But we reach a certain date beyond which, if we put the language back into its older form, it will no longer fit into the metrical structure. For example, words like flōd, feld, eard were originally "u-nouns": with nom. and acc. sing. flōdu, etc. But the half-line ofer fealone flōd (1950) becomes exceedingly difficult if we put it in the form ofer fealone flōdu[[243]]: the half-line fīfelcynnes eard becomes absolutely impossible in the form fīfelcynnes eardu[[244]].
It can, consequently, with some certainty be argued that these half-lines were composed after the time when flōdu, eardu had become flōd, eard. Therefore, it has been further argued, Beowulf was composed after that date. But are we justified in this further step—in assuming that because a certain number of half-lines in Beowulf must have been composed after a certain date, therefore Beowulf itself must have been composed after that date?
From what we know of the mechanical way in which the Old English scribe worked, we have no reason to suppose that he would have consistently altered what he found in an older copy, so as to make it metrical according to the later speech into which he was transcribing it. But if we go back to a time when poems were committed to memory by a scop, skilled in the laws of O.E. metre, the matter is very different. A written poem may be copied word for word, even though the spelling is at the same time modernized, but it is obvious that a poem preserved orally will be altered slightly from time to time, if the language in which it is written is undergoing changes which make the poem no longer metrically correct.
Imagine the state of things at the period when final u was being lost after a long syllable. This loss of a syllable would make a large number of the half-lines and formulas in the old poetry unmetrical. Are we to suppose that the whole of O.E. poetry was at once scrapped, and entirely new poems composed to fit in with the new sound laws? Surely not; old formulas would be recast, old lines modified where they needed it, but the old poetry would go on[[245]], with these minor verbal changes adapting it to the new order of things. We can see this taking place, to a limited extent, in the transcripts of Middle English poems. In the transmission of poems by word of mouth it would surely take place to such an extent as to baffle later investigation[[246]].
Consequently I am inclined to agree that this test is hardly final except "on the assumption that the poems were written down from the very beginning[[247]]." And we are clearly not justified in making any such assumption. A small number of such lines would accordingly give, not so much a means of fixing a period before which Beowulf cannot have been composed, as merely
one before which Beowulf cannot have been fixed by writing in its present form.
If, however, more elaborate investigation were to show that the percentage of such lines is just as great in Beowulf as it is in poems certainly written after the sound changes had taken place, it might be conceded that the test was a valid one, and that it proved Beowulf to have been written after these sound changes occurred.
This would then bring us to our second difficulty. At what date exactly did these sound changes take place? The chief documents available are the proper names in Bede's History, and in certain Latin charters, the glosses, and a few early runic inscriptions. Most important, although very scanty, are the charters, since they bear a date. With these we proceed to investigate:
A. The dropping of the u after a long accented syllable (flō´du becoming flō´d), or semi-accented syllable (Stā´nfòrdu becoming Stā´nfòrd).