"William came o'er the sea,
With bloody sword came he.
Cold heart and bloody sword hand
Now rule the English land."
The Heimskringla
WILLIAM THE NORMAN ruled England. Norman knights and nobles
filled all the posts of honor at court, all the great places in
the land. Norman bishops and abbots ruled in church and
monastery. The Norman tongue was alone the speech in court and
hall, Latin alone was the speech of the learned. Only among the
lowly, the unlearned, and the poor was English heard.
It seemed as if the English tongue was doomed to vanish before
the conquering Norman, even as the ancient British tongue had
vanished before the conquering English. And, in truth, for two
hundred years it might have been thought that English prose was
dead, "put to sleep by the sword." But it was not so. It slept,
indeed, but to awake again. For England conquered the conqueror.
And when English Literature awoke once more, it was the richer
through the gifts which the Norman had brought.
One thing the Normans had brought was a liking for history, and
soon there sprang up a whole race of chroniclers. They, like
Bede, were monks and priests. They lived in monasteries, and
wrote in Latin. One after another they wrote, and when one laid
down his pen, another took it up. Some of these chroniclers were
mere painstaking men who noted facts and dates with care. But
others were true writers of literature, who told their tales in
vivid, stirring words, so that they make these times live again
for us. The names of some of the best of these chroniclers are
Eadmer, Orderic Vitalis, and William of Malmesbury.
By degrees these Norman and Anglo-Norman monks became filled with
the spirit of England. They wrote of England as of their home,
they were proud to call themselves English, and they began to
desire that England should stand high among the nations. It is,
you remember, from one of these chroniclers, Geoffrey of Monmout
(see chapter vi.), that we date the reawakening of story-telling
in England.
As a writer of history Geoffrey is bad. Another chronicler* says
of him, "Therefore as in all things we trust Bede, whose wisdom
and truth are not to be doubted: so that fabler with his fables
shall be forthwith spat out by us all."
*William of Newbury.
But if Geoffrey was a bad writer of history, he was good as "a
fabler," and, as we have seen in chapter vii., it was to his book
that we owe the first long poem written in English after the
Conquest.
The Norman came with sword in hand, bringing in his train the
Latin-writing chroniclers. But he did not bring these alone. He
brought minstrels also. Besides the quiet monks who sat in their
little cells, or in the pleasant cloisters, writing the history
of the times, there were the light-hearted minstrels who roamed
the land with harp and song.
The man who struck the first blow at Hastings was a minstrel who,
as he rode against the English, sang. And the song he sang was
of Roland, the great champion of Charlemagne. The Roland story
is to France what the Arthur story is to us. And it shows,
perhaps, the strength of English patriotic spirit that that story
never took hold of English minds. Some few tales there are told
of Roland in English, but they are few indeed, in comparison with
the many that are told of Arthur.
The Norman, however, who did not readily invent new tales, was
very good at taking and making his own the tales of others. So,
even as he conquered England by the sword, he conquered our
literature too. For the stories of Arthur were told in French
before they came back to us in English. It was the same with
other tales, and many of our old stories have come down to us,
not through their English originals, but through the French. For
the years after the Conquest are the poorest in English
Literature.
From the Conquest until Layamon wrote his Brut, there was no
English literature worthy of the name. Had we not already spoken
of Layamon out of true order in following the story of Arthur, it
is here that we should speak of him and of his book, The Brut.
So, perhaps, it would be well to go back and read chapter vii.,
and then we must go on to the Metrical Romances.
The three hundred years from 1200 to 1500 were the years of the
Metrical Romances. Metrical means written in verse. Romance
meant at first the languages made from the Latin tongue, such as
French or Spanish. After a time the word Romance was used to
mean a story told in any Romance language. But now we use it to
mean any story of strange and wonderful adventures, especially
when the most thrilling adventures happen to the hero and
heroine.
The Norman minstrels, then, took English tales and made them into
romances. But when the English began once more to write, they
turned these romances back again into English. We still call
them romances, although they are now written in English.
Some of these tales came to us, no doubt, from the Danes. They
were brought from over the sea by the fierce Northmen, who were,
after all, akin to the Normans. The Normans made them into
French stories, and the English turned them back into English.
Perhaps one of the most interesting of these Metrical Romances is
that of Havelok the Dane.
The poem begins with a few lines which seem meant to call the
people together to listen:--
"Hearken to me, good men,
Wives, maidens, and all men,
To a tale that I will tell to
Who so will hear and list thereto."
We can imagine the minstrel as he stands in some market-place, or
in some firelit hall, touching his harp lightly as he sings the
words. With a quick movement he throws back his long green
cloak, and shows his gay dress beneath. Upon his head he wears a
jaunty cap, and his hair is long and curled. He sings the
opening lines perhaps more than once, in order to gather the
people round him. Then, when the eager crowd sit or stand about
him, he begins his lay. It is most probably in a market-place
that the minstrel stands and sings. For Havelok the Dane was
written for the people and not for the great folk, who still
spoke only French.
"There was a king in byegone days
That in his time wrought good laws,
He did them make and full well hold,
Him loved young, him loved old,
Earl and baron, strong man and thane,
Knight, bondman and swain,
Widows, maidens, priests and clerks
And all for his good works."
If you will compare this poetry with that of Layamon, you will
see that there is something in it quite different from his. This
no longer rests, as that does, upon accent and alliteration, but
upon rhyme. The English, too, in which it is written, is much
more like the English of to-day. For Havelok was written perhaps
a hundred years after Layamon's Brut. These are the first lines
as they are in the MS.:--
"Herknet to me gode men
Wiues maydnes and alle men
Of a tale pat ich you wile telle
Wo so it wile here and yerto dwelle."
That, you see, except for curious spelling, is not very unlike
our English of to-day, although it is fair to tell you that all
the lines are not so easy to understand as these are.