REFERENCE LIST
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An often cited poem, it was long believed by many Dutch people to be the only text remaining of Old Dutch. The complete text, a probatio pennae or “scribble” by a monk to try out his pen, is usually transcribed as Hebban olla uogala nestas hagunnan hinase hic enda thu uuat unbidan uue nu. This is a word-for-word translation of the Latin sentence written directly above it: Abent omnes uolucres nidos inceptos nisi ego et tu quid expectamus nu(nc). It is roughly translated as: “Have all birds begun nests, except me and you – what are we waiting for?” (Modern Dutch: Zijn alle vogels nesten begonnen, behalve ik en jij – waarop wachten we nu?)“Hebban olla vogala”, sometimes spelled “hebban olla uogala”, are the first three words of an 11th-century text fragment written in Old Dutch. The fragment was discovered in 1932 on the flyleaf of a manuscript that was probably made in the abbey of Rochester, Kent and is kept in Oxford. It is usually considered to represent a West Flemish variant of Old Low Franconian.