The Lord’s Prayer
Here’s The Lord’s Prayer in three Old English dialects. Click on the little players to the upper right of the texts to hear the pronunciation.
- Mercian:
- Northumbrian:
- West Saxon:
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Interesting. The Mercian and the West Saxon versions appear to have been translated from the Vulgate, whereas the Northumbrian one seems to be directly from the Greek. (The Mercian and West Saxon ones say “our daily bread”, from the Latin “Panem nostrum cotidianum”, whereas the Northumbrian has “our sustaining bread”, from the Greek “τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον.” Also, the “swe &” in the Mercian version is a word for word translation of the Latin “sicut et.”)
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September 27, 2008 at 1:40 am
Cool, the Northumbrian is actually very close to the Lindisfarne version: http://www.christusrex.org/www1/pater/hugon/northumbrian.jpg
This suggests that it too is probably derived from some Latin source or another. The only “big” difference I see between the NU version above and the Lindisfarne NU are relatively minor word order discrepancies.
September 27, 2008 at 3:20 am