the literature of every modern country is made up of many elements, contributed by various races; and has been modified at different times by foreign influences. thus, among the ancient celtic inhabitants of our islands, the peoples whom the romans found here, the welsh have given us the materials of the famous romances of king arthur, and from the gaelic tribes of ireland and scotland come the romances of heroes less universally known, finn, diarmaid, cuchulain, and the rest. but the main stock of our earliest poetry and prose, like the main stock of our language, is anglo-saxon. the anglo-saxon tribes who invaded britain, and after the departure of the romans (411) conquered the greater part of the island, must have had a literature of their own, and must have brought it with them over sea.
for all early peoples, even the least civilized, possess the germs of literature. they have their hymns to their divine father above the sky, and to gods and spirits; they have magic songs, to win the love of women, or to cause the deaths of men; they have love-songs, and songs of feats of war. they possess fairy-tales, and legends in prose concerning gods and fabulous heroes; they have tales of talking birds and beasts; and they have dances in which the legends of old heroes are acted and sung. these dances are the germ of the drama: the songs are the germs of lyric poetry; the beast-stories are the sources of books like ?sop's fables and ovid's "metamorphoses"; and the fairy-tales are the earliest kind of novels.
the anglo-saxon invaders were, of course, on a very much higher level than that of savages. they were living in the age of[pg 2] iron; they did not use bronze for their swords, spears, and axes; much more remote were they from the period of stone axes, stone, knives, and stone arrow-heads. they could write, not in the roman alphabet, but in "runes," adapted at some unknown time by the germanic peoples, probably from the greek characters; and there is no reason why they should not have used this writing to preserve their poetry, though it is not certain that they did so at this early, period.
one early anglo-saxon poem, indeed, "the husband's message," professes to be written in runic characters on a staff or tablet of wood. even more ancient poems may have been written and preserved in this way, but the wood, the bóc (book) as it was called, has perished, while brief runic inscriptions on metal and on stone remain.
the anglo-saxon way of living.
the society of the anglo-saxons, as described in the oldest surviving poems, was like that of the early irish about a.d. 200 as depicted in their oldest romances, and like that of the early icelanders as painted in the sagas, or stories of 1100, and later. each free man had his house, with its large hall, and a fire in the centre. in the hall, usually built of timber, the people ate and passed their time when not out of doors, and also slept at night, while there were other rooms (probably each was a small separately roofed house) for other purposes. the women had their "bower," the married people had their little bedclosets off the hall, and there were store-rooms. the house stood in a wide yard or court, where geese and other fowls were kept; it was fenced about with a palisade, or a bank and hedge. tilling the soil, keeping cattle, hunting, and war and raiding, by sea and land, were the occupations of the men; the women sewed and span, and kept house.
a group of such homesteads, each house well apart from its neighbours, made the village or settlement: there were no towns with streets, such as the romans left in britain.
a number of such villages were united in the tribe, each tribe had its king, while the other chief men, the richest and best[pg 3] born, constituted a class of gentry. later, tribes were gathered into small kingdoms, with a "bretwalda" or "over-lord," the most powerful of the kings, at the head of all.
this kind of society is almost exactly the same as that which homer describes among the greeks, more than a thousand years before christ. as in homer, each anglo-saxon king had his gleeman (scop) or minstrel, who sang to his household and to the guests in hall. the songs might be new, of his own making, or lays handed down from of old.
we shall see that the longer anglo-saxon poems, before christianity came in, were stories about fabulous heroes; or real kings of times past, concerning whom many fables were told. most of these tales, or "myths," were not true; they were mere ancient "fairy stories," in which sometimes real but half-forgotten warriors and princes play their parts. the traditions, however, were looked on as being true, and the listeners to the gleemen thought that they were learning history as well as being amused. meanwhile any man might make and sing verses for his own pleasure, about his own deeds and his own fancies, sorrows, and loves.
