Burne on Prayer
Older Scots Reading 1
Chapter 9 · Burne on Prayer
📜 Burne on Prayer
Chapter 8 read the Protestant side of 1560. This chapter reads the other side, twenty-one years later: a Catholic writer arguing that ordinary people do not need to understand the Latin prayers said in church. It is plain argumentative prose, which makes it a good test of what you have learned, and it has a new spelling habit: v standing for w.
The text in one box
Nicol Burne, Of the praying in Latine (1581), described by Wikipedia's Middle Scots article as "Nicol Burne's anti-reformation pamphlet". The article quotes the passage from G. Gregory Smith, Specimens of Middle Scots (1902), page 218. It prints no translation. I read 37 lines of the extract, as the page tool gave them, and use the first 13.
The text
| Line | Older Scots | Gloss (mine) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Thair be tua kynd of prayeris in the kirk, the ane is priuat, quhilk euerie man sayis be him self, the vthir is publik, | There are two kinds of prayers in the church, the one is private, which every man says by himself, the other is public, |
| 2 | quhilk the preistis sayis in the name of the hail kirk. As to the priuate prayeris, na Catholik denyis bot | which the priests say in the name of the whole church. As to the private prayers, no Catholic denies but |
| 3 | it is verie expedient that euerie man pray in his auin toung, to the end he vndirstand that quhilk he sayis, | (that) it is very expedient that every man pray in his own tongue, to the end he understand that which he says, |
| 4 | and that thairbie the interior prayer of the hairt may be the mair valkinnit, and conseruit the bettir; and gif, | and that thereby the interior prayer of the heart may be the more awakened, and preserved the better; and if |
| 5 | onie man pray in ane vther toung, it is also expedient that he vnderstand the mening of the vordis at the lest. | any man pray in another tongue, it is also expedient that he understand the meaning of the words at the least. |
| 6 | For the quhilk caus in the catholik kirk the parentis or godfatheris ar obleist to learne thame | For which cause in the Catholic church the parents or godfathers are obliged to teach them |
| 7 | quhom thay hald in baptisme the formes of prayeris and beleif, and instruct thame sufficiently thairin, | whom they hold in baptism the forms of prayers and belief, and instruct them sufficiently therein, |
| 8 | sua that thay vndirstand the same: Albeit the principal thing quhilk God requiris is the hairt, | so that they understand the same: although the principal thing which God requires is the heart, |
| 9 | that suppois he quha prayis vndirstand nocht perfytlie the vordis quhilk he spekis, yit God quha lukis in the hairt, | that though he who prays understand not perfectly the words which he speaks, yet God, who looks in the heart, |
| 10 | vill nocht lat his prayer be in vane. As to the publik prayeris of the kirk, it is not necessar that | will not let his prayer be in vain. As to the public prayers of the church, it is not necessary that |
| 11 | the pepill vndirstand thame, becaus it is nocht the pepill quha prayis, bot the preistis in the name of the hail kirk, | the people understand them, because it is not the people who pray, but the priests in the name of the whole church, |
| 12 | and it is aneuche that thay assist be deuotione liftand vp thair myndis to God or saying thair auin priuate oraisonis, | and it is enough that they attend by devotion, lifting up their minds to God or saying their own private prayers, |
| 13 | and that be thair deuotione thay may be maid participant of the kirk. | and that by their devotion they may be made participant of the church. |
Source: Wikipedia, Middle Scots, the Burne extract (from G. Gregory Smith, Specimens of Middle Scots, 1902), lines 1 to 13 of the 37 the page tool gave me. The article prints no translation or gloss, so every gloss is mine and unverified. Least certain: valkinnit (line 4), learne (line 6), obleist (line 6), suppois (line 9) and assist (line 12).
Walking through it
- v for w, and for u. In this text v stands for w in vordis ("words") and vill ("will"), and for u at the start of vthir ("other") and vndirstand. Inside a word, u stands for English v, as in euerie. Chapter 1 gave the u/v swap; the v for w is new, and I read it as a spelling habit of this printed text.
- quh-. quhilk ("which"), quha ("who") and quhom ("whom") all have Chapter 1's quh-.
- Small Scots words. tua is "two"; ane is "one" here ("the ane ... the vthir": the one ... the other) and "a" in ane vther toung; na is "no"; bot is "but"; nocht is "not"; gif is "if" (Chapter 2); mair is "more"; auin is "own"; hairt is "heart"; sua is "so".
- hail. the hail kirk means "the whole church". That fits my guess in Chapter 8 that hailsome comes from the same word for "whole", though the guess is still mine.
- Verbs with -is. sayis and denyis and lukis and requiris end in -is, the Northern ending of Middle English Grammar 1, Chapter 6, with singular subjects. the preistis sayis in line 2 has a plural subject, as in hes in Chapter 7, and the pepill ... prayis in line 11 does too. I cannot state a rule from my sources.
- Subjunctive-looking forms. After expedient that the verbs are bare: pray, vndirstand. In English you might say "that every man pray" in the same way. I note the match and give no label, since I did not read a Scots grammar.
- Participle and past. liftand ends in -and, the Scots present participle (Chapter 1), so "lifting". conseruit has the -it past ("preserved"), and maid is "made".
- Plurals. prayeris, preistis, parentis, godfatheris, myndis and vordis all have -is.
- Latin-based words. expedient, interior, participant, deuotione, oraisonis, necessar and sufficiently are in the spirit of the French and Latin words of Middle English Grammar 1, Chapter 9. I read -ione as "-ion".
New words
| Older Scots | Meaning | Modern English relative |
|---|---|---|
| kynd | kind, sort | kind |
| kirk | church | kirk |
| preistis | priests | priests |
| toung | tongue, language | tongue |
| hail | whole | whole; compare hale |
| beleif | belief | belief |
| aneuche | enough | enough |
| pepill | people | people |
| oraisonis | prayers, orisons (my reading) | orisons (archaic) |
Watch out
Do not read vordis as "vordis": v can be w or u in the same page, so use the sense. learne in line 6 means "teach" here, which is my reading from the sense and the older use of learn. ane is "one" and "a". thair could be "there" or "their".
Try It Yourself
Say the answer first, then click to check.
1. Who wrote the pamphlet, and in what year?
Show answer
Nicol Burne; 1581.
2. Translate tua kynd of prayeris.
Show answer
"Two kinds of prayers."
3. What does the ane ... the vthir mean?
Show answer
"The one ... the other."
4. Translate the hail kirk.
Show answer
"The whole church."
5. What does v stand for in vordis, and in vthir?
Show answer
w in the first, u in the second.
6. What are quha and quhom?
Show answer
"Who" and "whom".
7. What does in his auin toung mean?
Show answer
"In his own tongue (language)."
8. What is liftand, and what ending does it carry?
Show answer
"Lifting"; the present participle -and.
9. Which line says the people need not understand the public prayers, and why?
Show answer
Lines 10 and 11: because it is the priests, not the people, who pray, in the name of the whole church.
10. Translate gif onie man pray in ane vther toung.
Show answer
"If any man pray in another tongue."
Note on sources
The thirteen lines, the author, the date and the attribution to Smith's Specimens of Middle Scots come from Wikipedia's Middle Scots, as the page tool gave them. The article prints no translation or gloss. I read no edition of the pamphlet and do not know where the passage sits in it. The glosses, the notes on v, the -is endings and the vocabulary table are mine and unverified. The pamphlet argues one side of a sixteenth-century dispute; I report what it says and take no side.
Coming up in Chapter 10: a recap. It brings together the spellings, endings and small words from the nine texts, with no new text.