Talk:Orthanc
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In trying to figure out what the "third letter" is in the word ... "orþonc" ... (in my browser) it looks like a lower case "b" overlayed with a lower case "p," It apparently depends on which translation of Beowulf one is using. One is...
Glof hangode sid ond syllic, searobendum faest; sio waes ordoncum eall gegyrwed deofles craeftum ond dracan fellum. (2085b-88)
(don't know whose translation that is.)
Glof is variously "interpreted" by different "authors" as : Glove or Paw or Stomach
The most common translation of this above is apparently:
- A glove hung, broad and strange, fastened with cunningly wrought clasps; it was cleverly adorned with the devil's crafts and a dragon's skins.
He had this roomy ‘glof’, a strange accoutrement, intricately strung and hung at the ready, a rare patchwork of devilishly fitted dragon-skins [‘dracan fellum’]. I had done him no wrong, yet the raging demon wanted to cram me and many another into this bag – but it was not to be. [lines 2085b-90; this is Seamus Heaney’s translation: Beowulf (Faber 1999), p.67.]
Heaney translates it as "bag"... :)
Aha, now I understand. I just managed to find the word in the The Bosworth-Toller Anglo Saxon dictionary "orþonc" is defined as "adj. Cunning, skilful"
So the Glof would be not made OF orþonc but made IN an orþonc fashion! (to use modern english phrasing.)
(And the "letter combination" is actually a the representation of a Rune! No idea how one might pronounce it!)
All of which is to say... the reference to Beowulf should probably be removed (or at least footnoted) or expanded. I.e. the word "orþonc," while seemingly spelled similarly, is probably not relevant to the tower.
Talk about academic debates!!!