The elegy of Deor consists of a number of brief notices of misfortunes which had befallen various persons, Weland and Beaduhild, Geat, Theodric and the subjects of Eormenric. Each notice ends with a refrain expressing the belief or hope that the poet will be able to survive his misfortunes as they did. At the end he says that he had been the bard of the Heodeningas, but that his office had been taken away from him and given to a skilful minstrel named Heorrenda.
In a later chapter we shall have to discuss the question when these poems were composed. At present it will be enough to remark that though the MSS. in which they are preserved date only from the tenth or eleventh centuries almost all scholars agree that the poems themselves cannot be later than the eighth century, while probably the majority would refer their composition, in part at least to the seventh. In their present form they cannot be earlier than this, for with the exception of the Finn-fragment all of them contain Christian allusions.
The later group of secular narrative poems may best be described as historical. The earliest of them celebrates the battle of Brunanburh won by Aethelstan in 937 over the Scottish king Constantine II and his Scandinavian allies. Others describe Edmund's conquest of the Five Boroughs, the coronation of Edgar, the glories of his reign, the troubles which followed, and lastly the death of Edward the Confessor. The longest of all is a detailed account of the disastrous battle of Maldon, in which Byrhtnoth, earl of Essex, lost his life. All these pieces except the last are found inserted in texts of the Saxon Chronicle and all without exception appear to have been composed soon after the events which they commemorate.
In addition to the above there are a number of other short poems which are not essentially of a religious character. The most important of these are the Wanderer, the Wife's Complaint, the Husband's Message and the Ruin—to which we may perhaps add the first half of the Seafarer. They are probably all of fairly early date, but they differ from the poems we have been discussing in the fact that they contain no proper names. Those of them which can be called narrative deal apparently with typical characters or situations. A certain amount of magical and gnomic poetry has also survived, while metrical riddles are numerous, but these need not concern us here.
It is scarcely open to doubt that a large amount of Anglo-Saxon narrative poetry has perished. Several historical poems and ballads of the tenth and eleventh centuries, now lost, can be traced in texts of the Saxon Chronicle and in Latin works[1]. Attempts have been made also to show that narrative poems were used by the compilers of the early part of the Chronicle and by several Latin histories referring to the same period, but the evidence adduced is very doubtful. Perhaps the most likely case is the story of Hengest and Horsa, especially in the form in which it appears in the Historia Brittonum. On the other hand it is probable that parts of the Vitae Duorum Offarum, a St Albans work dating from the beginning of the thirteenth century, are derived ultimately from poems which described Offa's single combat and marriage—incidents to which we find brief references in Widsith and Beowulf respectively. A similar origin may perhaps be claimed for Walter Map's story (De Nugis Curialium, II 17) of Gado (Wada). A few corrupt verses of a poem on this subject, obviously of late date, have been preserved in a Latin homily[2].
The earlier and later groups of narrative poems have in general[3] the same metrical form and on the whole a very similar terminology. The love of battle-scenes is also common to both. In other respects however they differ greatly. Here we need only notice the entire difference in subject-matter; the poems of the second group contain no allusion to the subjects of the first. Much greater changes however, both in form and matter, are noticeable when English poetry reappears in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The majority of these poems are of French origin. But even when the scene is laid in England, the subjects are usually drawn from written sources—which is certainly not the case with the historical poems of the tenth century. To the subjects of the earlier group of Anglo-Saxon poems there is scarcely a reference.
The period of German literature which corresponds chronologically to the Anglo-Saxon period in England is far inferior to the latter in remains of secular narrative poetry. We possess only one fragment of a poem somewhat similar to the Finn-fragment, preserved in a MS. dating from about 800, and one poem of somewhat later date, celebrating a victory of Ludwig III, king of the West Franks. To these we may add three or four very short metrical charms, similar to the Anglo-Saxon magical pieces mentioned above.
The subject of the first of these poems is as follows: Hildebrand (Hiltibrant) is an old warrior who has left his country with Dietrich (Theotrih) and served with the Huns. On his return from exile, thirty years later, he is challenged by a young warrior named Hadubrand. In the altercation with which the piece opens Hildebrand discovers that his opponent is his own son, acquaints him with the fact and tries to dissuade him from the combat with offers of rich presents. But the young man refuses to believe him, and taunts him with cowardice and guile in trying to put him off his guard. Hildebrand is therefore obliged to fight, and the fragment comes to an end in the midst of the encounter.
The Ludwigslied is a poem of fifty-nine verses celebrating the praises of Ludwig III, with special reference to his victory over the Northmen at Saucourt in 881, and seems to have been composed before the king's death in the following year. It is not in the old Teutonic alliterative metre which we find in Anglo-Saxon poetry and in the Hildebrandslied, but in the later rhyming verse. The religious element is prominent throughout.
There is no doubt that a considerable amount of secular narrative poetry once existed in German. Einhard in his Life of Charlemagne (cap. 29) states that the emperor collected native and very ancient poems in which were related the deeds and battles of kings of former times[4]. But during the following centuries poetry of this kind seems to have gone entirely out of favour among the higher classes. We do indeed find occasional references to such poems in later Latin works. In particular the Annals of Quedlinburg have incorporated from them a number of notices relating to Eormenric, Theodric (Thideric de Berne) and other heroes of antiquity. But here it is expressly stated that it was among the peasants (rustici) that these poems were known. Other Latin chronicles cite lost poems relating to persons and events of the tenth century, which may have been somewhat similar to the contemporary Anglo-Saxon poems, though generally they appear to have been of a less serious character.