Forgotten Ground Regained
On the Maker (The Wessobrunn Prayer)
Jacob Riyeff
I’ve learned this from wise ones, the greatest of wonders:neither earth existed, nor heaven above,neither plant nor mountain appeared—not a single thing, nor did the sun shine,neither did the moon glow, nor the glorious sea.When there was only abyss, no bounds nor turnings,then there existed only God Almighty,the most merciful, and with him many others,godly spirits. And God the Holy,you the Almighty, made heaven and earth,gave humankind so many good gifts!Give me in your grace faith that is true,a good will, wisdom and prudence,power to resist ravaging devilsand evil to shun, your will to work.
Translator’s Note:
The Wessobrunn Prayer is an early Germanic-language prayer that takes creation as its motivating theme. The first nine lines are clearly in the four-stress accentual meter common to early written Germanic verse. The rest, where the poem turns toward address and invocation, is often thought to be a shift into prose, though others think it’s a looser metrical section or corrupted and can be emended to metrical form. I don’t personally have a stake in the answer there but have chosen to take the whole as verse for the translation at least and used an emended text that leans toward this as well, though meter is still not always smooth.
The translation here loosely mimics the four-stress accentual meter with strong medial caesura common to early Germanic-language verse. Like Old English and Old Norse, the Old High German long line comes with four primary beats. I’ve tried to lay primary stress on nouns, adjectives, and some finite verbs as Germanic meters tend to do, though where I’ve been able to keep the line more readily compact, I’ve put stress on different parts of speech for concision’s sake. I hope it’s still fairly clear (especially when read aloud) which two syllables would have the primary accents in the performance of each half-line.
After focusing almost solely on Old English for fifteen years or so, I’ve begun looking at Old Frisian, Old Norse, Old High German, and Old Saxon more, and I’m hoping to continue this branching out. Part of this desire, concerning the sojourn into Old High German in particular, stems from the fact that some of my ancestry on my mother’s side goes back to Old High German-speaking areas of Germany, especially the Alemannic dialectal region.
In Forgotten Ground Regained, Issue 9, Winter 2026
Psalms and Meditations
The author of what is commonly referred to as “The Wessobrunn Prayer” is unknown, though likely a Carolingian monk. The work is largely in a Bavarian dialect of Old High German and is preserved in a single manuscript from Wessobrunn Abbey. The prayer is thought to be from the late eighth century and is one of the few Old High German poetic texts to be preserved with original intent by a bookmaker, rather than being added in a margin or spare manuscript leaf after a book was completed.
ᛡ Rune used for Old High German prefix “ga-“
⁊ Tironian note used for Old High German “enti” (“and”).
Dat ᛡfregin ih mit firahim firawizzo meista:dat ero niwas noh ufhimil,noh paum noh pereg niwas,ni nohheinig noh sunna niscein,noh mano niliuhta noh der maręo seo.Do dar niwiht niwas enteo niewenteo⁊ do was der eino almahtico cot,manno miltisto. ⁊ dar warun auh manake mit inancootlihhe geista. ⁊ cot heilac,cot almahtico du himil ⁊ erda ᛡworahtos,⁊ du mannun so manac coot forᛡpi:forgip mir in dino ganada rehta galaupa⁊ cotan willeon, wistom ⁊ spahida,⁊ craft tiuflun za widarstantanne,⁊ arc za piwisanne, ⁊ dinan willeon za ᛡwurchane.
Copyright © Jacob Riyeff, 2025
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