“Merie sungen the muneches binnen Ely,
Tha Cnut ching rew ther by.
“Roweth, cnihtës, noer the land,
And herë we thes muneches sang.”
Several things here are noteworthy; both Grundtvig and Rosenberg have pointed out[[670]] that this song is composed in a two-line ballad strophe of four accents to the verse, the kind afterward so common in Scandinavia and in England; and whatever Cnut’s share in the making of it, it is at least of the eleventh century, and is the first recorded piece of verse to break away from the regular stichic metre of our oldest poetry. Moreover, it is said that Cnut improvised the song, and that he called on the others to join him; the lines quoted then, so Grundtvig infers, are the burden or chorus of the song itself; and it is interesting to know that in the days of the chronicler, say about the middle of the twelfth century, this refrain as well as the song was sung in the choral dances of the English folk. Doubtless it was sung to the oar itself; and that may have been the first of it, with royalty as an afterthought.[[671]]
Coming to land, one would think that the blacksmith, rhythmic as his work may be, must have little breath to spare for song; and, indeed, Bücher could find but one specimen which seemed to hold the genuine rhythm of the anvil. Had he looked to the English, however, he would have met more; an old “Satire on the Blacksmiths”[[672]] preserves a refrain probably sung to the work itself, or, at worst, imitated from its cadence:—
Thei gnaven and gnacchen, thei gronys togydere....
Stark strokes thei stryken on a stelyd stokke,
Lus! bus! Las! das! rowten be rowe,
Swych dolful a dreme the devyl it todryve!