The Battle of Maldon, page 7
All these words like cniht are tricky. Since young men unmarried or not of full age are at once the most daring and the most frequently in service they develop simultaneously in different directions. The senses gallant warrior, blade – young man, retainer, servant, boy, lad. Cniht in OE usually = boy … Its elevation into the higher class is post OE and comes through its sense of servant.
burnished; 163 bruneccg
With a glittering edge. A famous epithet. Cf. brad ond brunecg of a seax (Beowulf 1546). Brun in sense shining (of weapons) also occurs in Judith, Beowulf, and [Exeter Book] Riddle 17.
The sense dusky, dark, brown also occurs in verse, and is the only one in prose of any period. This points (1) either to the words being distinct (2) the other sense shining being conventional as applied to metal.
The word brun got from G[ermanic] into Romance hence bruno; but it got there also in this sense of bright which occurs frequently in Song of Roland.
In ME at least with its application to steel (and glass and diamonds) it was understood as white-gleaming. It is suggested with probability that it is same as brun – brown, and was first applied to swords of the bronze age, and becoming a fixed part of the poetic vocabulary as applied to helms, swords, spear-point, it changed its sense as these changed their metal and appearance. Not an uncommon semantic development.
pale gleaming hilt; 166 fealohilte
Pale-hilted. Fealu in OE means pale, especially pale yellow (cf. fallow deer), as of leaves going pale and golden. No connection with fallow of land. Fealohilte is nowhere else recorded.
steed; 189 eoh
The oldest word for horse. In OE it chiefly survived as eo- in names like Eomer, being ousted (except in the language of verse that preserved so many ancient words) by synonyms such as hors (courser, runner); mearh, etc. Cf. eored = eoh-rid, a riding of horses.
in those very trappings of his, in which it was not right; 190 on þam gerædum þe hit riht ne wæs
(that he should appear) – because the Earl’s horse was known, and probably specially caparisoned and richly harnessed: the explanation is found in 239 where it is seen that men took the figure of Godric galloping off on the well-known horse for Byrhtnoth and a panic ensued.
fit; 195 mæð
Lit[erally] measure, and is used in OE (and ME) for decent limits of moderation; practically here sense is ‘than was at all decent’ or creditable.
men of his house; 204 heorðgeneatas
Means personal retainers of a lord or king who lived in his hall, and sat at his board beside his hearth. Here no doubt it implies nothing more than the members of Byrhtnoth’s own personal picked troops, the heorðwerod cf. 24. Though elements of the old conditions still survived. This is the word by which Beowulf describes himself and his companions when they arrive in Denmark. So a heorðgeneat was often in close touch (Cf. Beowulf 260–261). Beowulf was Hygelac’s nephew.
Remember all those speeches that we have often spoken at the drinking of mead; 212 Gemunon þa mæla þe we oft æt meodo spræcon
Cf. Beowulf 2633 (Wiglaf speaks:) [Rendered thus in Tolkien’s Beowulf 2208–13: ‘I do not forget the time when, where we took our mead in the hall of revelry, we vowed to our master, who gave us these precious things, that we would repay him for that raiment of warriors, the helmets and stout swords, if ever on him such need as this should fall.’]
In addition to what is called the ‘comitatus’ motive, there is also the feeling that vows spoken in drink must be made good. The great classic example is the Jomsvikings, a band of celibate vikings (i.e. they occupied a permanent military fort where no women or children were) who held Jomsburg in N. Germany and became so powerful that they made kings. They put Swein Forkbeard on throne of Denmark. The most famous were Palnatoke, and Sigvaldi son of Strut-Harald. At the funeral drinking given by King Swein, there was fearful strong drink and enormous horns. [?They] had to drink cups of memory to the King’s father, then to Christ, then to Michael, and then to Strut-Harald – and by that time they were in the mood for vows, and Earl Sigvaldi vowed he would invade Norway, and they all followed his vow.
