Oriental
Fable:
Flores and Blancheflour, The Seven Sages of Rome.
Flores and Blancheflour, The Seven Sages of Rome.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v01
The Chronicle.
Gregory's Dialogues.
Works at-
tributed to Alfred. His Literary Achievement . . . . 88
CHAPTER VII
FROM ALFRED TO THE CONQUEST
By JOHN S. WESTLAKE, M. A. , Trinity College.
The Chronicle. The Monastic Reform. Blickling Homilies.
The Works of Aelfric. Wulfstan. Byrhtferth. Lindisfarne,
Rushworth and West Saxon Glosses. Legends of the Holy Rood.
Legends of the East. Quasi-scientific works. The Ballads and
Poems in The Chronicle. Judith. The Battle of Maldon or
Byrhtnoth's Death. Menologium. Be Domes Daege . . .
Wulfatares. Legends The Baldon Of
108
108
CHAPTER VIII
THE NORMAN CONQUEST
By A. R. WALLER
Dunstan. The Coming Change. The Wisdom of the East. Lanfranc.
Anselm. Norman Gifts . . . . . . . . . .
149
## p. xiii (#17) ############################################
Contents
xiii
CHAPTER IX
LATIN CHRONICLERS FROM THE ELEVENTH TO THE
THIRTEENTH CENTURIES
By W. LEWIS JONES, M. A. , Professor of English Language and
Literature at the University College of North Wales.
PAGE
England and Normandy. Characteristics of the Chroniclers. The
Northumbrian School of English Medieval History. Simeon of
Durham. Florence of Worcester. Eadmer and Ordericus Vitalis.
William of Malmesbury. Gesta Stephani. Henry of Huntingdon.
Geoffrey of Monmouth. William of Newburgh. Benedict of
Peterborough. Richard Fitz-Neale. Roger of Loveden. Ralph
of Diceto. Richard of Devizes. Jocelin of Brakelond. Giraldus
Cambrensis. Walter Map. Matthew Paris. Minor Chroniclers.
156
CHAPTER X
ENGLISH SCHOLARS OF PARIS AND FRANCISCANS
OF OXFORD
LATIN LITERATURE OF ENGLAND FROM JOHN OF SALISBURY TO
RICHARD OF BURY
By J. E. SANDYS, Litt. D. , Fellow of St John's College and
Public Orator of the University of Cambridge.
The University of Paris. English Scholars of Paris. John of Salisbury.
Peter of Blois. Walter Map. Other Writers of Latin. Gervase.
Nigel Wireker. Jean de Hauteville. Alain de Lille. Geoffrey de
Vinsauf. Alexander Neckam. Joannes de Garlandia. Giraldus
Cambrensis. Michael Scot. Franciscans and Dominicans. Fran-
ciscans of Oxford. Alexander of Hales. Robert Grosseteste and the
Franciscans. Adam Marsh. Roger Bacon. Duns Scotus. William
of Ockham. Walter Burleigh. Scholars of Oxford. John Bacon-
thorpe. Thomas Bradwardine. Richard of Bury . . . . 183
CHAPTER XI
EARLY TRANSITION ENGLISH
By J. W. H. ATKINS, M. A. , Professor of English Language and
Literature at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth,
Fellow of St John's College.
The Proverbs of Alfred. Poema Morale. Literary Revolt of the
13th Century. Ormulum. Hortatory Verse and Prose. Genesis
and Exodus. The Bestiary. An Bispel. Sawles Warde. Hali
Meidenhad. Lives of the Saints. Ancren Riwle. The Virgin
Cult and Erotic Mysticism. The Luve Ron. Layamon's Brut.
The Owl and Nightingale . . . . . . . . . 217
## p. xiv (#18) #############################################
xiy
Contents
CHAPTER XII
THE ARTHURIAN LEGEND
By W. LEWIS JONES, M. A. , Professor of English Language and
Literature at the University College of North Wales, Bangor,
formerly Scholar of Queens' College. .
PAGE
Early Welsh Tradition. Nennius and Gildas. Early Welsh Poetry.
Kulhwch and Olwen. The Mabinogion. Geoffrey of Monmouth.
Caradoc of Llancarvan. The French Romances. Wace. Layamon.
Subsidiary Legends. Merlin, Gawain. Lancelot and Guinevere.
The Holy Grail. Tristram and Iseult. Celtic Literature . . .
243
CHAPTER XIII
METRICAL ROMANCES, 1200—1500
I
By W. P. KER, M. A. , Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford,
Professor of English Literature, University College, London.
French Influences. Benoit de Ste More and Chrétien de Troyes.
Translators' difficulties. History of the English Romances. Matter
and Form. The“ matter of France," " of Britain” and “of Rome. "
Sources and Subjects. Forms of Verse. Traditional Plots. Breton
Lays. Fairy Tales. Sir Gawayne and Sir Tristrem. The Tale
of Gamelyn and The Tale of Beryn. Relation of Romances to
Ballads . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
CHAPTER XIV
METRICAL ROMANCES, 1200-1500
II
By J. W. H. ATKINS.
The Carolingian Element. English Romances: Havelok, Horn, Guy
of Warwick, Beves of Hamtoun. The literature of Antiquity:
Troy, King Alisaunder, Richard Cour de Lion.
Oriental Fable:
Flores and Blancheflour, The Seven Sages of Rome. Celtic
Romances. The Gawain Cycle. Ipomedon, Amis and Amiloun,
Sir Cleges, Sir Isumbras, The Squire of Low Degree, William
of Palerne, etc. Anonymity of the work embodied in the Romances.
Qualities and Defects . . . . . . . . . .
301
## p. xv (#19) ##############################################
Contents
XV
CHAPTER XV
PEARL, CLEANNESS, PATIENCE AND SIR GAWAYNE
By I. GOLLANCZ, Litt. D. , Christ's College, Professor of English
Language and Literature, King's College, London, Secretary
of the British Academy.
PAGE
Sources and Metre of Pearl. Cleanness and Patience. Sir Gawayne
and the Grene Knight. Sources of Sir Gawayne. The Question
of Authorship. Hypothetical Biography of the Poet. Ralph Strode.
Huchoun of the Awle Ryale. Erkenwald, etc. . . . . .
320
CHAPTER XVI
LATER TRANSITION ENGLISI
I
LEGENDARIES AND CHRONICLERS
By CLARA L. THOMSON.
Robert of Gloucester. Thomas Bek. The South English Legendary.
Northern Homilies and Legends. The Northern Psalter. Cursor
Mundi. Robert Mannyng of Brunne's Handlyng Synne. Char-
acteristics of Mannyng's style. Mannyng's Debt to Wadington.
Mannyng's Chronicle. The Medytacyuns. William of Shoreham.
The Ayenbite of Inwyt. Adam Davy. Laurence Minot . .
335
CHAPTER XVII
LATER TRANSITION ENGLISH
II
SECULAR LYRICS; TALES; SOCIAL SATIRE*
By A. R. WALLER.
Middle English Lyrics. The Proverbs of Hendyng. The Deeds of
Hereward. The Land of Cokaygne. Dame Siriz. The Vox
and the Wolf. The Turnament of Totenham. The Tale of
Gamelyn. Gesta Romanorum, John de Bromyarde. The Child-
hood of Jesus. Political verses. Songs of the Soil. John Ball.
The Black Death . . . . . . . . . . .
000
* Further chapters on Fugitive Social Literature of the 14th and 15th centuries
will be found in Vol. II.
## p. xvi (#20) #############################################
Xvi
Contents
CHAPTER XVIII
THE PROSODY OF OLD AND MIDDLE ENGLISH
By GEORGE SAINTSBURY, M. A. , Merton College, Oxford, Professor
of Rhetoric and English Literature in the University of
Edinburgh.
Old English Verse. The Transition. Foreign Influence. The Allitera-
tive Revival · · · · ·
372
PAGL
CHAPTER XIX
CHANGES IN THE LANGUAGE TO THE DAYS OF CHAUCER
By HENRY BRADLEY, M. A. (Oxon. ).
Continuity of the English Language. "English" and "Saxon. ” Periods
of English. Changes in Grammar. Old English Grammar.
Changes in Declension. Conjugation in Middle English. Influence
of the Norman Conquest. Pronunciation and Spelling. Middle
English Spelling. Development of Sounds. Changes in Vocabulary.
Words adopted from French. Scandinavian Words in English.
