When on holiday it is pleasant and sometimes helpful to read and reflect a little. I enjoyed some Old English in the form of an account of a hero’s deeds by an unknown, but wonderful, poet. In those days – the poet was writing in about AD850 of wilder times a few centuries earlier – basic requirements for survival included swords and armour. A Byrnie or coat of mail may seem an unremarkable piece of equipment today – its modern equivalents are perhaps flak jackets and body armour. But in a time when people had few possessions and little in the way of technology, a shirt that could save your life in a fight must have been a prized object indeed.

English has changed quite a bit in twelve centuries, but most of the words in the lines quoted above should need little explanation. By the way, the ‘y’ in ‘byrne’ is pronounced ‘ü’, and the ‘sc’ in ‘scan’ is pronounced ‘sh’ as in its modern equivalent, ‘shone’.

‘searo’ may be recognised by Tolkien readers as the root word in ‘Saruman’, the cunning man or wizard. ‘searo’ seems always to be used in the context of knowledgeable use of technology – not necessarily magical, but certainly clever and possibly dangerous.

Describing a piece of armour as a ‘searo-net’ says that it is a crafted mesh, valued for its properties. As the poet writes, it is

‘héard hóndlocen, hélpe gefrémede’

‘hard, hand-linked [mail-shirt] –– help afforded’.

Beowulf, line 551

We may notice that hardness (a required quality), hand-linking (a design, and means of production), and affording help (a function) are here elegantly and tersely combined.

We can also enjoy, perhaps, the strong rhythm of the contrasted half-lines, noting that alliteration of the stressed syllables takes the place of rhyme; and that intentional obscurity of word-coinage was appreciated by the audience. For instance, the poet refers to a mail-coat only by its properties – being hard and hand-linked (line 551), and talks of ‘weaving’ or perhaps even ‘sewing’ an armoured shirt (line 406), though word-meanings shift over the centuries – and sometimes much more quickly: it is dangerous to guess meanings from apparently familiar words. Obscurity and guessed meaning are features of poetry that we do not want to reproduce in our requirements.

‘smiþ / smith’ (the letter þ is the modern ‘th’, as in ‘Þe olde tea shoppe’ by the way) is plainly the Old English for engineer, the person who designs and makes things.

‘orþancum’ contains the root of the modern word ‘think’. Tolkien named Saruman’s tower and fortress Orthanc or ‘cunning mind’. In Beowulf it seems to mean ingenious use of knowledge, applied skill or artifice. The use of a specialised vocabulary, which on the surface appears to consist of ordinary words, is just as much a challenge for analysts trying to understand a new domain as for readers of poetry. And reading someone else’s interpretation or translation, even a good one, is no substitute for seeing the original text or stakeholder.

The finished product, the hero’s shining Byrnie, the ‘séaronet séowed –– smíthes ortháncum’ is an ancient vision of requirements put perfectly into practice. Safety-critical ones, at that.

© Ian Alexander 2004