Not Dead...

Ok, skeptics. Yes, I have had a bit of a hiatus in posting to "Blogging the Corpus": had to take care of some boring but important business at work. But...I'm back.  And in this entry, I need to give props to Miller Oberman, a graduate student at UCONN, but more importantly, a gifted poet. We have been toying around with the idea of working together in some way on the gigantic Corpus translation project, and spent a wonderful scotch-fueled evening on Riddle 1 of the Exeter Book. I know that whatever is wonderful in this translation belongs to Miller's craft and ear, and perhaps a bit to the whisky.

Check out this unintentionally hilarious youtube video of our Scotch du soir:

Youtube Review of Aberlour A'bunadh

So, on to Riddle #1: we may want to fuse what editors have called riddles 1-3 in due course, but for now this is the traditional #1 by itself:

Which hero is so hardy and so head-crafty

that can say who drives me on a journey,

when, strong, I ascend, sometimes savage,

powerful, roar, sometimes in revenge

5          fly through the world, fire the folk-halls,

            sack buildings?  Smoke swirls up,

            red/rusty over the roofs. There is a roar on the earth,

            butcher-death of men, when I beat the woods,

            groves blossom-blown, bring down trees,

10       (when), with water for my roof, I’m whipped on a journey,

            sent far and wide/far forth by strong forces;

            I have on my back what once hid bands

            of earth-dwellers, bodies and breath,

            together in water. Tell who covers me,

15       or what I’m called, who lifts this load.