ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE.
Nothing better illustrates the original peculiarities and subsequent
development of the early English mind than the Anglo-Saxon literature. A
vast mass of manuscripts has been preserved for us, embracing works in
prose and verse of the most varied kind; and all the most important of
these have been made accessible to modern readers in printed copies.
They cast a flood of light upon the workings of the English mind in all
ages, from the old pagan period in Sleswick to the date of the Norman
Conquest, and the subsequent gradual supplanting of our native
literature by a new culture based upon the Romance models.
All national literature everywhere begins with rude songs. From the
earliest period at which the English and Saxon people existed as
separate tribes at all, we may be sure that they possessed battle-songs,
like those common to the whole Aryan stock. But among the Teutonic races
poetry was not distinguished by either of the peculiarities–rime or
metre–which mark off modern verse from prose, so far as its external
form is concerned. Our existing English system of versification is not
derived from our old native poetry at all; it is a development of the
Romance system, adopted by the school of Gower and Chaucer from the
French and Italian poets. Its metre, or syllabic arrangement, is an
adaptation from the Greek quantitative prosody, handed down through
Latin and the neo-Latin dialects; its rime is a Celtic peculiarity
borrowed by the Romance nationalities, and handed on through them to
modern English literature by the Romance school of the fourteenth
century. Our original English versification, on the other hand, was
neither rimed nor rhythmic. What answered to metre was a certain
irregular swing, produced by a roughly recurrent number of accents in
each couplet, without restriction as to the number of feet or syllables.
What answered to rime was a regular and marked alliteration, each
couplet having a certain key-letter, with which three principal words in
the couplet began. In addition to these two poetical devices,
Anglo-Saxon verse shows traces of parallelism, similar to that which
distinguishes Hebrew poetry. But the alliteration and parallelism do not
run quite side by side, the second half of each alliterative couplet
being parallel with the first half of the next couplet. Accordingly,
each new sentence begins somewhat clumsily in the middle of the couplet.
All these peculiarities are not, however, always to be distinguished in
every separate poem.
The following rough translation of a very early Teutonic spell for the
cure of a sprained ankle, belonging to the heathen period, will
illustrate the earliest form of this alliterative verse. The key-letter
in each couplet is printed in capitals, and the verse is read from end
to end, not as two separate columns.[1]
Balder and Woden Went to the Woodland:
There Balder's Foal Fell, wrenching its Foot.
Then Sinthgunt beguiled him, and Sunna her Sister:
Then Frua beguiled him, and Folla her sister,
Then Woden beguiled him, as Well he knew how;
Wrench of blood, Wrench of bone, and eke Wrench of limb:
Bone unto Bone, Blood unto Blood,
Limb unto Limb as though Limèd it were.
[1] The original of this heathen charm is in the Old High
German dialect; but it is quoted here as a good specimen of
the early form of alliterative verse. A similar charm
undoubtedly existed in Anglo-Saxon, though no copy of it has
come down to our days, as we possess a modernised and
Christianised English version, in which the name of our Lord
is substituted for that of Balder.
In this simple spell the alliteration serves rather as an aid to memory
than as an ornamental device. The following lines, translated from the
ballad on Æthelstan's victory at Brunanburh, in 937, will show the
developed form of the same versificatory system. The parallelism and
alliteration are here well marked:–
Æthelstan king, lord of Earls,
Bestower of Bracelets, and his Brother eke,
Eadmund the Ætheling, honour Eternal
Won in the Slaughter, with edge of the Sword
By Brunnanbury. The Bucklers they clave,
Hewed the Helmets, with Hammered steel,
Heirs of Edward, as was their Heritage,
From their Fore-Fathers, that oft the Field
They should Guard their Good folk Gainst every comer,
Their Home and their Hoard. The Hated foe cringed to them,
The Scottish Sailors, and the Northern Shipmen;
Fated they Fell. The Field lay gory
With Swordsmen's blood Since the Sun rose
On Morning tide a Mighty globe,
To Glide o'er the Ground, God's candle bright,
The endless Lord's taper, till the great Light
Sank to its Setting. There Soldiers lay,
Warriors Wounded, Northern Wights,
Shot over Shields; and so Scotsmen eke,
Wearied with War. The West Saxon onwards,
The Live-Long day in Linkèd order
Followed the Footsteps of the Foul Foe.
