History of English #39 (5 Mar 2014): Not Lost in Translation
Now that people are writing Christian poetry in (old) English, they need to come up with English words for Christian concepts. One thing was that they had a stock phrase “blank-guardian”, and Cadmin’s poetry called god “mankind-guardian”. (Cadmin was the cowherd from last episode.)
The only history I remember from this episode was a cross called the Roothschild cross or something, which had a poem written on it that was also found in the Italy book from last episode. In the 17th Century the cross was broken up (either because it was Catholic and Protestants were doing that sort of thing at the time, or vice versa) and scattered across church grounds, but eventually it was mostly reconstructed. The poem was written from the perspective of the cross that Jesus was crucified on, and the way it talks about blood has similarities with Beowulf. Some people think it was written by Cadmin but we can’t know.
Some etymology: “good” and “god” are unrelated, but they sometimes get mixed up. “Goodbye” comes from “god be with you” and “gospel” comes originally from something meaning “good news” that at some point becomes “godspel”. “Drip” comes from blood dripping, and cognate with dreary. “Lord” comes from loaf-guardian (“breadwinner” is more modern but similar) and “Lady” comes from “loaf-maid”. That’s kind of redundant because “maid” itself comes from “dough-maker”, so we have loaf-guardian and loaf-maker.
History of English #39 (5 Mar 2014): Not Lost in Translation
Now that people are writing Christian poetry in (old) English, they need to come up with English words for Christian concepts. One thing was that they had a stock phrase “blank-guardian”, and Cadmin’s poetry called god “mankind-guardian”. (Cadmin was the cowherd from last episode.)
The only history I remember from this episode was a cross called the Roothschild cross or something, which had a poem written on it that was also found in the Italy book from last episode. In the 17th Century the cross was broken up (either because it was Catholic and Protestants were doing that sort of thing at the time, or vice versa) and scattered across church grounds, but eventually it was mostly reconstructed. The poem was written from the perspective of the cross that Jesus was crucified on, and the way it talks about blood has similarities with Beowulf. Some people think it was written by Cadmin but we can’t know.
Some etymology: “good” and “god” are unrelated, but they sometimes get mixed up. “Goodbye” comes from “god be with you” and “gospel” comes originally from something meaning “good news” that at some point becomes “godspel”. “Drip” comes from blood dripping, and cognate with dreary. “Lord” comes from loaf-guardian (“breadwinner” is more modern but similar) and “Lady” comes from “loaf-maid”. That’s kind of redundant because “maid” itself comes from “dough-maker”, so we have loaf-guardian and loaf-maker.