English Literature for Boys and Girls Part 12

Chapter XV HOW ALFRED THE GREAT FOUGHT WITH HIS PEN

WHILE Caedmon sang his English lays and Bede wrote his Latin books, Northumbria had grown into a center, not only of English learning, but of learning for western Europe. The abbots of Jarrow and Wearmouth made journeys to Rome and brought back with them precious MSS. for the monastery libraries. Scholars from all parts of Europe came to visit the Northumbrian monasteries, or sent thither for teachers.

But before many years had pa.s.sed all that was changed. Times of war and trouble were not yet over for England. Once again heathen hordes fell upon our sh.o.r.es. The Danes, fierce and lawless, carrying sword and firebrand wherever they pa.s.sed, leaving death and ruin in their track, surged over the land. The monasteries were ruined, the scholars were scattered. A life of peaceful study was no longer possible, the learning of two hundred years was swept away, the lamp of knowledge lit by the monks grew dim and flickered out.

But when sixty years or more had pa.s.sed, a king arose who crushed the Danish power, and who once more lit that lamp. This king was Alfred the Great.

History tells us how he fought the Danes, how he despaired, and how he took heart again, and how he at last conquered his enemies and brought peace to his people.

Alfred was great in war. He was no less great in peace. As he fought the Danes with the sword, so he fought ignorance with his pen. He loved books, and he longed to bring back to England something of the learning which had been lost. Nor did he want to keep learning for a few only. He wanted all his people to get the good of it. And so, as most good books were written in Latin, which only a few could read, he began to translate some of them into English.

In the beginning of one of them Alfred says, "There are only a few on this side of the Humber who can understand the Divine Service, or even explain a Latin epistle in English, and I believe not many on the other side of the Humber either. But they are so few that indeed I cannot remember one south of the Thames when I began to reign."

By "this side of the Humber" Alfred means the south side, for now the center of learning was no longer Northumbria, but Wess.e.x.

Alfred translated many books. He translated books of geography, history and religion, and it is from Alfred that our English prose dates, just as English poetry dates from Caedmon. For you must remember that although we call Bede the Father of English History, he wrote in Latin for the most part, and what he wrote in English has been lost.

Besides writing himself, Alfred encouraged his people to write.

He also caused a national Chronicle to be written.

A chronicle is the simplest form of history. The old chronicles did not weave their history into stories, they simply put down a date and something that happened on that date. They gave no reasons for things, they expressed no feelings, no thoughts. So the chronicles can hardly be called literature. They were not meant to be looked upon as literature. The writers of them used them rather as keys to memory. They kept all the stories in their memories, and the sight of the name of a king or of a battle was enough to unlock their store of words. And as they told their tales, if they forgot a part they made something up, just as the minstrels did.

Alfred caused the Chronicle to be written up from such books and records as he had from the coming of the Romans until the time in which he himself reigned. And from then onwards to the time of the death of King Stephen the Saxon Chronicle was kept. It is now one of the most useful books from which we can learn the history of those times.

Sometimes, especially at the beginning, the record is very scant.

As a rule, there is not more than one short sentence for a year, sometimes not even that, but merely a date. It is like this:--

"Year 189. In this year Severus succeeded to the empire and reigned seventeen winters. He begirt Britain with a dike from sea to sea.

"Year 190.

"Year 199.

"Year 200. In this year was found the Holy Rood."

And so on it goes, and every now and again, among entries which seem to us of little or no importance, we learn something that throws great light on our past history. And when we come to the time of Alfred's reign the entries are much more full. From the Chronicle we learn a great deal about his wars with the Danes, and of how he fought them both by land and by sea.

The Saxon Chronicle, as it extended over many hundred years, was of course written by many different people, and so parts of it are written much better than other parts. Sometimes we find a writer who does more than merely set down facts, who seems to have a feeling for how he tells his story, and who tries to make the thing he writes about living. Sometimes a writer even breaks into song.

Besides causing the Chronicle to be written, Alfred translated Bede's History into English. And so that all might learn the history of their land, he rebuilt the ruined monasteries and opened schools in them once more. There he ordered that "Every free-born youth in the Kingdom, who has the means, shall attend to his book, so long as he have no other business, till he can read English perfectly."*

*Preface to Boethius' Pastoral Care, translated into English by Alfred.

Alfred died after having reigned for nearly thirty years. Much that he had done seemed to die with him, for once again the Danes descended upon our coasts. Once again they conquered, and Canute the Dane became King of England. But the English spirit was strong, and the Danish invasion has left scarcely a trace upon our language. Nor did the Danish power last long, for in 1042 we had in Edward the Confessor an English king once more. But he was English only in name. In truth he was more than half French, and under him French forces began already to work on our literature. A few years later that French force became overwhelming, for in 1066 William of Normandy came to our sh.o.r.es, and with his coming it seemed for a time as if the life of English literature was to be crushed out forever. Only by the Chronicle were both prose and poetry kept alive in the English tongue. And it is to Alfred the Great that we owe this slender thread which binds our English literature of to-day with the literature of a thousand years ago.

