Nothing new under the sun.

æt ic bi me sylfumsecgan wille,
þæt ic hwile wæsHeodeninga scop,
dryhtne dyre.Me wæs Deor noma.
Ahte ic fela wintrafolgað tilne,
holdne hlaford,oþþæt Heorrenda nu,
leoðcræftig monnlondryht geþah,
þæt me eorla hleoær gesealde.
Þæs ofereode,þisses swa mæg! 

This of myself I wish to say that for a time I was the bard of the Heodenings, dear to my lord.  Deor was my name; I had for many winters a good employment, a gracious lord: until now Heorrenda, a song-skilled man, received the landrights that to me the protector earls had given before. That passed - so may this.

  Though most people are more or less aware of Beowulf, especially since Seamus Heaney's recent translation and an animated film, it is not all that remains of Anglo-Saxon (or Old English if you prefer) poetry.  Amongst the rest are riddles, and some longer poems, often with a religious theme, including The Dream of the Rood where the cross of the crucifixtion tells its story.  The extract above comes from a poem called Deor.  Proof if we ever needed it that people then were much as we are now.  This is the last stanza - the previous ones detail earlier historic episodes and makes the point, in the repeated last line, that everything passes with time.
I find our early language beautiful to look at as well as to read (in translation, though I do have a resident expert who can do it in the original - when it sounds strangly familiar, like something you might have known in early childhood and forgotten).  I love the characters we no longer use and the transposition of wh to hw.  

The readings on BBC Radio4 in celebration of the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible has given the opportunity to listen to words long familiar - especially to those who went through school before the arrival of the Good News Bible and its sometimes puzzling modernisations, who heard readings from the KJB every school assembly and carol service of our childhood even if we weren't from church going families, and so many well worn phrases are still in everyday use though possibly their origins are not always known.   

Our language and the way we speak it is in constant flux.  M was brought up by a mother with a broad Gloucestershire accent in a small Hampshire village.  On arrival at grammar school she happily embraced a 1930's middle class accent.  She decries loudly anyone now whom in her opinion speaks 'badly'.  I had a Bristolian accent as a child which I lost after moving to Essex, not at the behest of my grammar school teachers but to avoid the derision of my Essex school mates, who were, of course, oblivious to their own regional accents!  Estuary English seems to be taking over everywhere now (and bears no relation to the old Essex accent even if it purports to be the language of Essex Girl).   Even the Queen now sounds roughly like someone who lives round the corner instead of on a another planet where they lived in hices and spoke as if they breathed hydrogen.

We are now many centuries away from the language of Deor, Chaucer, Shakespeare and the KJB.  Even Trollope and Dickens are foreign to our younger generation.  What will our language look and sound like in another 13-15 centuries I wonder, or even in 20 years?  W8 & C.




(the slightly odd P (Thorn) and d (eth) shaped letters are pronounced as 'th'.  There are others (not in the passage shown) which are described  here.

EDIT
Here's the link to the Youtube reading of the Lord's Prayer in Anglo-Saxon which I mentioned in the comment below, as that link didn't work: