Bookworm

Text

From Skeats' Anglo-Saxon Reader, rev. C. T. Onions (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933), 167.

Moððe word fræt; mē þæt þūhte

wrǣttlicu wyrd, þā ic þæt wundor gefrægn,

þæt se wyrm forswealg wera giedd sumes,

þēof in þȳstro þrymmfæstne cwide

and þæs strangan staþol: stælgiest ne wæs

wihte þȳ glēawra þe hē þām wordum swealg.

Translation

From The Anglo-Saxon World, tr. Kevin Crossley-Holland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 247.

A moth devoured words. When I heard

of that wonder it sruck me as a strange event

that a worm should swallow the song of some man,

a thief gorge in the darkness on a great man's

speech of distinction. The thievish stranger

was not a whit the wiser for swallowing words.