are, however, more Latin than English. Æthelfrith rushes on the foe as if he had "found a prey." In 633 King Eadwine was slain by Cadwallon and Penda at Heathfield, and Henry of Huntingdon repeats the same phrase-one perhaps of the conventional phrases of Anglo-Saxon poetry "The plain of Hethfeld reeked red from end to end with a river of the blood of Æthelings; a place of sudden woeful slaughter of the bravest warriors." In 634 Oswald, the most Christian king, met the forces of the leader of the Britons at Denises-burn, and another fragment of an old song tells us that "the corses of men of Cadwallon choked the Dennisburn." But Penda had his way at Maserfeld in 642, and slew Oswald; whence "it is said," writes Huntingdon, "the plain of Maserfeld was white with the bones of the Saints." At last, in 655, Penda the Strong was made weak by Oswiu, and the "earth was wet with his blood and the ground splashed with his brains." The battle was fought near the river Winwaed, which, swollen over its banks with excessive rain, destroyed, as they fled from the field, more of the heathen men than fell by the sword. So great was the deliverance (and we hear, as we read of it, the song of another deliverance of the same kind "The river of Kishon swept them away, that ancient river, the river Kishon") - that it was celebrated in a battle song of which the Norman chroniclers retained three lines At the Winwede was vengéd the war-death of Anna, In 658 Cenwealh, the West Saxon king, fought a great battle at Pen in Dorsetshire against the Welsh, and the account of the Norman chronicler has it in the character of poetry. When the fight was joined the English yielded, but they feared flight more than death, and stood to their arms. "Then weary grew the Welsh, their strength melted away like snow; they fled from Pen even to Pedred, and cureless was the wound given there to the children of Brut." It seems doubtful if all of these have an origin in Anglo-Saxon songs, especially the last, which looks as if it had a Briton lay as its source. Yet the three lines concerning the flight at Winwaed are enough to prove that the Norman chroniclers had some English lays before them when they prepared their history. This brings the remnants of English literature, seen, it is true, in mere flights of song, up to 670, which is about the date of the first Christian poem, of Caedmon's song of the Creation; and which is also the date of the true beginning of Latin literature in the south, at Canterbury. A more detailed account of the influences which in Northumbria preceded and influenced the beginning at Whitby of a vernacular poetry, is reserved to a later chapter. Meanwhile, of what kind was the life these warriors and settlers lived? What did they think as they went to war, and as they struck in battle? How did they feel when they settled down to agriculture, when they built their homesteads, and when they drank together in the hall? What kind was the scenery among which they lived? What did they think and feel concerning the sea on which they sailed, and the storms which roared upon their coasts? Have we any record in their literature of these matters? Does their literature disclose to us their character, their emotions, their thoughts in war, at home, and on the ocean? These are the questions which the following chapters will attempt to answer. Before they were land-dwellers they were warriors, and we will begin with war. CHAPTER VIII ARMOUR AND WAR IN POETRY In the earliest poems of the English we have already seen something of their customs of war, and of the armour they used. War was one of their chief businesses, and being knit up with courage, self-sacrifice, scorn of death, contention against fate, faithful comradeship, rescue of the weak, defence of the kinsfolk and the land, the praise of women, the worship of the gods, glory after death, reverence for ancestors, romantic adventure and other ideal matters, became naturally one of the great subjects of song. Everything pertaining to it was clothed in imaginative dress. The body-armour, the weapons, and chiefly the sword, were glorified. The war-smiths, especially as forgers of the sword, were garmented with legend, and made into divine personages. Of these Weland is the type, husband of a swan maiden, and afterwards almost a god. Battle, as in Homer, was attended by immortal creatures, among the Norsemen by the shield-women- the choosers of the slain by evil and good spirits among the English, and by Wyrd herself, the mistress of them all. The meeting of the warriors in fight-the wielding of the sword, the darting and pushing of the spears, the shield wall as it drove its way into the mass of the foe, the shower of arrows, the challenges of the warriors as they fought, the crashing and shouting, the way the armour behaved under the