there was no lack of old legends of times before the english invasion of britain, or of legends quite fabulous about gods and heroes. we know from roman and early christian authors, that the other germanic peoples, on the continent, had abundance of this material for poetry: thus the germans sang of arminius, the lombards sang of alboin, or ?lfwine (died a.d. 573), and the scandinavians and germans had legends of attila, the great hun conqueror, in the fifth century, and of sigurd, who slew fafnir, the snake-man; of the vengeance of brynhild, and all the other adventures of the volsungs and niblungs; in germany fashioned, much later, into the famous "nibelungenlied".[1]
the anglo-saxons, too, knew forms of these legends; and mention the heroes of them in their poetry. thus there is no[pg 4] reason why the anglo-saxons should not have produced poems as magnificent as those of the early greeks, except that they, like all other peoples, had not the genius of the greeks for poetry, and for the arts; and had not their musical language, and glorious forms of verse. they were a rough country folk, and for long did not, like the greeks, live in towns.
but even if they had possessed more genius than they did, much of their old literature would probably have been lost when they became christians; and when the clergy, who had, most to do with writing, generally devoted themselves only to verses on biblical or other christian subjects, or to prose sermons; and to learned books in latin. while plenty of anglo-saxon christian poetry survives, of poetry derived from the heathen times of the anglo-saxons there is comparatively little, and much of it has been more or less re-written, and affected by later changes and additions, in early christian times.
the fragments of old poetry enable us to understand the poetic genius of our remote ancestors as it was before they had wholly adopted christianity, or come under latin, french, and norman influences. from the descendants of the britons whom they had conquered, or who survived as their welsh neighbours, they seem, at this time, to have borrowed little or nothing in the way of song or story.
before beginning to try to understand the anglo-saxon literature, we ought to set before our minds two or three considerations. though the language of these very old poems is the early form of our own english, we cannot understand them except in translations, unless we learn anglo-saxon. however well a translator may render the ideas of a poem, he cannot give the original words of it in another language. now the poet's very own words have a beauty and harmony and appropriateness which a translation cannot reproduce. the ideas remain, but the essence of the poem is lost: gone is the vigour, the humour is weakened; the harmony is impaired. once more we are accustomed to rhyme, and to certain forms of versification in our poetry. the early anglo-saxons did not employ rhyme; the peculiar cadence, with alliteration, of their verse cannot easily be reproduced; and there is much difference[pg 5] of opinion as to the prosody or scansion of anglo-saxon verse. thus, till we can read anglo-saxon easily, and while we only read its poetry through translations, we are apt to think less highly of it than it deserves.
again, the ideas and manners of the anglo-saxons were not like our own in many details. their poets did not write for us, but for men of their own time, whose taste and ways of thinking and living were in many respects very different from ours.
if many people cannot now take pleasure in the novels of fielding, scott, miss austen, thackeray, and dickens—the novels of 1745-1870—because these seem "so old-fashioned," they will certainly be unable to admire the poetry of 500-800. yet it may be excellent poetry, when we put ourselves as far as we can in the place of the hearers for whom it was composed. if we fail to do this we may read anglo-saxon poetry as a matter of history, but, as poetry, we cannot enjoy it.
minstrels, story-tellers, and stories.
perhaps the oldest of the anglo-saxon poems is that called "widsith," after the name of the far-travelled minstrel or gleeman who sang it before the people in the hall of a prince or noble. this short poem tells us what kind of tales the people liked to hear. it begins:—
widsith spoke
his word-hoard unlocked,
that is, he opened his treasure of stories as a travelling pedlar opens his box of goods. he says that he has wandered, gathering songs and tales, all over the world from the german ocean to egypt and india. he means that he knows all, stories; he is merely giving his hearers their choice of a tale about any king and people in the known world.
let us suppose that they choose to hear about ?lfwine, or alboin, king of the longobards or lombards, whom widsith says that he had visited. we know what tales were told of ?lfwine. one of these is a fair example of the rest; it is probably not true. ?lfwine had killed the father of his wife rosamund, and had a[pg 6] cup made out of the skull, and he made rosamund drink out of it at a feast. she determined to be revenged for this cruel insult, and took counsel with the king's shield-bearer and guardsman. by his advice she entrapped beartheow, a very strong man, by a trick, so that he became guilty of high treason. he was now at her mercy, for she threatened to inform against him, and thus compelled him to murder her husband, ?lfwine, in his bed. after that, the king's shield-bearer tried to win the kingdom. but rosamund gave him poisoned wine, and he, when he knew that it was poisoned, made her drink out the cup, and they two died in the same hour.
this makes a noble tragic song, but the story is only a form of a much older greek tale which herodotus, 1000 years earlier, tells of king candaules of lydia, of his wife, whom he insulted, and of the captain of his guard, whom she induced to kill king candaules.
probably an anglo-saxon minstrel would recite the poem called "widsith," and then the listeners would ask him for any of the stories which he had mentioned, perhaps for one about ?lfwine; or alexander the great; or sigurd of the volsungs, who slew the serpent-man, fafnir; or of hygelac (who is believed to have been the man named, in latin, chochilaicus, a real king of about 520); or of hrothgar, whom widsith mentions. this king is befriended by beowulf, in the great anglo-saxon poem of that name, the noblest and most famous of all these old songs. the minstrel makes requests for gifts of rings and bracelets; and speaks of his desire to meet generous princes. in the same way homer loves to tell how golden cups and beautiful swords were given by princes to the minstrels in greece. the last verses of "widsith" run thus, in modern english, and are a fair example of early anglo-saxon versification:—[2]
swa scrithende so wandering on
gesceapum hweorfath the world about,
glee men gumena gleemen do roam
geond grunda fela; through many lands;
thearfe secgath they say their needs
thonc word sprecath, they speak their thanks,
simle suth oththe north sure, south or north
sumne gemetath, some one to meet,
gydda gleawne of songs to judge
geofam unhncawne and gifts not grudge.
[pg 7]
there are few early anglo-saxon poems that can be called "lyrics"; they are rather narratives, as in the case of the songs of war, the battles of brunanburh and maldon; or "elegiac," and reflective, as in "the ruined city," though personal emotion, a characteristic of the lyric, often appears in the christian poems and elsewhere as we shall see.
"beowulf" the chief poem may be called a brief "epic," a narrative of over 3000 lines, on great heroic adventures. such a poem would be sung in hall, to beguile more than one long winter night.
beowulf.
it is impossible to be certain about the date when the original form of this great old poem, "beowulf," was first composed, because it contains, on the one hand, descriptions of the ancient heathen way of living, thinking, manners, and customs; and, on the other hand, has many allusions to christian doctrine, which the anglo-saxons knew nothing of till after they had quite conquered this country. the poet of "beowulf" as it now exists, had read the bible, or knew part of its contents. we must look first at the[pg 8] poem as it stands, and the story as it is told, or rather at the stories, for there are several.
one beowulf, not our hero, was the son of scyld. scyld died, and, in place of christian burial, was placed in his ship, with arms and treasures, and so sailed out to sea at the wind's will. not so, when his time came, was our beowulf buried; that is, beowulf the hero of the poem, for the earlier beowulf, son of scyld, was another man.
the grandson of scyld was hrothgar (whose name becomes roger in later times), and hrothgar was a danish king, builder of heorot, a princely hall. his happiness awoke the envy of grendel, a fiend of the wilds.
the christian author of the poem, as it stands, thinks that grendel and other monsters are descendants of cain!
the nobles slept in the great hall, whither grendel came and caught away thirty of them. men sought other sleeping-rooms, but grendel still came and slew them. the house was empty, and men promised sacrifices to their false gods all in vain: "they knew not the true god," yet the poet often forgets their ignorance, and makes them speak like christians:
there was a king of gothland named hygelac, a real king living at the beginning of the sixth century. the king's nephew, beowulf, heard of the evil deeds of grendel, and set sail with some of hygelac's men to help the unhappy hrothgar. they all wore shirts of mail made curiously of interlaced iron rings, they had spears with iron heads, and helmets crowned with the figure of a boar made in iron; some of these shirts of chain-mail and helmets still exist. coming into the great hall, built of timber plated with gold, the heroes explained their errand, and were well received. as grendel cannot be harmed with stroke of steel, beowulf will carry neither sword nor shield, but be slain by grendel; or slay him with his hands. if grendel eats him, hrothgar will not need to give him due burial—burning his body, and burying the bones in a mound of earth; the custom is that of the unconverted german tribes. hrothgar accepts the offer, the warriors sit at their ale (they had not much wine), and listen to the clear voice of the minstrel as he sings of old adventures. but hunferth, a thane of[pg 9] hrothgar, out of jealousy, taunts beowulf with having been beaten in a swimming match that lasted for seven nights. beowulf replies that hunferth "has drunk too much beer": he himself swam better than his opponent for five nights, and slew nine sea-monsters with his sword; hunferth, on they other hand, dare not face grendel, and has been the destroyer of his own brothers. yet hunferth does not draw his sword, after these insults, which is strange; and the feast in hall goes on merrily.
