Before I end this chapter, however, let me make a few remarks upon the spirit prevalent among the English after the conquest.
In the scrap of Saxon poetry quoted above, the reader will perceive that the chronicler mentions William's severe restrictions upon the exercise of woodcraft in the wide waste lands of the escheated manors. Following the same lines farther, we find in the old chronicle the winding up words, which I will translate from the original. After remarking that "he forbade men to kill harts or boars," the chronicler adds, "Rich men bemoaned it and poor men shuddered at it. But he was so stern and hot that he recked not the hatred of them all."
In consequence of these laws, Robinhoods and Littlejohns gathered in the matted thickets, and among the oak glades on the banks of every obscure lake and river, from the Thames to the Tweed. There was something alluring in the romantic life of an outlawed forester, and many a tall deer and bristling boar, died on the 'green shawe,' against whom that law, intended as a shield, pointed the arrow.
Thus sprung up a race of men of whom the ballad makers delighted to sing—coupling their names with 'Hereward the hardy outlaw' and the patriot heroes of the ground and trampled Saxons.
That the introduction of Norman manners brought with it more softness—a fact mentioned more than once—we may discover by comparing the productions of those bards who in the same age, sung in the rugged north country, and those who grew up in Kent and on the Thames. These latter were for years before the Norman's coming, receiving polish from their neighborhood, while those of Northumberland retained much of their early rudeness ages after. The bard who sings of the reyde on which
"The Perse out off Northumberland"
went to be killed among the Cheviot hills, has more roughness as well as more strength than any of his compeers on the Thames. This old poem is an important stone in the temple of English literature, and I will treat of it in due season, as coming within the pale of English classic poetry. This polish and increased softness introduced by the Normans, opened the eyes and ears of all to "the soother and honeyeder" style of poetry. And, indeed, unless Lord Bacon's remark,—that verse is a better balm than any the Egyptians knew, "for that it not only preserveth the stateliness of the form and the color of the face—which the Egyptian preservative doth not—but giveth to the one tenfold stateliness and borroweth from the rose for the other,"—be true, their women were passing stately and very beautiful. There were the three Mauds, all queens and all heroines. There was the proud yet "fair Rosamond," who forgot her pride in the arms of a royal lover; and many another fitting sharer in immortality with the Elgivas and Ediths of an earlier time.
Superstition too gave a tinge to poetry.—The Druids had left their foot marks upon the soil, and the ancient rites and feelings cherished in Wales—the last place of refuge for the injured Britons—still held an undefined influence over the hearts of their neighbors. This feeling blazed out for awhile, when the partisans of Henry slew Thomas a-Becket, the "child of love and wonder,"12 before the altar of St. Bennet. And the murdered Archbishop was doubly canonized, in the holy ritual of Rome, and in the songs of those whom his death had made worshippers.
12 Sir J. Mackintosh tells an odd romance of the mother of the celebrated Archbishop, whom he calls the "child of love and wonder."
But the greatest characteristic of the ballad, as used among the Norman successors to the Saxons in England, was a love for the legendary. Britagne—that country lying between the Loire and the Seine, had been peopled by a body of British emigrants about the time of the Saxon invasion under Hengist, and these calling themselves Armoricans, settled quietly down in a strange land. They retained many of their old British feelings, and when in the course of time they became nearly amalgamated with their Norman neighbors, and followed them into England, the old love of country revived and they sung of King13 Arthur and his knights as champions of their forefathers. The strange legends of the early contests between Angles and Britons, were mere clews to the discovery of a thousand others, wholly unfounded in truth, yet none the less palatable to the ignorant. This love of the legendary remains to this day among the descendants of these people, and will, perhaps, never be obliterated.