Introduction: General Characteristics of Old English Poetry

The Anglo-Saxons left us accounts of two defining moments in the formative years of their literature. The first is
a famous story about an illiterate peasant who one night miraculously refashioned his native poetic tradition.
The story is told by Bede (c.673–735), a monk who near the end of his scholarly career compiled a narrative
history of the Christian church in England up to his time. The history devotes an entire chapter to the cowherd
Cædmon largely because his new poetic skills were applied only to Christian stories and not because he received
the gift of poetry. English poetry itself was nothing new and scarcely worth Bede’s attention. For centuries
before Cædmon the Anglo-Saxons had cultivated a tradition of oral poetry, which continued to celebrate its
pagan themes and legends well after the conversion to Christianity. For Bede, the importance of Cædmon’s
innovation was that it baptized the old vernacular poetry. For literary history, however, the story’s importance
lies elsewhere. Soon after receiving his God-given skills Cædmon took vows and entered the monastery, where
he continued to learn sacred stories and turn them into poems. His passage from the outside world into the
cloister meant that English poetry itself found a place in the monastic life, since verse-making was the only skill
Cædmon could offer to the community. Before Cædmon entered, the old poetry was limited to an oral context;
afterwards, it could find its way into the scriptorium. Without writing a word Cædmon opened up the possibility
of English literature. The second account is a letter from King Alfred of Wessex (871–99), which urges an
ambitious program of translating certain Latin texts that were, as he put it, most necessary for all people to
know. Before Alfred there was little in the way of English prose, but his efforts generated an industry that by the
time of his death had produced an impressive body of literature and fixed the conventions of the emerging
genre. Alfred did more than issue directives to writers, however, because he set himself to the task of translating
three scholarly books and fifty psalms from Latin to English.

This presentation introduces students to the English literature produced in the centuries before the year 1100
AD. Today the language of this period is generally called Old English to distinguish it from Middle English (1100–
1500) and Modern English (1500-present), but its speakers called it simply English. The different accounts left by
Bede and Alfred, discussed only briefly here, are not quite myths of origin, but each offers a richly suggestive
description of early conditions for one of the two major literary genres: verse (Bede) and prose (Alfred). Both
writers, moreover, show the literature emerging from the backdrop of the Latin culture of the church. Like
almost everything else he wrote, Bede narrated the story of Cædmon in Latin, which was the universal language
of scholarship and an essential part of monastic life, so his validation of the vernacular carries special weight.
Latin is just as much a part of the context of King Alfred’s program, in which almost all the new English texts
were translations. In the relative scale of cultural prestige, English was always the poor stepchild of Latin. But
unlike the status of English in later generations, when writers like William Caxton (d. 1491) felt compelled to
apologize for their “rude” and “base” language, that of Old English was not so low as to be debilitating. After a
theologian with the credentials of Bede gave his blessings to the poetry, and after the greatest king of early
England translated the word of God, later writers were free to work in the vernacular without special pleading.
One measure of the relative status of English comes in a later century, when Ælfric (c.945–c.1010), a monk,
scholar, homilist, and gifted prose stylist, used the vernacular to compose a Latin grammar for use in the
monastery. (It took almost another five centuries before the next English-to-Latin grammar was written.) For
Ælfric Latin was unquestionably the superior language and essential to the monastic life, but English provided an
adequate vehicle for teaching it.