such scenes of boasting and quarrelling were, no doubt, common over the ale cups, but waltheow, queen of hrothgar, "the golden-garlanded lady, the peace-weaver," enters the throng, and bears the cup of welcome to beowulf, thanking god that she has found a helper to her heart's desire. then she takes her place by her lord hrothgar.
night fell, beowulf, committing himself "to the all-knowing god," takes off his armour and lays his head on the bolster—the word is the same in anglo-saxon. grendel arrived, burst in the iron-bolted door, and laughed as he saw the sleeping men. one warrior he tore to pieces and devoured; but beowulf, who had the strength of thirty, gripped the fiend, and the hall echoed with their wrestling and stamping up and down; the clamped benches were torn from the floor. men smote at grendel with swords, but the steel did not bite on his body. beowulf tore his arm and shoulder clean away, and grendel, flying to a haunted pool, described as a terrible place, dived down through the bloodstained water, and "hell caught hold of him".
in heorot men now made merry, and the minstrel sang a new song of the fight.
after, the rejoicings, eight horses and princely armour are given to beowulf. the minstrel sings of the hero finn, with a pleasant description of the coming of spring after a long winter. the poem is not all about fiends and fighting; the descriptions of wild rocks and seas, and of happy nature, are beautiful. then the gracious wife of hrothgar bids beowulf farewell, giving him a cup of gold. other presents are offered, and on so happy a day, wine, not ale, is drunk in hall.
but beowulf s adventure is not ended. that night he slept,[pg 10] not in hall, but in a separate room, and the mother of grendel, a creature more terrible than himself, came to avenge her son, and slew a warrior.
next day hrothgar described to beowulf the home of the fiends; they abode in dark wolf-haunted places, windy "nesses," or headlands, wild marshlands, where the hill-stream rushes through black shadows into a pool or perhaps sea-inlet, under the earth. the boughs of trees hang dense over the water, and at night a fire shines from it. even the stag that ranges the moors, when he flies from the hounds to the lake, dies rather than venture there to take the water. this is a fine example of the descriptions of nature in the poem. beowulf is not alarmed; we must all die at last, he says, but while we live we should try to win glory.
so they all rode to the haunted pool, beowulf in his iron armour and helmet. the man who had insulted him now repents, and gives beowulf the best of iron swords, named hrunting; for famous swords in these days had names, like king arthur's blade, excalibur, or roland's durendal. "i will gain glory with hrunting, or death shall take me," says beowulf.[3]
beowulf dived into the black water, the fiend strove to crush him, but his iron shirt of mail protected him, and she dragged him into the dreadful hall, her home, where the water did not enter. a strange light burned; beowulf saw his hideous foe and smote at her with hrunting; but the edge did not bite on her body. he threw away the useless sword, and they wrestled; they fell, beowulf was under her, and she drew her short sword. she could not pierce his armour, but he saw and seized a huge sword, made for a giant in times long ago. with this he cut her down from the neck to the breast-bone, and his friends on shore saw the pool turn to blood; all but his own men had believed that beowulf was dead, and had gone home.
meanwhile the blade of the great sword melted away in the[pg 11] poisoned blood of his foe, and he swam to shore with the hilt, and with the heads of the two monsters, grendel and his mother. with these he came gloriously to hrothgar, who wondered at that sword hilt, covered with plates of gold, engraved with a poem in runic letters; for the poet is fond of describing beautiful swords and armour.
hrothgar now made a long speech about the goodness of god, which, of course, is a christian addition to the poem. beowulf gave back hrunting to hunferth, saying no word against the weapon though it had been of no service. then they all departed in high honour, and their swift ship under sail cut the sea into foam as she flew homeward.
in time hygelac and his son fell in battle, and beowulf was for fifty years "the shepherd of the people". the last adventure of his old age was a fight with a fiery dragon which dwelt among the golden treasures in an ancient burial mound. in the tomb, says the poet, "there is no sound of swords or harness, no joy of the harp; the good hawk flits not through the hall; the swift horse does not beat the ground at the gate". anglo-saxon poetry is full of the melancholy of death, and of mournful thoughts awakened in presence of the ruined homes of men long dead.
