My sister has just asked me to translate a carol for her from her Medieval songbook. It's quite pretty so I'm passing it on.
Quem pastores laudavere
Quibus angeli dixere
Absit vobis jam timere
Natus est rex gloriae
Ad quem magi ambulabant
Aurum, thus, myrrham portabant
Immolabant, haec sincere
Nato regi gloriae
Christo regi, deo nato
Per Mariam nobis dato
Merito resonet vere
Laus, honor et gloria
The king, the king whom the shepherds praised,
The king with whom the angels spoke,
He is separated from you now, with awe,
The king of glory is born.
To he whom the wise men travelled,
To whom they carried gold, incense and myrhh;
They burned these things with sincerity
To the born king of glory.
To Christ the king, the born God,
Given to us through Mary,
He resounds truly with merit,
To Christ the king: Praise, Honour, Glory.
Translation notes: This poem is holding back the subject to the last line of each stanza as an intensifier. This works well in Latin syntax but less so in English, hence some of the repetitions of 'Christ the king' inserted where there were none before: they aid comprehension and I think add to the poetic effect. The third line of the first stanza I'm not terribly sure about, it doesn't quite seem to fit the rest of the verse and 'timere' could be a form of verb. I'm choosing to translate it as adverbial by comparison with the equivalent line in the other stanzas.
Pronunciation notes: (Cat asked how to pronounce it, with particular reference to 'c's.) Bah humbug. 'c' is the worst of the lot. In the Classical period it's believed to have sounded like a 'k' does now. In the Medieval period it could be like an 's' or like a 'ch' depending on where you live, and that's before you take into account the spelling confusions between 'c' and 't'. I refer you to someone with more knowledge on the subject and suggest you go with the Southern Continental / Church Latin instructions, hence pronouncing 'c' as 'ch' and 'g' as 'j' when coming before most vowel sounds.
Scansion notes: The poetically inclined will have noted that this poem is both rhythmical and rhyming, developments in Latin poetry which were pretty much concurrent with the rise of Christian poetry. Classical Latin poetry is quantitive, the music that comes out of recitation is based on patterns in the length of the vowel sounds, not in patterns of stressed syllables. Rhythmical techniques did exist in part, but were mostly reserved for rhetorical prose. I suspect that one of the drivers in the early days of rhythmical poetry in the Christian Church was its use in singalongs - rather than performance pieces that one speaker presents to a crowd, many of the early hymns were written as group pieces for use during services and to keep people's spirits up in the middle of a purge. Later on, of course, when Latin was only ever learnt as a second language, rhythmical poetry became a lot easier to write than quantitive, it's easier to hear stressed syllables than vowel quantities that you have to look up in a book because nobody pronounces them that way anymore. There were still people writing the latter, but I don't know of any really good pieces.
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3 comments:
I've often wondered about the exact meaning of that carol. My latin skills not being up to the full scope you can drag out of it.
FWIW, cathedral practice in NZ is as you state. The ce in sincere is chair with a liquid rolled r.
g is normally a soft french style g.
Question: why do they think they know how latin was pronounced in classical times? I've always wondered.
Question: why do they think they know how latin was pronounced in classical times? I've always wondered.
It explains that a little in the document Steph posted above. :)
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3. Do we know how the Romans pronounced Latin?
Surprisingly, yes. The details of the reconstruction are given in W. Sidney Allen, Vox Latina
(written in English), Cambridge, 1965. There are several main sources of knowledge:
• The Latin alphabet was meant to be entirely phonetic. Unlike us, the ancient Romans did
not inherit their spellings from any earlier language. What you see is what you get.
• Language teaching was big business in Roman times, and ancient Roman grammarians give
us surprisingly detailed information about the sounds of the language.
• Languages derived from Latin give us a lot of evidence. In fact, many of the letters of the
alphabet are pronounced the same way in French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian. It
stands to reason that the original Latin pronunciation has survived.
• Spelling errors made by the ancient Romans are very informative. If two letters are often
mixed up, they must sound fairly similar. Likewise, if two letters are never mixed up, we
know they sounded different.
Here’s an example. In classical times, the natives had no trouble keeping ae distinct from
e; if they ever misspelled ae it came out ai. Later on, they started changing ae to e. That
enables us to pinpoint when the sound of ae changed.
• Finally, transcriptions into other writing systems, such as Greek and Sanskrit, often pin
down the ancient pronunciation of Latin very precisely.
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Quite interesting that. :)
I saw this blog, and thought "Yes - Steph can write a cool blog!" I have learnt more Latin words and grammar from this translation than pretty much any other I have seen. Cheers.
For what it's worth, Catholic types have been saying Latin Masses since, well, forever, and although it has fallen in and out of favour, it has been said in the same way throughout, not only what was being said, but how it was said, down to pronunciations, etc.
That is what I believe. Others may shoot me down, but I believe it has had an influence on our knowledge.
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