#enta geweorc

[berkeley-mews]

when will my beautiful wife (the dictionary of old english) come back...

[astronicht]

I was rereading the Old English poem The Ruin (why, great question, I ran out of Stargate Atlantis fanfiction) and I forgot JRR also got the word Ent from OE. Nowhere is safe: Wrætlic is þes wealstan; wyrde gebræcon, burgstede burston, brosnað enta geweorc. (“Wondrous is this wall-stone; fate-shattered, strong-city cracked, decayed are the ents’ [ie, the giants’] works”).

If the city/wall-building doesn’t seem like the style of Ents, yeah, couple things going on here. 1) poem’s about Roman ruins 2) “giants” aka ents were a standard Old English reference to Idk People From Really Long Ago, before floods etc. So in this case (The Ruin) ents are Romans; in JRR’s case, whatever big fancy Old/Pre Gondor are the Romans. And ents are giant and old enough to remember the seas being in different places, but not— whatever.

Anyway I assume there was some JRR scene that got deleted in the edit where Faramir wanders around Minas Morgul or whatever gently stroking the stones and reciting a Tolkien redux of The Ruin. That or it’s in RotK and I haven’t gotten to it yet.

[rqbossman]

Hey Alexander!

I’m a massive fan of your work! And also a massive fan of bookmarks! My favourite hobby is making my own bookmarks with my favourite quotes on them ( with cut out letters or calligraphy).

Do you have any favourite quotes? If so, what are they? (tma, tmp or otherwise)

So I sort of collect quotes. I know they are generic but I always got good mileage out of: "This too shall pass." "He who endures conquers." "All things in moderation" But I love saying: "brosnað enta geweorc" ominously.

[omophagias]

wait, hang on, connecting some blocks here. this could be entirely unsubstantiated. but i feel as though potentially another dividing line between belief in the unexplained as an elf/fairy encounter and as an alien encounter may be settler colonialism. like: one of the things about the former is that it's associated with specific physical locations, right? and those locations are often—by no means always but often—sort of “deep time” locations. barrows, wells, things that point to millenia of human habitation; places with layers of accreted meaning that are not really legible to a viewer but are visible. enta geweorc—the work of giants. so strange experiences are seen as stemming from these histories of, like, mysterious habitation. but like, in the united states, in a settler-colonial culture, the “deep time” of a location can’t be mainstream acknowledged in the same way, like it’s not thinkable in the same way, because to recognize it would be to recognize that we (settlers) were not in fact here first, that the deep time context is one that we’ve tried to wipe out. and so the same strange experiences i mentioned above have to be emerging from an extraplanetary source, to be coming from (a different) Outside because for them to be coming from a place would require that place to have a history beyond what settlers have done to/on/with it, and we certainly can't have that.

[frustrationinexcelsis]

Now, it's established that the Ents refer to themselves as Ents, simply, and to their kind's women as the Entwives. We don't know, strictly speaking, what words the Entwives used.

"Ent", as a word, derives directly from Old English, where it means "giant" -- see orthanc enta geweorc, “work of cunning giants”, referring to Roman ruins.

In Old English, "wif" simply means "woman", whereas "man" is "wer" -- hence "werewolf" (meaning, yes, that the "proper" term for a woman who turns into a wolf would be "wifwolf", in that sense).

Now, Tolkien certainly drew heavily from Old English for his works -- see Ent, Orthanc, etcetera.

Thus, logically, we can conclude that it's not much of stretch to assume that the Entwives would also have referred to themselves as Ents, simply, and to their kind’s men as the Entwers.

[medievalcities]

The Old English poem The Ruin is a singular perspective on the decaying remains of a previously glorious city. Its beginning sets the tone: Wrætlic is þes wealstan, wyrde gebræcon burgstede burston, brosnað enta geweorc (Wondrous is this wall’s foundation—wyrd has broken and shattered this city; the work of giants crumbles.)

One remarkable feature of the poem is its own material existence in something of a ruin: it survives only in a single manuscript that has suffered damage to its pages. The Exeter Book (Exeter, Cathedral Library MS 3501) is a stunning collection of Old English poetry from the late tenth century (probably around 975). But the pages of The Ruin are among those damaged over the years, and several of the lines are now illegible. This image is of folio 124r of the Exeter Book, on which part of The Ruin is written.

[fragariavescana]

Wrætlic is þes wealstan, wyrde gebræcon; burgstede burston, brosnað enta geweorc. Hrofas sind gehrorene, hreorge torras, hrungeat berofen, hrim on lime,

scearde scurbeorge scorene, gedrorene, ældo undereotone. Eorðgrap hafað waldend wyrhtan forweorone, geleorene, heardgripe hrusan, oþ hund cnea werþeoda gewitan. Oft þæs wag gebad

ræghar ond readfah rice æfter oþrum, ofstonden under stormum; steap geap gedreas. Wonað giet se ...num geheapen, fel on grimme gegrunden

scan heo... ...g orþonc ærsceaft ...g lamrindum beag mod mo... ...yne swiftne gebrægd hwætred in hringas, hygerof gebond

weallwalan wirum wundrum togædre. Beorht wæron burgræced, burnsele monige, heah horngestreon, heresweg micel, meodoheall monig dreama full, oþþæt þæt onwende wyrd seo swiþe.

