57
2.4 Exclamatory Hwæt in Prosed. ða cwæð he:
bað unhale eagan ne magon full eaðe locian ongean þa sunnan ... (Bo
38.121.8– 10)
‘Then he said, “That is no wonder; what, you know that the men who have
unsound eyes cannot very easily look at the sun ...” ’
e. Hwæt , we witon ðæt we ma lufi að ðone æcer ðe ær wæs mid ðornum aswo-
gen ... (CP 52.411.16– 17)
‘What, we know that we love the fi eld more which fi rst was choked with
thorns ...’
f. Hwæt se Babylonia cyning wæs suiðe upahafen on his mode (CP 4.39.13
[cited in Wülfi ng 1901 : 690])
‘What, the Babylonian king was very exalted in his spirit’
g. <Hwæt >, þa yrmingas nyston na hu lytelice hy þonne
(WHom 6 77– 78 [cited in Stanley 2000 : 535])
‘What, those wretched people did not know how cunningly the devil had
then deceived them’
h. Hwæt se casere þa hine gebealh (ÆCHom I, 29 125 [cited in Stanley
2000 : 536])
‘What, the emperor was then wroth’
i. Hwæt se halga bisceop þa on ðære byrig wunode (ÆLS (Apollinaris) 67
[cited in Stanley 2000 : 538])
‘What, the holy bishop then remained in the city’
2.4.1 Uses of hwæt þa
A collocation which occurs almost exclusively in prose, hwæt þa ,^18 presents
an interesting contrast to simple hwæt. I have examined all instances of hwæt
þa in Ælfric’s Lives of saints (Skeat 1881 , 1900 ), which number 111.^19 The
expression is translated variously by Skeat as “lo then” (29 times), “then” (25
times), “so then” (18 times), “well then” (11 times), “thereupon” (7 times),
“whereupon” (4 times), “so” (4 times), “moreover” (3 times), and “behold
then” (3 times).^20 From such translations it would appear that hwæt þa func-
tions rather differently than simple hwæt.
Hwæt þa precedes clauses which denote events in the plot sequence. In over
half the cases, the subject of the hwæt þa clause is a proper name,^21 denoting
either a main or subsidiary participant in the narrative, and in over one- third of
18 Hwæt þa is almost exclusive to Ælfric; Cichosz fi nds 231 or 261 (88%) to occur in his prose.
19 Walkden ( 2013 ) does not distinguish between hwæt and hwæt þa in his word- order counts. He
claims to have found 112 examples of exclamatory hwæt in Ælfric’s Lives of saints , but he is
obviously counting hwæt þa.
20 Occurring one time each in Skeat’s translation are “thus,” “and lo,” “upon this,” “now,” “now
there,” “however,” and “afterwards.”
21 The high proportion of nouns in hwæt þa clauses is confi rmed by Cichosz (forthc.), though
she notes that the nouns often denote old information, as is consistent with the verb- fi nal word
order found in many of these clauses.