From some random googling it seems like "swie" could be "silence", but it doesn't seem to be quite that meaning. There may be some religious overtones .
I'm almost certain it's the imperative form of a verb, in the grammar of the time apparently "to swien", "to be silent" or "to shut up".
"Swie!" from "swien" looks kind of exactly like "Schweige!" from "zu Schweigen" in modern German. Must go back to the same root (closer to "swie" than "schweigen", I'd guess) in Proto-Germanic.
Here the text says "I swied", so it has to be a verb, but the meaning "be silent" makes sense in the passage.
Something to think about in this exercise is that the shortness of the passages adds difficulty.
Consider section 1200, where a verb with the root ner is used. It's given so much focus and contextual elaboration that you can easily tell what it means, even though the word is unfamiliar.
If you read longer passages of Middle English, this same phenomenon will occur with more words.
CRConrad|3 days ago
"Swie!" from "swien" looks kind of exactly like "Schweige!" from "zu Schweigen" in modern German. Must go back to the same root (closer to "swie" than "schweigen", I'd guess) in Proto-Germanic.
thaumasiotes|8 days ago
Here the text says "I swied", so it has to be a verb, but the meaning "be silent" makes sense in the passage.
Something to think about in this exercise is that the shortness of the passages adds difficulty.
Consider section 1200, where a verb with the root ner is used. It's given so much focus and contextual elaboration that you can easily tell what it means, even though the word is unfamiliar.
If you read longer passages of Middle English, this same phenomenon will occur with more words.
SilasX|8 days ago
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/schweigen