Since my last post on the subject was rather dry and technical in nature, I thought this time it would be more illustrative to show some samples of the dialects spoken in mediaeval Romance-speaking Britain. Below are samples of the same sentence, rendered into three different dialects, all dating to about 1350 AD. First, though, the Vulgar Latin sentence from which they derive:

Unā nocte, ūna femina et suus vicīnus caecus sunt passātī subtus illa lūna plēna, quandō incontrārunt ad ūnu pastōre. Magis ille pastor erat werwulf, et manducaut illu caecu. Et post, illa femina erat sōlā.
One night, a certain woman and her blind neighbour went out walking under the full moon, when they met a shepherd. But the shepherd was a werewolf, and ate the blind man. And then the woman was alone.

I’m aware that it’s execrable Latin- it’s simply giving the forms of the words which provided the later reflexes. Also, not the Old English loan werwulf.

Coltován, the dialect of Rades (< Ratae Corieltauvorum, Leicester), is probably the most “neutral” of the dialects spoken at the time, with few majorly distinctive features unshared by any other dialect. As such, it enjoyed a certain amount of presteige in the late middle ages as having the “purest” and “best” language. However, very little literature was produced in the dialect, and there are no people of note from the city.

Ona nueit, ona femna et sus vezins cecs sont passet sotz la lona pleina, quan incontaront un pastour. Mais el pastre era gueruls, et manjo lo cec. Et post, la femna era soula.
/ˈona nu̯ɛjt, ˈona ˈfemna ˈe ˈsus veˈdzins ˈtsɛks ˈsont paˈsɛt ˈsots la ˈlona ˈpleina, ˈkan inkonˈtraront un paˈstour. ˈmais il ˈpastre ˈɛra ˈgwɛruls, ˈe manˈdʒo lo ˈtsɛk. ˈe ˈpɔs, la ˈfɛmna ˈɛra ˈsoula/

The dialect spoken around the city of Dorveira (< Durnovaria, Dorchester), known as Durreis, is characterised primarily by the reflex of VL mn being /u̯n/, and the backnes dissimilation of the reflexes of stressed mid-close vowels:

Na nueit, na feuna et sus vezins cecs sont passet soz la lona ploina, quan incontraront un pasteur. Mais le pastre era guerufs, et mantget lo cec. Et post, la feuna era seula.
/na ˈnu̯ɛjt, na ˈfɛu̯na e ˈsus veˈdzins ˈtsɛks ˈsont paˈsɛt ˈsots la ˈlona ˈploina, ˈkan inkonˈtraront un paˈsteu̯r. ˈma.is il ˈpastrǝ ˈɛra ˈgwɛrufs, e ˈmandʒɛ lo ˈtsɛk. e ˈpɔs, la ˈfɛu̯na ˈɛra ˈseu̯la/

Briançán dialect of Evrac (< Eborācum, York), was characterised by the /vn/ as the reflex of Latin mn, retaining archaic features such as /u̯ɔ/ as the stressed diphthongisation product of ĕ, and weakening of most word-final /a/ to /ǝ/ (a development which would spread to the rest of the language by the modern period). For the last, note the scribe’s hesitation between la and le for the feminine definite article:

Ona nuoit, one fevna yt sus vezins cecs sont passiat sos le lona pleana, quan incontraront un pastoar. Mais il pastre era guerulfs, et manzo le cec. Et pos, le fevna era soale.
/onǝ nu̯ɔjt, onǝ fɛvnǝ i sus vedzins tsɛks sont pasi̯at sos lǝ lonǝ pleǝ̯nǝ, kan inkontraront un pastoǝ̯r. mais il pastrǝ ɛra gɛrulfs, e mandzo lǝ tsɛk. e pɔs, lǝ fɛvnǝ ɛra soǝ̯lǝ/

I’ve been saying for a long time that I’m going to write something about ritual purity, and how I apply the concept in my own spiritual practice. Neopagan rituals of all flavours frequently begin with some kind of “purificaton”: be it of participants or as part of a process of creating “sacred space”, so there’s clearly some concept of “pure” and “impure” there, albeit fuzzily and foggily defined- like so much in modern neopaganism. Disliking fuzzy concepts when it comes to ritual (I’m fine with it in theology), I decided a while ago to investigate the concept as attested in the ancient polytheistic traditions.

