I’m still on a quest for an Old English reading of the Seafarer to post to this site to help give people some context for my piece. But there’s progress!
Heather Thompson, of Caedmon Tutorials found this page from WW Norton. As part of their Norton Anthology of English Literature they’ve posted a ton of online audio examples. For the Old English (Or Anglo-Saxon, depending on your preferred term) examples this is a great help. You can really hear the connections to modern English and to German. Unfortunately, to play the Seafarer clip you have to use Real Player, which is a really annoying little piece of software that I try to avoid. So I’m still on the lookout for something more practical – perhaps a nice reading in Youtube video form that can be easily embedded?
Heather’s job is, I think, probably one of the most fun jobs around. Her company, Caedmon Tutorials, is based in Ottawa and teaches the more interesting chunks of British literature online. Next Tuesday her class may or may not include a rough cut of the Seafarer film…. we’ll see what happens, and maybe what the students think of it…
In the meantime, if you want to see a great demonstration of the heritage of Old English, check this out: