We are seventeen sisters voiceless born; six others, half-sisters, we exclude from our set; children of iron by iron we die, but children too of the bird’s wing that flies so high; three brethren our sires, be our mother as may; if any one is very eager to hear, we tell him, and quickly give answer without any sound.[61]
Aldhelm is the first of the Anglo-Latin poets, and he was a classical scholar at a time when to be so was a great distinction. Both in prose and verse, his style has the faults which belong to an age of revived study. His love of learning, his keen appreciation of its beauty and its value, have tended to inflate his sentences with an appearance of display. His poetic diction is simpler than that of his prose; but here, too, he is habitually over-elevated, whence he becomes sometimes stilted, and oftentimes he drops below pitch with an inadequate and disappointing close. But we must honour him in the position which he holds. He is the leader of that noble series of English scholars who represent the first endeavouring stage of recovery after the great eclipse of European culture.
There is nothing of his remaining in the vernacular; but that he was an English poet we have testimony which, though late, is not to be disregarded. William of Malmesbury quotes a book of King Alfred’s, which said that Aldhelm had been a peerless writer of English poetry: and he adds, moreover, that a popular song, which had been mentioned by Alfred as Aldhelm’s, was still commonly sung in his own time—that is, in the twelfth century.
Attempts have been made to identify some of our extant Anglo-Saxon literature with a name so eminent. In 1835 the Anglo-Saxon Psalter of the Paris manuscript was first printed at Oxford, and as this book gives a hundred of the Psalms in vernacular poetry, the suggestion that they might be Aldhelm’s, though modernised, had rhetorical attractions for the editor (Thorpe), and supplied him with material for a few rather idle sentences of his Latin preface. In 1840 Jacob Grimm edited (from Thorpe’s editio princeps) two poems of the Vercelli book, the “Andreas” and the “Elene;” and in his preface he sought to fix this poetry upon Aldhelm by a line of argument altogether fallacious, as was afterwards shown by Mr. Kemble in his edition of the “Andreas” for the Ælfric Society.
That which we have to show for this period in the native Kentish dialect is less ambitious, but it will not be despised by the considerate reader. In the beginnings of learning, when students had not the apparatus of grammars and dictionaries, which now, being common, are almost as much a matter of course as any gift of nature, it was necessary for students to make lists of words and phrases for themselves, and after a while a few of these would be thrown together, and would be reduced to alphabetical order for facility of reference. It is to such a process as this that we owe the Glossaries which form an interesting branch of Anglo-Saxon literature. The Epinal Gloss is the oldest of these, and it is very valuable because of the archaic forms of many of the words. A selection is here given by way of specimen:—[62]
EPINAL GLOSS.
(Cooper, Appendix B, p. 153.)
Alba spina, haegu thorn (hawthorn).
Aesculus, boecae (beech).
Achalantis, luscina netigalæ (nightingale).
Acrifolus, holegn (holly).
Alnus, alaer (alder).
Abies, saeppae (fir).
Argella, laam (loam).
Accitulium, geacaes surae (sorrel).
Absintium, uuermod (wormwood).
Alacris, snel (swift, German schnell).
Alveus, stream rad (stream-road = channel).
Aquilæ, segnas (military standards).
Anser, goos (goose).
Beta, berc, arbor (birch).
Ballena, hran (whale).
Buculus, rand beag (buckler).
Berruca, uueartæ (wart).
Cados, ambras (casks).
Chaos, duolma (confusion, error).
Cicuta, hymblicae (hemlock).
Cofinus, mand (hamper).
Fulix, ganot, dop aenid (gannet, dip-chick).
Filix, fearn (fern).
Fasianus, uuor hana (pheasant).
Fungus, suamm (German schwamm).
Fragor, suoeg (swough, sough).
Finiculus, finugl (fennel).
Follis, blest baeelg (blast-bellows).
Glarea, cisil (pebble, cf. Chesil Bank).
Hibiscum, biscop uuyrt (marsh mallow).
Horodius, uualh hebuc (foreign hawk).
Hirundo, sualuuae (swallow).
Intestinum, thearm (German Darm).
Jungetum, risc thyfil (jungle).
Inprobus, gimach (troublesome).
Iners, asolcaen (lazy).
Inter primores, bituien aeldrum (among the chief men).
Juris periti, red boran (counsellors).
Invisus, laath (loath).
Iuuar (= jubar), leoma, earendil (gleam, beacon, crest).
Ignarium, al giuueorc (fire-work).
Ibices, firgen gaett (mountain goats, chamois).
Lunules, mene scillingas (coins or bracteates on a necklace).
Lucius, haecid (hake, German Hecht).
Lolium, atae (oats).
Limax, snel (snail).
Ligustrum, hunaeg sugae (honeysuckle).
Manipulatim, threatmelum (in bands).
Manica, gloob (glove).
Mascus, grima (mask).
Malva, cotuc, geormant lab (mallow).
Mars, Tiig (cf. Tuesday).
Ninguit, hsniuuith (snoweth).
Nigra spina, slach thorn (sloe-thorn).
Nanus, duerg (dwarf).
Olor, aelbitu (the elk, wild swan).
Piraticum, uuicing sceadan (pirates).
Pares, uuyrdae (Fates).
Perna, flicci (flitch).
Pictus acu, mið naeðlae sasiuuid (embroidered).
Pronus, nihol (perpendicular).
Pollux, thuma (thumb).
Quoquomodo, aengiþinga (anyhow).
Rumex, edroc.
Ramnus, theban (thorn).
Salix, salch (sallow).
Sturnus, staer (starling).
Titio, brand (firebrand).
Tignarius, hrofuuyrcta (roofwright).
Vadimonium, borg (pledge, security).
In this glossary we see the preparation for our modern Latin-English dictionaries. Already, as early as the reign of Augustus, the foundation of the Latin dictionary was laid by Verrius Flaccus, but his dictionary would naturally consist of Latin words with Latin explanations. But in the seventh century there was a demand for Latin vocabularies, with equivalents in the vernacular languages; and here, in the Epinal Glossary, we have the earliest known example of such a work. At first such glossaries would be merely lists of words formed in the course of studying some one or two Latin texts, and in process of time would follow the compilation of several such glossaries into one, until, in the tenth and eleventh centuries, we find vocabularies of some compass (as Ælfric’s), and by the fifteenth century we have such bulky dictionaries as the “Catholicon” and the “Promptorium Parvulorum.”
We will close this chapter with specimens of the “Psalter of St. Augustine,” which received an Anglo-Saxon gloss (dialect Kentish[63]) at the end of the ninth, or early in the tenth century. The book has been already described above, p. [33].