Poems Attributed to Cynewulf
[In the following essay, Brooke discusses the five poems which were not signed by Cynewulf but have been attributed to him by various critics, with an emphasis on spiritual elements.]
The most important of these poems are the Phaenix, the second part of the St. Guthlac, the Harrowing of Hell, the Andreas, and the Dream of the Rood. They have all been attributed to Cynewulf, but with regard to the two last there has been much difference of opinion, and present criticism tends to remove them from his hand.
The Phenix is in the Exeter Book, and runs to 677 lines. Its source is a Latin poem by Lactantius. Cynewulf, to whom almost all the critics attribute the poem, leaves his original at verse 380, and then composes the story he has told into an allegory of the Resurrection. He uses, in this second part, the writings of Ambrose and Beda. He greatly expands, but sometimes shortens, the original Latin of the first part. His expansions are mostly when he is describing natural scenery or breaking into praise. The ending is somewhat fantastic in form—eleven lines, the first half of each in Anglo-Saxon, the latter half in Latin. The Latin is alliterated with the Anglo-Saxon.
The first canto describes the Paradise—which is related to the Celtic land of eternal youth—in which the Phcenix dwells, and I have already translated a part of this famous piece. The second describes the enchanting life the Bird lives from morn to evening in that deathless land of joy. A translation of them will best express the careful imagination of Cynewulf, and his delight in the doings of the sun and in the waters of the earth and sea.
He shall of the Sun see and watch the
voyaging;
And shall come right on 'gainst the candle of
the Lord,
'Gainst the gladdening gem! He shall gaze
with eagerness
When upriseth clear that most Ætheling of stars,
O'er the Ocean wave, from the East a-glitter,
Gleaming with his glories, God the father's
work of old;
Beacon bright of God!—Blind the stars shall
be,
Wandered under waters to the western realms,
All bedimmed at dawn, when the dark of
night,
Wan, away has gone. Then, o'er waves, the
Bird,
Firm and feather-proud, o'er the flowing ocean
stream,
Under Lift and over Lake, looketh eager-
hearted
When up-cometh fair, from the East a-gliding
O'er the spacious sea, the upshining of the
Sun.
The next lines repeat the same motive in other words, and as this is one of the characteristics of Anglo-Saxon poetry, and as Cynewulf manages it with excellent skill, I translate them here. They were used to heighten the impression, and when they were sung were perhaps set to different music or to the same in a different key.
So the fair-born fowl at the fountain-head,
At the well-streams wonneth, in a
winsomeness unfailing!
There a twelve of times, he, the joy-
triumphant one
In the burn doth bathe him, ere the beacon
cometh,
Candle of the Æther; and, as often, he
Of those softly-joyous springings of the Wells
Tastes at every bath—billow-cold they are!
Then he soars on high, when his swimming-
play is done,
With uplifted heart on a lofty tree—
Whence across the Eastern paths, with an ease
the greatest,
He may watch the Sun's outwending, when
that Welkin-taper
O'er the battle of the billows brilliantly is
blickering,
Flaming light of light! All the land is fair-
adorned;
Lovely grows the world when the gem of
glory,
O'er the going of great Ocean, glitters on the
ground,
Over all the middle earth—mightiest this of
stars!
This is the repetition, and very well done it is. Then Cynewulf describes the Phcenix' life till evening falls, and its wondrous song.
Soon as ere the Sun, o'er the salt sea-
streamings,
Towers up on high, then the gray and golden
fowl
Flieth forth, fair shining, from the forest tree;
Fareth, snell of feathers, in its flight along the
lift;
Sounds, and sings his way (ever) sunwards on.
Then as beautiful becomes all the bearing of
the bird;
Borne his breast is upwards in a blissfulness
of joy!
In his song-craft he makes changes, in his
clear re-voicing,
Far more wonderfully now than did ever bairn
of man
Hear, the Heavens below, since the High-
exalted King,
He the Worker of all glory, did the world
establish,
Earth, and eke the Heaven.
The up-ringing of his
voice
Than all other song-crafts sweeter is and
lovelier;
Far away more winsome than whatever
winding lay.
