Collective beowulf

[Fitch, Chester]

Point taken... (sorry - guess I should know English history better than
that..  ;)

'A moot of Beowulfs' - I like it!

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Martin WHEELER [mailto:mwheeler at startext.co.uk]
> Sent: Monday, May 20, 2002 5:57 PM
> To: Fitch, Chester
> Cc: 'Tim.Hayton at vodafone.com'; beowulf at beowulf.org
> Subject: RE: Collective beowulf
> 
> 
> On Mon, 20 May 2002, Fitch, Chester wrote:
> 
> > But - anybody enough of a linguist to know what the ancient 
> Celtic word for
> > "war party" was?
> 
> Ummm .. knowledge of the celtic dialects spoken in these isles in
> the 8th and 9th centuries isn't going to help much with the people who
> composed and recited the Beowulf.  They were Angles; and/or 
> Saxons; and
> in fact spent much of their time beating the stuffing out of the local
> celtic-speaking crowd.  ('Sasseneach' -- Saxon -- is still a term of
> comtempt in the far N.W.)
> 
> Haven't got my Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Grammar to hand, and my 
> well-thumbed
> Sedgefield isn't much help; but as a pacifist descendant of 
> the warrior
> invaders, I'd prefer a term like 'moot' (as in "starlings' moot" or
> "witanegemot") to convey the idea of a cluster of these things.
> 
> Just a thought.
> 
> 'A moot of Beowulfs' -- yeah, sounds OK to me.
> 
> msw
> -- 
> Martin Wheeler <mwheeler at startext.co.uk> gpg key 01269BEB @ 
> the.earth.li
> 
> 
>