This is honestly huge - a high quality edition of facing page translations of the Old High German poetic corpus in English has been sorely desired for a long time. Murdoch’s translation of Waltharius with UB was very high quality and I’m really looking forward to this anthology!

Cats have been grooming themselves in the same way for thousands of years. This manuscript is part of a 13th century French bible (Bibliothèque cantonale et universitaire de Lausanne, U 964, fol. 376r). It’s not exactly surprising, but still cool to see.

Ophelia (from Ancient Greek ὠφέλεια meaning help, profit) was Hamlet’s cursed lover, whom he rejects. She seems to lose her mind as the play goes on, and eventually (maybe) ends her own life. She is the unhappy object of Hamlet’s famous “get thee to a nunnery!”

One poetic Old English word for 'king' (most commonly 'cyning') was 'þēoden', which etymologically means the ruler of a people. Tolkien wasn't special just because he was more creative than other authors, he was special because he was more learned than other authors.

I got to have a really interesting conversation with my Latin colleague Corrado Russo today on humor in Caesar's commentaries. It turns out that Julius Caesar was actually one of the funnier Roman authors of his time. Here's our full conversation: youtu.be/2fSpeUtDBIs?si…

What is the BEST Beowulf translation out there? I finally sat down and decided to make a full video explaining a few important recent translations, and which one I recommend the most. Check it out here: youtu.be/coFK6bfHBQU?si…

Augustus said: “σπεῦδε βραδέως” (hasten slowly) which, in Latin, is “festina lente”. We have a similar sentiment in Modern English: “slow is smooth, smooth is fast”. In Old English, that would be “læt is smēðe, smēðe is hræd”. Doesn’t have the same ring to it…

The word for book in Old English was “bōc”, another good example of a long o coming to be spelt with duplex-o in Middle English (think gōd->good, mōd->mood). The plural was bēċ, which obviously didn’t survive into Modern English. If it had, we would have one book, many ‘beech’.

Today I sat down with archeologist Richard Sermon to talk about his book on the origins of Easter. Check it out: youtu.be/ERGnkf_m-nY?si…

One Old English word for ocean (there were many) was “garsecg”, which has a really strange etymology. It seems to mean “spear-man”, and some scholars think it might have referred to a pagan god similar to Neptune. Or was it “spear-sedge”, as Jacob Grimm suggests? As in the

Friendly reminder: if you're looking for recommendations on Beowulf translations, here's my take on a few of the more famous (and recent) ones: youtu.be/coFK6bfHBQU?si…