I understand that words such as mine and thine are used whenever the following word starts with a vowel or an 'H'. However, if I have this sentence... "Only mine healeth heart goes whither thine heart leads." ... and I omit the second 'heart', should I still switch to 'thy', or could it remain 'thine' since it's still referring to her 'heart'? "Only mine healeth heart goes whither thine leads." or "Only mine healeth heart goes whither thy leads."
I'm not sure what you're trying to say. "Healeth" is an inflected verb. He healeth, she healeth, it healeth. Did you mean "healing"? Or "healthy"? And what do you mean by "it's still referring to her 'heart'"? Aren't there two hearts involved here? Leaving that aside, @Sack-a-Doo! is right. "Mine/thine" for both, with or without the noun.
I know this isn't helpful, on subject, or even wanted in this thread, but all i can think when i hear Arcaic English is how grateful i am we don't talk like that anymore.
I missed the correct conjugation for the second verb, though. Were we to truly pull out all the stops and make this as correct as correct can be: "Only mine healed heart goeth whither thine [heart] leadeth." May as well, aye? You've gone to the trouble of using whither correctly and making use of archaic 2nd person singular pronouns....
Oooh!! Oooh! In that case, have the second syllable of "healed" written to indicate it's pronounced, like this: "Only mine healéd heart goeth whither thine heart leads." That'll keep the rhythm going. Bear in mind, however, that by the 1600s or 1700s it seems to be totally arbitrary whether one used mine and thine before words beginning with h (my source for this is the Responsive Psalter we use at church). But if you go with those possessive pronouns, you have to drop the h when reading. So it'd be "Only mine 'ealéd heart goeth whither thine 'eart leads." So if you just want to use my and thy, go ahead. Or my and thine. I rather like that. Go for the art of it. So to speak. EDIT: @Wreybies is right. Let's go whole hog. Or 'ole 'og: "Only mine healéd heart goeth whither thine heart leadeth." Which doesn't sound half so poetical! Unless, dear OP, it's prose you want?
Heh. I'm thinking I might do better to post my poems and you guys help me fix them or something, because they're likely completely upside down... I researched some archaic english when I wrote them some three years ago, but I had trouble finding good information on it. Most of what I found was some quick-and-dirty-articles sort of thing. I'm now attempting to polish the poems, and apparently I need to know quite some more about old english... Does anyone know a good place to learn more about it? I worry that it wouldn't be very readable... Alas, she might not understand me. It might fit one of my poems though, in which the speaker (well, me) is a pirate.
Taking another look at this... What I'm not clear on is what you intend 'healeth' to mean. I'm guessing either 'healed' or 'healing' which each has its own connotations. It would be better in this case to use whichever of 'healed' or 'healing' you actually mean.
This works too, though I must point out that both leadeth and doth lead are present tense. In biblical texts of the King James variety, you will find the two syntactic constructions perfectly interchangeable and being chosen, one over the other, more for sake of rhythm and meter than anything else.
I'm currently overhauling one of my poems. You have all been a great help. I had some severe misconceptions (namely that -eth was a replacement for -ed ), but I've been doing some further reading as well, and I'm fixing all that. Meanwhile thanks to everyone. By the way, me likest this translator: http://lingojam.com/EnglishtoShakespearean
That translator makes no claims to be highly accurate, and good thing too, because it's really bad. I flicked through a couple of random sentences and it would conjugate infinitives, mistake nouns for verbs, conjugate more than one verb per subject, get pronoun cases wrong... I'm no expert, but those are the things that stood out to me instantly. Thou shouldst spend, perchance, a little time with thy nose in books which regard this subject. Surely will it yield results more authentic.
They did to me too. But I like the comedic value of some translations, such as clock -> horologe and mushroom -> mushrump.