Not alike to that clear sound may the clarion
be,
Nor the horn nor harp-clang, nor the heroes'
singing—
Not to one of them on earth—nor the organ
tone,
Nor the singing of the sackbut, nor sweet
feathers of the swan;
None of all the other joys that the Eternal
shaped
For the mirthfulness of men in this mournful
world.
So he sings and softly sounds, sweetly blest
in joy,
Till within the southern sky doth the Sun
become
Sunken to its setting. Silent then is he.
Listening now he lends his ear, then uplifts
his head,
Courage-thrilled, and wise in thought! Thrice
he shaketh then
Feathers whet for flight—so the fowl is still.
Thus lives the Phcenix for a thousand years and then flies far to the Syrian land, where on a high tree he makes his death-nest of odorous leaves; and when at summer time the sun is brightest, the nest is heated, and the fury of fire devours bird and nest. But the ashes, balled together, grow into an apple, and in the apple a wondrous worm waxes till it becomes an eagle, and then a Phcenix as before. Only honey-dew he eats that falls at midnight, and when he has gathered all the relics of his old body he takes them in his claws and, flying back to his paradise, buries them in the earth. All men and all the birds gather to watch his flight, but he outstrips their sight, and once more in his happy isle "dwells in the grove, delighting in its bubbling streams." When Cynewulf has thus brought his bird back, he makes two allegories out of the story—one, of the immortal life of the saints—for Christ after the judgment flies through the air attended by the adoring souls like birds, and each soul becomes a Phcenix and dwells for ever young in the city of life; and the other of Christ himself, who passed through the fire of death to glorious life. "Therefore to Him be praise for ever and ever. Hallelujah!"
it is here, after the Phcenix, that we may probably place and date the second part of St. Guthlac. Most critics allot it to Cynewulf, and some suggest that if we had its end, it would contain that poet's runic signature. It is preceded by a first part, which is so poor in comparison with the second that, if Cynewulf wrote it, I should place it before the Juliana, that is, immediately after his conversion. He would be likely to take, as his first Christian subject, the story of an English saint.
The complete work, first and second parts, follows on the Crist in the Exeter Book, and Mr. Gollancz has transferred to its beginning a number of lines usually printed as the end of the Crist. These form, he says, the true introduction to the Guthlac, and he supports his opinion by the fact that there is a blank space in the manuscript before these lines begin. The Crist certainly ends better where he now makes it end, at line 1663. But the difficulty of accepting these lines as the beginning of the first part of Guthlac is that the quality of their poetry is far superior to anything else in that part. The only way I see out of that difficulty is to hold that Cynewulf placed these lines at the beginning when, several years afterwards, he wrote the second part. He kept then the first as it was, but he remodelled the introduction. That would be natural enough, and would equally suit either the view that Cynewulf wrote the first part in early days, or that he made use of an old poem on St. Guthlac written by some other person.
A few pleasing lines of description illuminate the first part, but otherwise it is a hampered and barren piece of work. It rests chiefly on traditions of the Saint. The second part, often differing from the first with regard to the same events, follows closely the Life of Guthlac by Felix, written in Latin prose for an East Anglian king between the years 747 and 749. The first part avoids the poetic terms commonly used by heathen poets. In the second, composed when Cynewulf's soul was at peace in forgiveness, he freely uses the old saga expressions.
The death of St. Guthlac is its subject—the last fight of a Christian hero with death and Satan. This is told in almost as heroic a manner as Beowulf s fight with the dragon; and Guthlac's death-praise is sung—not as Beowulf s by his comrades but in as heroic a strain—by the angels who receive him with high pomp of music and lays into the "hereditary seat of the saints."
The scenery, which does not disdain the nature-myths, is carefully painted. The sun plays his part in the contest. Night darkens with her shadowy helm the battlefield; night after night strides like a phantom across the sky. Guthlac stands alone on his hill, as if on Holmgang, and Satan rushes on him with many troops, "smiths of sin, roaring and raging"; but his soul, full of joy, was ready, and the fiend is put to flight. Then death enters the lists, "that warrior greedy of corpses, the stealthy bowman who draws near in the shadow with thievish steps." "How is thine heart, my lord and father," asks his disciple; "Shelter of friends, art thou sore oppressed?" "Death is at hand," Guthlac answers, "the warrior never weary in the fight." Then, "hot and close to Guthlac's heart, the whirring arrow-storm, with showers of war, drove into his body."
