by Cynewulf. These grounds are, however, only literary, and literary persons alone are likely to receive them as amounting to probability. Nor am I at all anxious to prove the point. What is important is not who wrote the poetry, but of what kind the poetry is. I hope I have made it pretty clear in previous chapters, not by criticism, but by examples, that the writer, whoever he was, had not only talent, but some genius; nor do I hesitate to say that some of the most imaginative Anglo-Saxon poetry we possess is contained in about a dozen of the Riddles. I do not think I need dwell here on their range of natural description, or on any of their special characteristics. Those who have read what I have given of them in the chapters on the "Settlement," and the "Sea," can indulge in and supply their own criticisms. The Riddles given in those chapters are, however, on noble subjects, belonging to Nature and War and Wisdom; things fitted for the hearing of the grayhaired prince, the warrior, and the monk. There are a number of others, of which I have not written, which were made for the villagers and the ruder sort; to fit the other end of society. The common animals of the hamlets. the ox, the dog, the hens, the swine; the common things in use the cowhide, the leathern bottle, the wine-vat, the onion, the one-eyed garlic seller, and the fools who are led astray by the night. are celebrated by this manifold writer who had seen the world. It only remains to say that there are a few of such primæval grossness that they indicate a young man's hand, and a coarse audience in village or camp. It seemed to me once, that if he was afterwards, as some think, the Bishop of Lindisfarne or even a monk — I do not believe he was either- he would not have allowed them to exist. But it is probable that he could not have repressed them. They were afloat, and were no doubt repeated from mouth to mouth. They may not have been collected until after the writer's death. Moreover, English folk, even the monks, were never very prudish, and became less and less so as monasticism grew corrupt in Northumbria. Even Leofric, who, I suppose, read the Exeter Book through before he gave it to his Cathedral Library, did not erase these riddles. CHAPTER XXIII CYNEWULF We know the names of only two writers of Anglo-Saxon poetry, and these two are Caedmon and Cynewulf. We know that Caedmon was a Northumbrian of Whitby, but we do not know whether he wrote any of the poems which bear his name. It is different when we think of Cynewulf. Many believe him to have been a Northumbrian, but we do not know this with any certainty. But we do know some of the poems he wrote; he has signed four of them with his name -Juliana, the Christ, the Fates of the Apostles, and the Elene. There is a fifth writingthe Riddles - which most persons think he has also signed with his name. In the four first he signs in this fashion. He puts the runes which spell his name into certain connected and personal verses in the midst, or at the end, of each of these poems; and Kemble was the first to discover that these runes, when placed together, made up the poet's name. Owing to this discovery it occurred, as we have seen, to Leo that the first Riddle contained in a charade the syllables of Cynewulf's name, and that in this way the Riddles were also signed. Attached to the four signatures, if I may call them so, there are four personal statements in which something of his character and part of his life are vividly portrayed. Moreover, the last riddle which I have translated in the first chapter is, if we allot it to him, as vivid a description of himself as a young poet, as the personal descriptions in the signed poems are of himself as a religious man in old and middle age. We possess then not only his name, but we can also realise him as a man; and he is not unlike some of our own poets, though so many centuries have passed away. He is, for instance, as personal as Cowper, and in much the same way. No other of the Anglo-Saxon poets has this fashion of talking about himself, and it is so unique, and the manner of it so distinct, that when I find it in a poem which is not signed by him in the Dream of the Rood-it seems to me to be as good as his signature. by Cynewulf. These grounds are, however, only literary, and literary persons alone are likely to receive them as amounting to probability. Nor am I at all anxious to prove the point. What is important is not who wrote the poetry, but of what kind the poetry is. I hope I have made it pretty clear in previous chapters, not by criticism, but by examples, that the writer, whoever he was, had not only talent, but some genius; nor do I hesitate to say that some of the most imaginative Anglo-Saxon poetry we possess is contained in about a dozen of the Riddles. I do not think I need dwell here on their range of natural description, or on any of their special characteristics. Those who have read what I have given of them in the chapters on the "Settlement," and the "Sea," can indulge in and supply their own criticisms. The Riddles given in those chapters are, however, on noble subjects, belonging to Nature and War and Wisdom; things fitted for the hearing of the grayhaired prince, the warrior, and the monk. There are a number of others, of which I have not written, which were made for the villagers and the ruder sort; to fit the other end of society. The common animals of the hamlets. the ox, the dog, the hens, the swine; the common things in use - the cowhide, the leathern bottle, the wine-vat, the onion, the one-eyed garlic seller, and the fools who are led astray by the night-are celebrated by this manifold writer who had seen the world. It only remains to say that there are a few of such primæval grossness that they indicate a young man's hand, and a coarse audience in village or camp. It seemed to me once, that if he was afterwards, as some think, the Bishop of Lindisfarne or even a monk - I do not believe he was either - he would not have allowed them to exist. But it is probable that he could not have repressed them. They were afloat, and were no doubt repeated from mouth to mouth. They may not have been collected until after the writer's death. Moreover, English folk, even the monks, were never very prudish, and became less and less so as monasticism grew corrupt in Northumbria. Even Leofric, who, I suppose, read the Exeter Book through before he gave it to his Cathedral Library, did not erase these riddles. CHAPTER XXIII CYNEWULF We know the names of only two writers of Anglo-Saxon poetry, and these two are Caedmon and Cynewulf. We know that Caedmon was a Northumbrian of Whitby, but we do not know whether he wrote any of the poems which bear his name. It is different when we think of Cynewulf. Many believe him to have been a Northumbrian, but we do not know this with any certainty. But we do know some of the poems he wrote; he has signed four of them with his name Juliana, the Christ, the Fates of the Apostles, and the Elene. There is a fifth writing — the Riddles which most persons think he has also signed with his name. In the four first he signs in this fashion. He puts the runes which spell his name into certain connected and personal verses in the midst, or at the end, of each of these poems; and Kemble was the first to discover that these runes, when placed together, made up the poet's name. Owing to this discovery it occurred, as we have seen, to Leo that the first Riddle contained in a charade the syllables of Cynewulf's name, and that in this way the Riddles were also signed. Attached to the four signatures, if I may call them so, there are four personal statements in which something of his character and part of his life are vividly portrayed. Moreover, the last riddle which I have translated in the first chapter is, if we allot it to him, as vivid a description of himself as a young poet, as the personal descriptions in the signed poems are of himself as a religious man in old and middle age. We possess then not only his name, but we can also realise him as a man; and he is not unlike some of our own poets, though so many centuries have passed away. He is, for instance, as personal as Cowper, and in much the same way. No other of the Anglo-Saxon poets has this fashion of talking about himself, and it is so unique, and the manner of it so distinct, that when I find it in a poem which is not signed by him in the Dream of the Rood-it seems to me to be as good as his signature. - The question as to whether he was a Northumbrian or not has been elaborately argued to and fro, and Wülker, with all these warring arguments before him, concludes that the matter remains doubtful until further evidence, for or against, is supplied. I have, however, a few suggestions to make in confirmation of my belief that he was a Northumbrian, or at least lived in the North; and I am not aware (though it is probable enough) that they have been made before. The first is, that if Cynewulf wrote the Riddles - and far the greater number of critics think he did he was well acquainted with a storm-lashed coast bordered with cliffs; with the life and business of sailors in their ships, and that the seas which he knew were not only tempestuous but frequently weltering with ice. It seems incredible that the writer of the riddles on the Anchor and the Tempests, to say nothing of others, could have lived inland in Mercia, or on the low-lying coasts of East Anglia, or on the southern coasts of Wessex where ice was never seen in the sea, and where seamanship in the eighth century was at a very low ebb. The Christ is also full of sea allusions; the cliff-barrier between sea and land is once, at least, vigorously seen; and the famous passage, translated at vol. i. p. 256, is written by one who had been a sailor, who knew the pains 2 1 A full discussion of the whole question will be found in Wülker's Grundriss, pp. 157-164. 2 This welter of sea and ice which, frequently spoken of in Beowulf, is there no doubt a remembrance of the Baltic frosts, is also spoken of in the Seafarer and the Riddles, and other poems which belong, as I think, to Northumbria. It would not be seen, I have said, on the Anglian or Wessex coasts, but it is seen to this day on the Northumberland coasts, especially where the great sand-flats extend far out to sea, and are covered daily by the tide. In the course of a severe three days' frost, the sand-flats become one vast ice-field, many hundreds of acres in extent and five or six inches in thickness. The tide daily breaks this up and carries the broken masses about; fresh ice forms on the vacant parts, and this is again broken up, till, as the storm comes in, the welter of ice and water is amazing. "Where, as happens in such extremity of cold as we experienced" (and I quote from Abel Chapman's Bird Life of the Borders, p. 165) "in the winter of 1878-79, and again in January 1881, the frost continues unbroken for weeks at a time, the phenomena created by the ice and tide are almost incredible save to those who have witnessed them. The masses of detached ice, split up by their own weight into fragments of all sizes and shapes and carried here and there by the currents, drive helter-skelter in the tideway, and along the lee shores are thrown up into ridges and rugged piles, extending for miles along the shore. Outside this glacial barrier of stranded blocks, the floating floes, carried along by the strong tide currents, grind and crash against each other, piling up table on table till they become miniature icebergs, and form a spectacle such as few have seen outside the Arctic regions." If this took place in Northumberland in 1881, what must it have been in the eighth century, when the winters, owing to the vast extent of the forest land, were much colder than now, and the snowfall much heavier. The Northumbrian poets saw this continually, and described it, but the Wessex and Mercian folk did not see it at all. |