The concept of “ritual purity” is ubiquitous in the classical Indo-European paganisms. We have records of the concept in Ancient Rome, in Vedic India and in the concept of miasma in Greece. In Zoroastrianism, of course, the concept of ritual purity reaches its apogee: the complex purity code laid out in the Denkerd and Videvdat rivals that of Judaism (upon which Zoroastrian ideas most likely were a significant influence). Examining the evidence of all these practices, we can draw out a fairly large number of commonalities: a fact that, combined with the widespread distribution of the concept, implies a Proto-Indo-European vintage for ritual purity.

Before examining the details, however, it is appropriate that we seek a broad definition of what “ritual purity” actually is. From the examples in the classical paganisms, we can state that ritual purity is essentially a state in which one is fit to face the gods. Plato explains ritual purification as an aspect of the “science of division”, a division between the sacred and the profane: by becoming ritually pure, one places oneself outside the mundane, profane world and into a relationship with the sacred. The ritual impurity of a thing or a person is, to quote Robert Parker’s Miasma, “the impairment of a thing’s form or integrity”: becoming ritually pure is, in effect, a reconstitution of a thing or person’s proper form.

This is not to say, however, that ritual impurity has some connotation of sin, or badness. Outside of a ritual context, value-judgements such as this are inappropriate. Ritual impurity is simply the default state for human beings: one simply cannot live life in a constant state of ritual purity, nor is there any pressing reason to do so. To use an analogy, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with slobbing about the house in just your underwear- it’s more comfortable and convenient. But if you were expecting visitors, you would at least go an put some trousers on.

Taking all the evidence together, it seems that there was not a simple binary division into ritually pure/impure. Rather, there seem to have been differing types of impurity, which I have conflated into three broad categories: minor impurity, major impurity and mortal impurity. I shall discuss each of these categories below in turn.

Minor impurity seems the be the most basic category, and is most akin to the secular conception of “dirt”. Essentially, minor impurity is a neccessary result of our nature as mortals. Accross Greece, India, Rome and Iran ritual impurity was caused by the functioning of one’s body: most universally, the passing of bodily fluids, such as urine, faeces, blood and semen all caused ritual impurity. To these, Vedic India added spit and vomit. Coming into contact with another’s bodily fluids also made one impure: this is why, if done correctly, sex renders one ritually impure. What all of these have in common is that they are essential to mortality: it seems that becoming ritually pure was to cleanse oneself of one’s mortal nature. This distancing oneself from mortality also explains why contact with corpses renders one ritually impure, and hence why butchers, undertakers and so on were considered to be low-caste in later Hinduism. Of course, there are some complications and exceptions. For example, the Greeks believed that sex at night with one’s wife didn’t case ritual impurity, but sex with her during the day did, as did sex with someone who isn’t your wife. Oral sex rendered the fellator impure, but not the fellatee.

Major impurity was somewhat more serious. Major impurity is the pollution incurred after committing a crime, or sacrilege. This rendered one wholly unfit to participate in rituals- recall that the Gauls excluded criminals from their sacrifices. A full detailing of what constitutes sacrilege in IE cultures is rather beyond the scope of a short blog post, but some examples that readily spring to mind are defiling the hearth fire, killing someone in a temple precinct, or urinating in a river (actually, the ancient Indo-European cultures seem to have been inordinately concerned with where men pissed. There were taboos on urinating while walking, while on roads, while facing the sun, while near a river, etc.) Unlike minor impurities, which could be cleansed simply, by ablutions or abstinence, for example, major impurity could only be expiated by a sacrifice.

