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Although it is with this stage only that the present chapter is concerned, for the sake of convenience and future reference, we give below, in a modified form, the whole of his arrangement of the progressive changes in the language.

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Middle

Authorities differ considerably as to the limits of the English' and 'Modern English' periods (4 and 5). In lieu of the term 'Broken English' (2), the better one of Transition English' has been proposed by Mr. F. J. Furnivall. But it must be borne in mind that both nomenclature and classification in these cases are at best arbitrary, and that no precise date could reasonably be assigned for the commencement or completion of any of the alterations. §

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4. The Gaelic and Cymric Literature. Before passing to the literature of the 'Original English' stage, a few words may be fittingly said concerning the literature of the CELTIC inhabitants of Britain, although the subject does not come strictly within the scope of this chapter. Of the Gaelic literature many examples are preserved in Ireland. The earliest writing of the primitive Gaels was by the so-called Oghuim characters, which were carved on the four sides of a square staff, or in the folds of a thick staff opening fanwise.' || This tablet staff was the distinctive mark of the Gaelic rhapsodists. Of these there were different classes, ranked according to their competency as narrators. The recitations again were classed into Prime and Secondary Stories. Professor Morley quotes, from The Book of Leinster, the following characterisation of the first kind :-'Destructions and Preyings, Courtships, Battles, Caves, Navigations, Tragedies (or Deaths), Expeditions, Elopements, and Conflagrations. These following also reckon as Prime Stories:-Stories of Irruptions, of Visions, of Loves, of Hostages, and of Migrations.' § So

* v. present Chapter.

v. Chapter III.

English Writers, i. Pt. i. 173-4. Literature, pp. 170-217.

tv. Chapter II.

§ v. Introduction to Appendix A. v. also entire account of Gaelic and Cymric

much for Gaelic tales. Our space will not permit us to do more than recall the names of some of the Gaelic poets. They are Fionn or Finn (fair-haired) McCumhaill (d. 283 ?), Oisin (little fawn), and Fergus Finnbheoil (the eloquent), his sons, and his cousin, Caeilte McRonan.

The above-named Gaelic poets belong to the third century those of the Cymri to the sixth, and 'the main haunt and region' of the songs of the latter is the Cymric and Teutonic battle-field-the wars of Urien Rheged and Ida, the last leader of the Angles. First, as the chief singer of Urien and his sons comes Taliesin (shining forehead). Another, more illustrious, is Llywarch Hen, or Llywarch the Old (b. 490), bard and Prince of Argoed, who fought at Urien's side and sung his death. Aneurin' with the flowing muse,' warrior and poet too, celebrated, in his poem of The Gododin, the great battle at Cattraeth (Catterick, in Yorkshire ?), whence, of all King Mynyddawg's Eurdorchogion, or heroes with the golden torques, only the bard and two of his companions went alive. Last comes King Arthur's bard Merlin or Myrrdin, of whose productions none remain. With other names we shall not detain the reader.

5. The Literature of the 'Original English' Period.Although, by the successive settlements of the so-called Saxons in South Britain, a new language was introduced, some time elapsed before any opportunity arose for its development in the direction of literature. The majority of the community was too deeply engaged in the struggle for existence or supremacy to find leisure for intellectual culture; nor had the Saxons, like the Britons, the advantage of foreign tuition. But after the arrival, in 597, of Gregory the First's missionary Augustine (d. 604), and the subsequent conversion of large numbers of the people to Christianity, a certain mental activity began to show itself. The new religion stimulated curiosity; the monks set about collecting libraries, and an acquaintance with Latin became indispensable to students. In Ireland, especially, the taste for religious literature was remarkable. That island,' says Hallam, 'both drew students from the continent, and sent forth men of comparative eminence into its schools and churches.'* In Britain, an immense impetus was given to learning by Theodore of Tarsus, whom the Pope nominated, in 668, to the seo of Canterbury. By him, and his friend Adrian, 'both well versed in sacred and profane literature, and thoroughly acquainted with the Greek and Latin languages,' numbers of pupils were instructed in Greek and Latin,

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* Hallam, Lit. History, 1864, i. chap. i. 5.

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in the art of Latin poetry, and in astronomy and arithmetic. Schools began to spring up-at Malmesbury, at Glastonbury and at York, where, in the circuitous language of the time, students were taught 'the harmony of the sky, the labour of the sun and moon, the five zones, the seven wandering planets; the laws, rising and setting of the stars, and the aërial motions of the sea; earthquakes; the natures of man, cattle, birds and wild beasts, and their various species and figures.'* One valuable library was collected by Benedict, Bishop of Wearmouth, and another, which included the works of Cicero, Pliny, Aristotle, Virgil, Lucan, etc., and many of the ancient fathers, by Egbert, Archbishop of York (732). Of Wilfrid of York, another pioneer of literature, it is recorded by his biographer Eddius, that he caused the four Evangelists to be written, of purest gold, on purple-coloured parchments, for the benefit of his soul, and he had a case made for them of gold, adorned with precious stones.'† Yet, notwithstanding the rapid growth of literature during the seventh and eighth centuries-and that growth must indeed have been rapid, which, from the darkness of comparative ignorance, produced, in a period of two hundred years, scholars so far advanced and so well equipped as Beda and Alcuin-it was destined never to fulfil the promise of its youth. The predatory incursions of the Scandinavians or Northmen put an end to all studious seclusion; and, in spite of Alfred's noble efforts to revive the old enthusiasm for cultivation, learning did little more than drag on a crippled and stunted existence till the reign of Edward the Confessor. Then, again, peace seemed to promise progress; but the Norman Conquest speedily changed the old order of things, supplanted English by Norman-French, and raised a new literature on the ruins of the old.