Chapter XVI WHEN ENGLISH SLEPT

"William came o'er the sea, With b.l.o.o.d.y sword came he.

Cold heart and b.l.o.o.d.y sword hand Now rule the English land."

The Heimskringla

WILLIAM THE NORMAN ruled England. Norman knights and n.o.bles filled all the posts of honor at court, all the great places in the land. Norman bishops and abbots ruled in church and monastery. The Norman tongue was alone the speech in court and hall, Latin alone was the speech of the learned. Only among the lowly, the unlearned, and the poor was English heard.

It seemed as if the English tongue was doomed to vanish before the conquering Norman, even as the ancient British tongue had vanished before the conquering English. And, in truth, for two hundred years it might have been thought that English prose was dead, "put to sleep by the sword." But it was not so. It slept, indeed, but to awake again. For England conquered the conqueror.

And when English Literature awoke once more, it was the richer through the gifts which the Norman had brought.

One thing the Normans had brought was a liking for history, and soon there sprang up a whole race of chroniclers. They, like Bede, were monks and priests. They lived in monasteries, and wrote in Latin. One after another they wrote, and when one laid down his pen, another took it up. Some of these chroniclers were mere painstaking men who noted facts and dates with care. But others were true writers of literature, who told their tales in vivid, stirring words, so that they make these times live again for us. The names of some of the best of these chroniclers are Eadmer, Orderic Vitalis, and William of Malmesbury.

By degrees these Norman and Anglo-Norman monks became filled with the spirit of England. They wrote of England as of their home, they were proud to call themselves English, and they began to desire that England should stand high among the nations. It is, you remember, from one of these chroniclers, Geoffrey of Monmout (see chapter vi.), that we date the reawakening of story-telling in England.

As a writer of history Geoffrey is bad. Another chronicler* says of him, "Therefore as in all things we trust Bede, whose wisdom and truth are not to be doubted: so that fabler with his fables shall be forthwith spat out by us all."

*William of Newbury.

But if Geoffrey was a bad writer of history, he was good as "a fabler," and, as we have seen in chapter vii., it was to his book that we owe the first long poem written in English after the Conquest.

The Norman came with sword in hand, bringing in his train the Latin-writing chroniclers. But he did not bring these alone. He brought minstrels also. Besides the quiet monks who sat in their little cells, or in the pleasant cloisters, writing the history of the times, there were the light-hearted minstrels who roamed the land with harp and song.

The man who struck the first blow at Hastings was a minstrel who, as he rode against the English, sang. And the song he sang was of Roland, the great champion of Charlemagne. The Roland story is to France what the Arthur story is to us. And it shows, perhaps, the strength of English patriotic spirit that that story never took hold of English minds. Some few tales there are told of Roland in English, but they are few indeed, in comparison with the many that are told of Arthur.

The Norman, however, who did not readily invent new tales, was very good at taking and making his own the tales of others. So, even as he conquered England by the sword, he conquered our literature too. For the stories of Arthur were told in French before they came back to us in English. It was the same with other tales, and many of our old stories have come down to us, not through their English originals, but through the French. For the years after the Conquest are the poorest in English Literature.

From the Conquest until Layamon wrote his Brut, there was no English literature worthy of the name. Had we not already spoken of Layamon out of true order in following the story of Arthur, it is here that we should speak of him and of his book, The Brut.

So, perhaps, it would be well to go back and read chapter vii., and then we must go on to the Metrical Romances.

The three hundred years from 1200 to 1500 were the years of the Metrical Romances. Metrical means written in verse. Romance meant at first the languages made from the Latin tongue, such as French or Spanish. After a time the word Romance was used to mean a story told in any Romance language. But now we use it to mean any story of strange and wonderful adventures, especially when the most thrilling adventures happen to the hero and heroine.

The Norman minstrels, then, took English tales and made them into romances. But when the English began once more to write, they turned these romances back again into English. We still call them romances, although they are now written in English.

Some of these tales came to us, no doubt, from the Danes. They were brought from over the sea by the fierce Northmen, who were, after all, akin to the Normans. The Normans made them into French stories, and the English turned them back into English.

Perhaps one of the most interesting of these Metrical Romances is that of Havelok the Dane.

The poem begins with a few lines which seem meant to call the people together to listen:--

"Hearken to me, good men, Wives, maidens, and all men, To a tale that I will tell to Who so will hear and list thereto."

We can imagine the minstrel as he stands in some market-place, or in some firelit hall, touching his harp lightly as he sings the words. With a quick movement he throws back his long green cloak, and shows his gay dress beneath. Upon his head he wears a jaunty cap, and his hair is long and curled. He sings the opening lines perhaps more than once, in order to gather the people round him. Then, when the eager crowd sit or stand about him, he begins his lay. It is most probably in a market-place that the minstrel stands and sings. For Havelok the Dane was written for the people and not for the great folk, who still spoke only French.

"There was a king in byegone days That in his time wrought good laws, He did them make and full well hold, Him loved young, him loved old, Earl and baron, strong man and thane, Knight, bondman and swain, Widows, maidens, priests and clerks And all for his good works."