But before he dies, he tells his disciple the secret of his converse with an angel who visits him "between the rushing of the dawn and the darkening of the night." My soul, he cries, is struggling forth to reach pure joy. "Then sank his head; but still high minded, he drew his breath; and it was fragrant as the blowing herbs in summer time, which, each in its own home, drop honey and sweetly smell, winsome on the meadows." The next sixty lines are some of the finest in old English poetry. They begin with the setting of the sun, and the rising of the pillar of light, that common miracle, over the hut where Guthlac lies.
When the glorious gleaming
Sought its setting-path, swart the North-sky
grew,
Wan below the welkin; veiled the world in
mist,
Thatched it thick with gloom! Over thronged
the night,
Shrouding the land's loveliness! Then of
Lights the greatest
Holy from the heavens came, shining high,
serenely,
Bright above the Burg-halls!
All the night it blazed, and "the shadows dwindled, loosed and lost in air, till the murmur of the dawn softly drew from the east over the deep ocean." Then Guthlac rose, sent his last message to his dear sister, was "houselled with the food majestic," and the angels bore his soul on high. All heaven bursts into a lay of victory. The ringing sound was heard on earth; "the blessed Burg was filled with bliss, with sweetest scents, with skiey wonders, with the singing of the seraphim, to its innermost recesses, rapture following rapture. And all our island trembled, all its field-floor shook." The messenger, himself shaken by fear, drew out his ship and hurried over seas to Guthlac's sister. This passage brings together so many of the terms by which the Anglo-Saxon poets called the ship that I insert it here. The disciple
Urged the Stallion of the sea, and the Water-
rusher ran
Snell beneath the sorrow-laden! Shone the
blazing sky,
Blickering o'er the Burg-halls; fled the
Billow-wood along,
Lightly lifting on its way. Laden, to the hithe,
Flew at speed the Flood-horse, till this Floater
of the tide,
After the sea-playing, scornful surged upon
the sea-coast,
Ground against the shingle-grit.
He gives his message, and the poem, written at the zenith of Cynewulf's power, breaks off suddenly, unfinished.
It is probable that the fragment of a Descent into Hell was written about this time, that is, after A.D. 750. Almost every critic gives it to Cynewulf. It has the manner of the first part of the Crist, the same trick of dialogue, the same choric outbursts of exalted praise. There is a passage in which the poet apostrophises Gabriel, Mary, Jerusalem, and Jordan which almost parallels a passage in the Crist, but is better done. For the poem was probably written after the Crist. There are traces in it of the use of the pseudo-gospel of Nicodemus, but there are no traces of that gospel in the Crist. Moreover, the use of the terms of heroic saga, begun in the Guthlac, is here more fully developed. The women who go to the tomb, the disciples, the patriarchs, even the soldiers, are Æthelings. Jesus is the victory-child of God, his death a king's death, his burial the burial of a hero-king. John the Baptist is the greatest of his thegns who welcomes Christ to the doors of Hades, as an English chieftain would welcome his victorious lord. Here is a passage:—
At the dawning of the day down a troop of
angels came,
And the singing joy of hosts was round the
Saviour's burg;
Open was the earth-house, and the Ætheling's
corse
Took the spirit of life. Shivered all the earth,
High rejoiced Hell's burghers, for the Hero
had awakened,
Full of courage from the clay. Conquest-sure,
and wise,
Rose on high his majesty! Then the Hero,
John,
Spoke exulting.
This is the full saga note. It is even fuller when Christ breaks down the gates:—
On his war-path hastened then the Prince of men,
Then the Helm of Heaven willed the walls of
hell
To break down and bow to ruin, and the Burg
unclothe
Of its sturdy starkness—He, the strongest of
all kings!
