William Laud, who was Archbishop of Canterbury in Charles the First's time, and, like him, died on the scaffold, was also greatly interested in collecting books. He gave generously to Oxford University, and his books are in the Bodleian Library, with many other valuable literary treasures.
Francis Junius collected Anglo-Saxon literature, and other books. He left them to the Bodleian Library. Among them is the unique "Caedmon" Manuscript, given him by Archbishop Usher, who founded the library of Trinity College, Dublin. People are now alive to the value of these great possessions, and we must be glad that scholars have worked at them, and published many of them, and so made their contents accessible to everyone. But we must never forget our debt to the earliest writers, and chiefly to the monks who wrote and who copied, much and long and well. As we trust, they have their reward.
There are two specially interesting collections of manuscript Anglo-Saxon poems, known respectively as the Exeter Book and the Vercelli Book. The Exeter Book is one of some sixty volumes acquired by Leófric, Bishop of Crediton, when he was making his library for the cathedral of his new bishopric at Exeter. It is described as "a large English book of many things wrought in verse." It is one of the few of Leófric's books that remain at Exeter, where it has been over eight hundred years. It contains various poems by Cynewulf and others. Several leaves are missing, and ink has been spilt over part of one page. This Exeter library was scattered at the "Reformation." Some of its treasures are in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, or at Corpus Christi College, at Cambrige.
The Vercelli Book is so called because it was discovered in its home in the cathedral library at Vercelli in Italy a good many years ago. It contains twenty-two sermons in Anglo-Saxon, and six poems, among which is our beautiful "Dream of the Holy Rood." Perhaps some English pilgrim or pilgrims, on the way to Rome, left this book as a gift, or through inadvertence, at the hospice where hospitality had been received. Or perhaps Cardinal Guala, who was over here in the days of John and of Henry III, bought the book for his library at Vercelli. Or perhaps it was one of the books of which John Bale tells us whole ships-full went abroad. We have to be very grateful to the scholars whose researches have recovered for us so much of our old heritage, and to those who have made their contents in various ways so easy to get at.
CHAPTER XV
Runes. An early love-poem.
I said I would tell you a little about runes, which I have had more than once occasion to mention. The runes were the alphabet used by the Teutonic tribes, to which the English belonged. This alphabet is very old, and it is not certain where it originally came from. The word "rune" means secret or mystery. To "round" in a person's ear means to whisper, so that what is said is a "secret" or a "mystery." The word comes from "rune." When we use the word to "write" we think of setting down words on paper with a pen or a pencil. But the old meaning of "write" is to incise, or to cut, or engrave. Probably the runes were at first cut in wood. A wooden tablet was called "bóc," from beechwood being used for it. When we talk of a book we are away from the first idea of a book a good distance. Runes were also carved, or incised, in metal and in bone. They were associated, not only with secrecy or mystery, but with magic, and were supposed to possess power for good or evil. People thought that "runes could raise the dead from their graves; they could preserve life or take it, they could heal the sick or bring on lingering disease; they could call forth the soft rain or the violent hailstorm; they could break chains and shackles, or bind more closely than bonds or fetters; they could make the warrior invincible and cause his sword to inflict none but mortal wounds; they could produce frenzy and madness, or defend from the deceit of a false friend."
There is a story in an old Norse book telling that Odin, the Scandinavian god, learned them and used them. St Bede tells in his "Church History" a story which proves that the belief in the magic power of runes lingered on in England after Christianity had become the professed religion of the people. It takes a good while to lose superstition that has been with people for a long, long time. Because Christianity condemns anything like magic, the use of the runes, associated with it, gradually went out. The Irish missionaries in the North of England taught the people there a beautiful kind of handwriting from which the English handwriting of later times was formed. The "Lindisfarne Gospels" are written in the earlier Irish rounded characters. In a copy of St Bede's "Church History" written after a.d. 730, a more pointed hand is used. If we want to write fast, we do not write so round as when we write slowly. Afterwards, in the tenth century, the English began to use the French style of writing.
The runes were sometimes used as ordinary letters, without any thought of the old connection with magic. So the great Christian poet, Cynewulf, wrote his name in runes, which is how we know him to be the author of some of the poems we have been considering.