Ted Hughes, Thistles and the Origins of English

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What kind of words does Hughes use?

Look some up in an etymological dictionary. Where do they come from? The first three lines have been done for you: Key: OE = Old English; ME = Middle English. Against (ME, C12th) the rubber (discovered in C18th) tongues (OE tunge) of cows (OE cu) and the hoeing (hoe ME C14th) hands (OE hand) of men (OE menn) Thistles (OE þistel) spike (ME spyk C13th) the summer (OE sumor) air (ME, from Latin/Greek) Or crackle (OE cracian - to crack) open (OE open) under (OE under) a blue (ME C13th bleu)-black (OE blæc) pressure (C14th ME from French/Latin).

Apart from 'rubber' all these words were in use by the time of Chaucer. Excluding 'and' and 'the' (also Old English), ten of the 17 words checked were Old English and used in the time of Beowulf. Now continue checking the rest of the poem…

Anyone speaking Scandinavian languages - Norwegian, Swedish and Danish - can immediately recognise many words in this poem. A Norwegian speaker found an amazing 36 familiar words, including:

Hand - hand blood - blod frost - frost up - opp over - over splintered - splintet stiff - stiv same - samme tongue - tung weapon - våpen summer - sommer underground - undergrunn

Our Viking links still exist. Old English includes both words that came (with other invaders) from the same sources as the Scandinavian words and words that the Vikings brought themselves. Old English itself is an interweaving of languages. There is nothing 'pure' about it.

To return to Ted Hughes - he has made his vocabulary fit his invasion theme dramatically.

	What do you notice about the language of his other poems…?
	The poems of other modern writers…?

As a contrast to the vocabulary of Ted Hughes, look at the passage in Samuel Johnson.

To find out more about Old English, go to the Beowulf page.

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