Edited by Alastair Walker, Eric Hoekstra, Goffe Jensma, Wendy Vanselow, Willem Visser and Christoph Winter
[NOWELE Supplement Series 33] 2022
► pp. 361–374
It is suggested that the text of Day 10 of the Old Frisian Version of ‘The Fifteen Days before Doomsday’ be understood not as saying the world reverts to its state before the Creator made it, but when He made it. This entails a reinterpretation of the form er in the clause in question. In Day 14, the word dāthon ‘dead ones’ is problematic, because the medial consonantism -th- is not immediately reconcilable with the accepted interpretation as the substantivized adjective dād (we expect medial -d-). A solution is provided by the extinct modern East Frisian dialect of the island of Wangerooge (which is closely related to the Riostring dialect of the Old Frisian text). It attests the lexeme dooeTH (m.) ‘der Todte, die Leiche’. Assuming such a form existed already in Old Frisian solves the problem.
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