Widsith is our Ulysses. "I have fared through many stranger lands, through the spacious earth; good and evil have I known." It is the true description of a common type of Englishman in every period of our history. Nor is Widsith's pleasure in his art or his practical pleasure in the receipt of gifts, less characteristic of the English. But the gifts are little in comparison with his joy in his work, and his reverence for it. Even great kings are but little, he thinks, without their singer. In his hands their history lies, and their honour. Horace did not feel more strongly the need of a sacred bard to chronicle great actions than did the earliest of English poets. The poem is then not only the story of wanderings, it also sketches the life and the repute of the Scôp-the name given to the singer and poet who was retained in the court of a king or the hall of a great noble. He was frequently one of the thegns, and received money and landright from the king. He may have been, if not a thegn, on an equality with them; and was often, as we see in Beowulf, a renowned captain. Sometimes, like Widsith, or perhaps like Cynewulf at one period of his life, he took to roving, and singing from court to court. this fashion he became the travelling geographer and historian, the bringer of news, the man who, by singing the great deeds of warriors in various lands, knit together by a common bond of admiration the heroes of diverse peoples, and made the great stories the common property of the Teutonic tribes. In As Widsith is the picture of the poet in his happiness, singing his life in a lyrical fashion, (it has been attempted to arrange the poem in strophes), so the Lament of Deor images the Scop in his sorrow. This song is much later, I think, than Widsith. It belongs to a time when the Gothic cycle of lays had at least well begun. Hermanric has become legendary. Theodric has become the fabulous hero. But the prominence of the story of Weland, and the mention of Geat, localise the poem among the Northern Teutonic tribes. From these it was brought to England, perhaps by some belated Angles, if Sweet be right in his conjecture that it may have been composed before the English migration. I think it is likely to be much later, and to have been made in England - it is put by some as far on as the eighth century, but no decision can be come to on the matter. Its form is remarkable. It has a refrain, and there is no other early English instance of this known to us. It is written in 1 Beowulf is the name of a poem, and of the hero whose deeds are sung in the poem. Whenever I mention the poem, I print its name in italics, and whenever the hero is meant, his name is in ordinary type. strophes, and Sweet thinks that it may be a solitary remnant of a number of English strophic lays which belonged to the same class as some of the old Scandinavian lays which were rudely strophic. One motive, constant throughout, is expressed in the refrain. This dominant cry of passion makes the poem a true lyric, and we ought to look upon it with pleasure, for it is the Father of all English lyrics. Deor is not like Widsith, a treasure-gifted singer, always in favour of his lord. Like the Wanderer who looks back with mourning on the time when he was his master's favourite, he has been deprived of his rewards and lands, and has seen a rival set above his head. It is this whirling down of Fortune's wheel that he mourns in his song, and he compares his fate to that of others who have suffered, so that he may have some comfort. But the comfort is stern like that the Northmen take. Others, he thinks, have gone through great griefs, and come out on the other side of them so also may he win through his pain. Here is the song, and the legendary woes of which he speaks. show that the English knew the story of Weland well, the story of Geat, of Hermanric, of Theodric, and the tale which became in after years the saga of Gudrun 1 German critics have rearranged the first four strophes, and put strophe 4 into the place of strophe 3. The order will then be harmonious. A strophe of six lines will be followed by one of five, twice over; but I think Müllenhof gave up this needless change. 2 There are many readings of this obscure line. As to Weland, Hild, and Geat, a note at the end of the volume treats of them. That Love-sorrow stole all his sleep away! For a thirty winters did Theodric fast We in songs have heard Woe within his waiting! of the wolfish thought Far he owned the folk Grisly was that king. with his sorrows cloaked, Wistfully he longed That the kingdom's king1 overcome should be! That he overwent; this also may I. I omit here what seems a Christian interpolation of the ordinary gnomic character. We may, however, give thanks to it, for I suspect we owe the preservation of this lyric to the zeal of the interpolator who saw in the sadness of Deor an opportunity for introducing his gentle phrases on the vanity of life and the mercy of God. The rest is Deor's own. The Heorrenda who conquered Deor may be the Horant of the Gudrun saga of whom it is said that he bound all men with his song, that the beasts who listened to him ceased to graze in the woods, and the worms and fishes forgot their daily work in his singing. "Now," he says, "I will say concerning myself" of the Heodenings: me Whilom was