Last night was the carol service of Crisis, an organisation that works to end homelessness. Sean was leading it so several Zaccers went along.
One of the carols we sang was Ding, Dong, Merrily on High. I don't think I'd ever noticed the second verse before.
let steeple bells be swungen;
and i-o, i-o, i-o,
by priest and people sungen.
I smiled to myself especially when we got to the next verse, where the composer writes, "may you beautifully rhyme, your evetime song, you singers."
Interesting wish I thought after the unusual rhyme in the previous verse. Perhaps the writer is chuckling to himself as he writes.
Well, he might be, but probably not I find. The lyricist was George Ratcliffe Woodward, who as well as a composer and bell ringer was also an accomplished linguist. Hence his use of the Old English past participle of singan, similarly with swungen no doubt. He manages to combine, English, Old English and Latin in his carol. Or he couldn't come up with another rhyme.
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Husband and I spent a good 75 minutes trying to work out how we could get the Zoom screen on my computer in the study onto our television in the lounge. Daughter-in-law is coming around this evening so we can watch a live presentation of A Child's Christmas in Wales performed in the living-room of Dylan Thomas' childhood home (now preserved as a museum.)
Supposed to be simple. Never is. Tried again this afternoon and it worked but neither of us knows why, or why it didn't this morning. Terrified to turn it off now.
To get it to work I had to download an app called Airdroid Cast Web, cast here being a shortened form of broadcast (obviously, you guessed that, didn't you?) Fairly recently GrandDaughter1 introduced me to 'ship', as in, "Do you ship them?" meaning "Do you think they should be in a relationship?"
And even more recently we heard about someone having rizz, an abbreviation for charisma. Honestly? Does it take too long to say the proper words?
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A good discussion in Zac's last night and I only had to stuff my scarf in my mouth twice to stop me saying something I would later regret. Probably. Must start wearing a scarf every week.
5 comments:
That's clearly the secret to versifying -- just make up some word that fits and say it's Ye Olde Englisshe.
And good strategy with the scarf! They're calorie-free, too!
I tried to sing that bit in my head. I think that I more or less got it.
I think Dr. Seuss was onto this strategy.
I remember singing all those verses. Bits of Middle English inserted here and there.
I had never heard of rizz before the Oxford people declared it their word of the year.
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