Hwæt. That word, barking through the clatter of the mead hall, typically opened an Old English poem in the Dark Ages, and roughly translates to “What” or “Listen now.” Old English is largely Germanic, ...

There are four original manuscripts containing poetry in Old English—the now-defunct language of the medieval Anglo-Saxons—that have survived to the present day. No more, no less. They are: the ...

Students in my history of England class this week are getting their first dose of early English poetry, a brief immersion into their cultural history that, at worst, will do them no harm. Their ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Wulf and Eadwacer occupies just a few lines in the Exeter Book, an anthology of mostly anonymous Old English poems made in the ...

Recently, I read ``Beowulf,” the oldest epic in English literature and the greatest extant poem in Old English. As is widely known, the poem is about the heroic deeds of Beowulf, his victories over ...

While Nobel Prize winner Heaney's translation was sprinkled with numerous Hiberno-English terms throughout its lines (such as "bawn" and "bothie"), it may be said that the alliterative verse of the ...

I went to college a little bit later than most. Excited but nervous to plunge into a degree — in English literature — that demands all students learn Old English, I asked a friend what studying the ...