I Scôp many winters through; seized upon my land-right With this song begins and ends the Old English lyric. We have in Anglo-Saxon a few elegiac poems of fine quality, but the true lyric short, at unity with one thought, with one cry of joyful or sorrowful passion-does not occur again till long after the Conquest. We have yet another sketch of the Scôp which we may well set beside the sketches in Widsith and in Deor, though it belongs to a later time in Anglo-Saxon literature. It is the eighty-ninth riddle of Cynewulf which Dietrich has happily solved as the Wandering Singer 1 I have introduced king into the text. Ætheling am I, and to earls am known; with the rich and with the poor; if that I should have or the goods that shine. And not rarely do I rest Though the sons of men, If this riddle be by Cynewulf, as I think it is, he sketches in it his own position and temperament, and with that, the position and temperament of the Scôp. He was not only ennobled and at home with the rich, but also sang with the poor and stayed in their houses. He loved to win gifts and rings, and to excite the warriors who roved for plunder; but he sang a different kind of song to the elder and wiser men. And we may judge from all that is left to us that these songs of "wisdom 99 were the great sagas like Beowulf, tales of law and justice and noble war; sometimes riddles and gnomic verses fitted for well-witted men; even songs of history like that of Widsith; and, when he had so sung, all men sat silent, listening. Moreover, he was eagerly sought after, but it was often his habit, like many of his clan, to hide himself in solitude, musing like his fellow in Beowulf on new poems; or indulging the melancholy found in the Lament of Deor, and which lay deep in the temperament of Cynewulf. Of this there is ample proof at the end of the Elene. In that poem Cynewulf sketches his early life as a poet. Once he received treasures and appled gold, once his youth was swift and happy, but now all joy was fled away, and sore had been his trouble. But at last, when he seemed to have lost the art of weaving words, God "unbound his breast, unlocked the craft of song, and again he practised with delight his versing." Cynewulf had been then a Scôp attached to a court, and also a wandering singer. He had had his pleasure and also his pain - had been Widsith and Deor in one. When, however, we meet with the wandering Scôp we meet with that which is not usual. His place was, generally, like 1 The passage is most difficult. It means, according to my translation - and I read fremdum instead of fremdes - that the warriors enjoy the singing of a stranger, since he is new to them, more than the singing of their own bards. Deor's, a fixed place, with an appointment of food and money or land which attached him to the court of the chieftain or king. When he wandered, it was either from a roving spirit, or as an attendant on an embassage, like Widsith, or because misfortune had befallen his lord, like the "Wanderer," or because, like Deor, he was dispossessed by a rival. Below the Scôp there were a great number of inferior singers who made it their business to go from place to place, to whom the name of Scôp was not given - who did not shape, but sang that which had been shapen by the Scôp. These were the gleemen, though their name is sometimes given to the Scôpand in later Anglo-Saxon times, they were not unfrequently accompanied by jugglers, tumblers, and wrestlers. These two -the Scôp and the gleeman-were professional persons, but they were not the only singers. Almost every one made verses or sang them. Heroes in the midst of battle sang as they advanced, like Harold Hardrada at Stamford Bridge; Vikings, as they drave their ships through the gale or stormed a town on the river, shouted their hymn of defiance to the sea, or their praises of their ship, or the battle-stroke of the moment. Warriors chanted their deeds of the day in the hall or the camp at night, as Woden's chosen did in Valhalla. The old chiefs sang the glory of their youth. Their very swords and spears were thought to sing. The spear yells, the sword shouts in battle. Then, the wanderer who came into the hall to claim hospitality sang his stave of thanks, or versed for the chief in the high seat, who he was. The king himself often broke in with his tale, and seized the harp as Hrothgar did in Heorot. Even the preachers afterwards, like Ealdhelm, sang ancient songs in the public ways to draw the people round them. In the women's chambers, also, the old lays were sung. Alfred, we are told, sang the ballads of his people at his mother's knee. At the feasts of the commoner folk it was the same as in the noble's hall. Freedmen, peasants, even the serfs, sent round the harp, (as we hear from the Caedmon story in Baeda), telling, as Greek and Roman did, alternate tales. The player beat the harp in time with the thoughts and images of his song; his voice rang out the alliterated words and the accented syllables of the verses. Gesture accompanied and exalted the things described. The listeners often joined in, moved to excitement, and a whole chorus of voices filled the hall, the monastery, or the farm-building. As the practice of the art was widely spread, so was it greatly honoured. The very name of Scôp, like the independent word |