In the truly historical age, the clan system seems to have died out, and each person bore, as a rule, only a single personal name. These names are almost invariably compounded of two elements, and the elements thus employed were comparatively few in number. Thus, we get the root _aethel_, n.o.ble, as the first half in aethelred, aethelwulf, aethelberht, aethelstan, and aethelbald. Again, the root _ead_, rich, or powerful, occurs in Eadgar, Eadred, Eadward, Eadwine, and Eadwulf. _aelf_, an elf, forms the prime element in aelfred, aelfric, aelfwine, aelfward, and aelfstan. These were the favourite names of the West-Saxon royal house; the Northumbrian kings seem rather to have affected the syllable _os_, divine, as in Oswald, Oswiu, Osric, Osred, and Oslaf. _Wine_, friend, is a favourite termination found in aescwine, Eadwine, aethelwine, Oswine, and aelfwine, whose meanings need no further explanation. _Wulf_ appears as the first half in Wulfstan, Wulfric, Wulfred, and Wulfhere; while it forms the second half in aethelwulf, Eadwulf, Ealdwulf, and Cenwulf.
_Beorht_, _berht_, or _briht_, bright, or glorious, appears in Beorhtric, Beorhtwulf, Brihtwald; aethelberht, Ealdbriht, and Eadbyrht.
_Burh_, a fortress, enters into many female names, as Eadburh, aethelburh, s.e.xburh, and Wihtburh. As a rule, a certain number of syllables seem to have been regarded as proper elements for forming personal names, and to have been combined somewhat fancifully, without much regard to the resulting meaning. The following short list of such elements, in addition to the roots given above, will suffice to explain most of the names mentioned in this work.
_Helm_: helmet.
_Gar_: spear.
_Gifu_: gift.
_Here_: army.
_Sige_: victory.
_Cyne_: royal.
_Leof_: dear.
_Wig_: war.
_Stan_: stone.
_Eald_: old, venerable.
_Weard_, _ward_: ward, protection.
_Red_: counsel.
_Eeg_: edge, sword.
_Theod_: people, nation.
By combining these elements with those already given most of the royal or n.o.ble names in use in early England were obtained.
With the people, however, it would seem that shorter and older forms were still in vogue. The following doc.u.ment, the original of which is printed in Kemble"s collection, represents the pedigree of a serf, and is interesting, both as showing the sort of names in use among the servile cla.s.s, and the care with which their family relationships were recorded, in order to preserve the rights of their lord.
Dudda was a boor at Hatfield, and he had three daughters: one hight Deorwyn, the other Deorswith, the third Golde. And Wulflaf at Hatfield has Deorwyn to wife. aelfstan, at Tatchingworth, has Deorswith to wife: and Ealhstan, aelfstan"s brother, has Golde to wife. There was a man hight Hwita, bee-master at Hatfield, and he had a daughter Tate, mother of Wulfsige, the bowman; and Wulfsige"s sister Lulle has Hehstan to wife, at Walden. Wifus and Dunne and Seoloce are inborn at Hatfield. Duding, son of Wifus, lives at Walden; and Ceolmund, Dunne"s son, also sits at Walden; and aethelheah, Seoloce"s son, also sits at Walden. And Tate, Cenwold"s sister, Maeg has to wife at Welgun; and Eadhelm, Herethryth"s son, has Tate"s daughter to wife. Waerlaf, Waerstan"s father, was a right serf at Hatfield; he kept the grey swine there.
In the west, and especially in Cornwall, the names of the serfs were mainly Celtic,Griffith, Modred, Riol, and so forth,as may be seen from the list of manumissions preserved in a ma.s.s-book at St. Petroc"s, or Padstow. Elsewhere, however, the Celtic names seem to have dropped out, for the most part, with the Celtic language. It is true, we meet with cases of apparently Welsh forms, like Maccus, or Rum, even in purely Teutonic districts; and some names, such as Cerdic and Ceadwalla, seem to have been borrowed by one race from the other: while such forms as Wealtheow and Waltheof are at least suggestive of British descent: but on the whole, the conquered Britons appear everywhere to have quickly adopted the names in vogue among their conquerors. Such names would doubtless be considered fashionable, as was the case at a later date with those introduced by the Danes and the Normans. Even in Cornwall a good many English forms occur among the serfs: while in very Celtic Devonshire, English names were probably universal.