Loss of Native Words. The Poetical Vocabulary. English Dialects
in the Fourteenth Century . . . . . . . . . 379
CHAPTER XX
THE ANGLO-FRENCH LAW LANGUAGE
By the late F. W. MAITLAND, LL. D. , Downing Professor of the
Laws of England.
(By permission of the Council of the Selden Society. )
Retention of French in the Courts. The Making of Legal Terms. . 407
.
.
.
Appendix to Chapter VII. By J. S. Westlake
Bibliographies . . . . . . .
Table of Dates . . . . . . .
Index. . . . . . . . . .
.
.
.
.
.
## p. 1 (#21) ###############################################
CHAPTER I
THE BEGINNINGS
By the time the English settlements in Britain had assumed
permanent form, little seems to have been left from the prior
Roman occupation to influence the language and literature of the
invaders. Their thought and speech, no less than their manners
and customs, were of direct Teutonic origin, though these were
afterwards, in some slight degree, modified by Celtic ideas, derived
from the receding tribes, and, later, and, in a greater measure, by
the Christian and Latin elements that resulted from the mission
of St Augustine. Danish inroads and Norman-French invasions
added fresh qualities to the national character and to its modes
of expression; but, in the main, English literature, as we know it,
arose from the spirit inherent in the viking makers of England
before they finally settled in this island.
Of the origins of Old English poetry we know nothing ; what
remains to us is chiefly the reflection of earlier days. The frag-
ments that we possess are not those of a literature in the making,
but of a school which had passed through its age of transition
from ruder elements. The days of apprenticeship were over;
the Englishman of the days of Beowulf and Widsith, The Ruin
and The Seafarer, knew what he wished to say, and said it,
without exhibiting any apparent trace of groping after things
dimly seen or apprehended. And from those days to our own,
in spite of periods of decadence, of apparent death, of great
superficial change, the chief constituents of English literature-
a reflective spirit, attachment to nature, a certain carelessness of
"art,” love of home and country and an ever present consciousness
that there are things worse than death-these have, in the main,
continued unaltered. “Death is better," says Wiglaf, in Beowulf,
"for every knight than ignominious life" and, though Claudio feels
death to be “a fearful thing,” the sentiment is only uttered to
enable Shakespeare to respond through the lips of Isabella, “And
shamed life a hateful. ”
It is, for instance, significant of much in the later history of the
E. L. I. CH. I.
## p. 2 (#22) ###############################################
The Beginnings
English people and of their literature, that the earliest poems
in Old English have to do with journeyings in a distant land
and with the life of the sea. Our forefathers had inhabited
maritime regions before they came to this island; the terror and
the majesty and the loneliness of the sea had already cast their
natural spells on "far-travelled" "seafarers” when English litera-
ture, as we know it, opens. The passionate joy of the struggle
between man and the forces of nature, between seamen and the
storms of the sea, finds its expression in the relation of the struggle
between Beowulf and the sea monster Grendel, and of the deeds of
Beowulf and his hard-fighting comrades. Though die Nordsee
ist eine Mordsee, love of the sea and of sea things and a sense
of the power of the sea are evident in every page of Beowulf.
The note is struck in the very opening of the poem, wherein
the passing of the Danish king Scyld Scefing, in a golden-bannered
ship, is told in lines that recall those in which a later poet related
the passing of an English king, whose barge was seen to
pass on and on, and go
From less to less and vanish into light.
The life of those whose task it was to wander along "the ocean-
paths" across "the ice-cold" northern sea, where feet were “fettered
by the frost,” is described in The Seafarer as a northern fisher of
to-day might describe it, could he "unlock the word-hoard”;
English and northern also is the spirit of the lines in the same
poem wherein is described the spell cast by the sea on its lovers :
For the harp he has no heart, nor for having of the rings,
Nor in woman is his weal; in the world he's no delight,
Nor in anything whatever save the tossing o'er the waves!
O for ever he has longing who is urged towards the seal.
These “wanderers” are of the same blood as the sea kings
and pirates of the old sagas, and their love of nature is love of her
wilder and more melancholy aspects. The rough woodland and
the stormy sky, “the scream of the gannet” and “the moan of the
sea-mew” find their mirror and echo in Old English literature
long before the more placid aspects of nature are noted, for it
is not to be forgotten that, as Jusserand says, the sea of our
forefathers was not a Mediterranean lake? The more placid
aspects have their turn later, when the conquerors of the shore
ers.
i Stopford Brooke's version.
