(no subject)
Because I spent my formative years wandering half-drunk around as many foreign countries as I could get to, I have always loved books and poems about travel and what it means. One of the reasons I fell so hugely in love with Old English when I first started learning it is that they kept alive this Germanic heroic tradition of deep metaphysical poetry about travelling and journeys.
There is one smallish poem called Widsiþ about this travelling scop, or minstrel. It starts:
Widsið maðolade, wordhord onleac,
se þe monna mæst mægþa ofer eorþan,
folca geondferde . . .
Widsith spoke out, unlocked his wordhoard,
he who most of all men had travelled through peoples
and tribes over the earth . . .
My translation entirely fails to do justice to the original. When I first started reading it it made my heart race and my balance go. And it was around then that I left my job and decided to go and make a film in Morocco - where I started this journal to try and stay in touch with people. Unfortunately,
widsithwas taken - by some IDIOT WHO NEVER USES IT (check it out - piss or get off the pot, you name-hogger!). So I just added another W, because my actual initials are WW so it seemed to make sense.
AND THAT IS WHY I AM CALLED THAT.
Where did your name come from? (That's not a rhetorical question; tell me.)
There is one smallish poem called Widsiþ about this travelling scop, or minstrel. It starts:
Widsið maðolade, wordhord onleac,
se þe monna mæst mægþa ofer eorþan,
folca geondferde . . .
Widsith spoke out, unlocked his wordhoard,
he who most of all men had travelled through peoples
and tribes over the earth . . .
My translation entirely fails to do justice to the original. When I first started reading it it made my heart race and my balance go. And it was around then that I left my job and decided to go and make a film in Morocco - where I started this journal to try and stay in touch with people. Unfortunately,
widsithwas taken - by some IDIOT WHO NEVER USES IT (check it out - piss or get off the pot, you name-hogger!). So I just added another W, because my actual initials are WW so it seemed to make sense.
AND THAT IS WHY I AM CALLED THAT.
Where did your name come from? (That's not a rhetorical question; tell me.)