This exercise relates to an extract of historical English from Section 13.3, and includes questions on a range of linguistic features, with the final question inviting you to explore the text on a discourse level.
This extract was written by the renowned Winchester-educated scholar, Ælfric, and comes from his account of the life of the saintly King Oswald (604–642). Here, Ælfric describes an Easter feast and the generosity of the king to the poor. (The length marks on some of the vowels are a modern convention.)
þā bær man þām cyninge cynelice þēnunga on ānum sylfrenan disce • and sōna þā inn ēode ān þæs cyninges þegna þe his ælmyssan bewiste • and sǣde þæt fela þearfan sǣtan geond þā strǣt gehwanon cumene tō þæs cyninges ælmyssan • þā sende se cyning sōna þām þearfum þone sylfrenan disc mid sande mid ealle • and hēt tōceorfan þone disc • and syllan þām þearfum heora ǣlcum his dǣl
(...then regal foods were brought to the king on a silver dish. And shortly, one of the king’s thanes, who was in charge of his gifts to the poor, came in. And he said that many needy people were sitting in the street, having come from far and wide for the king’s charity. At once, the king sent out the silver dish with the food and everything to the poor, and commanded that the dish be cut into pieces, and that each of those poor people should get a share...)
Question 1
Identify the various inflectional forms taken by the OE noun ‘king’ and explain their function in this passage.
Answer/discussion
| (se) cyning | nominative | ‘the king’ is the subject of the clause |
| (þæs) cyninges | genitive | refers to a thane ‘of the king’ and the charitable nature ‘of the king’ – the genitive indicates some kind of possession or association |
| (þām) cyninge | dative | the food is brought ‘to the king’ – here the dative indicates the indirect object |
You may also have noticed the adjective cynelice is derived from cyning. The PDE form of this is kingly, but regal has been used in the modern gloss.
Question 2
Using the information given about noun inflections in Section 13.10, is it possible to work out the grammatical gender of ‘king’?
Answer/discussion
The grammatical gender of cyning is masculine. Based on singular noun inflections, cyning could be masculine or neuter, but the use of the masculine nominative determiner in se cyning (as opposed to neuter þæt) makes the gender clear. If the noun had appeared in nominative and accusative plural forms, this would also have pointed to masculine gender.
Question 3
Can you identify any instances in the passage where the verb precedes its subject in contrast to present-day SV order?
Answer/discussion
| þā bær man | (then) carried someone |
| þā inn ēode ān þæs cyninges þegna | (then) in went/came one of the king’s thanes |
| þā sende se cyning | (then) sent the king |
You’ll notice the subject-verb inversions all occur after the adverb þā. Elsewhere, the subject precedes the verb, for example, in fela þearfan sǣtan – ‘many poor people were sitting’.
Question 4
Looking at words containing <f>, can you determine whether this letter represents the [f] or the [v] allomorph?
Answer
The allomorph [f] occurs word-initially, as in fela (‘many’). Its voiced counterpart [v] occurs between vowels and/or voiced consonants: sylfrenan (as in PDE silver), þearfan/þearfum, tōceorfan (as in PDE carve).
Question 5
On a discourse level, what strategies has the author, Ælfric, used to present King Oswald in a positive light?
Answer/discussion
Ælfric begins the passage by establishing King Oswald’s status: his food is fit for a king, and this is highlighted by the juxtaposition of ‘king’ and ‘kingly’ in the opening clause: þā bær man þām cyninge cynelice þēnunga on ānum sylfrenan disce. The king’s food is served on a silver dish, as befits his station, but this dish then becomes the focus of the king’s generosity, and its significance is emphasised through repetition – ānum sylfrenan disce, þone sylfrenan disce, þone disc – and further reinforced by the switch of the determiner from anum (‘a’) to þone (‘the’/‘that’). The parallelism of mid sande mid ealle (‘with food, with everything’) also emphasises the king’s generosity, while the use of the prefixed verb tōceorfan (‘to completely carve up’) intensifies the king’s willingness to donate the silver fairly and in its entirety to the poor. In Old English, the adverb sōna meant ‘very soon’ or ‘at once’ (not ‘after a while’), so we are told that the king wasted no time in sending assistance to his subjects in need.