? La mer des Anglo-Saxons n'est pas une Méditerranée lavant de ses flots bleus les
murs de marbre des villas : c'est la mer du Nord, aux lames grises, bordée de plages
stériles et de falaises de craie. --Histoire Littéraire du Peuple Anglais, 1, 60.
## p. 3 (#23) ###############################################
The Gleemen
3
played
to received the the ale
had penetrated inland and taken to more pastoral habits; when,
also, the leaven of Christianity had worked.
The first English men of letters of whom we have record-
smiths of song, as the poet-priests are called in The Ynglinga Saga
-were the gleemen or minstrels who played on the harp and
chanted heroic songs while the ale-mug or mead-cup was passed
round, and who received much reward in their calling. The teller of
the tale in Widsith is a typical minstrel of this kind, concerned
with the exercise of his art. The scop' composed his verses and
"published" them himself; most probably he was a great
plagiarist, a forerunner of later musicians whose "adoption” of
the labours of their predecessors is pardoned for the sake of the
improvements made on the original material. The music of
skirling bagpipes and of the regimental bands of later times
are in the direct line of succession from the chanting of tribal
lays by bards as warriors rushed to the fight; the “chanties”
of modern sailors stand in the place of the songs of sea-rovers
as they revelled in the wars of the elements, or rested inactive
on the lonely seas. And the gift of song was by no means confined
to professionals. Often the chieftain himself took up the harp
and sang, perhaps a little boastfully, of great deeds. At the other
end of the scale, we hear of the man whose duty it was to take a
turn at the stable-work of a monastery being sad at heart when
the harp was passed round and he had no music to give; and
the plough-lad, when he had drawn his first furrow, revealed both
his capacity for song and his nature-worship, with faint, if any,
traces of Christianity, in lines perhaps among the oldest our
language has to show :
Hal wes thu, folde, fira modor,
beo thu growende on godes faethme;
fodre gefylled firum to nytte.
Hale be thon Earth, Mother of men!
Fruitful be thou in the arms of the god.
tributed to Alfred. His Literary Achievement . . . . 88
CHAPTER VII
FROM ALFRED TO THE CONQUEST
By JOHN S. WESTLAKE, M. A. , Trinity College.
The Chronicle. The Monastic Reform. Blickling Homilies.
The Works of Aelfric. Wulfstan. Byrhtferth. Lindisfarne,
Rushworth and West Saxon Glosses. Legends of the Holy Rood.
Legends of the East. Quasi-scientific works. The Ballads and
Poems in The Chronicle. Judith. The Battle of Maldon or
Byrhtnoth's Death. Menologium. Be Domes Daege . . .
Wulfatares. Legends The Baldon Of
108
108
CHAPTER VIII
THE NORMAN CONQUEST
By A. R. WALLER
Dunstan. The Coming Change. The Wisdom of the East. Lanfranc.
Anselm. Norman Gifts . . . . . . . . . .
149
## p. xiii (#17) ############################################
Contents
xiii
CHAPTER IX
LATIN CHRONICLERS FROM THE ELEVENTH TO THE
THIRTEENTH CENTURIES
By W. LEWIS JONES, M. A. , Professor of English Language and
Literature at the University College of North Wales.
PAGE
England and Normandy. Characteristics of the Chroniclers. The
Northumbrian School of English Medieval History. Simeon of
Durham. Florence of Worcester. Eadmer and Ordericus Vitalis.
William of Malmesbury. Gesta Stephani. Henry of Huntingdon.
Geoffrey of Monmouth. William of Newburgh. Benedict of
Peterborough. Richard Fitz-Neale. Roger of Loveden. Ralph
of Diceto. Richard of Devizes. Jocelin of Brakelond. Giraldus
Cambrensis. Walter Map. Matthew Paris. Minor Chroniclers.
156
CHAPTER X
ENGLISH SCHOLARS OF PARIS AND FRANCISCANS
OF OXFORD
LATIN LITERATURE OF ENGLAND FROM JOHN OF SALISBURY TO
RICHARD OF BURY
By J. E. SANDYS, Litt. D. , Fellow of St John's College and
Public Orator of the University of Cambridge.
