Phibbus
Nargothrond
Nov 1 2012, 5:07am
Views: 1639
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More about nayt than anybody wants to know
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ETA: I also found "Nat=not" in Sisam which further bolsters Phibbus' claim to 5%. n Sir Gawain line 65: "Nowel nayted onewe, neuened ful ofte:" which clumsily translates to: Noel celebrated anew, named full often;" (This is from the top of the story, as Arthur's court was celebrating Christmas and the coming new year, just before the Green Knight shows up.) The word continues to intrigue me, and I think there might be something interesting, here. I have a suspicion that Tolkien & Gordon's original gloss may make a bit of an overreaching contextual assumption and that Tolkien may have later corrected himself.
I don't want to bolster my own guess, because I think it's wrong—however it does appear others have made the same assumption. It seems there's an old 1913 Webster dictionary entry for "nayt" that has it as an obsolete form of "deny" (which can be found by googling,) but I have a feeling it's spurious. There's also this Wiktionary entry for "nait" which gives it as derived from Old Norse "nita" (= "deny" or "refuse") in the first definition. And the OED gives "nayt" in one sense as a Middle English spelling of "naught."
The trouble is, none of these give an example of actual usage, and I'm still not finding any. The closest I can come is one instance in the Chaucer's Parson's Tale which looks like it's a late copy error and should actually be "nay" (which is what my standard edition has.) In any case, none of these indicate any past tense of "nayted", as given, and none have meanings would pertain to the usage in the Gawain line.
OK, so the interesting bit: The Gawain gloss has the word as derived from Old Norse "neyta", which appears to be a past tense of the verb "njóta", which means "enjoy" in the sense "have the use of". I suspect Tolkien & Gordon may have added "celebrated" based primarily on the association of the word with Christmas in this particular context. But they don't give a note on the usage in the text itself, which they often do for words with uncertain Old Norse etymologies, making it seem a matter of course.
However, in his ca.1950 translation of the poem, Tolkien renders "nayted" as "announced":
With loud clamours and cries both clerks and laymen
Noel announced anew, and named it full often; It may be that he massaged the translation a bit in the absence of a suitable word for "celebrate" that would maintain the alliteration on the 'N's (which would have been quite important to him.) However, this sense agrees closely with the OED's own third (rare) usage of the word "nait" as "recite" or "repeat", itself using the Gawain line as an example (I'm going to stretch a bit and paste the whole entry, since it's interesting, and some won't have access):
† nait, v.2
Forms: ME nait, ME naite, ME natte, ME nayt, ME nayte, ME naytte, ME neyte, ME (18 Sc.) nate; Eng. regional (north.) 16–18 nate, 18 nait.
Etymology: < an early Scandinavian weak verb (compare Old Icelandic neyta , Norwegian (Nynorsk) nöyta , Old Swedish nöta (Swedish nöta )), cognate with Old Frisian nēta < an ablaut variant of the base of the Germanic strong verb represented by Old English nēotan to use, have the use of, enjoy, employ (cognate with Old Frisian niāta , Middle Dutch -nieten (in prefixed form genieten , ghenieten (Dutch genieten )), Old Saxon niotan (Middle Low German nēten ; also genēten ), Old High German niozan (also giniozan ; Middle High German niezen , geniezen , German genießen ), Old Icelandic njóta , Old Swedish niuta (Swedish njuta ), Norwegian (Bokmål) nyte , Norwegian (Nynorsk) nyta , Danish nyde , Gothic niutan ), probably ultimately < the same Indo-European base as Lithuanian nauda use, profit, advantage, Latvian nauda money. Compare geneat n., neat n.1, note n.1 Compare nait n.
In later use Eng. regional (north.). Obs.
1. trans.
a. To make use of, use, employ; to exert (one's strength). Also refl.: to exert oneself.
c1400 (1380) Cleanness (Nero) (1920) 531 Uche fowle to þe flyȝt þat fyþerez myȝt serve, Uche fysch to þe flod þat fynne couþe nayte.
c1440 (1400) Sir Perceval (1930) 185 Oþer gudez wolde scho nonne nayte, Bot with hir tuke a tryppe of gayte.
c1450 (1400) Wars Alexander (Ashm.) 2468 Getis ȝow a name & naytis ȝour strethe [read: strenthe].
c1450 (1400) Wars Alexander (Ashm.) 2968 He..naytis him to ryse, Buskis him vp at a braide.
c1540 (1400) Gest Historiale Destr. Troy 10940 Telamon..Gird hym full graidly with a gay sworde, Bad hym nait hit nemly.
1677 W. Nicolson Gloss. Cumbrian Dial. in Trans. Royal Soc. Lit. (1870) 9 316 Nate, to use.
1807 J. Stagg Misc. Poems (new ed.) 48 Then brouce about nor tek sec preesin, To nate your awn.
1894 R. O. Heslop Northumberland Words, Nate, to use, to make use of.
b. To want, need, desire.
a1425 Medulla Gram. (Stonyhurst) f. 8, Aueo, to neyten.
a1500 (1460) Towneley Plays 260 Loke that we haue that we shuld nate, ffor to hald this shrew strate.
c1540 (1400) Gest Historiale Destr. Troy 6031 All necessaries for þe night þat þai naite shuld.
2. trans. To repeat, recite. rare.
c1400 (1390) Sir Gawain & Green Knight (1940) 65 Loude crye watz þer kest of clerkez & oþer, Nowel nayted o-newe, neuened ful ofte.
a1500 (1400) St. Erkenwald 119 Ser Erkenwolde..welneghe al þe nyȝt hade nattyd his houres. Could it be that he changed his mind about the word having the "celebrated" connotations in the interim between the two treatments of the work? Although I suppose "announced", taken more strongly in the sense of "proclaimed" or "heralded", could fall somewhere between "recited" and "celebrated" and indicate a compromise.
Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream.
(This post was edited by Phibbus on Nov 1 2012, 5:17am)
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