A Literary History of the English People Part 4

Violent in their speech, cruel in their actions,[49] they love all that is fantastic, prodigious, colossal; and this tendency appears even in the writings where they wish to amuse; it is still more marked there than in the ancient Celtic tales. Thor and the giant go a-fishing, the giant puts two hooks on his line and catches two whales at once. Thor baits his hook with an ox's head and draws out the great serpent which encircles the earth.[50]

Their violence and energy spend their force, and then the man, quite another man it would seem, veers round; the once dauntless hero is now daunted by shadows, by thoughts, by nothing. Those strong beings, who laugh when their hearts are cut out alive, are the prey of vague thoughts. Already in that far-off time their world, which appears to us so young, seemed old to them. They were acquainted with causeless regrets, vain sorrows, and disgust of life. No literature has produced a greater number of disconsolate poems. Mournful songs abound in the "Corpus Poetic.u.m" of the North.

II.

With beliefs, traditions, and ideas of the same sort, the Anglo-Saxons had landed in Britain and settled there.[51] Established in their "isolated dwellings," if they leave them it is for action; if they re-enter them it is for solitary reverie, or sometimes for orgies. The main part of their original literature, like that of their brothers and cousins on the Continent, consists of triumphal songs and heartrending laments. It is contemplative and warlike.[52]

They have to fight against their neighbours, or against their kin from over the sea, who in their turn wish to seize upon the island. The war-song remains persistently in favour with them, and preserves, almost intact, its characteristics of haughty pride and ferocity. Its cruel accents recur even in the pious poems written after the conversion, and in the middle of the monotonous tale told by the national annalist. The Anglo-Saxon monk who draws up in his cell the chronicle of the events of the year, feels his heart beat at the thought of a great victory, and in the midst of the placid prose which serves to register eclipses of the moon and murders of kings, he suddenly inserts the bounding verse of an enthusiastic war-song:

"This year, King aethelstan, lord of earls, ring-giver of warriors, and his brother eke Edmund aetheling, life-long glory in battle won at Brunanburh.... The foes lay low, the Scots people and the shipman death-doomed fell. The field streamed with warriors' blood what time the sun up, at morning-tide the glorious star, glided o'er grounds, G.o.d's candle bright the eternal Lord's, until the n.o.ble creature sank to its setting."

The poet describes the enemy's defeat and flight, the slaughter that ensues, and with cries of joy calls upon the flocks of wild birds, the "swart raven with horned neb," and "him of goodly coat, the eagle," and the "greedy war hawk," to come and share the carcases. Never was so splendid a slaughter seen, "from what books tell us, old chroniclers, since hither from the east Angles and Saxons ('Engle and Seaxe'), came to land, o'er the broad seas, Britain ('Brytene') sought, proud war-smiths, the Welsh ('Wealas') o'ercame, men for glory eager, the country gain'd."[53]

The writer's heart swells with delight at the thought of so many corpses, of so great a carnage and so much gore; he is happy and triumphant, he dwells complacently on the sight, as poets of another day and country would dwell on the thought of paths "where the wind swept roses" (ou le vent balaya des roses).

