I’m a dabbling Wiccan, and of the dozens of variation of the rede I’ve seen, some exclusively use “thy” and “thee” type language, and some use “you” and “your,” but most combine the two. I was wondering if someone could read this and tell me where the use of “ye” or “thy” is appropriate, where its not, and if the comined use is correct.
This is the version I most commonly see:
Bide ye wiccan laws ye must, in perfect love and perfect trust.
Live ye must and let to live, fairly take and fairly give.
Form the circle thrice about to keep unwelcome spirits out.
To bind thy spell every time, let the spell be spake in rhyme.
Soft of eye and light of touch, speak ye little, listen much.
Deosil go by the waxing moon, chanting out ye baleful tune.
When thy Lady’s moon is new, kiss your hand to her times two.
When ye moon rides at her peak, then thy heart’s desire seek.
Heed the north winds mighty gale, lock the door and trim the sail.
When the wind comes from the south, love will kiss thee on the mouth.
When the wind blows from the east, expect the new and set the feast.
When the wind blows from the west, Bardic words be at their best!
Nine woods in the cauldron go, burn them fast and burn them slow.
Elder be thy Lady’s tree, burn it not or cursed ye’ll be.
When the wheel begins to turn, soon ye Beltane fires burn.
When the wheel hath turned a Yule, light the log, the Horned One rules.
Heed ye flower, bush and tree, by the Lady blessed be.
Where the rippling waters go, cast a stone, the truth ye’ll know.
When ye have and hold a need, harken not to others greed.
With a fool no season spend, lest ye be counted as his friend.
Merry meet and merry part, bright the cheeks and warm the heart.
Mind the threefold law ye should, three times bad and three times good.
When misfortune is enow, wear the star upon thy brow.
True in love ye ever be, lest thy love be false to thee.
Bide ye wiccan laws you must, in perfect love and perfect trust.
In these eight words the Wiccan rede fulfill; An it harm none, do what ye will.
Thanks!
Absolutely no expertise in the Rede or in Wiccan lore of any kind, but enough knowledge of Early Modern English to tell you that
Thou is singular, Ye plural.
Thou, thee, thy, thine are exactly parallel to I, me, my, mine in where they are to be used.
Ye is the nominative of which you is the objective, but even at that time you was creeping into nominative use as well.
And, though it doesn’t apply in the context you discuss, “you” is a proper EME usage addressing a single person of higher rank or status, in the same sense as French tu and vous are used. (This is scarcely noticeable, though, because the eye simply reads it as the Modern English singular “you.”)
“Thou, thee, thy, thine are exactly parallel to I, me, my, mine in where they are to be used.”
Really? Not having any training in Early Modern English whatsoever, excepting incidental reading of Shakespeare, my instinct is “thou” = singular “you” addressing a person, not the self indicating “I”. Similarly, “thee” = second person singular object, and “thine” = second person singular possessive. Also, from childhood recollection of the “Our Father” prayer, “Our father… hallowed be thy name” does not seem to me as though it would be “translated” as “my name”. Is this all incorrect?
“Thou, thee, thy, thine are exactly parallel to I, me, my, mine in where they are to be used.”
Really? Not having any training in Early Modern English whatsoever, excepting incidental reading of Shakespeare, my instinct is “thou” = singular “you” addressing a person, not the self indicating “I”. Similarly, “thee” = second person singular object, and “thine” = second person singular possessive. Also, from childhood recollection of the “Our Father” prayer, “Our father… hallowed be thy name” does not seem to me as though it would be “translated” as “my name”. Is this all incorrect?
Most people know of thee, thy, thou, ye and thine from the bible. And the bible was written in King James English–a dialect of the English in many ways quite different from modern English. The bible has been re-translated several times since the original King James Version. So the uses of thee, thy, thou, ye and thine that you would see today would only be meant to imitate King James English–ironically it probably wouldn’t even be correct, at least strictly speaking.
Short answer to your question: there is no real “correct” way to use thee, thy, thou, ye and thine. It usually comes down to a question of aesthetics and poetics. For example, Mennonites once used “thee” exclusively for all their forms of you.