blows, were one and all adorned with metaphor; and every poet, while using the terms that had become conventional and which the guests in the hall. expected, strove to add something of his own, or to express in a new fashion the well-known forms of description. Then, around the battle, and following it, like minor beings of fate and slaughter, were the birds and beasts that prey upon the slain the eagles of the woods and of the sea, the kite and the hawk of the rocks, the raven, the carrion crow, the wolf, and the hill fox. These, screaming, croaking, howling, sang the "horrid song" of death, and their omens often foretold the issue of the fight. An English warrior went into battle with a boar-crested helmet, and a round linden shield, with a byrnie of ring mail (or in the case of the poorer sort a cloth or leather coat, often covered with flakes of iron or horn), with two javelins or a single ashen spear some eight or ten feet long, with a long two-edged sword naked or held in an ornamental scabbard and a great knob at the head of the hilt. In his belt was a short, heavy, one-edged sword, or rather a long knife, called the seax, which was used for close quarters and for finishing a foe. Beowulf rips asunder the dragon with it, and Grendel's mother uses it on Beowulf in the struggle when he lies on the sand of the cavern. Some carried great axes, very heavy and longhandled; and the javelin, and bow with broad-headed arrows, especially among the thralls, were frequent weapons. In the Crafts of Men we see the Smith at work on this armour: may for use in war, many (arms) make ready One, a clever smith Crafts, 1. 61. At times an iron-bound club was carried, but the sword was the special weapon of all the nobler sort. It was also the noblest of all the pieces of armour, and it was fame for a smith to have forged one that would last, because of its fine temper, from generation to generation. If its maker was not known, and it was of the finest quality, its origin was referred to the elves, the dwarfs, or the giants. Magic runes were engraved on the blade by the smith, it was damasked, spells were muttered over it; it seems sometimes to have been dipped, when red hot, in blood, or in a broth of poison-twigs. The hilt was wrought with wires of gold, silver, or iron, interwoven like writhing snakes. Sometimes a blood-painted serpent, as in the Icelandic lay of Helgi and Swava, lay above the edges or on the ridge of the sword, whirling its tail round the hilt. Such a sword received a name of its own, and had, as it were, a living spirit in it that sorrowed and rejoiced. Swords of this kind are named in Beowulf; "hard-edged 1 I have translated waepenpracu, not waepenpraege. - and wonderful, damascened, and adorned with jewels," Hrunting, Naegling, and the sword of the cave, but of all these enough has been said. We touch on the proper literature of the sword in one of the Riddles of Cynewulf, where it is finely personified. Cynewulf conceives it as itself a warrior, wrapped in its scabbard as in a coat of mail; going, like a hero, into the battle; hewing a path for its lord into the ranks of the foe; praised in the hall by kings for its great deeds; and strangest of all, and most poetical (unless Prehn be wrong, from whom I take this explanation),' mourning when the battle is over, for its childless desolation, for the times when it was innocent of wars, for the anger with which the women treat it as the slaughterer of men. The power with which Cynewulf enters into the life of the things he treats of can scarcely go further, but this is not apart from Teutonic thought, which conceived a living being in the sword. Here is the riddle. The Sword speaks: for the warstrife shapen; lovelily adorned: I'm a wondrous wight and a clasping wire which my Wielder gave to me: wide-wanderer that I am, Then I carry treasure, honours me in hall, Gold above the garths, through the glittering day; Cursed of all weapons. praise! Of my ways he boasts me the weary with wayfarings, Ranging largely, I'm a foe, He is cursed of them, for he breaks through armour and beats down the spear and axe, but he pays the penalty. "No son have I," so mourns the Sword, "who shall avenge me; his fate is, if he shape the work of war, never to have a bride, and the woman, whose joy he has lessened (by slaying her 1 Composition und Quellen der Rätsel des Exeterbuches, to which, both in the translation and explanation of the Riddles, I am throughout indebted. 2 Eusebius, Ealdhelm, and Tatwine have all written riddles on the sword. Cynewulf has most followed the first; but Cynewulf adds all the imaginative work. It is he alone who represents the sword as a warrior, wearing armour of his own, showing his lord the way through the battle, and when the war is over, mourning like a shattered veteran over his lonely future. |