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I am trying very hard to find an English (or if not French) translation of the Carolingian poem "De pugna avium" from Theodulf of Orleans. I found a Latin version in the Bibliotheca Augustana.

However, it is very difficult to find a full rendition in English (or French). Where could such a version be found?

Edit: As Tsundoku pointed out, a perhaps more citable source for the Latin version can be found in the Monumenta Germaniae historica. Poetarum Latinorum Medii Aevi (on Archive.org), which the
Bibliotheca Augustana used as a source.

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  • Hi. When I click the link to the Latin text, I get a message saying "Access forbidden". Is the poem also available elsewhere?
    – Tsundoku
    Commented Jul 24, 2021 at 12:15
  • Yeah, I don't get it. I now put the link explicitly and if you copy it into your browser bar, you will be able to get there. But not if you click on it for some reason. Weird.
    – Ben
    Commented Jul 24, 2021 at 12:32
  • Curiously, when I copy the URL into the browser bar in Firefox or SeaMonkey, I still get blocked, but not when I do that in Opera or Otter Browser...
    – Tsundoku
    Commented Jul 24, 2021 at 12:36
  • The source used by the Bibliotheca Augustana is Monumenta Germaniae historica. Poetarum Latinorum Medii Aevi. If you can figure out the right page number, you can add that to your question.
    – Tsundoku
    Commented Jul 24, 2021 at 12:42
  • I found the Latin text on pages 567-569.
    – Tsundoku
    Commented Jul 24, 2021 at 13:03

1 Answer 1

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There is an English translation entitled The Battle of the Birds in the transcript of this podcast. [Note: this link is now dead, but the full translation is included in the book Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance by Peter Godman.] The translated section starts:

There is a place at the very edge of the region around
Toulouse and Cahors: both districts end at this place.

This corresponds to the Latin lines:

Nempe Tolosani locus est rurisque Caturci
Extimus, hoc finit pagus uterque loco,

which are the seventh and eight lines of the poem, so it's not quite a "full rendition", but it's fairly close.

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  • Your link doesn't work.
    – Charo
    Commented Dec 10, 2023 at 9:01
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    @Charo: It did when I wrote the answer. You can find the complete translation by Googling "there is a place at the very edge of the region around Toulouse and Cahors." I suspect it's an unauthorized online copy, so I'm not going to link to it; the book it's in is entitled Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance by Peter Godman.
    – Peter Shor
    Commented Dec 10, 2023 at 12:46

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