Due Monday, 10 March.
Translate the passage from the Middle English poem Cleanness into present-day English. Then, mark the words of French origin to distinguish them from those of Anglo-Saxon origin. Then, comment briefly, in the manner of Assignment #3, on the significant changes that salient words in the passage have undergone since the Middle English period.
Cleanness is a poem from the 1300s, written in a dialect of the northwest part of England. It survives in a single manuscript in the British Museum, sometimes called the Pearl or Gawain manuscript, as it also contains the poems Pearl, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Patience. The version below is from the Everyman edition by A.C. Cawley and J.J. Anderson, London: Dent, 1976: 61.
You get a small glossary with this assignment, but most of the words are Modern--though several have changed in meaning.
Adam inobedyent, ordaynt to blysse,
Ther pryvely in Paradys his place was devised,
To lyve ther in lykyng the lenthe of a terme,
And thenne enherite the home that aungeles forgart.
Bot thurgh the eggyng of Eve he ete of an apple
That enpoysened alle peples that parted fro hem bothe,
For a defence that was dyght of Dryghtyn selven,
And a payne theron put and pertly halden.
The defence was the fryt that the freke towched,
And the dom is the dethe that drepes uus alle;
Al in mesure and methe was mad the vengiaunce,
And efte amended with a mayden that make had never.
Glossary: forgart="forfeited"; Dryghtyn= OE "Drihten," "Lord"; freke="man"; methe="moderation"; make="mate"