” On every side fell the heroes; a kingman of
Byrhtnoth
was
wounded, and, at last, the brave earl himself was slain by a poisoned
spear.
wounded, and, at last, the brave earl himself was slain by a poisoned
spear.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v01
A.
IV.
• Oott. Tib. B. v.
: 0. 0. C. C. 8. 18.
in bis Con Pecially intearly appear
## p. 136 (#156) ############################################
136 From Alfred to the Conquest
stating the various ills for which each plant is a remedy. It
appears in four MSS, the one printed by Cockayne dating
from the first half of the eleventh century. Following this
is an English version of the Medicina de quadrupedibus of
Sextus Placidus, about whom nothing is known, which describes
the various kinds of animals and the use of their bodies in
medicine.
Even more interesting is the leech-book in Cockayne's second
volume? The author was evidently acquainted with the Greek
and Latin authorities on medicine, for the work is full of their
prescriptions, and Helias, patriarch of Jerusalem, is mentioned as
having sent such prescriptions to king Alfred.
Lastly, Cockayne printed in his third volume two collections
of miscellaneous recipes, and a number of prognostications, inter-
pretations of dreams and a horologium. The first collection is
extremely interesting on account of the heathen nature of many
of the prescriptions, which require for their efficacy the repetition
of charms. Some of these are mere gibberish, in which, however,
fragments of Greek, Latin and Hebrew may be traced; others,
such as the celebrated charm against the stitch, show close con-
nection with Scandinavian mythology; while in some, such as the
charm to bring home straying cattle, there is a curious mingling
of Christian nomenclature and heathen superstition. All these
works are deeply tinged with poetic feeling; and the desire to
propitiate the powers that distribute storm and sunshine is visible
throughout. The date of these compositions is not known, but
most of the manuscripts belong to the eleventh century.
From the foregoing survey of English prose literature during
the eleventh century, it is clear that the language had attained
considerable development as a literary medium. In the hands of
Aelfric its vocabulary became less concrete, its constructions
more logical, and, though it was still seen to best advantage in
simple narrative, it was moulded by him with fair success to
philosophic requirements. But, in the years that followed the
Norman conquest, the development of English prose met with a
great check, and four hundred years elapsed before the vernacular
was again employed with the grace and fluency of Aelfric.
The decline of Old English poetry cannot be so directly
attributed to the Norman conquest. During the course of the
tenth and eleventh centuries the classical rhetorical metre bad
i Cott. Vitell. O. m.
· Printed from MS Reg. 12 D. XVI.
* M8 Harl. 685 and M8 Harl. 6258. • Chiefly from MS Oott. Tib. A. II.
## p. 137 (#157) ############################################
The Ballads and Poems in the Chronicle 137
already begun to deteriorate, and was being gradually replaced
by the sung metre of the popular ballad. For the whole of our
period we have only two great poems, the fragment of Judith
in the Beowulf MS and the East Anglian poem of Byrhtnoth’s
death at Maldon. Both poems deal with the struggle against the
same foe and both are in the alliterative rhetorical metre. Judith
contains a fair number of lines which are undoubtedly clear types
of sung verse, such as is found in the thirteenth century in
Layamon's Brut. The Battle of Maldon also contains two much
alike'. The adoption of this metre, which, although ancient, here
exhibits what are practically its first known traces in Old English
literature, is carried to much greater lengths in the poems em-
bedded in the Chronicle; and some observations upon this new
metre, called the “sung" or four-beat verse, as opposed to the
declamatory or two-beat metre of the older poems, will be found
in an appendix at the end of the volume.
The first poem in the Chronicle occurs under the year 937, and
celebrates the glorious victory won by Aethelstan at Brunanburh.
It is a markedly patriotic poem and shows deep feeling; its
brilliant lyrical power, and the national enthusiasm evident
throughout, have made it familiar, in one form or another, to
all lovers of English verse. Great care was taken with the metre,
which is the ancient rhetorical line.
Under the year 942 another poem in alliterative rhetorical
metre occurs. It consists only of a few lines, and its subject is
the liberation of the five boroughs, Leicester, Lincoln, Nottingham,
Stamford and Derby, “which were formerly Danish, constrained
by need in the captive bonds of the heathen,” by Edmund, son
of Edward the Elder. It has little poetic value; but it is dis
tinguished by the same intense patriotism as the verses on the
battle of Brunanburh.
The first poem in sung verse contained in the Chronicle is that
for 959, on the accession of king Edgar. It contains forty-nine half
lines, making twenty-four and a half full lines, connected, of which
only about eight show alliteration. The lines are connected in the
earlier form of rimeless rhythm, not strictly alliterative, though
* But the reader must be cautioned against assuming that every rimed verse was
also sung verse. The shorter types of rimed verse in such poems as Judith and The
Battle of Maldon were almost certainly not. The only sure oriteria are (1) conformity
to the metrical schemes given in the Appendix, (2) a tendency to neglect the rhetorio
stress and turn the two-beat rhythm into a four-beat, as shown by the riming use of
syllables pot carrying the full stress. Examples are: Judith, l. 231, (écgum geoósto)
slógon éornostè; Maldon, 1. 309, Býrhtwold máþetode bórd bắfēnode.
## p. 138 (#158) ############################################
138
From
Alfred to the Conquest
assonance is sometimes found. Metrically, it is our best preserved
example. The theme is the prosperity of Edgar; how his wise
rule was honoured far and wide, how he established peace in the
land and how he was rewarded by God with the willing submission
of kings and earls. Of one fault, however, says the chronicler,
he was too often guilty, namely that he loved foreign ways and
enticed outlanders into his dominions. The poem ends with a
prayer that God may be more mindful of the king's virtues than of
his evil deeds, and that they may shield his soul from harm on its
long journey hence.
The delight of the English in the peaceful rule of Edgar is
still further shown by a poem in the old rhetorical metre which
is variously given in the different recensions of the Chronicle
under the years 972, 973 and 974, and relates the coronation of
Edgar. The Peterborough chronicle has some lines which have
been written as verse, but scansion seems to raise insurmount-
able difficulties. It can only be scanned on the assumption
that we have an attempt to combine two stress lines with four-
stress rhythm, or an attempt to put a ballad into the form of the
“higher” poetry. They tell how kings came from afar to do
homage to Edgar, and how there was no fleet so daring as to
threaten his dominions, or host so strong as to ravage the land
while he ruled over it.
Another interesting ballad poem, on the troubles caused by
Aelfhere and other rebels in the reign of Edgar's son Edward,
is found in the MS known as Cott. Tib. B. IV. It is of 19 half
lines or 9} full lines. The linking system seems to be mostly
alliteration, but rime and assonance show themselves most clearly
where alliteration becomes absent or weak, as in
Godes wibersăecan
Godes lage brãecon
and
mynstra tostaencton,
and
munecas todraefdon.
The verse is sung ballad-verse, and the alliteration what would
be called irregular in rhetorical verse. It is uncertain whether
what seems an opening verse really belongs to the song.
The murder of Edward son of Edgar, at Corfesgeat, is
related in a peculiarly distinctive poem, which is quite clearly in
sung verse, and shows traces of strophic arrangement. Some lines,
possibly, show the earliest English seven-beat verse; some lines
have, obviously, been lengthened, and the last six printed as verse
do not scan as such, being, possibly, only rhythmic prose added
## p. 139 (#159) ############################################
The Ballads and Poems in the Chronicle 139
afterwards. They are exactly like the irregular lines on Edgar's
death. Probably the chronicler took a popular ballad or ballads,
broke it up, and attempted to destroy its sing-song character by
the addition of end verses. This, and the strophic character of the
original or originals, would account for its metrical variety and
uncertainty. In several places we meet with half line tags, gene-
rally trimetric, once certainly in full tetrameter. The poem de-
clares that no worse deed than the murder of Edward had ever
been committed among the English since the invasion of Britain ;
men murdered him, but God glorified him; and he who was before
an earthly king is now, after death, a heavenly saint. His earthly
kinsmen would not avenge him, but his heavenly Father has
avenged him amply, and they who would not bow to him living
now bend humbly on their knees to his dead bones. Thus, we may
perceive that men's plans are as naught before God's. The words,
“Men murdered him, but God glorified him,” are alliterative, and
seem like a refrain ; and the whole poem is, metrically, one of the
most interesting of the series.
There is a long interval before the next verses, which tell of
the siege of Canterbury, and the capture of archbishop Aelfhēah
(Alphege) in 1011. They consist of twelve half lines of sung verse,
and are, evidently, a quotation from some ballad commemorating
these disasters. They lament the imprisonment of him who was
erstwhile head of Christendom and England, and the misery that
men might now behold in the unhappy city whence first came
the joys of Christianity. There are some difficulties in scansion,
and the variant readings in certain MSS', though they can be
restored to something like proper metrical harmony, show what
mishandling these songs underwent when written down by the
scribes.
The metre of the next poem is much better preserved. It is
of the same Layamon sung verse type, but shows a regular
union of each two half lines by rime and assonance. Where this
fails, we can at once suspect that the scribe has tampered with the
original version. Some assonances can only be south-eastern. Its
subject is the capture and cruel fate of the aetheling Alfred, and it
shows a strong spirit of partisanship against Godwin. This is led up
to by the prose account telling how Alfred came to Winchester
to see his mother, but was hindered and captured by Godwin.
The poem relates how Godwin scattered Alfred's followers, killing
some and imprisoning others, and how the aetheling was led
* Cott. Tib. B. IV, and Bodl. Laud. 686.
## p. 140 (#160) ############################################
140
From
Alfred to the Conquest
bound to Ely, blinded aboard ship and given over to the monks.
It gives us the important architectural statement (since the old
minster long has perished) that he was buried at the west end
in the south porch “close to the steeple. ” The story is told in
20 couplets of sung half lines (40 half lines). The few lines that
do not rime can easily be restored'.
Many of the features of this poem are paralleled in another on
a like theme, the arrival of Edward Aetheling, son of Edmund
Ironside, in England in 1057, his illness and his death, without
seeing his kinsman the king. The story is that of the death of the
last of the kingly line. The poem is in sung verse, the half lines
being mainly arranged in pairs of one short and one fuller half
line, a combination which is the great feature of this poem, whose
strophic connection depends absolutely neither on rime or asso-
nance, but rather on rhythm. The poem is in four uneven tirades.
The first two are ended by a single half line as a tag (no. 1, of 3 full
lines + tag; no. 2, of 5 full lines + half line tag). The last two
tirades (no. 3, of 3 full lines; no. 4, of 4 full lines) are without half
line tags. The tags may here have been lost in copying.
It is noticeable that all these poems in sung verse, which seem
to be based on popular ballads, are characterised by deep patriotic
feeling. This, however, is wanting in the alliterative rhetorical
lines on the death of Edward the Confessor, which merely tell how
he had reigned for four and twenty years and had governed
illustriously Welsh, Scots, Britons, Angles and Saxons.
Another passage in sung verse dealing with the marriage of
Margaret, the sister of Edward Aetheling, to Malcolm of Scotland,
and recording her distaste for marriage and her desire for convent
life, seems to be in ten sung half lines, of which the first four have
been completely wrecked. The last four are perfect and of great
1 At the end we have the following: They buried him
"fal warflice / swa he wyrde waes (no rime)
aet pam Westende i pam styple fulgehende (rimes)
on pam suðportice | seo saul is mid Criste” (no rime).
Now on þam supportice rimes with ful wurflice, although it does not rime in
its present place. It also would then follow on in sense. Seo saul is mid Criste
needs a rime in -iste and what better one can be than og ba aeriste? This rime was
possibly removed because, on a fullstop being lost in the last line, the first half verso
would apply to the soul, and smack of heresy to the monk. We may then read:
“ ful wurdlice on bam bu portice.
aet bam Westende i bam styple falgehendo
08&a aeriste / 800 saul is mid Criste"
which obanges the architectural sense.
## p. 141 (#161) ############################################
The Ballads and Poems in the Chronicle 141
interest. We have, likewise, some fragments on the marriage of
earl Ralph of Norwich, the first couplet of which
baer waes paet bryd ealo
paet waes manegra manna bealo,
shows, unmistakably, its ballad origin.
