N I.AN;IA<;I: AND I.ITKIIATURK. 



SAXON LANOUAiii: AND 



sot 



thought that the i In tl.ni was tuu vague ad loose, but in practice it is 



generally found sufficiently definite ; and there arc mine of its rules 



which certainly give it a more scientific character than belong* to the 



:u that baa lupaneded it For example, no sentence, nor 'any 



unt member of a sentence, could end otherwise than at the 



close of a aectiun. In uur im dem |KUwe often find n sentence Milling 



in the midst of a Motion, or M n immoluu 1\ 



ufUie 



Much 



I*r 



Have found | him (mil | ty of hih.trca | Km. 

 Hr >poke and learnedly for life," &c. i 



but such a rene would not hare been tolerated in an Anglo-Saxon 

 poem. We may indeed find scores of such veraea in the printed 

 edition! of theae poema ; but not one single example, and we speak 

 advisedly, in any Anglo-Saxon manuscript. 



The ' G Iranian's Song ' is the oldest specimen extant of Anglo-Saxon 

 literature. It u found in what is called the Exeter manuscript, one of 

 the bookit Irft by Bishop Leofric to bis cathedral, about the mi. Ml.' . ! 

 the llth century. Of the Gleeman himself we know nothing, save 

 what can be learned from the poem ; but from certain passages in it 

 we may gather that he was born among the Mirginga, a tribe which 

 dwelt on the marches that separated the Kngle from the Swefe in the 

 4th century. In early youth he attended a Mirging princera named 

 Ealhild to the court of Kormanric. the celebrated king of the East-Goteji, 

 and who figures so often in Roman history under the name of Enuen- 

 ricus. (' Ainni. Marc.' xxxi. 3, &c.) His professional tkiil appears to 

 have gained him the favour of thin monarch, and of the great lords 

 who frequented the court, and whom he visited in their respective 

 governments. He afterwards accompanied a Mirging prince into Italy, 

 probably during the inroad of Alaric, A.D. 401 ; and as Gothic leaders 

 were now rapidly gaining a footing in the empire, he seems to have 

 Mind the opportunity of wandering through its provinces. On his 

 return, he must have been an eye-witness of the wars waged between 

 -ttla (Attila) and the East-Goten ; and as .Ktla's accession dates only 

 in 433, and Eormanric died in 375, he must have been more than 

 seventy when he wrote the poem. 



The ' Gleeman's Song,' like many other Anglo-Saxon poems, has a 

 short preface in verse, which appears to be of almost equal antiquity 

 with the poem. 



Then follows a list of celebrated kings, from which the Gleeman 

 select* for special notice Alexandrcns, who appears to be Alexander of 

 Macedon, and Wala, who is, no doubt, the Wallia that founded the 

 kingdom of the Visigoths at Toulouse, A.D. 417. With the exception 

 of Alexander, all of them appear to have been the Gleeman's contem- 

 poraries. After this enumeration he proceeds 



" So I fared through many stranger lands, 

 Through the wide earth ; of gcod and evil 

 There I Usted ; from family parted, 

 From kingmen far, widely I did my suit 

 Therefore may I sing, and story tell, 

 Relate fore the crowd, in mead-hall, 

 How me the high-born with largess bleat. 



I was with the Huns," &c. 



We hare then the names of nations and of countries visited by him, 

 which appear to be strung together in the order best suited to the 

 alliteration. There are also certain notices of the great people by whose 

 bounty he had benefited, and the reader will not be surprised at the 

 Gleeman seeing only a liberal patron in the same monarch (Eormanric) 

 whom the author of the preface denounces as " a wrathful treachour." 

 The whole concludes with a short eulogy on the dignity and privileges 

 of his craft. 



The great value of this poem lies chiefly in that string of names, 

 which ,we have omitted as being so little interesting to the general 

 reader. We do not stop to examine the question, whether any or how 

 many of these notices have been interpolated during the five centuries 

 which elapsed between the composition of the poem and the writing 

 of the manuscript. Our knowledge of early Saxon history is so scanty 

 that all such speculations must be hazardous. But we may observe, 

 that the Scriptures had beep translated into a Gothic dialect long 

 before the Gleeman began his wanderings, and we know from I 

 history that during the 4th century nearly one-half of the Gothic 

 tribes were Christians. We need not therefore necessarily feel 

 suspicion, when we read of the Assyrians and the Persians, the Jews 

 and the Idunucans : they may have been as well known to the Glee- 

 man as to the Saxon monk who transcribed the manuscript. Tin- 



nterest however attaches to the mention of tin- various Gothic, 

 Slavish, and Finnish races. In tracing their history, tin 1 i;leenMn'.-' 

 Song 'is the great link which connects the know I I fimn 



Latin sources with the information gleam-d from (In- Middle Age 

 chronicle. In many instances it furnishes the only r :ietrat- 



ing the na ftery which surrounds these races. There ore tribes, still 



:"-'iind IH-IWII-II tin- Wolj;,i and (lie Vistula, which we can identity 

 with others named liy the Clveinan, and thirdly pro\e to ha\e had a 



il existence fourteen hundred \ of whom hardly 



another trustworthy memorial can In- found, till within the last two ..'r 



three centuries. The helps which it affords us in unravelling tli.-v., 1 , 

 of Gothic fiction are also most valuable, and may, it rightly takon 

 advantage of, save ux from much of that speculation in whieh (icrman 

 scholar* have indulged so largely. _ 



There are two other poems, which must have been composed before 

 tin- Km;le left tli" Continent, the " Hat tie of Kins -luirgh," and the 

 ' Tale of Beowulf.' The first of these is a mere fragtii' nl. Mid a)>|>iar.< 

 to have belonged to one of those historical songs which Tocitua 

 (' Germ.,' 2) represents as the only literature of the ancient Germans. 