Bede, Alfred, and Ælfric lived in three distinct eras within the larger period of pre-Conquest or Anglo-Saxon
England. At its outer limits the period extends over six centuries – an interval equivalent to that between today
and Chaucer’s lifetime – and over those centuries the society (or rather societies) underwent enormous changes.
The Anglo-Saxons themselves traced their ancestors’ arrival to the year 449, when legend has it that two
brothers, Hengest and Horsa, came as leaders of mercenary armies from the continent and later decided to turn
on their British employers and take the land for themselves. The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes brought their pagan
religion to their new home, and it was not until shortly before 600 that conversion to Christianity began, first by
Irish missionaries in Northumbria and then by a special mission in the south sent by Pope Gregory the Great.
Conversion proceeded gradually with some setbacks during much of the seventh century, but even by the 650s
monasteries such as Whitby (Cædmon) and Jarrow (Bede) were thriving. Throughout the earlier centuries the
Anglo-Saxons were politically divided into smaller, often competing kingdoms until about 800, when the four
great kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, and Wessex emerged. In 793 a raiding party of Vikings
attacked the island monastery of Lindisfarne off the coast of Northumbria. It was the start of 100 years of Viking
attacks, which evolved from small raids eventually to large invading armies that conquered and occupied more
and more territory until the 870s, when only Wessex remained of the four kingdoms. King Alfred managed to
stop the Viking advances, and eventually he and his successors won back enough territory to create a united
kingdom of England, ruled by the kings of Wessex. Alfred also instituted a program of cultural revival that
indirectly led to the great Benedictine reform of the latter half of the tenth century, which produced outstanding
churchmen like Archbishop Wulfstan and Abbot Ælfric. It was the period when most of the surviving manuscript
volumes of Old English prose and poetry were transcribed. But the tenth century also witnessed a second wave
of Viking attacks, much of it during the long and unhappy reign of Æthelred (978–1016), who was finally
succeeded by the king of Denmark, Cnut (1016–35). Cnut’s long reign was followed by the even longer one of
Edward the Confessor (1042–66), who died childless, leaving several powerful claimants ready to pounce on the
throne. First Harold Godwineson was crowned, but in October of 1066 his rival Duke William of Normandy
defeated him in the battle of Hastings, and the throne of England passed into Norman hands. The linguistic
changes that distinguish Middle English from Old English would have proceeded whether or not William became
king. And so to decouple linguistic change from a change of political regime scholars prefer to consider 1100 as
the approximate end of Old English.

The verse form used for vernacular poetry throughout the Anglo-Saxon period was that common to all the
Germanic peoples, and was carried to England by the migrating tribes of the fifth century. It is therefore rooted
in an oral tradition of poems composed, performed and passed on without benefit of writing. Some signs of the
ways in which this poetry was created and transmitted can be gleaned from occasional references in vernacular
and Latin literature. Heroic poetry in Old English tells of the professional minstrel at the court of kings, singing
traditional legends from the Germanic past, and occasionally adding Christian stories to his repertoire, familiar
tales made delightful to his audience by his skill in developing and embellishing them. In Latin works we learn
something of the transmission of poems in more humble surroundings: William of Malmesbury, in the twelfth-
century Gesta pontificum, reports King Alfred's story of Abbot Aldhelm (d. 709) reciting secular poetry at the
bridge in Malmesbury to attract an audience for his preaching, and Bede, in the Ecclesiastical History, suggests
that it was normal in the seventh century for men of the lowest social classes when attending festive gatherings
to recite poems that they had learnt by heart. Bede tells this in relation to the cowman Caedmon of Whitby who
was graced, late in life, with a miraculous gift of song, in a manner reminiscent of other divine visitations of the
early Middle Ages, and who thereby became the first to convert the inherited Germanic metre to Christian use.
Many others, Bede goes on, did so after him, but none so well (Historia Ecclesiastica... IV.24). By the end of the
period, there are signs of a fully articulated written tradition. Amongst the poems surviving in manuscripts are
four by a man called Cynewulf, who signed his name in an acrostic of runes which presumably would have to be
seen rather than heard to make their impact. But the poetry which has come down to us in manuscript owes
much to its oral background. Some of the surviving poems may themselves have been transmitted orally,
perhaps across many generations, before they were committed to writing, and even those which were
composed in writing use techniques and rhetorical devices which were developed in an oral tradition and reflect
the needs of that tradition, such as the repetition of sentence elements or the frequent use of mnemonic
formulae.

