| Pedites omnes cum bipennibus conserta ante se scutorum testudine, impenetrabilem cuneum faciunt; quod profecto illis ea die saluti fuisset, nisi Normanni, simulata fuga more suo confertos manipulos laxassent. (§ 241) | Geldons engleis haches portoent E gisarmes qui bien trenchoent Fait orent deuant els escuz De fenestres e d'altres fuz, Deuant els les orent leuez, Comme cleies joinz e serrez; Fait en orent deuant closture, N'i laissierent nule iointure, Par onc Normant entr'els venist Qui desconfire les volsist. D'escuz e d'ais s'auironoent, Issi deffendre se quidoent; Et s'il se fussent bien tenu, Ia ne fussent le ior uencu. (ll. 7813-26) |
Mr Freeman, of course, observed the parallel, but, oddly enough, missed the point. He first quoted the lines from Wace, and then immediately added, 'So William of Malmesbury' (iii. 764), thus reversing the natural order. The word that really gave me the clue was the escuz of Wace. It was obvious, I held, that, here as elsewhere,[43] it must mean 'shield'; and Mr Freeman consequently saw in the passage an undoubted description of the 'shield-wall' (iii. 763). Moreover, the phrase lever escuz is, in Wace, a familiar one, describing preparation for action, thus, for instance:
Mult ueissiez Engleis fremir
· · · · ·
Armes saisir, escuz leuer.
(ll. 8030, 8033)
On the other hand, there are, in spite of Mr Freeman, undoubted difficulties in rendering the passage as a description of the 'shield-wall', just as there are in taking escuz to mean 'barricades' (iii. 471). The result was that, perhaps unconsciously, Mr Freeman gave the passage, in succession, two contradictory renderings (iii. 471, 763). Now, starting from the fact that the disputed passage supported, and also opposed both renderings, I arrived at the conclusion that it must represent some confusion of Wace's own. He had, evidently, himself no clear idea of what he was describing. But the whole confusion is at once accounted for if we admit him to have here also followed William of Malmesbury. His escuz—otherwise impossible to explain—faithfully renders the scuta of William, while the latter's testudo, though strictly accurate, clearly led him astray. The fact is that William of Malmesbury must have been quite familiar with the 'shield-wall', if indeed he had seen the fyrd actually forming it.[44] Wace, on the contrary, living later, and in Normandy instead of England, cannot have seen, or even understood, this famous formation, with which his cavalry fight of the twelfth century had nothing in common. It is natural therefore that his version should betray some confusion, though his Fait en orent deuant closture clearly renders William of Malmesbury's conserta ante se scutorum testudine. There is no question as to William's meaning, for a testudo of shields is excellent Latin for the shield-wall formed by the Romans against a flight of arrows. Moreover, the construction of William's Latin (conserta) accounts for that use by Wace of the pluperfect tense on which stress has been laid as proof that the passage must describe a 'barricade'.[45] That Wace could, occasionally, be led astray by misunderstanding his authority, is shown by his taking Harold to Abbeville, after his capture on the French coast, a statement which arose, in Mr Freeman's opinion, 'from a misconception of the words of William of Jumièges (iii. 224)'. No one, I think, can read dispassionately the extracts I have printed side by side, without accepting the explanation I offer of this disputed passage in Wace, namely, that it is nothing but a metrical, elaborate, and somewhat confused paraphrase of the words of William of Malmesbury.
Passing from William of Malmesbury to the Bayeux Tapestry, we find a general recognition of the difficulty of determining Wace's knowledge of it. I can only, like others, leave the point undecided. On the other hand, his narrative, as a whole, does not follow the Tapestry; on the other, it is hard to believe that the writer of ll. 8103-38 had not seen that famous work. His description of the scene is marvellously exact, and the Tapestry phrase, in which Odo confortat pueros—often a subject of discussion—is at once explained by his making the pueri whom Odo 'comforted' to be—
Vaslez, qui al herneis esteient
E le herneis garder deueient.