50 BETIEWS — HIAWATHA. 



of northern Europe is well attested, and no doubt he knows, much 

 better than his critics, that the alliteration and verbal repetitions, on 

 which chiefly rest the evidences of his supposed plagiarism from 

 Finnish or Norse poets, is not only adducible from the ancient poems 

 of Scandinavia, but from those of his own fatherland — both Celtic and 

 Anglo-Saxon. It is no very rare blunder of the shallow critic to 

 mistake for something peculiar and individual, a characteristic common 

 to a whole age. The following extract from Layamon's " Brut 

 d'Angleterre" may suffice as an early example of the alliterations and 

 verbal recurrences which so puzzle the critics of New York, but were 

 nevertheless familiar to their Anglo-Saxon forefathers ages ago, in 

 that semi- Saxon translation of the thirteenth century. To Layamon's 

 old version we add our own Canadian one, not as an attempt to convert 

 its simple inventory Into poetry like that of Longfellow, but merely to 

 shew the ease with which such verse may be rendered into the measure 

 of "Hiawatha :"— 



"Tha the king igeten hafde 



And al his raon-weorede, 



Tha bugen ut of burhge 



Theines swithen balde. 



Alle tha kinges : and heroe here-thringes, 



Alle tha biscopes : and alle tha clarckes, 



Alle tha eorles : and alle the beornes, 



Alle tha theines : alle tha sweines, 



Feire iscrudde : helde geond felde. 



Sumrae heo gunnen cernen, 



Summe heo gunnen urnen, 



Summe heo gunnen lepen, 



Summe heo gunnen sceoten, 



Summe heo wraestleden 



And wither-gome makeden," &c. 



Both Kemble and Thorpe have edited this ancient translation of 

 Wace's " Brut," but in the absence of their versions, we take the semi- 

 Saxon from Ellis, and in the following rendering of it into modern 

 English, adhere pretty closely to the literal text: — 



There the king then having feasted, 



And his multitude of warders, 



Forth there hastened out of burgh 



All the people very quickly. 



All the kings and throng of servants, 



All the bishops, all the clergy, 



All the earls, and all the nobles, 



All the thanes, and all the peasants, 



Gaily mantled, thronged the meadows 



And betook them to their pastimes. 