Poems in Old English are untitled in the manuscripts in which they survive, the titles by which they are now
generally known having been given to them, in the main, by their nineteenth-century editors. They are also for
the most part anonymous. Although Bede reports that Caedmon composed poetic paraphrases of Genesis,
Exodus and other biblical books, it is likely that only the nine lines composed at his initial inspiration survive. The
only other named poet of note from the period is Cynewulf, who signed four poems, Elene, Juliana, The Fates of
the Apostles and Christ II (the central section, lines 440-866, of the poem Christ as edited in the third volume of
Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records), so that those enjoying his poetry might pray for his soul. But beyond his name and
his interest in translating Latin hagiographic and homiletic literature into Old English verse, nothing is known of
him. Two other prominent Anglo-Saxons who are better known for their prose writings are associated with
some surviving verse. Soon after King Alfred translated Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy from Latin into Old
English prose at the end of the ninth century, someone recast the sections of the work which corresponded to
the Latin metra into uninspired but metrically passable Old English verse. It is probable, but by no means certain,
that Alfred was that someone. And finally, towards the end of the Anglo-Saxon period, Archbishop Wulfstan, a
prolific writer of ecclesiastical and civil legislation and well known for his fiery eschatological sermons, is thought
by some scholars to have composed the brief poems on King Edgar that appear in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
annals for 959 and 975.

Caedmon's first nine lines of Christian verse are recorded in eighth- century manuscripts; almost all the other
surviving examples of Old English poetry are in manuscripts of the tenth and eleventh centuries, the greater part
in the four so-called Poetic Codices, all written within the period 975—1025. These four books have little in
common with each other except that they all contain verse. Only one, the Exeter Book, is an anthology of poetry
(both secular and religious). In two of the others, the Vercelli Book and the Beowulf Manuscript, the fact that
some items are in verse is perhaps incidental. In the Vercelli Book, six religious poems are scattered in a collection
of homiletic prose, the scribe showing no interest in making a distinction between the two mediums. The only
convincing explanation of the compilation of the Beowulf Manuscript is that it contains a series of 'monster'
tales, some in prose, some in verse, the subjects being a mixture of Christian and secular. Finally, the Junius
Manuscript contains religious poetry, Old Testament paraphrase and some lyrics on Old and New Testament
themes. It is difficult to reconstruct the reasons for the creation of these books. The content and large format of
the Junius Manuscript suggest that it may have had some liturgical use. The Exeter Book was probably made for a
wealthy patron; by 1072 it belonged to Bishop Leofric of Exeter, for it was amongst the collection of books that
he bequeathed to his cathedral church. The variety of manuscript contexts in which the poems survive adds to
the difficulty of determining anything of their origin and transmission.

That books of vernacular poetry existed at an earlier period we know from a story told about the boyhood of
King Alfred, in Bishop Asser's Life of the King, in which his mother offered to give a book of Saxon poetry to
whichever of her sons first learnt it by heart. (Alfred won it, of course.) It is impossible to know if any of the
poems that Alfred knew survived into the copies made a century and a half later. We can only speculate on the
period of time over which poetry was copied, as we can about the relationship between oral and written
composition and transmission. A few clues may be drawn from the very small quantity of verse that survives in
more than one copy. A dozen lines from the middle of The Dream of the Rood were carved in runes on an
eighteen-foot stone preaching cross in Ruthwell, Dumfriesshire, no later than the end of the eighth century,
while the whole poem survives in the Vercelli Book, copied in Canterbury towards the end of the tenth. This
suggests the freedom with which popular poems might move around the country, and their ability to survive
(either orally or in writing) for hundreds of years. On the other hand, the marked differences between two
copies of a passage of homiletic verse, The Soul and Body, in the Vercelli and Exeter Books (written within a
generation of one another) indicate the freedom with which scribes sometimes made alterations to the material
they were copying.

