Olaf fled in his ship over the barren sea, the aged Constantine, King of the Scots, left his son dead on the field. As usual the raven, wolf, and eagle have their share of the corpses: an Anglo-Saxon poet could not omit these animals. This poet boasts that there has been no such victory since first the Anglo-Saxons "the Welsh overcame". Perhaps the enthusiasm of English students rather overrates the poetical merits of this war-song.
There is more poetry, and more originality in "Byrhtnoth," a song of a defeat at the hands of the Danes. The warrior entering the field of battle
Let from his hands his lief hawk fly,
His hawk to the holt, and to battle he stepped.
He haughtily refuses to accept peace in exchange for tribute which the Danes demand. The armies are divided from each other by a tidal river, and Byrhtnoth chivalrously allows the heathen to cross, at low tide, and meet him in fair field. There are descriptions of hand to hand single combats; and of the wounds given and taken, and the boasts of the slayers, who throw their spears, piercing iron mail, and shields of linden wood; and strip the slain of their armour and jewels. The friends of the fallen fight across the corpses. Byrhtnoth falls, some of his company flee, the rest make a ring of spears about the hero, one cries
The more the mood, as lessens our might,
that is,
The braver be we, as our strength fails.
The whole poem might be translated, almost without a change, into "the strong-winged music of Homer," or the verse of the old French "Song of Roland". The song is not conventional, it is a noble war-poem. For some reason the best war-poems are inspired by glorious defeats, at Maldon, at Flodden, at Bosworth, at Roncesvaux, at Culloden.
The Monks and Learning.
The "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle," running from Alfred's day to King Stephen's, and thus surviving the Norman Conquest, is the earliest historical writing in English prose. As we have seen, it was the work of the monks, regular soldiers of learning, living together under strict rules. On the other hand the secular clergy, parish priests and others, were the irregular levies against ignorance. The monks were fallen on evil times for learning and literature.