The University of Paris. English Scholars of Paris. John of Salisbury.
Peter of Blois. Walter Map. Other Writers of Latin. Gervase.
Nigel Wireker. Jean de Hauteville. Alain de Lille. Geoffrey de
Vinsauf. Alexander Neckam. Joannes de Garlandia. Giraldus
Cambrensis. Michael Scot. Franciscans and Dominicans. Fran-
ciscans of Oxford. Alexander of Hales. Robert Grosseteste and the
Franciscans. Adam Marsh. Roger Bacon. Duns Scotus. William
of Ockham. Walter Burleigh. Scholars of Oxford. John Bacon-
thorpe. Thomas Bradwardine. Richard of Bury . . . . 183
CHAPTER XI
EARLY TRANSITION ENGLISH
By J. W. H. ATKINS, M. A. , Professor of English Language and
Literature at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth,
Fellow of St John's College.
The Proverbs of Alfred. Poema Morale. Literary Revolt of the
13th Century. Ormulum. Hortatory Verse and Prose. Genesis
and Exodus. The Bestiary. An Bispel. Sawles Warde. Hali
Meidenhad. Lives of the Saints. Ancren Riwle. The Virgin
Cult and Erotic Mysticism. The Luve Ron. Layamon's Brut.
The Owl and Nightingale . . . . . . . . . 217
## p. xiv (#18) #############################################
xiy
Contents
CHAPTER XII
THE ARTHURIAN LEGEND
By W. LEWIS JONES, M. A. , Professor of English Language and
Literature at the University College of North Wales, Bangor,
formerly Scholar of Queens' College. .
PAGE
Early Welsh Tradition. Nennius and Gildas. Early Welsh Poetry.
Kulhwch and Olwen. The Mabinogion. Geoffrey of Monmouth.
Caradoc of Llancarvan. The French Romances. Wace. Layamon.
Subsidiary Legends. Merlin, Gawain. Lancelot and Guinevere.
The Holy Grail. Tristram and Iseult. Celtic Literature . . .
243
CHAPTER XIII
METRICAL ROMANCES, 1200—1500
I
By W. P. KER, M. A. , Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford,
Professor of English Literature, University College, London.
French Influences. Benoit de Ste More and Chrétien de Troyes.
Translators' difficulties. History of the English Romances. Matter
and Form. The“ matter of France," " of Britain” and “of Rome. "
Sources and Subjects. Forms of Verse. Traditional Plots. Breton
Lays. Fairy Tales. Sir Gawayne and Sir Tristrem. The Tale
of Gamelyn and The Tale of Beryn. Relation of Romances to
Ballads . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
CHAPTER XIV
METRICAL ROMANCES, 1200-1500
II
By J. W. H. ATKINS.
The Carolingian Element. English Romances: Havelok, Horn, Guy
of Warwick, Beves of Hamtoun. The literature of Antiquity:
Troy, King Alisaunder, Richard Cour de Lion.
Oriental Fable:
Flores and Blancheflour, The Seven Sages of Rome. Celtic
Romances. The Gawain Cycle. Ipomedon, Amis and Amiloun,
Sir Cleges, Sir Isumbras, The Squire of Low Degree, William
of Palerne, etc. Anonymity of the work embodied in the Romances.
Qualities and Defects . . . . . . . . . .
301
## p. xv (#19) ##############################################
Contents
XV
CHAPTER XV
PEARL, CLEANNESS, PATIENCE AND SIR GAWAYNE
By I. GOLLANCZ, Litt. D. , Christ's College, Professor of English
Language and Literature, King's College, London, Secretary
of the British Academy.
PAGE
Sources and Metre of Pearl. Cleanness and Patience. Sir Gawayne
and the Grene Knight. Sources of Sir Gawayne. The Question
of Authorship. Hypothetical Biography of the Poet. Ralph Strode.
Huchoun of the Awle Ryale. Erkenwald, etc. . . . . .
320
CHAPTER XVI
LATER TRANSITION ENGLISI
I
LEGENDARIES AND CHRONICLERS
By CLARA L. THOMSON.
Robert of Gloucester. Thomas Bek. The South English Legendary.