There are no sure objective tests by which poetry can be dated, and no means of proving which of the surviving
poems were composed orally and which in writing. All Old English poetry is of such uniformity in form and
language that it is impossible to establish even relative dating with any certainty. Bede's story of Caedmon
suggests that Christian poetry began late in the seventh century, and analysis of the runes on the Ruthwell Cross
and of the spelling of Cynewulf's name in the acrostics suggest that some surviving poetry was in existence in
some form from early in the ninth century, although the manuscript copies that we have were not made until
almost two hundred years later. The dating of secular poetry is extremely problematic, not least because so little
survives beyond Beowulf, and because the dating of that poem, which is so crucial to the study of Old English
metre, is amongst the most vexed questions facing students today. Many critics still hold trenchantly to the
generally accepted view of earlier scholars, that the poem was composed in the seventh or eighth centuries, or
just possibly in the early ninth, before much of England succumbed to the attacks of the Vikings. But the voices
of those who argue for a later date are slowly becoming more assured. Although very few accept the recently
argued case for the hand of one of the two scribes responsible for making the only surviving copy of the poem
being that of the author himself, many now believe that the poem could have taken the form in which we have it
some time between the birth of Alfred in 849 and the accession of his great-great-grandson Aethelred in 978.
Poems on historical subjects can be dated with more precision, but offer no useful basis for establishing a
comparative chronology. Those recorded in Anglo-Saxon Chronicle entries for the tenth century lack inspiration.
In The Battle of Maldon, composed after the historically documented battle of 991, traditional metrical patterns
are very occasionally replaced by couplets linked with assonance or rhyme similar to that found in contemporary
Latin verse, and this heralds the change which was to overtake English poetry by the twelfth century. But against
this we must set the fact that the majority of lines in The Battle of Maldon do satisfy the constraints of traditional
metre, and it is therefore necessary to accept that Old English classical verse could still be handled competently
after 991.

Anglo-Saxon scribes copied poetry in continuous lines, as they did prose, although some used punctuation to
mark metrical units. The manuscripts give no indication about performance. We might draw some inferences
from other evidence, for example the fact that writers use the terms leoð ('poem') and sang ('song')
interchangeably, but so do Latin writers of poema and carmen, and the word 'lyric' in Modern English may also
apply to poetry or to song. The Old English translation of Bede's account of Caedmon renders Latin cantare
(which may mean 'to chant or recite' as well as 'to sing') as be hearpan singan, literally 'to sing to the harp', and
Old English poems frequently refer to minstrels as performing to the same stringed instrument, which in fact
more resembled a lyre if we judge from manuscript illustrations. The fragmentary remains of a stringed
instrument, carefully wrapped in a beaver-skin bag, were amongst the treasures laid in the great royal ship-burial
at Sutton Hoo, and this bears witness to the fact that patronage of poetry and of the minstrel was considered an
important function of the king. But none of this takes us any nearer to an appreciation of how poetry was
performed, and whether the minstrel's art was closer to modern ideas of singing or of chant than of recitation.
The basis of Old English metre, as of English verse of later periods, is one of alternating stressed and unstressed
syllables. Some 30,000 lines survive, all of them divided into two, roughly equal parts, each containing two
strongly stressed syllables (or lifts) and a variable number of lightly stressed ones (each group of which is known
as a fall). The underlying rhythm may be said to be trochaic or dactylic, with the heavy stresses preceding the
light ones, as in the nursery rhyme :
/X/X/X/X
Mary, Mary, quite contrary
(where '/' represents a heavy stress and 'X' a light one). This line falls into two sense-units, the repeated name
being one, the character-definition the other, and the two-part structure is underscored by the internal rhyme
Mary: contrary. In Old English too a half-line is frequently a sense-unit, but the dividing-point or caesura is
stressed by a change of rhythm, for example the trochaic pattern might become iambic or anapestic, as in
Beowulf 7:

