The short answer to the title question is I don't know what's wrong with the Barlow Carmen. I haven't seen the Barlow Carmen. It costs over £100 on Amazon and isn't available from any public lending library in southeast England. I might have been able to obtain it on inter-library loan from the British Library, but I am not a scholar and didn't want it for research. I wanted a Carmen to read for personal enjoyment. I wanted a Carmen to understand the contemporaneous Norman story of the events of the conquest as they unfolded in 1066.
Now that I have produced my own English translation of the Carmen, those familiar with the Barlow Carmen ask why I bothered. The question has been raised five times in three months, so here is the answer.
I never intended to translate the Carmen before actually doing so. I took possession of the only English translation Carmen I could obtain (the Morton & Muntz Carmen from 1972) from my local library on 25th January, having waited three weeks for the only copy available in southeast England, and within days the Carmen took possession of me.
It is an indictment of the academic press that the Carmen is so hard to get and so expensive. Every schoolchild in Britain should know about the Carmen as an epic story of blood, plunder and conquest that shaped world history. Every English historian should have a copy. Although if they were exposed to the M&M version, they might not find the story gripping or credible. Right away I began to see problems with the translation.
I started translating a few lines myself, one or two at a time, and the more I did, the angrier I got. There is so much more in the Carmen than appeared in the English. I stopped reading the English.
I found the original published Carmen from 1840 and another transcription from 1869. I transcribed the Carmen in Latin from beginning to end, and then began translating it from line 1 to line 835. When I finished I went back and re-translated everything that jarred. Where the Latin didn't make sense, I checked all the transcriptions for possible errors and made sensible corrections of my own. I kept doing this obsessively for more than four months, sometimes 20 hours a day. My son became frightened when he started coming home from school to find me still hunched over the keyboard in my jammies, not having bothered to eat, brush my teeth or feed the cats. If anyone doubts the originality of my efforts, I have plenty of translations of incrementally improving quality to prove that I did the work.
Why is my Carmen worth reading? First, it costs £100 less than the Barlow Carmen. If you want a Carmen that reads well and doesn't put you in debt, mine is a sensible choice. Second, my Carmen is available worldwide instantly as an ebook, where the Barlow Carmen is almost entirely unavailable to the public except to scholars with access to specialist libraries or people who can drop £100 on a book. Third, my Carmen is free of received translation and therefore probably truer to the original Latin. I'll let others compare the texts, but what I know for certain is that I reveal significant new facts embedded in the Latin of the Carmen while still translating it word for word from the original.
The most glaring wrong-headed mis-translation involves lines 681 to 688. I'll provide comparisons of the M&M and mine below. This is only an example of how a better translation completely changes the history revealed in the Carmen.
Morton & Muntz Carmen:
In the city there was a certain man crippled by a weakness of the loins and therefore slow upon his feet, because he had received some few wounds in the service of his country. He was borne on a litter, lacking the ability to move, yet he commanded all the chief men of the city and the affairs of the community were conducted by his aid. To this man, by an envoy, the king secretly revealed a better choice, privately seeking to learn how far he favoured this.
Tyson Carmen:
Now that I have produced my own English translation of the Carmen, those familiar with the Barlow Carmen ask why I bothered. The question has been raised five times in three months, so here is the answer.
I never intended to translate the Carmen before actually doing so. I took possession of the only English translation Carmen I could obtain (the Morton & Muntz Carmen from 1972) from my local library on 25th January, having waited three weeks for the only copy available in southeast England, and within days the Carmen took possession of me.
It is an indictment of the academic press that the Carmen is so hard to get and so expensive. Every schoolchild in Britain should know about the Carmen as an epic story of blood, plunder and conquest that shaped world history. Every English historian should have a copy. Although if they were exposed to the M&M version, they might not find the story gripping or credible. Right away I began to see problems with the translation.
I started translating a few lines myself, one or two at a time, and the more I did, the angrier I got. There is so much more in the Carmen than appeared in the English. I stopped reading the English.
I found the original published Carmen from 1840 and another transcription from 1869. I transcribed the Carmen in Latin from beginning to end, and then began translating it from line 1 to line 835. When I finished I went back and re-translated everything that jarred. Where the Latin didn't make sense, I checked all the transcriptions for possible errors and made sensible corrections of my own. I kept doing this obsessively for more than four months, sometimes 20 hours a day. My son became frightened when he started coming home from school to find me still hunched over the keyboard in my jammies, not having bothered to eat, brush my teeth or feed the cats. If anyone doubts the originality of my efforts, I have plenty of translations of incrementally improving quality to prove that I did the work.
Why is my Carmen worth reading? First, it costs £100 less than the Barlow Carmen. If you want a Carmen that reads well and doesn't put you in debt, mine is a sensible choice. Second, my Carmen is available worldwide instantly as an ebook, where the Barlow Carmen is almost entirely unavailable to the public except to scholars with access to specialist libraries or people who can drop £100 on a book. Third, my Carmen is free of received translation and therefore probably truer to the original Latin. I'll let others compare the texts, but what I know for certain is that I reveal significant new facts embedded in the Latin of the Carmen while still translating it word for word from the original.
