CHAPTER VII

THE OLD ENGLISH PERIOD

(a) THE EARLY LITERATURE OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS

The People. For the beginnings of English literature we must go back to a time before our Anglo-Saxon forefathers came to England, when they were still living on the shores of the North Sea in Denmark and about the mouth of the Elbe River in northern Germany. They were LowGerman tribes, allied more closely to the modern Dutch than to the modern Germans both by language and by blood. It is thought that they did not penetrate far into the swamps and forests of the interior, but lived along the shore and on the sea. They were uncivilized people, but not savages. Their literature shows and we always go to literature to find out the inner life of a people that they loved their homes, reverenced their women, felt the influences of Nature, believed in their gods, loved personal freedom, sought honor and glory. They were adventurous seafarers, stern of heart and strong of hand; but they were not pirates.

Their Gloomy Life. Their life was gloomy. Denmark and Germany are lands of cloud and mist. During the entire year the sun can be seen only a third of the time that it is above the horizon. In winter, darkness comes in the middle of the afternoon. Moreover, the struggle with storm and sea was long and hard. No wonder this people was a stern and somber race, with a gloomy religion, and with melancholy ideas of life and fate. Life was almost without joy save

perhaps the joy of conflict; and the whole of man's life, with whatever of joy it might have, was but the flicker of a candle between two great darknesses. The essential gloom of it was well expressed somewhat later in Northumbria by one of their own chiefs:

"You remember, it may be, O king, that which sometimes happens in winter when you are seated at table with your earls and thanes. Your fire is lighted, and your hall warmed, and without is rain and snow and storm. Then comes a swallow flying across the hall; he enters by one door, and leaves by another. The brief moment while he is within is pleasant to him; he feels not rain nor cheerless winter weather; but the moment is brief -the bird flies away in the twinkling of an eye, and he passes from winter to winter. Such, methinks, is the life of man on earth, compared with the uncertain time beyond. It appears for a while; but what is the time which comes after - the time which was before? We know not. If, then, this new doctrine [Christianity] may teach us somewhat of greater certainty, it were well that we should regard it."

Literature of Tradition. Life, however, was not altogether without solace. In the long winter evenings the lord and his retainers gathered in the hall and sat around the mead bench, drinking together and listening to the song of the scôp and the gleeman. These poets and reciters kept alive the traditions of the people, interpreting their ideals in myth and legend and heroic story. This was their literature; not books, not even manuscripts. Stories of gods and heroes passed from generation to generation by word of mouth, even as the story of the wrath of Achilles was handed down among the prehistoric Greeks. Some of these stories are history; most of them, myths about the struggle of the race with sea and storm and pestilence.

When our forefathers came to England in the fifth century, they brought with them these traditions just as the pre

historic Greeks took their traditions to Asia Minor; and just as the story of the siege of Troy developed in Asia Minor into The Iliad, so the Anglo-Saxon legends developed in England into an Anglo-Saxon epic, Beowulf.

"Beowulf." The scene of the early part of this story is Denmark. Hrothgar, King of the Danes, had built a splendid mead hall by the sea, where he and his thanes gathered to feast and to listen to the songs of the gleemen. But a frightful monster, Grendel, came now and again and carried off the warriors to devour them in his lair. Arms could not prevail against him, and joy was turned to mourning in Hrothgar's Hall. At length from across the sea came the hero Beowulf to fight with the monster in the hall, and to pursue him wounded to the death to his lair beneath the waters of a sea pool. Here Beowulf also meets and destroys Grendel's mother. The hero then returns in great honor to his home in South Sweden, where he rules over his people for fifty years. In his old age, he destroys a fire dragon, and thereby secures for his people a great treasure-hoard; but, in the battle, he loses his own life. A grateful people burn his body in pomp upon a funeral pyre and, upon a promontory overlooking the sea, erect a memorial barrow above his ashes. The end of the poem is too fine to pass over without quoting:

"Then fashioned for him the folk of Geats

firm on the earth a funeral-pile,

and hung it with helmets and harness of war
and breastplates bright, as the boon he asked;
and they laid amid it the mighty chieftain,
heroes mourning their master dear.
Then on the hill that hugest of balefires
the warriors wakened. Wood-smoke rose
black over blaze, and blent was the roar
of flame with weeping (the wind was still),

till the fire had broken the frame of bones,

hot at the heart. In heavy mood

their misery moaned they, their master's death. Wailing her woe, the widow old,

her hair upbound, for Beowulf's death sung in her sorrow, and said full oft she dreaded the doleful days to come,

deaths enow, and doom of battle,

and shame. The smoke by the sky was devoured.

"The folk of the Weders fashioned there

on the headland a barrow broad and high, by ocean-farers far descried:

in ten days' time their toil had raised it, the battle-brave's beacon.

Round brands of the pyre

a wall they built, the worthiest ever

that wit could prompt in their wisest men.

They placed in the barrow that precious booty, the rounds and the rings they had reft erewhile,

hardy heroes, from hoard in cave,

trusting the ground with treasure of earls,

gold in the earth, where ever it lies useless to men as of

yore it was.

"Then about that barrow the battle-keen rode

atheling-born, a band of twelve,

lament to make, to mourn their king,

chant their dirge, and their chieftain honor.

They praised his earlship, his acts of prowess

worthily witnessed: and well it is

that men their master-friend mightily laud, heartily love, when hence he goes

from life in the body forlorn away.

"Thus made their mourning the men of Geatland,

for their hero's passing his hearth-companions:

quoth that of all the kings of earth,

of men he was the mildest and most belov'd,

to his kin the kindest, keenest for praise."

In this poem we see the scenes with which our forefathers were familiar, enter into their hopes and fears, and realize their passion for honor and glory, their high feeling of duty, and the stern heroism with which they took leave of life.

Other poems which give us insight into Anglo-Saxon character and life are Widsith, an account of the wanderings of a gleeman; The Sea-farer, written in the spirit of Odysseus, though the northern seas differ much from the Mediterranean; and the Battle of Brunanburh and the Battle of Maldon, fine expressions of the warlike spirit of the race.

(b) THE TRADITIONAL LITERATURE OF THE CELTS The Celts in Britain. The people who inhabited England or Britain as it was then called before the AngloSaxon conquest, were Celts, that branch of the Indo-European family of races which had overspread France, Spain, and the British Islands before the time of recorded history in western Europe. Cæsar had fought against many of the Celtic tribes in Gaul, and in 55 B.C. had crossed over into Britain and defeated the British tribes there. Later Britain had become a Roman province, adopting to a certain extent the civilization. of Rome. By the early part of the fifth century, however, the Roman legions had been withdrawn from Britain to protect the imperial city from the inroads of the Teutonic tribes of northern Europe, leaving the Celts of Britain to take care of themselves. They resisted the Anglo-Saxon invaders as best they could; but they were little by little driven back into the mountains of Wales and Scotland, and some of them passed over into Armorica on the northwest coast of France.

Literature of the Britons. These people, as well as the Anglo-Saxons, had their traditional literature of myth and legend and heroic story, which has had a large influence in