Northern Homilies and Legends. The Northern Psalter. Cursor
Mundi. Robert Mannyng of Brunne's Handlyng Synne. Char-
acteristics of Mannyng's style. Mannyng's Debt to Wadington.
Mannyng's Chronicle. The Medytacyuns. William of Shoreham.
The Ayenbite of Inwyt. Adam Davy. Laurence Minot . .
335
CHAPTER XVII
LATER TRANSITION ENGLISH
II
SECULAR LYRICS; TALES; SOCIAL SATIRE*
By A. R. WALLER.
Middle English Lyrics. The Proverbs of Hendyng. The Deeds of
Hereward. The Land of Cokaygne. Dame Siriz. The Vox
and the Wolf. The Turnament of Totenham. The Tale of
Gamelyn. Gesta Romanorum, John de Bromyarde. The Child-
hood of Jesus. Political verses. Songs of the Soil. John Ball.
The Black Death . . . . . . . . . . .
000
* Further chapters on Fugitive Social Literature of the 14th and 15th centuries
will be found in Vol. II.
## p. xvi (#20) #############################################
Xvi
Contents
CHAPTER XVIII
THE PROSODY OF OLD AND MIDDLE ENGLISH
By GEORGE SAINTSBURY, M. A. , Merton College, Oxford, Professor
of Rhetoric and English Literature in the University of
Edinburgh.
Old English Verse. The Transition. Foreign Influence. The Allitera-
tive Revival · · · · ·
372
PAGL
CHAPTER XIX
CHANGES IN THE LANGUAGE TO THE DAYS OF CHAUCER
By HENRY BRADLEY, M. A. (Oxon. ).
Continuity of the English Language. "English" and "Saxon. ” Periods
of English. Changes in Grammar. Old English Grammar.
Changes in Declension. Conjugation in Middle English. Influence
of the Norman Conquest. Pronunciation and Spelling. Middle
English Spelling. Development of Sounds. Changes in Vocabulary.
Words adopted from French. Scandinavian Words in English.
Loss of Native Words. The Poetical Vocabulary. English Dialects
in the Fourteenth Century . . . . . . . . . 379
CHAPTER XX
THE ANGLO-FRENCH LAW LANGUAGE
By the late F. W. MAITLAND, LL. D. , Downing Professor of the
Laws of England.
(By permission of the Council of the Selden Society. )
Retention of French in the Courts. The Making of Legal Terms. . 407
.
.
.
Appendix to Chapter VII. By J. S. Westlake
Bibliographies . . . . . . .
Table of Dates . . . . . . .
Index. . . . . . . . . .
.
.
.
.
.
## p. 1 (#21) ###############################################
CHAPTER I
THE BEGINNINGS
By the time the English settlements in Britain had assumed
permanent form, little seems to have been left from the prior
Roman occupation to influence the language and literature of the
invaders. Their thought and speech, no less than their manners
and customs, were of direct Teutonic origin, though these were
afterwards, in some slight degree, modified by Celtic ideas, derived
from the receding tribes, and, later, and, in a greater measure, by
the Christian and Latin elements that resulted from the mission
of St Augustine. Danish inroads and Norman-French invasions
added fresh qualities to the national character and to its modes
of expression; but, in the main, English literature, as we know it,
arose from the spirit inherent in the viking makers of England
before they finally settled in this island.
Of the origins of Old English poetry we know nothing ; what
remains to us is chiefly the reflection of earlier days. The frag-
ments that we possess are not those of a literature in the making,
but of a school which had passed through its age of transition
from ruder elements. The days of apprenticeship were over;
the Englishman of the days of Beowulf and Widsith, The Ruin
and The Seafarer, knew what he wished to say, and said it,
without exhibiting any apparent trace of groping after things
dimly seen or apprehended. And from those days to our own,
in spite of periods of decadence, of apparent death, of great
superficial change, the chief constituents of English literature-
a reflective spirit, attachment to nature, a certain carelessness of
"art,” love of home and country and an ever present consciousness
that there are things worse than death-these have, in the main,
continued unaltered. “Death is better," says Wiglaf, in Beowulf,
"for every knight than ignominious life" and, though Claudio feels
death to be “a fearful thing,” the sentiment is only uttered to
enable Shakespeare to respond through the lips of Isabella, “And
shamed life a hateful. ”
