The Battle of Maldon, page 4
Beorhtnoth was wrong, and he died for his folly. But it was a noble error, or the error of a noble. It was not for his heorðwerod to blame him; probably many would not have felt him blameworthy, being themselves noble and chivalrous. But poets, as such, are above chivalry, or even heroism; and if they give any depth to their treatment of such themes, then, even in spite of themselves, these ‘moods’ and the objects to which they are directed will be questioned.
We have two poets that study at length the heroic and chivalrous with both art and thought in the older ages: one near the beginning in Beowulf; one near the end in Sir Gawain. And probably a third, more near the middle, in Maldon, if we had all his work. It is not surprising that any consideration of the work of one of these leads to the others. Sir Gawain, the latest, is the most fully conscious, and is in plain intention a criticism or valuation of a whole code of sentiment and conduct, in which heroic courage is only a part, with different loyalties to serve. Yet it is a poem with many inner likenesses to Beowulf, deeper than the use of the old ‘alliterative’[4] metre, which is nonetheless significant. Sir Gawain, as the exemplar of chivalry, is of course shown to be deeply concerned for his own honour, and though the things considered honourable may have shifted or been enlarged, loyalty to word and to allegiance, and unflinching courage remain. These are tested in adventures no nearer to ordinary life than Grendel or the dragon; but Gawain’s conduct is made more worthy, and more worth considering, again because he is a subordinate. He is involved in peril and the certain prospect of death simply by loyalty, and the desire to secure the safety and dignity of his lord, King Arthur. And upon him depends in his quest the honour of his lord and of his heorðwerod, the Round Table. It is no accident that in this poem, as in Maldon and in Beowulf, we have criticism of the lord, of the owner of the allegiance. The words are striking, though less so than the small part they have played in criticism of the poem (as also in Maldon). Yet thus spoke the court of the great King Arthur, when Sir Gawain rode away:
Before God ’tis a shame
that thou, lord, must be lost, who art in life so noble!
To meet his match among men, Marry, ’tis not easy!
To behave with more heed would have behoved one of sense,
and that dear lord duly a duke to have made,
illustrious leader of liegemen in this land as befits him;
and that better would have been than to be butchered to death,
beheaded by an elvish man for an arrogant vaunt.
Who ever heard tell of a king such courses taking,
as knights quibbling at court at their Christmas games!
Beowulf is a rich poem: there are of course many other sides to the description of the manner of the hero’s death; and the consideration (sketched above) of the changing values of chivalry in youth and in age and responsibility is only an ingredient. Yet it is plainly there and though the author’s main imagination was moving in wider ways, criticism of the lord and owner of the allegiance is touched on.
Thus the lord may indeed receive credit from the deeds of his knights, but he must not use their loyalty or imperil them simply for that purpose. It was not Hygelac that sent Beowulf to Denmark through any boast or rash vow. His words to Beowulf on his return are no doubt an alteration of the older story (which peeps rather through in the egging of the snotere ceorlas, 202–4); but they are the more significant for that. We hear, 1992–7, that Hygelac had tried to restrain Beowulf from a rash adventure. Very properly. But at the end the situation is reversed. We learn, 3076–83, that Wiglaf and the Geatas regarded any attack on the dragon as rash, and had tried to restrain the king from the perilous enterprise, with words very like those used by Hygelac long before. But the king wished for glory, or for a glorious death, and courted disaster. There could be no more pungent criticism in a few words of ‘chivalry’ in one of responsibility than Wiglaf’s exclamation: oft sceall eorl monig anes willan wræc adreogan, ‘by one man’s will many must woe endure’. These words the poet of Maldon might have inscribed at the head of his work.
NOTES
(I)
BEORHTNOTH’S DEATH
Æthelred II
King from 978–1013 and again from 1014 to his death in 1016. His reign was marred by many viking invasions. In draft material, Tolkien notes that ‘trying to buy off the Danes with gafol (tribute) was first adopted’ as English policy following the disaster at Maldon. And he more than once refers to Æthelred’s disparaging epithet, ‘the Unready’.
Beorhtnoth
On Tolkien’s unusual spelling of the Maldon hero’s name, Michael D.C. Drout notes:
The manuscript reading of the name is ‘Byrhtnoth’. Tolkien emended the ‘y’ to the diphthong ‘eo’ … indicating his understanding of the poet’s likely pronunciation of the name in the Eastern dialect in which most scholars believe it was written. The poem as we have it is in West Saxon’ (161).
