[lbo-talk] Lefty library of pdfs

Joseph Catron jncatron at gmail.com
Thu Sep 13 07:36:08 PDT 2012


On Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at 6:33 AM, andie_nachgeborenen < andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> wrote:

U don't know any agaric. What's your signature line mean?

It's not Arabic, but Old English (or, in Michael Smith's pre-political correctness days, Anglo-Saxon). A line from the Battle of Maldon, an epic poem recounting a Viking invasion of England in 991, it reads in translation:

"Thought must be the harder, heart be the keener, mind must be the greater, while our strength lessens."

If you like, you can read the whole thing (it's not long) in modern English here:

http://www.lightspill.com/poetry/oe/maldon.html

Or, if you're feeling hard-core:

http://www.english.ox.ac.uk/oecoursepack/maldon

-- "Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen lytlað."



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