The final category, mortal impurity, is a temporary situation of ritual impurity caused by either birth or death in the household: three days appears to be a common time period for the latter, at least. While it might seem fairly harsh to render new mothers and the grief-stricken ritually impure, it is worth mentioning that ritual impurity exempted them from all religious and social duties: in effect it made allowances for people not being able to fulfil their religious obligations, due to incapacitation by grief or birth.

What to make of all this? At the very least, I hope: wash your hands before engaging in ritual.

In the first post on this topic, I suggested that two soundchanges which might arise in British Romance are “raising” and “lowering”. The first, I reckon, is probably the simplest to implement: stressed /i u/ lower to /e o/ when the vowel in the following syllable is /a/. So from Latin vīta, we’d have a form like /ˈveda/, and from lūna we’d get /ˈlona/. Given that this change occured in our universe in Welsh before i-affection, we’ll say that this precedes raising in all dialects.

The second offers more interesting possibilities. For what happened here in the Celtic languages, allow me to quote Matasović: “In Goidelic, the articulation of stressed short mid-vowels (e and o) is raised to i and u, respectively, if there was a high vowel (i or u) in the following syllable […] A similar change occurred in British at more or less the same period, but there only i caused the raising of the articulation of vowels in the preceding syllable, and the low vowel a was affected, too (unlike in Goidelic)” adapting this to Romance presents some interesting oppurtunities. The vowels affected in Goidelic, stressed short e and o were exactly those vowels which in the Romance languages underwent diphthongisation, as in Latin tĕrra > Spanish tierra. The conditioning factor of this diphthongisation, beyond being stressed, varies considerably accross the Romance languages: in Spanish it’s universal, while in French it occurs only in open syllables. In Portuguese it doesn’t happen at all. In Occitan and Catalan, the conditioning factor was the following syllable including yod or a palatal sound: VL ŏc’lu- gave something like /ˈɔʎo/ in early Occitan and Catalan, with the palatal /ʎ/ triggering diphthongisation in the preceding vowel, giving Occitan uelh and Catalan ull (with subsequent re-monophongisation). In my opinion, this diphthongisation began under the same constraints as in Occitan and Catalan, later spreading by analogy first to other vowels in open syllables (as in French), and then to all mid-open stressed vowels (as in Spanish).

In British Romance, or at least those dialects most heavily influenced by Goidelic (I reckon that given my previous map, these would be the dialects of the Vale of Gloucester), let’s merge raising and the typical Romance diphthongisation: in stressed syllables, the reflexes of Latin ĕ, ae and ŏ undergo diphthongisation to /i̯ɛ u̯ɔ/ if either followed by a palatal consonant or a high vowel (/i u/) in the following syllable. This, incidentally, would give fun nominal alternations, where diphthongisation occurs in the reflexes of second declension singulars, but not in the oblique plural (assuming an Old French-style two-case system here), so fŏcus > /ˈfu̯ɔks/ in the nominative singular, but fŏcōs > /ˈfɔks/ in the oblique plural.

Of course, this isn’t the only way this could be done, and one of the fun things about creating multiple dialects is that you get to explore more than one option. In varieties spoken further away from Goidelic influence, the pattern might have been more similar to that attested in Brythonic, with only following /i/ (and following palatals) triggering diphthongisation. As the Brythonic pattern of raising also affected /a/, let’s extend our Romance diphthongisation to the low vowel /a/, raising it to /ɛ̯a/, probably by way of a diphthong /æa/.

The resultant diphthongs from both dialect groupings could subsequently undergo a number of different changes. For the /ɛ̯a/ diphthong, I quite like the idea of it monophthongising to plain /ɛ/, but I can also see it easily developing to /i̯a/, whic h would also be fun: the reflex of palia could end up as /ˈpɛʎa/ or /ˈpi̯aʎa/, both of which are pretty neat. We could also get Irish-like reflexes of /i̯a/ and /u̯a/ from /i̯ɛ/ and /u̯ɔ/ quite easily, although I’m thinking of doing this in another way (see below). And, of course, /u̯ɔ/ could easily become /ø/ as in French, by way of a dissimilated /u̯ɛ/.

