(29-04-2021, 05:26 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Grammatica weeps when she sees your work, Geoffrey.
"Completely sits young, promising top gaptoothing stabs".
Wow, I hadn't realized that Grammatica is proficient in Middle English!
Seriously, I will be more than happy to discuss and parse the grammatical structure of these lines in detail.
Again, I read and interpret the line as follows:
"Al-to siteth yong, hoting acme gatteething riteth"
"sits" does not do justice to the meaning of "siteth". I quote from Definition 3. at the Middle English Compendium:
"To occupy a special seat of honor, pre-eminence, etc.: (a) of a king: to sit enthroned, sit in state; with prep. phrases:
~ in (o) kinesetle, ~ in sege (sete, throne), ~ on (upon) se, etc., sit on the throne; fig. hold kingship, reign;
~ in davides sete (on davides throne, on solomones solie), rule Israel;
~ upon the chaiere of moises, of Scribes and Pharisees: assume the authority of Moses; (b) to hold an episcopal or the papal see, be bishop or pope; also, with noun complement:
~ pope, be pope;
~ in popehede (the sege..mynster), occupy the papal (an episcopal) see; © to have a seat in a legislative, investigative, or advisory body, sit in council, assembly, etc.; with inf.: meet in session (to do sth.);
~ on billes, hold deliberation on bills;
~ upon verdit, of a jury: deliberate upon a verdict; (d) to sit as judge, sit in judgment; hold judicial proceedings, hold court; also, sit as a defendant in judicial proceedings [quot.: 1457]; with noun complement:
~ juge, be a judge;
~ as domesman (justice), ~ for juge, sit as a judge;
~ in dom (jugement), ~ on dom setle, ~ upon sete of domesman, etc., act as judge;
~ on (upon), sit in judgment on (sb.); preside over an inquest upon (a death); pass judgment in (a case); (e) of a confessor: to hear confession; (f) of God or Christ: to sit enthroned in Heaven; of the Virgin Mary, saints, souls of the saved, etc.: have a place in Heaven, sit in Paradise; of Lucifer: make (his) seat; of Antichrist: sit (with Lucifer in Hell); also in oaths and asseverations:
bi god that sittes aboven; ~ upon sise, of Christ: hold court at the Last Judgment; (g) of a court: to be in session. You are not allowed to view links.
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Thus, the actual appropriate translation for this word is not "sits", but "reigns".
"Completely reigns young" indeed makes grammatical sense, although we would amend it slightly in modern English as "He completely reigns young" or as "Completely the young one reigns".
For the record, the famous Wycliffe Bible itself is now criticized by modern scholars for being an excessively literal word-for-word Middle English translation of the Latin Vulgate Bible. But the author of this text could very well have been following the stylistic example of the Wycliffe Bible in these lines!
Thus, I read "young" as an attributive adjective that actually represents an unwritten understood noun: "the young one".
I admit that the second half of this line is more complicated. I am reaching out to try to find Middle English scholars who may be willing and able to assist me with the more difficult details of reading and interpreting such text. But at the same time, for now I have to try to do this work myself, until I can show a sufficient amount of text to get scholars to take my work seriously. So this is a double-edged sword for me. Yes, I'm sure I will make some mistakes in the details that a more knowledgeable and experienced scholar could have fixed. But such a scholar won't even take a second look at my work until I have shown that my system can read and interpret more than just a couple lines here or there. So for the time being, I must proceed, little mistakes and all.
For example, I do not know if "acme" is the actual word here or not. "YmK" is rather ambiguous in this cipher. That is the price the author paid for making every word look as much like "YorK" as possible. [I should have added a Rule H: "Y" can also represent "i" or "e" in order to make the word appear to begin with the same letter as the first letter of "YorK".] I chose "acme" because it can mean "Mature age; full bloom of life" in English. See definition 3. at this link: You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view. . If this is indeed the word here, then it does present an antithesis (contrast) with "young" in the first part of the line.
That is to say, the point of the line is that "Percy (son of Hotspur) is a young ruler now, but when he comes of age he will fulfill his promise and avenge his father by vanquishing Bolingbroke."
The English grammar of the line may seem somewhat opaque to us as written, but I argue this may be seen as a parallel to the apparently "poor style" of the Middle English of the Wycliffe Bible since it was written as a very literal word-for-word translation of the Latin Vulgate Bible.
At the end of the line, the order of the object (the insulting epithet for Bolingbroke) and the verb are inverted. This is permissible in English in a poetic style of writing. It is clear who is the subject and who is the object of "riteth" = "stabs" here! There is even a bit of internal rhyme in the two parts of the line: "yong siteth, acme riteth". Again, "acme" is intended to represent "the mature one" or "the mature Percy", just as "yong" represents "the young one" or "the young Percy".
Geoffrey