feasceaft funden, /caesura/ he þaes frofre gebad

[Scyld was] found destitute; he lived to see consolation for that

Complex syntax that overruns lines is frequent in Old English poetry, and one of the functions of variation may
be to improve understanding in oral performance by the repetition of key sentence elements. In what seems to
us the best of the surviving poetry, repetition is employed to identify different aspects of what is described.
Here, in the four phrases used of the Danes, the poet first identifies them, stressing their unity, 'all the Danes',
then uses the term Scylding which is both a general patronymic for the tribe and a pointer towards its line of
kings, all of whom (including Hroðgar present here) are descended from Scyld. Hence winum Scyldinga 'friends
of the Scyldings' implies the Danes' amity to one another and their love of their lord. Similarly Segue monegum
'many a thegn' stresses their loyalty and eorla gehwaem 'each of the warriors' their individual bravery. This use of
parallel phrases supplies one level of imagery in the poem. However, such variation makes great demands on the
poet's vocabulary, and consequently the poetry of the period exhibits a specialized diction. In this passage,
oncyð 'desolation' and hafelan are examples of simple words not found in prose. Also, the wide range of
synonyms required for variation, the difficulty of satisfying the constraints of alliteration, and the need to reduce
unstressed syllables to a minimum encouraged the use of compound words, many of which were created by the
poets to satisfy the demands of particular contexts. One third of the lexicon of Beowulf consists of compounds,
most of which do not occur outside poetry or even outside the one poem. The frequency of occurrence of such
compound words is no doubt in part the result of the limited survival of early poetry, but it is hard to resist the
suggestion that some examples were created by poets for the contexts in which they are uniquely found.

Many poetic compounds are not simple descriptive terms but circumlocutory, incorporating a metaphor, as
when Hroðgar in line 1012 is called sincgyfan 'giver of treasure', a reference to the pervasive image of the
comitatus in Old English poetry, that is, a body of men who vow total loyalty to a lord in return for rich gifts. Such
descriptive terms, often periphrastic, are known as kennings. Compound words lend themselves to adaptation to
different metrical and semantic conditions, since one element of the compound can be replaced by a synonym or
a word in a related semantic field. For instance, King Beowulf is called sincgifan in line 2311 but goldgyfan 'giver of
gold' in line 2652 where the poet needs to alliterate on a different consonant. However, the Beowulf poet also
uses the kenning goldwine, literally 'gold-friend', of both Kings Hroðgar and Beowulf, because the relationship
between lord and retainer was much more complicated than that suggested by the mercenary arrangement of
services offered in return for profit. The Wanderer expresses very movingly the desolation of a retainer deprived
of the love and protection of his goldwine (lines 34-44). If sincgifa and goldgyfa may be said to be literal
descriptions, albeit within the convention of the comitatus, goldwine involves the greater degree of compression
found in many kennings.

Often kennings are found as phrases rather than compounds. Hroðgar is called sinces brytta 'distributor of
treasure' or beaga brytta 'distributor of gold rings' to give double alliteration in the first verse of a line. In Judith
this formula is developed to great effect: in line 30, the poet used the traditional sinces brytta with references to
the villain of the poem, Holofernus, when he was entertaining his troops at a feast (the usual opportunity for the
distribution of treasure), but an adaptation of the term is then employed twice by the heroine as she is about to
behead her would-be ravisher, first when she refers to Holofernus as morðres brytta 'distributor of murder' (line
90) and immediately afterwards when she invokes God as tires brytta 'distributor of glory'. It was this ability to
transfer epithets from heroic concepts to religious ones that encouraged the use of the traditional verse form
for Christian purposes. Caedmon's nine-line Hymn of Creation, cited by Bede as the first Christian poetry to be
composed in English, has a number of examples of compounds and phrases which are developed from heroic
vocabulary; for example the kennings used for God, heofonrices weard 'guardian of heaven's kingdom' and
moncynnes weard 'guardian of mankind', may be compared with the Beowulf-Poet's description of Hroðgar as
beahhorda weard 'guardian of hoards of gold-rings' (line 921) or with the commonly used heroic formula for
kings, folces hyrde 'guardian of the people'. The success of poets in adapting traditional forms to serve a variety
of Christian purposes, from biblical paraphrase to hymns to the Virgin, testifies to the flexibility of poetic diction
and imagery.

Kennings abound in Old English poetry, some of the better known being banhus 'bone-house = body', hronrad
'whale-road = ocean', haeðstapa 'heath-walker = stag'. All of these survive in more than one poem, but many
more are unique, such as feorhhus 'life-house = body' which occurs only in The Battle of Maldon. The latter looks
like an adaptation of banhus, but it is impossible for the modern reader to know when an Anglo-Saxon poet is
being original in word - or phrase - formation because of the random survival of texts. The phrases mordres
brytta and tires brytta work well in Judith, but the same kennings are found in other poems too. In fact, the use
of traditional compounds and phrases, as well as their adaptation, is part of a wider pattern of the extensive use
of traditional formulae, only occasionally changed to fit different circumstances or to satisfy artistic demands.
The frequency with which formulaic phraseology, including kennings, recurs throughout Old English poetry
should not be seen as detrimental to its overall effect. The
fact that a verse or kenning is traditional is of less significance than its suitability for the context in which it is
found. A useful example may be seen in the epithets by which the Beowulf poet reintroduces King Hroðgar on
the morning after Grendel has attacked his hall for the first time, killing thirty thegns. Lines 129-30 describe the
king as maere Þeoden, I aeÞeling aergod 'famous leader, fine prince', terminology traditionally used of a strong
and victorious warlord which here by its ironic reversal underscores his helplessness in the face of the might of
the enemy.

Anglo-Saxon poets occasionally made use of extended lines, involving what are known as hypermetric verses.
These consist broadly of one of the five types preceded by a series of 'extra' syllables. If the hypermetric verse is
in the first half of a line, it regularly contains one extra alliterative syllable, but if in the second half, it may not.
Occasionally hypermetric verses occur singly but most are found in groups, and some poems, notably The Dream
of the Rood and Judith, have a regular pattern of alternation between lines of hyper-metric and of normal verses
which give them a stanzaic effect, although it should be stressed that the stanzas thus produced are far from
regular. Such alternation may be seen to lay different degrees of emphasis on different parts of the poem. In The
Dream of the Rood the two longest passages of hypermetric verses surround the nine lines of normal verses
which describe Christ's last moments on the cross, when darkness covered the earth and all creation wept (50-
59). In Judith, the poet's description of the feast at which Holofernus shows himself to be a bad leader by
getting his Assyrian followers drunk consists mainly of normal verses, but a shift into hyper-metric verse allows
for an effective use of the metre to stress a moral point:
Swa se inwidda ofer ealne daeg
dryhtguman sine drencte mid wine,
swiðmod sinces brytta, oðþaet hie on swiman lagon,
oferdrencte his duguðe ealle, swylce hie waeron deaðe
geslegene,
agotene goda gehwylces
(28—32)
'Thus the evil one drenched his body of retainers with wine throughout the whole day, the resolute distributor of
treasure, until they lay in a swoon, he made all his nobility drunk, as if they were struck down by death, drained
of every goodness'.

Hypermetric verses widen the gap between the alliterating sounds in the two halves of a line. In line 31, the
pattern of alliteration is established by the stressed syllables -drenc- and duguð-, and an audience that delighted
in the completion of patterns of alliteration would have its expectations of a word in d- raised through the long
series of unstressed syllables in swylce hie waeron, to be fulfilled dramatically with the whole weight of the metre
emphasizing deaðe, the fate that awaited the army at the end of the poem.

The Old English poetry that has survived may give an unduly limited impression of the range that existed. Scraps,
such as the forty-eight lines of The Battle of Finnsburh, another poem on the treachery of Finn's men which was
found on a single parchment leaf in the eighteenth century and then lost again, suggest that styles not evident in
the rest of the corpus may have been attempted. This poem has a compression of story-telling, an example of
concise direct speech and a certain wry humour which are lacking elsewhere. But we can deduce very little from
an imperfect copy of a fragment of a lost poem, which may have been composed late, under external influences
such as those of Old Norse. Most Old English poetry is slow-moving, elevated in diction and moral in tone, but
enough has been said above to suggest that the best is far from monotonous. The alliterative metre retained its
attraction for English speakers long after post- Conquest French influence introduced other patterns, and the so-
called alliterative revival of the fourteenth century produced major works of literature in Sir Gawain and the
Green Knight and Piers Plowman. Alliteration continued to play an important part in the metre of dramatic verse
in the fifteenth century, and the Germanic alliterative line should be seen as the basis of the blank verse metre of
the sixteenth century. But the tradition of 'classical' Old English verse, with a two-part line, a strong caesura,
alliteration, variation and heavy reliance on traditional diction and imagery, is lost with the Norman Conquest.

℗ Daniel Donoghue & Donald Scragg