I’m six pages into A Store of Common Sense: Gnomic Theme and Style in Old Icelandic and Old English Wisdom Poetry by Carolyne Larrington1, and I’ve run into a swamp. Scholars from 50 years ago got themselves wrapped around the axle, trying to figure out the difference between maxims that have “bið” in them and those that have “sceal” in them. “Bið” is a fancy word for “is”. “Sceal” is our modern word “shall”, among other things. Those other things are making a mess as the scholars try to figure out when maxim-makers chose to use one or the other.
“Winter bið cealdost” means “winter is [the] coldest [season]”. That’s fine. It’s in a list of seasons, the next of which is “lencten hrimigost (he byð lengest ceald)”, which is the punchline (spring is frostiest, it’s cold for the longest time). Everyone who’s planted a garden knows the temptation to plant as soon as it feels like spring, and then watch your plants die when the temperature drops below freezing two weeks later. Even scholars understand “bið” here.
But then we come to “sceal”. Among its meanings are “oughta be”, “has to be”, and so forth. A parallel maxim to the winter one from Maxims II is in the Exeter Maxims: “forst sceal freosan”. One of the snottors cited on page 7 translates that as “It is appropriate that frost should freeze.” I am unable to understand why. Nobody would ever say that! That sentence means, “Frost is gonna freeze you”! The whole point of Wise Sayings is to warn people about what’s going to happen, and Old English doesn’t have a future tense, so this is what’s available to the writer.
What is it about scholaring that makes people miss things that are obvious?
OK; now I’m up to page 18. Prof. Larrington is no longer quoting distinguished greybeards, but speaking for herself: “I contend there was a body of folk-wisdom, not yet in metrical form, a body which can be sensed…” Exactly. When a writer puts a Wise Saying into the text, they’re not springing some new insight on the reader. The reader already knows it. If a character in a story says a contemporary maxim like, “Never sign anything by neon light,” the expected reaction is “damn right,” not “gee, I never thought of that before.”
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