6. The Poets.-The metrical writings of the 'Original English' stage may be divided into two classes: those in the native tongue, and those in the acquired Latin. They are distinct in style and kind, though both, for the most part, exhibit the impress of an education derived from monastic sources, and in its tendency religi

ous.

The Old English poems are abrupt and exclamatory, overweighted with imagery, and obscured by repetition and periphrasis; the Latin poems are composed according to the rules and in the rhetorical verbiage of the Latinity of the decline. In the Latin compositions hexameters predominate; but those in the vernacular depend principally for their metrical character upon rhythm and a

* Dean Gale: quoted in Turner, Hist. of the Anglo-Saxons, 1852, iii. 347. + Turner, ib. iii. 346.

certain mechanical alliteration:-in other words, in every line or couplet a settled number of accented initial syllables begin with the same letter.

*

Bede thus defines rhythm as practised by his contemporaries :-'It is a modulated composition of words, not according to the laws of metre, but adapted in the number of its syllables to the judgment of the ear, as are the verses of our vulgar (or native) poets.' None of the metrical writings of the period can properly claim to be styled poems in the strict sense of the word; but those in Old English are by far the more poetic. In them, at least, an uncouth exultation stirs and struggles for utterance, while the Latin works exhibit all the pedantic conceits and barren superfluities of a style in its decay.

(A) WRITERS IN ENGLISH METRE.-The metrical writings in original English which still exist may be roughly classed into songs and ballads and narrative poems.

There is little doubt that the songs and ballads existed in great numbers, and were chanted or recited to the common people by wandering harpers, scóps, or gleemen, and others. Aldhelm, Bishop of Malmesbury, it is said, composed and sang them in the street; Bede, according to the narrator of his last hours, repeated them upon his death-bed; and we learn from Bede himself that the harp went round at festivals in order that those who would might sing them. Yet few specimens of this kind of Old English poetry are now extant. The chief of these are-the Traveller's (or Gleeman's) Song and the fragment of the Fight at Finnesburg, the latter of which is supposed to belong to the seventh century; the Battle of Brunanburh, 937, in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,† recording the victory of Athelstane and Edmund, his brother, over Olaf or Anlaf; and the Battle of Maldon, 993, recording the death of Byrhtnoth or Brihtnoth, the Aldorman, who fell fighting against Olaf Tryggvason, King of Norway, in a battle thus referred to in the same record :— 'An. DCCCC.XCIII. In this year came Olaf with ninety-three ships to Staines, and harried without it; and then went thence to Sandwich, and so thence to Ipswich, and ravaged all over it; and so to Maldon; and the aldorman Brihtnoth came against him with his force, and fought against him; and they there slew the aldorman, and had possession of the place of carnage.' ‡

To the above may be added, as a curiosity, the following verse,

* Quoted in Turner, Hist. of the Anglo-Saxons, 1852, iii. 232.

† See Appendix A, Extract III.

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Thorpe's translation), 1861, ii. 105.

preserved in the Historia Eliensis, from a ballad attributed to King

Canute :

Merie sungen the muneches binnen Ely

Tha Cnut cning reu ther by ;
Roweth, cnihtes, ner the land

And here we thes muneches soeng.

Merrily sang the monks within Ely
When Canute king rowed thereby ;
Row, my knights, row near the land,
And hear we these monks' song.

Among the narrative poems the most notable are the fragments of Judith (supposed to have been composed about 650), the ancient epic of Beowulf, generally assigned to the beginning of the Original English period, and the Metrical Paraphrase of the Bible, by Cadmon, written circa 675.

The first named of these is the story from the Apocrypha, with Anglo-Saxon costumes and accessories, probably from an ecclesiastical pen; the second narrates the exploits of Beowulf, a Goth, in delivering Hrothgar, chief of the Scyldings or Danes, from the murderous depredations of a grim and invulnerable giant of the neighbouring fens, called Grendel, who nightly falls upon and slaughters Hrothgar's sleeping thegns. Beowulf, in whose hand-grip is the strength of thirty men, attacks Grendel without arms, overcomes him, and afterwards kills his mother. The story further relates the death of Beowulf himself from the poisoned wound of a dragon. Recent writers are divided as to the scene of this poem, some holding that the persons and events belong to Denmark, others that they should be assigned to the North of England.*

Cadmon's paraphrase treats expansively of the Fall of the Angels, the Creation, Adam and Eve, Cain, Abraham, Nebuchadnezzar, and Daniel. Its author is said to have been a monk of Whitby, who lived in the seventh century; and it has been alleged (we give the allegation for what it is worth) that certain passages of the poem must have been familiar to Milton's memory when he composed his Paradise Lost. Copious extracts from the Paraphrase and the Judith are given in the third volume of Mr. Sharon Turner's History of the Anglo-Saxons (1852, iii. pp. 270–82), and it is unnecessary to describe them further here.

Besides the foregoing specimens, a quantity of Old English lyrical and narrative verse is contained in the two collections, styled respectively the EXETER BOOK and the VERCELLI BOOK. The former, the codex Exoniensis, was presented by Leofric, Bishop of Exeter, between 1046 and 1073, to the library of the cathedral. It includes,

*Prof. Morley appears to incline to the latter view (English Writers, 1, pt. i. pp. 251-278, which include a summary of Beowulf). See also Turner, Hist. of the Anglo-Saxons, 1852, iii. 251-269; and Extract I., Appendix A.

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