Forgotten Ground Regained

Tynin a Wellie

Glossary for “Tynin a Wellie”
Green fit-ships, moss gruppen,guddled through still hilltappools o uncut peat-bog,pairtin the vole’s gairden.A leg-ferry, lairin,left the fleet; the sweetinland-wrack’s kingdom quicklyclaimed the shank’s tall langship
  • tynin: losing
  • wellie: a waterproof rubber boot
  • fit-ships: foot-ships; a kenning, meaning boots
  • moss: a bog
  • gruppen: gripped
  • guddled: waded
  • pairtin: parting
  • gairden: garden
  • vole’s gairden: voles garden; a kenning, meaning moorland
  • leg-ferry: a kenning, meaning rubber boot
  • lairin: sinking
  • left the fleet: a kenning, meaning separated from the other boots. The poem commemorates a pupil losing her boot in a bog while on a field-trip.
  • sweetin: sweating
  • wrack: seaweed
  • land-wrack: land-seaweed; a kenning, meaning bogland plants
  • sweetin land-wrack’s kingdom: a kenning, meaning sodden bog
  • langship: longship, as in a Viking raiding ship
  • shank’s tall langship: leg’s tall longship; a kenning, meaning boot
A Note on Form
This poem follows an Old Norse form called dróttkvætt ‘court metre’ which uses 8 line stanzas with six metrical positions per line, where alliteration links two syllables in odd-numbered lines with the first syllable of even-numbered lines. Dróttkvætt, unlike other Germanic alliterative metres, also uses internal-rhyme in each line: in odd-numbered lines two syllables end in half-rhyme (-ip, -up) and in even-numbered lines two syllables end in full-rhyme (-eet, -eet). The second of these syllables is always in the firth metrical position. Dróttkvætt makes heavy use of kennings, verbal circumlocutions which stand in place of a noun. While found in other Germanic poetry, kennings in dróttkvætt are often long, elaborate, puzzle-like constructions. These poems, written in modern Scots, illustrate why dróttkvætt was favored by Norse court poets to demonstrate their poetic agility (and one-up their rivals).
Copyright © Colin Mackenzie, 2024 First printed in Forgotten Ground Regained, New Series, Issue 5, Winter, 2025
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