These strong men lend themselves willingly, as do their kin over the sea, to the ebb and flow of powerful contrary feelings, and rush body and soul from the extreme of joy to the acme of sorrow. The mild _serenite_, enjoyed by men with cla.s.sical tendencies was to them unknown, and the word was one which no Norman Conquest, no Angevin rule, no "Augustan" imitation, could force into the language; it was unwanted, for the thing was unknown. But they listen with unabated pleasure, late in the period, to the story of heroic deeds performed on the Continent by men of their own race, whose mind was shaped like theirs, and who felt the same feelings. The same blood and soul sympathy which animates them towards their own King aethelstan, lord of earls, ring-giver of warriors--not a myth that one, not a fable his deeds--warms the songs they devote to King Waldhere of Aquitaine, to the Scandinavian warrior Beowulf, and to others, probably, who belonged to the same Germanic stock. Not a word of England or the Angles is said in those poems; still they were popular in England. The Waldhere song, of which some sixty lines have been preserved, on two vellum leaves discovered in the binding of an old book, told the story of the hero's flight from Attila's Court with his bride Hildgund and a treasure (treasures play a great part in those epics), and of his successive fights with Gunther and Hagen while crossing the Vosges. These warriors, after this one appearance, vanish altogether from English literature, but their literary life was continued on the Continent; their fate was told in Latin in the tenth century by a monk of St. Gall, and again they had a part to play in the German "Nibelungenlied." Beowulf, on the contrary, Scandinavian as he was, is known only through the Anglo-Saxon poet. In "Beowulf," as in "Waldhere," feelings, speeches, manners, ideal of life are the same as with the heroes of the "Corpus Poetic.u.m Boreale." The whole obviously belongs to the same group of nations.[54]

The strange poem of "Beowulf,"[55] the most important monument of Anglo-Saxon literature, was discovered at the end of the last century, in a ma.n.u.script written about the year 1000,[56] and is now preserved in the British Museum. Few works have been more discussed; it has been the cause of literary wars, in which the learned men of England, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, France, and America have taken part; and peace is not yet signed.

This poem, like the old Celtic tales, is a medley of pagan legends, which did not originally concern Beowulf in particular,[57] and of historical facts, the various parts, after a separate literary life, having been put together, perhaps in the eighth century, perhaps later, by an Anglo-Saxon Christian, who added new discrepancies in trying to adapt the old tale to the faith of his day. No need to expatiate on the incoherence of a poem formed of such elements. Its heroes are at once pagan and Christian; they believe in Christ and in Weland; they fight against the monsters of Scandinavian mythology, and see in them the descendants of Cain; historical facts, such as a battle of the sixth century, mentioned by Gregory of Tours, where the victory remained to the Frankish ancestor,[58] are mixed up with tales of fantastic duels below the waves.

According to a legend partly reproduced in the poem, the Danes had no chief. They beheld one day a small ship on the sea, and in it a child, and with him one of those ever-recurring treasures. They saw in this mysterious gift a sign from above, and took the child for their ruler; "and he was a good king." When that king, Scyld, died, they placed him once more on a bark with treasures, and the waters bore him away, no one ever knew whither.

One of his successors, Hrothgar,[59] who held his court, like the Danish kings of to-day, in the isle of Seeland, built in his old age a splendid hall, Heorot, wherein to feast his warriors and distribute rings among them. They drank merrily there, while the singer sang "from far-off ages the origin of men." But there was a monster named Grendel, who lived in the darkness of lonely mora.s.ses. He "bore impatiently for a season to hear each day joyous revelry loud-sounding in the hall, where was the music of the harp, and the clear piercing song" of the "scop." When night came, the fiend "went to visit the grand house, to see how the Ring-Danes after the beer-drinking had settled themselves in it. Then found he therein a crowd of n.o.bles (aethelinga) asleep after the feast; they knew no care."[60] Grendel removed thirty of them to his lair, and they were killed by "that dark pest of men, that mischief-working being, grim and greedy, savage and fierce." Grendel came again and "wrought a yet worse deed of murder." The thanes ceased to care much for the music and glee of Heorot. "He that escaped from that enemy kept himself ever afterwards far off in greater watchfulness."

Higelac, king of the Geatas (who the Geatas were is doubtful; perhaps Goths of Gothland in Sweden, perhaps Jutes of Jutland[61]), had a nephew, Beowulf, son of Ecgtheow, of the royal Swedish blood, who heard of the scourge. Beowulf went with his companions on board a ship; "the foamy-necked cruiser, hurried on by the wind, flew over the sea, most like to a bird," and followed "the path of the swans." For the North Sea is the path of the swans as well as of the whales, and the wild swan abounds to this day on the coasts of Norway.[62] Beowulf landed on the Danish sh.o.r.e, and proposed to Hrothgar to rid him of the monster.