While on the subject of diphthongisation, there’s an interesting development which happened (presumably independently!) in Goidelic, Brythonic and the Romance varieties of northern France: the reflexes of long mid vowels underwent diphthongisation[1]. Given this spread, I can’t not include it in British Romance. In stressed open syllables, then, Latin ē and ō underwent diphthongisation. In Old French, it is speculated that the sequence was ẹ́ > ẹ́ẹ > ẹ́i̯, which is what I’ll take for Early British Romance. The options for the subsequent reflexes are manifold: ei ou as in Old French, or perhaps dissimilation of the two elements to ia ua like in Irish? Or somewhere in between, ea oa? Or maybe the dissimilation was not in height, but in backness, giving oi eu?

To illustrate this, I’ve put together a simple isogloss map, which can be seen to the right (click on it for a larger version) The map shows the distribution of the features discussed above, along with the locations of the three main cities of Romance-speaking Britain, Corinium, Eboracum and Londinium. The grey areas are, of course, those areas which do not speak Romance.

The black line divides the areas in which the conditioning vowels for the diphthongisation of open-mid vowels differ: to the west of the line (the area with the greatest Goidelic influence), the conditioning factor is any high vowel, while to the east of the line, it’s only /i/. This area is further subdivided by the reflex of the diphthongisation of /a/: in the south it’s /ɛ/, probably influenced by the French fronting of /a/ to /ɛ/ in open syllables. Note that the original diphthong /æa/ is preserved in the fenlands around the Wash: the area’s inaccessibility makes it a haven for archaic features.

The blue lines represent the reflexes of ē ō in stressed, open syllables. Again, in the area with the heaviest Goidelic influence- the western coast- the reflexes resemble those of Irish. In the south and east, however, the reflexes resemble those of French, probably due to the influence of the cosmopolitan seaports on the south coast. I haven’t shown it on the map, but the area around Isca Dumnoniorum (Exeter) also follows the French pattern, at least in the reflex of ō. Otherwise, the Dumnonian peninsula dissimilates the two elements of the original diphthong not by height but by backness (it’s no coincidence that the neighbouring Brythonic language does the same: *cētos > Middle Cornish coys).

From this map, we can build up something of a snapshot of the dialects of the major cities:

