An early medieval woman's love poem
Longing for someone this Valentine's Day? You wouldn't be the first...
I lost my voice today, so there is no accompanying audio! Apologies.
An early medieval woman’s love poem
In 1931 a love poem was discovered on the back of an end leaf in an eleventh-century manuscript from Rochester, a copy of Ælfric’s Old English homilies. Medieval scribes charged with copying texts had to keep their goose feather quills sharp, and in this instance the scribe had used the end leaf of a manuscript to test their sharpened quill out before continuing. They wrote out a little verse, first in Latin, and then again in what appears to be Old Dutch with the influence of Old English. The poem reads as follows:
Habent omnes uolucres nidos inceptos nisi ego et tu quid expectamus nunc
Hebban olla uogala nestas hagunnan hinase hic enda thu uuat unbidan uue nu
All the birds have begun their nests
Except for me and you
What are we waiting for now?
The poem is brief, but the sentiment sweet and longing. It can be read either as a proposal: ‘shall we make a nest together then?’, or a lament: ‘why are we still apart?’. A thousand years after it was written down it still has the capacity to resonate with anyone who has been in love, making it the perfect subject for a Valentine’s Day newsletter.
The most interesting question is, what can we know about the person who composed these lines?