Repository path: workshop/translations/alfred-preface/R06-v1/translation.md · rendered 2026-09-09

Alfred's Preface to the Pastoral Care — the single-pass draft

R06 output: the R04 draft, written straight through and frozen before any revision began (R04 v1.0 §Procedure 2a). Source: ../../../experiments/E-20260729b-graded-drift/materials/alfred-preface-oe.txt. Committed before the revision existed; the commit is the freeze.

Contamination: suspected, and it is measured rather than asserted — see the R04 artifact, which carries the longest-common-run figure against Sweet 1871 and the one declared incidental exposure.

King Alfred bids Bishop Wærferth be greeted in his own words, lovingly and as a friend; and I bid it be made known to you that it has very often come into my mind what wise men there once were throughout England, both in holy orders and in lay life; and how happy the times then were throughout England; and how the kings who had rule over the people in those days obeyed God and his messengers; and how they kept both their peace and their customs and their authority at home, and also widened their homeland abroad; and how they prospered both in war and in wisdom; and also how eager the holy orders were about teaching and about learning, and about all the services they owed to God; and how men from abroad sought wisdom and teaching here in this land, and how we now must get them from outside, if we are to have them at all. It had so entirely fallen away in England that there were very few on this side of the Humber who could understand their service-books in English, or even turn a single letter out of Latin into English; and I think there were not many beyond the Humber either. There were so few of them that I cannot think of a single one south of the Thames when I came to the throne. Thanks be to God almighty that we now have any supply of teachers at all. And therefore I command you to do as I believe you wish to do — to free yourself from the affairs of this world as often as you can, so that you may put the wisdom God gave you wherever you can put it. Think what punishments came upon us in this world when we neither loved it ourselves nor left it to other men: we loved the name only, that we were Christians, and very few of the practices.

When I remembered all this, I remembered also how I saw, before it was all ravaged and burnt, how the churches throughout all England stood filled with treasures and books, and a great multitude of God's servants besides — and they knew very little of the use of those books, because they could understand nothing of them, since they were not written in their own language. As if they had said: 'Our elders, who held these places before us, loved wisdom, and through it they got wealth and left it to us. Here one can still see their track, but we cannot follow after it, and so we have now lost both the wealth and the wisdom, because we would not bend down to that trail with our mind.'

When I remembered all this, I wondered very greatly at those good wise men who once were throughout England, and had learned all those books through and through, that they would not turn any part of them into their own language. But then at once I answered myself, and said: 'They never thought that men should ever become so careless, and learning fall away so; they left it undone on purpose, and wished that there should be the more wisdom here in the land the more languages we knew.'

Then I remembered how the law was first found in the Hebrew language, and afterwards, when the Greeks had learned it, they turned it all into their own language, and all the other books besides. And afterwards the Latin people did the same: once they had learned them, they turned them all, through wise interpreters, into their own language. And all other Christian nations too turned some part of them into their own language. Therefore it seems better to me, if it seems so to you, that we too turn certain books — those that are most needful for all men to know — into the language that we can all understand, and bring it about, as we very easily can with God's help, if we have peace, that all the youth now in England of free men, those who have the means to apply themselves to it, be set to learning, so long as they are fit for no other employment, until the time when they can read English writing well: let those be taught further in Latin whom one wishes to teach further and to advance to higher orders. When I remembered how the knowledge of Latin had fallen away throughout England before this, and yet many could read English writing, then I began, among other various and manifold cares of this kingdom, to turn into English the book that is called in Latin Pastoralis and in English the Herdsman's Book, sometimes word for word, sometimes sense for sense, as I learned it from Plegmund my archbishop, and from Asser my bishop, and from Grimbold my mass-priest, and from John my mass-priest. After I had learned it, so as I understood it and could set it out most intelligibly, I turned it into English; and I will send one to every bishop's see in my kingdom; and in each there will be a pointer worth fifty mancuses. And I command in God's name that no man take the pointer from the book, nor the book from the minster: it is unknown how long there may be such learned bishops as now, thanks be to God, there very nearly everywhere are. Therefore I would have them always stay at that place, unless the bishop wishes to have them with him, or they are out on loan anywhere, or anyone is copying another.