This session is mainly about Brut, which claims to a give lineage of the kings of England. Politics rather than piety seems to be the theme. Laghamon was a monk and the picture below is a window of the church at Areley Kings (Ernel3e) on the Severn opposite Stourport. See what you can make of his English. When you are really stuck, come back to the MnE translation at the bottom of the page.
Glossary: ihoten means “was called”, similar to German “heißt”; wonede means “lived”, similar to “wohnte”; nom, “took” from niman, “to take”; radde is the past tense of “read”; þuhte means “thought” gan wende combines modern “gone” and “went”, and may be translated as “travelled”; drihten means “of God” or “blessed”.
It includes letters we have lost ȝ yogh the sound in Scottish “loch” and Laȝamon. Þ (thorn) is now written as “th” in “think”
Loanwords from any source but OE are rare: only 150 from French, 140 from Danish, nearly zero from Welsh or Latin. The Danish are repetitions of five words: eorl; kaisere (emperor); grið (peace); tiðende (tidings); la3e. Despite avoiding French common nouns, place names have French spelling: Normandie, Britayne, Alemaine. Some OE pronouns are reintroduced – þone and þæm. He uses the beon form of the verb “to be” widely, but not with all the grammatical persons: beon is frequent, and beo also occurs, but bist and bith are absent. The wesan form is probably entirely absent.
Alliterative verse is used, a device to make memorisation easier for oral historians. Each pair of lines has a head letter, which is repeated in the pair. Each line is divided into two half lines, with a definite break in the middle. There should be two stressed and two unstressed syllables. Laghamon sometimes misses the repeated sound, and also uses rhymes.
MnE translation. “There was a priest was in the land. His name was Laghamon. He was Leovenath’s son. May God be gracious to him. He liked it there, he read services there. He lived at Earnley at a good church, upper Severn, quite near to Radistone. It came to him and as a serious thought that he would tell the story of England, their noble deeds, how they were called and where they came from. Laghamon did travel widely among the people, He took that English book that Saint Bede had made. Another he took, in Latin, that Saint Albin had made. And the fair [Saint] Augustine, who brought baptism hither; A third book he took, and laid it alongside, He took feathers in his fingers, and he composed on parchment; And these three books he condensed into one.”