From the Old English poem, Fortunes of Mortals (translated Robert E. Bjork)
Sum sceal on beore þurh byreles hond
meodugal mæcga; þonne he gemet ne con
gemearcian his muþe mode sine,
ac sceal ful earmlice ealdre linnan,
dreogan dryhtenbealo dreamum biscyred,
ond hine to sylfcwale secgas nemnað,
mænað mid muþe meodugales gedrinc. (51-57)One through beer from the cupbearer’s hand will
become a mead-mad man; then he will know no measure,
will not give boundary to his mouth with his mind,but he must very wretchedly yield up his life,endure great misfortune bereft of joys,and people will say he killed himself, well decrythe drinking of the mead-mad man with their mouths
Meodugal – here alliteratively rendered mead-mad – is a compound of mead (meodu) and an adjective (gal) defined with the Latin equivalent luxuriosus (immoderate, wanton, self-indulgent). The root of that adjective is the same that yields geil (lit. horny) in modern german, and I can’t help wanting break the alliteration in favor of the anachronistic ‘mead-horny’ – on parallel with the similar split in sense of French-derived ‘besotted’ (‘madly impassioned for’ and ‘drunk’)
It’s a shame Malcolm Lowry never worked this passage into Under the Volvano as fortune of the mezcal-mad man
Extracts 