Old English/Anglo Saxon Pagan Poems

1. Widsith – 143 lines long
   • Other name: The Far Traveller
   • Oldest poem in English language.
   • Survives in: Exeter book
   • Three Thulas (Poetic genre) of Widsith:
     1. A list of the various kings of name, both contemporary and ancient. 
     2. Name of people the narrator visited.
     3. Heroes of Myth and legends that the narrator has visited.
   • The widely travelled poet widsith (meaning ‘for journey’). 
   • Oldest extent Germanic Poem.
2. Waldere – 63 lines long
   • Discovered by E.C Werlauff, Librarian in 1860, in Danish Royal Library at Copenhagen, where it is still preserved.
   • Two fragments remain from 1000 C
   • The first main translation of Waldere was by Fredrick Norman in 1933.  
3. Beowulf
   • According to modern scholars, dated around 750
   • Oldest surviving English Epic of the Teutonic people.
   • Anonymous Anglo-Saxon Poet.
   • Type: Heroic poetry.
   • Begins with, “Yes, we have heard of the glory of the Spear-Danes’ kings in the old days–how the princes of that people did brave deeds.”
   • Narrative: Omniscient 3rd person narrator.
   • Dialect: West Saxon
   • Contained in the Nowell Codex manuscript Collection
   • Theme: Continental German
   • Three major trials:
     1. Battle with a monster: named Grandel
     2. Followed by an attack by Grendel’s Mother
     3. Years later: confronted by a dragon
   • Characters:
     • Beowulf: King of Geates and son of Ecgtheow, who sailed to Denmark to rid King of Denmark Hrotgar from monster Grendel.
     • King Hrothgar: King of Danes.
     • Wealhtheow: Hrothgar’s wife, Queen of Danes.
     • Aeschere: Hrothgar’s trusted adviser and friend, whom Grendel’s Mother kills.
     • Grendel: Monster, He is guided by human emotions and impilses.
     • Dragon
   • Heorot: in Beowulf, is a place of King Hrothgar.
   • The last Battle in Beowulf takes place in Greatland, where Beowulf has become King.
   • After 50 years from killing Grandel, he killed a dragon before death.
   • In the 1990s two major poets Scot Edwin Morgan and Irishman Seamus Heaney retranslated it into modern English, Heaney’s translation became a worldwide bestseller.
   • In “Beowulf,” what is wergild? Blood-price
   • Kevin Kiernan produced The Electronic Beowulf (1982)
   • Seamus Heaney translated Beowulf in 1999
4. Fight at Finnsburh (48 lines): Allusion to which is made in the Finn Episode in Beowulf
5. The Battle of Brunanburh – 73 lines long
   • Time of the war: 937 between English army of king AEthelstan and a combined army of Northern Kings (Scots, Vikings, Britons).
   • Written in West-Saxon Dialect
   • Edited by – Alistair Campbell
   • Remarkable for its nationalistic tone.
   • The poem begins with praise King AEthelstan and his brother Edmund I for their victory. It mentions the fall of Scots and Seafarers in a battle that lasted for a day. 
   • Lord Alfred Tennyson translated or modernised the poem in 1880 publishing it as part of his Ballads and Other Poems, and his son Hallam Tenyson published a prose translation of the poem.
   • The Argentine Writer Jorge Luis Borges write a short poem “Brunanburh 937 AD”.
6. The Battle of Maldon
   • Stresses blood-shed and loss, commemorating a battle in the year 991 or 993. 
   • What Old English poem tells the story of resistance against a Scandinavian raid? The battle of Maldon
   • Synopsis:
   • The Battle of Maldon, Old English heroic poem describing a historical skirmish between East Saxons and Viking (mainly Norwegian) raiders in 991. It is incomplete, its beginning and ending both lost. The poem is remarkable for its vivid, dramatic combat scenes and for its expression of the Germanic ethos of loyalty to a leader. The poem, as it survives, opens with the war parties aligned on either side of a stream (the present River Blackwater near Maldon, Essex). The Vikings offer the cynical suggestion that the English may buy their peace with golden rings. The English commander Earl Byrhtnoth replies that they will pay their tribute in spears and darts. When the Vikings cannot advance because of their poor position, Byrhtnoth recklessly allows them safe conduct across the stream, and the battle follows. In spite of Byrhtnoth’s supreme feats of courage, he is finally slain. In panic some of the English warriors desert. The names of the deserters are carefully recorded in the poem along with the names and genealogies of the loyal retainers who stand fast to avenge Byrhtnoth’s death. The 325-line fragment ends with the rallying speech of the old warrior Byrhtwold (here in modern English):

Old English Religious Poetry

Caedmon and Cynewulf both wrote on Biblical & Religious themes.