Of course no songs of the old heathen period were committed to writing
either in Sleswick or in Britain. The minstrels who composed them taught
them by word of mouth to their pupils, and so handed them down from
generation to generation, much as the Achæan rhapsodists handed down the
Homeric poems. Nevertheless, two or three such old songs were afterwards
written out in Christian Northumbria or Wessex; and though their
heathendom has been greatly toned down by the transcribers, enough
remains to give us a graphic glimpse of the fierce and gloomy old
English nature which we could not otherwise obtain. One fragment, known
as the _Fight at Finnesburh_ (rescued from a book-cover into which it
had been pasted), probably dates back before the colonisation of
Britain, and closely resembles in style the above-quoted ode. Two other
early pieces, the _Traveller's Song_ and the _Lament of Deor_, are
inserted from pagan tradition in a book of later devotional poems
preserved at Exeter. But the great epic of _Beowulf_, a work composed
when the English and the Danes were still living in close connexion with
one another by the shores of the Baltic, has been handed down to us
entire, thanks to the kind intervention of some Northumbrian monk, who,
by Christianising the most flagrantly heathen portions, has saved the
entire work from the fate which would otherwise have overtaken it. As a
striking representation of early English life and thought, this great
epic deserves a fuller description.[2]
[2] It is right to state, however, that many scholars regard
_Beowulf_ as a late translation from a Danish original.
_Beowulf_ is written in the same short alliterative metre as that of the
Brunanburh ballad, and takes its name from its hero, a servant or
companion of the mighty Hygelac, king of the Geatas (Jutes or Goths). At
a distance from his home lay the kingdom of the Scyldings, a Danish
tribe, ruled over by Hrothgar. There stood Heorot, the high hall of
heroes, the greatest mead-house ever raised. But the land of the Danes
was haunted by a terrible fiend, known as Grendel, who dwelt in a dark
fen in the forest belt, girt round with shadows and lit up at eve by
flitting flames. Every night Grendel came forth and carried off some of
the Danes to devour in his home. The description of the monster himself
and of the marshland where he had his lair is full of that weird and
gloomy superstition which everywhere darkens and overshadows the life
of the savage and the heathen barbarian. The terror inspired in the rude
English mind by the mark and the woodland, the home of wild beasts and
of hostile ghosts, of deadly spirits and of fierce enemies, gleams
luridly through every line. The fen and the forest are dim and dark;
will-o'-the-wisps flit above them, and gloom closes them in; wolves and
wild boars lurk there, the quagmire opens its jaws and swallows the
horse and his rider; the foeman comes through it to bring fire and
slaughter to the clan-village at the dead of night. To these real
terrors and dangers of the mark are added the fancied ones of
superstition. There the terrible forms begotten of man's vague dread of
the unknown–elves and nickors and fiends–have their murky
dwelling-place. The atmosphere of the strange old heathen epic is
oppressive in its gloominess. Nevertheless, its poetry sometimes rises
to a height of great, though barbaric, sublimity. Beowulf himself,
hearing of the evil wrought by Grendel, set sail from his home for the
land of the Danes. Hrothgar received him kindly, and entertained him and
his Goths with ale and song in Heorot. Wealtheow, Hrothgar's queen,
gold-decked, served them with mead. But when all had retired to rest on
the couches of the great hall, in the murky night, Grendel came. He
seized and slew one of Beowulf's companions. Then the warrior of the
Goths followed the monster, and wounded him sorely with his hands.
