Talk:Wiccan Rede

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Archive 1,

Contents 1 An and an' 2 Rede of the Wiccae Book 3 Added passage 4 an it harm none vs an harm ye none 5 Earth Religion News version

[edit] An and an'

Just to clear this up, the "an" of such Shakespearian phrases as "an hadst thou not come to my bed" is conditional, and is much the same as "if". (This is how Valiente used it in "An it harm none".) When the phrase "an it" is abbreviated to "an't", the apostrophe stands for the missing I of "it", and not a missing D of "and". This is the same as in "for't" and "to't", for "for it" and "to it" respectively.

The examples that were cited from Shakespeare do not show a contracted "and" but a contracted "an it". "An't shall please your Majesty", for example, is simply "If it shall please your Majesty", and emphatically not "and it shall". [[1]] Cavalorn 12:26, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Just to clear this up, "an" as in "an't shall please your majesty" is, according to the OED, a contraction of "and" ("weakened from and" it says). Yes, it has the function of "if", but that function derives from its role in phrases where the "and" identifies a condition: - that is "and and only and". It is an additional condition for the act that it should "please your majesty", hence "an(d) it please".... If the word simply meant "if" then the phrase "an if" in Love's Labour's Lost would be tautology. The sentence is "Nay then two treyes, an if you grow so nice Methegline, Wort, and Malmsey; well runne dice". Here "an if you grow so nice" means "and if you are becoming so picky".

I'd rather resolve this than have an edit war, so I won't yet restore my footnote, but unless you come up with some evidence that this is wrong, I will. Don't mistake me, the "ye olde" language of the poem is blatantly "fake", but this kind of archaism was quite common throughout the twentieth century. The point is that the repeated abbreviation of "and" as "an'" does not proove that the last line predated the others. I believe it did, but we have to present the arguments fairly. Paul B 13:20, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

For proof, focus on the all-important apostrophe. When "an" is used with the function of "if", as in Shakespeare, it is presented exactly as such, sans apostrophe; the modern contraction, with the apostrophe standing for a missing "d", is what is found (quite anachronistically) in non-Valiente parts of the Thomson Rede, and most importantly in the Valiente couplet as it appears in the Thomson Rede. Since Valiente's use of the term was not apostrophised (any more than it is in Shakespeare), the addition of the apostrophe and subsequent proliferation of imitative "an'"s can only be a later addition.

As I pointed out, where "an" is followed by an apostrophe in Shakespeare, it is the initial vowel of the following word that is missing, as in "an't please". The apostrophe is not used to signify a missing "d" in "and", but a missing "i" in "it". (Have now changed initial paragraph of article, which implied that this was the case.) See also "for't" ("and hang for't afterward") and "in't" ("O brave new world, that has such people in't!").

Bear in mind also that "an" is only ever used in Shakespeare et al in that conditional role, and never as a mere substitute for "and". Using "an" in such a manner, apostrophised or not, is a blatant anachronism, and nobody who had sufficient understanding of archaic English to come up with "an it harm none" would produce this.

So, we can say with confidence that Valiente's line is a well constructed archaism, while the Thomson rewrite (and addition of extra lines) is a poorly constructed one. It's all in the tacked-on apostrophe, and subsequent proliferation of "an'"s, as if the idea was to suggest that witches always contract "and" to "an'".Cavalorn 13:56, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, I don't think you have proved anything. The addition of the apostrophe is just a matter of choice regarding the printing of the text. For example, many editions of Shakepeare update spelling for ease of reading. Some editions of LLL even add the "d" on the end of "an" in the passage I cited.[2] An apostrophe would be another option. I don't know why you keep repeating the point that the apostrophe in "an't" marks the abbreviation of "it". I know that. It's irrelevant. And the first paragraph of the article never implied anthing else either.