Caedmon: Wrote on the themes of Old Testament

• Also called – Anglo-saxon Milton
• He was a saphered
• 9-lines of alliterative poem/hymn in honour of God
• The first native English port who used Anglo Saxon dialect.
• Oldest surviving O.E text
• His works are in: Junius Manuscript

Caedmon’s Hymn

• His works were preserved by the monks of Whitby.
• The earliest Northumbrian poet whose name is known. He was originally ignorant of “the art of song” but learned to compose one night in the course of a dream, according to 8th Century historian Bede.
• The first fragment of literature in English: Caedmon’s Hymn in late 670 (Unfortunately, all of Cædmon’s poems are lost, but Bede in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People does describe one of them, which is known as Cædmon’s Hymn.) ia an alliterative verse.
• His hymn is known to have been copied in 21 medieval manuscripts. 19 of these texts exist in their original form today.
• Genesis, Exodus and Daniel is considered under one title Christ. All four poems draw upon Latin sources such as homilies and hagiographies (the lives of Saints) for their content.
• Where does this quote come from? “Then middle-earth, mankind’s Guardian, eternal Lord, afterwards made.”
• Caedmon’s Hymn

Genesis

1. Genesis is a poem of 2,936 lines. The first 234 lines describe the fall of angels and parts of the creation. Lines 235–851 give a second account of the fall of angels and tell of the fall of man. The sequence, style, and superior quality of these lines reveal them to be interpolated.

Exodus

1. Exodus, an incomplete poem of 590 lines regarded as older than Genesis or Daniel, describes the flight of the Israelites with considerable dramatic power.

Daniel

1. Daniel, an incomplete poem of 764 lines, is a scholarly work closely following the Vulgate Book of Daniel and much inferior to Exodus in poetic quality.

Christ & Satan

1. The 729-line piece known as Christ and Satan contains a lament of the fallen angels, a description of the harrowing of hell (Christ’s descent into hell after his death), and an account of the temptation of Christ by Satan.

Cynewulf: New Testament

• Probably Northumbrian
• One of 12 O.E poets known by name from Anglo-Saxon period.
• His poems are religious in theme.
• 3 of the poems are martyrolical (the branch of history that deals with the lives of martyrs) in which protagonists suffer for their religious values. The Fates of the Apostles, Juliana, Elene.
• His 4 poems with runic signature:
  1. The Fates of the Apostles – 122 lines. The speaker creates a song that meditates on the death of the apostles which they joyously faced.
  2. Juliana – 731 lines. The titular character dies after she refuses to marry a pagan man, thus retaining her christian integrity.
  3. Elene – 1,321 lines (longest). In Elena, Saint Helena endures her quest to find the Holy cross and spread Christianity.
  4. Christ II (The Ascensions)– 427 lines (also known as The Christ’s Ascension)

• Dialect: Cynewulf wrote in the Anglican dialect.
• The Exeter Book holds his Juliana and Christ II (The Christ’s Ascension) and the Vercelli Book his Elene and Fates of Apostles.
• Lives of saints: 1. Fates of The Apostles 2. Christ’s Ascension 
• **The Dream of The Rood: finest of all O.E religious poem, controversy over authorship. Rood = Cross. It gives us the image of Suffering and redemption.
• Who is “the young hero” of the poem “The Dream of the Rood”? Jesus Christ
• Rood = Cross
• Which of the following is an example of a kenning? Triumph-tree
  • In “The Dream of the Rood,” the word “triumph-tree” is used to refer to Christ’s cross. A kenning replaces a single word with a compound word, often linked by a hyphen. A kenning used for God’s thoughts in “Caedmon’s Hymn” is “mind-plans,” and a kenning used for the sea in “Beowulf” is “whale-road.”

