[80] See Dr. Morris’s Preface to the Blickling Homilies.
[81] Cod. Exon., ed. Thorpe, p. 473.
[82] Cod. Exon., ed. Thorpe, p. 476; Grein, i., 248.
[83] Years ago I discussed this little poem before the Bath Field Club; and my arguments were subsequently printed in the “Proceedings” of that society (1872). Professor Wülcker has since agreed with me that the subject of the poem is a city, and not a fortress. My identification of the ruin with Acemanceaster (Bath) has been approved by Mr. Freeman in his volume on “Rufus.”
[84] The feeling which pervades this remarkable fragment was strangely recalled by the following passage in a recent book that has interested many:—“Masses of strange, nameless masonry, of an antiquity dateless and undefined, bedded themselves in the rocks, or overhung the clefts of the hills; and out of a great tomb by the wayside, near the arch, a forest of laurel forced its way, amid delicate and graceful frieze-work, moss-covered and stained with age. In this strangely desolate and ruinous spot, where the fantastic shapes of nature seem to mourn in weird fellowship with the shattered strength and beauty of the old Pagan art-life, there appeared unexpectedly signs of modern dwelling.”—“John Inglesant,” by J. H. Shorthouse, new edition, 1881, vol. ii., p. 320.
[85] Cod. Exon., ed. Thorpe, p. 286.
[86] A translation of this poem in Alexandrines appeared in the Academy, May 14, 1881, by E. H. Hickey.
[87] Cod. Exon., ed. Thorpe, p. 377. His title is “Deor the Scald’s Complaint.” I have adopted the title from Professor Wülcker, “Des Sängers Trost.”
[88] Sometimes a prose passage of unusual energy raises the apprehension that it may be a ballad toned down. Dr. Grubitz has suggested this view of the Annal of 755, in which there is a fight in a Saxon castle (burh). The graphic description of the place, the dramatic order of the incidents, and the life-like dialogue of the parley, might well be the work of a poet.
[89] Kemble called it “The Traveller’s Song;” Thorpe, Cod. Exon., p. 318, “The Scop or Scald’s Tale.”