My god, this is fun, but it’s gone midnight and I should really bring this to some kind of conclusion, or, in lieu of that, just. Stop. Writing. On Friday, I’ll try to write about some of the grammatical ideas I’ve been playing with.

~~~~

1) OK, so in Welsh *ō, from earlier *ou etc gave *ū, but diphthongisation happened with *ē: *trē > Welsh trwy.

I’m still running with the British Romance idea, it’s just too engaging to let go of. So my apologies to those of you who have become accustomed to this blog being mainly religion-centred, but I will offer in my defence that this post comes with maps!

Before contemplating the question “what would a British Romance language look like?” we first need to answer the much bigger question of “how the hell would one survive in the first place?”

The Point of Divergence between our universe and the one in which British Romance is spoken takes place somewhere in the middle of the fourth century. It’s not some kind of glorious act of fate whereby, I dunno, Constantine decides to make his new capital in York rather than Byzantium, but something much more prosaic, like an outbreak of plague, or a crushing defeat in battle. Whatever this event is, it takes place in southern Denmark, where the Angles and Saxons are at this point. The Anglo-Saxons did indeed invade Britain, but not in the numbers that they did in our timeline. The immediate results of this are less Saxon settlement in Britain and less Saxon political control over the territory, allowing a Romance language to flourish.

The first map (to your the right) is a rough depiction of the languages spoken in this alternate Britain during the fifth century, or thereabouts. The coloured areas represent languages: dark green represents Anglo-Saxon dialects, light green Goidelic, brown Brythonic and violet Romance, although there’s most likely extensive bilingualism in all areas (which I’ve tried to suggest by having the colours bleed into each other). The dashed red line indicates the maximum extent of Anglo-Saxon political control. As can be seen, the Anglo-Saxon settlements avoided the easily defensible and difficult to control fenlands around the Wash and Humber, instead preferring the coastal plains in East Anglia, Surrey and Holderness. Romance is largely restricted to the lowland areas of Britain, leaving Brythonic spoken in the highlands. Along the western coast, the Irish have left small settlements. So far, so uninteresting: this presents a picture of fifth century Britain not too dissimilar to our own universe.

The second map, to the left, is somewhat different. It shows the geographical extent of the same languages seen in the first map, but about five hundred or so years later.

Because the Anglo-Saxons were unsuccessful in taking over the whole of the lowland area of Britain, they also failed to extinguish the Romanised culture of its speakers. This Romanised culture was in all respects far more “advanced” than that of the invaders- this was a literate, urbanised and largely Christian society, exerting massive prestige. Essentially, what happened to the Anglo-Saxons in Britain was the same as happened to the Franks in Gaul: they were assimilated linguistically and culturally to the native Latin culture- the military leaders and aristocracy may have Germanic names, and their style of warfare may well owe more to Männerbunde than the the Legions, but they largely spoke Romance languages. Old English only manages to hang on in the far corner of East Anglia: much like Flemish in French Flanders. A contributory factor to this linguistic retreat was probably the pressure exerted by London: while ravaged and no longer the political and cultural centre of the whole island, it was still an important trading port, and still speaking a Romance language.

Brythonic has also taken something of a battering as well, surviving only in the north and in the undesirable bits of Wales and Cornwall. Again, this massive language shift is down to the prestige of the Romance varieties spoken in the lowlands, as well as the fact that with London in Anglo-Saxon hands, the centre of British culture has shifted, to Corinium near the Severn Estuary, and to Eboracum. The importance of the varieties spoken in these two cities would have exerted a great pressure on the surrounding areas, hastening language shift.

I’ve not indicated any political divisions on the second map, because I’m not sure what they would be as yet. I’m thinking at the moment, though, that any kind of unified state would be unlikely, at least during the High Middle Ages. More plausible would be a division of the country into a number of differing feudal states, with some of them perhaps owing fealty to a titular “High King” somewhere or other: much like the situation in Spain or Italy. At the time of the map, however, I’m not sure: perhaps some kind of unified “Brittonic Empire” with a Saxon monarch at its head?

One of the first constructed languages I came accross after getting the internet way back in 2000 was Brithenig. The premise of the language is simple: if Latin-speaking Britain had never been conquered by the Anglo-Saxons, what would the resultant language look like?

Andrew Smith’s answer to this question is Brithenig: a Romance language which has evolved from Latin phonetically in approximately the same way as Welsh has from Proto-Brittonic (the liturgical language scattered through the posts of this blog is my attempts at reconstructing the same). I’ve always liked Brithenig: its combination of Romance and Brythonic aesthetics in my opinion works well. However, from a linguistic point of view, I don’t really think it’s all that plausible: even if we accept that the phonology of a language has its own “inertia”, with its soundchanges a neccessary product of the phonetic structure of its earlier stages (and that is highly unlikely to be so, IMO); why would a Romance language spoken in Britain neccessarily undergo almost exactly the same changes as Welsh did? On and off, over the years, I’ve thought about what might have actually happened, from a more secure linguistic point of view.

