Laudator Temporis Acti

William Morris, The House of the Wolfings, chapter IV:

For long had they abided there in the Mark, and the life was sweet to them which they knew, and the life which they knew not was bitter to them: and Mirkwood-water was become as a God to them no less than to their fathers of old time; nor lesser was the mead where fed the horses that they loved and the kine that they had reared, and the sheep that they guarded from the Wolf of the Wild-wood: and they worshipped the kind acres which they themselves and their fathers had made fruitful, wedding them to the seasons of seed-time and harvest, that the birth that came from them might become a part of the kindred of the Wolf, and the joy and might of past springs and summers might run in the blood of the Wolfing children. And a dear God indeed to them was the Roof of the Kindred, that their fathers had built and that they yet warded against the fire and the lightening and the wind and the snow, and the passing of the days that devour and the years that heap the dust over the work of men. They thought of how it had stood, and seen so many generations of men come and go; how often it had welcomed the new-born babe, and given farewell to the old man: how many secrets of the past it knew; how many tales which men of the present had forgotten, but which yet mayhap men of times to come should learn of it; for to them yet living it had spoken time and again, and had told them what their fathers had not told them, and it held the memories of the generations and the very life of the Wolfings and their hopes for the days to be.

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Dear Mike,

Thanks for The Life was Sweet for Them Which They Know. I did blench at some of Morris’s outlandish word-stock. As is well known, his Anglish wasn’t always wholesome. For ‘guarded’ it would have been better had he written ‘shielded’, for ‘warded against’ ‘shunned’, for ‘devour’ ‘gloup’, for ‘secrets’ ‘hidings’, for ‘present’ ‘today’, for ‘memories’ ‘mindings’, and for ‘generations’ ‘forefathers’. Cross-channel migrants get short shrift in the Kingdom of the Anglish.

What would Morris have made of Broutgang, I wonder?

Best wishes,
Eric [Thomson]