first he measured with his hands the torment and the woe, and then (as he descended) the lurid flame smote upwards and against him, and then he saw the captives lie below him in hell, and then the howl of the demons reached his ear when they saw the unholy one return, and then he on the bottom stood. And when he was there it seemed to him that to hell door from the place where he had been was 100,000 miles by measure. And he looked round on the ghastly place, and there rose a shriek from all the lost, and they cried aloud to the Lord of their kingdom. 733. There! be ever thou in evil! Erst thou wouldst not good. With this fine passage close the poems that bear the name of Caedmon. Whatever their several dates be, they are a noble beginning to English song. Whoever be their several writers, they owe their impulse to the man who on that night took care of the cattle in the monastery of Hild. Honour from all the English race, from all the poets, greatest of the English race, is due to his name. He was the first (and I borrow some of Ebert's phrases) who, like a Scop singing heroic tales, sang to the people in their own tongue the tales of the Old Testament and the subject-matters of Christianity. He showed how this new material might be assimilated by the genius of the people. He made the bridge which led to the artistic poetry which begins, after him, to handle the same subjects. The old singers of heathendom, crossing it, became the new singers of Christianity. CHAPTER XX 99 THE followers of Caedmon were many, Baeda says, and the phrase proves that there was a number of Northumbrian poems on Christian subjects at the time of Baeda's death in 735. Some of these poets adopted, no doubt, Caedmon's method, which may have been hymnic, and among them there were simple paraphrasers of the Sacred Books, men who sang only for the monastery and not for the mead-hall. But there were others, as we see plainly from the Exodus, who, while they followed him, passed far beyond simple narration. They conceived their subject in somewhat of a Saga fashion, and recited their work to please the warriors, the king, the thegns, and the freemen as they sat in the hall at the mead. The religious element is of course introduced, and the poem, half war, half religion, touching heathendom with one hand and Christianity with the other, equally excited and instructed the feasters. Of this type is the Judith: a poem of the cycle of Caedmon, written, it is most likely, in Northumbria, and which we may perhaps roughly date at about the middle of the eighth century. Had this long and important piece of work been by Caedmon, as some have said, it would not, I think, have been omitted from Baeda's catalogue of the poet's work, nor passed over without a distinct reference, among the plurimae sacrae scripturae historiae which he ascribes to Caedmon. Moreover, the form in which the poem is cast, its unity of story which can be discerned even in the portion left to us, its careful composition and its rhythmical changes1 bear witness to a time 1 The writer of Judith, like the writer of Genesis B, has frequent recourse to those long swelling lines when he is excited, which, while retaining the three alliterative stresses - two in the first half of the line, one in the second; sometimes only one in the first half- allowed the poet to insert at the beginning of each half line as many unaccented syllables as he chose. Hence the third letter-stress is almost always on the last word but one of the line. when poetry had added to its early simplicity a more artistic method, such as, for example, we find in the Exodus. The same uncertainty as to date which belongs to the greater number of Anglo-Saxon poems belongs also to Judith. The dates given by well-known scholars range over three hundred years, from the seventh to the tenth century. This is enough to show that we have no clear criterion in our hands. The various conjectures will be found drawn together, with an exhaustive treatment of the poem itself, in a book written by Mr. Cook, who puts forward an interesting suggestion with regard to the origin of the Judith. He thinks it was composed in gratitude for the deliverance of Wessex from the fury of the Northmen, and dedicated to Judith, the stepmother of Ælfred, the great-granddaughter of Charles the Great, whom, in her charming youth, Ethelwulf brought to England as his wife in the year 856. Her name, her joyous reception by the people and her beauty suggested the choice of the subject, and it may have been written by Swithhun, Bishop of Winchester, Ethelwulf's friend and teacher. The arguments by which he strengthens this theory deserve consideration, but the poem still remains for me a Northumbrian poem of the beginning or the middle of the eighth century; after Baeda's death, and before the times of anarchy and decay. There is no melancholy note in the poem. It exists only in a single manuscript, the same in which the Beowulf has been handed down to us. The several parts of the poem are headed with numbers, and we possess fourteen lines of section ix., and the whole of sections x. xi. xii. These together reach to 350 lines. The other books are lost-that is, about threefourths of the poem. It was then an important piece of about 1400 lines in all, and I say again that had a poem of this length and power been in existence while Baeda was alive, he would probably have mentioned it when he spoke of the followers of Caedmon, or as Caedmon's own, had Caedmon written it. The tenth book begins with a vigorous description of a great drinking feast given by Holofernes which lasts the whole day till all the Captains are furiously drunk. As to Holofernes, he seems to be drawn direct from some English chief, well known for drinking prowess. "He laughed and shouted and raged so that all his folk heard far away how the stark-minded stormed and yelled, full of fierce mirth and mad with mead." He bids Judith be led to his tent. A golden 1Judith. Albert S. Cook, Professor of English Language and Literature in the University of California. Boston, Heath and Co. - fly-net hangs between his bed and the drinking chamber, so that he could see the guests, but they might not look on him. Drunk, he fell on his bed, and Judith steps forth, with plaited tresses. And she held a sharp sword, hardened by the storms (scurum) of battle, "drew it from the sheath, and called on the Ward of Heaven - God the creator, spirit of consolation." The prayer is nobly wrought, brief and forceful, full of passion-passion for her country and her God, passion of the woman brought so near to shame. "Let me hew down," it ends, "this lord of murder! Venge thou, O God, that which is so angry in me, the burning in my heart." The slaughter is then carefully described. Her cleverness, as she seizes the heathen by the hair and fits him for the blow; her strength, as she drives the glittering sword half through his throat, and then again smites the heathen dog, half dead, till his head rolled out upon the floor, are as vigorously hewn into the verse as the sword into Holofernes. "There lay the foul carcase, but the spirit turned to go to the deep abyss, and was battened down, with pangs, with worms enwound in that snake-hall." Book xi. then takes Judith and her "pale-cheeked maid," with the head in their bag, out of the sleeping camp, till they see the "shining walls of fair Bethulia. There sat on the ramparts the burghers, watching, and Judith called to them, and the folk ran to the gate, men with women, crowding together; stormed and raced, old and young in thousands, to meet the divine maid." She bids her girl unwrap the bloody head, and Joan of Arc could not have made a more impassioned, a more warlike speech 177. Clearly may ye now, 185. conquering heroes strong; O ye leaders of the people, (looking) stare upon the head most of murderous woes for us! I have wrenched his life away. Each burg-dweller to the battle. 189. Fit ye for the fighting! Merciful and monarch,1 Now will I bid each of you When the God of first beginnings, bear your lindens forward then, Shield-board sheltering your breast, byrnies for your raiment, Helmets all a-shining, Felling the folk-leaders midst that horde of scathers; Chieftains cursed for death! (Courage !) all your foes Ye shall have dominion, 1 Arfaest oyning, "glorious king"; but ar has also the sense of compassion. Gain a glory in the battle; as the greatest Lord through mine hand to you. Then the host of swift ones speedily was readied; all the warriors bold as kings, all the comrades, bore their victory banners, fared into the fight; forward in right line they moved; all the heroes under helm from the holy burg at the breaking of the day. Din there was of shields, loud they rang; and the gaunt wolf of the weald rejoiced, and the black raven, greedy of slaughter. Well they knew both of them that the heroes thought to count out death to the doomed;1 and upon their track flew the Earn, hungry for its fodder; all its feathers dewy; dusky was its sallow coat; horny-nebbed, he sang his battle-song. Swiftly stepped the chiefs of battle to the field of carnage, with the hollow lindens sheltered. . . . Then they let, with valiancy, showers of their arrows fly, adders of the battle from their bows of horn, hard-headed bolts. Loudly stormed the warriors fierce, and their spears they sent, right into the host of hard ones. .. So the Hebrews showed their foes what the sword-swing was. By this time the Assyrian host is roused, and Book xii. relates how the messengers came from the outskirts of the host to the chief thegns, and how they roused the standardbearing warrior; and how they took counsel whether they dared to wake Holofernes. Too much at this crisis is made of this poor motive. They gather round their lord's tent. No noise awakens him. At last, one bolder than the rest breaks in, and lo! pale lay his gold-giver on the bed, robbed of life. "Here lies," he cries, "headless, hewn down by sword, our Upholder." All their weapons fall; they fly; behind them urges a mighty folk; the Hebrew heroes "hew a path with swords through the press, thirsty for the onset of the spear." So fell in dust the nobles of Assyria, left to "the will of the wolves, fodder for the fowls of slaughter." Then is told the gathering of the spoil. "Proud, with plaited locks, the Hebrews brought precious treasures to Bethulia's shining burg-helms and hip-seaxes, bright-gray byrnies, and panoplies of warriors inlaid with gold. And to Judith, wise and fair of face, they gave the sword and bloody helm, and eke the huge byrnie of Holofernes all with red gold embossed, and his armlets and bright gems. For all this she said praise to the Lord of every folk." Then the poem makes a fair ending, tender and gracious and touched with that 1 Or, perhaps, "to furnish for them their fill on the doomed." |