No helm-bearing heroes he would have for
battle then;
None of warriors wearing byrnies did he wish
to bring
To the doors of hell! Down before him fell
the bars,
Down the hinges dashed, inwards drove the
king his way!
All the exiles throng to see him, but of the great deeds when the "doors of hell, garmented so long in darkness, glearned in the glory of the king," John, the great thegn, saw the most. His long speech of welcome breaks off in the midst, and this heroic fragment closes.
If we allow that Cynewulf wrote the Andreas,1 this is the place, before the Elene, in which to place it. It is much younger in sentiment, in movement, in fancy than the Elene. The heroic strain in it is as full as in the Descent into Hell, and fuller than in the Elene, or rather, it is used in a ruder way. But the attribution of it to Cynewulf is doubtful. Fritzsche, who started this doubt, gives it to an imitator of Cynewulf, and Wilker agrees with him, though he allows that in the use of words and in the speech of it, as well as in the whole fashion of its representation, there is certainly a great deal which puts one in mind of Cynewulf.
The poem does not possess the personal sentiment so characteristic of Cynewulf, nor his habit of accumulating repetitions of the same thought, nor his slow-moving manner broken by swift and rapturous outbursts of song. On the contrary, it is full of changing incidents, its movement is swift, its pictures are imaginative, and there are few repetitions. Nevertheless, there are many phrases which put us in mind of Cynewulf, but then there are many which recall Beowulf. Had Cynewulf read Beowulf about this time, he might have been drawn into the manner of the Andreas. On the whole it is no wonder that it is attributed to an imitator of Cynewulf, though it is not easy to conceive of an imitator who is as good a poet as his original, who resembles his original at so many different points—in his heroic strain, in the curious badness of his rude humour, in his knowledge of a stormy sea and coast. The writer was evidently one who had sailed the seas. It is all these resemblances, combined with the great excellence of the Andreas, that makes the difficulty of the imitation theory. In fact, in their anxiety to give nothing to Cynewulf which he has not signed, the critics have pushed their imitation theory too far. It is very difficult to believe that three poets, each of them of a capacity and imagination able to write the Phcenix, the Andreas, and the Dream of the Cross should have lived at so early a period in the same century, and been companions of a fourth like Cynewulf. Heaven is not usually so gracious. It is possible, as we know from Elizabeth's time and our own, but it is very improbable in the eighth and ninth centuries. The new theory of Mr. Gollancz of the Fates of the Apostles, as the epilogue to the Andreas, would settle these difficulties, and allot the Andreas to Cynewulf. "The Fates of the Apostles," he says, "consists of little more than a hundred lines; it is certainly no meritorious piece of work, and it seems strange that a poet should have been so anxious to attest his authorship thereof by a long runic passage. In the MS., the poem immediately follows the legend of Andreas, and I am more and more inclined to regard it as a mere epilogue to this more ambitious epic, standing in the same relation to it that the tenth passus of Elene does to the whole poem. Its relationship is perhaps even closer, for whereas the ninth passus of Elene ends with 'finit,' there is no such ending in the case of Andreas. At the present moment I see nothing that militates against this view of the Cynewulfian authorship of the Andreas, and further investigation will enable us, I think, to claim that Cynewulf inserted his name in his four most important works—the epics on Christ, Elene, Juliana, and Andreas." This is a happy suggestion, and we will wish it to be proved true. It adds to the Andreas that personal cry the want of which makes us doubt that Cynewulf was its author. It frees us from the difficulty of putting a poem so poor as the Fates of the Apostles into Cynewulf's best period, for it is then not a separate poem, but a mere epilogue which we may conceive to have been written carelessly. At any rate its heroic manner is quite in accordance with the Andreas. Amid all these conflicting opinions, it is comfortable to be able to turn to something which is certain—to the poem itself. There is very little worth our interest in the question—Who wrote the poem? It is of the greatest interest to us to be able to feel the poem itself.