• From what work does this quote come? “Wonderful was the triumph-tree, and I stained with sins, wounded with wrongdoings.” The Dream of the Rood
• What work contains the characters Birhtnoth and Ethelred? The dream of the rood

Elegies

1. The Wanderer
   • Preserved in Exeter book
   • Date 10th century, around 975
   • 115 lines alliterative verse
   • Anonymous 
   • Personages: The narrator of the “wise man”‘s speech, and the “wise man”, presumably the “Wanderer” himself. 
   • What work begins, “He who is alone often lives to find favor.” ***The Wanderer
   • Themes: A number of formal elements of the poem have been identified by critics, including the use of the “beasts of battle” motif, the ubi sunt formula, the exile theme, the ruin theme, and the journey motif, as also seen in The Seafarer.
   • The “beasts of battle” motif, often found in Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry, is here modified to include not only the standard eagle, raven, and wolf, but also a “sad-faced man”. It has been suggested that this is the poem’s protagonist.
   • The ubi sunt or “where is” formula is here in the form hƿær cƿom, the Old English phrase “where has gone”. The use of this emphasises the sense of loss that pervades the poem.
   • In “The Wanderer”, why is the wanderer wandering – His king died.
   • In “The Wanderer”, when the wanderer wakes up , what does he see? The sea.
   • In “The Wanderer”, when the wander reflects on mankind, what does he realize?
   • All men will one day grow old and die.
   • In “The Wanderer”, according to him, what things are fleeting? Riches and Treasure
   • In “The Wanderer”, how does the wanderer com to terms with his loss?
   • He realizes that everything in life must die.
   • You can tell that the wanderer in “The Wanderer” most keenly feels the loss of his lord when he imagines kneeling before a throne
   • The first half of “The Wanderer” suggest that the Wanderer lives in an emotional state of agonized silence
   • The speakers in all three poems express a deep despair and loneliness
   • “The Measurer” in line 2 of “The Wanderer” In “The Wanderer”, all of the following refer to the protagonist
     • A.    “Lone-dweller”
     • B.     “The friendless man”
     • C.     The earth-stepper”
     • D.    Claimed by the “exile-track” refers to The Christian God
   • The literary devices kenning, alliteration, and caesura classify “The Wanderer” as a poem from which literary period? Anglo-Saxon period
2. Wife’s Lament
   1. The poem read as a riddle.
   2. The wife does not know why her husband left her.
3. Husband’s Message
4. Deor’s Lament
   1. The first poem in history about unemployment.***
   2. The speaker in Deor’s Lament recounts the day to day trials of life, naming several heroes of Germanic origin, and their sufferings, with the repeated chorus – “That evil ended, so also may this”

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Important Quotations

• That evil ended. So also may this, – Deor’s Lament
• Lo! I will tell the dearest of dreams. – The Dream of the Rood
• The ruinous deeds of the ravaging foe. – Beowulf
• Bold in battle fighters fell
• Weary with wounds. Death covered earth.
• Lenten is come with love to them. – Spring C, 1330

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Fact Treatment

1. Literary Techniques:
   
   1. Blank Verse: no end rhyme
   2. Alliteration: Repetition of consonant sounds within a line of poetry.
   3. Caesura: A pause in the middle of a line in poetry
   4. Kenning: Metaphor made of compound words
      
2. Riddle: linguistic guessing game.Which are the Old English Dialects?
   1. Northumbrian, Mercian, West Saxon, Kentish
3. Kentish was a dialect of:
   1. Jutes in the southeast.
4. Old English is a synthetic inflectional language.
5. Which did medieval minstrels do? : Sing ballads.
6. Anglo Saxon Metre marked by accent and persistent
7. Scandinavian Sagas were translated to English in the 19th century by William Morris.
8. Martyology: Prose works about Saints & martyrs
9. Gnomic Verse= moral aphorism or proverb
10. Kevin Kiernan produced The Electronic Beowulf (1982)
11. Seamus Heaney translated Beowulf in 1999
12. Anglo Saxon literature was – Oral until Christianity was introduced.