This is corroborated by Tolkien’s own words on the matter. Among his linguistic notes on Maldon, he describes the shift ‘Byrhtnoð for *Beorht’ as ‘a Late West Saxon change’ (MS. Tolkien A 30/2, fol. 165). And, in abandoned material for the scholarly portions of The Homecoming, he draws attention to the space of time that probably lies between oral composition and written record: the Maldon manuscript, ‘now destroyed by fire, was probably almost a century later than the composition of the poem’ (MS. Tolkien 5, fol. 88). As his drama is set just a day after the battle, and his interest is partly in recovering the poem’s origins, Tolkien opts for the older spelling.
led by Anlaf …
None of the viking enemies are identified by name in the poem. Throughout Part I of The Homecoming, Tolkien acknowledges the ‘soup of story’ that shapes our understanding of the battle – the inconsistent Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ‘the late, and largely unhistorical’ Liber Eliensis – even as he prepares to add to it with his own verse drama. Further speculation as to the identity of the invaders emerges in draft material: ‘The viking-leaders were probably called Jósteinn and Guðmundr’ (MS. Tolkien 5, fol. 62v).
misplaced chivalry
Chivalry, an anachronistic term derived from Old French, emerges as a key term in Tolkien’s work on Maldon. It is taken up at length in the ‘Ofermod’ essay, and it is, tellingly, part of Tolkien’s gloss for ofermod (‘overconfident chivalry’) in his prose translation of the OE poem. Tolkien probably found its connections to reputation and to the courtly ‘game’ of honour apt. As an anachronism it echoes Tolkien’s interest in changing times and attitudes; the jarring word choice may perhaps emphasize something of Beorhtnoth’s misjudgment in the misplacement of his men, and of The Homecoming’s wider interest in changing heroic tradition over time.
abbey of Ely
The family’s patronage of Ely Abbey continued after Beorhtnoth’s death. According to the Liber Eliensis, among the rich gifts bestowed by his widow, Ælfflæd, was an embroidery (now lost) depicting his great deeds.
head had been hacked off
Other grisly discoveries were reported in James Bentham’s letter to the Society of Antiquaries in 1772:
It is a curious fact (given to the Editor by a Gentleman present when the bones were examined), that the clavicula, or collar bone, found in Brithnoth’s Cell, appeared to have been nearly cut through – with, perhaps, a battle axe, or a two-handed sword (Deegan 291).
very many had fallen on both sides
A precise body count is of course impossible to ascertain. E.V. Gordon thought the poem to be ‘generally trustworthy’ on the facts of the battle, while other sources could be prone to hyperbole, especially on the matter of the depletion of the viking forces. The Vita Oswaldi’s claim that ‘the Danes … scarcely had men enough left to man the ships’ is, according to Gordon, ‘certainly an exaggeration’, for they were able to ‘continue plundering along the coasts’ soon after (5–7).
Torhthelm (colloquially Totta) … Tídwald (in short Tída)
I have not found in Tolkien’s papers any indication of the provenance or special significance of the names of the two chief voices in The Homecoming. While Totta was early settled upon, replacing Pudda in the earliest drafts, Tída emerges later, and in stages: Tibba > Tudda > Tída from Version H on. Tom Shippey glosses Torhthelm, ‘bright helmet’ and Tídwald, ‘ruler of time’ (‘Tolkien and the Homecoming’ 326). Jessica Yates has made the fascinating observation that the names have been ‘staring us in the face’ in the Old English poem Crist – ‘Torht ofer tunglas, þu Tida gehwane’ – only three lines down from the famous ‘Eala earendel’, which can be said to have launched Tolkien’s mythology. Balancing one another on opposite sides of the caesura, they may capture a kind of Homecoming dialogue in miniature. Other theories might draw on English place-names. Tidwalditun certainly makes an impression as the former name of Heybridge, not far from Maldon in Essex. The villages of Little and Great Totham lie only a few miles north of Heybridge. Farther afield is Totanæs (now Totnes) in Devon, or Tottenham of north London.
heroes of northern antiquity
Such figures, straddling history and legend, were often at the heart of Tolkien’s own studies. There is a wistful pleasure in eavesdropping on Tída and Totta, in an age when, perhaps, such tales were better preserved. For more on such legends, see also Finn and Hengest, and Tolkien’s discussion of Fróda in ‘On Fairy-stories’ (MC 127).
