56
Old English Hwæt
I have given a more complete context for (10b) than Walkden does. He trans-
lates the last clause as ‘how he truly uncovers the nakedness of his father.’ It
is not entirely clear to me that hwæt is exclamatory; in fact, it could be an
example of hwæt used to introduce an indirect question (BTS: s.v. hwæt , adv.
or interjection, def. II).
Thus, I do not fi nd the few examples of hwæt meaning ‘how’ that Walkden
provides persuasive.
2.4 Exclamatory Hwæt in Prose
The use of pragmatic hwæt appears to be less frequent in prose than in verse
(Hiltunen 2006 : 105), perhaps because of the more literary and less speech-
like nature of much OE prose. One would nonetheless expect to fi nd it in rep-
resented speech, in more informal or colloquial types of narrative – such as
homilies and sermons – and in original rather than translated texts.^16 A com-
plete examination of the use of hwæt in OE prose is beyond the scope of this
chapter.^17 The instances of exclamatory hwæt in the prose OE section of the
Helsinki corpus suggest that it functions in a similar way in prose as in verse.
In (11a– b) hwæt prefaces direct discourse in which the speaker or narrator
reminds his interlocutor of what he has said before. In the cases in (11), hwæt
prefaces a statement of what is evident or visible to the addressee, is a general
truth, or is otherwise known to the addressee. Most interesting is the use of
an apparently redundant þu wast ‘you know’ in (11b and d) and we witon ‘we
know’ in (11e):
(11) a. þa cwæð he: Hwæt , ic þonne ær sæde þæt þæt hehste good & sio hehste
gesælð an wære. (Bo 34.85.6– 7)
‘Then he said, “What, I said then before that the highest good and the high-
est happiness were one” ’
b. ða cwæð he: Hwæt , þu wast ðæt ic þe ær sæde þæt sio soðe gesælð wære
good, (Bo 34.86.16– 17)
‘Then he said, “What, you know that I said before to you that the true hap-
piness was good” ’
c. Hwæt , þa stanas, forðæm sint stillre gecynde & heardre, <bioð> ear-
foðe to tedælenne; (Bo 34.92.22– 24)
‘What, the stones, because they are more immovable and harder in nature,
are diffi cult to divide’
16 W ü l fi ng ( 1901 : 688– 692) provides examples of exclamatory hwæt from Alfredian prose, and
Stanley ( 2000 : 531– 550) gives examples from a wide range of OE texts, though he does not
distinguish between hwæt and hwæt þa (see Section 2.5.1 below). See also Cichosz (forthc.)
for examples; she fi nds hwæt only slightly less frequent than hwæt þa in the YCOE.
17 A search for hwæt in the Dictionary of Old English Corpus yields 4,741 entries, though most
are the interrogative and complementizer uses of the form.