The Hailene: Difference between revisions
Created page with "{{Song |title=The Hailene |season=2 |composer=Lorne Balfe }} '''The Hailene''' is a song from the Season 2 soundtrack of ''The Wheel of Time'' television series. == Lyrics == === Verse 1 === ==== Old Tongue ==== koudam gaen miere sei'wabde bantye syatshi ==== Official English ==== To the West Across the Sea Avert your eyes (from) The Crystal Throne ==== Literal Translation ==== west across (the) sea eyes disconnect (from) (the) c..." |
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Revision as of 02:08, 18 March 2026
The Hailene is a song from the Season 2 soundtrack of The Wheel of Time television series.
Lyrics
Verse 1
Old Tongue
Official English
To the West
Across the Sea
Avert your eyes (from)
The Crystal Throne
Literal Translation
west
across (the) sea
eyes disconnect (from)
(the) crystal throne
Notes
Wabde seems derived from wabunen (connection), and a likely verb form wabu (connect), with a negating -de suffix, hence "disconnect". In this sense, the connection being described is the connection made by looking directly at something, which in English is rendered more idiomatically as "avert your eyes" or "avert your gaze".
Banta is the word for chair. Here, we get "throne" through the -ye suffix, bantye. This is one of the quintessential examples which helps us digest the meaning Naomi Joy Todd seems to have intended for this suffix, a generalization of how numbers in Old Tongue take the -yat suffix for material quantification, and the -ye suffix for immaterial quantification. A throne is obviously often a literal chair, which one calls "the throne". But it is also a metonym for the concept of the ruler, ruling government, and the abstract hierarchy. This points to the -ye suffix as a metonymy indicator, pointing the word away from its original material meaning and towards a broader and more conceptual one.
Verse 2
Old Tongue
sei'wabde
bantye syatshi
Official English
Hear Damane
And Sul'dam
Avert your eyes (from)
The Crystal Throne
Literal Translation
damane (plural)
sul'dam (plural)
eyes disconnect (from)
(the) crystal throne
Notes
We see the plural of damane (leashed) is damanen. And we see the plural of sul'dam is sulen'dam, which establishes an interesting method for pluralizing compound words: sul'dam literally means "hold leash", or implicitly, "leash holder". It is the "holder" part that gets the plural form (which is sensible since the implication is several sul'dam, not a single holder of many leashed), not merely the ending of the whole word. So even though these words form a compound, the compound still retains some internal structure grammatically. One would expect other compounds in Old Tongue may lose this internal structure over time, and eventually the plural would simply append to the word.
Verse 3
Old Tongue
sei'wabde
bantye syatshi
Official English
To the West
A Golden Hawk
Avert your eyes (from)
The Crystal Throne
Literal Translation
to (the) west
the golden hawk
eyes disconnect (from)
(the) crystal throne
Notes
No additional notes for this section.