Grendel fled to his lair to die. But after the contest, Grendel's
mother, a no less hateful creature–the "Devil's dam" of our mediæval
legends–carries on the war against the slayer of her son. Beowulf
descends to her home beneath the water, grapples with her in her cave,
turns against her the weapons he finds there, and is again victorious.
The Goths return to their own country laden with gifts by Hrothgar.
After the death of Hygelac, Beowulf succeeds to the kingship of the
Geatas, whom he rules well and prosperously for many years. At length a
mysterious being, named the Fire Drake, a sort of dragon guarding a
hidden treasure, some of which has been stolen while its guardian
sleeps, comes out to slaughter his people. The old hero buckles on his
rune-covered sword again, and goes forth to battle with the monster. He
slays it, indeed, but is blasted by its fiery breath, and dies after the
encounter. His companions light his pyre upon a lofty spit of land
jutting out into the winter sea. Weapons and jewels and drinking bowls,
taken from the Fire Drake's treasure, were thrown into the tomb for the
use of the ghost in the other world; and a mighty barrow was raised upon
the spot to be a beacon far and wide to seafaring men. So ends the great
heathen epic. It gives us the most valuable picture which we possess of
the daily life led by our pagan forefathers.
But though these poems are the oldest in tone, they are not the oldest
in form of all that we possess. It is probable that the most primitive
Anglo-Saxon verse was identical with prose, and consisted merely of
sentences bound together by parallelism. As alliteration, at first a
mere _memoria technica_, became an ornamental adjunct, and grew more
developed, the parallelism gradually dropped out. Gnomes or short
proverbs of this character were in common use, and they closely
resembled the mediæval proverbs current in England to the present day.
With the introduction of Christianity, English verse took a new
direction. It was chiefly occupied in devotional and sacred poetry, or
rather, such poems only have come down to us, as the monks transcribed
them alone, leaving the half-heathen war-songs of the minstrels attached
to the great houses to die out unwritten. The first piece of English
literature which we can actually date is a fragment of the great
religious epic of Cædmon, written about the year 670. Cædmon was a poor
brother in Hild's monastery at Whitby, and he acquired the art of poetry
by a miracle. Northumbria, in the sixth and seventh centuries, took the
lead in Teutonic Britain; and all the early literature is Northumbrian,
as all the later literature is West Saxon. Cædmon's poem consisted in a
paraphrase of the Bible history, from the Creation to the Ascension. The
idea of a translation of the Bible from Latin into English would never
have occurred to any one at that early time. English had as yet no
literary form into which it could be thrown. But Cædmon conceived the
notion of paraphrasing the Bible story in the old alliterative Teutonic
verse, which was familiar to his hearers in songs like _Beowulf_. Some
of the brethren translated or interpreted for him portions of the
Vulgate, and he threw them into rude metre. Only a single short excerpt
has come down to us in the original form. There is a later complete
epic, however, also attributed to Cædmon, of the same scope and purport;
and it retains so much of the old heathen spirit that it may very
possibly represent a modernised version of the real Cædmon's poem, by a
reviser in the ninth century. At any rate, the latter work may be
treated here under the name of Cædmon, by which it is universally known.
It consists of a long Scriptural paraphrase, written in the alliterative
metre, short, sharp, and decisive, but not without a wild and passionate
beauty of its own. In tone it differs wonderfully little from _Beowulf_,
being most at home in the war of heaven and Satan, and in the titanic
descriptions of the devils and their deeds. The conduct of the poem is
singularly like that of _Paradise Lost_. Its wild and rapid stanzas show
how little Christianity had yet moulded the barbaric nature of the
newly-converted English. The epic is essentially a war-song; the Hebrew
element is far stronger than the Christian; hell takes the place of
Grendel's mere; and, to borrow Mr. Green's admirable phrase, "the verses
fall like sword-strokes in the thick of battle."