Crungon walo wide, cwoman woldagas, swylt eall fornom secgrofra wera; wurdon hyra wigsteal westen staþolas, brosnade burgsteall. Betend crungon hergas to hrusan. Forþon þas hofu dreorgiað,

ond þæs teaforgeapa tigelum sceadeð hrostbeages hrof. Hryre wong gecrong gebrocen to beorgum, þær iu beorn monig glædmod ond goldbeorht gleoma gefrætwed, wlonc ond wingal wighyrstum scan;

seah on sinc, on sylfor, on searogimmas, on ead, on æht, on eorcanstan, on þas beorhtan burg bradan rices. Stanhofu stodan, stream hate wearp widan wylme; weal eall befeng

beorhtan bosme, þær þa baþu wæron, hat on hreþre. þæt wæs hyðelic. Leton þonne geotan ofer harne stan hate streamas un...

...þþæt hringmere hate þær þa baþu wæron. þonne is ...re; þæt is cynelic þing, huse ...... burg....

🙚 🙚 🙘 🙘

Wondrous is this wall-stead, wasted by fate. Battlements broken, giant’s work shattered. Roofs are in ruin, towers destroyed, Broken the barred gate, rime on the plaster,

walls gape, torn up, destroyed, consumed by age. Earth-grip holds the proud builders, departed, long lost, and the hard grasp of the grave, until a hundred generations of people have passed. Often this wall outlasted,

hoary with lichen, red-stained, withstanding the storm, one reign after another; the high arch has now fallen.

The wall-stone still stands, hacked by weapons, by grim-ground files. ...

Mood quickened mind, and the mason, skilled in round-building, bound the wall-base,

wondrously with iron. Bright were the halls, many the baths, High the gables, great the joyful noise, many the mead-hall full of pleasures. Until fate the mighty overturned it all.

Slaughter spread wide, pestilence arose, and death took all those brave men away. Their bulwarks were broken, their halls laid waste, the cities crumbled, those who would repair it laid in the earth. And so these halls are empty,

and the curved arch sheds its tiles, torn from the roof. Decay has brought it down, broken it to rubble. Where once many a warrior, high of heart, gold-bright, gleaming in splendour, proud and wine-flushed, shone in armour,

looked on a treasure of silver, on precious gems, on riches of pearl... in that bright city of broad rule. Stone courts once stood there, and hot streams gushed forth, wide floods of water, surrounded by a wall,

in its bright bosom, there where the baths were, hot in the middle. Hot streams ran over hoary stone

into the ring

i. The Wanderer (anonymous Old English poem ca. 9th-10th century; trans. A.S. Kline)

ii. Maffeo Vegio, Book XIII of the Aeneid, 1428, trans. Michael Putnam

iii. J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers, 1954

[thephantomcasebook]

"You shouldn't take anything that Maryse Van Houten says seriously, we don't. That Knickerbocker sow is only mad, because, Consuelo told me, that Billy Roosevelt said that her father can't get the better Opera Companies to play at their concert halls like Daddy can for ours. So now she's got a bee in her bonnet and is looking for any sort of way to spoil my ball."

There was a girlish entitled and spoiled immaturity that showed her age as she took to a gossipy tone. Popping a grape in her mouth, she talked as she chewed with a finishing chortle that spoke to someone who, despite her regal elegance, thrived off interpersonal drama. But when she looked to the man with a petulant commiseration, she received no reply, only a soft sigh and a shift of posture. Swallowing her grape, the girl tightened her cheek, looking back to the gilded ballroom, before wiping her nose on her crafted lace thumb gauntlet distractedly in one more show of a true age well covered by regal dress and beauty.

She sensed that there was something wrong, something she said that bothered him. The realization hit the teenage beauty in the confidence, knowing her mother's favorite phrase to snap at her was "alright, shut up" for this exact reason … sometimes she was 'one of them stray chattering monkeys, full of them shines' as her nanny maid Annie would say throughout her childhood in New Orleans.

Sensing her distress, the officer turned back with a forgiving sigh. "It's not you …" He frowned.

"Only that it is …" She said petulantly under her breath with baiting guilt.

He breathed unsteadily. "Well, it's not you, I …" he seemed a loss of what to say, or perhaps how to say what it was. "It's just this place, I believe." He shook his head. "In my country we don't openly speak of money, nor hold it over one's head when you don't have it." He paused. Then, after a moment he looked humble. "Well, at least not in public or social settings." He shrugged.