The last verses of this class are those on the reign of William
the Conqueror. Earle arranged some twelve lines as poetry, but
the whole passage claims similar treatment, since, in the portion
which he has printed as prose, there occur examples of full rime
and also of full assonance, connecting the half lines in the passages
he has not so written. The whole passage seems to be derived
from at least two ballads against the Norman conqueror. The
first begins "He rixade dfer Englaeland” and tells of the king's
intimate acquaintance with his dominions, so that he knew the
owner of every hide of land and how much it was worth; then, how
he conquered Wales and Scotland and, if he had lived two years
longer, would have won Ireland, also, without weapon strife. This,
which is unrimed, is followed by the passage “Castelas hè lēt
wýrcedn,” which is invaluable because of its strong Kentish asson-
ances. These lines tell, in bitter words, of the king's oppression, of
his heavy taxation, and of the terrible game laws, drawn up to pre-
serve those "tall deer" which he loved as greatly as though he were
their father. This last part is 38 lines long, divided into 19 couplets
linked by rime or assonance, the nineteenth being either marred
in transcription or a monastic addition in rime. The spelling often
hides the dialectical completeness of the assonance. After this
sung ballad follows a passage of rhythmical prose, in which the
compiler states that he has written these things about the king,
both good and evil, that men may imitate the goodness and wholly
flee from the evil. It would seem that the chronicler had to be
original in telling of the Conqueror's virtues; but, for the vices, he
had plenty of popular material at hand. The unhappy people were
in no mood to exalt his virtues, and, for the description of these,
the chronicler was forced to rely on his own literary resources.
The verses in the Chronicle have little literary merit, with
the exception of the poem on the battle of Brunanburh, and this
seems to have been strongly influenced by the epic of Judith.
Of this latter, unfortunately, only a beautiful fragment, consisting
of some 350 lines, survives? . Judith was, perhaps, composed as
a eulogy of Aethelflaed, queen of Mercia, who fought nobly against
1 Cott. Vitell. xv.
## p. 142 (#162) ############################################
142
From Alfred to the Conquest
the Danes in the first quarter of the tenth century. It has been
attributed to Caedmon; but its use of rime and the character of
its language has led some critics to place the poem comparatively
late. The use of rime, however, is no conclusive argument. It
recounts, in vigorous language, the deeds of the Apocryphal
heroine, and dwells especially on the way in which her deed
stirred up the timorous Jews to more courageous patriotism.
It is noteworthy that Aelfric himself had written a homily on
Judith, to teach the English the virtues of resistance to the
Danes. This homily must have been written earlier, and, perhaps,
it influenced the writer of Judith to choose her as a national
type in the fight for God and fatherland. The poem, as we
have it, begins at the end of the ninth canto; cantos X, XI
and xII are preserved in full, but the earlier part of the poem
is entirely wanting. This loss, however, is the less to be regretted
since the remaining cantos, containing the crisis of the story, are,
probably, the finest of all, and deal with a complete episode, to
which the fragment of canto Ix, telling of the faith of the heroine
and the invitation to the feast of Holofernes, serves as introduc-
tion. Canto x describes, with all the delight of Old English poets
in such pictures, the banquet in the Assyrian camp, the deep bowls
of wine borne along the benches, and the shouts and laughter of
the revellers. Darkness descends, and the warriors bring the maiden
to their master's tent. Overcome with wine, he falls into a deep
slumber, and the heroine, with a supplication to heaven for help,
draws the sword from its sheath. She hales the heathen towards
her by his hair, and smites twice with her weapon, till his head
rolls upon the floor. In canto XI, we read how Judith and her
maid steal from the camp with the head of Holofernes, and return
to Bethulia, where their kinsmen are waiting for them on the
wall. As soon as the two approach, men and women hasten to-
gether to meet them, and Judith bids her servant uncover the
trophy and exhibit it to the warriors. Then, with passionate
words, she exhorts them to attack the camp, to bear forth shields
and bucklers and bright helmets among the foe. So, at dawn
of day, they set out, the wolf and raven rejoicing in the tumult,
and the dewy-feathered eagle singing his war-song above them,
their sudden onset on the camp disturbing the enemy, drowsy
with mead. The next canto relates how the terrified Assyrians
hasten to tell their leader of the assault, and how, when they find
only his dead body, they, “sorrowfully minded, cast down their
weapons, and turn, sad at heart, to flight. ” The poem ends with
## p. 143 (#163) ############################################
Judith
143
the entire overthrow of the Assyrians, the return of the conquerors
with their booty to Bethulia, and Judith’s praise of the Almighty
for the triumph of her stratagem.
From this sketch of the poem it will be seen that it is
closely allied in theme to those of Cynewulf and his school, and
this led to the assumption of Ten Brink and others that it was
composed in the early part of the ninth century. A close in-
vestigation of its diction by Gregory Foster led him to place it
a century later; and, if, as he thinks, it was composed to com-
memorate the valiant deeds of Aethelflaed, the Lady of Mercia,
who wrested the five boroughs from the Danes, it was probably
written about 918. But nothing can be said with certainty on the
subject.
As poetry, this fragment stands in the front rank of Old English
literature, with Beowulf and Elene and Andreas. In wealth of
synonym it is equal to the best poems of Cynewulf, while the
construction of the sentences is simpler, and the narrative, in
consequence, less obscure. An impression of intensity is produced
by the heaping of synonyms in moments of stress, as in the prayer
of Judith, and in the fierce lines which describe the onset against
the Assyrians ; while a sense of dramatic fitness is shown in the
transitions, the divisions of the cantos and the preparation for
each great adventure. The tragedy is alive, and the actors play
their parts before our eyes.
The patriotic feeling which probably gave rise to Judith was
certainly responsible for the second great poem of our period, the
Battle of Maldon, sometimes called Byrhtnoth's Death. The
manuscript of this poem was destroyed by the Cottonian fire;
but it had, fortunately, been printed by Hearne in 1726, and it is
from his text that our knowledge of the poem is derived. It
celebrates the death of the great ealdorman Byrhtnoth, who was
connected by close ties of kinship with Aethelmaer, the friend of
Aelfric; it was, indeed, partly by means of legacies left by him
that Aethelmaer was enabled to support so generously the monastic
revival, and it is, therefore, fitting that he should be commemorated
by one of the finest poems in Old English. In the poem before
us he stands out as the ideal leader of men, admirable alike in his
devotion to his king, his simple piety and his sense of responsi-
bility towards his followers. He died as became a member of
the race that thirsts for danger, almost the last of the warriors
of that time who maintained the noble tradition of the days of
1 Oth. A. xa.
• Tacitus, Hist. V, 19.
## p. 144 (#164) ############################################
144
Alfred to the Conquest
From
Alfred. In less than twenty years after this date, the chronicler
tells a pitiful story of divisions between those who should have
united to lead the people to battle, and of forced payment of the
shameful tribute which Byrhtnoth refused.
It was in the year 991 that the Northman Anlaf sailed with
ninety-three ships to the coast of England, and, after harrying
Stone, Sandwich and Ipswich, came to Maeldune (now Maldon)
on the banks of the river Panta or Blackwater. The stream
divides here into two branches, and, leaving their ships at anchor
in one of them, the Danes drew up their forces on the intervening
piece of land. The poem, the beginning and end of which are lost,
opens with the directions of Byrhtnoth to his men, and tells how,
after marshalling his troops, he exhorted them to stand firm,
taking his place among the band of his immediate followers. At
that moment there appeared on the other side of the stream the
viking herald, who said that he was sent by the seamen to
announce that, if Byrhtnoth would buy off the assault with tribute,
they would make peace with him and return to their own land.
But Byrhtnoth scornfully rejected the offer, saying that he would
give tribute, indeed, but it should be the tribute of the sharp spear
and the ancient sword, and their only booty would be battle. With
this message he bade his men advance to the edge of the stream;
but, owing to the inflowing flood after the ebb, neither army could
reach the other, and they waited in battle array till the tide's
going out. Then Byrhtnoth, overweeningly daring, trusting too
much in his own strength, allowed the enemy to cross by the
bridge (probably one of stepping-stones which would be covered
at high tide), and the fight became fierce. “The time had come
for the fated men to fall; then was a tumult raised, the raven,
eager for carrion, hovered in the air, and on earth was a great
cry.
” On every side fell the heroes; a kingman of Byrhtnoth was
wounded, and, at last, the brave earl himself was slain by a poisoned
spear. With his last words he exhorted his men to resistance, and
died commending his soul to God. True to the noble traditions
of the heroic age, Aelfnoth and Wulfmaer shared his fate and fell,
hewn down by the heathen beside their lord. Then cowards began
to flee and seek safety in the woods, forgetting the brave words
they had spoken when feasting in the mead-hall. But Aelfwine,
the son of Aelfric, shouted to those fleeing, reminding them of
their vows, and declaring that none among his race should twit
him with flight, now that his prince lay fallen in battle, he who
was both his kinsman and his lord His brave words were taken
## p. 145 (#165) ############################################
The Battle of Maldon
145
up by Offa and Dunnere; and the warriors advanced to a fresh
attack. The appearance amongst the defending ranks of Aeschere,
son of Ecglaf, a Northumbrian hostage, is of great interest, as it
seems, for a moment, to give us a vivid glance of the political
troubles of the land. The poem ends by telling how Godric
exhorted his comrades and fought fiercely against the heathen
till he, too, fell.
This brief outline may, perhaps, give some idea of the great
interest of the poem, whose every word is filled with deep hatred
against the marauding foe, and with dignified sorrow for the loss
of beloved friends. The verse is as noble as the deed and instinct
with dramatic life. In it we see the heroic feeling of the earlier
national poetry, full of the Teutonic theme of loyal friendship and
warlike courage. And not until many hundreds of years have elapsed
do we find its equal in tragic strength. It is from this stirring
narrative, from Wulfstan's address to the English and from the
bitter records in the Chronicle, that we realise the degradation
of the country during the unhappy reign of Aethelred.
The remaining poems of our period in the old alliterative
metre are of a didactic character. Among them may be mentioned
the Menologium or poetical calendar, which is prefixed to a
version of the Chronicle'. It is an interesting metrical survey
of the progress of the year, with special mention of the saints'
days observed by the church, preserving some of the Old English
names of the months, such as Weodmonad (August), Winterfylleð
(October) and Blotmona8 (November), and retaining traces of
heathen times, though the whole is Christian in basis. Its value,
as poetry, depends on the tender feeling for nature shown in such
passages as those which describe the coming of May, tranquil
and gentle, with blossoming woods and flowers, or winter, which
cuts off the harvest with the sword of rime and snow, when all is
fettered with frost by the hest of the Creator, so that men may
no longer haunt the green meadows or the flowery fields.
Of more literary value is the poem entitled Be Domes Daege,
a free version of the Latin poem De Die Judicii, by some scholars
ascribed to Bede and by others to Alcuin. The 157 lines of the
Latin original are expanded to 304 by the translator, whose
imaginative gift is especially visible in the way he enlarges on a
hint from his source. The opening passage is extremely beautiful.
i Cott. Tib. B. I.
· Found in a unique manuscript in the library of Corpus Christi College,
Cambridge.
E. L I. CH, VII.
10
## p. 146 (#166) ############################################
146 From Alfred to the Conquest
It tells how, as the author sat lonely within a bower in a wood,
where the streams murmured among pleasant plants, a wind sud-
denly arose that stirred the trees and darkened the sky, so that his
mind was troubled, and he began to sing of the coming of death.
He describes how he wept and lay upon the earth, beating his breast
for sorrow, and he calls upon all his fellow sinners to confess their
sins with tears and to throw themselves on the mercy of Christ.
Then comes another highly imaginative passage, describing the
terrors that will foretell the second advent. “All the earth
shaketh, and the hills also quiver and fall; the gates of the
mountains bend and melt, and the terrible tumult of the stormy
sea fearfully frights the minds of men. " Then the Lord shall come
with hosts of angels, the sins of all shall be revealed and fire
shall consume the unrepentant. The poem ends with a passage,
partly borrowed from the Latin, on the joys of the redeemed.
They shall be numbered in heaven among the angels, and there,
amidst clusters of red roses, shall shine for ever. A throng of
virgin souls shall wander there, garlanded with flowers, led by
that most blessed of maidens who bore the Lord on earth.
