Mi Contra Fa

Languishing with love

Ref. Davidson, C., 'Erotic “Women's Songs” in Anglo-Saxon England', Neophilologus, 59 (1975), 451–62

Davidson provides the following text and translation for "Nam languens" (I've guessed at the line breaks in the translation):

Nam languens amore tuo
consurrexi diluculo
perrexique pedes nuda
per niues et frigora
atque maria rimabar mesta
si forte uentiuola
uela cernerem
aut frontem nauis conspicerem

Languishing with love for you,
I rose at daybreak
and bare- footed went
through the snow and cold,
and examined the sea-waste
to see if I could spot
sails in the breeze
or see the bow of a ship

Some notable features:

Irregular line length: I think.  There are a lot of vowels in there, and I'm guessing which ones make dipthongs and which ones get pronounced separately.    I think it goes 8-8-8, 7-10-7, 6-9.

Not much end rhyme: tuo/diluculo is weak; cernerem/conspicerem is better.  The other lines all end on unaccented "a" sounds but they're not true feminine rhymes.

A little internal same-sounds: consurrexi/perrexique catches the ear

Rhythmic trope: Not being sure of the pronunciation, I don't think there's a particular exact rhythm, but a pattern of "u u / u" (or maybe "\ u / u")shows up a lot.

Alliteration:

• Line 2: If the first syllable of "consurrexi" is a weak or secondary stress, that with the third syllable of "diluculo."
• Line 3: Same with first syllable of "perrexique" and "pedes"
• Line 3-4: "nuda" with "niues."  In OE poetry, the last stress of a line could foreshadow the alliteration of the next line.
• Line 5: "maRIa" with "rimabar"  (which, probably because of the -ar ending, I'm thinking sounds like RIMabar, as it would in Spanish); "maria" sort of with "mesta" (the m in maria isn't stressed but it does start the word).
• Lines 6-7: Assonace, with "uentiuola"s primary and secondary stresses assonating with "uela," next line.
• Lines 7-8: Eh... does "cernerem" foreshadow "conspicerem"?  I'd guess they're pronounced KER-ner-em and con-SPEE-ker-em, again based on my Spanish experience.  There's a lot of hard "C"s going on even if they're not stressed in the second line.

Not that I pretend to really know a single thing about modern poetry, but this reminds me a bit of free verse.  There are definite poetic techniques being used, even if there is no fixed form.

Or is there?

"The eight syllable lines of this fragmentary poem break down in the last three lines; the version given here is amended to give it the octosyllabic structure it seems meant to have."  Jane Stevenson, Women Latin Poets, footnote on p. 103.

Anne Klink (hey, I remember her from the Wulf and Eadwacer translation!) has this to say about it in her An Anthology of ancient and medieval woman's song:

Possibly this evocative piece is a fragment of something longer; only the feminine inflection of nuda points unmistakably to a female speaker.  The woman looking out over the sea is reminiscent of Ariadne, except that here she seems to be expecting a returning lover.  Ovid (although not Catullus) was well known in the Middle Ages and may have been an influence.  As in the following two poems, there are also echoes of the Song of Songs.

[The poem follows, being broken into short four syllable lines.]

Provenance: Germany, early 11th century.
Meter: Lines 1-8 and 14 of 4 syllables; 9-10 and 12-13 of 5; line 11 of 7.  The alternate lines rhyme.  Could also be treated as (for the most part) longer lines rhyming in pairs.

...I may need to acquire that book.  It looks good.

Okay, so... octosyllabic rhyming couplets, maybe totally regular, maybe not.  Not like that's unusual or anything.  It still doesn't seem very rhymy to me, though.  Maybe there's a technical poetry word that covers it that I don't know.

Christmas in Royal Anglo-Saxon Winchester

I mentioned the Winchester Troper in an earlier post.  As it happens, I came into some Amazon.com gift certificates and as a result, "Christmas in Royal Anglo-Saxon Winchester," a CD of music from the troper, arrived yesterday.

I was slightly disappointed that the liner notes didn't include any mention of how they reconstructed the music.  That's probably a lot to ask from liner notes when there's a $220 book on the subject available.  But I was hoping for a crumb or two.

I haven't finished listening to it yet, but three early impressions:

1) Yeah, that's chant.  I really have to focus or else my mind wanders.

2) But if I do focus?  Sweet.  There's something about the melodic structure that makes it pop just a little more than some of the other chant I've listened to.  I could see using some of this music for contrafacta.  I've got a Cambridge Song - a haunting poem about a woman scouring the sea-shore for her absent lover - that I'd love to set to music. 