The Danish Conquest introduced a number of Scandinavian names, especially in the North, the consideration of which belongs rather to a companion volume. They must be briefly noted here, however, to prevent confusion with the genuine English forms. Amongst such Scandinavian introductions, the commonest are perhaps Harold, Swegen or Swend, Ulf, Gorm or Guthrum, Orm, Yric or Eric, c.n.u.t, and Ulfcytel. During and after the time of the Danish dynasty, these forms, rendered fashionable by royal usage, became very general even among the native English. Thus Earl G.o.dwine"s sons bore Scandinavian names; and at an earlier period we even find persons, apparently Scandinavian, fighting on the English side against the Danes in East Anglia.
But the sequel to the Norman Conquest shows us most clearly how the whole nomenclature of a nation may be entirely altered without any large change of race. Immediately after the Conquest the native English names begin to disappear, and in their place we get a crop of Williams, Walters, Rogers, Henries, Ralphs, Richards, Gilberts, and Roberts. Most of these were originally High German forms, taken into Gaul by the Franks, borrowed from them by the Normans, and then copied by the English from their foreign lords. A few, however, such as Arthur, Owen, and Alan, were Breton Welsh. Side by side with these French names, the Normans introduced the Scriptural forms, John, Matthew, Thomas, Simon, Stephen, Piers or Peter, and James; for though a few cases of Scriptural names occur in the earlier historyfor example, St. John of Beverley and Daniel, bishop of the West Saxonsthese are always borne by ecclesiastics, probably as names of religion. All through the middle ages, and down to very recent times, the vast majority of English men and women continued to bear these baptismal names of Norman introduction. Only two native English forms practically survivedEdward and Edmundowing to mere accidents of royal favour. They were the names of two great English saints, Eadward the Confessor and Eadmund of East Anglia; and Henry III. bestowed them upon his two sons, Edward I. and Edmund of Lancaster. In this manner they became adopted into the royal and fashionable circle, and so were perpetuated to our own day. All the others died out in mediaeval times, while the few old forms now current, such as Alfred, Edgar, Athelstane, and Edwin, are mere artificial revivals of the two last centuries. If we were to judge by nomenclature alone, we might almost fancy that the Norman Conquest had wholly extinguished the English people.
A few steps towards the adoption of surnames were taken even before the Conquest. t.i.tles of office were usually placed after the personal name, as aelfred King, Lilla Thegn, Wulfnoth Cild, aelfward Bishop, aethelberht Ealdorman, and Harold Earl. Double names occasionally occur, the second being a nickname or true surname, as OsG.o.d Clapa, Benedict Biscop, Thurkytel Myranheafod, G.o.dwine Bace, and aelfric Cerm. Trade names are also found, as Ecceard smith, or G.o.dwig boor. Everywhere, but especially in the Danish North, patronymics were in common use; for example, Harold G.o.dwine"s son, or Th.o.r.ed Gunnor"s son. In all these cases we get surnames in the germ; but their general and official adoption dates from after the Norman Conquest.
Local nomenclature also demands a short explanation. Most of the Roman towns continued to be called by their Roman names: Londinium, Lunden, London; Eburac.u.m, Eoforwic, Eurewic, York; Lindum Colonia, Lincolne, Lincoln. Often _ceaster_, from _castrum_, was added: Gwent, Venta Belgarum, Wintan-ceaster, Winteceaster, Winchester; Isca, Exan-ceaster, Execestre, Exeter; Corinium, Cyren-ceaster, Cirencester. Almost every place which is known to have had a name at the English Conquest retained that name afterwards, in a more or less clipped or altered form.