The translation is one of the finest in Old English. It is far
more powerful than its Latin original, and many of the most
beautiful passages are new matter put in by the Old English
translator; for example, the lengthening of the opening, telling
of the woodland scene, the section on the terrors of judgment
and hell, and the whole passage describing Mary leading the
flower-decked maiden throng in Heaven.
In the same manuscript occurs another poem to which its
editor, Lumby, gave the title of Lar, and which he ascribed to
the author of the previous poem. It has, however, none of the
imaginative power of Be Domes Daege, and consists simply of
eighty lines of exhortatory verse addressed by one friend to an-
other, bidding him work, fear God, pray, give alms and go to
church in cold weather. And, since the length of life is unknown,
and the enemies of man are ever at hand to assail him, they must
be routed by earnest prayer and meditation, and the abandonment
of all bad habits. The low poetical worth of this piece would seem
to show that it was not by the translator of Be Domes Daege.
Next follow in the manuscript some curious verses, of which
each line is half in Latin and half in English, and which were
formerly also attributed to the author of Be Domes Daege. The
poems, however, differ so much in merit that this theory must
certainly be rejected. The further theory that the invocation
## p. 147 (#167) ############################################
147
Be Domes Daege
of saints in these verses shows that it was not by the author of
Be Domes Daege is, however, scarcely sound, for it disregards
contemporary theology and overlooks the English verses in praise
of the Virgin added by the translator of that poem. Hence our
truest warrant for attributing these verses to a different author
lies rather in the beauty and dignity of Be Domes Daege. The
hymn in question is an ingenious piece of trickery, like many a
Provençal poem of later date. It opens with a prayer for God's
mercy on the reader, and then goes on to speak of the incarnation,
ending with an invocation to Mary and the saints. These verses,
however, are of inestimable value metrically, since they show, by
their Latin equivalents, the two-beat character of the rhetorical
verse, just as similar Old German poems show, by their far greater
length in the Latin portions, the four-beat character of Germanic
sung verse.
More interesting are the eleventh century metrical versions of
the Psalms, in a manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale. This
MS contains only Psalms 1 to cl, but Bouterwek discovered further
fragments in a Benedictine office, which partly fill up the gaps,
and point to the existence of a complete metrical version of the
Psalter in Old English. Taken altogether, however, this Bene-
dictine office is merely a heap of fragments. The translation is,
as a rule, good, when play is given to love of nature or to feelings
common in Old English poetry. An isolated version exists of
Psalm 1 in Kentish dialect, which was formerly supposed to
belong to the eighth century, but which is shown, by its language,
to be two hundred years later. It was not, apparently, one of
a series, but was complete in itself, being rounded off at the close
by a short hymn-like passage on David's sin and his atonement.
A gloomy poem on The Grave, “For thee was a house built
Ere thou wast born,” etc. , written in the margin of a volume of
homilies in the Bodleian and known to all readers of Longfellow
and many beside, need not detain us long. It is, probably, of latere
date than any of the poems already referred to and shows signs of
the coming metrical change.
Last, there must be mentioned a poem on the city of Durham,
which, though not composed within our period, is the latest in
the classical rhetorical metre that is known to exist, and is, there-
fore, most suitably described in this place. One versions was
printed by Hickes in his Thesaurus (1703—5), and another copy
· Cott. Vesp. D. v. 1.
* NE. F. 4, 12.
3 Cott. Vitt. D. 20.
!
10-2
## p. 148 (#168) ############################################
148
Alfred to the Conquest
From
occurs at the close of a manuscript of the Historia Ecclesia
Dunelmensis of Simeon of Durham in the University Library,
Cambridge. The poem, which contains twenty long lines, falls
into two parts, the first eight describing the city on the hill,
surrounded with steep rocks, girdled by the strong flowing river,
full of many kinds of fish, and environed by forests in whose deep
dells dwell countless wild beasts; while the last twelve tell of the
wonderful relics preserved there, memorials of Cuthbert and
Oswald, Aidan and Eadberg, Eadfrith and bishop Aethelwold,
as well as of the famous writers Bede and Boisil, which, amidst
the veneration of the faithful, awaited in the minster the dooms-
day of the Lord. It is this catalogue of saints which enables us
to fix the date of the poem, for the translation of their relics to
the new cathedral took place in 1104, and the poem follows closely
the order of enumeration found in Simeon of Durham's description
of that ceremony! Although it is written in a strained archaistic
attempt at West Saxon spelling, yet we catch many clear glimpses
of south-eastern twelfth century phonology in its faulty attempts
at correctness.
After 1100, English poetry ceases to exist for nigh a hundred
years, although fragments remain to bear witness to that popular
verse which was to keep in the west midlands and north some
continuity with the old poetry-for the sung rhythm never died
out amongst the common folk, and rose ever and anon to such
songs as that of The Pearl, to heroic lays of Arthur, Alexander
and Troy and, in our own days, has been revived in the rhythm of
the mystic Christabel.
English prose was wrecked for many a hundred year. Centuries
elapsed before Aelfric had his equal again.
Capitula de Miraculis et Translationibus S. Cuthberti, Cap. VI.
## p. 149 (#169) ############################################
CHAPTER VIII
THE NORMAN CONQUEST
THE Norman conquest of England, from a literary point of
view, did not begin on the autumn day that saw Harold's levies
defeated by Norman archers on the slopes of Senlac. It began
with the years which, from his early youth onwards, Edward the
Confessor, the grandson of a Norman duke, had spent in exile in
Normandy; and with his intimacy with “foreigners" and its
inevitable consequences. The invasion of Norman favourites,
which preceded and accompanied his accession to the throne, and
their appointment, for a time, to the chief places in church and
state, led to the tightening of the bonds that bound England to
the Roman church, and paved the way for the period of Latin
influence that followed the coming of William, Lanfranc and
Anselm.
The development of the old vernacular literature was arrested
for nearly a hundred and fifty years after Hastings; and, as the
preservation of letters depended on ecclesiastics, professed scholars
and monastic chroniclers of foreign extraction, the literature of
England for practically a couple of centuries is to be found mainly
in Latin. Happily for England, her connection with the continent
became intimate at a time when Paris, “the mother of wisdom,"
was about to rise to intellectual dominance over Europe.
Of the national vernacular literature of France, at the time of
the Conquest, little was transplanted to English soil; but, in the two
centuries that followed, the cultivation of romance, aided by
“matter" that had passed through Celtic hands, flourished exceed-
ingly among the Anglo-Norman peoples and became a notable
part of English literature.
The development of Old English literature, as we have said,
was arrested. It was by no means, as some have urged, lifeless
before this break in its history; and speculation would be futile
as to what might have been its future, had there been no Norman
conquest. Where so much has been lost, there is no safety in
## p. 150 (#170) ############################################
150
The Norman Conquest
sweeping generalisations, based upon what is left. As a whole,
the evidence which we possess shows Old English literature
to have been richer than that of any other European nation
during the period of its most active life; and, though there
was, apparently, throughout Christian Europe, a lowering of
letters, in which England shared, during “the gloom and iron
and lead” of the tenth century, yet the lamps of learning and of
literature, though low, were not extinguished in this island. It was
the age of Dunstan, a lover of ballads and music and illuminated
missals and precious jewels and letters, a learned saint, a dreamer
of dreams, a worker in metal, the reformer of Glastonbury, a states-
man and teacher who "filled all England with light. " It was, as
we have seen, the age of Aelfric, in whose hands Old English prose
had been fashioned from the condition in which we find it in the
early days of the Chronicle, and in the days of Alfred, into an
instrument capable of expressing different kinds of thought in
ways of lightness and strength. And it was the age, certainly,
of The Battle of Maldon and of Brunanburh, and, possibly, of
Judith also. Old English poetry had proved itself capable of
expressing with notable aptitude, and with grave seriousness, the
nobler views of life.
A period of warfare with the Danes follows, during which
monasteries like that of Cerne, in Dorset, are sacked, and litera-
ture wanes; but there is evidence that the national spirit, fostered
by the beneficent rule of Canute, was strong in England in the
days preceding the coming of the Conqueror; and it is but
reasonable to assume that this spirit would not have withered
away and become a thing of naught, had Harold won, instead of
lost, the battle of Hastings. The main stream of its literary
expression was dammed at that time, and portions of it were
turned into other, and, so far as we can now see, into better,
because more varied, channels; but, when the barriers were
gradually broken down, and the stream regained freedom of
action, it was not the source that had been vitally altered—this
had only been changed in ways that did not greatly modify its
main character—but, between altered banks, and in freshly
wrought-out channels, the old waters ran, invigorated by the
addition of fresh springs.
Into what the folk-songs, of which we have faint glimmerings,
were about to develop, had there not been an interregnum, we
know not; but the literary spirit of the people, though they were
crushed under their Norman masters, never died out; it had little
## p. 151 (#171) ############################################
The Coming Change 151
or no assistance at first from the alien lettered classes; and, when
it revived, it was "with a difference. ”
There had not been wanting signs of some coming change.
Already, in pre-Conquest days, there had been a tendency to seek
some "new thing. " A growing sense of the existence of wonder-
ful things in the east, of which it was desirable to have some
knowledge, had led an unknown Englishman to translate the story
of Apollonius of Tyre into English. The marvellous deeds of the
Lives of the Saints had already proved that a taste for listening to
stories, if not, as yet, the capacity to tell them with conscious
literary art, grace and skill, was in existence. And, in addition to
this, we learn from the list of books acquired by Leofric for Exeter
cathedral, sixteen years only before the battle of Hastings, that
the love for books and learning which had inspired Benedict
Biscop and Dunstan had by no means died out; of some sixty
volumes, many were in English and one is the famous “mycel
Englisc boc" “ of many kinds of things wrought in verse," from
which we know much of the little we do know concerning Old
English literature.
The facility with which Englishmen adopted what Normans
had to give was, in some measure, due to the blood-relationship
that already existed between the two races. Scandinavian sea-
farers, mated with women of Gaul, had bred a race possessing
certain features akin to those of the Teutonic inhabitants of
England. It was a race that, becoming “French,” adapted itself
rapidly to its new surroundings, soon forgetting its northern home
and tongue; and, when it was master of England, further barriers
between race and race were soon broken down. The Norman con-
quest of England differed altogether from the English conquest of
Britain. The earlier conquest was a process of colonisation and gave
the land an almost entirely new population, with entirely new
thoughts and ways of looking at things, save in the borderlands
of the “Celtic fringe"; the later brought a new governing, and
then a new trading, class, and added a fresh strain to the national
blood without supplanting the mass of the people. Intermarriage,
that would begin, naturally enough, among Norman serving-men
and English women, spread from rank to rank, receiving its
ultimate sanction when Anselm crowned Matilda as Henry's queen.
Sooner or later the Norman, whether of higher or of lower degree,
adopted England as his country, spoke and acted as an English-
man and, before the Great Charter, that is to say, a hundred and
fifty years after the battle of Hastings, when the French homes of
## p. 152 (#172) ############################################
152
The Norman Conquest
Normandy and Anjou had been lost, the mixture of the invading
race and the conquered people was approaching completion. The
more stolid native had been touched with “finer fancies" and
“lighter thought"; the natural melancholy of the Old English
spirit had been wedded to the gaiety of the Norman; and England,
“meri Ingeland,” in due season was recognised to be
a wel god land, ich weno ech londe best,
Iset in the on ende of the worldo as al in the west;
The see geth him al aboute, he stond as in an yle;
Of fon1 hii dorre the lasse doute-bote hit be thorz gyle
of folo of the sulve? lond, as me hath iseye zwilo 84,
in language that irresistibly recalls the “fortress built by Nature
for herself,” the “happy breed of men,” the "little world,” the
“precious stone set in the silver sea,” the “ blessed plot, this earth,
this realm, this England,” of Shakespeare. So it came to pass
that, though, as the immediate result of the Conquest, Norman-
French became the exclusive language of the rich and courtly
nobles and ecclesiastics, knights and priests, and Latin the
exclusive language of learning-the conduits thus formed tending
inevitably to trouble the isolated waters—yet the language
in the country places,
Where the old plain men have rosy faces,
And the young fair maidens
Quiet eyes,
and among the serfs, and the outlaws in the greenwood, and
"lowe men” generally, was the unforbidden, even if untaught,
English of the conquered race. And, contrary to the expectation,
and, perhaps, the desire, of the governing class, it was this
language which, in the end, prevailed.
