🚀 go-pugleaf

     The following quotation is from the Old English translation
[attributed to King Alfred, but probably done by Mercian
translators under his influence] of the Venerable Bede's
[:-) The Venemous Bede's] Ecclesiastical History of the English
People.  [Original langauge, Latin.]  Alas, I do not speak      
Old English, so treat my translation warily.  Eth and Thorn are
represented as th, and ash (the ae digraph) as ae.

     Waes in tha tid heora heretoga and latteow Ambrosius, haten
     othre noman Aurelianus.  Waes god mon and gemetfaest,
     Romanisces cynnes mon.

     There was in that time a captain and leader Ambrosius,
     by another name called Aurelianus.  He was a good man and 
     moderate, a man of the Roman race.

     My Old English professor, the learned John Halverson of
U.C. Santa Cruz, claimed that this was the only surviving 
reference to Arthur in Old English literature.  The passage
goes on to cite his achievements at the battle of Mt. Badon
(Beadonescan dune), but my translation above is sufficiently
offensive to dissuade me from attempting the whole paragraph.
I don't have a copy of the entire Ecclesiastical History;
my source is page 240 of Moore, Knott, and Hulbert's
The Elements of Old English.

     I hope Old English ("Anglo-Saxon") is permissible in 
discussions of things Celtic.


                               
                               David M. MacMillan

P.S.  A curious topic might be the misspellings of Gaelic
names.  Within the past few years, an entirely new variant
has arisen:  MacMillian.  For some reason, I find this
particularly irritating.