Battle-hungry bird, both knowing well
That the gallant people would give them soon
A feast on the fated; now flew on their track
The deadly devourer, the dewy-winged eagle,
Singing his war song, the swart-coated bird,
The horned of beak.
[Judith], vv. 199-212.
Besides the distinctive meter in which the Old English poems are written, there are several qualities of style for which they are peculiar. No one can read a page of these poems without being struck by the parallel structure that permeates the whole body of Old English verse. Expressions are changed slightly and repeated from a new point of view, sometimes with a good effect but quite as often to the detriment of the lines. These parallelisms have been retained in the translation in so far as it has been possible, but sometimes the lack of inflectional endings in English has prevented their literal translation.
Accompanying these parallelisms, and often a part of them, are the frequent synonyms so characteristic of Old English poetry. These synonymous expressions are known as “kennings.” They are not to be thought of as occasional metaphors employed at the whim of the poet; they had, in most cases, already received a conventional meaning. Thus the king was always spoken of as “ring giver,” “protector of earls,” or “bracelet bestower.” The queen was the “weaver of peace”; the sea the “ship road,” or “whale path,” or “gannet’s bath.”
Old English poetry is conventionalized to a remarkable degree. Even those aspects of nature that the poets evidently enjoyed are often described in the most conventional of words and phrases. More than half of so fine a poem as [The Battle of Brunnanburg] is taken bodily from other poems. No description of a battle was complete without a picture of the birds of prey hovering over the field. Heroes were always assembling for banquets and receiving rewards of rings at the hand of the king. These conventional phrases and situations, added to a thorough knowledge of a large number of old Germanic myths, constituted a great part of the equipment of the typical Old English minstrel or scop, such as one finds described in [Widsith] or [Deor’s Lament].