Old English help

[yorkshiregoth]

My daughter has to translate a passage from the Death of Arthur into modern English but both her and I are stuck on this phrase "he was ware betwixt two holts hoar"

Any ideas????

 

[Lazy-Commuter]

Found this for hoar ..

showing characteristics of age, especially having grey or white hair; "whose beard with age is hoar"-Coleridge; "nodded his hoary head"

.. hoar being derived from something to do with frost, as in hoar frost.

ware = wary / beware?
betwixt = between, I think.

"he was wary between two grizzled old holts" ??

 

[siadwell]

From a bit of googling, "ware" is an archaic term for "wary", and "holts hoar" seems to mean "small trees", "thicket" or "ancient wooded knoll".

Does that fit?

 

[scots_lass]

holt = wooded hill or animal's den

Doesn't help much !

 

[philipbh]

A Holt is a small woodland or copse

Hoar "could" relate to colour or appearance - such as Hor Frost that might be coating said trees or the colour of the frost white / grey

Betwixt is in between (but you you knew that already)

 

[Lazy-Commuter]

So presumably he was caught between two old woods, and was a bit nervous about it? Seems fair if there was baddies in the area.

 

[JamesAC]

My daughter has to translate a passage from the Death of Arthur into modern English but both her and I are stuck on this phrase "he was ware betwixt two holts hoar"

Any ideas????

She and I

I'll ask Mrs JamesAC when she gets in later .. she's a linguist, and studied Middle English at Uni.

 

[Baggy]

What is the line beofre and after?
It could either mean he was wary of something between two old thickets, or that he was aware of something between two thickets.

 

[philipbh]

On line dictionary of New and Old English, here:

http://home.comcast.net/~modean52/oeme_dictionaries.htm

 

[siadwell]

I'll ask Mrs JamesAC when she gets in later .. she's a linguist, and studied Middle English at Uni.

You've got to move faster than that!

I reckon we've cracked it between us. From question to LC's summary of responses in 11 minutes. Not bad.

 

[Lazy-Commuter]

You've got to move faster than that!

I reckon we've cracked it between us. From question to LC's summary of responses in 11 minutes. Not bad.

It'd be nice to get a confirmation from an expert, though ..

Maybe we can check our guess from the context using lines around it, as already asked for?

 

[Baggy]

I studied Middle English as well, but alas, am not a linguist.

What we need to pin down is whether he was inbetween the trees, or whether something else was in between them. We need context!

 

[Baggy]

OK, some context is:
"and so he went all that night, and in the morning he was ware betwixt two
holts hoar, of a chapel and an hermitage."

I reckon that's "he walked all night, and in the morning he became aware of a chapel and a hermitage between two old thickets."

 

[yorkshiregoth]

that sounds about right baggy.

 

[bleakanddivine]

It's not Old English (=Anglo Saxon) which looks like an almost completely different language to us now. It's barely Middle English which is reckoned to date until the printing press appeared in 1470.

Le Morte D'Arthur was published in 1485, so it's on the cusp of Early Modern English.