Aethelflaed’s Horse
Now the thing about Opus Anglicanum is that it’s lots of very small stitches, so you maybe don’t see so much of Aethelflaed, but apart from occasional periods of Life getting in the way, she is making progress.
I’ve started on her horse. It’s going to be a grey – what you see of it, what with her riding dress and all! – so with a wave of my artistic licence, shadows and details are going blue.
I have time to wonder what she’d call her horse – all the names I can come up with tend towards the Norman French (Blanchemain, Blanchefleur), and that’s a good couple of centuries too early. So I’m looking for something Brythonnic, or Welsh (although the Mercians weren’t on reliably good terms with the Welsh, so maybe not..). Welsh would suggest something with “gwyn” in (for “white). Moving to Old English, “hwita” is “white”, but “aedre” is “stream”, and then suddenly you have a name starting with the same syllable as the rider’s. And that is the sort of thing you find in retellings of myths as a way to bring the two close together in the mind.
Thoughts, anyone?
The “Aeth” part of her name means Noble, the whole thing being Noble Strength, which sounds a good horse name, too! (Wikipedia tells me this.) Apparently the name Audrey is derived from her name. But I suppose they can’t both be Audrey. Aedre sounds good. (The spell-checker just tried to ‘correct’ that to Audrey, so it must be on the right track.) Have fun choosing!
Sue Jones and you have done a lot of research and thinking about a suitable name for the horse. I have no idea, but think a name with connections to the horses colour would be appropriate…
Alliteration is a good way to go for anything Anglo-Saxon (as in alliterative long-line verse) but you could also go with something like a two-word descriptive expression (a kenning) where two nouns are bolted together to create a third that means something different like swan-raed (swan’s road – the sea). There are loads of Anglo Saxon vocab sites out there so you could play with meanings until you find something that sounds right e.g. queen bearer, noble white, stream strider etc.
I don’t know enough about about the languages and traditions to weigh in but reading your thoughts and the comments was extremely interesting – I’m going to enjoy hearing what you do choose and the story behind it.