An Introduction to Old English Edinburgh University Press

.
efo¯re of Hæ
¯
e
um,
t
æt he¯ wæ¯re on Tru¯so¯ on
in syfan dagum and nihtum, 
t
æt
t
æt sc
.
ip wæs ealne weg
.
yrnende
under seg
.
le
Wulfstan said that he went from Hedeby, that he was in Druznyo
seven days and nights, that the ship was all the way running
under sail
The use of the subjunctive here merely indicates that this is what
Wulfstan said and does not imply disbelief. But note also that the final
critical verb form is in the indicative. That is due to a process of distance
concord; at that point the distance between the subject (Wulfstan) and
the verb is so great that the grammatical agreement has been lost
sight of.
Two other uses of the subjunctive are of general interest. Firstly it can
be used to express a wish, as in:
(66) God u¯re helpe!
God help us!
As the translation shows, this usage remains in present-day English;
compare God helps us. The second use is after verbs expressing doubt or
possibility, as can be seen in the following example:
(67) For 
e
y ic
.
wolde
e
ætte hı¯e ealneg
.
æt
e
æ¯re sto¯we wæ¯ren [
]
Therefore I would like that it always at the place were
The particular interest of this type, of course, is that it parallels con-
structions found in present-day languages such as French, Italian and
German. It would be possible to extend the discussion of the subjunctive
considerably, but I am not convinced that that would be helpful at this
stage. It is perhaps more important for you to recognise subjunctives
when you find them and then attempt yourself to explain why they
occur, given the principles above. But even in Old English, the similarity
of indicative and subjunctive inflection resulted in many cases where
NOUN PHRASES AND VERB PHRASES
83
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it has become uncertain whether an indicative or an subjunctive was
intended. Later, this is going to promote the loss of a distinctive subjunc-
tive in a great many instances.
In the chapters on morphology I indicated that there were distinctive
forms for the imperative singular and plural, and these are, I think self-
explanatory. In addition, however, there is a special imperative form for
the 1st person plural, namely uton, which is very similar to present-day
English let’s in its use, as can be seen from an example such as:
(68) Utan faran to Bethleem
let’s travel to Bethlehem
For third person exhortations, the subjunctive is used, as can also happen
today, as the gloss to (67), discussed above, shows. With a small number
of verbs roughly equivalent to the modal verbs in present-day English,
the infinitive can directly follow, as in:
(69) Hwæt sc
.
eal ic
.
singan?
what must I sing?
A use of the infinitive which has been quite lost from English is its use
with verbs of rest or motion, as in:
(70) He¯ e¯ode eft sittan si
ee
an mid his 
e
egnum
He went again [to] sit then with his disciples
So far I have completely ignored one morphological form of the
infinitive. You may also have wondered about the Old English corre-
spondent to the familiar to-infinitive of present-day English. The two
points are connected. As well as the usual infinitive forms we have
observed, there was a further infinitive form, so that we find forms such
as fremmenne or fremmanne and lufienne or lufianne, corresponding to the
plain infinitives fremman, lufian. These are traditionally called inflected