ling. The little tale is so simple, so direct, and so full of the detail of memory, that here if anywhere we seem to get to the genuine matter. There the King of Gotens with his gifts was good to me; He, the Prince of burg-indwellers, gave to me an armlet. On the which 600 scats of beaten gold to my lord who guarded me- When I homeward came- And another gift Lord of Myrgings he homeland of my fathers. Ealdhild gave to me, Folk queen of the doughty men, daughter of Eadwine. When so e'er in singing I must say to men Where beneath the sky I had known the best Of all gold-embroidered queens giving lavishly her gifts. Lifted up the lay to our lord the conqueror; Loudly at the harping lilted high our voice. listed haughty of their heart, clearly said in words had they never. The poem now represents his further wanderings among the Gothic tribes that, one after another, fought and began to settle in the provinces of Italy; and again, when he grew older, his visits to the Gothic princes while they were still fighting with the Huns in the dark woods about the Vistula. "Often was battle fierce," he sings, "when with hard swords the host of the Hreads had to guard the old fatherland against the bands of Etla (Attila) all about the Wistla Wood." He names many of the warriors with whom he companied, and in whose camps he sang, but most "Wudga and Hama" (both of whom become personages in the hero sagas), "not the worst of my friends, though I name them the last." Then in four lines he sketches that long and dreadful war which the East Goten waged with the Huns, and so great is the power, even of poor poetry, that we see, as if they were alive, Wudga and Hama whirling the spear for wife and child in Wistla Wood. 1 The portions of a beág, outlined on the gold, would be called scillings; when these were adjusted to a fixed scale upon the weight of the solidus, the scilling would become (1) a definite division of a ring, (2) a division equal in weight to a solidus, and this is the meaning here; but see, for the whole matter, English Coins, British Museum. Oft from their hosting hurtling through air Then, leaving out verses 131-134, which are an interpolation, the Traveller ends his verses by a description of the wandering singer and of the glory of his art. men rove through many lands Thus, drifting on, the glee speak aloud their thankword! Say (in song) their need, Life and light together- Till all flits away - The poem has but little literary value, but a certain literary charm is diffused over it by the names it enshrines - names of men concerning whom great sagas were written, and whose gests and government made a noise which filled the ear of the world. If the writer really saw Hermanric and Attila before they became heroes of Teutonic saga, we transfer to him and to his poem our pleasure in their cycle of stories. The very possibility that he saw these men excites us. Moreover, if we consider the poem to be of the fifth century, the light of four cycles of lays is reflected backwards upon it. Its names bring before us the sagas of Hermanric, of Alboin, of Gudrun, and Beowulf; the story of Offa, and of the fight at Finnsburg. We may be said to be present at the birth and to watch over the cradle of these great Teutonic sagas. Even if the poem be of the seventh century, and these sagas are behind it and not before it, this reflected literary charm is still present. All the great figures rise before our eyes as we read their names in the dry detail of the catalogue. We may also bind it up with another fancy for which we have a good foundation. We may fairly imagine the delight of Ælfred when he read this poem. The catalogue of tribes and kings, the geographical details it contains would fall in with the temper of the king who translated and added to Orosius, who wrote down from Ohthere's and Wulfstan's lips their voyages to the North Sea, and to the mouth of the Vistula. Moreover, the passion for roving, for adventure, which is keen above all other nations in the people of our island, makes this poem representative of the English. Widsith is our Ulysses. "I have fared through many stranger lands, through the spacious earth; good and evil have I known." It is the true description of a common type of Englishman in every period of our history. Nor is Widsith's pleasure in his art or his practical pleasure in the receipt of gifts, less characteristic of the English. But the gifts are little in comparison with his joy in his work, and his reverence for it. Even great kings are but little, he thinks, without their singer. In his hands their history lies, and their honour. Horace did not feel more strongly the need of a sacred bard to chronicle great actions than did the earliest of English poets. The poem is then not only the story of wanderings, it also sketches the life and the repute of the Scôp-the name given to the singer and poet who was retained in the court of a king or the hall of a great noble. He was frequently one of the thegns, and received money