The most glaring wrong-headed mis-translation involves lines 681 to 688. I'll provide comparisons of the M&M and mine below. This is only an example of how a better translation completely changes the history revealed in the Carmen.
Morton & Muntz Carmen:
In the city there was a certain man crippled by a weakness of the loins and therefore slow upon his feet, because he had received some few wounds in the service of his country. He was borne on a litter, lacking the ability to move, yet he commanded all the chief men of the city and the affairs of the community were conducted by his aid. To this man, by an envoy, the king secretly revealed a better choice, privately seeking to learn how far he favoured this.
Tyson Carmen:
681. Intus erat quidam contractus debilatate
Among those drawn together to weaken
682. Regnum sicque pedum signis ab officio,
Royal powerwas a bishop whose staff of office was a shepherd’s crook,
Royal powerwas a bishop whose staff of office was a shepherd’s crook,
683. Vulnera pro patria quoniam numerosa recepit.
Sorrowful for his country because the multitude were besieged.
684. Lectica vehitur mobilitate cavens.
A litter was set in motion bearing him cautiously.
685. Omnibus ille tamen primatibus imperat urbis,
Of all men, those most superior rule over the City,
686. Ejus in auxilio publica res agitur.
Overseeing it in the public interest.
687. Huic per legatum clam rex pociora revelat.
He revealed this legacy unknown to the better king,
688. Secreti poscens quatinus his faveat.
Asking to what extent hewould support separate rule.
As far as I can tell from excerpts online, Barlow sticks with the dude with the groin injury in his translation, evidencing the dangers of received translations. I have some sympathy as I caught two transcription errors in the Latin in these lines. But just on common sense grounds, earlier translators should have been wary. The Carmen doesn't describe anyone's physical features, so making six lines descriptive of someone not even royal struck me as immediately false.
The bishop, probably William of Malmesbury, Bishop of London (pro patria indicates he was perceived as a Londoner), was troubled by the siege's effects on London's citizens. He went to King William at Westminster and revealed that London was a church livery borough. The livery status of London was the legacy unknown to William (clam).
The bishop, probably William of Malmesbury, Bishop of London (pro patria indicates he was perceived as a Londoner), was troubled by the siege's effects on London's citizens. He went to King William at Westminster and revealed that London was a church livery borough. The livery status of London was the legacy unknown to William (clam).
Res publica is the phrase that gives us the word republic, a community that covenants liberty in exchange for municipal obligations. Here the words are reversed, but the meaning is clear enough. London is a civil jurisdiction self-administered by its aldermen having a livery port. The City owed its loyalty to the king and its tributes to the church.
The London bishop has revealed to King William that the most powerful church in France has a claim over London just as Fecamp Abbey in Normandy held Hastings and the Rye Camber ports in Sussex under other royal charters. The King of France is William's suzerain as Duke of Normandy, and in any event, William would never offend the powerful Church of Saint-Denis. As soon as William learns that London is a livery port of Saint-Denis, he immediately concedes to London's citizens all the customary immunities and privileges of civil jurisdictions, common to both England and France. He assures the bishop that the aldermen can continue to rule the City if they swear an oath of loyalty to him as king, as was customary for aldermen of civil jurisdictions in both countries.
French, Norman and Breton shipping into the port of Billingsgate in London would remain free of tax and toll into the 13th century. Free trade endured between London and France for more than 500 years! London owes its ancient liberties to French clerics - and two French brothers who left them the original legacy in 788. Did you know that? I didn't before I started studying the Carmen. And no one has ever identified the bishop as the emissary of the City in 1066 before.
The legacy of this political accommodation still shapes British politics. The City still elects the Lord Mayor from its aldermen. The City has its own police force, independent of the London Metropolitan Police. The wealthy elite of the City still resist taxation and regulation by Westminster. Had William treated London as harshly as he treated Dover - whose burgesses had thrown off the church's protection and rebeled against royal authority under Godwin of Wessex - then the City of London and British history would be very different today.
The legacy of this political accommodation still shapes British politics. The City still elects the Lord Mayor from its aldermen. The City has its own police force, independent of the London Metropolitan Police. The wealthy elite of the City still resist taxation and regulation by Westminster. Had William treated London as harshly as he treated Dover - whose burgesses had thrown off the church's protection and rebeled against royal authority under Godwin of Wessex - then the City of London and British history would be very different today.
And that's why I translated the Carmen word by laborious word. It is important that the history the Carmen reveals about the Norman Conquest be better understood and more widely available. Priced on Amazon Kindle under £7.00 in Britain and under $10.00 in the USA, I am hopeful that many others will enjoy the Carmen and come to better appreciate the history and events of the Norman Conquest.