to þam wife cwæð god
þu bist under weres onwealde
and he gewielt þe

I am at my morning exercise. I’ve made a cup of coffee and am sitting up in bed with an extract of Aelfric’s Old English translation of part of the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden which I am rendering (!) into current dialogue.

Mitchell & Robinson have kindly provided alongside for comparison King James’s Authorised Version and a Latin text which I take to be Jerome’s dubious vulgar rendition. The Old English makes its point with greater fervour.

god said to the woman
you are under your man’s command
and he uses you

None of the mollycoddling flimflam from KJ’s boys ‘he shall rule over thee’.
Still less of Jerome’s ‘sub viri potestate eris et ipse dominabitur tui’, though I must admit dominabitur associated with sub viri potestate does evoke a certain kind of folksy imagery, sitting up in bed as I am illuminated by rosy-fingered Dawn’s early light.

Aelfric was a monk, Abbot of Eynsham, no less, and he really didnt want to make the Book of Genesis open to men of the common herd lest they imagine they were free to copulate, as did the patriarchs, with their sisters and daughters for the better increase of the better part of the population; nor indulge themselves with assorted concubines as well as a plethora of wives and a side order of nubile serving wenches. Nonetheless he does make a point.

Was there something about knowing which side his bread was buttered?