and landright from the king. He may have been, if not a thegn, on an equality with them; and was often, as we see in Beowulf, a renowned captain. Sometimes, like Widsith, or perhaps like Cynewulf at one period of his life, he took to roving, and singing from court to court. this fashion he became the travelling geographer and historian, the bringer of news, the man who, by singing the great deeds of warriors in various lands, knit together by a common bond of admiration the heroes of diverse peoples, and made the great stories the common property of the Teutonic tribes. In the As Widsith is the picture of the poet in his happiness, singing his life in a lyrical fashion, (it has been attempted to arrange the poem in strophes), so the Lament of Deor images the Scop in his sorrow. This song is much later, I think, than Widsith. It belongs to a time when the Gothic cycle of lays had at least well begun. Hermanric has become legendary. Theodric has become the fabulous hero. But the prominence of the story of Weland, and the mention of Geat, localise the poem among Northern Teutonic tribes. From these it was brought to England, perhaps by some belated Angles, if Sweet be right in his conjecture that it may have been composed before the English migration. I think it is likely to be much later, and to have been made in England - it is put by some as far on as the eighth century, but no decision can be come to on the matter. Its form is remarkable. It has a refrain, and there is no other early English instance of this known to us. It is written in 1 Beowulf is the name of a poem, and of the hero whose deeds are sung in the poem. Whenever I mention the poem, I print its name in italics, and whenever the hero is meant, his name is in ordinary type. strophes, and Sweet thinks that it may be a solitary remnant of a number of English strophic lays which belonged to the same class as some of the old Scandinavian lays which were rudely strophic. One motive, constant throughout, is expressed in the refrain. This dominant cry of passion makes the poem a true lyric, and we ought to look upon it with pleasure, for it is the Father of all English lyrics. Deor is not like Widsith, a treasure-gifted singer, always in favour of his lord. Like the Wanderer who looks back with mourning on the time when he was his master's favourite, he has been deprived of his rewards and lands, and has seen a rival set above his head. It is this whirling down of Fortune's wheel that he mourns in his song, and he compares his fate to that of others who have suffered, so that he may have some comfort. But the comfort is stern like that the Northmen take. Others, he thinks, have gone through great griefs, and come out on the other side of them so also may he win through his pain. Here is the song, and the legendary woes of which he speaks show that the English knew the story of Weland well, the story of Geat, of Hermanric, of Theodric, and the tale which became in after years the saga of Gudrun 1 German critics have rearranged the first four strophes, and put strophe 4 into the place of strophe 3. The order will then be harmonious. A strophe of six lines will be followed by one of five, twice over; but I think Müllenhof gave up this needless change. 2 There are many readings of this obscure line. As to Weland, Hild, and Geat, a note at the end of the volume treats of them. That Love-sorrow stole all his sleep away! For a thirty winters did Theodric fast We in songs have heard of the wolfish thought Far he owned the folk Grisly was that king. with his sorrows cloaked, Woe within his waiting! Wistfully he longed overcome should be! That he overwent; this also may I. The I omit here what seems a Christian interpolation of the ordinary gnomic character. We may, however, give thanks to it, for I suspect we owe the preservation of this lyric to the zeal of the interpolator who saw in the sadness of Deor an opportunity for introducing his gentle phrases on the vanity of life and the mercy of God. The rest is Deor's own. Heorrenda who conquered Deor may be the Horant of the Gudrun saga of whom it is said that he bound all men with his song, that the beasts who listened to him ceased to graze in the woods, and the worms and fishes forgot their daily work in his singing. "Now," he says, "I will say concerning my self" Deor was my name. me Whilom was I Scôp of the Heodenings: many winters through; That one overwent; this also may I. With this song begins and ends the Old English lyric. We have in Anglo-Saxon a few elegiac poems of fine quality, but the true lyric-short, at unity with one thought, with one cry of joyful or sorrowful passion - does not occur again till long after the Conquest. We have yet another sketch of the Scôp which we may well set beside the sketches in Widsith and in Deor, though it belongs to a later time in Anglo-Saxon literature. It is the eighty-ninth riddle of Cynewulf which Dietrich has happily solved as the Wandering Singer 1 I have introduced king into the text. |