in his last fight and his best fight, beowulf, with a young prince to aid him, slew the fire drake, but he was mortally hurt by its poisonous flaming breath, and spoke his latest words: "bid the brave men pile up a mound for me, high and far-seen on the headland, that seafaring men in time to come may call it beowulf's mound". these are almost the very words of the ghost of the dead oarsman, elpenor, to odysseus in homer.
so much has been said about the poem of "beowulf," because it is by far the greatest poem that the anglo-saxons have left to us, and best shows how they lived. from "beowulf" we learn that our ancestors lived almost exactly as did the ancestors of the greeks, in homer's poems, made perhaps 1600 years before the making of "beowulf". both these ancient greeks and our own ancestors had, and expressed in poetry, the same love, of life and of the beauty of the world; and the same belief that, after death, hope was hopeless, and joy was ended. both had the[pg 12] same sense of the mystery of existence, and, when they took time to think, had the same melancholy. our poetry thus began like that of greece, and, in the end, became the rival of the greatness of greece.
we know from broken pieces of these old songs which have come down to us that the anglo-saxons, like their german neighbours on the continent, had even better stories than "beowulf". but they have been lost, and "beowulf" was perhaps saved by the christian parts of it, which must have been put in by some one who wrote it over again after the anglo-saxons were converted: the language is like what was spoken and written about 750. one beautiful poem is "the ruined city". the minstrel, beholding the desolation of the towers and baths of some roman town which the anglo-saxons have overthrown, laments its fall and the perishable state of human fortunes. other poems may be briefly mentioned.
the wanderer.
in "the wanderer" there is abundance of gloom, but it is a less noble poem than "the ruined city," for the speaker is in sorrow, not for the griefs of all mankind, but for his own. he is an exile, homeless, in fact a tramp, eardstapa. he has lost his lord, his patron; and dreams of his kindness, in the old happy days; and wakens, an aged man, friendless, to see the snow falling in the ocean, and the seabirds flitting with their white wings through the snow. the house where he had been young has fallen, and he laments over the ruins.
the plaint of deor.
this complaint is also rueful, but it is manly. the poet calk to mind old heroes and heroines, such as weland (remembered still as wayland smith, in scott's "kenilworth"), who suffered many misfortunes, but endured them bravely. the poem is in stanzas; each ending with the burden or refrain,
that evil he overcame,
so may i this!
[pg 13]
it is like the often repeated word of odysseus in homer:—
endure my heart,
worse hast thou endured!
one sorrow of the poet is that his lord has taken from him the land which he held as a minstrel, and given it to another singer. now he is in new trouble.
that i surmounted,
so may i this!
probably there were many other poems with refrains, or recurring lines at the end of each stanza; this is a very old poetic device; originally the refrains were sung in chorus by the listeners as they danced to the music of the minstrels.
the seafarer.
in this poem, as in "beowulf," the sea is spoken of as it would be by men who knew its wild moods; cold, tempest, biting salt water, danger, and grey waves under driving rain, yet the seafarer loves, it. the poet says that (like
the gentlemen of england
who live at home at ease,)
many a one knows not the dangers of the deep, while the minstrel has heard the swan sing through the ice-cold showers of hail and the spindrift. but the coming of spring and the cuckoo's cry, admonish the brave man to go seafaring, despite the distresses; they are more inspiriting than life on land. he is a christian, but he falls back on the old melancholy for the passing of kings and gold-givers. though he preaches over much, he still thinks of the bale-fire as the mode of burial, as if christian rites of earth to earth were not yet adopted.
waldhere.
of this poem only some sixty lines exist. they were found at copenhagen, written on two pieces of vellum which had been used in binding a book: it is common to find fragments of early printed books or manuscripts in the bindings of books more recent. one[pg 14] page of "waldhere" contains a speech by the heroine of the tale, hildeguthe, urging waldhere to fight guthere; the other fragment has portions of a dialogue between the two combatants.
