I see him a bit like Hugh Laurie's Prince of Wales in Blackadder.
The Battle of Brandings 1066 Page 2
Quote: gappy @ 22nd January 2014, 8:55 AM GMTSwa cwaeth snottor on mode.
Even though Beowulf and the Anglo Saxon Chronicles were the limit of my uni Anglo Saxon syllabus and I am not a Tolkien afficianado, luckily I have some skills in the art of googling ... 
Swa cwæð snottor on mode,So spake the wise man in his mind,
From The Wanderer http://www.anglo-saxons.net/hwaet/?do=get&type=text&id=Wdr&textOnly=false
Not to be confused with
The Wanderer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDFNpH83EMs
Okay as nobody else will. Cnut
Quote: Goldnutmeg @ 22nd January 2014, 6:27 PM GMT
Swa cwæð snottor on mode,So spake the wise man in his mind,
Alternate translation: so said the man who was wise in mind.
Anglo-Saxon is cool. Sorry, cald.
"says cleverclogs."
Quote: beaky @ 23rd January 2014, 5:55 PM GMT"says cleverclogs."
Quote: gappy @ 23rd January 2014, 3:35 PM GMTAlternate translation: so said the man who was wise in mind.
Anglo-Saxon is cool. Sorry, cald.
I'm willing to be corrected by an Anglo Saxon Cnut or other soul more learnèd in Anglo Saxon 
but ... I Googled first an Anglo Saxon translator and translated the words separately before I searched for the phrase and found the poem The Wanderer and its translation. Doesn't snottor mean 'wise man'? As far as I can tell, there is no separate adjective in the sentence for 'wise'. So isn't 'wise man' the subject of the sentence 'So spake [or 'spoke'] the wise man'. Then 'on' is a preposition meaning 'in' which seems to take the dative - so 'mode' is a dative noun. 'So spake the wise man in his mind'. So isn't it a way of saying the wise man was thinking, 'spoke to his mind' rather than the man was wise in mind?
It's a bit more confusing than that. According to my old Mitchell & Robinson, snottor is an adjective, and there is no noun, the subject of the sentence is only implied by the second clause:
"Swa cwaeth snottor on mode, gesaet him sundor aet rune" = "So said the wise [man] in mind, as he sat apart in thought". Both translations are possible, therefore.
I just Googled up an article where Gerald Richman from Mankato University says, "the most common interpretation [...] taking snottor on mode as a single epithet identifying the speaker is highly improbable, as on mode should be construed with cwaeth". Despite the fact I've never heard of him or his university, let's assume he's read more AS poetry than me, and go with his reading, because I don't imagine anyone else wants to read this.
Quote: gappy @ 24th January 2014, 5:39 PM GMTIt's a bit more confusing than that. According to my old Mitchell & Robinson, snottor is an adjective, and there is no noun, the subject of the sentence is only implied by the second clause:
"Swa cwaeth snottor on mode, gesaet him sundor aet rune" = "So said the wise [man] in mind, as he sat apart in thought". Both translations are possible, therefore.
I just Googled up an article where Gerald Richman from Mankato University says, "the most common interpretation [...] taking snottor on mode as a single epithet identifying the speaker is highly improbable, as on mode should be construed with cwaeth". Despite the fact I've never heard of him or his university, let's assume he's read more AS poetry than me, and go with his reading, because I don't imagine anyone else wants to read this.
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Wow, I had no idea I had hit upon such a knotty problem and that Anglo Saxon poetry was so beautiful! Although a phrase in translation has stuck in my mind from my one year of Anglo-Saxon from the Anglo Saxon Chronicle "And the river ran into the sea and they knew not which was which".
I was applying Latin/German rules to the So Spoke ... but I can see it's one of those moments in translation where you have to accept that it could be a deliberate Anglo Saxon ambiguity and mindset which could even be untranslatable in English or maybe it could be conveyed in a musical, chanting way.
I've found on Page 2 of http://www.sunypress.edu/pdf/53572.pdf
"The narrative voices in The Wanderer, though, complicate rather than guide the reading process. Shifts between the first-person and third-person narration, changes in the tone of the speech and two "Swa cwaeth" ("so spoke") clauses with ambiguous reference hinder our designation of the source of the speech and cause disorientation. Interpretations of the poem have depended upon the definition of speech boundaries (the limit of each "character's" speech)and, following from this the description from unified, believable characters; as many definitions and descriptions have been suggested as there are commentators.
"The problem with this approach is that it does not allow for the possibility of letting the compolications and ambiguities stand of reading in a different way from a shifting perspective ... the poem's multiple voices and perspective."
At risk of sound awwwwfully pretentious, this is actually fascinating and I think it's very helpful for any writer to know about this different rhetorical mindset. I assume these poems were first said out loud and then written down, so they weren't meant to be read but listened to? I'm even wondering whether it was a kind of game with different storytellers coming in in a kind of relay (or maybe like an internet forum thread 
) and taking delight in the shifting the perspective with a musical intonation where one takes a breath in one place when telling it at one time and taking a breath in another place when narrating the poem at another time, like a jazz riff? Changing the meaning and relishing the flexible structure. Or it was a kind of singing, chanting, harmonizing with each other, each with the same words but a different syntax?
Yep, you can let your imagination run riot about the narrative voice(s) in The Wanderer - and because it's a canon built on fragments and sometimes erroneously captured transcriptions, it's hard to tell what might be deliberately ludic and what might be a series of f**k-ups.
If you like The Wanderer, give The Seafarer a spin. 
But I fear we should probably take this to General Chat (AKA the meadbench) or shut up, as I think the Critique brigands might cut us down like Byrthnoth. 
Quote: gappy @ 24th January 2014, 10:40 PM GMTit's hard to tell what might be deliberately ludic and what might be a series of f**k-ups.
Ah, so to bring it back to the point, maybe that's what I should say about my own original posting
PS I went tonight to a play A World Elsewhere at Theatre 503 and funnily enough there was an tutor in it, a lecturer or professor of Anglo Saxon. However the twist was that his students found out he had Plagiarized in a published work and they then proceeded to blackmail him ... 