The portions of the "Dream of the Holy Rood" which are on the Ruthwell Cross (see Chapter IV) are carved in runes. There is a small sword in the British Museum with runes on it, which was found in the Thames.
In connection with the runes I want to tell you of two old poems, which may be related to each other. One is known as "The Wife's Complaint," the other as, "The Husband's Message." The first of them is apparently spoken by a woman who laments her hard fate, her husband having gone over the sea, away from her. She is imprisoned in an old earthen dwelling under an oak; she has no friends near, and she tells how vain were the vows of love exchanged between her and her husband. Now the second poem, "The Husband's Message," may be written for this wife; we do not know; at any rate it conveys a message from an absent husband to a wife; and I will give it to you as an early love-letter. It consists of two parts, one of which has been thought to be a riddle, but they have been put together by a learned Professor, and if they do belong to each other, the arrangement is as interesting as it is beautiful. The message is given by the letter itself—the slip of bark or wood on which it was carved—and this wood speaks. First it tells us about itself. It had dwelt on the beach near the sea-shore: there were few to behold its home in the solitude, but every morning the brown wave encircled it with a watery embrace. Then it little thought that even, though itself mouthless, it should speak among the mead-drinkers and utter words.
A great marvel it is,
Strange in the mouth that knoweth it not,
How the point of the knife and the right hand,
The thought of a man, and his blade therewith,
Shaped me with skill, that boldly I might
So deliver a message to thee
In the presence of us two alone,
That to other men our talk
May not make it more widely known.
The letter then tells how it had come in the keeled vessel, and how the lady would now know how in her heart she may think of the love of her lord. "I dare maintain," says the letter, "that there thou wilt find true loyalty." He that carved the characters on the wood, bad it pray her, the lady decked with jewels, to remember the vows they twain had often made when they dwelt together in their home in the same land.
Force drove him
Out of the land. Now hath he bidden me
Earnestly to urge thee to sail the sea
When thou hast heard on the brow of the hill
The mournful cuckoo call in the wood.
Then let no living man keep thee
From the journey, or hinder thy going.
Betake thee to the sea, the home of the mew,
Seat thee in the boat, that southward from here
Beyond the road of the sea thou mayest find the man
Where waits thy prince in hope of thee.
We hope the lady betook herself to the sea-mew's home, and found her beloved at the end of the journey! Her beloved had no thought of any greater joy than the granting of Almighty God that together they should be givers of treasure to men. The beloved has enough of beaten gold and wealth, and a fair home among the strangers, the noble warriors that obey him. Banished from home, gone forth a homeless one, in the stranger-land good has come to him; he has no lack of anything but of her, who had with him come under an old threat, and had been parted from him. He vows to fulfil his pledge and love-troth, and he writes in runes some message, which she, as it appears, would understand, and she alone.
The old, old story, written fair and full.
You will have noticed in the literature we have been considering the absence of certain elements which are an integral part of our modern literature. This poem, for instance, is, as far as I know, the only love poem before the Conquest which has come down to us. There is no romance either, and there is, we may say, no humour. Life is a very serious thing, so often lying close to the sword-edge; and the duties of life are simple. There is to be a great, very great enlargement of the borders of English literature later on. Prose and poetry are to have new developments. Romances are to show us heroic ideals. Lyrics of joy, of sorrow, of passion, of emotion natural and spiritual, are to be sung. The sense of beauty is to grow. The drama is to arise from beginnings to be but faintly traced in early days. Epic poetry is to take a great place. Character modified, enriched by foreign strains, is to mould a noble literature—noble through many and many a gift and grace. A great poet is to arise with sympathies large and wide, to show us, in verse most musical, in words full meaning, with that grace of humour which is a fresh light upon life, how men and women lived: and to be the great precursor of a greater than he. Geoffrey Chaucer is to come to us. After him William Shakespere.