And now the long answer. I have an old dictionary that has a listing of all the former Middle English you cases. Notice that the “you” form is still included. BTW in Shakespeare English “thou” is for servants and “you” is considered more respectful–just like in French (don’t ask me how “thou” got in the Our Father, though). Please read:
NOMINATIVE: thou NOM. PLURAL: ye ACCUSATIVE: thee ACC. PLURAL: you GENITIVE: thy(n) GEN. PLURAL: your DATIVE: thee DAT. PLURAL: you
If you have any further question about the case names NOMINATIVE, ACCUSATIVE, DATIVE, etc., just consult a dictionary.
Jim B, could you give me a sentence using these in context?
What confuses me about the Rede is that “thy” and “your” seem to be used interchangably, sometimes even in the same line-- “When thy Lady’s moon is new, kiss your hand to her times two.” Is there any grammatical reason to use one or the other (like who vs whom) or are they really exactly interchangable?
Also, “Ye” seems to be used interchangably with “your” and “you” and sometimes even “the”: “Bide ye wiccan laws ye must” “Heed ye flower, bush and tree…” and “When ye have and hold a need…”.
As I said, it all comes down to poetics and aesthetics.
I’m not sure what sentence would put it in the right context for you. But I know the NOMINATIVE is always the subject of the sentence. I guess Thou art nice could put that in the right context. ACCUSATIVE is always the direct object: in Throw the ball, “ball” is in the accusative case. GENITIVE is basically the same as our possesive (just think of how you’d use 's). And DATIVE is the indirect object: in Give Dad the phone, “Dad” is in the DATIVE case and “phone” is in the ACCUSATIVE case. BTW, early scribes used Y to represent “thorn”–a letter that was eventually replaced by th. Thus Ye would be pronounced as the–“YEE” would be incorrect.
Yes, and I did read the article in the link. What I did not understand was the ambiguous usage–thy and your being used interchangably (whether one OR the other would have been used at the time, or if they really would have both been used), and the use of “ye” which was NOT covered in the article.
AFAIK, as it has been originally noted, thy was originally singular and your originally plural, so you would have used “thy house” when adressing John, and “your house” when adressing John and all his family.
But over time, you/your became a polite way to adress respected individualpeople instead of thou/thy. Thou/thy eventually dissapeared, but there was an intermediary period during which both where used interchangeably, depending on whom you adressed. As someone stated, it’s exactly similar to the current situation in french (or german, italian, etc…) where tu/ton (thou/thy) and vous/votre (you/your) are both used, in similar circumstances, depending on who you’re adressing.
What has always been a mystery to me is the use of “thou” when adressing God (who should be respected more?), but I assume it’s because religion and religious speech is conservative, hence kept adressing God as “thou” because it was how it has always been adressed (I mean before “you” began to be used as a respectful “thou”). Does anyone know?
I took a graduate course in the history of the English language last semester, and our professor told us that the familiar forms “thou” and “thy” are used in prayer because people saw (or perhaps wanted to see?) God as a loving, friendly confidante rather than as a distant, harsh Judge. It’s a question of which attributes one wishes to emphasize.
There’s probably a much more complex and complete answer than this, but it’s just my two cents.
In “Heed ye flower, bush and tree”, “ye” is the subject of the command. Normally when giving a command in English, the subject is omitted: “Heed flower, bush and tree”
“Ye” is sometimes incorrectly used as an old-sounding replacement for “the”, as in “Come see Ye Olde Gifte Shoppe at the Renaissance Faire.” There used to be a letter that looked sort of like a Y but was pronounced as TH; people saw old texts that spelled “the” using this letter and got the wrong idea.
“Thine” is also used as a possessive adjective when the following word begins with a vowel sound. Thus you would have “thy father” but “thine eyes.” (Cf. "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord" in “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”)
Years ago a short item in the defunct language magazine Quinto Lingo noted that in French–at least Canadian French–God (Dieu) can now be addressed with the familiar tu, but the Virgin Mary (Marie la Vierge) is still vous. :rolleyes:
The same “plural” polite forms exist in Spanish (tu, ustedes), German (du, Sie) and Russian (ty, Vy).