Examples are Kent, Wight, Devon, Dorset; Manchester, Lancaster, Doncaster, Leicester, Gloucester, Worcester, Colchester, Silchester, Uttoxeter, Wroxeter, and Chester; Thames, Severn, Ouse, Don, Aire, Derwent, Swale, and Tyne. Even where the Roman name is now lost, as at Pevensey, the old form was retained in Early English days; for the "Chronicle" calls it Andredes-ceaster, that is to say, Anderida. So the old name of Bath is Akemannes-ceaster, derived from the Latin _Aqua_, Cissan-ceaster, Chichester, forms an almost solitary exception.
Canterbury, or Cant-wara-byrig, was correctly known as Dwrovernum or Doroberna in Latin doc.u.ments of the Anglo-Saxon period.
On the other hand, the true English towns which grew up around the strictly English settlements, bore names of three sorts. The first were the clan villages, the _hams_ or _tuns_, such as Baenesingatun, Bensington; Snotingaham, Nottingham; Glaestingabyrig, Glas...o...b..ry; and Waeringwica, Warwick. These have already been sufficiently ill.u.s.trated; and they were situated, for the most part, in the richest agricultural lowlands. The second were towns which grew up slowly for purposes of trade by fords of rivers or at ports: such are Oxeneford, Oxford; Bedcanford, Bedford (a British town); Stretford, Stratford; and Wealingaford, Wallingford. The third were the towns which grew up in the wastes and wealds, with names of varied form but more modern origin. As a whole, it may be said that during the entire early English period the names of cities were mostly Roman, the names of villages and country towns were mostly English.
CHAPTER XX.
ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE.
Nothing better ill.u.s.trates the original peculiarities and subsequent development of the early English mind than the Anglo-Saxon literature. A vast ma.s.s of ma.n.u.scripts 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 peculiaritiesrime or metrewhich 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 quant.i.tative 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 princ.i.p.al 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 ill.u.s.trate 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 Limed 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 subst.i.tuted 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 aethelstan"s victory at Brunanburh, in 937, will show the developed form of the same versificatory system. The parallelism and alliteration are here well marked:
aethelstan king, lord of Earls, Bestower of Bracelets, and his Brother eke, Eadmund the aetheling, 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 h.o.a.rd. 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, G.o.d"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 Linked 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 Achaean rhapsodists handed down the Homeric poems. Nevertheless, two or three such old songs were afterwards written out in Christian Northumbria or Wess.e.x; 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 sh.o.r.es 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 superst.i.tion 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 superst.i.tion. There the terrible forms begotten of man"s vague dread of the unknownelves and nickors and fiendshave 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 creaturethe "Devil"s dam" of our mediaeval legendscarries 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 mediaeval 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 Caedmon, written about the year 670. Caedmon 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. Caedmon"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 Caedmon 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 Caedmon, 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 Caedmon"s poem, by a reviser in the ninth century. At any rate, the latter work may be treated here under the name of Caedmon, 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 pa.s.sionate 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 t.i.tanic 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; h.e.l.l 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 G.o.ds 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 aelfred 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 Baeda"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 aeddi or Eddius, and the Latin verses of Ealdhelm) the great representative is, in fact, Baeda, 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, Baeda 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 pa.s.sed 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, Baeda 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 ill.u.s.tration 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 supremaciesthe interval embraced by the eighth century, and covered by the greatness of Mercia under aethelbald and Offawe 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 doc.u.ments. 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 Caedmon. The following lines, taken from the beginning of his poem "The Phnix" (a transcript from Lactantius), will sufficiently ill.u.s.trate 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 h.o.a.ry 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 Wess.e.x gave new life to the West Saxon people. Under aelfred, 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. aelfred 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 a.s.ser, his Welsh secretary and Bishop of Sherborne. They comprise translations into the Anglo-Saxon of Boethius _de Consolatione_, the Universal History of Orosius, Baeda"s Ecclesiastical History, and Pope Gregory"s _Regula Pastoralis_. But the fact that aelfred still has recourse to Roman originals, marks the stage of civilisation as yet mainly imitative; while the interesting pa.s.sages 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 doc.u.ment, the oldest history of any Teutonic race in its own language, was probably first compiled at the court of aelfred. 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 Baeda. But with the reign of aethelwulf, aelfred"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 aelfred"s death, will show its meagre nature. The pa.s.sage has been modernised as little as is consistent with its intelligibility at the present day: