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eftychia: Me in kilt and poofy shirt, facing away, playing acoustic guitar behind head (cyhmn)
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QotD

posted by [personal profile] eftychia at 05:24am on 2018-09-08

"On þe hit is wel eþseene of alle wimmen þu havest þe pris.
 Mi sweete levdi, her mi bene & reu of me 3if þi wille is."
  -- from "Edi beo thu, heven quene" (Blessed are you, queen of heaven), anon., 13th Century, English. (a couple of pages discussing the song, and images of a medievql manuscript it's in -- last link requires creating a free account at DIAMM) [I've seen different transcriptions using different spellings, which got me searching for the oldest version I could find. In this manuscript, 'd' looks an awful lot like an eth, every 'w' is written with a wynn, the '3' above is actually a yogh, and some instances of 's' are long-s -- I've not bothered trying to put in long-s for now.]

Today is:
Gregorian: 2018 September 08 -- Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Julian: 2018 August 26
Hebrew: 5778 Elul 28
Islsmic: 1439 Dhu I-Hija 27
Persian: 1397 Shahrivar 17
Mayan: 0.0.0.13.0.5.14.7
Indian: 1940 Bhadra 17
Coptic: 1734 Pi Kogi Evanot 03

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There are 2 comments on this entry. (Reply.)
twistedchick: watercolor painting of coffee cup on wood table (Default)

(no subject)

posted by [personal profile] twistedchick at 03:11pm on 2018-09-08
It looks to me like a thorn, the th letter in runes. Is the melody known?
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eftychia: Me in kilt and poofy shirt, facing away, playing acoustic guitar behind head (Default)

(no subject)

posted by [personal profile] eftychia at 04:08pm on 2018-09-08
The first place I saw the lyrics (liner notes for a Sequentia CD), there were both thorns and eths in it. Looking at the manuscript I found online, there are things that I'm pretty sure have to be 'd', some but not all of which were eths in the liner notes, and which looked kind of eth-like, so I transcribed all of those as 'd' but preserved the thorns because I could be sure they were thorns. I would have kept the wynns as well, but I don't think most computer fonts have that letter (almost none have a yogh, which is why I substituted a three for that), and the wynn is so very 'p'-like that reading it as 'w' instead of 'p' takes a while. (Way more so than thorn.)

I also took the liberty of switching between 'u' and 'v' to make it easier for modern readers, even though at the time those were still the same letter (and the manuscript uses the 'u'-shape for it). I've seen at least one transcription that changes thorn to 'th' but retains 'u' throughout.

The melody is known, and pretty. The first link has it in F, in modern notation; I've also seen it transposed to G. And IIRC there are performances/recordings of it on YouTube in a couple different tempos (I think?). I like it just fast enough to feel "bouncy".

It is an earworm-capable tune.
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