bind the living’ [i.e., if the suckling lives to grow up it will draw the plow; if it dies its hide will make thongs.]”
Number 22 (k-d 8), one of the best, is a more difficult example. First, a literal, line-by-line version:
I through my mouth speak in many tongues
with skills I sing change enough [often]
in head-tone [or mourning tone] loud chirm [cry out]
hold my tunes [or customs] voice restrain not.
Old evening-scop to earls [princes] bring
bliss in burgs [towns]. Then I bending [varying]
with voice storm [cry out] still in dwellings
[they] sit bowing. Say what I am called
who so clearly call players’ songs
loudly imitate to heroes bode
many welcomes with my voice.
There are several uncertainties here which must be canvassed at the outset. First, the textual. In l. 3 heafodwoþ(e) means ‘mournful sound,’ and this would support the solution Wood-dove, Anglo-Saxon cuscote, which fits the text in other ways and was strongly urged by Dietrich. In the manuscript the rune for C stands above the text. In l. 4 wisan may mean ‘tunes’ (as in German Volksweise) or ‘manner,’ i.e., ‘I hold (prolong) my song and do not sing out of tune,’ or ‘I sing according to my nature.’ In l. 4 hleoþre, ‘sound,’ may be for hleahtor, ‘laughter,’ an emendation which receives some support from l. 9. In l. 5 Eald may mean ‘old in years,’ or ‘of old,’ in the sense of long familiar. In l. 8 the manuscript has siteð nigende, ‘sits bending forward’; siteþ, third person singular, is difficult and is changed to sitteð, plural, by the editors: ‘they [the earls of l. 5] sit.’ For nigende (which Wyatt translated ‘listening’ in a footnote, but ‘bending forward’ in his Glossary) most editors read hnigende, ‘bowing,’ to avoid the repetition, nige, in the next line. In l. 9 the manuscript has þa swa scire nige. If scire nige are two words the meaning must be ‘I listen brightly’; but most editors make it one word, scirenige (for sciernicge), ‘