Using an apostrophe for abbreviations of "and" as "an" is just a copy-editing decision. Given that "an" is a contraction of "and" it's quite a legitimate one. Of course, no-one doubts that the poem does misuse archaisms, but since there is no dispute that it is modern, demonstrations of the fact are an irrelevance. The debate is whether it was written in the 1920-40s or the 1960s-70s. You are arguing that "an it harm none" demonstrates a degree of familiarity with early modern English that is not evidenced in the rest of the poem. I accept that you have a point, but this evidence is far too thin to say that one can "prove" or say "with confidence" that the rest of the poem is an extrapolation from the last line. You say that "nobody who had sufficient understanding of archaic English to come up with 'an it harm none' would produce this [abbreviation of "and"]". How do you know? The "an it" expression is common in Shakespeare. Any educated person would have read it often enough. Use of "an'" as an abbreviation of "and" was also common in a number of published texts by the late 19th century (the OED gives "an" and "an'" as synonymous for the relevant definition). It's quite possible that both could have been used by the same writer in the early 20th century. I don't think it's likely, but we have to give a fair account of both sides. Oh, and the NECTW has published a booklet, in collaboration with an historian, one that presumably defends Thompson's claims regarding the origin of the poem. I doubt it will be convincing, but I have ordered it. Its arguments should be presented. Paul B 11:50, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Why would the author of the Thomson Rede write "an' the werewolf howls" for "and the werewolf howls"? That is surely the question to ask - why anyone would think that this was appropriate or convincing. Why would anyone think that witches habitually dropped the Ds off their "and"s? Where would they learn that?

I can only conclude that this was someone's conclusion after reading a text, which they believed to be authoritative, in which the D was dropped off the end of an "and". The use of 'an it harm none' can be attributed to familiarity with Shakespeare, but the persistent, forced use of "an'" for "and" cannot.

You say that "nobody who had sufficient understanding of archaic English to come up with 'an it harm none' would produce this [abbreviation of "and"]". How do you know? - Because there is no precedent in archaic English for using that kind of abbreviation of "and" as a conjunction, so why use it on virtually every single occasion? (Shakespeare does not write of "the slings an' arrows of outrageous fortune" or "tomorrow an' tommorow an' tomorrow".

Whoever wrote all those "an'"s in the Thomson Rede was trying to emulate something. In order to use that form in the belief that it was archaic, the writer must first have read it (or something they had mistaken for it) in a context that they believed was archaic. When people fake a style, they do it by using what they have already seen. So, someone who writes "an'" for "and" in an attempt to sound witchy must have picked up the idea, from somewhere, that Olde Worlde Wytches write "an'" when they mean "and". Given that the Valiente line appeared twenty years before the Thomson Rede, and that no other text associated with witchcraft uses this odd apostrophised abbreviation of "and" throughout, it seems obvious to me that Gwen Thomson simply inferred from reading Valiente that saying "an'" instead of "and" was stylistically witchy.

To put it another way, show me a document other than the Thomson Rede that a) pretends to antiquity and b) uses "an'" for "and" almost every time in the same way that the Rede does. It's not that it's fake Olde Worlde language, it's misinformed fake Olde Worlde language, which requires the author to have gotten the wrong end of a very specific stick.

Also, there are other alterations to the original Valiente line that appear in the Thomson rede and are replicated there. Valiente's line was "Eight words the witches' rede fulfil", which is changed in the Thomson rede to "Eight words ye witches' rede..." To use "ye" for "the" is, as you almost certainly know, a classic pseudo-archaism. Given that the same pseudo-archaism appears again in the Thomson Rede - "Elder be ye Lady's tree" - the evidence suggests that the same person who wrote the Thomson Rede also put that "ye" in the Valiente line, also changing "an" to "an'" to fit in with all the other "an'"s. Since the error-introducing alterations occurred between the first appearance of the (archaically correct) Valiente line and the (badly pseudo-archaic) Thomson Rede, I don't see how there can be any doubt that the former came before the latter, nor that it was authored by a different person.

The only other explanation would be to suggest that the Thomson Rede, pseudo-archaisms, abundant "an'"s and all, was around in the 1920s-40s, and that Doreen Valiente 'cleaned up' the pseudo-archaic Rede for public consumption, changing the "ye" back to a "the" and the "an'" into an authentically Shakespearian "an", only for Thomson to put the pseudo-archaisms back again in 1975. Even that would not, however, explain where all those bizarre and idiosyncratic "an'"s came from in the first place.