The gain to English literature that accrued from the Norman
conquest in three directions is so great as to be obvious to the
most superficial observer. The language was enriched by the
naturalisation of a Romance vocabulary; methods of expression
and ideas to be expressed were greatly multiplied by the incursion
of Norman methods and ideas; and the cause of scholarship and
learning was strengthened by the coming of scholars whose reputa-
tion was, or was to be, European, and by the links that were to
bind Paris and Oxford.
In a less obvious way, it gained by the consequent intercourse
with the continent that brought our wandering scholars into
1 Of foes they need the less fear-unless it be through guile.
s formerly.
Robert of Gloucester.
2 game.
## p. 153 (#173) ############################################
The Wisdom of the East
153
connection with the wisdom of the east. It is not to be forgotten,
for instance, that, for three or four hundred years, that is to say,
from about the ninth to about the twelfth century, Moham-
madanism, under the rule of enlightened caliphs in the east and in
the west, fostered learning and promoted the study of the liberal
arts at a time when many of the Christian kingdoms of Europe
were in intellectual darkness. Harun ar-Rashid was a contem-
porary of Alcuin, and he and his successors made Baghdad and the
cities of Spain centres of knowledge and storehouses of books.
The Aristotelian philosophy, which had a commanding influence
over the whole of the religious thought of the west during the
Middle Ages, was known, prior to the middle of the thirteenth
century, chiefly through Latin translations based upon Arabic
versions of Aristotle; and the attachment of the Arabs to the
study of mathematics and astronomy is too well known to call for
comment. Our own connection with Mohammadan learning during
the period of its European predominance is exemplified in the
persons of Michael Scot; of Robert the Englishman or Robert de
Retines, who first translated the Coran into Latin; of Daniel of
Morley, East Anglian astronomer, scholar of Toledo and importer
of books; and of Adelard or Aethelard of Bath, who, in many
wanderings through eastern and western lands, acquired learning
from Greek and Arab, who translated Euclid and who showed his
love of the quest for knowledge in other than purely mathemati-
cal ways in his philosophical treatise De Eodem et Diverso, an
allegory in which Philocosmia, or the Lust of the World, disputes
with Philosophia for the body and soul of the narrator.
The Christian learning of the west received fresh impetus in the
middle of the eleventh century at the hands of Lanfranc, who
made the monastic school at Bec a centre famous for its teaching,
and who, when he came to England, to work for church and state,
did not forget his earlier care for books and learning. It was
under Lanfranc's direction that Osbern, the Canterbury monk,
wrote his lives of earlier English ecclesiastics, of St Dunstan and
St Alphege and St Odo; and he gave generously to the building
of St Albans, a monastery which, under the abbacy of Lanfranc's
well-beloved kinsman Paul, encouraged the spirit of letters in
its specially endowed scriptorium, and so led the way to the
conversion of annalist into historian illustrated in the person of
Matthew Paris.
A consideration of the writings of Lanfranc himself falls outside
our province; they consist of letters, commentaries and treatises
## p. 154 (#174) ############################################
154
The Norman Conquest
on controversial theology. Prior to his appointment as arch-
bishop of Canterbury, Lanfranc had been mainly responsible for
the refutation of the "spiritual” views concerning the Eucharist
held by Berengarius, who, following in the footsteps of John
Scotus (Erigena) opposed the doctrine of Real Presence. Lanfranc's
disputation helped largely to strengthen the universal accept-
ance of the doctrine of transubstantiation throughout the Roman
church; and, as the chief officer of the English church, in the
years of its renovation under William, his influence could but tend
towards placing English religious life and thought and, therefore,
English religious literature, more in harmony with the religious
system of Europe.
Lanfranc's successor in the see of Canterbury was his fellow-
countryman and pupil, Anselm ; perhaps less of a statesman, but
a greater genius, a kindlier-natured and larger-hearted man and a
more profound thinker. As one of the greatest of English church-
men, who fought for the purity and liberty and rights of the
English church, we may claim Anselm as English, and we may
rejoice at the place given him in the Paradiso in the company of
Bonaventura and John Chrysostom and Peter “the devourer"
of books, but the consideration of his writings, also, falls rather to
the historian of religious philosophy. Inasmuch, however, as the
result of Anselm's fight against kingly tyranny led to the Charter
of Henry I and so prepared the way for the Great Charter that
followed a century later, he must be mentioned among those who
took part in the making of England.
The reflection in English literature of the gradual construction
of this new England will be seen more clearly when we have passed
through the interval of quiescence that prevailed in vernacular
letters after the Conquest. The literature of church and state
and scholarship was for those who knew Latin; and the literature
that followed the invaders was for those who were taught French;
the struggle for supremacy between native and alien tongues was
fought out; and, when the first writers of Transition English
appear, it is seen that the beaten Romance has modified the con-
quering Teutonic. The early days appear to be days of halting
steps and curious experiment; and, naturally, the imitation of
foreign models seems greater at first than later, when the naturali-
sation, or, rather, the blending, is nearer completion. Even the
manuscripts of these early days, in their comparatively simple
character, show that the vernacular is in the condition of a “poor
relation. " Writers in English were at school under the new masters
## p. 155 (#175) ############################################
Norman Gifts
155
of the land, whose cycles of romance, including much that was
borrowed from the adopted country, and, therefore, much that
was easily assimilated, afforded, both in respect of form and
of matter, excellent material for translation for many a year,
until, in fact, the clipped wings had had time to grow again.
As before hinted, we do not know the extent of what we lost,
and we cannot, with any advantage, proceed far on the road of
aesthetic comparison between old and new. We must be content,
therefore, to recognise to the full the gifts of the Norman race, and
these were not confined to the making of literary English. For, as
an outward and visible sign, still remaining in many places to
testify, with the strengthening of our literature, to the change in
art that accompanied the change in blood, and that gave expression
to the change in thought, there stand the buildings erected
throughout the land, as William of Malmesbury said, “after a style
unknown before. ”
After the axe came the chisel; and this change of tool, which
helps us to follow the steps that mark the development of
Anglo-Norman architecture, may symbolise the development of
language and letters in England under Anglo-Norman kings, a
development that had begun years before the Conqueror had
landed. When inflections had been well-nigh lopped off, and
the language had been made more copious by additions to its
ornamental vocabulary, the new “smiths of song"-whether
graceless minstrel or ascetic priest-were able to give more
adequate expression to the work of their hands and to branch out
into less imitative ways. They were beating out the material in
preparation for the coming of Chaucer.
## p. 156 (#176) ############################################
OHAPTER IX
LATIN CHRONICLERS FROM THE ELEVENTH TO THE
THIRTEENTH CENTURIES
Of all the literary monuments of the remarkable revival of
learning which followed the coming of the Normans, and which
reached its zenith under Henry II, the greatest, alike in bulk and
in permanent interest and value, is the voluminous mass of Latin
chronicles compiled during the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries.
So ample is the wealth of this chronicle literature, and so full and
trustworthy is its presentment of contemporary affairs, that few
periods in our history stand out in such clear and minute relief as
that of the Norman and Angevin kings. Priceless as these docu-
ments are to the modern historian, they are far from being, as a
whole, the colourless records which concern the student of political
and constitutional movements alone. Many of them may have but
little charm or distinction of style, and may appear to be nothing
better than laboriously faithful registers of current events. They
all, however, after their quality and kind, bear the marks of a
common inspiration, and the meanest chronicler of the time felt
that, in compiling the annals of his own country, he was working in
the tradition of the great historians of antiquity. Some few of the
chronicles are real literature, and show that their writers were well
aware that history has its muse.
While a scholarly delight and an honest pride in their art were
common to all the English chroniclers of the Norman and Angevin
period, not a few of them found an additional incentive in royal
and aristocratic patronage. Much of the activity of the twelfth
century historians was palpably due to the favour shown to men of
letters by the two Henrys, and to the personal encouragement of
princely nobles like earl Robert of Gloucester, and courtly eccle-
siastics like Alexander, bishop of Lincoln. Some of the monastic
writers enjoyed no such direct patronage; but they were none the
less responsive to the demands of the time. They not only felt the
impulse of the new learning—they were conscious of living in a
great age, and of witnessing the gradual establishment in England
## p. 157 (#177) ############################################
England and Normandy 157
of a new and powerful kingdom. Nothing is more significant than
the way in which the Anglo-Norman chroniclers, whether native
Englishmen or Normans domiciled in England, reflect the united
patriotic sentiment which it was the design of Norman statesman-
ship to foster. Though composed in a foreign tongue, these
chronicles are histories of England, and are written from a
national English standpoint. It was under Henry I, whose marriage
with Matilda seemed to symbolise the permanent union of the two
peoples, that a new sense of national self-consciousness began to
grow out of the Norman settlement. A shrewd observer of the next
generation, Walter Map, tells us that it was Henry who effectually
“united both peoples in a steadfast concord ? . " It was Henry's reign
also that witnessed the transfer of the central seat of Norman power
from Normandy to England. William of Malmesbury, himself half-
Norman, half-English, in his account of the battle of Tinchebray,
reminds his readers that it was fought “on the same day on which,
about forty years before, William had first landed at Hastings”-a
fact which the chronicler characteristically takes to prove "the
wise dispensation of God that Normandy should be subjected
to England on the same day that the Norman power had
formerly arrived to conquer that kingdom. ” In other words,
England now became the predominant partner in the Anglo-
Norman kingdom, and the twelfth century chroniclers are
fully alive to the meaning of the change. As the dreams of a
great Anglo-Norman empire began to take shape in the minds of
the new rulers of England, and came to be temporarily realised
under Henry II, the English historiographers rose to the height of
their opportunities with patriotic ardour. No other country pro-
duced, during the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries, anything
to be compared with the English chronicles in variety of interest,
wealth of information and amplitude of range. So wide is their
outlook, and so authoritative is their record of events, that, as
Stubbs observes, “it is from the English chroniclers of this period
that much of the German history of the time has to be written. ” The
new England had become conscious of her power, and of her growing
importance in the international economy of Europe.
In literature the most signal expression of that consciousness
is the work of our Latin chroniclers. Thus, however unattractive
much of this chronicle literature may be to the ordinary reader,
there belongs to all of it the human interest of having been
· De Nugis Curialium, Dist. v, Cap. v.
3 Gesta Regum Anglorum, Bk. v.
: Lectures on Medieval and Modern History, p. 125.
## p. 158 (#178) ############################################
158
Latin Chroniclers
written under the pressure of great events and the stimulus of a
glowing national feeling.
Even apart from patriotic incentives, there were other in-
fuences at work during the twelfth century which made for the
study and the writing of history. The Norman settlement in
England synchronised with a movement which shook all western
Christendom to its foundations. The crusades not only profoundly
stirred the feelings of Europe-they served indirectly to quicken
the imagination and stimulate the curiosity of the western races
as nothing had done for centuries. Intercourse with the east, and
the mingling together of different tribes in the crusading armies,
brought about a “renascence of wonder” as far-reaching in some
of its effects as the great renascence itself. The twelfth century
is, above all, the age of the birth of modern romance. The insti-
tutions of chivalry, the mystic symbolism of the church, the
international currency of popular fabliaux, the importation of
oriental stories of magic and wizardry-all contributed to the
fashioning of the fantastic creations of the medieval romances.
And of the romantic cycles none came to have so speedy and
triumphant a vogue as that which was named, originally in France,
"the matter of Britain. " This “matter of Britain" had its beginning,
as a formative influence in European literature, in the work of an
Anglo-Norman writer, who, while professing to draw his information
from a suspiciously cryptic source and frequently giving obvious
rein to his own imagination, assumes none the less the gravity and
the deliberate manner of an authentic chronicler. Geoffrey of
Monmouth, ambitious of supplying what previous writers had
failed to tell about the kings of Britain before the coming of the
English, wrote a chronicle which had all the charm and novelty of
a romance of adventure. King Arthur, as a romantic hero, is
Geoffrey's creation. Hence, the most readable Latin chronicle
of the twelfth century is one that has the least real claim to that
title. But the History of the Kings of Britain is no more to be
ruled out of a place in the chronicle literature of England than it
is to be ousted from its assured pre-eminence as the fountain-head of
Arthurian romance.
