Old English Prose - University of Oxford

Old English Proseand Sunset on Sunday evening he is to compensate his lord 80 coins. So we know there was aservant lord relationship.If a husband sacrificed to the devil without his wife’s knowledge he is to forfeit all of his property.If a slave, we know there are slaves sacrificed to devils he is to compensate six shillings or beflogged. So we also know that there are slaves and there is witchcraft going on in the seventhcentury.Law codes are quite interesting.This, you think what on earth is this, this is what is called a charter and you may think, the eagleeyed say that is not old English because this is in fact Latin and that is Latin but the smaller textis actually old English here and charters pretty much defined a boundary of land. So it would sayyou start here, you go round here, here, here, here, you come back that’s the area of land and that’swhy we have the thing beating the bounds, they used to take the small children from the village,walk round the bounds at regation tide, beat them, so you didn’t actually beat as in walk, youbeat them physically so they would understand and that is how people remembered land charters.These things were written down and that was proof of ownership.So a charter, a good one from London, [[faerst aerst erist uptames 0:21:10]]first up the Thames after the old ditch to the cow ford, the bridge where the cows go across. Upandlang, tayoburnan, now burnan is a river or a stream so that is the Tyburn there isn’t a river,there is there, it’s underground in London now. To the wide army street, so it was the street wherethe Roman army used to walk along, to the old stock and sanctus, place of St. Andrews Churchand then along the hollow stream can anyone guess what that is in London?Holborn, exactly. And then along the streams by the land and by the stranda, a strand is a placebetween water and land and it is of course The Strand in London and you can follow that walk. It’san awful map I’m afraid but you can actually follow that walk and that was a bit of land holding.The most amusing thing is the cow ford, the place they used to get the cows to walk across thebridge is Buckingham Palace.Science, so they wrote books about science. The liver is extended on the right side as far as the pitof the belly; it has five lobes of lapidus to hold on the false ribs, it is the material of the blood, thehouse of nourishment of the blood. When there is digestion, the attenutation of meats they arriveat the liver and then they change hue etc. etc. Now I’m not a medic but that’s not a bad descriptionof a liver and at least it gives you the impression that they were interested in science.They were interested in travel, this is a travel book. If you are going on your holidays don’t gohere. There is a giant bloke with two heads who eats people or there are camels, what are theydoing with the camels here, the camels aren’t your problem, it’s the giant ants that are the size ofthe camels that are the problem.So you would read that book and look at the pictures and go “I don’t think I’ll be going there thissummer.”Science again, more science. Here is begins to tell about the nature of man, how he becomes manin his mother’s inside. First the man’s brain is formed, then in the sixth week the brain is coveredwith a membrane and the second month the veins are formed. Separate 365 shorter and longer,this is the formation of the foetus withinside the womb. So they had obviously observed this sothey picked this up from previous studies and they were interested.It does not say a stork comes along and drops it behind a bush, they were actually at this level ofunderstanding. They get it obviously slightly wrong because it turns into a mortal sickness in theabdomen most often on a Tuesday night.You might think this is silly, you might know which kind of a child a pregnant woman would givebirth to, if she walks slowly with hollow eyes she’ll give birth to a boy if she walks quickly andswollen eyes she will give birth to a girl.6 http://rss.oucs.ox.ac.uk/engfac/oldenglish-audio/rss20.xml