The next morning the Jomsvikings felt very blue about it – they thought they had spoken ‘big words enough’. But they set about it – and met with complete disaster in one of the most famous Scandinavian naval battles related in Heimskringla in which nearly 250 ships engaged. [Pencilled addition:] Note that we have a convention here, but a living one, for the commitments of comitatus loyalty were still fully genuine. They were still in personal touch.
forgetting not his desire for vengeance; 225 fæhðe gemunde
To bear in mind one’s bitter hatred, the duty of vengeance, and so to show unsoftened valour.
shield wall; 242 scyldburh
This is probably the oldest term for what is also called in this poem wihaga 102, bordweall 277. We gather what it was from the gloss testudo …
Appears in OHG as sciltburg = testudo. ON has skjaldborg as name of an ancient battle array. The classic description of which is in Harald’s saga Hardrada concerning the battle of Stamford Bridge 1066. Generally it referred to bodies standing in close ranks shield touching shield – a formidable array – so that for a single warrior with impetuous onslaught to burst inside it as Eadweard se langa does is a feat. Cf. the British Square in ‘Fuzzy-Wuzzy’ [1892 poem by Rudyard Kipling].
249 Sturmere
The only place mentioned in poem. Most likely it = Sturmer in Essex. And is a grain of evidence of the Essex origin of the poem. Note that Leofsunu was not the author (he pretty plainly perished) but that an Essex place-name is the only one to be mentioned in 325 lines dealing with the fall of many noble men might point to an Essex author.
men; 249 hælæð
It is interesting to note this old archaic pl[ural] surviving in this late piece of verse.
a simple ‘ceorl’ [churl]; 256 unorne ceorl
Not a noble, or a man of noble-birth (eorl), though a free man not bound by same feelings of aristocratic honour (according at least to the notions of an aristocratic society) – but nevertheless laying down his life for loyalty. The poet probably felt this as an especial testimony to the love Byrhtnoth inspired. Dunnere would not have had to face the same obloquy on his homecoming if he had departed after B’s death.
unorne = humble, mean, of little value – of clothes poor, shabby. It is of obscure origin.
hostage; 265 gysel
We don’t know what a ‘hostage’ was doing in B’s retinue, especially one with an English name (whose father also was English). Note, however, that on Norðhymbron = Northumbria whether the Danes or English of that region are meant. In the confusion of those days when Northumbria was a separate kingdom (theoretically tributary to the W[est] S[axon] Kings) of course both English and Danes would often be in same army fighting against the W.S. forces. Nor does the English name prove pure English ancestry at this date – 100 years and more after the definite settlement of Scandinavians (turning to tillage, etc.) into Northumbria.
A parallel of the duty of the hostage to behave exactly as native member of the comitatus is provided in Cynewulf and Cyneheard where the British gisel in retinue of Cynewulf fights with the other king’s men against the greater numbers brought by Cyneheard even though all are offered their lives.
Ecglaf’s son, Æscferð; 267 Ecglafes bearn … Æscferð
Is oddly reminiscent of Unferð Ecglafes sunu in Beowulf.
271 æfre embe stunde he sealde sume wunde
The line is remarkable for complete substitution of rhyme for alliteration.
hung never back, unwearyingly he fought …; 281–2 fus and forðgeorn feaht eornoste / Sibyrhtes broðor and swiðe mænig oþer
The punctuation is difficult to decide on – we have a kind of ‘flowing connexion’.
This is another verse in which rhyme is substituted for alliteration.
283 cellod
Meaning and etymology unknown. We have already seen the parallelisms that exist in Battle of Maldon with other surviving fragments of tenth-century verse. It can hardly be doubted that this passage and sceolde cellod bord … Finnesburh 29 are connected. Unfortunately both Maldon and Finnesburh survive only in eighteenth century transcripts. Whether the eighteenth century has corrupted one or both passages is difficult to determine.
[in battle slew Offa] that sea-pirate; 286 þone sælidan
Which? The one who had slain Byrhtnoth?
Note all the part from 184–286 is really devoted to a short episode in the battle: the flight of Godric, Godwine, Godwig, the rallying of Byrhtnoth’s own personal following and their several speeches. The slaying of the sælidan is reserved, by Offa clearly the chief of B’s following (cf. his proud words about the rest of the leavers at the war-council), until the end.
the kinsmen of Gadd; 287 Gaddes mæg
Clearly = Offa. We don’t know more. Mæg in this way is used to relate a man to any notable ancestor – usually exclusively (but not always) his father. Gadd may have been uncle or grandfather.
an old retainer was he; 310 se wæs eald geneat
We have here another instance of old traditional situation and actual occurrence coinciding. We need not doubt that Byrhtwold was an eald geneat, and that he actually spoke memorable words not unlike the remarkable ones here enshrined. Yet it was traditional for the eald geneat to be relentless and dauntless and ‘speak winged words’.
With eald geneat æsc acwehte cf. the eald æscwiga of Beowulf 2042 whose place in the Ingeld story corresponds to that of the grim Starkaðr of Norse.
The old retainer is more jealous for the honour of the house than even the master is – but if this is a ‘literary’ situation it is only so because also it is a common one in reality.
No one has yet doubted the authenticity of Maldon – why it has been thus neglected is difficult to say – but at least as sensible as some of the ‘internal’ criticisms of texts would be one that pointed how mythical it all is
the dear swuster sunu is the first to fall
all the characters make ‘comitatus’ speeches in the best ‘epic’ manner
the eald geneat comes in at the end preaching a courage of blank defiance of fate. In fact they might even say he was a fabrication of the poet, his name a mere variation of Byrhtnoth introduced to emphasize what the poet wished to present as B’s character – but of course the two B’s have a quite different character.
Each mind shall be the sterner …; 312–313 Hige sceal þe heardra heorte þe cenre / mod sceal þe mare þe ure mægen lytlað
These 2 lines are deservedly famous – in OE they are vigorous and sum up in curiously compact and forceful way the special quality of Northern heroism: unless you admit defeat you are not beaten, a cold grim and desperately hard creed, but a noble one, and not one that is at present in danger of being overpopularized and exaggerated. In fact read attentively one can hardly escape the impression that these lines are older and go back further than the texture of the context – a fact that Byrhtwold probably spoke these exact words because they were either proverbial or a familiar quotation.
PART THREE
The Tradition of Versification in Old English
with special reference to the Battle of Maldon and its alliteration
[This fair copy manuscript of a wide-ranging lecture/essay (MS. Tolkien A 30/2, fols. 35–38, 44–64) dates to the late 1920s or early 1930s, when Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College. I have found no precise means of dating its composition or delivery, though it may have been part of his repertoire during Oxford terms in 1928 and 1930, where he is recorded lecturing on The Battle of Maldon. I present the first 34 pages of the text here; the remaining 10 pages, a technical discussion of elements of Maldon’s prosody in a series of notes labelled a-f, are found in Appendix II. At points where Tolkien presents a series of Old English quotations as examples of unusual scansion or otherwise notable poetic features, I have in the interest of brevity omitted all but the first in the series, giving only the line numbers for reference to those that follow.]
The Battle of Maldon is in a more hasty, or rather in a less formal manner than the long poems that have survived from an earlier age. Most of these are from their matter, or their handling of it, seen to be the elaborated works of the minstrel turned scholar (or the scholar turned minstrel) rather than of the minstrel plain, the gleeman of a noble lord. Such fragments as have survived of Old English verse do not allow us clearly to distinguish separate prosodic varieties of composition, each with formally acknowledged difference of rule.[1] Yet to some degree recognized differences may have existed. It would be surprising, if it were otherwise, for the required conditions were present: learning, both Latin and vernacular, often going hand in hand; a lively interest in metres; a critical appreciation of native verse, and skill in its composition, among those who were also schooled in book-Latin. Sometimes all these things were found together in one man: such as Aldhelm, some of whose Latin has survived, and whose English verse, though it has not survived, had a long popularity and tradition which lasted for some hundreds of years.
Doubtless the native ‘kinds’ were not fully differentiated, and all varieties were interconnected in metrical rules, conventions, and poetical vocabulary. So that when Old English verse was used for different purposes, as divergent, say, as some of the Riddles are from Beowulf, it does not, in what has survived, show the formal metrical differentiation of, for example, the Latin epic hexameter and elegiac verse. But it still does not follow that its regulation was the same in all cases, and that the differences which do exist from poem to poem are simply to be ascribed to individual aberrations, to deficient skill, or to disorganization and decay. It does not follow that lines in Maldon, for instance, that do things never done in Beowulf, were necessarily ‘bad lines’ – to be marked with a dagger when not emended – made by a bungler or a man in a hurry.