Hrothgar does not conceal from his guests the terrible danger they are running: "Often have boasted the sons of battle, drunken with beer, over their cups of ale, that they would await in the beer-hall, with their deadly sharp-edged swords, the onset of Grendel. Then in the morning, when the daylight came, this mead-hall, this lordly chamber, was stained with gore, all the bench-floor drenched in blood, the hall in carnage...." The Geatas persist in their undertaking, and they are feasted by their host: "Then was a bench cleared for the sons of the Geatas, to sit close together in the beer-hall; there the stout-hearted ones went and sat, exulting clamorously. A thane attended to their wants, who carried in his hands a chased ale-flagon, and poured the pure bright liquor."

Night falls; the Geat and his companions remain in the hall and "bow themselves to repose." Grendel the "night walker came prowling in the gloom of night ... from his eyes there issued a hideous light, most like to fire. In the hall he saw many warriors, a kindred band, sleeping all together, a group of clansmen. Then he laughed in his heart." He did not tarry, but seized one of the sleepers, "tore him irresistibly, bit his flesh, drank the blood from his veins, swallowed him by large morsels; soon had he devoured all the corpse but the feet and hands." He then finds himself confronted by Beowulf. The fight begins under the sounding roof, the gilded seats are overthrown, and it was a wonder the hall itself did not fall in; but it was "made fast with iron bands." At last Grendel's arm is wrenched off, and he flees towards his mora.s.ses to die.

While Beowulf, loaded with treasure, returns to his own country, another scourge appears. The mother of Grendel wishes to avenge him, and, during the night, seizes and eats Hrothgar's favourite warrior. Beowulf comes back and reaches the cave of the fiends under the waters; the fight is an awful one, and the hero was about to succ.u.mb, when he caught sight of an enormous sword forged by the giants. With it he slays the foe; and also cuts off the head of Grendel, whose body lay there lifeless. At the contact of this poisonous blood the blade melts entirely, "just like ice, when the Father looseneth the bonds of frost, unwindeth the ropes that bind the waves."

Later, after having taken part in the historic battle fought against the Franks, in which his uncle Higelac was killed, Beowulf becomes king, and reigns fifty years. In his old age, he has to fight for the last time, a monster, "a fierce Fire-drake," that held a treasure. He is victorious; but sits down wounded on a stone, feeling that he is about to die. "Now go thou quickly, dear Wiglaf," he says to the only one of his companions who had come to his rescue, "to spy out the h.o.a.rd under the h.o.a.r rock; ... make haste now that I may examine the ancient wealth, the golden store, may closely survey the brilliant cunningly-wrought gems, that so I may the more tranquilly, after seeing the treasured wealth, quit my life, and my country, which I have governed long." Bowls and dishes, a sword "shot with bra.s.s," a standard "all gilded, ... locked by strong spells," from which issued "a ray of light," are brought to him. He enjoys the sight; and here, out of love for his hero, the Christian compiler of the story, after having allowed him to satisfy so much of his heathen tastes, prepares him for heaven, and makes him utter words of grat.i.tude to "the Lord of all, the King of glory, the eternal Lord"; which done, Beowulf, a heathen again, is permitted to order for himself such a funeral as the Geatas of old were accustomed to: "Rear a mound, conspicuous after the burning, at the headland which juts into the sea.

