuation in the manuscript seems odd, and so I have moved the punctus,
allowing me to translate the passage as:
And drip wax three times upon the hoof-track: no man may hide it
[the animal] from you [or, may no man hide it from you]!
The most obvious similarities here are between the Old English words dryp and
wæx and their Modern English counterparts drip and wax.
Let us now take a look at the final one-and-a-half lines of the charm instructions.
Here’s a transcription:
Gif hit sy inorf sing
on feower healfa ðæs huses. ⁊ æne on middan.
What does it mean? Here’s a colour-coded breakdown:
Gif hit sy inorf sing on feower healfa ðæs huses ⁊ æne on middan.
If it be household property sing on four sides of the house & once
on middle.
We could translate this as:
If it is household property [that has been stolen], sing towards the
four sides of the house and once in the middle.
DIPHTHONGS
Old English has two diphthongs,
ea and eo. (Some guides also
include ie as a diphthong.) The
sounds the two vowels make are
not pronounced separately but
rather the first glides into the
second. If this seems strange,
think about Modern English. It
too has diphthongs such as those
in the words loud and coin.
Scholars debate over which
sounds are represented by each of
the diphthongs, so you should see
the suggestions here as a guide:
ea glides from the a-sound of cat
into the a-sound of father.
eo glides from the a-sound of
fate into the o-sound of go.
(ie, mostly found in the early West
Saxon dialect of Old English,
probably corresponds to the isound of sit.)
You may have noticed several similarities
between Old and Modern English in this
passage. Old English hus (the -es ending
above indicates possession: of the house) is
quite similar to Modern English house, and
feower is not so different from its
counterpart four, especially when you hear it
pronounced.
The link between the Old English word
midd and Modern English middle is quite
clear (the -an ending in our passage indicates
that the word follows the preposition on –
just another one of those inflections you
have to get used to in Old English).
A fascinating word is Old English healf (the
-a ending above indicates the plural: halves).
We derive Modern English half from it, and
they sound very similar when pronounced.
Though in Old English it can carry the same
sense as its modern counterpart, healf has a
wider range of meanings, including side and
part.
I
do hope you have enjoyed this short introduction to reading the Old English
texts within the twelfth-century book Textus Roffensis. And there is so much
more for you to explore! If you wish to learn Old English more formally, here are
two useful study aids:
Peter S. Baker’s Introduction to Old English (third edition), published by WileyBlackwell: www.wiley.com
Stephen Pollington’s First Steps in Old English, published by Anglo-Saxon Books:
www.asbooks.co.uk
In due course, I will be recording various Old English passages from a variety of
Anglo-Saxon works for my website www.anglosaxonmonk.com, so please keep a
look out for these.
Dr Christopher Monk