Ælfwine
The name, meaning ‘Elf-friend’, plays a major role in Tolkien’s legendarium, most plainly as the Anglo-Saxon mariner of The Book of Lost Tales. If Ælfwine’s part recedes in later revisions of the mythology, the concept of the Elf-friend certainly does not. Elf-friends, from Elendil to Bilbo, function within the frame as protagonists in the adventures and without it as the authors and transmitters of the tales themselves.
It is here implied …
This point is elaborated in ‘Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics’. Tolkien notes that Beorhtwold’s ‘doctrinal expression’ of northern courage ‘may well have been actually used by the eald geneat, but none the less (or perhaps rather precisely on that account) is probably to be regarded not as new-minted, but as an ancient and honoured gnome of long descent’ (MC 45 n11).
rhyme: presaging the fading end of the old heroic alliterative measure …
For more on Cnut’s verse and its connections to Ely Abbey, see Eleanor Parker’s ‘Merry sang the monks’. For further discussion of rhyme in Maldon, see Appendix II, section (e).
little if at all freer
Tolkien hypothesizes at some length about different OE verse modes in ‘The Tradition of Versification’. On a half sheet between pages 7 and 8 of this essay, he classifies three types: 1) ‘Strict epic or ‘fornyrðislag’ type’; 2) ‘Freer verse’; and 3) ‘Poetic or emotional prose’. Maldon he called the ‘chief example’ of the freer type 2, whose hallmarks included ‘greater freedom in 2nd half anacrusis not infrequent, head-stave occasionally on 2nd beat in 2nd half – especially when assisted by crossed alliteration which was considerably used. Heavy types and loose types commoner’ (fol. 39).
Historia Eliensis
The Liber Eliensis is a twelfth-century history of Ely Abbey in Latin, beginning with its founding in 673.
King Canute
Neither the sporting resistance of Beorhtnoth nor the monetary tribute of Æthelred II would long hold off the Northern invaders. The fierce but Christian Canute (or Cnut) became King of England in 1016, and later claimed the crowns of Denmark and Sweden, ruling a vast – but short lived – North Sea Empire, which collapsed with his death in 1035.
(II)
THE HOMECOMING OF BEORHTNOTH BEORHTHELM’S SON
The sound is heard … in the darkness.
In ‘On Fairy-stories’, Tolkien remarks that fantasy ‘hardly ever succeeds in Drama … visibly and audibly acted’ (140). Perhaps this is why little to nothing is seen in Tolkien’s verse drama. But like Tída’s dark lantern, The Homecoming can illuminate the fabric of Tolkien’s fantasy.
barrow-wights
These spirits haunting ancient burial mounds feature in the opening verses collected in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and in the early misadventures of the hobbits in ‘Fog on the Barrow Downs’, the eighth chapter of The Fellowship of the Ring.
gleeman’s stuff
A gleeman is a professional singer, perhaps a descendent of the OE scop or bard. Tída refers to Totta’s family business with a note of disparagement.
Woden’s days
That is, in pre-Christian England. Woden is Old English for the Norse god, Odin.
they’ll be two-leggéd
Wolf and outlaw intertwine in Old Norse (vargr) and Old English (wearh), and this connection is revived also in the evil wargs of The Lord of the Rings. In meeting the scavengers shortly thereafter, Tída’s suggestion here proves true. See also note on Maldon l. 91 in Part Two.
Owls are omens
This difference of opinion on the bird offers an opportune moment to note that The Homecoming shares some common ground with medieval debate poems such as the Middle English Owl and the Nightingale, which Tolkien studied, translated, and taught at various times during his career.
His sister-son!