Can you suggest any other explanation for why the "and"s were shortened to "an'"s almost without exception, when that's not a feature of archaic or even pseudo-archaic texts? Misparsing of the Doreen Valiente line on Gwen Thomson's part seems to me to be the only explanation for this.Cavalorn 16:56, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay in replying. You say "Can you suggest any other explanation for why the "and"s were shortened to "an'"s almost without exception, when that's not a feature of archaic or even pseudo-archaic texts?" Well yes, I can. As I've already said, the an' abbreviation was well-established at the beginning of the 20th century. It was common in published "ballad" poetry, which was very popular at the time. Here's an example from Kipling:

For the wine was old and the night is cold,

An' the best we may go wrong,

So, 'fore 'e gits to the sentry-box,

You pass the word along. (The Shut-Eye Sentry).

Of course, in this case it's intended to represent colloquial speech, along with the other abbreviated words. But the central point is that it was commonplace by this date. More important, however, is the fact that it is also found by the same date in popular editions of Middle English and Early Modern texts, as for example in David Laing Purves' edition of Chaucer:

A worm to nighe near my flow'r than thou."

"And why, Sir," quoth I, "an' it liketh you?"

So there is good evidence that Bott is wrong to say that this convention could not have been used by Porter. Adding an apostrophe is a copy-editing decision. It tells us very little about the age of the text. As I've already said, I think the proliferation of "an'" suggests that the poem is an extrapolation from the last line, but is not proof because the "an'" abbreviation of "and" was very common in ballad poetry by the 1900s. Porter could - conceivably - have read Laing Purves or some other popular poetry-book of the era along with ballads of the day and have conflated the two usages of "an'". It is the same word, after all. So there's no problem with the apostrophe. It's just a spelling choice in published form. As for the "ye", one could adopt the same explanation. If the text was transmitted verbally, it could be written down in many variant forms. The Porter-Thompson poem itself now exists with variant and added lines, as you know. Both Valiente and Thompson, after all, were claiming to have inherited oral tradition.

I'll repeat that I don't actually believe that Porter, or anyone else, wrote the poem before 1964. I'm just responding to the arguments that have been put forward. I think they are far from watertight. These were the points I attempted to make in the sentence that I added at the end of the summary of Bott's argument and in footnote, both of which you deleted. I can still see no good reason why this evidence should have been removed. Paul B 14:53, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

As I've already said, the an' abbreviation was well-established at the beginning of the 20th century. Well, yes - but by that stage, the use of "an" in the conditional sense was long OUT of circulation. The an' abbreviation was well-established, yes, but as a colloquialism, not as an archaism.

No. I have already pointed out that the an’ spelling was used for the archaism, which was (rightly) construed as an abbreviation. That was the whole point of including a reference to the 1870 edition of Chaucer in which the archaic an with the function of “if” is published with an apostrophe. There's even a footnote in the original edition, right next to the apostrophe, explaining its meaning as "if". Since you seemed to be preoccupied by the “all important apostrophe” in your earlier posts it seemed necessary to point this out. You wrote, "When "an" is used with the function of "if", as in Shakespeare, it is presented exactly as such, sans apostrophe." My reference shows that that statement is not accurate. Bott also thinks that the apostrophe is important as evidence of a mistake on the poet's part. Paul B 14:41, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

The fact of there being precedent for the colloquial "an'" in print doesn't explain why on earth someone trying to sound archaic would have used it, any more than they would have used "ain't" or "crikey"! The Chaucerian example you suggest is just another example of the conditional "an" by the way - "an it liketh".

Yes. I know the Chaucer use was an example of the conditional "an". That’s why I included it. I was showing that the same spelling (with apostrophe) was used for both usages in published texts.