• Oott. Tib. B. v.
: 0. 0. C. C. 8. 18.
in bis Con Pecially intearly appear
## p. 136 (#156) ############################################
136 From Alfred to the Conquest
stating the various ills for which each plant is a remedy. It
appears in four MSS, the one printed by Cockayne dating
from the first half of the eleventh century. Following this
is an English version of the Medicina de quadrupedibus of
Sextus Placidus, about whom nothing is known, which describes
the various kinds of animals and the use of their bodies in
medicine.
Even more interesting is the leech-book in Cockayne's second
volume? The author was evidently acquainted with the Greek
and Latin authorities on medicine, for the work is full of their
prescriptions, and Helias, patriarch of Jerusalem, is mentioned as
having sent such prescriptions to king Alfred.
Lastly, Cockayne printed in his third volume two collections
of miscellaneous recipes, and a number of prognostications, inter-
pretations of dreams and a horologium. The first collection is
extremely interesting on account of the heathen nature of many
of the prescriptions, which require for their efficacy the repetition
of charms. Some of these are mere gibberish, in which, however,
fragments of Greek, Latin and Hebrew may be traced; others,
such as the celebrated charm against the stitch, show close con-
nection with Scandinavian mythology; while in some, such as the
charm to bring home straying cattle, there is a curious mingling
of Christian nomenclature and heathen superstition. All these
works are deeply tinged with poetic feeling; and the desire to
propitiate the powers that distribute storm and sunshine is visible
throughout. The date of these compositions is not known, but
most of the manuscripts belong to the eleventh century.
From the foregoing survey of English prose literature during
the eleventh century, it is clear that the language had attained
considerable development as a literary medium. In the hands of
Aelfric its vocabulary became less concrete, its constructions
more logical, and, though it was still seen to best advantage in
simple narrative, it was moulded by him with fair success to
philosophic requirements. But, in the years that followed the
Norman conquest, the development of English prose met with a
great check, and four hundred years elapsed before the vernacular
was again employed with the grace and fluency of Aelfric.
The decline of Old English poetry cannot be so directly
attributed to the Norman conquest. During the course of the
tenth and eleventh centuries the classical rhetorical metre bad
i Cott. Vitell. O. m.
· Printed from MS Reg. 12 D. XVI.
* M8 Harl. 685 and M8 Harl. 6258. • Chiefly from MS Oott. Tib. A. II.
## p. 137 (#157) ############################################
The Ballads and Poems in the Chronicle 137
already begun to deteriorate, and was being gradually replaced
by the sung metre of the popular ballad. For the whole of our
period we have only two great poems, the fragment of Judith
in the Beowulf MS and the East Anglian poem of Byrhtnoth’s
death at Maldon. Both poems deal with the struggle against the
same foe and both are in the alliterative rhetorical metre. Judith
contains a fair number of lines which are undoubtedly clear types
of sung verse, such as is found in the thirteenth century in
Layamon's Brut. The Battle of Maldon also contains two much
alike'. The adoption of this metre, which, although ancient, here
exhibits what are practically its first known traces in Old English
literature, is carried to much greater lengths in the poems em-
bedded in the Chronicle; and some observations upon this new
metre, called the “sung" or four-beat verse, as opposed to the
declamatory or two-beat metre of the older poems, will be found
in an appendix at the end of the volume.
The first poem in the Chronicle occurs under the year 937, and
celebrates the glorious victory won by Aethelstan at Brunanburh.
It is a markedly patriotic poem and shows deep feeling; its
brilliant lyrical power, and the national enthusiasm evident
throughout, have made it familiar, in one form or another, to
all lovers of English verse. Great care was taken with the metre,
which is the ancient rhetorical line.
Under the year 942 another poem in alliterative rhetorical
metre occurs. It consists only of a few lines, and its subject is
the liberation of the five boroughs, Leicester, Lincoln, Nottingham,
Stamford and Derby, “which were formerly Danish, constrained
by need in the captive bonds of the heathen,” by Edmund, son
of Edward the Elder. It has little poetic value; but it is dis
tinguished by the same intense patriotism as the verses on the
battle of Brunanburh.
The first poem in sung verse contained in the Chronicle is that
for 959, on the accession of king Edgar. It contains forty-nine half
lines, making twenty-four and a half full lines, connected, of which
only about eight show alliteration. The lines are connected in the
earlier form of rimeless rhythm, not strictly alliterative, though
* But the reader must be cautioned against assuming that every rimed verse was
also sung verse. The shorter types of rimed verse in such poems as Judith and The
Battle of Maldon were almost certainly not. The only sure oriteria are (1) conformity
to the metrical schemes given in the Appendix, (2) a tendency to neglect the rhetorio
stress and turn the two-beat rhythm into a four-beat, as shown by the riming use of
syllables pot carrying the full stress. Examples are: Judith, l. 231, (écgum geoósto)
slógon éornostè; Maldon, 1. 309, Býrhtwold máþetode bórd bắfēnode.
## p. 138 (#158) ############################################
138
From
Alfred to the Conquest
assonance is sometimes found. Metrically, it is our best preserved
example. The theme is the prosperity of Edgar; how his wise
rule was honoured far and wide, how he established peace in the
land and how he was rewarded by God with the willing submission
of kings and earls. Of one fault, however, says the chronicler,
he was too often guilty, namely that he loved foreign ways and
enticed outlanders into his dominions. The poem ends with a
prayer that God may be more mindful of the king's virtues than of
his evil deeds, and that they may shield his soul from harm on its
long journey hence.
The delight of the English in the peaceful rule of Edgar is
still further shown by a poem in the old rhetorical metre which
is variously given in the different recensions of the Chronicle
under the years 972, 973 and 974, and relates the coronation of
Edgar. The Peterborough chronicle has some lines which have
been written as verse, but scansion seems to raise insurmount-
able difficulties. It can only be scanned on the assumption
that we have an attempt to combine two stress lines with four-
stress rhythm, or an attempt to put a ballad into the form of the
“higher” poetry. They tell how kings came from afar to do
homage to Edgar, and how there was no fleet so daring as to
threaten his dominions, or host so strong as to ravage the land
while he ruled over it.
Another interesting ballad poem, on the troubles caused by
Aelfhere and other rebels in the reign of Edgar's son Edward,
is found in the MS known as Cott. Tib. B. IV. It is of 19 half
lines or 9} full lines. The linking system seems to be mostly
alliteration, but rime and assonance show themselves most clearly
where alliteration becomes absent or weak, as in
Godes wibersăecan
Godes lage brãecon
and
mynstra tostaencton,
and
munecas todraefdon.
The verse is sung ballad-verse, and the alliteration what would
be called irregular in rhetorical verse. It is uncertain whether
what seems an opening verse really belongs to the song.
The murder of Edward son of Edgar, at Corfesgeat, is
related in a peculiarly distinctive poem, which is quite clearly in
sung verse, and shows traces of strophic arrangement. Some lines,
possibly, show the earliest English seven-beat verse; some lines
have, obviously, been lengthened, and the last six printed as verse
do not scan as such, being, possibly, only rhythmic prose added
## p. 139 (#159) ############################################
The Ballads and Poems in the Chronicle 139
afterwards. They are exactly like the irregular lines on Edgar's
death. Probably the chronicler took a popular ballad or ballads,
broke it up, and attempted to destroy its sing-song character by
the addition of end verses. This, and the strophic character of the
original or originals, would account for its metrical variety and
uncertainty. In several places we meet with half line tags, gene-
rally trimetric, once certainly in full tetrameter. The poem de-
clares that no worse deed than the murder of Edward had ever
been committed among the English since the invasion of Britain ;
men murdered him, but God glorified him; and he who was before
an earthly king is now, after death, a heavenly saint. His earthly
kinsmen would not avenge him, but his heavenly Father has
avenged him amply, and they who would not bow to him living
now bend humbly on their knees to his dead bones. Thus, we may
perceive that men's plans are as naught before God's. The words,
“Men murdered him, but God glorified him,” are alliterative, and
seem like a refrain ; and the whole poem is, metrically, one of the
most interesting of the series.
There is a long interval before the next verses, which tell of
the siege of Canterbury, and the capture of archbishop Aelfhēah
(Alphege) in 1011. They consist of twelve half lines of sung verse,
and are, evidently, a quotation from some ballad commemorating
these disasters. They lament the imprisonment of him who was
erstwhile head of Christendom and England, and the misery that
men might now behold in the unhappy city whence first came
the joys of Christianity. There are some difficulties in scansion,
and the variant readings in certain MSS', though they can be
restored to something like proper metrical harmony, show what
mishandling these songs underwent when written down by the
scribes.
The metre of the next poem is much better preserved. It is
of the same Layamon sung verse type, but shows a regular
union of each two half lines by rime and assonance. Where this
fails, we can at once suspect that the scribe has tampered with the
original version. Some assonances can only be south-eastern. Its
subject is the capture and cruel fate of the aetheling Alfred, and it
shows a strong spirit of partisanship against Godwin. This is led up
to by the prose account telling how Alfred came to Winchester
to see his mother, but was hindered and captured by Godwin.
The poem relates how Godwin scattered Alfred's followers, killing
some and imprisoning others, and how the aetheling was led
* Cott. Tib. B. IV, and Bodl. Laud. 686.
## p. 140 (#160) ############################################
140
From
Alfred to the Conquest
bound to Ely, blinded aboard ship and given over to the monks.
It gives us the important architectural statement (since the old
minster long has perished) that he was buried at the west end
in the south porch “close to the steeple. ” The story is told in
20 couplets of sung half lines (40 half lines). The few lines that
do not rime can easily be restored'.
Many of the features of this poem are paralleled in another on
a like theme, the arrival of Edward Aetheling, son of Edmund
Ironside, in England in 1057, his illness and his death, without
seeing his kinsman the king. The story is that of the death of the
last of the kingly line. The poem is in sung verse, the half lines
being mainly arranged in pairs of one short and one fuller half
line, a combination which is the great feature of this poem, whose
strophic connection depends absolutely neither on rime or asso-
nance, but rather on rhythm. The poem is in four uneven tirades.
The first two are ended by a single half line as a tag (no. 1, of 3 full
lines + tag; no. 2, of 5 full lines + half line tag). The last two
tirades (no. 3, of 3 full lines; no. 4, of 4 full lines) are without half
line tags. The tags may here have been lost in copying.
It is noticeable that all these poems in sung verse, which seem
to be based on popular ballads, are characterised by deep patriotic
feeling. This, however, is wanting in the alliterative rhetorical
lines on the death of Edward the Confessor, which merely tell how
he had reigned for four and twenty years and had governed
illustriously Welsh, Scots, Britons, Angles and Saxons.
Another passage in sung verse dealing with the marriage of
Margaret, the sister of Edward Aetheling, to Malcolm of Scotland,
and recording her distaste for marriage and her desire for convent
life, seems to be in ten sung half lines, of which the first four have
been completely wrecked. The last four are perfect and of great
1 At the end we have the following: They buried him
"fal warflice / swa he wyrde waes (no rime)
aet pam Westende i pam styple fulgehende (rimes)
on pam suðportice | seo saul is mid Criste” (no rime).
Now on þam supportice rimes with ful wurflice, although it does not rime in
its present place. It also would then follow on in sense. Seo saul is mid Criste
needs a rime in -iste and what better one can be than og ba aeriste? This rime was
possibly removed because, on a fullstop being lost in the last line, the first half verso
would apply to the soul, and smack of heresy to the monk. We may then read:
“ ful wurdlice on bam bu portice.
aet bam Westende i bam styple falgehendo
08&a aeriste / 800 saul is mid Criste"
which obanges the architectural sense.
## p. 141 (#161) ############################################
The Ballads and Poems in the Chronicle 141
interest. We have, likewise, some fragments on the marriage of
earl Ralph of Norwich, the first couplet of which
baer waes paet bryd ealo
paet waes manegra manna bealo,
shows, unmistakably, its ballad origin.