the names of the personages show that the poem was one of which we have other versions, the most intelligible is a latin form in verse.[4] the story deals with an adventure, real or romantic, in the wars of attila with the franks. waldhere, an aquitanian hostage, brought up in attila's court, with his betrothed lady, hildeguthe, daughter of the king of the burgundians, is now keeper of attila's treasures; he and his friend hagen escape; hagen, who first fled, reached the court of guthere, king of the franks, and hearing there that a lady and a knight, with a treasure, are wandering about, he recognizes his friends, and follows them with king guthere (who mainly wants the treasure), and with eleven other warriors. hildeguthe sees them coming, and waldhere, who will not give up the treasures, slays the eleven companions of guthere, who are chivalrous enough to "set him man for man," as the scottish ballad says, in place of overpowering him by numbers. hagen, of course, does not want to fight his friend waldhere, but fate, the anglo-saxon wyrd, is too strong: waldhere has to encounter both guthere and hagen, for hagen is guthere's man, or thegn, and may not disobey him; moreover, he must avenge his nephew, whom waldhere has already slain. all three men receive terrible wounds, and then they make friends; and waldhere keeps both his lady and the treasure.
this version of the story is more like a later romance than the other germanic epics. in these, as in this tale, there is usually a tragic conflict of passions and duties, as when the law of blood-vengeance compels a woman to avenge a slain father or brother, or her husband or her lover. the end is always tragic, but the latin poet has probably contrived "a happy ending," while retaining the many good fights, and the conflict of friendship and duty to a hero's lord, which make the interest of the story.
in the anglo-saxon fragments, hildeguthe, encouraging, her[pg 15] lover to fight, praises the swordsmith, the old german hero, weland, the tubal cain of the race. he made the sword miming, the best of all swords, which never fails the fighter. hildeguthe has never seen waldhere flee the fight; now he must not be less noble than himself. the other fragment is like the dialogues of the heroes in the iliad before they come to blows.
the whole of "waldhere" must have been, when complete, a poem much more complex, and even more interesting (at least to modern readers) than "beowulf". it had "love interest," a brave heroine, good duels, and the tragic conflict of duties, while it was full of allusions to other ancient epics of the germanic peoples.
the fight at finnsburg.
in a song of the gleeman at hrothgar's house in "beowulf," there are obscure references to the slaying of hn?f, brother of hildeburh, wife of the frisian king finn, and the slaying of hildeburh's own sons by the men of hn?f, in a fight within the royal hall of finn. they are all burned together on the funeral pyre, while hildeburh weeps for sons and brother. a fragment of an anglo-saxon epic on this affair exists only in one copy, the original is lost. it is a complicated story of slayings and revenges among folk akin by marriage, and the interest clearly lay in the tragic situation of hildeburh, who owes vengeance against her husband, finn, and also against the family of her brother, who have slain her sons. as hildeburh returns to her own people, the danes, after her husband is killed, she probably preferred her own blood kindred to those of her husband.
[1] the best versions for english readers of these splendid stories are to be found in "the volsungs and the niblungs," translated by william morris and magnusson, and in "the corpus poeticum boreale," with translations by f. york powell and vigfusson.
[2] this form of verse has been described thus by prof. saintsbury:—
"the staple line of this verse consists of two halves or sections, each containing two 'long,' 'strong,' 'stressed,' 'accented' syllables, these same syllables being, to the extent of three out of the four, alliterated. at the first casting of the eye on a page of anglo-saxon poetry no common resemblance except these seem to emerge, but we see on some pages an altogether extraordinary difference in the lengths of the lines, or, in other words, of the number of 'short,' 'weak,' 'unstressed,' 'unaccented' syllables, which are allowed to group themselves round the pivots or posts of the rhythm, that is, round the syllables on which strong stress is laid."
the eye and ear of the reader soon find out the essential facts of the measures; the strong pause in the middle of each verse, the alliteration, the accent, and the great variety in the number of the syllables which are slurred, or not dwelt upon, in each case. the poetry avoids rhymes, except in "the rhyming poem," later than king alfred's time, and in two or three other instances.
[3] the words are:—
ic me mid hruntinge
dóm gewyrce, otthe mec death nimeth.
i (ic, german ich) with (german mit) hrunting, glory will win, otherwise (otthe) me (mec) death taketh (nimmeth), german nehmen ("to take").
[4] translated from a lost german form; the latin is of the tenth century, by ekkehard of st. gall.