Suddenly an avalanche of guilt fell over the princess. Weeks, months, of conversations about a failing estate, a faltering noble name, had gone out the window in a moment of cat like nature. For the girl, she could not think of once in which she did not have everything, in which her family was not at the top of every list in New York, Newport, New Orleans, and Cincinnati. But as of this moment she realized that she had miscalculated gravely. Though, in her world, the gossipy nature of what one has and what one does not was how girls her age fought with one another. She did not think how she must have sounded to someone who really didn't have anything anymore. How horrid she must have sounded, how terribly uncouth and cruel.

"I'm sorry …" She clutched his arm. "I'm so sorry." She began.

"It's alright, my darling." He said easily.

"No, no, I'm such a terrible fool. I'm a damned fool chattering monkey full of shines." She admitted in a torrented rush of mortification.

To the admittance, there was a heavily amused and confused look on the British Officer's face at the strange dialect of southern American tongue the girl suddenly slipped into, breaking her aristocratic conditioning. But seeing her genuine distress at offending him, he only settled her with a hand to her back to make sure that she knew that it was alright. However, in that moment, without a thought, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, the American Socialite stepped into him, folding herself into his arms as she lain her head against his chest with apology in the warm affection.

Suddenly the man found himself holding the most beautiful prize on two continents looking over the vast expanse of darkness.

For just a moment, a blink, he allowed himself to feel what any man would feel holding such an angelic creature. But he quickly put it from his mind, refusing to justify his low cunning to high ambitions. He would not dishonor himself or this beauty by pretending that there was anything more to this than a business arrangement. Yet, he could not put such strong emotions from his heart as the abyss dissipated before his very eyes.

And when Robert Crawley held Ms. Cora Levinson for the first time, he saw only the beauty of starlight upon the midnight waters …

[berkeley-mews]

from manish sharma, 'heroic subject and cultural substance in the wanderer'.

[thegaylinguist]

i wonder whether old saxon wrisilic gewerk is just a modelling on old english enta geweorc or if maybe it's a real cognate formula

[pikedarabian]

Wrætlic is þes wealstan, wyrde gebræcon; burgstede burston, brosnað enta geweorc. Hrofas sind gehrorene, hreorge torras, hrungeat berofen, hrim on lime, scearde scurbeorge scorene, gedrorene, ældo undereotone. Eorðgrap hafað waldend wyrhtan forweorone, geleorene, heardgripe hrusan, oþ hund cnea werþeoda gewitan. Oft þæs wag gebad ræghar ond readfah rice æfter oþrum, ofstonden under stormum; steap geap gedreas. This masonry is wondrous; fates broke it courtyard pavements were smashed; the work of giants is decaying. Roofs are fallen, ruinous towers, the frosty gate with frost on cement is ravaged, chipped roofs are torn, fallen, undermined by old age. The grasp of the earth possesses the mighty builders, perished and fallen, the hard grasp of earth, until a hundred generations of people have departed. Often this wall, lichen-grey and stained with red, experienced one reign after another, remained standing under storms; the high wide gate has collapsed.

The Ruin

[ema-ranth]

“Wondrous is this wall-stone; fates have broken it; the fortified cities broke apart; the work of giants decays.”

Wrætlic is þes wealstan, wyrde gebræcon;

burgstede burston, brosnað enta geweorc.

— Old English poem “The Ruin”

[tocool4youtoo-blog]

Anglo-Saxon phrases orþanc enta geweorc ("work of cunning giants")[2] and eald enta geweorc ("old work of giants", which describes Roman ruins, nephilim).

[cup-of-starlight-waters]

imo no analysis of this moment is complete with acknowledging that tolkien was hella petty about macbeth btw

from the footnote in letter 163 (to wh auden), where he discusses the invention of the ents:

“Take the ents for instance. I did not consciously invent them at all. The chapter called ‘Treebeard’, from Treebeard’s first remark on p.66, was written off more or less as it stands, with an effect on myself (except for labor pains) almost like reading someone else’s work….But looking back analytically, I should say that Ents are composed of philology, literature, and life. They owe their name to the eald enta geweorc of Anglo-Saxon [ref. to “the old creations of giants stood desolate”, from The Wanderer], and their connexion with stone. Their part in the story is due, I think, to my bitter disappointment and disgust from schooldays with the shabby use made in Shakespeare of the coming of ‘Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill’: I longed to devise a setting in which the trees might really march to war.”

if you think this man, having accidentally made up the ents just so he could one-up shakespeare’s solution to the second prophecy, was not paying exact attention to that travesty of wordplay which makes the third, you are fooling yourself.

tolkien: the woods being carried by soldiers is not the same as them coming to fight against Macbeth; just you wait and I’ll show how it’s really done—

shakespeare: technically a man is not “born” if he’s ripped from his mother’s womb prematurely, amirite?

tolkien, gripping his pencil, eye twitching: you absolute bastard—

Source: https://existentialcomics.com/comic/318

[berkeley-mews]

reaching critical levels of brainrot by simultaneously thinking about the lejre legends, the beowulf-poet's (possible) use of them, the lost skjöldunga saga, ur-hamlet, and naturally shakespeare's hamlet

[berkeley-mews]

from john blair, building anglo-saxon england.