The last verses of this class are those on the reign of William
the Conqueror. Earle arranged some twelve lines as poetry, but
the whole passage claims similar treatment, since, in the portion
which he has printed as prose, there occur examples of full rime
and also of full assonance, connecting the half lines in the passages
he has not so written. The whole passage seems to be derived
from at least two ballads against the Norman conqueror. The
first begins "He rixade dfer Englaeland” and tells of the king's
intimate acquaintance with his dominions, so that he knew the
owner of every hide of land and how much it was worth; then, how
he conquered Wales and Scotland and, if he had lived two years
longer, would have won Ireland, also, without weapon strife. This,
which is unrimed, is followed by the passage “Castelas hè lēt
wýrcedn,” which is invaluable because of its strong Kentish asson-
ances. These lines tell, in bitter words, of the king's oppression, of
his heavy taxation, and of the terrible game laws, drawn up to pre-
serve those "tall deer" which he loved as greatly as though he were
their father. This last part is 38 lines long, divided into 19 couplets
linked by rime or assonance, the nineteenth being either marred
in transcription or a monastic addition in rime. The spelling often
hides the dialectical completeness of the assonance. After this
sung ballad follows a passage of rhythmical prose, in which the
compiler states that he has written these things about the king,
both good and evil, that men may imitate the goodness and wholly
flee from the evil. It would seem that the chronicler had to be
original in telling of the Conqueror's virtues; but, for the vices, he
had plenty of popular material at hand. The unhappy people were
in no mood to exalt his virtues, and, for the description of these,
the chronicler was forced to rely on his own literary resources.
The verses in the Chronicle have little literary merit, with
the exception of the poem on the battle of Brunanburh, and this
seems to have been strongly influenced by the epic of Judith.
Of this latter, unfortunately, only a beautiful fragment, consisting
of some 350 lines, survives? . Judith was, perhaps, composed as
a eulogy of Aethelflaed, queen of Mercia, who fought nobly against
1 Cott. Vitell. xv.
## p. 142 (#162) ############################################
142
From Alfred to the Conquest
the Danes in the first quarter of the tenth century. It has been
attributed to Caedmon; but its use of rime and the character of
its language has led some critics to place the poem comparatively
late. The use of rime, however, is no conclusive argument. It
recounts, in vigorous language, the deeds of the Apocryphal
heroine, and dwells especially on the way in which her deed
stirred up the timorous Jews to more courageous patriotism.
It is noteworthy that Aelfric himself had written a homily on
Judith, to teach the English the virtues of resistance to the
Danes. This homily must have been written earlier, and, perhaps,
it influenced the writer of Judith to choose her as a national
type in the fight for God and fatherland. The poem, as we
have it, begins at the end of the ninth canto; cantos X, XI
and xII are preserved in full, but the earlier part of the poem
is entirely wanting. This loss, however, is the less to be regretted
since the remaining cantos, containing the crisis of the story, are,
probably, the finest of all, and deal with a complete episode, to
which the fragment of canto Ix, telling of the faith of the heroine
and the invitation to the feast of Holofernes, serves as introduc-
tion. Canto x describes, with all the delight of Old English poets
in such pictures, the banquet in the Assyrian camp, the deep bowls
of wine borne along the benches, and the shouts and laughter of
the revellers. Darkness descends, and the warriors bring the maiden
to their master's tent. Overcome with wine, he falls into a deep
slumber, and the heroine, with a supplication to heaven for help,
draws the sword from its sheath. She hales the heathen towards
her by his hair, and smites twice with her weapon, till his head
rolls upon the floor. In canto XI, we read how Judith and her
maid steal from the camp with the head of Holofernes, and return
to Bethulia, where their kinsmen are waiting for them on the
wall. As soon as the two approach, men and women hasten to-
gether to meet them, and Judith bids her servant uncover the
trophy and exhibit it to the warriors. Then, with passionate
words, she exhorts them to attack the camp, to bear forth shields
and bucklers and bright helmets among the foe. So, at dawn
of day, they set out, the wolf and raven rejoicing in the tumult,
and the dewy-feathered eagle singing his war-song above them,
their sudden onset on the camp disturbing the enemy, drowsy
with mead. The next canto relates how the terrified Assyrians
hasten to tell their leader of the assault, and how, when they find
only his dead body, they, “sorrowfully minded, cast down their
weapons, and turn, sad at heart, to flight. ” The poem ends with
## p. 143 (#163) ############################################
Judith
143
the entire overthrow of the Assyrians, the return of the conquerors
with their booty to Bethulia, and Judith’s praise of the Almighty
for the triumph of her stratagem.
From this sketch of the poem it will be seen that it is
closely allied in theme to those of Cynewulf and his school, and
this led to the assumption of Ten Brink and others that it was
composed in the early part of the ninth century. A close in-
vestigation of its diction by Gregory Foster led him to place it
a century later; and, if, as he thinks, it was composed to com-
memorate the valiant deeds of Aethelflaed, the Lady of Mercia,
who wrested the five boroughs from the Danes, it was probably
written about 918. But nothing can be said with certainty on the
subject.
As poetry, this fragment stands in the front rank of Old English
literature, with Beowulf and Elene and Andreas. In wealth of
synonym it is equal to the best poems of Cynewulf, while the
construction of the sentences is simpler, and the narrative, in
consequence, less obscure. An impression of intensity is produced
by the heaping of synonyms in moments of stress, as in the prayer
of Judith, and in the fierce lines which describe the onset against
the Assyrians ; while a sense of dramatic fitness is shown in the
transitions, the divisions of the cantos and the preparation for
each great adventure. The tragedy is alive, and the actors play
their parts before our eyes.
The patriotic feeling which probably gave rise to Judith was
certainly responsible for the second great poem of our period, the
Battle of Maldon, sometimes called Byrhtnoth's Death. The
manuscript of this poem was destroyed by the Cottonian fire;
but it had, fortunately, been printed by Hearne in 1726, and it is
from his text that our knowledge of the poem is derived. It
celebrates the death of the great ealdorman Byrhtnoth, who was
connected by close ties of kinship with Aethelmaer, the friend of
Aelfric; it was, indeed, partly by means of legacies left by him
that Aethelmaer was enabled to support so generously the monastic
revival, and it is, therefore, fitting that he should be commemorated
by one of the finest poems in Old English. In the poem before
us he stands out as the ideal leader of men, admirable alike in his
devotion to his king, his simple piety and his sense of responsi-
bility towards his followers. He died as became a member of
the race that thirsts for danger, almost the last of the warriors
of that time who maintained the noble tradition of the days of
1 Oth. A. xa.
• Tacitus, Hist. V, 19.
## p. 144 (#164) ############################################
144
Alfred to the Conquest
From
Alfred. In less than twenty years after this date, the chronicler
tells a pitiful story of divisions between those who should have
united to lead the people to battle, and of forced payment of the
shameful tribute which Byrhtnoth refused.
It was in the year 991 that the Northman Anlaf sailed with
ninety-three ships to the coast of England, and, after harrying
Stone, Sandwich and Ipswich, came to Maeldune (now Maldon)
on the banks of the river Panta or Blackwater. The stream
divides here into two branches, and, leaving their ships at anchor
in one of them, the Danes drew up their forces on the intervening
piece of land. The poem, the beginning and end of which are lost,
opens with the directions of Byrhtnoth to his men, and tells how,
after marshalling his troops, he exhorted them to stand firm,
taking his place among the band of his immediate followers. At
that moment there appeared on the other side of the stream the
viking herald, who said that he was sent by the seamen to
announce that, if Byrhtnoth would buy off the assault with tribute,
they would make peace with him and return to their own land.
But Byrhtnoth scornfully rejected the offer, saying that he would
give tribute, indeed, but it should be the tribute of the sharp spear
and the ancient sword, and their only booty would be battle. With
this message he bade his men advance to the edge of the stream;
but, owing to the inflowing flood after the ebb, neither army could
reach the other, and they waited in battle array till the tide's
going out. Then Byrhtnoth, overweeningly daring, trusting too
much in his own strength, allowed the enemy to cross by the
bridge (probably one of stepping-stones which would be covered
at high tide), and the fight became fierce. “The time had come
for the fated men to fall; then was a tumult raised, the raven,
eager for carrion, hovered in the air, and on earth was a great
cry.
” On every side fell the heroes; a kingman of Byrhtnoth was
wounded, and, at last, the brave earl himself was slain by a poisoned
spear. With his last words he exhorted his men to resistance, and
died commending his soul to God. True to the noble traditions
of the heroic age, Aelfnoth and Wulfmaer shared his fate and fell,
hewn down by the heathen beside their lord. Then cowards began
to flee and seek safety in the woods, forgetting the brave words
they had spoken when feasting in the mead-hall. But Aelfwine,
the son of Aelfric, shouted to those fleeing, reminding them of
their vows, and declaring that none among his race should twit
him with flight, now that his prince lay fallen in battle, he who
was both his kinsman and his lord His brave words were taken
## p. 145 (#165) ############################################
The Battle of Maldon
145
up by Offa and Dunnere; and the warriors advanced to a fresh
attack. The appearance amongst the defending ranks of Aeschere,
son of Ecglaf, a Northumbrian hostage, is of great interest, as it
seems, for a moment, to give us a vivid glance of the political
troubles of the land. The poem ends by telling how Godric
exhorted his comrades and fought fiercely against the heathen
till he, too, fell.
This brief outline may, perhaps, give some idea of the great
interest of the poem, whose every word is filled with deep hatred
against the marauding foe, and with dignified sorrow for the loss
of beloved friends. The verse is as noble as the deed and instinct
with dramatic life. In it we see the heroic feeling of the earlier
national poetry, full of the Teutonic theme of loyal friendship and
warlike courage. And not until many hundreds of years have elapsed
do we find its equal in tragic strength. It is from this stirring
narrative, from Wulfstan's address to the English and from the
bitter records in the Chronicle, that we realise the degradation
of the country during the unhappy reign of Aethelred.
The remaining poems of our period in the old alliterative
metre are of a didactic character. Among them may be mentioned
the Menologium or poetical calendar, which is prefixed to a
version of the Chronicle'. It is an interesting metrical survey
of the progress of the year, with special mention of the saints'
days observed by the church, preserving some of the Old English
names of the months, such as Weodmonad (August), Winterfylleð
(October) and Blotmona8 (November), and retaining traces of
heathen times, though the whole is Christian in basis. Its value,
as poetry, depends on the tender feeling for nature shown in such
passages as those which describe the coming of May, tranquil
and gentle, with blossoming woods and flowers, or winter, which
cuts off the harvest with the sword of rime and snow, when all is
fettered with frost by the hest of the Creator, so that men may
no longer haunt the green meadows or the flowery fields.
Of more literary value is the poem entitled Be Domes Daege,
a free version of the Latin poem De Die Judicii, by some scholars
ascribed to Bede and by others to Alcuin. The 157 lines of the
Latin original are expanded to 304 by the translator, whose
imaginative gift is especially visible in the way he enlarges on a
hint from his source. The opening passage is extremely beautiful.
i Cott. Tib. B. I.
· Found in a unique manuscript in the library of Corpus Christi College,
Cambridge.
E. L I. CH, VII.
10
## p. 146 (#166) ############################################
146 From Alfred to the Conquest
It tells how, as the author sat lonely within a bower in a wood,
where the streams murmured among pleasant plants, a wind sud-
denly arose that stirred the trees and darkened the sky, so that his
mind was troubled, and he began to sing of the coming of death.
He describes how he wept and lay upon the earth, beating his breast
for sorrow, and he calls upon all his fellow sinners to confess their
sins with tears and to throw themselves on the mercy of Christ.
Then comes another highly imaginative passage, describing the
terrors that will foretell the second advent. “All the earth
shaketh, and the hills also quiver and fall; the gates of the
mountains bend and melt, and the terrible tumult of the stormy
sea fearfully frights the minds of men. " Then the Lord shall come
with hosts of angels, the sins of all shall be revealed and fire
shall consume the unrepentant. The poem ends with a passage,
partly borrowed from the Latin, on the joys of the redeemed.
They shall be numbered in heaven among the angels, and there,
amidst clusters of red roses, shall shine for ever. A throng of
virgin souls shall wander there, garlanded with flowers, led by
that most blessed of maidens who bore the Lord on earth.
The translation is one of the finest in Old English. It is far
more powerful than its Latin original, and many of the most
beautiful passages are new matter put in by the Old English
translator; for example, the lengthening of the opening, telling
of the woodland scene, the section on the terrors of judgment
and hell, and the whole passage describing Mary leading the
flower-decked maiden throng in Heaven.
In the same manuscript occurs another poem to which its
editor, Lumby, gave the title of Lar, and which he ascribed to
the author of the previous poem. It has, however, none of the
imaginative power of Be Domes Daege, and consists simply of
eighty lines of exhortatory verse addressed by one friend to an-
other, bidding him work, fear God, pray, give alms and go to
church in cold weather. And, since the length of life is unknown,
and the enemies of man are ever at hand to assail him, they must
be routed by earnest prayer and meditation, and the abandonment
of all bad habits. The low poetical worth of this piece would seem
to show that it was not by the translator of Be Domes Daege.
Next follow in the manuscript some curious verses, of which
each line is half in Latin and half in English, and which were
formerly also attributed to the author of Be Domes Daege. The
poems, however, differ so much in merit that this theory must
certainly be rejected. The further theory that the invocation
## p. 147 (#167) ############################################
147
Be Domes Daege
of saints in these verses shows that it was not by the author of
Be Domes Daege is, however, scarcely sound, for it disregards
contemporary theology and overlooks the English verses in praise
of the Virgin added by the translator of that poem. Hence our
truest warrant for attributing these verses to a different author
lies rather in the beauty and dignity of Be Domes Daege. The
hymn in question is an ingenious piece of trickery, like many a
Provençal poem of later date. It opens with a prayer for God's
mercy on the reader, and then goes on to speak of the incarnation,
ending with an invocation to Mary and the saints. These verses,
however, are of inestimable value metrically, since they show, by
their Latin equivalents, the two-beat character of the rhetorical
verse, just as similar Old German poems show, by their far greater
length in the Latin portions, the four-beat character of Germanic
sung verse.
More interesting are the eleventh century metrical versions of
the Psalms, in a manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale. This
MS contains only Psalms 1 to cl, but Bouterwek discovered further
fragments in a Benedictine office, which partly fill up the gaps,
and point to the existence of a complete metrical version of the
Psalter in Old English. Taken altogether, however, this Bene-
dictine office is merely a heap of fragments. The translation is,
as a rule, good, when play is given to love of nature or to feelings
common in Old English poetry. An isolated version exists of
Psalm 1 in Kentish dialect, which was formerly supposed to
belong to the eighth century, but which is shown, by its language,
to be two hundred years later. It was not, apparently, one of
a series, but was complete in itself, being rounded off at the close
by a short hymn-like passage on David's sin and his atonement.
A gloomy poem on The Grave, “For thee was a house built
Ere thou wast born,” etc. , written in the margin of a volume of
homilies in the Bodleian and known to all readers of Longfellow
and many beside, need not detain us long. It is, probably, of latere
date than any of the poems already referred to and shows signs of
the coming metrical change.
Last, there must be mentioned a poem on the city of Durham,
which, though not composed within our period, is the latest in
the classical rhetorical metre that is known to exist, and is, there-
fore, most suitably described in this place. One versions was
printed by Hickes in his Thesaurus (1703—5), and another copy
· Cott. Vesp. D. v. 1.
* NE. F. 4, 12.
3 Cott. Vitt. D. 20.
!
10-2
## p. 148 (#168) ############################################
148
Alfred to the Conquest
From
occurs at the close of a manuscript of the Historia Ecclesia
Dunelmensis of Simeon of Durham in the University Library,
Cambridge. The poem, which contains twenty long lines, falls
into two parts, the first eight describing the city on the hill,
surrounded with steep rocks, girdled by the strong flowing river,
full of many kinds of fish, and environed by forests in whose deep
dells dwell countless wild beasts; while the last twelve tell of the
wonderful relics preserved there, memorials of Cuthbert and
Oswald, Aidan and Eadberg, Eadfrith and bishop Aethelwold,
as well as of the famous writers Bede and Boisil, which, amidst
the veneration of the faithful, awaited in the minster the dooms-
day of the Lord. It is this catalogue of saints which enables us
to fix the date of the poem, for the translation of their relics to
the new cathedral took place in 1104, and the poem follows closely
the order of enumeration found in Simeon of Durham's description
of that ceremony! Although it is written in a strained archaistic
attempt at West Saxon spelling, yet we catch many clear glimpses
of south-eastern twelfth century phonology in its faulty attempts
at correctness.
After 1100, English poetry ceases to exist for nigh a hundred
years, although fragments remain to bear witness to that popular
verse which was to keep in the west midlands and north some
continuity with the old poetry-for the sung rhythm never died
out amongst the common folk, and rose ever and anon to such
songs as that of The Pearl, to heroic lays of Arthur, Alexander
and Troy and, in our own days, has been revived in the rhythm of
the mystic Christabel.
English prose was wrecked for many a hundred year. Centuries
elapsed before Aelfric had his equal again.
Capitula de Miraculis et Translationibus S. Cuthberti, Cap. VI.
## p. 149 (#169) ############################################
CHAPTER VIII
THE NORMAN CONQUEST
THE Norman conquest of England, from a literary point of
view, did not begin on the autumn day that saw Harold's levies
defeated by Norman archers on the slopes of Senlac. It began
with the years which, from his early youth onwards, Edward the
Confessor, the grandson of a Norman duke, had spent in exile in
Normandy; and with his intimacy with “foreigners" and its
inevitable consequences. The invasion of Norman favourites,
which preceded and accompanied his accession to the throne, and
their appointment, for a time, to the chief places in church and
state, led to the tightening of the bonds that bound England to
the Roman church, and paved the way for the period of Latin
influence that followed the coming of William, Lanfranc and
Anselm.
The development of the old vernacular literature was arrested
for nearly a hundred and fifty years after Hastings; and, as the
preservation of letters depended on ecclesiastics, professed scholars
and monastic chroniclers of foreign extraction, the literature of
England for practically a couple of centuries is to be found mainly
in Latin. Happily for England, her connection with the continent
became intimate at a time when Paris, “the mother of wisdom,"
was about to rise to intellectual dominance over Europe.
Of the national vernacular literature of France, at the time of
the Conquest, little was transplanted to English soil; but, in the two
centuries that followed, the cultivation of romance, aided by
“matter" that had passed through Celtic hands, flourished exceed-
ingly among the Anglo-Norman peoples and became a notable
part of English literature.
The development of Old English literature, as we have said,
was arrested. It was by no means, as some have urged, lifeless
before this break in its history; and speculation would be futile
as to what might have been its future, had there been no Norman
conquest. Where so much has been lost, there is no safety in
## p. 150 (#170) ############################################
150
The Norman Conquest
sweeping generalisations, based upon what is left. As a whole,
the evidence which we possess shows Old English literature
to have been richer than that of any other European nation
during the period of its most active life; and, though there
was, apparently, throughout Christian Europe, a lowering of
letters, in which England shared, during “the gloom and iron
and lead” of the tenth century, yet the lamps of learning and of
literature, though low, were not extinguished in this island. It was
the age of Dunstan, a lover of ballads and music and illuminated
missals and precious jewels and letters, a learned saint, a dreamer
of dreams, a worker in metal, the reformer of Glastonbury, a states-
man and teacher who "filled all England with light. " It was, as
we have seen, the age of Aelfric, in whose hands Old English prose
had been fashioned from the condition in which we find it in the
early days of the Chronicle, and in the days of Alfred, into an
instrument capable of expressing different kinds of thought in
ways of lightness and strength. And it was the age, certainly,
of The Battle of Maldon and of Brunanburh, and, possibly, of
Judith also. Old English poetry had proved itself capable of
expressing with notable aptitude, and with grave seriousness, the
nobler views of life.
A period of warfare with the Danes follows, during which
monasteries like that of Cerne, in Dorset, are sacked, and litera-
ture wanes; but there is evidence that the national spirit, fostered
by the beneficent rule of Canute, was strong in England in the
days preceding the coming of the Conqueror; and it is but
reasonable to assume that this spirit would not have withered
away and become a thing of naught, had Harold won, instead of
lost, the battle of Hastings. The main stream of its literary
expression was dammed at that time, and portions of it were
turned into other, and, so far as we can now see, into better,
because more varied, channels; but, when the barriers were
gradually broken down, and the stream regained freedom of
action, it was not the source that had been vitally altered—this
had only been changed in ways that did not greatly modify its
main character—but, between altered banks, and in freshly
wrought-out channels, the old waters ran, invigorated by the
addition of fresh springs.
Into what the folk-songs, of which we have faint glimmerings,
were about to develop, had there not been an interregnum, we
know not; but the literary spirit of the people, though they were
crushed under their Norman masters, never died out; it had little
## p. 151 (#171) ############################################
The Coming Change 151
or no assistance at first from the alien lettered classes; and, when
it revived, it was "with a difference. ”
There had not been wanting signs of some coming change.
Already, in pre-Conquest days, there had been a tendency to seek
some "new thing. " A growing sense of the existence of wonder-
ful things in the east, of which it was desirable to have some
knowledge, had led an unknown Englishman to translate the story
of Apollonius of Tyre into English. The marvellous deeds of the
Lives of the Saints had already proved that a taste for listening to
stories, if not, as yet, the capacity to tell them with conscious
literary art, grace and skill, was in existence. And, in addition to
this, we learn from the list of books acquired by Leofric for Exeter
cathedral, sixteen years only before the battle of Hastings, that
the love for books and learning which had inspired Benedict
Biscop and Dunstan had by no means died out; of some sixty
volumes, many were in English and one is the famous “mycel
Englisc boc" “ of many kinds of things wrought in verse," from
which we know much of the little we do know concerning Old
English literature.
The facility with which Englishmen adopted what Normans
had to give was, in some measure, due to the blood-relationship
that already existed between the two races. Scandinavian sea-
farers, mated with women of Gaul, had bred a race possessing
certain features akin to those of the Teutonic inhabitants of
England. It was a race that, becoming “French,” adapted itself
rapidly to its new surroundings, soon forgetting its northern home
and tongue; and, when it was master of England, further barriers
between race and race were soon broken down. The Norman con-
quest of England differed altogether from the English conquest of
Britain. The earlier conquest was a process of colonisation and gave
the land an almost entirely new population, with entirely new
thoughts and ways of looking at things, save in the borderlands
of the “Celtic fringe"; the later brought a new governing, and
then a new trading, class, and added a fresh strain to the national
blood without supplanting the mass of the people. Intermarriage,
that would begin, naturally enough, among Norman serving-men
and English women, spread from rank to rank, receiving its
ultimate sanction when Anselm crowned Matilda as Henry's queen.
Sooner or later the Norman, whether of higher or of lower degree,
adopted England as his country, spoke and acted as an English-
man and, before the Great Charter, that is to say, a hundred and
fifty years after the battle of Hastings, when the French homes of
## p. 152 (#172) ############################################
152
The Norman Conquest
Normandy and Anjou had been lost, the mixture of the invading
race and the conquered people was approaching completion. The
more stolid native had been touched with “finer fancies" and
“lighter thought"; the natural melancholy of the Old English
spirit had been wedded to the gaiety of the Norman; and England,
“meri Ingeland,” in due season was recognised to be
a wel god land, ich weno ech londe best,
Iset in the on ende of the worldo as al in the west;
The see geth him al aboute, he stond as in an yle;
Of fon1 hii dorre the lasse doute-bote hit be thorz gyle
of folo of the sulve? lond, as me hath iseye zwilo 84,
in language that irresistibly recalls the “fortress built by Nature
for herself,” the “happy breed of men,” the "little world,” the
“precious stone set in the silver sea,” the “ blessed plot, this earth,
this realm, this England,” of Shakespeare. So it came to pass
that, though, as the immediate result of the Conquest, Norman-
French became the exclusive language of the rich and courtly
nobles and ecclesiastics, knights and priests, and Latin the
exclusive language of learning-the conduits thus formed tending
inevitably to trouble the isolated waters—yet the language
in the country places,
Where the old plain men have rosy faces,
And the young fair maidens
Quiet eyes,
and among the serfs, and the outlaws in the greenwood, and
"lowe men” generally, was the unforbidden, even if untaught,
English of the conquered race. And, contrary to the expectation,
and, perhaps, the desire, of the governing class, it was this
language which, in the end, prevailed.