That shall, to keep my people in mind, tower up on Hrones-ness, that seafaring men may afterwards call it Beowulf's Mound, they who drive from far their roaring vessels over the mists of the floods." Wiglaf vainly tries to revive him with water; and addressing his unworthy companions, who then only dare to come out of the wood, expresses gloomy forebodings as to the future of his country: "Now may the people expect a time of strife, as soon as the king's fall shall become widely known to the Franks and Frisians.... To us never after [the quarrel in which Higelac died] was granted the favour of the Merovingians (_Mere-Wioinga_). Nor do I expect at all any peace or faith from the Swedish people...." The serpent is thrown "over the wall-cliff; they let the waves take, the flood close upon, the keeper of the treasures." A mound is built on the hill, "widely visible to seafaring men.... They placed on the barrow rings and jewels, ... they let the earth hold the treasure of earls, the gold in the sand where it now yet remaineth, as useless to men as it [formerly] was."[63] They ride about the mound, recounting in their chants the deeds of the dead: "So mourned the people of the Geatas, his hearth-companions, for their lord's fall; said that he was among world-kings the mildest and the kindest of men, most gracious to his people and most desirous of praise."

The ideal of a happy life has somewhat changed since the days of Beowulf. Then, as we see, happiness consisted in the satisfaction of very simple and primitive tastes, in fighting well, and after the fight eating and drinking heartily, and listening to songs and music, and after the music enjoying a sound sleep. The possession of many rings, handsome weapons and treasure, was also indispensable to make up complete happiness; so much so that, out of respect towards the chief, some of his rings and jewels were buried with him, "useless to men," as the author of "Beowulf" says, not without a touch of regret. Such was the existence led by those companions of Hrothgar, who are described as enjoying the happiest of lives before the appearance of Grendel, and who "knew no care." All that is tender, and would most arouse the sensibility of the sensitive men of to-day, is considered childish, and awakes no echo: "Better it is for every one that he should avenge his friend than that he should mourn exceedingly," says Beowulf; very different from Roland, the hero of France, he too of Germanic origin, but living in a different _milieu_, where his soul has been softened.

"When Earl Roland saw that his peers lay dead, and Oliver too, whom he so dearly loved, his heart melted; he began to weep; colour left his face."

Li cons Rodlanz, quant il veit morz ses pers Ed Olivier qu'il tant podeit amer, Tendror en out, commencet a plorer, En son visage fut molt descolorez.[64]

Beowulf crushes all he touches; in his fights he upsets monsters, in his talks he tumbles his interlocutors headlong. His retorts have nothing winged about them; he does not use the feathered arrow, but the iron hammer. Hunferth taunts him with not having had the best in a swimming match. Beowulf replies by a strong speech, which can be summed up in few words: liar, drunkard, coward, murderer! It seems an echo from the banqueting hall of the Scandinavian G.o.ds; in the same manner Loki and the G.o.ddesses played with words. For the a.s.sembled warriors of Hrothgar's court Beowulf goes in nowise beyond bounds; they are not indignant, they would rather laugh. So did the G.o.ds.

Landscape painting in the Anglo-Saxon poems is adapted to men of this stamp. Their souls delight in the bleak boreal climes, the north wind, frost, hail, ice, howling tempest and raging seas, recur as often in this literature as blue waves and sunlit blossoms in the writings of men to whom these exquisite marvels are familiar. Their descriptions are all short, save when they refer to ice or snow, or the surge of the sea. The Anglo-Saxon poets dwell on such sights complacently; their tongue then is loosened. In "Beowulf," the longest and truest description is that of the abode of the monsters: "They inhabit the dark land, wolf-haunted slopes, windy headlands, the rough fen-way, where the mountain stream, under the dark shade of the headlands, runneth down, water under land.

It is not far from hence, a mile by measure, that the mere lies; over it hang groves of [rimy] trees, a wood fast-rooted, [and] bend shelteringly over the water; there every night may [one] see a dire portent, fire on the flood. No one of the sons of men is so experienced as to know those lake-depths. Though the heath-ranging hart, with strong horns, pressed hard by the hounds, seek that wooded holt, hunted from far, he will sooner give up his life, his last breath on the bank, before he will [hide] his head therein. It is not a holy place. Thence the turbid wave riseth up dark-hued to the clouds, when the wind stirreth up foul weather, until the air grows gloomy, the heavens weep."

