Tuesday, March 2, 2010

The Lord's Prayer in Old English

Something makes me think that J.R.R. Tolkein would have liked this a lot. He certainly would have been able to recite it.



Via The Lair of Catholic Cavemen, who has a very cool translation up:
Fæder ure
Þu þe eart on heofonum
Si þin nama gehalgod.
Tobecume þin rice.
Gewurþe ðin willa on eorðan swa swa on heofonum.
Urne gedæghwamlican hlaf syle us to dæg.
And forgyf us urne gyltas, swa swa we forgyfað
urum gyltendum.
And ne gelæd þu us on costnunge,
ac alys us of yfele. Soþlice.

Modern Literal Translation
Father our
You who are in Heaven
Be Your name hallowed,
Come your kingdom.
Become Your will on earth as on Heaven.
Our daily loaf give us today.
And forgive us our guilts as we forgive the fellow guilty.
And do not lead you us into temptation
But release us of evil. Truly.
This is very much like what it would have sounded like to Ethelred The Unready.

Hat tip: Don, via email.

1 comment:

  1. bluesunMarch 2, 2010 at 5:42 PM

    Cool. I led a devotion a while back where I had everyone "translate" it into their own words. It's kind of cool to hear the same thing in other people's words, and it helps to overcome the boring repetition where the words no longer have any impact.

    ReplyDelete

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