It is, for instance, significant of much in the later history of the
E. L. I. CH. I.
## p. 2 (#22) ###############################################
The Beginnings
English people and of their literature, that the earliest poems
in Old English have to do with journeyings in a distant land
and with the life of the sea. Our forefathers had inhabited
maritime regions before they came to this island; the terror and
the majesty and the loneliness of the sea had already cast their
natural spells on "far-travelled" "seafarers” when English litera-
ture, as we know it, opens. The passionate joy of the struggle
between man and the forces of nature, between seamen and the
storms of the sea, finds its expression in the relation of the struggle
between Beowulf and the sea monster Grendel, and of the deeds of
Beowulf and his hard-fighting comrades. Though die Nordsee
ist eine Mordsee, love of the sea and of sea things and a sense
of the power of the sea are evident in every page of Beowulf.
The note is struck in the very opening of the poem, wherein
the passing of the Danish king Scyld Scefing, in a golden-bannered
ship, is told in lines that recall those in which a later poet related
the passing of an English king, whose barge was seen to
pass on and on, and go
From less to less and vanish into light.
The life of those whose task it was to wander along "the ocean-
paths" across "the ice-cold" northern sea, where feet were “fettered
by the frost,” is described in The Seafarer as a northern fisher of
to-day might describe it, could he "unlock the word-hoard”;
English and northern also is the spirit of the lines in the same
poem wherein is described the spell cast by the sea on its lovers :
For the harp he has no heart, nor for having of the rings,
Nor in woman is his weal; in the world he's no delight,
Nor in anything whatever save the tossing o'er the waves!
O for ever he has longing who is urged towards the seal.
These “wanderers” are of the same blood as the sea kings
and pirates of the old sagas, and their love of nature is love of her
wilder and more melancholy aspects. The rough woodland and
the stormy sky, “the scream of the gannet” and “the moan of the
sea-mew” find their mirror and echo in Old English literature
long before the more placid aspects of nature are noted, for it
is not to be forgotten that, as Jusserand says, the sea of our
forefathers was not a Mediterranean lake? The more placid
aspects have their turn later, when the conquerors of the shore
ers.
i Stopford Brooke's version.
? La mer des Anglo-Saxons n'est pas une Méditerranée lavant de ses flots bleus les
murs de marbre des villas : c'est la mer du Nord, aux lames grises, bordée de plages
stériles et de falaises de craie. --Histoire Littéraire du Peuple Anglais, 1, 60.
## p. 3 (#23) ###############################################
The Gleemen
3
played
to received the the ale
had penetrated inland and taken to more pastoral habits; when,
also, the leaven of Christianity had worked.
The first English men of letters of whom we have record-
smiths of song, as the poet-priests are called in The Ynglinga Saga
-were the gleemen or minstrels who played on the harp and
chanted heroic songs while the ale-mug or mead-cup was passed
round, and who received much reward in their calling. The teller of
the tale in Widsith is a typical minstrel of this kind, concerned
with the exercise of his art. The scop' composed his verses and
"published" them himself; most probably he was a great
plagiarist, a forerunner of later musicians whose "adoption” of
the labours of their predecessors is pardoned for the sake of the
improvements made on the original material. The music of
skirling bagpipes and of the regimental bands of later times
are in the direct line of succession from the chanting of tribal
lays by bards as warriors rushed to the fight; the “chanties”
of modern sailors stand in the place of the songs of sea-rovers
as they revelled in the wars of the elements, or rested inactive
on the lonely seas. And the gift of song was by no means confined
to professionals. Often the chieftain himself took up the harp
and sang, perhaps a little boastfully, of great deeds. At the other
end of the scale, we hear of the man whose duty it was to take a
turn at the stable-work of a monastery being sad at heart when
the harp was passed round and he had no music to give; and
the plough-lad, when he had drawn his first furrow, revealed both
his capacity for song and his nature-worship, with faint, if any,
traces of Christianity, in lines perhaps among the oldest our
language has to show :
Hal wes thu, folde, fira modor,
beo thu growende on godes faethme;
fodre gefylled firum to nytte.
Hale be thon Earth, Mother of men!
Fruitful be thou in the arms of the god.
