King Alfred and the Translator’s Voice in the Old English Prose Psalms

The Old English Psalms stand out as being the first translation of this text into the vernacular. The prose rendering of the first fifty psalms, known as the Prose Psalms (PP), is generally accepted as having been produced in late ninth-century Wessex, thus linking the work to King Alfred and his cultural programme. If seen through the framework of Descriptive Translation Studies, and especially Theo Hermans’ concept of ‘translator’s voice’, Alfred’s approach in the production of the PP assumes interesting and hitherto unexplored traits. Focussing on the so-called ‘warfare psalms’, i.e., those psalms that plead for God’s help in military matters, I shall contend that the translator’s voice in the PP resulted in a functional transfer; the addition to the typically liturgical and didactic function of the psalms of a more intimate, ‘psychological’ dimension, consistent with Asser’s account of the king’s use of this text as a tool of private devotion, transformed these renderings into historically grounded prayers to be used by both the king and all his people to call for God’s protection against the Danish enemy.