Still less necessarily does it follow that divergences between poems known to be late (such as Brunanburh and Maldon) and poems credibly conjectured to be 200 years or more older (such as Beowulf) are due simply to the passing of time – with the breaking of rules as its inevitable result. This would mean that metre and alliteration such as that of Beowulf could no longer be done in the tenth century, and metre like Maldon would have been scorned in the eighth. But neither of these beliefs are founded on proof, and both are probably unwarranted deductions from scanty material. It may seem in that case an odd chance that has so arranged that of poems in what might be called the freer manner the only examples should come from late in the tenth century. But reflection will show that this chance might very well be expected. It was probably a very odd chance that Maldon got written down at all, and a longer chance that a fragment of it then survived. But the odds are altogether against the few things (if any) of this kind that were written down in the earlier age surviving both the wrack and ruin of the North in the ninth century, and the disaster of 1066 and the overthrow of that relatively advanced and artistic English culture by the crude and semi-barbaric Normans, and finally the general havoc of the sixteenth. For the earlier age we depend upon later pious copies of casual survivors of serious and treasured books, brought south often in tattered condition. Cynewulf owes his survival probably to the rescue in the tenth century of a single manuscript. The Cædmonian poems are a sadly inefficient tenth-century collection of poems preserved we do not know how – though evidently they were found in older manuscripts much the worse for wear when the WS ‘edition’ was made.
Of all the effect that the many stirring events, major and minor, in which commanding or beloved men (such as Byrhtnoth) met victory or death, must have had upon poets and tale-tellers, only the brief episode of King Cynewulf and Cyneheard survives in the chronicles from the pre-Danish period – in the vernacular. Another odd chance – connected doubtless with the special interest of the Chronicle in the royal house of Wessex, just as the preservation in writing of Maldon was probably connected with Byrhtnoth’s patronage of the church. The apparent relation, then, of regular (or rigid) metre to date is probably illusory, a natural accident. And if we look a little closer we shall see that even our extant fragments do not bear it out. Strict metre is found later than Maldon. In the same century we have pieces in strict metre in The Chronicle: Brunanburh in 937; Eadmund and the Five Boroughs in 941/2; the Coronation of Eadgar in 973; the Death of Eadgar in 975. Then remarkably in 1065 the Death of Eadweard the Confessor, written in technically good verse, with only one line that is not in strict form: and se froda swa þeah befæste þæt rice. This piece made seventy years and more after Maldon is in the compact epic metre, and precisely as ‘superior’ to it in that respect as is Brunanburh which lies half a century back on the other side. A hundred years after Brunanburh metre essentially the same as in Beowulf could be written. The similarity of the good Chronicle pieces to one another and their difference from Maldon is plainly a matter of purpose rather than of period. This has been observed by the fact that Maldon and Brunanburh are both concerned with battles. But this is really inessential. Brunanburh tells no story: it is a piece of Chronicle verse; the most elaborate and stirring certainly of these pieces, but still a piece for a place, a formal eulogy of the royal house upon accession, victory, or death.
In dealing with Maldon, then, we must be cautious of ascribing its so-called metrical ‘defects’ to change of metre, owing to decay of art or linguistic alteration. Metres change – or so we say: meaning that the practice of poets changes (not always from the decay of skill!). For ‘metres’ do not themselves change. A metre cannot change any more than a triangle. It is a shape, an abstract form. Once consciously recognized as a rule, or system of regulations – and this conscious recognition is an essential for the existence of metre in composer and audience – they can persist as long as poets find pleasure in them or have a purpose for them, and can be applied to linguistic material of different kinds at different times. All they need in a period of oral transmission is an unbroken succession of craftsmen. They can, of course, be simply lost or forgotten like the recipes or designs of any craft, if the national life and culture suffers some disastrous interruption. But this catastrophe, which did occur in the eleventh century, leaving the lines on Eadweard the Confessor as the last surviving work of the old court poetry, is quite another matter to the slow disintegration by time, which has so often been assumed. As if ‘metre’ was on a par with vowel-sounds, and suffered the same unconscious drift, which poets did not notice and were powerless to prevent! But linguistic change will never wholly explain metrical change; and when we move from period to period of one language (without a direct historical breach in cultural continuity) it has probably relatively small effect. The strict metre of Beowulf can be applied to current English; and there is no cogent linguistic reason why it should not have continued to be applied to English from Bede’s day to our own.
burnished; 163 bruneccg
With a glittering edge. A famous epithet. Cf. brad ond brunecg of a seax (Beowulf 1546). Brun in sense shining (of weapons) also occurs in Judith, Beowulf, and [Exeter Book] Riddle 17.
The sense dusky, dark, brown also occurs in verse, and is the only one in prose of any period. This points (1) either to the words being distinct (2) the other sense shining being conventional as applied to metal.
The word brun got from G[ermanic] into Romance hence bruno; but it got there also in this sense of bright which occurs frequently in Song of Roland.
In ME at least with its application to steel (and glass and diamonds) it was understood as white-gleaming. It is suggested with probability that it is same as brun – brown, and was first applied to swords of the bronze age, and becoming a fixed part of the poetic vocabulary as applied to helms, swords, spear-point, it changed its sense as these changed their metal and appearance. Not an uncommon semantic development.
pale gleaming hilt; 166 fealohilte
Pale-hilted. Fealu in OE means pale, especially pale yellow (cf. fallow deer), as of leaves going pale and golden. No connection with fallow of land. Fealohilte is nowhere else recorded.
steed; 189 eoh
The oldest word for horse. In OE it chiefly survived as eo- in names like Eomer, being ousted (except in the language of verse that preserved so many ancient words) by synonyms such as hors (courser, runner); mearh, etc. Cf. eored = eoh-rid, a riding of horses.
in those very trappings of his, in which it was not right; 190 on þam gerædum þe hit riht ne wæs
(that he should appear) – because the Earl’s horse was known, and probably specially caparisoned and richly harnessed: the explanation is found in 239 where it is seen that men took the figure of Godric galloping off on the well-known horse for Byrhtnoth and a panic ensued.
fit; 195 mæð
Lit[erally] measure, and is used in OE (and ME) for decent limits of moderation; practically here sense is ‘than was at all decent’ or creditable.
men of his house; 204 heorðgeneatas
Means personal retainers of a lord or king who lived in his hall, and sat at his board beside his hearth. Here no doubt it implies nothing more than the members of Byrhtnoth’s own personal picked troops, the heorðwerod cf. 24. Though elements of the old conditions still survived. This is the word by which Beowulf describes himself and his companions when they arrive in Denmark. So a heorðgeneat was often in close touch (Cf. Beowulf 260–261). Beowulf was Hygelac’s nephew.
Remember all those speeches that we have often spoken at the drinking of mead; 212 Gemunon þa mæla þe we oft æt meodo spræcon
Cf. Beowulf 2633 (Wiglaf speaks:) [Rendered thus in Tolkien’s Beowulf 2208–13: ‘I do not forget the time when, where we took our mead in the hall of revelry, we vowed to our master, who gave us these precious things, that we would repay him for that raiment of warriors, the helmets and stout swords, if ever on him such need as this should fall.’]
In addition to what is called the ‘comitatus’ motive, there is also the feeling that vows spoken in drink must be made good. The great classic example is the Jomsvikings, a band of celibate vikings (i.e. they occupied a permanent military fort where no women or children were) who held Jomsburg in N. Germany and became so powerful that they made kings. They put Swein Forkbeard on throne of Denmark. The most famous were Palnatoke, and Sigvaldi son of Strut-Harald. At the funeral drinking given by King Swein, there was fearful strong drink and enormous horns. [?They] had to drink cups of memory to the King’s father, then to Christ, then to Michael, and then to Strut-Harald – and by that time they were in the mood for vows, and Earl Sigvaldi vowed he would invade Norway, and they all followed his vow.
The next morning the Jomsvikings felt very blue about it – they thought they had spoken ‘big words enough’. But they set about it – and met with complete disaster in one of the most famous Scandinavian naval battles related in Heimskringla in which nearly 250 ships engaged. [Pencilled addition:] Note that we have a convention here, but a living one, for the commitments of comitatus loyalty were still fully genuine. They were still in personal touch.
forgetting not his desire for vengeance; 225 fæhðe gemunde
To bear in mind one’s bitter hatred, the duty of vengeance, and so to show unsoftened valour.
shield wall; 242 scyldburh
This is probably the oldest term for what is also called in this poem wihaga 102, bordweall 277. We gather what it was from the gloss testudo …
Appears in OHG as sciltburg = testudo. ON has skjaldborg as name of an ancient battle array. The classic description of which is in Harald’s saga Hardrada concerning the battle of Stamford Bridge 1066. Generally it referred to bodies standing in close ranks shield touching shield – a formidable array – so that for a single warrior with impetuous onslaught to burst inside it as Eadweard se langa does is a feat. Cf. the British Square in ‘Fuzzy-Wuzzy’ [1892 poem by Rudyard Kipling].
249 Sturmere
The only place mentioned in poem. Most likely it = Sturmer in Essex. And is a grain of evidence of the Essex origin of the poem. Note that Leofsunu was not the author (he pretty plainly perished) but that an Essex place-name is the only one to be mentioned in 325 lines dealing with the fall of many noble men might point to an Essex author.
men; 249 hælæð
It is interesting to note this old archaic pl[ural] surviving in this late piece of verse.
a simple ‘ceorl’ [churl]; 256 unorne ceorl
Not a noble, or a man of noble-birth (eorl), though a free man not bound by same feelings of aristocratic honour (according at least to the notions of an aristocratic society) – but nevertheless laying down his life for loyalty. The poet probably felt this as an especial testimony to the love Byrhtnoth inspired. Dunnere would not have had to face the same obloquy on his homecoming if he had departed after B’s death.
unorne = humble, mean, of little value – of clothes poor, shabby. It is of obscure origin.
hostage; 265 gysel
We don’t know what a ‘hostage’ was doing in B’s retinue, especially one with an English name (whose father also was English). Note, however, that on Norðhymbron = Northumbria whether the Danes or English of that region are meant. In the confusion of those days when Northumbria was a separate kingdom (theoretically tributary to the W[est] S[axon] Kings) of course both English and Danes would often be in same army fighting against the W.S. forces. Nor does the English name prove pure English ancestry at this date – 100 years and more after the definite settlement of Scandinavians (turning to tillage, etc.) into Northumbria.
A parallel of the duty of the hostage to behave exactly as native member of the comitatus is provided in Cynewulf and Cyneheard where the British gisel in retinue of Cynewulf fights with the other king’s men against the greater numbers brought by Cyneheard even though all are offered their lives.
Ecglaf’s son, Æscferð; 267 Ecglafes bearn … Æscferð
Is oddly reminiscent of Unferð Ecglafes sunu in Beowulf.
271 æfre embe stunde he sealde sume wunde
The line is remarkable for complete substitution of rhyme for alliteration.
hung never back, unwearyingly he fought …; 281–2 fus and forðgeorn feaht eornoste / Sibyrhtes broðor and swiðe mænig oþer
The punctuation is difficult to decide on – we have a kind of ‘flowing connexion’.
This is another verse in which rhyme is substituted for alliteration.
283 cellod
Meaning and etymology unknown. We have already seen the parallelisms that exist in Battle of Maldon with other surviving fragments of tenth-century verse. It can hardly be doubted that this passage and sceolde cellod bord … Finnesburh 29 are connected. Unfortunately both Maldon and Finnesburh survive only in eighteenth century transcripts. Whether the eighteenth century has corrupted one or both passages is difficult to determine.
[in battle slew Offa] that sea-pirate; 286 þone sælidan
Which? The one who had slain Byrhtnoth?
Note all the part from 184–286 is really devoted to a short episode in the battle: the flight of Godric, Godwine, Godwig, the rallying of Byrhtnoth’s own personal following and their several speeches. The slaying of the sælidan is reserved, by Offa clearly the chief of B’s following (cf. his proud words about the rest of the leavers at the war-council), until the end.
the kinsmen of Gadd; 287 Gaddes mæg
Clearly = Offa. We don’t know more. Mæg in this way is used to relate a man to any notable ancestor – usually exclusively (but not always) his father. Gadd may have been uncle or grandfather.
an old retainer was he; 310 se wæs eald geneat
We have here another instance of old traditional situation and actual occurrence coinciding. We need not doubt that Byrhtwold was an eald geneat, and that he actually spoke memorable words not unlike the remarkable ones here enshrined. Yet it was traditional for the eald geneat to be relentless and dauntless and ‘speak winged words’.
With eald geneat æsc acwehte cf. the eald æscwiga of Beowulf 2042 whose place in the Ingeld story corresponds to that of the grim Starkaðr of Norse.
The old retainer is more jealous for the honour of the house than even the master is – but if this is a ‘literary’ situation it is only so because also it is a common one in reality.
No one has yet doubted the authenticity of Maldon – why it has been thus neglected is difficult to say – but at least as sensible as some of the ‘internal’ criticisms of texts would be one that pointed how mythical it all is
the dear swuster sunu is the first to fall
all the characters make ‘comitatus’ speeches in the best ‘epic’ manner
the eald geneat comes in at the end preaching a courage of blank defiance of fate. In fact they might even say he was a fabrication of the poet, his name a mere variation of Byrhtnoth introduced to emphasize what the poet wished to present as B’s character – but of course the two B’s have a quite different character.
Each mind shall be the sterner …; 312–313 Hige sceal þe heardra heorte þe cenre / mod sceal þe mare þe ure mægen lytlað
These 2 lines are deservedly famous – in OE they are vigorous and sum up in curiously compact and forceful way the special quality of Northern heroism: unless you admit defeat you are not beaten, a cold grim and desperately hard creed, but a noble one, and not one that is at present in danger of being overpopularized and exaggerated. In fact read attentively one can hardly escape the impression that these lines are older and go back further than the texture of the context – a fact that Byrhtwold probably spoke these exact words because they were either proverbial or a familiar quotation.
PART THREE
The Tradition of Versification in Old English
with special reference to the Battle of Maldon and its alliteration
[This fair copy manuscript of a wide-ranging lecture/essay (MS. Tolkien A 30/2, fols. 35–38, 44–64) dates to the late 1920s or early 1930s, when Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College. I have found no precise means of dating its composition or delivery, though it may have been part of his repertoire during Oxford terms in 1928 and 1930, where he is recorded lecturing on The Battle of Maldon. I present the first 34 pages of the text here; the remaining 10 pages, a technical discussion of elements of Maldon’s prosody in a series of notes labelled a-f, are found in Appendix II. At points where Tolkien presents a series of Old English quotations as examples of unusual scansion or otherwise notable poetic features, I have in the interest of brevity omitted all but the first in the series, giving only the line numbers for reference to those that follow.]
The Battle of Maldon is in a more hasty, or rather in a less formal manner than the long poems that have survived from an earlier age. Most of these are from their matter, or their handling of it, seen to be the elaborated works of the minstrel turned scholar (or the scholar turned minstrel) rather than of the minstrel plain, the gleeman of a noble lord. Such fragments as have survived of Old English verse do not allow us clearly to distinguish separate prosodic varieties of composition, each with formally acknowledged difference of rule.[1] Yet to some degree recognized differences may have existed. It would be surprising, if it were otherwise, for the required conditions were present: learning, both Latin and vernacular, often going hand in hand; a lively interest in metres; a critical appreciation of native verse, and skill in its composition, among those who were also schooled in book-Latin. Sometimes all these things were found together in one man: such as Aldhelm, some of whose Latin has survived, and whose English verse, though it has not survived, had a long popularity and tradition which lasted for some hundreds of years.
Doubtless the native ‘kinds’ were not fully differentiated, and all varieties were interconnected in metrical rules, conventions, and poetical vocabulary. So that when Old English verse was used for different purposes, as divergent, say, as some of the Riddles are from Beowulf, it does not, in what has survived, show the formal metrical differentiation of, for example, the Latin epic hexameter and elegiac verse. But it still does not follow that its regulation was the same in all cases, and that the differences which do exist from poem to poem are simply to be ascribed to individual aberrations, to deficient skill, or to disorganization and decay. It does not follow that lines in Maldon, for instance, that do things never done in Beowulf, were necessarily ‘bad lines’ – to be marked with a dagger when not emended – made by a bungler or a man in a hurry.
Still less necessarily does it follow that divergences between poems known to be late (such as Brunanburh and Maldon) and poems credibly conjectured to be 200 years or more older (such as Beowulf) are due simply to the passing of time – with the breaking of rules as its inevitable result. This would mean that metre and alliteration such as that of Beowulf could no longer be done in the tenth century, and metre like Maldon would have been scorned in the eighth. But neither of these beliefs are founded on proof, and both are probably unwarranted deductions from scanty material. It may seem in that case an odd chance that has so arranged that of poems in what might be called the freer manner the only examples should come from late in the tenth century. But reflection will show that this chance might very well be expected. It was probably a very odd chance that Maldon got written down at all, and a longer chance that a fragment of it then survived. But the odds are altogether against the few things (if any) of this kind that were written down in the earlier age surviving both the wrack and ruin of the North in the ninth century, and the disaster of 1066 and the overthrow of that relatively advanced and artistic English culture by the crude and semi-barbaric Normans, and finally the general havoc of the sixteenth. For the earlier age we depend upon later pious copies of casual survivors of serious and treasured books, brought south often in tattered condition. Cynewulf owes his survival probably to the rescue in the tenth century of a single manuscript. The Cædmonian poems are a sadly inefficient tenth-century collection of poems preserved we do not know how – though evidently they were found in older manuscripts much the worse for wear when the WS ‘edition’ was made.
Of all the effect that the many stirring events, major and minor, in which commanding or beloved men (such as Byrhtnoth) met victory or death, must have had upon poets and tale-tellers, only the brief episode of King Cynewulf and Cyneheard survives in the chronicles from the pre-Danish period – in the vernacular. Another odd chance – connected doubtless with the special interest of the Chronicle in the royal house of Wessex, just as the preservation in writing of Maldon was probably connected with Byrhtnoth’s patronage of the church. The apparent relation, then, of regular (or rigid) metre to date is probably illusory, a natural accident. And if we look a little closer we shall see that even our extant fragments do not bear it out. Strict metre is found later than Maldon. In the same century we have pieces in strict metre in The Chronicle: Brunanburh in 937; Eadmund and the Five Boroughs in 941/2; the Coronation of Eadgar in 973; the Death of Eadgar in 975. Then remarkably in 1065 the Death of Eadweard the Confessor, written in technically good verse, with only one line that is not in strict form: and se froda swa þeah befæste þæt rice. This piece made seventy years and more after Maldon is in the compact epic metre, and precisely as ‘superior’ to it in that respect as is Brunanburh which lies half a century back on the other side. A hundred years after Brunanburh metre essentially the same as in Beowulf could be written. The similarity of the good Chronicle pieces to one another and their difference from Maldon is plainly a matter of purpose rather than of period. This has been observed by the fact that Maldon and Brunanburh are both concerned with battles. But this is really inessential. Brunanburh tells no story: it is a piece of Chronicle verse; the most elaborate and stirring certainly of these pieces, but still a piece for a place, a formal eulogy of the royal house upon accession, victory, or death.
In dealing with Maldon, then, we must be cautious of ascribing its so-called metrical ‘defects’ to change of metre, owing to decay of art or linguistic alteration. Metres change – or so we say: meaning that the practice of poets changes (not always from the decay of skill!). For ‘metres’ do not themselves change. A metre cannot change any more than a triangle. It is a shape, an abstract form. Once consciously recognized as a rule, or system of regulations – and this conscious recognition is an essential for the existence of metre in composer and audience – they can persist as long as poets find pleasure in them or have a purpose for them, and can be applied to linguistic material of different kinds at different times. All they need in a period of oral transmission is an unbroken succession of craftsmen. They can, of course, be simply lost or forgotten like the recipes or designs of any craft, if the national life and culture suffers some disastrous interruption. But this catastrophe, which did occur in the eleventh century, leaving the lines on Eadweard the Confessor as the last surviving work of the old court poetry, is quite another matter to the slow disintegration by time, which has so often been assumed. As if ‘metre’ was on a par with vowel-sounds, and suffered the same unconscious drift, which poets did not notice and were powerless to prevent! But linguistic change will never wholly explain metrical change; and when we move from period to period of one language (without a direct historical breach in cultural continuity) it has probably relatively small effect. The strict metre of Beowulf can be applied to current English; and there is no cogent linguistic reason why it should not have continued to be applied to English from Bede’s day to our own.