 The other is chiefly taken up with the relation of tw.. of I',, -owulf's 

 adventures : the first against a monster called the ' Grciidcl ;' the 

 second against a terrific " worm," or " earthdrake." The poem has 

 come down to us in a modernised form, and the mixture of Christian 

 and heathen notions is sometimes singularly curious. For the moat 

 part, the nature of the subject, and the marked change that takes 

 place in the rhythm, enable us to lay our finger on the very line where 

 the interpolation begins. The following is one of the attempts to 

 reconcile the old superstitions and the new creed : 



"The grim stranger was Grcndcl hlght 

 Mighty paeer of the March ; who held the moors, 

 Fen and fastness land of the Kifel-kin. 



The hapless man long had kept it, 



Sitben his Maker him had doomed. 



On Cain's kin the slaughter nvcnged 



The eternal Lord, for that he Abel slew ; 



For joy'd he in that feud, but him out-drave 



Ills Maker, for the sin, far from mankind. 



Thence evil births all proi 



Kltyns, and Elves and Orknecs ; 



So too the Giants, that ith God fought 



A long throw for it he paid them meed ! " 



The Goths eeem to have peopled every solitude with a race of 

 monsters called the Fifel-kin. The sea, the moor, the fen, the march, 

 or desert track which surrounded the territory of every (i-ithie tribe, 

 were their dwelling-place. The battle, by which Offa -.tiled the 

 marches between the Engle and the Swede, was fought at Fifel-door 

 (see ' Gleeman's Song'), and Alfred, when he brings his hero from Troy, 

 launches him on Fifel-stream, that is, the monster-deep. Ettyiis wen- 

 long remembered in our popular superstitions : 



' They say the king of Portugal cnnnot sit at his meat, hut the giants and 

 cttyni will come to snatch it from him." 



Beaum. and Fl. Knight of (lie Burning Prttlr. 



Elves Btill live in our poetry ; and genuine Gothic giants (notwith- 

 standing the worthy monk tried hard to convert them into rebel 

 angels) still terrify or amuse the nursery. The Orknees are probably 

 the same monsters as the Orks of the Italian romancers. 



Some of the oldest pieces of poetry, written after the removal of the 

 Engle to this country, and now extant, are the songs of Ctcdmon. The 

 circumstances which, first called forth the talents of this poet are 

 related by Bede ; and as he must have known many of Cjcdmon's con- 

 temporaries, his account may be looked upon as a simple narrative of 

 facts. Cscdnion, it appears, was neatherd to the monastery of Whit I iy , 

 then under the government of its first abbess, the celebrated llild. 

 One day at supper, as the harp was passing from hand to hand, and it 

 came to his turn to amuse the company, he stole from the room in 

 one of those fits of diffidence which eo often overtake the sensitive 

 poet. As he slept in the neathouee, some one, he thought, encouraged 

 tiirn to sing, and the song he composed, and which was next day 

 repeated to an admiring audience, established his reputation as a 

 and gained him the patronage of the abbess. He became a monk : was 

 loked upon as one who had received the gift of song from above : and 



u his death his body was enshrined, and valued as one of their most 

 precious relics by the monks of Whitby. 



Only six of Ciedmon's poems have reached us. The subject of the 

 first is the Creation ; that of the second, the Temptation and Fall, to 

 which is added, rather inartificially, a narrative of the events recorded 

 n Genesis, to the offering of Isaac ; the third relates the Exodus ; the 

 fourth, the M -i.-l; and the Torments of the Damned, and 



Christ's Harrowing of Hell, followed by his Ascension and (ilory, are 

 ;he subjects of the other two. Bede tells us that he also wrote on our 

 Lord's Incarnation and his Passion, as also on the Advent of the Holy 

 and the teaching of the Apostles. What remains is equal in 

 length to about one half of the ' Paradise Lost.' [CJDWOK, in Bioo. 

 Div.] ' 



e have called the 'Battle of Fins-burgh' an historical poem: 

 another poem of the same class was written i >n the death of 1 iy rthnoth, 

 who bravely fell in resisting one. of the R'tu-h inroads, A.D. 993. 

 Works, now 1<- t. were written in the lltli eentury, by Leofric, Here- 

 ward 's chaplain, on the warriors of our I : and the songs 



oinmet 'alive of Hi lew.-ird'. tells u- were in 



lis day so popular, were probalily writti n l>y t ' ,1. Then- 



can be little doubt also that many of the Old -English romances, as 



limn.' Havelok,' ' Bevis of South '"> "t' \\.-irwii'' 



arc mere adaptations of An^l ' 'eeasionally the subject 



was taken from foreign sources, of which the ' Tale of Judith,' pro- 