The Romance languages are the product of dialect a continuum, which, to quote Ralph Penny, “which extends in unbroken fashion all over the European territory where descendents of Latin are spoken.” This is a key point, in my opinion. The Latin of Britain would have formed part of that dialect continuum, with mutual intelligibility between the varieties spoken on either side of the Channel. In The Regional Diversity of LatinL 200 BC - AD 600, JN Adams shows that as far as we can tell, the Latin of Britain did not differ significantly in phonology or lexis from that of neighbouring Gaul (in contrast to Jackson’s contention in LHEB that there were “significant differences”- given Adams’ comprehensive critique of Jackson’s evidence, my money’s on him). So as a partial answer to our question: southern British Romance would probably have looked a lot like the Oïl varieties of Northern France. Of course, we cannot completely discount substratal contributions to the language. Perhaps the phonology of Proto-Brittonic did indeed have a contribution to the speech habits of British Romance speakers. But, given that in my view, Proto-Brittonic and Gaulish were essentially “the same” language, the substratal effect of Proto-Brittonic on British Romance would probably have been similar to that of Gaulish upon French.

What is perhaps a slightly more interesting prospect is the effect of adstratal languages on our putative British Romance. In his paper “Insular Celtic as a Language Area”, in The Celtic Languages in Contact, Ranko Matasović makes a convincing case for commonalities between Goidelic and Brythonic being due to extensive and intensive language contact, including widespread bilingualism, during the Dark Ages. Let us assume that similar contacts existed between British Romance and Goidelic. What changes might this have caused in British Romance? From a phonological perspective, Matasović points to the apocope and syncope of unstressed vowels, i- and a-affection and intervocalic lenition as likely being the result of contact: in Romance we see the first and the last already, so let’s add in i- and a-affection. It seems that a-affection originated in western Britain, while i-affection originated in Ireland, and that they happened roughly simultaneously. We can use this to create isogloss lines across the island: maybe in the south of Britain a-affection occured before i-affection, with the latter never being fully completed, or along the western seaboard i-affection from Ireland happened earlier and was far more rigorous. With regards to morphosyntax, Matasović points to loss of case-marking on personal pronouns (note that the same happened in Romansch), rigidisation of word-order, the creation of definite articles, the creation of periphrastic verbal forms indicating progressive meaning and the creation of a new conditional mood: several of which also happen in the contemporary Romance of the period. So let’s add those in as well.

By the High Middle Ages, we would probably have something looking quite like (Northern) Old French, but with a few morphosyntactic quirks in common with Irish. For the sake of argument, let’s call this language Old Bretagneis, from *Brittaniense-. And, once I’ve pulled my finger out, I’ll upload the resultant grammar of this thought-experiment

There’s a kind of pleasing circularity to finishing off this series on the lunar rituals on the night of a full moon. The first lunar rital was posted on the last full moon, the second on the dark of the moon and this one on the full moon again.

As I indicated in the first part of this post, I think that it would be appropriate to dedicate the new moon sacrifice to Rigantona. So the ritual below suggests some words and actions that I feel would be appropriate.

Lītus Nou̯i̯olugri̯ās

This ritual follows the same broad format as the full moon ritual, only the details and words have been changed. As before, you will need a source of flame and “cakes” to sacrifice, and you should be in a state of ritual purity. With all this in place, the sacrifice proper can begin.

I would use the same prefatory prayer as in the last sacrifice, as using a common set of prayers for ritual gives a sense of familiarity and structure. However, if free-form extempore is more your style, go for it.

The hymn invoking the dea dedicanda of the occasion is below, and can be chanted or spoken as one prefers:

Mārodēu̯ā, eχs·i̯o semet medu u̯latēs,
Rīgantonā, magesos cassorīganī,
ne·te tarbū, ton anu̯an aramū sepū.

Con argantū rīgani̯ās u̯or canī talū,
nou lomanā sterānon ambi ton monim,
dēu̯ā i̯ānā, dligī moinīs brigou̯latēs.

U̯ēdū aidou, dūcī sedū ni·tī sedū,
Rīgantonā, nemesos cassorīganī,
are dedmīs, dū tī sin daunon eχs·semū.

Great one who pours out the mead of kings,
Rigantona, shining queen of the plain,
I do not chase you, I softly call your name.

With queenly silver on a shining brow,
or a bridle of stars around your neck,
noble one, you deserve the adornments of power.

So before the sacred fire, I sit and wait for you,
Rigantona, shining queen of heaven,
I pour out a hymn of praise accoding to the sacred law.[1]

The prayer accompanying the sacrifice proper is below:

Lītou̯es mīnsos sent marcī gelu̯ī dēu̯on.
To·c rēsset Rīgantonā nemesos,
to·me rēde, gabe mon adbertās.

Ad·tī berū sindon baregon,
samalī adassos est,
samalī adbritin mon senisamonon.

Pāpos molātus dū tī, Rīgantonā!
Ton trougocarii̯ān arcū,
are·me u̯ede u̯indobitou.

The monthly sacrifices are the bay steeds of the gods.
Ride forth, Heavenly Rigantona,
ride forth to me, accept my offerings.

I offer you this bread,
as is right,
as did my ancestors.

All praise to you, Rigantona!
I beseech your mercy,
guide me to a blessed life.

Mead again is probably highly appropriate as an offering to Rigantona (beer I personally associate with third function deities and the ancestors: to me, offering her beer would be insulting)- if you’re going to offer mead the phrase etic sindon medu and this mead can be added to the first line of the second section.

The offerings should be made simultaneously with the second section of the prayer, with the bread broken in half, with one half burnt as an offering to Rigantona and the other eaten by the sacrificer.

And so the sacrifice is concluded. I’ve thought about the closing words I used for the full moon sacrifice and decided to shorten them to just Ro·u̯āda dēu̯ūs, samalī adassos est; ro·soibo adbertū, samalī adassos est. I have prayed to the gods, as is proper; I have sacrificed to them, as is proper.

So, what next? I’m going to work with the cycle of monthly sacrifices outlined in this series of posts, seeing how they work and making modifications as they see fit. I’d also like to outline sacrificial rituals tailored to the big seasonal feasts eventually, and expand the repertoire of hymns. As soon as I can, I’ll upload revised, printable pdf copies of the rituals, including pronunciation guides.

