The Ormulum
Middle English Reading 1
Chapter 3 · The Ormulum
📜 The Ormulum
This chapter replaces the planned Sumer Is Icumen In. The page tool I use declined to reproduce the lyric, even though it is a 13th-century text, and I will not quote it from memory. Instead we read a single line from the Ormulum, a text with a spelling system unlike any other in the course. One line is not much, so most of the chapter is about how the book was written.
The text
Icc was þær þær i crisstnedd was
I was there where I christened was
"Where I was christened, I was"
Source: Wikipedia, Ormulum, the line quoted there, with the translation printed beside it, as the page tool gave them. The word-for-word gloss is mine and unverified.
The translation is loose. It puts the clause "where I was christened" first and the main clause "I was" after it, as English prefers. The Middle English runs the other way round: "I was there, where I was christened".
Orrm's spelling system
- Doubled consonants mark a short vowel and a single consonant marks a long one. That is why Icc has two cs and crisstnedd has doubled s and d.
- Space-saving letters. Stacked doubled letters were used to save space, and two special letters stood for þþ and ƿƿ.
- Vowel marks. Breves marked short vowels and acute accents marked long ones, mainly in open syllables or for emphasis. The line as the page tool gave it shows none, so I cannot say where this manuscript would put them.
- Three kinds of g. The article lists insular ᵹ for the "j" sound, a flat-topped form for the hard "g", and Carolingian g for the "j" sound in seggen. There is no g in our line.
Walking through it
- Pronouns. Icc and i both mean "I". Middle English Grammar 1, Chapter 5 listed ic / ich / I, so Icc is a spelling of the same word with Orrm's doubled consonant. I read i as another spelling of "I" because the printed translation requires "I" twice (once in each clause). A reader who took i for "in" would get nonsense.
- Verbs. was twice, the past of be (Chapter 7). crisstnedd is the past participle of "christen", with the ending -edd. That is the weak -ed of Chapter 6 in Orrm's spelling. It carries no i- or y- prefix, though Chapter 6 listed prefixes as common.
- Little words. þær þær is "there where". Neither word appeared in Middle English Grammar 1, so the meanings are my reading of the printed translation.
- The line has no plural noun, article or adjective, so none of the Chapter 2, 3 or 4 tables can be tested here. The line is also too early and too short to check the Midland verb plural -en (Chapter 6), which the source dates from about 1200.
New words
| Middle English | Meaning | Modern English relative |
|---|---|---|
| Icc | I | I |
| i | I (as read here) | I |
| was | was | was |
| þær | there, where (in þær þær) | there |
| crisstnedd | christened | christened |
Try It Yourself
Say the answer first, then click to check.
1. What is the Ormulum?
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A 12th-century book of biblical commentary in almost 19,000 lines of early Middle English verse.
2. Who wrote it, and when was it probably finished?
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Orrm (or Orrmin), an Augustinian canon; around 1180, though he may have begun around 1150.
3. Which dialect is it?
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East Midlands, strongly within the Danelaw area.
4. What does a doubled consonant after a vowel mark in Orrm's spelling?
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A short vowel.
5. Translate Icc was þær þær i crisstnedd was.
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"Where I was christened, I was" (or, closer to the order: "I was there where I was christened").
6. Why is i read as "I" and not "in"?
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The printed translation needs "I" twice, and "in" would make nonsense of the second clause.
7. Which ending shows that crisstnedd is a weak participle?
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-edd, Orrm's spelling of weak -ed.
8. Which grammar tables from Middle English Grammar 1 can this line not test, and why?
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The noun, article and adjective tables, because the line has none of those words; and the Midland verb plural, because the line has no plural verb.