I don’t need to explain the abbreviated an', I only need to show that it’s possible. The an’ spelling for the archaism was used from the late nineteenth century, and the an’ abbreviation for the ordinary usage of “and” was also commonplace. The author of the poem liked to use Olde Englysh language; she throws in other gratuitous “poetic” archaisms (such as the bizarre “enow” derived from Fitzgerald). There’s nothing implausible about the idea that an unscholarly writer who likes to add as many archaisms as she can might have conflated the two uses of an', given that, as I have already said, the Chaucer/Shakespeare usage is an abbreviation of "and", and that its abbreviated nature and its meaning as "if" were explained in annotated editions like Purves's. She may have thought that such abreviations were authentially archaic, or at least that they sounded so — not surprising of we are talking about a writer with a head full of late-19th and early-20th century poetry — Kipling, Fitzgerald, Purves' version of Chaucer etc. Paul B 14:41, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

You say "an'" was common in ballads - where does this information come from?

It comes from the fact that I've read a lot of ballad-poetry of the time. It was a popular genre. It also appears in song lyrics of the era and in dramatic monologues. All this is readily availible in published texts. Paul B 14:48, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

When you write of Porter using "this convention", you're actually conflating two seperate conventions. One is the use of a shortened "and" in the conditional sense - "an it liketh" - while the other is the shortening of "and" in the colloquial sense - salt an' vinegar. (Kipling was writing down the speech patterns of soldiers in the British Army!)

You have an interesting capacity to inform me of my own statements as though you are contradicting them! Yes, I wrote that the author may have "conflated the two usages of "an'"", having carefully pointed out that they were distinct conventions ("Of course, in this case [Kipling] it's intended to represent colloquial speech"). But they are not so distinct that they could not be conflated. Both legitimately represent abbreviated "and"s. Paul B 16:29, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

The point I'm driving at is that the author of the Thomson Rede clearly doesn't know the difference between the two. Valiente, on the other hand, had a very sharp eye for pseudo-archaisms.

That's why it's reasonably to say that the proliferation of an's throughout the poem suggests that it was an extapolation from the last line. But it is also important to point out the factual errors in Bott's own argument in order to be fair. Paul B 16:29, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Porter could - conceivably - have read Laing Purves or some other popular poetry-book of the era along with ballads of the day and have conflated the two usages of "an'". - I don't think that's plausible, because in order to have formulated "an it harm none" correctly in the first place, she'd have to have understood its conditional meaning. If you understand "an" without apostrophe as conditional, you're hardly likely to introduce a whole pile of contracted colloquial "and"s, are you? I can accept that she saw "an" used conditionally in the Valiente couplet and tried to emulate it, but I cannot accept that she used "an" as adroitly as Valiente would have done and then went on to conflate it with the colloquial shortening of "and", adding a host of "ye"s into the bargain. There are clearly two levels of competence here.

Well, if the "Wiccan Rede: A Historical Journey" website correctly reproduces early published versions of the couplet, it seems that it was published with the apostrophe and with "ye" well before Thompson, but I don't have acccess to the original published forms, so maybe the website has altered the spellings. Of course, the ye is a legitimate, if pointless, archaism for "you", not for "the" in these instances, something that it would be worth pointing out in the article.

You write 'If you understand "an" without apostrophe as conditional, you're hardly likely to introduce a whole pile of contracted colloquial "and"s, are you?' Well, yes you are if you are familiar with both the conditional form as in Purves and the colloquial form as in Kipling, both spelled the same, both common in published verse. You may think that that's the proper "poetic" way of writing. Paul B 16:29, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

To sum up:

1. The author of the Thomson Rede was evidently trying to sound archaic, as we see from the proliferation of 'ye's and formulations such as 'Elder be ye lady's tree'. The use of 'ye' for 'thee', as well as the general tone of the couplets, strongly suggest that the author does not have any command of genuinely archaic language. Doreen Valiente is known to have been extremely good at writing archaic English, and was also competent at detecting pseudo-archaisms, as when she challenged Gardner over his made-up pseudo-archaic Laws of the Craft.