The gain to English literature that accrued from the Norman
conquest in three directions is so great as to be obvious to the
most superficial observer. The language was enriched by the
naturalisation of a Romance vocabulary; methods of expression
and ideas to be expressed were greatly multiplied by the incursion
of Norman methods and ideas; and the cause of scholarship and
learning was strengthened by the coming of scholars whose reputa-
tion was, or was to be, European, and by the links that were to
bind Paris and Oxford.
In a less obvious way, it gained by the consequent intercourse
with the continent that brought our wandering scholars into
1 Of foes they need the less fear-unless it be through guile.
s formerly.
Robert of Gloucester.
2 game.
## p. 153 (#173) ############################################
The Wisdom of the East
153
connection with the wisdom of the east. It is not to be forgotten,
for instance, that, for three or four hundred years, that is to say,
from about the ninth to about the twelfth century, Moham-
madanism, under the rule of enlightened caliphs in the east and in
the west, fostered learning and promoted the study of the liberal
arts at a time when many of the Christian kingdoms of Europe
were in intellectual darkness. Harun ar-Rashid was a contem-
porary of Alcuin, and he and his successors made Baghdad and the
cities of Spain centres of knowledge and storehouses of books.
The Aristotelian philosophy, which had a commanding influence
over the whole of the religious thought of the west during the
Middle Ages, was known, prior to the middle of the thirteenth
century, chiefly through Latin translations based upon Arabic
versions of Aristotle; and the attachment of the Arabs to the
study of mathematics and astronomy is too well known to call for
comment. Our own connection with Mohammadan learning during
the period of its European predominance is exemplified in the
persons of Michael Scot; of Robert the Englishman or Robert de
Retines, who first translated the Coran into Latin; of Daniel of
Morley, East Anglian astronomer, scholar of Toledo and importer
of books; and of Adelard or Aethelard of Bath, who, in many
wanderings through eastern and western lands, acquired learning
from Greek and Arab, who translated Euclid and who showed his
love of the quest for knowledge in other than purely mathemati-
cal ways in his philosophical treatise De Eodem et Diverso, an
allegory in which Philocosmia, or the Lust of the World, disputes
with Philosophia for the body and soul of the narrator.
The Christian learning of the west received fresh impetus in the
middle of the eleventh century at the hands of Lanfranc, who
made the monastic school at Bec a centre famous for its teaching,
and who, when he came to England, to work for church and state,
did not forget his earlier care for books and learning. It was
under Lanfranc's direction that Osbern, the Canterbury monk,
wrote his lives of earlier English ecclesiastics, of St Dunstan and
St Alphege and St Odo; and he gave generously to the building
of St Albans, a monastery which, under the abbacy of Lanfranc's
well-beloved kinsman Paul, encouraged the spirit of letters in
its specially endowed scriptorium, and so led the way to the
conversion of annalist into historian illustrated in the person of
Matthew Paris.
A consideration of the writings of Lanfranc himself falls outside
our province; they consist of letters, commentaries and treatises
## p. 154 (#174) ############################################
154
The Norman Conquest
on controversial theology. Prior to his appointment as arch-
bishop of Canterbury, Lanfranc had been mainly responsible for
the refutation of the "spiritual” views concerning the Eucharist
held by Berengarius, who, following in the footsteps of John
Scotus (Erigena) opposed the doctrine of Real Presence. Lanfranc's
disputation helped largely to strengthen the universal accept-
ance of the doctrine of transubstantiation throughout the Roman
church; and, as the chief officer of the English church, in the
years of its renovation under William, his influence could but tend
towards placing English religious life and thought and, therefore,
English religious literature, more in harmony with the religious
system of Europe.
Lanfranc's successor in the see of Canterbury was his fellow-
countryman and pupil, Anselm ; perhaps less of a statesman, but
a greater genius, a kindlier-natured and larger-hearted man and a
more profound thinker. As one of the greatest of English church-
men, who fought for the purity and liberty and rights of the
English church, we may claim Anselm as English, and we may
rejoice at the place given him in the Paradiso in the company of
Bonaventura and John Chrysostom and Peter “the devourer"
of books, but the consideration of his writings, also, falls rather to
the historian of religious philosophy. Inasmuch, however, as the
result of Anselm's fight against kingly tyranny led to the Charter
of Henry I and so prepared the way for the Great Charter that
followed a century later, he must be mentioned among those who
took part in the making of England.
The reflection in English literature of the gradual construction
of this new England will be seen more clearly when we have passed
through the interval of quiescence that prevailed in vernacular
letters after the Conquest. The literature of church and state
and scholarship was for those who knew Latin; and the literature
that followed the invaders was for those who were taught French;
the struggle for supremacy between native and alien tongues was
fought out; and, when the first writers of Transition English
appear, it is seen that the beaten Romance has modified the con-
quering Teutonic. The early days appear to be days of halting
steps and curious experiment; and, naturally, the imitation of
foreign models seems greater at first than later, when the naturali-
sation, or, rather, the blending, is nearer completion. Even the
manuscripts of these early days, in their comparatively simple
character, show that the vernacular is in the condition of a “poor
relation. " Writers in English were at school under the new masters
## p. 155 (#175) ############################################
Norman Gifts
155
of the land, whose cycles of romance, including much that was
borrowed from the adopted country, and, therefore, much that
was easily assimilated, afforded, both in respect of form and
of matter, excellent material for translation for many a year,
until, in fact, the clipped wings had had time to grow again.
As before hinted, we do not know the extent of what we lost,
and we cannot, with any advantage, proceed far on the road of
aesthetic comparison between old and new. We must be content,
therefore, to recognise to the full the gifts of the Norman race, and
these were not confined to the making of literary English. For, as
an outward and visible sign, still remaining in many places to
testify, with the strengthening of our literature, to the change in
art that accompanied the change in blood, and that gave expression
to the change in thought, there stand the buildings erected
throughout the land, as William of Malmesbury said, “after a style
unknown before. ”
After the axe came the chisel; and this change of tool, which
helps us to follow the steps that mark the development of
Anglo-Norman architecture, may symbolise the development of
language and letters in England under Anglo-Norman kings, a
development that had begun years before the Conqueror had
landed. When inflections had been well-nigh lopped off, and
the language had been made more copious by additions to its
ornamental vocabulary, the new “smiths of song"-whether
graceless minstrel or ascetic priest-were able to give more
adequate expression to the work of their hands and to branch out
into less imitative ways. They were beating out the material in
preparation for the coming of Chaucer.
## p. 156 (#176) ############################################
OHAPTER IX
LATIN CHRONICLERS FROM THE ELEVENTH TO THE
THIRTEENTH CENTURIES
Of all the literary monuments of the remarkable revival of
learning which followed the coming of the Normans, and which
reached its zenith under Henry II, the greatest, alike in bulk and
in permanent interest and value, is the voluminous mass of Latin
chronicles compiled during the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries.
So ample is the wealth of this chronicle literature, and so full and
trustworthy is its presentment of contemporary affairs, that few
periods in our history stand out in such clear and minute relief as
that of the Norman and Angevin kings. Priceless as these docu-
ments are to the modern historian, they are far from being, as a
whole, the colourless records which concern the student of political
and constitutional movements alone. Many of them may have but
little charm or distinction of style, and may appear to be nothing
better than laboriously faithful registers of current events. They
all, however, after their quality and kind, bear the marks of a
common inspiration, and the meanest chronicler of the time felt
that, in compiling the annals of his own country, he was working in
the tradition of the great historians of antiquity. Some few of the
chronicles are real literature, and show that their writers were well
aware that history has its muse.
While a scholarly delight and an honest pride in their art were
common to all the English chroniclers of the Norman and Angevin
period, not a few of them found an additional incentive in royal
and aristocratic patronage. Much of the activity of the twelfth
century historians was palpably due to the favour shown to men of
letters by the two Henrys, and to the personal encouragement of
princely nobles like earl Robert of Gloucester, and courtly eccle-
siastics like Alexander, bishop of Lincoln. Some of the monastic
writers enjoyed no such direct patronage; but they were none the
less responsive to the demands of the time. They not only felt the
impulse of the new learning—they were conscious of living in a
great age, and of witnessing the gradual establishment in England
## p. 157 (#177) ############################################
England and Normandy 157
of a new and powerful kingdom. Nothing is more significant than
the way in which the Anglo-Norman chroniclers, whether native
Englishmen or Normans domiciled in England, reflect the united
patriotic sentiment which it was the design of Norman statesman-
ship to foster. Though composed in a foreign tongue, these
chronicles are histories of England, and are written from a
national English standpoint. It was under Henry I, whose marriage
with Matilda seemed to symbolise the permanent union of the two
peoples, that a new sense of national self-consciousness began to
grow out of the Norman settlement. A shrewd observer of the next
generation, Walter Map, tells us that it was Henry who effectually
“united both peoples in a steadfast concord ? . " It was Henry's reign
also that witnessed the transfer of the central seat of Norman power
from Normandy to England. William of Malmesbury, himself half-
Norman, half-English, in his account of the battle of Tinchebray,
reminds his readers that it was fought “on the same day on which,
about forty years before, William had first landed at Hastings”-a
fact which the chronicler characteristically takes to prove "the
wise dispensation of God that Normandy should be subjected
to England on the same day that the Norman power had
formerly arrived to conquer that kingdom. ” In other words,
England now became the predominant partner in the Anglo-
Norman kingdom, and the twelfth century chroniclers are
fully alive to the meaning of the change. As the dreams of a
great Anglo-Norman empire began to take shape in the minds of
the new rulers of England, and came to be temporarily realised
under Henry II, the English historiographers rose to the height of
their opportunities with patriotic ardour. No other country pro-
duced, during the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries, anything
to be compared with the English chronicles in variety of interest,
wealth of information and amplitude of range. So wide is their
outlook, and so authoritative is their record of events, that, as
Stubbs observes, “it is from the English chroniclers of this period
that much of the German history of the time has to be written. ” The
new England had become conscious of her power, and of her growing
importance in the international economy of Europe.
In literature the most signal expression of that consciousness
is the work of our Latin chroniclers. Thus, however unattractive
much of this chronicle literature may be to the ordinary reader,
there belongs to all of it the human interest of having been
· De Nugis Curialium, Dist. v, Cap. v.
3 Gesta Regum Anglorum, Bk. v.
: Lectures on Medieval and Modern History, p. 125.
## p. 158 (#178) ############################################
158
Latin Chroniclers
written under the pressure of great events and the stimulus of a
glowing national feeling.
Even apart from patriotic incentives, there were other in-
fuences at work during the twelfth century which made for the
study and the writing of history. The Norman settlement in
England synchronised with a movement which shook all western
Christendom to its foundations. The crusades not only profoundly
stirred the feelings of Europe-they served indirectly to quicken
the imagination and stimulate the curiosity of the western races
as nothing had done for centuries. Intercourse with the east, and
the mingling together of different tribes in the crusading armies,
brought about a “renascence of wonder” as far-reaching in some
of its effects as the great renascence itself. The twelfth century
is, above all, the age of the birth of modern romance. The insti-
tutions of chivalry, the mystic symbolism of the church, the
international currency of popular fabliaux, the importation of
oriental stories of magic and wizardry-all contributed to the
fashioning of the fantastic creations of the medieval romances.
And of the romantic cycles none came to have so speedy and
triumphant a vogue as that which was named, originally in France,
"the matter of Britain. " This “matter of Britain" had its beginning,
as a formative influence in European literature, in the work of an
Anglo-Norman writer, who, while professing to draw his information
from a suspiciously cryptic source and frequently giving obvious
rein to his own imagination, assumes none the less the gravity and
the deliberate manner of an authentic chronicler. Geoffrey of
Monmouth, ambitious of supplying what previous writers had
failed to tell about the kings of Britain before the coming of the
English, wrote a chronicle which had all the charm and novelty of
a romance of adventure. King Arthur, as a romantic hero, is
Geoffrey's creation. Hence, the most readable Latin chronicle
of the twelfth century is one that has the least real claim to that
title. But the History of the Kings of Britain is no more to be
ruled out of a place in the chronicle literature of England than it
is to be ousted from its assured pre-eminence as the fountain-head of
Arthurian romance.
