Sigurd and the Dragon – Part 1

The legend of Sigurd, as narrated by British-born American writer Olivia Coolidge, from her book Legends of the North, here in Simplified Gregg transcribed by yours truly.

Attachment: sigurd-and-the-dragon-part-1.pdf


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  1. Carlos, thanks for posting reading material.  You are prolific.  I can't really read this one, but with a lot of struggle and some guesswork, I think I can decode some of it.  Here's what I got before I decided I better get back to work on the Simplified manual:

    Sigurd's story is part of a cycle of hero sagas.  Before this story opens, Lokey, the cunning god of fire, thoughtlessly kills an otter sunning itself–but the otter is actually the son of Raidmare, the king of dwarfs.

    I think the outline I had the most trouble with was "the."  In the manual, the stroke starts out upward and curves to the right.  Some of yours start leftward, curve upward and then curve rightward, so they look like a longhand lower case c.  I thought it was a different outline–one that I haven't gotten to yet, or perhaps a brief form represented by the left comma.  At the Anglefishy site, the list of brief forms shows the over th written more the way you write it, especially in the brief form for thing/think.  This makes the point that, even among the experts, there are (of course) variations in handwriting.

    I interpreted the vertical line (actually slanted a little to the right) under the first a in Raidmare as a diacritical mark telling us how the first vowel is pronounced.  I'm not seeing that in the simplified manual but it seems like a nice touch.  I guess it could be a disjointed sh.  Unfamiliar proper nouns are tough to decode.

    1. You're welcome, and thank you for your kind words. The vowel diacritical marks were removed from the second edition of the Simplified manual (they were explained in the first edition of the same manual). You can see all the marks in this alphabet chart from the Anniversary manual.

      About the th, different writers write it slightly differently. I prefer it to write it this way to avoid confusion with t in fast writing; that same motion also helps when writing "then/than", and "them."

  2. Sigurd's story is part of a cycle of hero sagas.  Before this story opens, Lokey, the cunning god of fire, thoughtlessly kills an otter sunning itself–but the otter is actually the son of Raidmare, the king of dwarfs.

  3. Wonderful choice. I'm a storyteller myself. I tell traditional, literary, and personal stories.

    It's more challenging and more rewarding to read this than business notes. If we gloss over a phrase, it comes back to haunt us a few sentences later. Rereading until we're fluent rewards us with nuances and foreshadowing.

    Kids who listen to and tell stories become better readers. They think about sentences, paragraphs, concepts, and connections, instead of just sounding out the words. I think that's also true about adults.

    (A teacher friend helped immigrant parents tell stories in their own languages that their kids then translated orally. Most parents were afraid that speaking their own language would slow their kids' learning of English, but the opposite is true. The kids in the program learned to read and write English much faster than the other immigrant kids, even though the it didn't include any reading or writing.)

    Next time, maybe include a list of names and uncommon words, like they do in the texts. It might not make much difference. I often think of a character as C——B or C-l-s rather than the actual name.

    I also struggled with "the" for a bit, then got used to it. Proof that with penmanship, consistency is more important than perfection. Like Carlos, I often curve the T in IT, so might try something similar.

    I'm looking forward to the day when I can contribute stories like this. Ten chapters to go!

  4. I'm excited to start reading this! I've read several versions of the story, including Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris' English translation and Wagner's The Ring (and got to see three of the four parts in Germany with my family). Gotta love Project Gutenberg. It will be fun to read another version and get to practice Gregg at the same time.

  5. Made it through Part 1 today, and after a couple of readings to smooth out the outlines I couldn't immediately understand, I read it aloud to my spouse (who also loves the story).

    A couple of outlines I'm still confused about:

    After "The Dragonslayer" subheading, it reads "Regin (or at least that's how his name is spelled in other versions I've read) saw the baby Sigurd and his heart was wonderfully stirred, for he knew the dragon slayer was born after [AJS OTM] To me it looks like "ages autumn" I tried to make it "ages untold," but that didn't seem to fit. Maybe "ages of time?"

    Another one was during the horse bit: "They saw him reach the shallows, climb up and stand in the flowering meadow [to shake?] his silvery [OOAIS/SAIS/AIS.] Looks like "wise," or possibly "size," or maybe even "eyes"? None of which seem to fit if "to shake" is indeed correct earlier in the sentence.

    Looking forward to the next part! Awesome to get some more varied vocabulary and infinitely more interesting reading material than in the Simplified Manual.

  6. Ah, "sides"! Thanks, Carlos. I had a similar moment with "[shall rise] to greet you." I kept thinking "short rise"? Ship rise? Shipwrights? (Norse saga, after all) Short rights? Then in the middle of something else it occurred to me that SH is also used for "shall."

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