For more on this special relationship, see Tolkien’s note on Maldon l. 115 in Part Two below.
gather them ungrown
This poignant image recalls A Spring Harvest, a collection of G.B. Smith’s poetry edited by Tolkien, and published in 1918, following Smith’s untimely death in the First World War. Mark Atherton has noted parallels between Smith’s ‘Glastonbury’ and The Homecoming (There and Back Again 158).
bad when bearded men put shield at back … the dastards
A reference to the flight of Odda’s sons recounted in the poem. See Tolkien’s note in Part Two on Maldon l. 190.
new weapon of the old metal
Ælfwine here is described in terms of a sword reforged – a familiar trope in Tolkien’s legendarium, as in Narsil > Andúril and Anglachel > Gurthang.
left with the luggage
In The Lord of the Rings, the hobbits make self-deprecating comments in such terms. Sam on the Great River deems himself ‘no more than luggage in a boat’; and Pippin, captured by the Uruk-hai, takes a gloomy look at his role in the company: ‘a nuisance: a passenger, a piece of luggage’ (383, 445).
a poor freeman may prove … more tough … than titled earls
Doubts about Totta’s courage notwithstanding, the sentiment, full of loyalty and unexpected pluck, is surely hobbit-like. In a 1955 letter to W.H. Auden, Tolkien notes ‘the value of Hobbits, in putting earth under the feet of “romance”, and in providing subjects for “ennoblement” and heroes more praiseworthy than the professionals’ (Letters 215).
count back their kin to kings ere Woden
Some of the more fanciful family trees of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle do just that.
the bite of swords
Tolkien’s Beowulf translation likewise reads that the hero’s sword ‘would bite not’ Grendel’s mother (l.1273). It is a familiar image in Tolkien’s legends, notably in the sentient Gurthang’s appetite for blood in the Tale of Túrin Turambar and the blade of Gondolin, simply called, by the Goblins in The Hobbit, Biter.
eyes … as Grendel’s in the moon
Gordon argues that ‘Maldon is of the same school as Beowulf and nearer to Beowulf in heroic art and social feeling than any other Old English poem’ (23). Here Tolkien suggests that while Totta does not know battle, he does know some Beowulf. In draft version C, ‘Grendel’s’ replaces in pencil the more generic ‘a fen-dweller’s’ (MS. Tolkien 5 fol. 10).
his sword … the golden hilts.
For the development of this scene in the drafts, see Appendix V. See also the introduction to Mark Atherton’s Battle of Maldon. In the fairy-tale Sellic Spell, the hero Beewolf comes to be called ‘the knight of the golden hilts’ (403).
Now mourn forever … while word or woe in the world lasteth.
The dirge, as Tída notes, owes much to the end of Beowulf.
You laboured long … in the watches of the night
In ‘The Tradition of Versification’, Tolkien writes of the Maldon poet’s likely participation in such a lonely vigil. It was also part of his own routine. In a 1944 letter to Christopher Tolkien on the progress of The Lord of the Rings, he notes: ‘I have seriously embarked on an effort to finish my book, and have been sitting up rather late’ (70). The phrase, ‘watches of the night’, occurs more than once in the Rohan chapters of The Lord of the Rings.
If swords he was seeking, he soon found one, by the biting end.
This plainly echoes (or anticipates) the exchange between Beorhtnoth and the messenger in the OE poem (see also Part Two, note on Maldon l. 46).
sprinkled
Baptized – converted to Christianity.
By Edmund’s head
Edmund the Martyr, East Anglian king, was beheaded by vikings more than a century before the Battle of Maldon.
his funeral ale
Ceremonial beer drunk at the funeral feast. Tolkien memorably describes Beowulf in such terms in ‘On Translating Beowulf’. Defending the poem from ‘one famous critic’ who claimed that the poem was only ‘small beer’, he counters: ‘Yet if beer at all, it is a drink dark and bitter: a solemn funeral -ale with the taste of death’ (MC 49).
It’s strange to me how they came across this causeway
For the developments of this crucial scene, see Appendix V.
to give minstrels matter for mighty songs
Beorhtnoth does, after a fashion, succeed in this.
So the last is fallen … In olden days this isle conquered
Totta’s verse plainly echoes the closing lines of The Battle of Brunanburh, a Chronicle poem commemorating a victory in 937. But here, rather than celebrating the continuity with the glorious conquest of the fifth century, Beorhtnoth’s fall seems to represent the end of an era. One of the modern touches of The Homecoming is its recognition of the cyclical irony to the depredations of the Danes in this time; centuries before, under leaders like Hengest and Horsa, it was the ‘English Vikings’ who played the role of invader. One sobering constant in all these centuries of war would seem to be, as Tída notes, that the poor ‘must die and dung’ the land.