In all these works we get the genuine native English note, the wild song
of a pirate race, shaped in early minstrelsy for celebrating the deeds
of gods and warriors, and scarcely half-adapted afterward to the not
wholly alien tone of the oldest Hebrew Scriptures. But the Latin
schools, set up by the Italian monks, introduced into England a totally
new and highly-developed literature. The pagan Anglo-Saxons had not
advanced beyond the stage of ballads; they had no history, or other
prose literature of their own, except, perhaps, a few traditional
genealogical lists, mostly mythical, and adapted to an artificial
grouping by eights and forties. The Roman missionaries brought over the
Roman works, with their developed historical and philosophical style;
and the change induced in England by copying these originals was as
great as the change would now be from the rude Polynesian myths and
ballads to a history of Polynesia written in English, and after English
prototypes, by a native convert. In fact, the Latin language was almost
as important to the new departure as the Latin models. While the old
English literary form, restricted entirely to poetry, was unfitted for
any serious narrative or any reflective work, the old English tongue,
suited only to the practical needs of a rude warrior race, was unfitted
for the expression of any but the simplest and most material ideas. It
is true, the vocabulary was copious, especially in terms for natural
objects, and it was far richer than might be expected even in words
referring to mental states and emotions; but in the expression of
abstract ideas, and in idioms suitable for philosophical discussion, it
remained still, of course, very deficient. Hence the new serious
literature was necessarily written entirely in the Latin language, which
alone possessed the words and modes of speech fitted for its
development; but to exclude it on that account from the consideration of
Anglo-Saxon literature, as many writers have done, would be an absurd
affectation. The Latin writings of Englishmen are an integral part of
English thought, and an important factor in the evolution of English
culture. Gradually, as English monks grew to read Latin from generation
to generation, they invented corresponding compounds in their own
language for the abstract words of the southern tongue; and therefore by
the beginning of the eleventh century, the West Saxon speech of Ælfred
and his successors had grown into a comparatively wealthy dialect,
suitable for the expression of many ideas unfamiliar to the rude pirates
and farmers of Sleswick and East Anglia. Thus, in later days, a rich
vernacular literature grew up with many distinct branches. But, in the
earlier period, the use of a civilised idiom for all purposes connected
with the higher civilisation introduced by the missionaries was
absolutely necessary; and so we find the codes of laws, the penitentials
of the Church, the charters, and the prose literature generally, almost
all written at first in Latin alone. Gradually, as the English tongue
grew fuller, we find it creeping into use for one after another of these
purposes; but to the last an educated Anglo-Saxon could express himself
far more accurately and philosophically in the cultivated tongue of Rome
than in the rough dialect of his Teutonic countrymen. We have only to
contrast the bald and meagre style of the "English Chronicle," written
in the mother-tongue, with the fulness and ease of Bæda's
"Ecclesiastical History," written two centuries earlier in Latin, in
order to see how great an advantage the rough Northumbrians of the early
Christian period obtained in the gift of an old and polished instrument
for conveying to one another their higher thoughts.
Of this new literature (which began with the Latin biography of Wilfrith
by Æddi or Eddius, and the Latin verses of Ealdhelm) the great
representative is, in fact, Bæda, whose life has already been
sufficiently described in an earlier chapter. Living at Jarrow, a
Benedictine monastery of the strictest type, in close connection with
Rome, and supplied with Roman works in abundance, Bæda had thoroughly
imbibed the spirit of the southern culture, and his books reflect for us
a true picture of the English barbarian toned down and almost
obliterated in all distinctive features by receptivity for Italian
civilisation. The Northumbrian kingdom had just passed its prime in his
days; and he was able to record the early history of the English Church
and People with something like Roman breadth of view. His scientific
knowledge was up to that of his contemporaries abroad; while his
somewhat childish tales of miracles and visions, though they often
betray traces of the old heathen spirit, were not below the average
level of European thought in his own day. Altogether, Bæda may be taken
as a fair specimen of the Romanised Englishman, alike in his strength
and in his weakness. The samples of his historical style already given
will suffice for illustration of his Latin works; but it must not be
forgotten that he was also one of the first writers to try his hand at
regular English prose in his translation of St. John's Gospel. A few
English verses from his lips have also come down to us, breathing the
old Teutonic spirit more deeply than might be expected from his other
works.
During the interval between the Northumbrian and West Saxon
supremacies–the interval embraced by the eighth century, and covered by
the greatness of Mercia under Æthelbald and Offa–we have few remains of
English literature. The laws of Ine the West Saxon, and of Offa the
Mercian, with the Penitentials of the Church, and the Charters, form the
chief documents. But England gained no little credit for learning from
the works of two Englishmen who had taken up their abode in the old
Germanic kingdom: Boniface or Winfrith, the apostle of the heathen
Teutons subjugated by the Franks, and Alcuin (Ealhwine), the famous
friend and secretary of Karl the Great. Many devotional Anglo-Saxon
poems, of various dates, are kept for us in the two books preserved at
Exeter, and at Vercelli in North Italy. Amongst them are some by
Cynewulf, perhaps the most genuinely poetical of all the early minstrels
after Cædmon. The following lines, taken from the beginning of his poem
"The Phœnix" (a transcript from Lactantius), will sufficiently
illustrate his style:–
I have heard that hidden Afar from hence
On the east of earth Is a fairest isle,
Lovely and famous. The lap of that land
May not be reached By many mortals,
Dwellers on earth; But it is divided
Through the might of the Maker From all misdoers.
Fair is the field, Full happy and glad,
Filled with the sweetest Scented flowers.
Unique is that island, Almighty the worker
Mickle of might Who moulded that land.
There oft lieth open To the eyes of the blest,
With happiest harmony, The gate of heaven.
Winsome its woods And its fair green wolds,
Roomy with reaches. No rain there nor snow,
Nor breath of frost, Nor fiery blast,
Nor summer's heat, Nor scattered sleet,
Nor fall of hail, Nor hoary rime,
Nor weltering weather, Nor wintry shower,
Falleth on any; But the field resteth
Ever in peace, And the princely land
Bloometh with blossoms. Berg there nor mount
Standeth not steep, Nor stony crag
High lifteth the head, As here with us,
Nor vale, nor dale, Nor deep-caverned down,
Hollows or hills; Nor hangeth aloft
Aught of unsmooth; But ever the plain,
Basks in the beam, Joyfully blooming.
Twelve fathoms taller Towereth that land
(As quoth in their writs Many wise men)
Than ever a berg That bright among mortals
High lifteth the head Among heaven's stars.
Two noteworthy points may be marked in this extract. Its feeling for
natural scenery is quite different from the wild sublimity of the
descriptions of nature in _Beowulf_. Cynewulf's verse is essentially the
verse of an agriculturist; it looks with disfavour upon mountains and
rugged scenes, while its ideal is one of peaceful tillage. The monk
speaks out in it as cultivator and dreamer. Its tone is wholly different
from that of the Brunanburh ballad or the other fierce war-songs.
Moreover, it contains one or two rimes, preserved in this translation,
whose full significance will be pointed out hereafter.
The anarchy of Northumbria, and still more the Danish inroads, put an
end to the literary movement in the North and the Midlands; but the
struggle in Wessex gave new life to the West Saxon people. Under Ælfred,
Winchester became the centre of English thought. But the West Saxon
literature is almost entirely written in English, not in Latin; a fact
which marks the progressive development of vocabulary and idiom in the
native tongue. Ælfred himself did much to encourage literature, inviting
over learned men from the continent, and founding schools for the West
Saxon youth in his dwarfed dominions. Most of the Winchester works are
attributed to his own pen, though doubtless he was largely aided by his
advisers, and amongst others by Asser, his Welsh secretary and Bishop of
Sherborne. They comprise translations into the Anglo-Saxon of Boëthius
_de Consolatione_, the Universal History of Orosius, Bæda's
Ecclesiastical History, and Pope Gregory's _Regula Pastoralis_. But the
fact that Ælfred still has recourse to Roman originals, marks the stage
of civilisation as yet mainly imitative; while the interesting passages
intercalated by the king himself show that the beginnings of a really
native prose literature were already taking shape in English hands.
The chief monument of this truly Anglo-Saxon literature, begun and
completed by English writers in the English tongue alone, is the
Chronicle. That invaluable document, the oldest history of any Teutonic
race in its own language, was probably first compiled at the court of
Ælfred. Its earlier part consists of mere royal genealogies of the
first West Saxon kings, together with a few traditions of the
colonisation, and some excerpts from Bæda. But with the reign of
Æthelwulf, Ælfred's father, it becomes comparatively copious, though its
records still remain dry and matter-of-fact, a bare statement of facts,
without comment or emotional display. The following extract, giving the
account of Ælfred's death, will show its meagre nature. The passage has
been modernised as little as is consistent with its intelligibility at
the present day:–
An. 901. Here died Ælfred Æthulfing [Æthelwulfing–the son
of Æthelwulf], six nights ere All Hallow Mass. He was king
over all English-kin, bar that deal that was under Danish
weald [dominion]; and he held that kingdom three half-years
less than thirty winters. There came Eadward his son to the
rule. And there seized Æthelwold ætheling, his father's
brother's son, the ham [villa] at Winburne [Wimbourne], and
at Tweoxneam [Christchurch], by the king's unthank and his
witan's [without leave from the king]. There rode the king
with his fyrd till he reached Badbury against Winburne. And
Æthelwold sat within the ham, with the men that to him had
bowed, and he had forwrought [obstructed] all the gates in,
and said that he would either there live or there lie.
Thereupon rode the ætheling on night away, and sought the
[Danish] host in Northumbria, and they took him for king and
bowed to him. And the king bade ride after him, but they
could not outride him. Then beset man the woman that he had
erst taken without the king's leave, and against the
bishop's word, for that she was ere that hallowed a nun. And
on this ilk year forth-fared Æthelred (he was ealdorman on
Devon) four weeks ere Ælfred king.
During the Augustan age the Chronicle grows less full, but contains
several fine war-songs, of the genuine old English type, full of
savagery in sentiment, and abrupt or broken in manner, but marked by the
same wild poetry and harsh inversions as the older heathen ballads.
Amongst them stand the lines on the fight of Brunanburh, whose exordium
is quoted above. Its close forms one of the finest passages in old
English verse:–
Behind them they Left, the Lych to devour,
The Sallow kite and the Swart raven,
Horny of beak,– and Him, the dusk-coated,
The white-afted Erne, the corse to Enjoy,
The Greedy war-hawk, and that Grey beast,
The Wolf of the Wood. No such Woeful slaughter
Aye on this Island Ever hath been,
By edge of the Sword, as book Sayeth,
Writers of Eld, since of Eastward hither
English and Saxons Sailed over Sea,
O'er the Broad Brine,– landed in Britain,
Proud Workers of War, and o'ercame the Welsh,
Earls Eager of fame, Obtaining this Earth.
During the decadence, in the disastrous reign of Æthelred, the Chronicle
regains its fulness, and the following passage may be taken as a good
specimen of its later style. It shows the approach to comment and
reflection, as the compilers grew more accustomed to historical writing
in their own tongue:–
An. 1009. Here on this year were the ships ready of which we
ere spake, and there were so many of them as never ere (so
far as books tell us) were made among English kin in no
king's day. And man brought them all together to Sandwich,
and there should they lie, and hold this earth against all
outlanders [foreigners'] hosts. But we had not yet the luck
nor the worship [valour] that the ship-fyrd should be of
any good to this land, no more than it oft was afore. Then
befel it at this ilk time or a little ere, that Brihtric,
Eadric's brother the ealdorman's, forwrayed [accused]
Wulfnoth child to the king: and he went out and drew unto
him twenty ships, and there harried everywhere by the south
shore, and wrought all evil. Then quoth man to the ship-fyrd
that man might easily take them, if man were about it. Then
took Brihtric to himself eighty ships and thought that he
should work himself great fame if he should get Wulfnoth,
quick or dead. But as they were thitherward, there came such
a wind against them such as no man ere minded [remembered],
and it all to-beat and to-brake the ships, and warped them
on land: and soon came Wulfnoth and for-burned the ships.
When this was couth [known] to the other ships where the
king was, how the others fared, then was it as though it
were all redeless, and the king fared him home, and the
ealdormen, and the high witan, and forlet the ships thus
lightly. And the folk that were on the ships brought them
round eft to Lunden, and let all the people's toil thus
lightly go for nought: and the victory that all English kin
hoped for was no better. There this ship-fyrd was thus
ended; then came, soon after Lammas, the huge foreign host,
that we hight Thurkill's host, to Sandwich, and soon wended
their way to Canterbury, and would quickly have won the burg
if they had not rather yearned for peace of them. And all
the East Kentings made peace with the host, and gave it
three thousand pound. And the host there, soon after that,
wended till it came to Wightland, and there everywhere in
Suth-Sex, and on Hamtunshire, and eke on Berkshire harried
and burnt, as their wont is. Then bade the king call out all
the people, that men should hold against them on every half
[side]: but none the less, look! they fared where they
willed. Then one time had the king foregone before them with
all the fyrd as they were going to their ships, and all the
folk was ready to fight them. But it was let, through Eadric
ealdorman, as it ever yet was. Then, after St. Martin's
mass, they fared eft again into Kent, and took them a winter
seat on Thames, and victualled themselves from East-Sex and
from the shires that there next were, on the twain halves
of Thames. And oft they fought against the burg of Lunden,
but praise be to God, it yet stands sound, and they ever
there fared evilly. And there after mid-winter they took
their way up, out through Chiltern, and so to Oxenaford
[Oxford], and for-burnt the burg, and took their way on to
the twa halves of Thames to shipward. There man warned them
that there was fyrd gathered at Lunden against them; then
wended they over at Stane [Staines]. And thus fared they all
the winter, and that Lent were in Kent and bettered
[repaired] their ships.
We possess several manuscript versions of the Chronicle, belonging to
different abbeys, and containing in places somewhat different accounts.
Thus the Peterborough copy is fullest on matters affecting that
monastery, and even inserts several spurious grants, which, however, are
of value as showing how incapable the writers were of scientific
forgery, and so as guarantees of the general accuracy of the document.
But in the main facts they all agree. Nor do they stop short at the
Norman Conquest. Most of them continue half through the reign of
William, and then cease; while one manuscript goes on uninterruptedly
till the reign of Stephen, and breaks off abruptly in the year 1154 with
an unfinished sentence. With it, native prose literature dies down
altogether until the reign of Edward III.
As a whole, however, the Conquest struck the death-blow of Anglo-Saxon
literature almost at once. During the reigns of Ælfred's descendants
Wessex had produced a rich crop of native works on all subjects, but
especially religious. In this literature the greatest name was that of
Ælfric, whose Homilies are models of the classical West Saxon prose.
But after the Conquest our native literature died out wholly, and a new
literature, founded on Romance models, took its place. The Anglo-Saxon
style lingered on among the people, but it was gradually killed down by
the Romance style of the court writers. In prose, the history of William
of Malmesbury, written in Latin, and in a wider continental spirit,
marks the change. In poetry, the English school struggled on longer, but
at last succumbed. A few words on the nature of this process will not be
thrown away.
The old Teutonic poetry, with its treble system of accent, alliteration,
and parallelism, was wholly different from the Romance poetry, with its
double system of rime and metre. But, from an early date, the English
themselves were fond of verbal jingles, such as "Scot and lot," "sac and
soc," "frith and grith," "eorl and ceorl," or "might and right." Even in
the alliterative poems we find many occasional rimes, such as "hlynede
and dynede," "wide and side," "Dryht-guman sine drencte mid wine," or
such as the rimes already quoted from Cynewulf. As time went on, and
intercourse with other countries became greater, the tendency to rime
settled down into a fixed habit. Rimed Latin verse was already familiar
to the clergy, and was imitated in their works. Much of the very ornate
Anglo-Saxon prose of the latest period is full of strange verbal tricks,
as shown in the following modernised extract from a sermon of Wulfstan.
