How did the swift sledge-hammer flash and furiously come down upon the rings when the sturdy artizan was rivetting the wall with clamps so wondrously together. Bright were the buildings, the bath-houses many, high-towered the pinnacles, frequent the war-clang, many the mead-halls, of merriment full, till all was overturned by Fate the violent. The walls crumbled widely; dismal days came on; death swept off the valiant men; the arsenals became ruinous foundations; decay sapped the burgh. Pitifully crouched armies to earth. Therefore these halls are a dreary ruin, and these pictured gables;[84] the rafter-framed roof sheddeth its tiles; the pavement is crushed with the ruin, it is broken up in heaps; where erewhile many a baron—
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glædmod and goldbeorht gleoma gefrætwed wlonc and wingal wig hyrstum scan; seah on sinc on sylfor on searo gimmas; on ead, on æht, on eorcan stan: on thas beorhtan burg bradan rices. Stan hofu stodan; stream hate wearp widan wylme, weal eal befeng beorhtan bosme; thær tha bathu wæron, hat on hrethre; thæt wes hythelic! |
joyous and gold-bright gaudily jewelled haughty and wine-hot shone in his harness; looked on treasure, on silver, on gems of device; on wealth, on stores, on precious stones; on this bright borough of broad dominion. There stood courts of stone! The stream hotly rushed with eddy wide, (wall all enclosed) with bosom bright, (There the baths were!) not in its nature! That was a boon indeed! |
“THE WANDERER” (EARDSTAPA).[85]
In patriarchal or sub-patriarchal times social life was still confined within the family pale; and the man who belonged to no household was a wanderer and a vagabond on the face of the earth. Through invasion or war or other accidents a man who had been the honoured member of a well-found home might live to see that home broken up or pass into strange hands, and he might be thus like a plant uprooted when he was too old to get planted in a fresh connexion. His only chance of any share in social life was to wander from house to house, getting perhaps a brief lodging in each; and such a homeless condition might be well expressed by the compound eardstapa, one who tramps (stapa) from one habitation (eard) to another. In such an outcast plight the speaker in this piece went to sea, and there he often thought of the old happy days that were gone. He would dream of the pleasure of his old access to the giefstol of his lord, whom he saluted with kiss and head on knee, and then he would wake a friendless man in the wintry ocean, and his grief would be the sorer at his heart for the recollections of lost kindred that the dream had revived. Such a lot is in ready sympathy with old-world ruins, of which there were many in England at that time, and they raise the anticipation of a time when a like ruin will be the end of all! “It becomes a wise man to know how awful it will be when all this world’s wealth stands waste, as now up and down in the world there are wind-buffeted walls standing in mouldering decay”—and the description which follows is either a reminiscence of “The Ruined City,” or else it shows that the subject of ruins was familiar with the Scōpas.[86]
“THE MINSTREL’S CONSOLATION.”[87]
Ettmüller reckoned this the oldest of the Saxon lyrics; influenced, perhaps, by the mythical nature of the contents. But, if we regard the form rather than the material, there is a refinement about the versification which does not look archaic. The poem is cast in irregular stanzas, and it has a refrain. The poet, whose name is Deor, has experienced the fallaciousness of early success. His prospects are clouded; once the favourite minstrel of his patron, he is now superseded by a newer Scōp. His consolation is a well-known one; perhaps the oldest and commonest of all the formulæ of consolation. Others have been in trouble before him, and have somehow got over it. This is not conveyed as a mere generalisation; it is done poetically through striking examples, of which Weland is the first, and Beadohild the second. After each example comes the refrain:—
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thæs ofereode thisses swa mæg! |
That [distress] he overwent, So . I . can . this! |
The failures of life’s hopes and ambitions have been so often lamented, that the subject is rather hackneyed and conventional. Here is a piece out of the beaten track; fresh, though ingenious and artistic. Such a poem is all the more welcome as the subject belongs to an extinct career—the career of a court minstrel.
The Ballads have a peculiar value of their own. There is a sense in which they are the best representatives of the native muse. There are several extant specimens of various merit, but two are pre-eminent, and these are, beyond all doubt, preserved in their original and unaltered form. They were manifestly produced in the moment when the sensation of a great event was yet fresh. They are impassioned and effusive, and they bear good witness to the characteristics of primitive poetry. One spontaneous element they preserve, which has been quite discarded from modern poetry, and of which the other traces are few. I mean the poetry of derision. The light and shade of the ballad is glory and scorn. The most popular subject of this species of poetry is a battle. Whether your ballad is of victory or of disaster, these two elements, not indeed with the same intensity or the same proportions, but still these two, are the constituents required. Our best examples are the “Victory of Brunanburh” (937), and the “Disaster of Maldon” (991).
The battle of Brunanburh was fought by King Athelstan and his brother Edmund (children of Edward), against the alliance of the Scots under Constantinus with the Danes under Anlaf.