The same unchanging genius manifests itself in the national epic, in the shorter songs, and even in the prose chronicles of the Anglo-Saxons. To their excessive enthusiasms succeed periods of complete depression; their orgies are followed by despair; they sacrifice their life in battle without a frown, and yet, when the hour for thought has come, they are hara.s.sed by the idea of death. Their national religion foresaw the end of the world and of all things, and of the G.o.ds even. Listen, once more, to the well-known words of one of them:

"Human life reminds me of the gatherings thou holdest with thy companions in winter, around the fire lighted in the middle of the hall.

It is warm in the hall, and outside howls the tempest with its whirlwinds of rain and snow. Let a sparrow enter by one door, and, crossing the hall, escape by another. While he pa.s.ses through, he is sheltered from the wintry storm; but this moment of peace is brief.

Emerging from the cold, in an instant he disappears from sight, and returns to the cold again. Such is the life of man; we behold it for a short time, but what has preceded and what is to follow, we know not...."[65]

Would not Hamlet have spoken thus, or Claudio?

Ay, to die and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstruction....

Thus spoke, nine centuries before them, an Anglo-Saxon chief who had arisen in the council of King Eduini and advised him, according to Bede, to adopt the religion of the monks from Rome, because it solved the fearful problem. In spite of years and change, this anxiety did not die out; it was felt by the Puritans, and Bunyan, and Dr. Johnson, and the poet Cowper.

Another view of the problem was held by races imbued with cla.s.sical ideas, the French and others; cla.s.sical equanimity influenced them. Let us not poison our lives by the idea of death, they used to think, at least before this century; there is a time for all things, and it will be enough to remember death when its hour strikes. "Mademoiselle," said La Mousse to the future Madame de Grignan, too careful of her beautiful hands, "all that will decay." "Yes, but it is not decayed yet," answered Mademoiselle de Sevigne, summing up in a single word the philosophy of many French lives. We will sorrow to-morrow, if need be, and even then, if possible, without darkening our neighbours' day with any grief of ours. Let us retire from life, as from a drawing-room, discreetly, "as from a banquet," said La Fontaine.[66] And this good grace, which is not indifference, but which little resembles the anguish and enthusiasms of the North, is also in its way the mark of strong minds. For they were not made of insignificant beings, those generations who went to battle and left the world without a sneer or a tear; with ribbons on the shoulder and a smile on the lips.[67]

Examples of Anglo-Saxon poems, either dreamy or warlike, could easily be multiplied. We have the lamentations of the man without a country, of the friendless wanderer, of the forlorn wife, of the patronless singer, of the wave-tossed mariner; and these laments are always a.s.sociated with the grand Northern landscapes of which little had been made in ancient literatures:

"That the man knows not, to whom on land all falls out most joyfully, how I, miserable and sad on the ice-cold sea, a winter pa.s.s'd, with exile traces ... of dear kindred bereft, hung o'er with icicles, the hail in showers flew; where I heard nought save the sea roaring, the ice-cold wave. At times the swan's song I made to me for pastime ...

night's shadow darken'd, from the north it snow'd, frost bound the land, hail fell on the earth, coldest of grain...." Or, in another song: "Then wakes again the friendless mortal, sees before him fallow ways, ocean fowls bathing, spreading their wings, rime and snow descending with hail mingled; then are the heavier his wounds of heart."[68]

There are descriptions of dawn in new and unexpected terms: "The guest slept within until the black raven, blithe-hearted, gave warning of the coming of the heaven's joy, the bright sun, and of robbers fleeing away."[69] Never did the terraces of Rome, the peristyles of Athens, the balconies of Verona, see mornings dawn like unto these, to the raven's merry shriek. The sea of the Anglo-Saxons is not the Mediterranean, washing with its blue waves the marble walls of villas; it is the North Sea, with its grey billows, bordered by barren sh.o.r.es and chalky cliffs.