Here, the alliterative letters are printed in capitals, and the rimes in
italics:–
No Wonder is it that Woes befall us, for Well We Wot that
now full many a year men little _care_ what thing they
_dare_ in word or deed; and Sorely has this nation Sinned,
whate'er man Say, with Manifold Sins and with right Manifold
Misdeeds, with Slayings and with Slaughters, with _robbing_
and with _stabbing_, with Grasping _deed_ and hungry
_Greed_, through Christian Treason and through heathen
Treachery, through _guile_ and through _wile_, through
_lawlessness_ and _awelessness_, through Murder of Friends
and Murder of Foes, through broken Troth and broken Truth,
through wedded unchastity and cloistered impurity. Little
they _trow_ of marriage _vow_, as ere this I said: little
they reck the breach of _oath_ or _troth_; swearing and
for-swearing, on every _side_, far and _wide_, Fast and
Feast they hold not, Peace and Pact they keep not, oft and
anon. Thus in this _land_ they _stand_, Foes to Christendom,
Friends to heathendom, Persecutors of Priests, Persecutors
of People, all too many; spurners of godly law and Christian
bond, who Loudly Laugh at the _Teaching_ of God's _Teachers_
and the _Preaching_ of God's _Preachers_, and whatso rightly
to God's rites belongs.
The nation was thus clearly preparing itself from within for the
adoption of the Romance system. Immediately after the Conquest, rimes
begin to appear distinctly, while alliteration begins to die out. An
Anglo-Saxon poem on the character of William the Conqueror, inserted in
the Chronicle under the year of his death, consists of very rude rimes
which may be modernised as follows–
Gold he took by might,
And of great unright,
From his folk with evil deed
For sore little need.
He was on greediness befallen,
And getsomeness he loved withal.
He set a mickle deer frith,
And he laid laws therewith,
That whoso slew hart or hind
Him should man then blinden.
He forbade to slay the harts,
And so eke the boars.
So well he loved the high deer
As if he their father were.
Eke he set by the hares
That they might freely fare.
His rich men mourned it
And the poor men wailed it.
But he was so firmly wrought
That he recked of all nought.
And they must all withal
The king's will follow,
If they wished to live
Or their land have,
Or their goods eke,
Or his peace to seek.
Woe is me,
That any man so proud should be,
Thus himself up to raise,
And over all men to boast.
May God Almighty show his soul mild-heart-ness,
And do him for his sins forgiveness!
From that time English poetry bifurcates. On the one hand, we have the
survival of the old Teutonic alliterative swing in Layamon's Brut and in
Piers Plowman–the native verse of the people sung by native minstrels:
and on the other hand we have the new Romance rimed metre in Robert of
Gloucester, "William of Palerne," Gower, and Chaucer. But from Piers
Plowman and Chaucer onward the Romance system conquers and the Teutonic
system dies rapidly. Our modern poetry is wholly Romance in descent,
form, and spirit.
Thus in literature as in civilisation generally, the culture of old
Rome, either as handed down ecclesiastically through the Latin, or as
handed down popularly through the Norman-French, overcame the native
Anglo-Saxon culture, such as it was, and drove it utterly out of the
England which we now know. Though a new literature, in Latin and
English, sprang up after the Conquest, that literature had its roots,
not in Sleswick or in Wessex, but in Greece, in Rome, in Provence, and
in Normandy. With the Normans, a new era began–an era when Romance
civilisation was grafted by harsh but strong hands on to the Anglo-Saxon
stock, the Anglo-Saxon institutions, and the Anglo-Saxon tongue. With
the first step in this revolution, our present volume has completed its
assigned task. The story of the Normans will be told by another pen in
the same series.