Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

is greatly enlivened by dialogue, which rises sometimes into passion. There was evidently plenty of dialogue in the early saga, and all that we have in our English fragments is dialogue. The first of the two fragments, which I give here, is the speech by which Hildeguthe kindles Waldhere to the fight with Guthhere and the eleven warriors, and proves again, if we needed proof, with what eagerness the Teutonic women joined in the interests of war and felt for the honours of their lord. "Then did Hildeguthe courage him greatly-"

[blocks in formation]

Thou shalt have one thing or else another

Or lose thy life, or long-lived dominion
Make thine among men,
At no time, my Chief,
Since never I saw thee
Through wretched fear
Flee out of the fight,
Or care for thy corse,
On thy breast-byrnie
But to fight forward
O'er the mark was thy measure,2
So I feared thou would'st fight,
Around the camp-ramparts,
With some other of heroes!

Elfhere's son !

do I chide thee with words;
at the sword-playing-

of whatever warrior -
or in flight on the field,
though a crowd of the foe
with bills were a-hewing;
was ever thy seeking!

Meter of meeds!
too fiercely by far,
in close set of war,
Then honour thyself

By thy great doings while good fortune rules!"

There are eight other lines, the allusions in which are obscure, but these are enough to show the writer's hand.

1 Mimming (Mimungr) was the masterpiece of Weland, the most famous sword in the Northern world. It descended to Widia or Wudga, his son. This is the only mention of it in Old English, but we hear of it later on in the romance of Horn Child, a Middle English poem

Than sche lete forth bring

A swerd hongand bi a ring;

To Horn sche it bitaught.

It is the make (mate) of Miming;
Of all swerdes it is king.
And Weland it wrought;
Bitterfer the swerd hight.

But Mimming is originally the work of Mimir, the great smith, who was the master of Weland, and who is the same as Regin in the Volsunga Saga. At least so Grimm declares.

2Thy measure o'er the mark," that is, I conjecture, "Thy place was beyond the front-line of the battle."

It

The second fragment is not so vigorous or so human. is a portion of the dialogue between Guthhere and Waldhere, and its main interest is in the mention of names which belong to the cycle of Romance that collected round Theodric. As Weland's sword is spoken of in the previous passage, so here Widia, Weland's son, "the kinsman of Nithad," is spoken of as having rescued Theodric from great straits. It is plain that the poem was written when the Theodric saga was well established.

As to its date, the poem seems to be so antique in form that it is put back to the eighth century, and its German original belongs probably to the middle of the seventh. That was a time of copious production of lays among the Lombards; Vigfusson and Powell have unearthed from the record of Paul the Deacon, who died in 790, two close paraphrases of old Elfwine lays which are contemporary with the poems of Caedmon, if we take the probable date of them as between Paul and Elfwine. Elfwine Eadwineson is Alboin, King of the Lombards, who died in 572. They go on to say that "these songs" (assuming that Paul's prose was derived from songs, and assuming also their own date) "are the earliest remains of Teutonic epic poetry which we have any exact knowledge of." The first of these is certainly a brilliant example of the heroic lay; the second seems to me much more like a piece of monkish history. They will both be found at p. lii., etc., of the Introduction to the Corpus Poeticum Boreale. There are, perhaps, several other passages in Paul from poems of this early period.

One other vernacular fragment of song of an early timebelonging to the heroic cycle-is not English but German, yet is connected in manner and style with Waldhere. It is the ancient lay of Hadubrand and Hildebrand, and was found, as Waldhere was found, on a piece of parchment used in binding a book, in the monastery of Fulda. It is a MS., we are told, of the eighth century, and was probably sung as a lay in the seventh. The story is curiously like the story of Sohrab and Rustum, though we do not know the issue of the fight. Hildebrand challenges his son Hadubrand, to single combat. Hildebrand asks of what parentage he is, and hears from Hadubrand enough to prove that he is his son whom he had left behind in Italy as a child of three years old when he fled years ago to the east from Odoacer. He declares his fatherhood, his son does not believe him - Hildebrand, he says, is long since dead. At this the father mourns the fate which is near him of falling by his son's hand; but, as he speaks, the war-fever seizes on

him and the men fall to with spear and axe. We hear no more, but can well imagine that the story ends as Sohrab and Rustum ends. This is the only piece of German heroic verse' which can compete in age with those that we possess, and it is later, I believe, than the Lament of Deor, later certainly than the Fight at Finnsburg and the lays contained in Beowulf.