~~~~

1) This is another metrical piece. The metre is fairly straight forward: stanzas built up of three lines of twelve syllables, with a caesura after the fourth syllable and cadences with the pattern short-long-short-long. The theme in the first stanza is fairly clearly taken from the first Branch of the Mabinogi. The second stanza may be less transparent: recalling a long-ago throwaway comment of Bo’s suggesting that the Wiccans explore their relationship with the Lady using the motifs of mediaeval courtly love, I went and nicked a couple of phrases from Arnaut Daniel.

A recent post on Bo’s blog reminded me of my intention this year to regain some of the competence I once had in a couple of foreign languages. At school, I studied French, German, Italian and Latin, and got decent grades in all four. At university, I only continued French and Italian, the latter of which I dropped last year after a particularly unpleasant experience with an insane Italian tutor.

With an eye to my goal of studying comparative linguistics and philology at Oxford in the 2011-12 academic year, I thought it would be sensible to reacquire what I’ve lost of Latin and German: to that end, I’ve bought Reading German by Waltraud Coles and Bill Dodd, and Mountford’s Latin Prose Composition. Having swiftly worked through the first two chapters of the former this afternoon, it makes me reflect that passive skills are always the last to go: parsing Flughafenrestaurantmanagerabteilungsprogramm as airport restaurant manager training programme still comes easily to me. In conjunction with the older version of Teach Yourself German, I hope to have a decent reading command of the language again fairly quickly.

Mountford’s Latin Prose Composition I bought mainly as an incentive to work through Teach Yourself Latin. I’ve always fancied being able to write texts in Latin with at least a degree of fluidity, and I think it would probably help with composition in Neo-Brittonic. Regaining a reading knowledge shouldn’t be too hard, but it’s being able to actively produce the inflections that’s tricky. I can remember “amo amas amat amamus amatis amant” and “dominus domine dominum domini domino domino” if I think hard about it, but beyond that they elude me. I actually found one of my old CLC textbooks the other day. Inexplicably, it has “Ritchley is a nobjocky” (sic) scrawled accross the front page: a sentiment which, fifteen years later, is not lacking in irony given that it’s me who’s the knobjockey and Ritchley a married man with kids.

Casting my eye along the shelf of my bookcase which holds the language textbooks is something of a depressing experience. It contains books on Afrikaans, Arabic, Breton, Bulgarian, Catalan, Cornish, Finnish, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Jerriais, Norwegian, Old Occitan, Polish, Portuguese, Romani, Romanian, Russian, Sanskrit and Spanish (yeah, they’re alphabetised. My other books on linguistics are instead grouped by family, though). I didn’t buy all of these in order to learn the languages to any degree of fluency, of course. Teach Yourself coursebooks provide a cheaper introduction to a language than a formal grammar. However, I have tried learning most of them; but I’ve only actually gotten anywhere with Catalan, Greek, Cornish, Breton and Romanian. The Spanish book I bought in order to complement the colloquial abilities which are the legacy of working with so many hispanophones over the years. My study of Hindi and Sanskrit petered out after the first couple of chapters in each case: i.e. when the transliteration stops. The Greek and Cyrillic alphabets I can read fairly easily, but Devanagari I could never master: all the characters look the same to me.

I’m also going to have a crack at Old Irish, mainly to see if I like it or not. Piling up the ifs here; if I graduate with a good degree and if I’m accepted by Oxford and if I do get on well with Old Irish, I might find myself in a better position to decide what I’d actually like to do. With the same aim, I might take up another Romance language again. So, drücken sie mir mal die Daumen!

I just discovered this piece of Celtic blithery- a collection of YouTube (or should that be YewTube?) videos in Cornish. Look at dear old Bardh Meur in the topmost one: he looks more like a particularly earnest old burgher, with his funny neck-chain there. Further down the page is a Pub Rock band singing a Cornish-language song which puts me in mind of the Welsh band Melys, oddly.

I’m struck by how hesitant and stalling many of the speakers are in the videos. They’re full of odd pauses, ums and ers. Aside from the bashfully fluent lady d’un certain âge halfway down, who appears to be reading the news from in front of the fireplace in the front room of some suburban semi (dreadful colour wall by the way there dear). The collection of WI members who narrate most of the news items fare somewhat less well in the fluency stakes. And twenty bucks says the radio presenter halfway through is gay.

It also startles me how much of it I understood: I had thought that I’d forgotten pretty much all of the Cornish I learnt. Well, hen sos, turns out I remember more than I thought.

Encore une fois je me trouve dans la situation peu enviable de la temporisation. Cette fois, c’est à cause de mes devoirs français: je dois traduire quelquechose facultatif et commenter ensuite sur les défis de traduction que j’ai rencontrés.Feuh. En place de ça, je vais nettoyer la cuisine. On manque des plats, et donc je dois faire la vaisselle.

The following is a rough distillation of what I believe, written in the form of a creed (inspired as much by the Zoroastrian Fravarane in the 12th Yasna as by the Nicene Creed):

I belive in Truth, the order which animates the world according to the sacred laws.

I believe in the Three Good Hosts, the gods, the non-gods and the ancestors.

I worship the gods, the undying, the beneficent, the givers of goods, guarantors of order in the three worlds. I entrust myself to their protection, and strive ever to be dear to them.

I offer reverence to the non-gods, the benevolent spirits who encircle the life of men and cattle. In hearth and storecupboard, at the door and in the fields, may they watch over my deeds.

I remember my ancestors, the venerable progenitors of my family. Gathered back unto the mother, I believe that they offer me their wisdom and guidance from the otherworld. May I live a good life according to their customs, in the hope of reunion and rebirth.

I fear the evil spirits who would threaten the truth, the hostile beings who stalk the edges of the world, the Lie which would engulf the world. Through right sacrifice, may Truth be strengthened against them, through a good life may their purposes be defeated.

A lot of this needs some explanation, so I intend on writing an accompanying “catechism”: which is ultimately just a fancy religious way of saying “FAQ”.