FOOTNOTES:

[40] H. Sweet, "Sketch of the History of Anglo-Saxon poetry," in Hazlitt's Warton, ii. p. 3.

[41] "De Bello Trojano," iii., line 108. Rhyme, however, commenced to appear in a few Christian poems of the end of the Anglo-Saxon period. On the use, rather rare, of alliteration in old French, which nevertheless has been preserved in several current expressions, such as "gros et gras," "bel et bon," &c., see Paul Meyer, "Romania," vol. xi. p. 572: "De l'alliteration en Roman de France."

[42] "His date has been variously estimated from the eighth to the eleventh century. The latter is the more probable." Earle, "Anglo-Saxon Literature," 1884, p. 228.

[43] Grein, "Bibliothek der Angelsachsischen Poesie," ed. Wulker; Ca.s.sel, 1883 ff., 8vo; "Corpus Poetic.u.m Boreale, The poetry of the old northern tongue, from the earliest to the XIIIth Century," edited and translated by G. Vigfusson and F. York Powell, Oxford, 1883, 2 vols.

8vo; vol. i., Eddic poetry; vol. ii., Court poetry. Other important monuments of Scandinavian literature are found in the following collections: "Edda Snorri," Ion Sigurdsson, Copenhagen, 1848, 2 vols.; "Norroen Fornkvaedi," ed. S. Bugge, Christiania, 1867, 8vo. (contains the collection usually called Edda Saemundi); "Icelandic Sagas," ed.

Vigfusson, London, 1887, 2 vols. 8vo (collection of the "Master of the Rolls"; contains, vol. i., "Orkneinga Saga" and "Magnus Saga"; vol. ii., "Hakonar Saga"); "Sturlunga Saga," including the "Islendiga Saga of Lawman Thordsson, and other works," ed. Vigfusson, Oxford, 1878, 2 vols.

8vo; "Heimskringla Saga, or the Sagas of the Norse Kings, from the Icelandic of Snorre Sturlason," ed. S. Laing, second edition, revised by R. B. Anderson, London, 1889, 4 vols. 8vo. The two Eddas and the princ.i.p.al Sagas will be comprised in the "Saga Library," founded in 1890 by W. Morris and Eirikr Magnusson (Quaritch, London). _Edda_ means great-grandmother; the prose Edda is a collection of narratives of the twelfth century, retouched by Snorri in the thirteenth; the Edda in verse is a collection of poems of various dates that go back in part to the eighth and ninth centuries. _Saga_ means a narrative; the Sagas are narratives in prose of an epic character; they flourished especially in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

[44] The Anglo-Saxon and the Scandinavian collections both contain the same kind of poems, and especially epic poems, elegies and laments, moral poems, war songs, aphorisms, riddles, some of which continue to puzzle the wisest of our day.

[45] The most ancient fragments of this epic are found in the _Edda_ in verse; a complete version exists in Icelandic prose ("Volsunga Saga") of the twelfth century; the German version ("Nibelungenlied") is of the end of the same century.

[46] "Lay of Skirni."--"Corpus Poetic.u.m," i. p. 114.

[47] "Alta-Kvida."--"Corpus Poetic.u.m," i. p. 48. This is one of the most ancient poems in the collection.

[48] "Alta-Kvida."--"Corpus Poetic.u.m," i. p. 51.

[49] A single example will be as good as many: "One of the Viking leaders got the nickname of Born (Child) because he had been so tender-hearted as to try and stop the sport of his followers, who were tossing young children in the air and catching them upon their spears.

No doubt his men laughed not unkindly at this fancy of his, and gave him the nickname above mentioned." C. F. Keary, "The Vikings in Western Christendom," 789-888, London, 1891, 8vo, p. 145.

[50] "Hymis-Kvida."--"Corpus Poetic.u.m," i. p. 222.

[51] The most valuable monuments of Anglo-Saxon literature and art are contained in the following MSS.: