The Battle of Maldon, page 8
The whole question is, in fact, more complicated than is usually observed. Metre is dependent on language: so much so that the slightest modification in the linguistic material affects it. In strictest analysis no two lines, written by the same poet on the same day in the same language, are identical. But this strict analysis is linguistic and phonetic not metrical. It assesses the differences between two lines; metre abstracts their agreement. Metre is indeed an abstraction, a pattern in itself devoid of colour, and so in a sense independent of its material: language. The same ‘metre’ applied to different material (different languages, or even different pieces of one language) can be compared to the same wallpaper design printed in different colours. Therefore the Latin hexameter is the same ‘metre’ as the Greek hexameter, though the result of the application of this metre to different material is not the same. But this difference, due to the great divergence in phonetic structures of Latin from Greek, is in fact precisely the same in kind (if greater in degree) as the difference between two hexameters in the same language, or between two poems in hexameters by different poets. Language can be said to have affected metre only when for linguistic reasons the rules have been modified: when things not previously allowed became permitted under what may be called linguistic pressure. Thus the stricter ‘epic’ type of Old English verse studiously avoids ‘anacrusis’ at the beginning of the second hemistich. This avoidance is a hall-mark of that variety of alliterative metre. But linguistic change has steadily reduced its convenience in natural phrasing: normal word-groups begin, more and more frequently as time goes on, with a weak syllable, as expressions like a host of warriors, for instance, replaces in normal older usage hæleða mengo, and so on. It is probable, then, that even if handed on in a continuous tradition, alliterative verse (when used for longer narrative poems, at any rate, in which a constant resistance to the leanings of the language is difficult) would have admitted ‘anacrusis’ before the second hemistich of at least one weak syllable. In other and stricter words, the poets would have changed the metre to fit different linguistic conditions; or in still more accurate words they would have adopted a different (though related) metre. For the old metre would still be there. It would not have been changed by linguistic change, or unconsciously! The avoidance of these ‘anacruses’ was originally deliberate. For though anacrusis was once easier to avoid, it still had to be avoided. Sequences of the type a host of warriors are common enough in the natural phrasing of even archaic Old English, and in the older verse are allowed in the first hemistich, as ne ge]feah he þære fæhðe (Beowulf l. 109). And at any date, from then until now, if and when a poet desired for technical or artistic reasons to avoid them, he could avoid them: and write the metre ‘unchanged’, defying the changes of the year with the simple weapon of purpose.
If we wish, then, to discover why the verse of one period differs in metrical practice (within a generally similar kind) from that of another, there are many things to consider. Not only linguistic change. There are the individual poets – in the history of English alliterative verse largely lost – who by their own peculiar behaviour modified the tradition that passed through them. One must at least sometimes wish to know, even if one cannot find out with certainty, by what methods the ‘rules’ were taught or learned, and so handed on: what was the apprenticeship of poets and scops. And there is also, as a universal condition, that inevitable change of taste and fashion, the weariness of achievement that turns aside from progress in one direction to wander in another, which continually overcomes all human art. But 200 years is not a great while in artistic history, even when it is filled with as much noise of battle and destruction as was that time between, say, the death of Bede and the fall of Byrhtnoth. And the strain in English, severe as it was, was not severe enough to break English tradition. Otherwise the Battle of Maldon would never have been fought, and the poem about it never written at all. That poem is linked in almost every word with the elder poetry: quite as strongly as Brunanburh, of which the derivative quality has often been as much exaggerated as the ‘freshness’ of Maldon has been misconceived. Yet of ‘tradition’ the easiest part to hand on is metrical rule. A boy – ex hypothesi having some bent for these things – can quickly grasp the scheme of even fairly intricate rules, though he will still need much schooling in the art of words before he can write even derivative verse within that scheme, or employ the hereditary vocabulary and style of English poetry. And we have seen that as a matter of fact verse much ‘stricter’ – that is much closer to Beowulf, indeed metrically identical – was written both contemporarily with Maldon, and still two generations later.
Maldon then, as we have it, is probably to be regarded not as a piece of uncertain metrical skill, but as a survival by fortunate chance of the kind of less polished and compacted verse that was made to celebrate events while the news of them was still hot – and was accepted for what it was: a poem in a freer mode. A kind that was seldom committed to writing at all. In a sense it was a ‘popular’ kind – and for that very reason it is more in the direct line of ancestry to Middle English alliterative verse. The fact that we catch in it here and there the very accents of Middle English is probably as much an indication of its kind as of its period. Beowulf on the other hand is a scholarly and consciously artistic product of the union of minstrelsy and letters (and antiquarian lore), of the harp and the pen. However its maker worked – with quill or lead and scraps of parchment, or in his head – it has been highly wrought, and in metre, even down to its most minor details, has been polished to a remarkable degree still plainly apparent in the one damaged copy that survives. Economy and compactness, and unity of movement in metre are in it, as in verse generally and of all times, rather testimony to hard work than evidence of mere antiquity. In fact ‘antiquity’ has nothing to do with it, unless by accident of history – unless you can in history find some clear and special reason why at an older period a writer would take trouble, and at a later would not. Such reasons can sometimes be found in the history, moral or political, of a country. But in our case – within the so-called Old English period – the other explanation is far more probable: namely that the kind was intentionally different.
There do exist differences of skill, of course, among verse-writers, that appear even when the metrical intentions are the same. Even in a bad period some individual may be a fair craftsman; and even in a good period some can fall below the general standard. Good poets vary in this respect. But the ‘strict’ Old English metre was not overwhelmingly hard to write, qua metre. It is unlikely that the divergence of Maldon from strict metre is due simply to the fact that its maker tried to write strict metre and could not do it. He either did not know of the existence of strict metre, and knew only a laxer form, which he therefore used. Or else he knew of both and used the latter out of choice.[2] The former of these supposes a condition of things in tenth-century England which is not likely actually to have existed. For there is no question of the knowledge of the old stricter metre having everywhere perished: we know that it had not. We have therefore to suppose that it was only known in certain places or in certain groups of men. But in no place or group of men would it be more likely to be known than among the heorðgeneatas and híred of the great duke Byrhtnoth, akin to the royal house, with lands in west and east, and men of Essex and Mercia (explicitly in the poem) among his following. Unless strict metre was indeed a monopoly of kings with crowns, it is precisely to the existence of such híreds that the preservation of noble minstrelsy must be attributed, and to their fall and ousting by lords of alien speech that its later decay must be ascribed.
It is, I think, necessary to examine in more specific detail the vague notion of ‘poetic tradition’ (especially as applied to words and forms before we scrutinize Maldon itself), to return to the idea that metrical forms decay or alter by an unconscious process analogous to, and indeed concomitant with, change in language. This finds superficial support in the fact that in early times verse has its life and descent mainly in oral tradition, and is so far in very similar case, it would seem, to language itself. But actually the only part of verse that is really on the linguistic plane is the language of it, phonetically speaking, the noises of which it is composed. When a man recites a piece of verse, the sounds he produces are ‘traditional’, and he is unaware or inattentive of their phonetic nature and method of production. But that which distinguishes this sound-sequence, among language in general, as ‘verse’ is on a different plane: it is a matter of which he is aware, and so are all of his audience whom it is worth considering at the moment. That is: the metre (and diction) are not abandoned to the realm of habit, though their use may be consecrated by ‘tradition’. The same man may tie all his neckties with certain habitual motions of the hand which he has long ceased consciously to direct, but his selection of their colour is conscious, even if his choice may be determined by tradition, as of a black one for a funeral. Tradition, in fact, is better not confused with physical habit. The underlying assumption – to be seen in so many quasi-scientific analyses of verse-structure – is really that metre resides only in the individual example: as the colour of flowers or the shape of leaves is an inherent quality of the being of the species. Which would really mean that it is in fact perpetually forgotten, and reproduced only because the same language and same character successively throws out nearly identical forms. So the beech dies, and from the nut eventually the same-shaped leaves emerge. And as it is believed that in slow time the aberrations of the descendants will evolve a new beech with leaves of different form – are there not some that simulate the oak? – so in time the metre will dissolve and change. But if language is in some ways like this, verse is not. Here rather comes the woodman; and in the forest he cuts boughs and gathers flowers to weave a garland for his brows, to brighten his halls, or to adorn the temple of his gods. He chooses the shapes and colours from the riches of the wood, and what is not there he cannot take, but of such as there is he makes a design which resides in no plant or tree. (Though it may come from the Maker of all trees, and must forever remain arboreal.) That design can be copied as long as the wood is there; and imitated in other lands and woods; and it can be perceived, learned or taught, as a pleasing way of arranging leaves and flowers, as something imposed upon the components separable from the actual garlands of woodmen that have gone before us, even though contemplation of these may be the usual way of learning the pattern. And finally it is something we can impose upon ourselves, with our own individual tastes. We are not trees, and we do not write in ‘metres’ according solely to the unconscious leaflike unfolding of our native rhythms. We have each our native rhythms, like trees, but we have also ‘tradition’. Both blend in poetry. But the trees make no poetry, because they do not conspire to teach the young how their grandsires shaped their leaves. (There is no conflict for them. They have a descent of the flesh only. They have not fallen.)
This parable is imperfect. For the garland, or in its more definite artistic form the painting, stays for a while. It too suffers time, and it may fade and its lines become blurred. But it has (with luck) a long life; and needs while it lasts no repetition. But a poem perishes even as it is being uttered. To live it must be preserved in memory and be after repeated. And men die quicker than pictures or monuments; and the time soon comes when the memory must pass into a different mind and the repetition to another mouth, or perish. And this whole prolongation of life, this ‘tradition’ can only normally be accomplished in and through the language, the ‘habitual’ element and the most changeable. If verse is compared to a picture it is a picture of which the primary pattern is made not by shade of colour but in line and balance, and yet in which these are represented solely by the boundaries of pieces of colour, and their correspondences.
And steadily as the line of tradition lengthens, the colour, the phonetic language changes. It is as if a picture with every view or exhibition changed slowly but inexorably from blue and silver to purple and gold, or what is worse that certain parts that once were alike diverge in colour, and others that were different grow alike. Such things may have happened to pictures, but they are not normal events in painting within those lengths of time that have seen considerable linguistic and phonetic change. It is true that much phonetic change can occur without necessarily disturbing metre: metre and diction on the whole stand the test of time better than the pure phonetics. But at any moment change may attack some phonetic feature that was used structurally, that was of metrical significance – the quality of a vowel or consonant in rhyme; the quantity of a syllable, its tone or emphasis. So linguistic change can be, and usually in the long run is, corrosive of metre.[3] What place does ‘tradition’ have in this conflict between art and change?
Metre and design are imposed upon language, even though they are ultimately derived by selection from it. But the fluid stuff of language will not take the impress permanently. What happens to this indurable coin as it passes from hand to hand? And in what way does the indurability affect the later moneyers who mint new pieces on the old models? And here we find a curious thing: the very people who seem to think of metre as a mere part of phonetic history, seem also nonetheless to ascribe powers to ‘tradition’ – at any rate in Old English which is our immediate concern – which it is unlikely to possess unless ‘metre’ is wholly independent of phonetics, and willing arbitrarily to defy them! What can tradition preserve, and what can it not?
I will anticipate here by saying at once that I think in general it can preserve metre, and some elements of diction including archaic grammar (which may become ‘poetic’ simply in the process of being preserved in verse after it has gone out of daily use), but cannot preserve phonetic detail. Not even a written tradition[4] can preserve memory of bygone pronunciation. Still less can an oral tradition do so. Because the only means of ascertaining pronunciation is in learning words, and it is precisely in this act of learning and using words that the changes occur; and yet the changes would not occur if they were actually appreciable at the moment, if they were made awarely and with observation. They pass below or beyond the attention of the normal man, the essential link in tradition; and he has seldom any ideas save the vaguest and most universal concerning linguistic change (such as that: tongues do like all else suffer alteration in time). And he usually regards his own familiar sounds as in some special way ‘right’; while the ‘rightness’ of the metrical design depends, and must always depend, in metrical appreciation upon its agreement in the overwhelming main with this familiar ‘right’ way of uttering words.[5] The interesting and difficult question at once arises: what will happen, then, if a body of traditional verse composed in past generations is handed down through phonetic or other linguistic change which affects ‘metre’? How do the ‘archaisms’ and conventions of verse arise; how does ‘tradition’ account for them or preserve them, and what is their relation to past speech?
The answers must vary at different times and under different conditions. But it is fairly clear, especially if we limit ourselves mainly to northern antiquity, that the primary condition is that there always was a tendency or a desire to differentiate the language of verse from that of daily speech – which was not essentially connected with ‘archaism’ as such. It was not antiquarian piety or philological curiosity but a belief and pleasure in ‘poetic diction’. With such a belief it is not difficult for forms not current in daily speech to become accepted (and by imitation traditional) in verse: it is a favourable atmosphere for the preservation of archaisms. But archaisms only of vocabulary and word-form: not of individual sounds. Let us glance at the ‘words’ before we further consider the sounds. In traditional verse there will in time come to be found a fairly large number of words, phrases, and constructions that are not used naturally in daily speech (unless by way of annotation, or the interjection of pieces of verse sentiment into one’s colloquial utterances, a habit once commoner than now, and which assisted in the preservation of ‘poetic diction’). These will actually be in some cases poetic devices, made by poets for use in poetry, and so poetical from birth; and in others words that were entirely natural once upon a time, but which have since been replaced. But this distinction will not be of importance: being preserved now only in verse, both will have become poetical. Their preservation will indeed depend on their being found in memorized verse, or familiar phrases of verse; and their interpretation will depend on the remembered contexts. Archaic words that were once very frequently used will still be almost living, for the consensus of the many contexts in which they occur, each contributing to define or enlarge their sense (even when each is not severally consciously remembered), will act almost like real speech. But it will still be more limited than real speech, and such words will tend more and more to become stereotyped in use. Archaic words that were rarely used will have only a semblance of life: the contexts may fail to interpret them clearly; or they may even suggest false renderings.
