Old English chants
Old English is also called Anglo Saxon after the people who started to live in Britain from about 450 AD. The pictures show how we think typical men and women would have looked in Anglo Saxon times.
Dr Nicholas Perkins was Director of Studies in English at Girton College, Cambridge, when I was writing The Time Wreccas. He very kindly agreed to translate all chants and enchantments into Old English for me.
I had asked him to help me find a name for the people who lived below ground, whose only aim in life was to wreak havoc, persecute and pester those above ground. Here are some of the notes from his answer.
‘Wræcca (‘wretch, exile, outcast’; devils are sometimes described using this and similar words in Old English). There’s a similar sounding verb in Old English meaning to drive, push or persecute, ‘wrecan’ (Middle English ‘wreak’), and a name like ‘wreckers’ or ‘wrackers’ would capture something of both worlds.
I used Wræcca, but changed the spelling slightly to make it easier to read.
Then I asked for a suitable name for the worst punishment that Wreccas could come up with. I suggested ‘Rumpus’.
As you can imagine, Old English is rich in words for battles, fights and hostilities of various kind... but they wouldn’t really get the sense of a group harassing one victim. I thought about Middle English ‘ruck’... It is probably related to Norweigan ‘ruka’, which... goes back to an Old Norse word. So ‘rucka’, ‘ruckus’, ‘ruck’ or ‘ruckle’ might do.
Ruckus seemed to me to be an ideal name.
Then I asked him to translate ‘eyes do not see’ which is the enchantment that Old Father Tim uses to make him and Tid invisible.
An Old English version of this might be ‘eagan ne sceawiaþ’. This can be used as an imperative, so would fit with a spell or a charm. The letter ‘thorn’ (þ) can, as I’m sure you know, be replaced by ‘th’. So you could spell the word ‘shawiath’.
Lastly, I gave him the chant ‘Time is guarded to serve all’. Dr Perkins kindly came up with a brilliant translation.
I’ve got what I think is a nice answer to this: ‘tide healdaþ,ealle brucaþ’. Literally ‘we guard/keep time; everyone uses/enjoys it’. Healdan covers senses of owning, keeping and governing. The Old English ‘tid’ is time. I think an Old English writer would enjoy the balanced phrase with rhyming verbs and another echo in ‘healdaþ, ealle’. NB - the final ‘e’ in ‘tide’ and ‘ealle’ would have been pronounced in Old English but not stressed. So the pronunciation is verging on ‘teeda haldath, alla brucath’ - but it stops looking like Old English if you go that far!
Inadvertently, Dr Perkins had given me the name for Old Father Tim’s grandson, which was great!
Dr Perkins has now moved to St Hugh’s, Oxford, from where he has helped me with The Time Apprentice. I constantly enjoy learning more about the ancient roots of our modern language and am deeply indebted to him.