1 The Weissenbrunner Prayer in alliterative High German verse belongs probably to the eighth century, but its only value is its age. In the ninth century we find a Low German poem, the Heliand, of which we shall have something to say in connection with the poems attributed to Caedmon. But these are plainly Christian; they do not intrude among the remnants which coming down originally out of heathen times are romantic, not religious.

CHAPTER VII

THE CONQUEST AND LITERATURE

THE Fight at Finnsburg and the lays from which our Beowulf was composed were, as it seems to me, sung among the English who dwelt in the north of Denmark and the south of Sweden, and whose tribal name was the Jutes or Goths. They were also sung among the other English who dwelt in the south of Denmark and who called themselves Angles. And I have conjectured that it was in this part of the English territory that they and Widsith were best preserved. The Angles, even in their seats on the Continent, seem to have shown the same desire to take care of literature which they afterwards had in Northumbria. I do not think, for reasons to which I have alluded, that the songs of Beowulf were much cared for, among the other English whom we know as Saxons, who dwelt in Hanover and Friesland, and who were the most southern of these three tribes whose common name was English, whose language was called English, but all of whom the Welsh and Irish called Saxons. The Saxons also had, we may be sure, their own lays, and if we could but discover Ælfred's Handbook, we should no doubt find some of them in it.

When the English came over they continued to make songs, to chant the daily chronicle of the conquest. This was their only literature, their only history; and though there is not much to tell of it, yet the imagination loves to dwell upon its fragments. In these rude chants begins the poetry of our islandEngland. The glory of a thousand years of song shines backward on its sources. During 147 years the poetry of England was altogether heathen. It was unbroken by a single Christian voice, save perhaps, as the battle joined, by the chanting in

1 It is well, even at the risk of repetition, to mark out-and I refer my readers to York Powell's Primer of Early England - the unity of the English tribes in the continental England. It has more bearing on literary questions than at first sight appears.

the distance of the British monks, which, when the English heard, they declared to be the singing of spells and the singers wizards. On this account Æthelfrith, at the battle of Chester, slew the dark-robed creatures, one and all. "If they cry to their God against us," he said, "they fight against us, though they do not carry arms."

In the year 597 Augustine brought Christianity to England, and the warriors of Ethelberht listened to the praise of Christ instead of the praise of their war-god. But for many years after, the war-songs, the rude verses sung by the freemen in the village as they ploughed, the charms for fruitful earth, against wounds, against the elves, the chants of the gleemen round the moot-tree or in the ealdorman's hall continued to be heathen. When Caedmon produced the first Christian poems the people in Sussex were still heathen, and in many parts of Christian England heathendom retained a considerable power. No doubt, poems which we might call heathen, such for instance as the Wanderer, were composed after Caedmon, as Christian poems were composed before him; but nevertheless the date of his death, 680 A.D., may be taken to mark most conveniently the final conquest of heathen by Christian poetry. It ends a period of 230 years, from 450 to 680. It is this period which we shall consider in this chapter, collecting together the Old English verse which belongs to the events of the invasion and the settlement; and touching on other matters which are likely to throw light on the growth of English literature.

The English tribes had, from the beginning of the fifth century, made some small and scattered settlements on the coasts of Roman Britain, but it was not till the year 449-450 that they came to stay. In that year, the story goes, a band of Jutes, under two war leaders, Hengest and Horsa, landed at Ebbsfleet, and landed to remain. No doubt, as they pushed the bows of their three long keels on to the shore of the Isle of Thanet, they shouted short staves of verse with so great a roaring that Gildas might well call them "whelps from the lair of the barbarian lioness." But we may be sure that the songs were louder when, in 455, their numbers swelled by new arrivals, the whole host, clashing their spears on their shields and singing hymns to their ancestral gods, crossed the inlet that divided Thanet from the mainland and set forth to ravage the country. Of a different character, and done by the Scop of Hengest, would be the song that followed the fight at Aylesford; but it would be mixed with sorrow, for Horsa was slain in that battle, and some days after they piled up his

« AnteriorContinuar »