Hwitgeard dan repost
Also, as some people have previously asked me about the word Wassail;
Old English had two verbs for 'to be', these were wesan (Dutch wezen, Frisian wêze, Icelandic/Faroese/Swedish vera, Danish/Norwegian være) and of course bēon (German still uses its cognate forms bin and bist). Much like the word 'to go', OE gān, which has taken the past tense 'went' from 'wend', OE wendan, modern English 'be' is a suppletive verb. Thus it has merged the infinitive of bēon (along with the past participle been from OE gebēon) with the regular forms from wesan; am, art, is and are (from Old Norse eru > earon, replacing the earlier sind), was, wert and were.
The imperative form is wes, equivalent to 'be!', so it seems that the phrase 'wassail' comes from Anglo-Saxon wes hǣl, 'be healthy!' One can also add pronouns; wes þū hāl 'be thou hale' or plural wesað gē hāle, 'be ye hale' (both of which are attested in Old English). However there is a problem...
Most spellings of hǣl were hāl, which became northern English 'hale' and southern 'whole' (with an excrescent W for disambiguation with 'hole'), but all are related to words like 'health', 'heal' and even 'holy' and 'hallow'. While it is possible that the phrase descends from dialects using wes hǣl, it is equally likely that the same phrase in Old Norse, using the more familiar vowel sounds in ves heill (attested 1275), replaced earlier Old English forms.
Old English had two verbs for 'to be', these were wesan (Dutch wezen, Frisian wêze, Icelandic/Faroese/Swedish vera, Danish/Norwegian være) and of course bēon (German still uses its cognate forms bin and bist). Much like the word 'to go', OE gān, which has taken the past tense 'went' from 'wend', OE wendan, modern English 'be' is a suppletive verb. Thus it has merged the infinitive of bēon (along with the past participle been from OE gebēon) with the regular forms from wesan; am, art, is and are (from Old Norse eru > earon, replacing the earlier sind), was, wert and were.
The imperative form is wes, equivalent to 'be!', so it seems that the phrase 'wassail' comes from Anglo-Saxon wes hǣl, 'be healthy!' One can also add pronouns; wes þū hāl 'be thou hale' or plural wesað gē hāle, 'be ye hale' (both of which are attested in Old English). However there is a problem...
Most spellings of hǣl were hāl, which became northern English 'hale' and southern 'whole' (with an excrescent W for disambiguation with 'hole'), but all are related to words like 'health', 'heal' and even 'holy' and 'hallow'. While it is possible that the phrase descends from dialects using wes hǣl, it is equally likely that the same phrase in Old Norse, using the more familiar vowel sounds in ves heill (attested 1275), replaced earlier Old English forms.