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II. LITERATURE BEFORE THE NORMAN

CONQUEST

To this preparation by the making of the race must be added the expanding and deepening of the English nature, which, taught by experience, refined and spiritualized by Christianity and by Latin culture, labored to embody its widening ideas of life in some literary form. To realize the part played by Christianity in the development of English literature we must go back to the preceding centuries of heathenism.

Like the early Greeks and other primitive races, the English had created a body of poetry and myth long before they were able to give it a Early Engwritten form. Their imagination had lish heathenpeopled the world about them with ism.

indwelling powers; the giant of the forest, the dwarf of the mine, Nicor the water-sprite, whose name survives in the nixies of popular song and legend.

Their religion seems to have been that of the Scandinavian, impressive in its vast and rough-hewn majesty. Crude, gigantic shapes loom up through this Teutonic mythology as through a cloud: Woden, the father of the gods; Thor, with his mighty hammer, the god of thunder and of tempest; Saxnéat, the god of war; and Tiw, the sword god, a fierce and terrible power whom none could encounter and live. Among these are gentler divinities, often personifying the creative and beneficent forces of nature arrayed against the destructive and warring powers of cold, darkness, and storm ; Frea, the divinity of joy, warmth, and harvests; the

radiant and gracious Balder, the sun god; Eostre, the remnant of a yet earlier mythology, the shining goddess of springtime and dawn, from whose name our Easter is taken. Back of all these is Wyrd, Destiny, including in one person the three attributes Past, Present, and Future, embodiment of that ingrained northern fatalism which has been already spoken of as a primary English trait.* Beowulf, the hero of our oldest English epic, is true to the spirit of his race, when he cries before his last fight, "To us it shall be as our Wyrd betides, that Wyrd is every man's lord."+

Side by side with these early myths and popular fancies was poetry, here, as among other primitive races, the handmaid of religion and of history. It is to poetry that the great races turn in their childhood by a deep universal instinct, when they would give vent to their primal passions-joy, suffering, or the lust of battle. We may picture the English, like their German kindred, working themselves up to a frenzied joy in slaughter before rushing into action, by chanting wild and discordant hymns to the god of battles.

*In the Scandinavian mythology these three attributes of Fate were separate persons. Urd (hence the English Wyrd), the Past, Werdaudi, the Present, and Skuld, the Future. These three Fatal Sisters wove the web of human destiny. Gray's poem, The Fatal Sisters, may be read in class. Discuss also possible connection of the Nornes with the weird sisters or witches of Macbeth, for which see Academy (February 8, 1879); Dyer's Folk Lore of Shakespeare, p. 27. + Beowulf, 1. 2525.

"A peculiar kind of verses is also current among them, by

In the midst of this turbulent, pitiless world of the early English, with its plundering, wasting, and burnings, stands the figure of the poet.

The Scop.

He is the scop,* the maker or shaper of song; perhaps the servant of some great household, perhaps a wandering singer, a welcome guest at feasts. Enter in imagination one of the great halls on a night of feasting, if you would know what the scop was in that rude society. At one end sits the king, on a high platform; fires are blazing on the stone flagging along the center, lighting up the goldwoven tapestries, and glittering on helmet and buckler hanging on the walls. At the two tables. which run lengthwise of the hall sit the warriors, eating boar's flesh and venison, and in the midst, while a thegn carries round the drinking cups of ale

the recital of which, termed 'barding,' they stimulate their courage, while the sound itself serves as an augury of the event of the impending combat. For, according to the nature of the cry proceeding from the line, terror is inspired or felt; nor does it seem so much an articulate song as the wild chorus of valor. A harsh, piercing note, and a broken roar are their favorite tones, which they render more full and sonorous by applying their mouths to their shields.”—Tacitus, Germania, ch. 3, Oxford translation.

* Scop, from A. S. scieppan, to make or create; creation being generally recognized as the supreme faculty of the poet; v. note on trouvère, p. 104. Among the early English the gleeman occupied an inferior place, as the singer, rather than the composer, of verses. Gomenwudu and gleóbéam were the names of the harp; gleóman, or gleeman, of the harper. The gleeman also performed juggling or acrobatic feats in very early times. The relative position of scop and gleeman correspond somewhat to that of trouvère and jongleur.

and mead, the gleeman sings of the deeds of heroes, marking the beats of his rude chanting by chords struck upon the harp. By his life, given to song, he stands apart from all the rest; the special representative of mind in the midst of brute force, the forerunner of that great world power we call literature. But the scop, or gleeman, was not the only singer at feasts; often the harp was passed from hand to hand, and king and thegn sang in turn, or some hoary warrior told of the battles of his youth.* Thus in battlehymn or dirge, in hero songs, in gnomic or proverbial verses, we find the half-forgotten beginnings of English literature. Songs were common property. Passed on from one singer to another, altered or enlarged at pleasure, they grew by frequent repetition, while their origin and the name of the poet who first sung them was often uncared for and unknown.

Two very early poems, perhaps of continental origin, Widsith, or the Far Wanderer, and the Complaint of Deor, † deal with the life and for tunes of the scop.

The first of these has little poetic merit, but deserves mention as containing passages thought to be the earliest remaining specimens of Widsith." Anglo-Saxon verse. Widsith, a scop, enumerates the various courts at which he has been received in his wandering singer's life, and tells of the rich gifts that have been given him for his songs, He seems to have been popular, as he shows us only * Beowulf, 1. 496; v. also Bede's Ecclesiastical History, story of Cædmon.

Translated by E. H. Hickey in the Academy, May 14, 1881.

the bright side of the poet's life, dwelling on the liberality of his hearers and the widespread appreciation of song. The Complaint of Deor, on the other hand, brings before us the scop in misfortune. Deor was not an itinerant singer; he belonged to a special household and was dear to his lord, until displaced by a rival whose songs found greater favor. Deor tries to reconcile himself to this by calling to mind the many wise and good who have endured

sorrow.

We should gain nothing by a mere enumeration of other minor poems of this period. It is enough to say here that they deserve to be read by every serious student of our literature, if only for one reason: They come into the midst of our nineteenth century from a world that lies buried under the dust and tramplings of twelve centuries. Read with that deep human sympathy by which alone we can truly decipher the records of any past, we can find, beneath all that overlays it, the breath of life.

"Beowulf."

Among these early poems, Beowulf, the oldest epic of any Germanic people, containing over three thousand lines,* stands alone in magnitude and importance. The scene of the poem is laid on the continent, probably in Denmark. The date of its composition is doubtful, but scholars have shown, from certain historical allusions, that the

* According to the former manner of printing it, Beowulf contained over six thousand lines (cir. 6365). The poem, which is in the usual Anglo-Saxon meter, is written in half-lines, each having two strongly-marked accents. These half-lines being formerly printed as separate lines, the number of lines was apparently doubled.

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