3) Organum: wow.  The CD opens with two monophonic pieces, and then the organum (early harmony) hits you.  By modern homophonic standards, it's a thin, two-voice harmony at strange intervals.  But after listening to extended monophony, it's just an amazing difference, like an orchestra suddenly swelling up from underneath a flute solo.  Only not quite, because you're not suddenly lost in that sea of sound... eh, I'm not doing it much justice. 

I've got Sequentia's "Edda" which makes similar switches between monophony and organum-like singing, and I don't find it nearly as affecting as this.  Possibly it's a matter of pitch - Sequentia's paired singers are usually two women, whereas this recording features mostly male voices (there's one female soprano). 

I'm very pleased with my purchase.

Six Notes

So, Singing the Past mentions that many of the tunes used for singing epic poems are melodically pretty flat, have stepwise motion, and span a fifth or a sixth.  Hoppin says almost the exact same thing about the oldest extant Gregorian chants - they commonly span a fifth or a sixth rather than an octave or more.  I suspect that, the more that I look, the more I'll find traditional cultures with poetic/musical traditions that fit this mold.

(Insert standard disclaimer about applying evidence from one culture to another here.)

We get folks on the lyre group who seem to think that playing melody on the six-stringed lyre is "lame" or too limited.  Well, it absolutely is, by our modern standards.  From the late Renaissance on, we've been conditioned to expect depth and texture in music - first, polyponic and then homophonic, as chordal texture started its reign of tenor.  So by any yardstick used in the last 400 years, yes, the lyre is a thin-sounding instrument with few possibilities. 

Of course, it's more than 400 years old.  And, based on my admittedly limited research so far, I'm starting to be of the opinion that the desired sound would have been something primarily melodic and easily encompassed by a sixth or so.

Technically, I think the challenges come in cleanness of fingering and sensitivity to the instrument.  When you have stripped down the sound so far, to a bare melody or melody with drone, you need to really have a clean, pure melody.  It doesn't have to be complicated, particularly for epic recitation.  But it can't be sloppy, with ragged intonation or uneven rhythm.

Rhythm.  I don't know what the answers are*, but by golly, figure out your correct answer for this particular piece and then nail it down to the microsecond. 

*Aside - matters of rhythm and note duration in very early music are extremely contentious.  There are no known right answers.  What I'm saying is, whatever rhythm(s) you decide on for a piece, they need to be executed with full commitment.  I used to worry about playing the right notes.  Now I worry about maintaining rhythm.  A hiccup in rhythm is ten times uglier than a misplayed note.

Artistically... artistically, it's hard.  The audience is conditioned to want more.  You are conditioned to want more.  The aesthetic the instrument belonged to... we don't really know it.  Some days, it seems like re-creations will be interesting exotica at best and dry, clinical efforts at worst.

That's the challenge - to make the art sing again, to make the glad-wood speak to people, even though we may have forgotten how to hear it.

Myth of the Anglo-Saxon Oral Poet

John D Niles, "Myth of the Anglo-Saxon Oral Poet," Western Folklore, Winter/Spring 2003.  (If the link doesn't work, a search on the title should uncover it.)

In a somewhat elliptical essay, Niles addresses the charge that, since we lack any good historical literary evidence for scops, we should ignore them.

Most of what we think we know about scops comes from tenth century writing.  Niles makes a good case for this to be some form of nostalgia for a heroic past and a claim to a common heritage for the aborning English nation.  However, it's a romantic past which is almost surely rooted in facts - Niles argues to general anthropology, saying that virtually every pre-literate society ever studied has some kind of oral tradition, and he also points out the physical evidence of the lyres interred in graves.  He also argues that there's value in the idealized picture left to us, as it tells us something about what was valuable to the 9th-10th century people writing it.

Working from a different perspective and to a different end, what I wish to claim is that precisely because representations of the scop were important to the Anglo-Saxons, they have value to us today, if not for their factual content then for what they contribute to the history of mentalities. These scenes could be considered part of the Anglo-Saxons' mental modeling of their ancestral past. Although none of the portraits of scops to be found in the Old English literary records can provide a social historian with reliable information about the early practice of poetry, they can tell us something about how the Anglo-Saxons conceived of their art of poetry. And nothing is clearer than that they conceived of that poetry as grounded in the art of ancient Germanic singers of tales.

Slightly confusing to me because "Anglo-Saxons" apparently means "10th century Anglo-Saxons."   He doesn't draw a timeline, a progression from "ancient Germanic singers of tales" pre-Migration (fifth century) to a proposed era of insular scops (fifth - seventh (?) centuries) and then a fade into an era of literacy (eighth - tenth centuries?).  He does suggest that in Bede's time (730s), the romance of the scop was much less than in the 900s.  Without looking things up, I want to say that the lyres date to the 6th-7th centuries.

I think the takeaway for performance has to be:

• In pagan (and probably early Christian) Anglo-Saxon England, there were oral poets.
• At least some of them used lyres at least during certain eras
• We have no hard evidence about their repertoire
• Modern analogs suggest epic, eulogistic and even lyric pieces could have been appropriate
• All those styles are found in later Old English verse
• It may be anachronistic to perform 10th century Old English verses with a 7th century English lyre, but that's about as close as we're going to get
• Everything we "know" about the scop comes from romanticized sources or modern analogs.  Proceed with humility and care.

Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry

Their homepage.
The Ric-a-Dam-Doo.  Neither flag appears to be red and gold, and purple, too.  (Although I've heard "and royal blue" used, which might be the one on the right.  Is the left just a super-fancy version of the Canadian flag?)
A Scout version of the song as well as... the original?

Why?  Because I'm doing a Pages Academy class singalong on Saturday.  I'll teach one or two period rounds and/or songs, one or two traditional songs ("Rattlin' Bog" is a kid favorite) and one or two "SCA Appropriate" but wildly modern fun songs like "The Princess Pat."  It's about a princess, right?

I know a verse about Captain Jack, one about Star Trek and one about Superman.  Two ain't SCA appropriate.

So...

Now Good Dame Joan  (stand at attention)
Was a valiant knight   (salute)
Moose Tourney-bound  (moose antlers on head)
She came to fight  (hit forearms against each other)
She asked a gift   (hand out)
Of her lord so true  (hands over heart)
He gave to her   (hand out again)
A rickabamboo 

Our archer Will   (pretend to draw a bow)
He liked to hunt  (hand shading eyes, peering around)
His dog was small  (hands up in front like paws)
It was a runt    (fingers "this far" apart)
But in the woods (hands arched over head for tree)
That dog sure flew  (To Infinity and Beyond flight pose)
When Will did take  (tap temple like a clever person remembering something)
His rickabamboo

Moose Draft

I limited the "Storvik's Founding" poem to around 30 lines, to fit it into a reasonable performance time at court.  I think this one can go 30-50, since I have more than 2 minutes.

The poem should be stanzas of eight half-lines.  I'm going to do the draft as full lines rather than half-lines because my brain functions better that way; I can chop them all in half later.

Loki slyly    slipped into Asgard
Planning trouble  for Thor, thunder-god
Loki starts    to scream and shake
Great wailing    from god's throat

Gods of Asgard    assemble at once
"Tell us, Loki,"    says Tyr One-Hand
"Why such noise?    What have you seen   
That scares you,    Sleipnir's mother?"

Loki replied    "A rampaging beast,
Giant thing,    with great wide horns
Feet to trample    freely roaming
Below in Midgard    bides this beast"

Mighty Thor    throws head back
Laughs long     and laughs loud
"No beast in Midgard    brings me fright
I will kill it    since Loki cannot"     (16)

Loki brings gods    over Bifrost to Midgard
To frozen field    where feeds the beast
An ancient elk    enormous as ocean
In its horns    a king's hall would fit

Thor paused    proud warrior
He knew strength    saw it in moose
No easy fight    against Midgard elk
But battle-war    worthy of Thor

Spoke Loki:    "Shameful it was
That I was frightened.  No fangs on it,
No sharp claws;    a cow it is.
A simple task    for Thor today."

With mighty Mjollnir    Met Thor the moose
Slammed the hammer    home in its shoulder
The great elk staggered    giant beast stumbled
But mountain-moose    managed its feet      (32)

Turned it to Thor    tossing its head   
Thunder-god caught    in tree of antler
Thor is thrown    high over hill
Sails in the sky    til sight fails to see him

Said Tyr to Loki:    "Look, a mad moose
Blinded with pain,     beginning a charge
Coming to trample    and Thor is gone
Your clever trick    will kill you, Loki."

"Not so," said Loki,    sprinting to moose
"Catch me!" he taunted    called to the elk
Over snow he flew    fox-footed god
Moose followed him    fixed in purpose

Towards a tree    traveled the trickster
At last he leapt    leaves embraced
Came on the elk    enormous beast
Antlers as high    as heaven's vault       (48)

Down fell the moose    flailing its feet
Into a pit    placed at tree's roots
Elk snorts and paws    escape it cannot
Loki throws spear    Simple task

Golden-haired Sif    great her anger
Fine husband Thor    made foolish by Loki
"A trophy be taken,"    she tells the gods
"Elk's great antlers    an honor for Loki"

She fashions a helmet    fine its make
Antlers affixed    adornments on helm
Ridiculous gift    refused cannot be
Lest Sif take offense    and summon Thor

Huge antler-hat    on head of Loki
Traitor-god smiles    despite Sif's gift
Today he made    a moose and Thor fight
And Thor lost -    Loki is pleased   

The Winchester Troper

The Winchester Troper is an 11th-12th century manuscript containing some of the earliest music in England.  There's a new facsimile edition out.  The $220 price tag is rather steep, but it's also at the UMD Performing Arts Library (in the Reference section, alas, so no checking it out).  The same scholars have put their learning into practice, with a CD of music from the Troper also available.  At $47, the CD ain't cheap, either, but I may just have to pick it up.

Thor and the Moose

One more link on moose-hunting pits.

My working idea is an eddaic-style poem about a joke Loki plays on Thor.  He gets the thunder god to attack a moose.  Not just any moose, of course, but a huge primordial moose that will challenge even Thor.  When the moose tosses Thor over the next hill and all the gods are cross with Loki (for leaving them with an angry moose and no Thor), Loki gets the moose to chase him and leads it into a hunting pit.

Loki requires some come-uppance, here, and the story needs a tighter ending, so perhaps in recognition of his great achievement, Thor will graciously see to it that the moose antlers are mounted on Loki's helm, so that all will know his deed.  Or maybe Sif will, as that sort of subtlety is not exactly Thor's strong suit.

Elg is the Norwegian word for moose.  (So the elkhound thing appears to be true!)  That might be useful to know.

Now, off to go re-read my notes from "The Lay of Storvik's Founding" so I can remember how eddaic poetry is (slightly) different from my usual A-S...

Google Penace: Lyre notes of nobody

Someone uses the search term "lyre notes of nobody" from google.com.ph to get here.  A lot.  I'm not quite sure what they are looking for.

Here's the melody line and lyrics for "Hey, Ho, Nobody at Home" by Ravenscroft.  I know a different tune for the fifth bar, and of course almost all of us know the revised Victorian lyrics.  It was originally "Fill the pot, Eadie," not "Yet I will be merry."  The absolutely! scandalous! reference to drinking had to go, and was replaced with the more generic "merry."

The melody, alas, spans an octave, so you won't fit it on a hexachord-tuned six-string lyre.  It's not pentatonic, so you won't fit it on a pentatonically tuned lyre, either.  You could, however, take that low E in Bar 2 and transpose it up an octave.  Tune the lyre from G to E (or transpose the music down to wherever your lyre is tuned) and you're good to go.

Leif and the moose?

Upon reflection, I see no real reason to involve skraelings in a moose tale.  It just shouts, "Hey it's the NEW WORLD!" more loudly and, I think, unnecessarily.  IT looks like Leif Erikkson found Vinland but did not encounter any people, anyhow.  As his is the more recognizable name, there's some value in tying the tale to him.  Maybe he'll be the human protagonist, or maybe it will be a previously unnamed member of his crew.  (It's kind of bad form to make fun of the ancient heroes.)

I admit I'm defaulting to a humorous mode because, well, MOOSE.  The ur-story that involves humor and ungulates appears to be of the "I ate'nt dead" sort.  I've read Pat McManus's version, Woody Allen did it, and it appears as hunter's yarns on the Internet in various places.  It would be simple enough to have someone chuck a spear at a moose only not have the killing "take," with hijinks ensuing.

There's an alternative, which is to take a legend like this as base material.  The major problem I have with that is it leans towards conflating all the peoples living in North America at all times into an undifferentiated mass of "Indians."  The Seneca (from whom this Moose Woman legend comes) are not the Inuit, and the skraelings were probably ancestors of the Inuits (but not actually Inuits themselves).

...oh holy cow.  Moose in Scandanavia?  Didn't know that!  Clearly, more work is needed...

Serious research is serious: Cross-continental differences in patterns of predation: will naive moose in Scandinavia ever learn?  Can I steal that title?

Scandinavian moose tales
Norwegian Moose blog? Y'all, the Internet is a scary place. "The Norwegian Elkhound is the national dog of Norway, and is used to hunt large game, such as wolf, bear and moose. The meaning of the direct translation of the Norwegian name "Elghund", means Moose Dog"  For reals?

Awful research is awful: Elkhounds found in 'Viking' graves dated to 4000 B.C.?  Viking, that word, I do not think it means what you think it means...

Slightly better article on hunting dogs, still almost totally lacking on specific dates.  Hm, wonder why that might be? 

Okay, the dogs are awesomely cute but probably beside the moosely point.

Loyal Order of the Moose.  Because I wondered what the virtues of the moose might be. To my surprise, there seems to be no intrinsic moosiness.  No rationale for the selection of mascot (?) is given.

Where to next?  Hunting stories in the eddas or sagas?  Might not be a bad idea.