As far as I know no-one is suggesting that Valiente wrote the poem. She doesn't even claim to have written the couplet. So I don't understand why her faux-archaism antenna is relevant. "Ye" already seems to appear in pre-Thompson versions. In any case, as Bott says himself, its a spelling convention. We are talking about a written text here. Paul B 16:29, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

2. The author of the Thomson Rede included a stylistically modern contraction of 'and' in many places. Though this was commonplace in print by the beginning of the 20th century, it was not archaic. "An'" when it appeared in print simnply represented the speech patterns of people who shortened their "and"s.

Yes, but it does not tell us that the poem was written after the 1960s. And an' (with apostrophe) also represented the archaism. Anyway, it's just a published version of a poem that's supposed to have been orally transmitted. There's lots or room for orthographic variation. Paul B 16:29, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

3. The only explanation for the presence of this incongruous modernism in a text which is striving to look archaic is a misunderstanding on the author's part. The author must have gotten the idea that it WAS archaic.

Yes, but that's only one explanation. Others might be that the publisher/editor shortened the ands for publication because it seemed more archaic that way, or the original poet felt that "an'" just sounded archaic. The evidence suggests that the latter possibility existed from around 1900 on. Paul B 16:29, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

4. Is there anything which the author could have misconstrued as a sanction for the use of the colloquial, modern "an'" as an archaism, especially in the context of witchcraft? Yes - the Valiente couplet.

Yes, that's possible, of course. Paul B 16:29, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

5. Since the same author could not plausibly have used a term appropriately in one sentence and then gone on to misconstrue it for 19 other sentences, the Valiente couplet MUST be the work of an earlier author.

No, it's not misconstrued in the other sentences. It is correctly construed in both cases. In the last line it is both a contraction of "and" and it means "if", just as Purves states in 1870. The contraction of other more commonplace usages of "and" is consistent with it, and with existing conventions at the turn of the century. The sources of the two contractions differ (unless you take the LLL example as source for the straight abbreviation), but they do not contradict eachother. Paul B 16:29, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

The reason for deleting the initial comment about "an't" was that it seemed to me to be arguing for a false literary precedent of "an'" as conditional, when the apostrophe stood for a missing vowel and not a missing "d". This could have given the impression that "an'" was the common archaic form of the conditional "an", which it was not.

As I've said before, the addition of an apostrophe in the archaic "an'" is just a publishing convention. It proves nothing. That apostrophe does stand for a missing "d" in these publications, just as it does in Loves Labour's Lost, in which case, BTW, there is a clear case of an Early Modern abbreviation of the normal use of "and". Paul B 16:29, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

The statement that the argument can be challenged by reference to the OED misses the main point, which is that the author of the Thomson Rede mixed up two sorts of abbreviation of 'and' willy-nilly. The point is not that the Shakespearian "an" is an abbreviation of "and", but that the "an"s of "an it please thee" and "four shillings an' sixpence, guv'nor" are completely different usages, seperated by centuries of history and muddled up by the Thomson Rede's author.

You have forgotten the LLL example. That's a clear abbreviation of the normal use of "and". So no, they are not completely different usages. Anyway, the sheer commonness of the Kiplingesque abbreviation is evidence that it might be in the mind of an early 20th century author. Paul B 16:29, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Nobody who was sufficiently well versed in archaisms to compose 'An it harm none, do what you will' would confuse the two, much less would they write 'ye' for 'the'. The only way to argue that the same person wrote 'An it harm none, do what you will' and 'Elder be ye lady's tree' is to maintain that the elegantly composed archaism of the Valiente line (which, let's not forget, appears in a mangled form in Thomson) is a happy accident, for which the author was temporarily gifted with superior powers of composition.

I'm not sure that it was "mangled" by Thompson, if the transcriptions on the "Wiccan Rede" website are correct. I've already answered the other points. I want to stress once again that I am not trying to prove that the poem predates Thompson, I just want to have the fullest and fairest discussion. That includes a summary of the good arguments for post-65 authorship, but also an acknowledgment that those arguments are not conclusive, and that Bott does in fact make a few erroneous assertions. Paul B 16:29, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Rede of the Wiccae Book

I have now obtained and read the Mathiesen/Theitic book on Thompson and Porter. The book's claim is that Porter probably wrote much - most - of the poem, which was later adapted and supplemented by Thompson. Anyway, I propose to add material relating to this and restore and supplement the critical notes relating to Bott that have been deleted. Paul B 00:40, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Added passage

I'm moving this here because I dont understand it:

Contrary to this, some argue that this interpretation is based upon the law of Thelema and while the wording of one may have inspired the other, the interpretation of the two do not necessarily coincide so. In particular, the injunction "An it harm none" is arguably redundant when it comes to matters of "true will", as knowledge of ones true will should be sufficient to result in ethical behaviour.

I don't understand:

1. Why being based on the law of Thelema "contradicts" other interpretations. 2. What is meant by "while the wording of one may have inspired the other, the interpretation of the two do not necessarily coincide so." 3. On what basis other than assertion is it claimed that "ones true will" necessarily will not involve harm to others, thus somehow making the "an it harm none" component redundant.

I assume this is a Crowleyite criticism of Wicca, but I think it needs some clarification. Paul B 01:55, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] an it harm none vs an harm ye none

I'm not going to get into a long long debate about the use of the apostrophe, unless I see a facsimile of the original article "Wiccan Pagan Potpourri" from Green Egg. However, someone at 24.222.134.200 keeps trying to change the wording of the end phrase. Now it may or not make much difference, that change. But the wording, as quoted by Nemed Cuculatii in Wiccan Pagan Potpourri TRANSCRIPT, is An it harm none not An harm ye none.--Vidkun 01:32, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, the original published form of the wording is from a report on Valiente's 1964 speech, not from the Green Egg magazine - which is not even the original published form of the long poem, so we can't be absolutist about the "correct" phrasing. Nevertheless, all published accounts that I know of agree with your version. Paul B 08:04, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

What is the first published version of the long form of the Rede of the Wiccae? I'll be mightily confused until I get my copy of Mathieson's and Theitic's book.--Vidkun 14:16, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

I'll add it here when I get the time. It's very similar to Porter's. I made a mistake above, since all versions are not identical. The reported Valiente version has "the Wiccan rede fulfill". Porter's version has "ye Wiccan rede fulfill". Paul B 16:31, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Earth Religion News version

Here's the ERN version. As you can see, there are many relatively minor differences. Intriguingly, the last line has "an ye harm none", but has "the" in the first half. So no early published version agrees with the anonymous editor's version, but every one of them has at least one "ye" in one of the places s/he added them, and all the places are "yeified" in one or other of the versions. Paul B 22:48, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

The Wiccan Rede

Bide the Wiccan Rede Laws ye must, in perfect love and perfect trust

Live and let live, fairly take and fairly give

Cast the circle thrice about to keep all evil spirits out.

To bind the spell everytime, let the spell be spoken in rhyme

Soft of eye and light of touch, speak little and listen much

Deosil go by waxing moon, chanting out the Wiccan rune

Widdershins go by waning moon, chanting out the baneful rune

When the Lady’s moon is new, kiss the hand to her times two

When the moon rides at her peak, then your heart’s desire seek

Heed the north wind’s mighty gale, lock the door and drop the sail

When the wind comes from the South, love will kiss thee on the mouth

When the moor wind blows from the West, departed spirits have no rest

When the wind blows from the East, expect the new and set the feast

Nine woods in the cauldron go, burn them quick and burn them slow

Elder be Ye Lady’s tree, burn it not or cursed you’ll be

When the wheel begins to turn, let the Beltane fires burn

When the wheel has turned a Yule, light the Log and the Horned One rules

Heed ye flower, bush and tree, by the Lady Blessed Be

Where the rippling waters go, cast a stone and truth you'll know

When ye have need, hearken not to others' greed

With a fool no season spend, or 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 blue star upon thy brow

True in love ever be, unless thy lover’s false to thee

Eight words the Wiccan Rede fulfill — an ye harm none, do what ye will