Early Britain by Grant Allen (books recommended by bts TXT) 📕

and said that he would either there live or there lie.
Thereupon rode the ætheling on night away, and sought the
[Danish] host in Northumbria, and they took him for king and
bowed to him. And the king bade ride after him, but they
could not outride him. Then beset man the woman that he had
erst taken without the king's leave, and against the
bishop's word, for that she was ere that hallowed a nun. And
on this ilk year forth-fared Æthelred (he was ealdorman on
Devon) four weeks ere Ælfred king.

During the Augustan age the Chronicle grows less full, but contains several fine war-songs, of the genuine old English type, full of savagery in sentiment, and abrupt or broken in manner, but marked by the same wild poetry and harsh inversions as the older heathen ballads. Amongst them stand the lines on the fight of Brunanburh, whose exordium is quoted above. Its close forms one of the finest passages in old English verse:–

Behind them they Left, the Lych to devour,
The Sallow kite and the Swart raven,
Horny of beak,– and Him, the dusk-coated,
The white-afted Erne, the corse to Enjoy,
The Greedy war-hawk, and that Grey beast,
The Wolf of the Wood. No such Woeful slaughter
Aye on this Island Ever hath been,
By edge of the Sword, as book Sayeth,
Writers of Eld, since of Eastward hither
English and Saxons Sailed over Sea,
O'er the Broad Brine,– landed in Britain,
Proud Workers of War, and o'ercame the Welsh,
Earls Eager of fame, Obtaining this Earth.

During the decadence, in the disastrous reign of Æthelred, the Chronicle regains its fulness, and the following passage may be taken as a good specimen of its later style. It shows the approach to comment and reflection, as the compilers grew more accustomed to historical writing in their own tongue:–

An. 1009. Here on this year were the ships ready of which we
ere spake, and there were so many of them as never ere (so
far as books tell us) were made among English kin in no
king's day. And man brought them all together to Sandwich,
and there should they lie, and hold this earth against all
outlanders [foreigners'] hosts. But we had not yet the luck
nor the worship [valour] that the ship-fyrd should be of
any good to this land, no more than it oft was afore. Then
befel it at this ilk time or a little ere, that Brihtric,
Eadric's brother the ealdorman's, forwrayed [accused]
Wulfnoth child to the king: and he went out and drew unto
him twenty ships, and there harried everywhere by the south
shore, and wrought all evil. Then quoth man to the ship-fyrd
that man might easily take them, if man were about it. Then
took Brihtric to himself eighty ships and thought that he
should work himself great fame if he should get Wulfnoth,
quick or dead. But as they were thitherward, there came such
a wind against them such as no man ere minded [remembered],
and it all to-beat and to-brake the ships, and warped them
on land: and soon came Wulfnoth and for-burned the ships.
When this was couth [known] to the other ships where the
king was, how the others fared, then was it as though it
were all redeless, and the king fared him home, and the
ealdormen, and the high witan, and forlet the ships thus
lightly. And the folk that were on the ships brought them
round eft to Lunden, and let all the people's toil thus
lightly go for nought: and the victory that all English kin
hoped for was no better. There this ship-fyrd was thus
ended; then came, soon after Lammas, the huge foreign host,
that we hight Thurkill's host, to Sandwich, and soon wended
their way to Canterbury, and would quickly have won the burg
if they had not rather yearned for peace of them. And all
the East Kentings made peace with the host, and gave it
three thousand pound. And the host there, soon after that,
wended till it came to Wightland, and there everywhere in
Suth-Sex, and on Hamtunshire, and eke on Berkshire harried
and burnt, as their wont is. Then bade the king call out all
the people, that men should hold against them on every half
[side]: but none the less, look! they fared where they
willed. Then one time had the king foregone before them with
all the fyrd as they were going to their ships, and all the
folk was ready to fight them. But it was let, through Eadric
ealdorman, as it ever yet was. Then, after St. Martin's
mass, they fared eft again into Kent, and took them a winter
seat on Thames, and victualled themselves from East-Sex and
from the shires that there next were, on the twain halves
of Thames. And oft they fought against the burg of Lunden,
but praise be to God, it yet stands sound, and they ever
there fared evilly. And there after mid-winter they took
their way up, out through Chiltern, and so to Oxenaford
[Oxford], and for-burnt the burg, and took their way on to
the twa halves of Thames to shipward. There man warned them
that there was fyrd gathered at Lunden against them; then
wended they over at Stane [Staines]. And thus fared they all
the winter, and that Lent were in Kent and bettered
[repaired] their ships.

We possess several manuscript versions of the Chronicle, belonging to different abbeys, and containing in places somewhat different accounts. Thus the Peterborough copy is fullest on matters affecting that monastery, and even inserts several spurious grants, which, however, are of value as showing how incapable the writers were of scientific forgery, and so as guarantees of the general accuracy of the document. But in the main facts they all agree. Nor do they stop short at the Norman Conquest. Most of them continue half through the reign of William, and then cease; while one manuscript goes on uninterruptedly till the reign of Stephen, and breaks off abruptly in the year 1154 with an unfinished sentence. With it, native prose literature dies down altogether until the reign of Edward III.

As a whole, however, the Conquest struck the death-blow of Anglo-Saxon literature almost at once. During the reigns of Ælfred's descendants Wessex had produced a rich crop of native works on all subjects, but especially religious. In this literature the greatest name was that of Ælfric, whose Homilies are models of the classical West Saxon prose. But after the Conquest our native literature died out wholly, and a new literature, founded on Romance models, took its place. The Anglo-Saxon style lingered on among the people, but it was gradually killed down by the Romance style of the court writers. In prose, the history of William of Malmesbury, written in Latin, and in a wider continental spirit, marks the change. In poetry, the English school struggled on longer, but at last succumbed. A few words on the nature of this process will not be thrown away.

The old Teutonic poetry, with its treble system of accent, alliteration, and parallelism, was wholly different from the Romance poetry, with its double system of rime and metre. But, from an early date, the English themselves were fond of verbal jingles, such as "Scot and lot," "sac and soc," "frith and grith," "eorl and ceorl," or "might and right." Even in the alliterative poems we find many occasional rimes, such as "hlynede and dynede," "wide and side," "Dryht-guman sine drencte mid wine," or such as the rimes already quoted from Cynewulf. As time went on, and intercourse with other countries became greater, the tendency to rime settled down into a fixed habit. Rimed Latin verse was already familiar to the clergy, and was imitated in their works. Much of the very ornate Anglo-Saxon prose of the latest period is full of strange verbal tricks, as shown in the following modernised extract from a sermon of Wulfstan. Here, the alliterative letters are printed in capitals, and the rimes in italics:–

No Wonder is it that Woes befall us, for Well We Wot that
now full many a year men little _care_ what thing they
_dare_ in word or deed; and Sorely has this nation Sinned,
whate'er man Say, with Manifold Sins and with right Manifold
Misdeeds, with Slayings and with Slaughters, with _robbing_
and with _stabbing_, with Grasping _deed_ and hungry
_Greed_, through Christian Treason and through heathen
Treachery, through _guile_ and through _wile_, through