The Andreas is in the Vercelli Book along with the Elene, and runs to 1724 lines. The source of the legend is the Acts of Andrew and Matthew, a Greek MS. discovered in the Royal Library at Paris. There was no doubt a Latin translation of them from which Cynewulf worked. The poet used his original with freedom, and the note of the Andreas is fully English—more English than any other Cynewulfian poem. Andrew, Matthew, Christ, the angels, are all English heroes and English sailors, and the scenery is also English.2
The poem divides into two parts. The first has an introduction which describes the seizure and imprisonment of Matthew by the cannibal Mermedonians (, Ethiopians). This is followed by the vision of Christ to Andrew and his voyage over the sea to deliver Matthew. The second part, which may be called the Glory of Andrew, is introduced by another vision of Christ to Andrew, now landed on the Mermedonian coast. This is followed by the delivery of St. Matthew, the martyrdom of Andrew, and the final triumph of the saint in the conversion of the Mermedonians.
The important part of the poem, from the point of view of literature, is the sea-voyage of St. Andrew, and it is so remarkable that I give a full account of it. "When the night-helm had glided away, behind it came the light, the trumpet-sound of the dawn." But in the night the Lord appeared to Andrew in a dream, while he dwelt in Achaia, and bade him go to Mermedonia to deliver his brother.
"How can I, Lord, make my voyage so quickly over the paths of the deep. One of thine angels from the high Heaven might more easily do this. He knows the going of the seas, the salt streams, and the road of the swan; the onset of the billows, and the Water-Terror, but not I. The Earls of Elsewhere are unknown to me, and the highways over the cold water."
"'Alas, Andrew!' answered the Lord, 'that thou shouldst be so slow of heart to fare upon this path. Nathless, thou must go where the onset of war, through the heathen battle-roar and the war-craft of heroes, is boded for thee. At early dawn, at the marge of the sea, thou shalt step on a keel, and across the cold water break over the bathway.' No skulker in battle was Andrew, but hard and high-hearted and eager for war. Wherefore at opening day he went over the sand-links and to the sea-stead, his thegns with him, trampling over the shingle. The ocean thundered, the billows beat the shore, the resplendent morning came, brightest of beacons, hastening over the deep sea, holy, out of darkness. Heaven's candle shone upon the floods of sea."
This is all in the heroic manner, and more so than in any other Anglo-Saxon poem. Moreover, it is filled with the sea-air and the morning breaking on the deep. The very verse has the dash and salt of the waves in it, and the scenery is more like a Northumbrian than an East Anglian or a Wessex shore. The sand-dunes, the shingle, the thunder of ocean, resemble Bamborough so closely that I have often thought that the writer of the poem may have lived at Holy Island.
Then, as Andrew stood on the beach, he was aware of three shipmasters sitting in a sea-boat, as they had just come over the sea, and these were Almighty God, with His angels twain, "clothed like ship-farers, when, on the breast of the flood, they dance with their keels, far off upon the water cold"
"Whence come ye," said Andrew, "sailing in keels, sea-crafty men, in your water-rusher, lonely floaters o'er the wave? Whence has the ocean stream brought you over the tumbling of the billows?"
"We from Mermedonia are," replied Almighty God. "Our high-stemmed boat, our snell sea-horse, enwreathed with speed, bore us with the tide along the way of the whale, until we sought this people's land; much grieved by the sea, so sorely were we driven of the wind."3
"Bring me there," said Andrew; "little gold can I give, but God will grant you meed."—"Strangers go not there," answered the Lord, standing in the ship; "dost thou wish to lose thy life?"—"Desire impels me," said Andrew, and he is answered from the bow of the boat by God who is, like a sailor of to-day, "sitting on the bulwark above the incoming whirl of the wave," and the extreme naïveté of the demand for payment, and the bargaining on the part of God, belong to the freshness of the morning of poetry; while the whole conversation is a clear picture of the manners and talk of travellers and seamen. We stand among the merchant carriers of the eighth century in England.
"Gladly and freely," the shipman says, "we will ferry thee over the fishes' bath when you have first paid your journey's fare, the scats appointed, as the ship-wards will desire of you." Then answered Andrew, sore in need of friends: "I have no beaten gold, nor treasure, nor lands, nor rings, to whet hereto your will."—"How then," said the King, "wouldst thou seek the sea-hills and the margin of the deep, over the chilly cliffs, to find a ship? Thou hast nothing for comfort on the street of sea; hard is his way of life and work who long makes trial of the paths of sea."
Andrew tells him he is God's thegn, and on His mission. Ah, answers God the Sailor, if it be so, I will take you. And they embark, but the whale-mere is soon mightily disturbed by a gale—
The sword-fish played
Through ocean gliding, and the gray gull
wheeled
Greedy of prey; dark grew the Weather-torch;
The winds waxed great, together crashed the
waves,
The stream of ocean stirred, and drenched
with spray
The cordage groaned; then Water-Terror rose
With all the might of armies from the deep. 4
And Andrew's thegns were afraid, but as in Beowulf, as in the Fight at Maldon, they will not leave their lord. "Whither can we go then," they say; "in every land we should be shamed before the folk, when those known for courage sit to choose who best of them has stood by his lord in war, when hand and shield upon the battle plain, bowed down by grinding swords, bear sharp straits in the play of foes." And Andrew cheers them by telling them of the storm that was calmed by Christ:—
So happened it of yore when we in ship
Steered for the sea-fords o'er the foaming bar,
Riding the waves; and the dread water-roads
Seemed full of danger, while the ocean-
streams
Beat on the bulwarks; and the seas cried out,
Answering each other; and at whiles uprose
Grim Terror from the foaming breast of sea,
Over our wave-ship, into its deep lap.
…And then the crowd
'Gan wail within the keel, and lo, the King,
The Glory-giver of the angels, rose
And stilled the billows and the weltering
waves,
Rebuked the winds! Then sank the seas, and
smooth
The might of waters lay. Our soul laughed
out,
When we had seen beneath the welkin's path
The winds and waves and water-dread become
Fearful themselves for fear of God the Lord.
Wherefore in very sooth I tell you now
The living God will never leave unhelped
An earl on earth if courage fail him not.
The thegns sleep, but Andrew and the steersman renew their talk. "A better seafarer," Andrew says, "I never met. Teach me the art whereby thou steerest the swimming of this horse of the sea, this wave-floater, foamed over by ocean. It was my hap to have been time after time on a sea-boat, sixteen times, pushing the deep, the streamings of Eagor, while froze my hands, and once more is this time—yet never have I seen a hero who like thee could steer o'er the stern. The sea-welter lingers on our sides, the foaming wave strikes the bulwark, the bark is at full speed. Foam-throated it fares; most like to a bird it glides o'er the ocean. More skilful art in any mariner I've never seen. It is as if the ship were standing still on a land-stead where nor storm nor wind could move it, nor the water-floods shatter its foaming prow; but over seas it sweeps along, swift under sail.
Yet thou art young, O refuge of warriors, not in winters old, and hast the answer of a sea-playing earl, and a wise wit as well."
"Oft it befalleth," answers Almighty God, "that we on ocean's path break over the bathway with our ocean stallions; and whiles it happeneth wretchedly to us on the sea, but God's will is more than the flood's rage, and it is plain thou art his man, for the deep sea straightway knew, and ocean's round, that thou hast grace of the Holy Ghost. The surging waves went back; a fear stilled the deep-bosomed wave."
Andrew, hearing this, broke into a song of praise, and this part of the poem closes; for now Christ changes the subject, and asks Andrew to tell him of his master Jesus, that is, of Himself—a pleasant motive. They have a long conversation until sleep overtakes Andrew. He wakens on shore in the morning, and sees a landscape which I have also thought might have been drawn direct from Bamborough:—
Until the Lord had bid in brightness shine
Day's candle, and the shadows swooned away,
Wan under clouds; then came the Torch of
air,
And Heaven's clear radiance blickered o'er
the halls.
Then woke the hard in war, and saw wide
plains
Before the burg gates, and precipitous hills,
And, round the gray rocks and the ledges steep,
Tile-glittering houses, towers standing high,
And wind-swept walls.
Then Andrew awakened his comrades. "'Twas Christ the Ætheling," he says, "that led us to cross the realm of the oar."—"We, too," they answer, "have had our adventure"; and this poet, who has a special turn for various incident, develops for them the dream in which they are brought into the heavenly Paradise:—
Us weary with the sea sleep overtook!
Then came great earns above the yeasty
waves,
Swift in their flight and prideful of their
plumes;
Who from us sleeping took away our souls,
And bore them blithely through the lift in
flight,
With joyful clamour. Bright and gentle they
Caressed our souls with kindness, and they
dwelt
In glory where eternal song was sweet,
And wheeled the firmament.
And there they saw the thegns of God, the patriarchs and martyrs and prophets, and the apostles and archangels praising the Lord. And Andrew gives thanks to Christ, who now in form of a young 2Ætheling draws near. "Hail to thee, Andrew," he cries, "the grim snare-smiths shall not overwhelm thy soul."
"How could I not know thee on the journey?" Andrew answers. "That was a sin."
"Not so great," replies Christ, "as when in Achaia thou saidst thou couldst not go over the battling of the waves. But now arise, set Matthew free. Bear many pains, for war is destined to thee. Let no grim spear-battle make thee turn from me. Be ever eager of glory. Remember what pains I bore when the rood was upreared. Then shalt thou turn many in this burgh to the light of Heaven."
Andrew then—and here begins the Delivery of St. Matthew—enters invisibly the town, like a chieftain going to the field of war. Seven watchmen keep the dungeon. As the saint drew near, death swept them all away; hapless they died; the storm of death seized on these warriors all beflecked with blood. The door fell in, and Andrew, the beast of battle, pressed in over the heathen who lay drunken with blood, ensanguining the death-plain. In that murder-coffer, under the locks of gloom, he found Matthew, the high-souled hero, singing the praises of God. They kissed and clipped each other. Holy and bright as heaven a light shone round about them, and their hearts welled with joys. Now when Andrew had delivered Matthew, he went to the city and sat him down by a pillar of brass on the march-path, full of pure love and thoughts of bliss eternal, and waited what would happen. And here begins the story of his suffering. The folk-moot is held, and the Mermedonians send for Matthew to devour him. He is gone, and an agony of hunger falls on them. The council is called, and the burghers, like English folk, "come riding to the Thing-stead on their horses, haughty with their ashen spears," and cast lots whom they shall eat. A youth is given up by his father, but Andrew blunts the knife, at which a devil cries—"It is Andrew, a stranger iÆtheling, who has done this. There he stands." He is seized; God cheers him, but he is dragged through gorges and over stony hills, and "over the streets paved with parti-coloured stones," and brought back, his thought still light and his courage unbroken, to his prison. A bitter night of frost is then painted, to frame and enhance the lonely figure of the martyr.
Then was the Holy One, the stark-
souled Earl,
Beset with wisdom's thoughts the whole night
long,
Under the dungeon gloom.
Snow bound the earth
With whirling flakes of winter, and the storms
With hard hail-showers grew chill, and Frost
and Rime—
Gray gangers of the heath5—locked closely up
The homes of heroes and the peoples' seats!
Frozen the lands; and by keen icicles
The water's might was shrunken on the
streams
Of every river, and the ice bridged o'er
The glittering Road of the Sea.
The next day's martyrdom follows, till "the sun, gliding to his tent, went under a headland of clouds, and Night, wan and brown, drew down her helm over the earth and veiled the steep mountains."
A wild scene takes place in the prison when the Devil, with seven shield-companions, attacks and is repulsed by Andrew, and another day of torment closes with the vision of Christ, who tells him he shall no longer suffer; and he looks on the track where his blood has gushed forth, and it is sown with blowing bowers laden with blossoms. On the plain where he has been left for dead are two upright stones, which are the two tables of the Law, and at Andrew's word they send forth a mighty, weltering torrent, and air and earth and fire join in the overwhelming. The yellow waters swell, the wind roars, fire-flakes fall on the town, the earth trembles, and a great angel withstands the warriors. All the wicked ones are swallowed by a cleft in the hills, and the rest, repenting, cry—"Hear Andrew, he is the messenger of the true God." He baptizes them, builds a Church, appoints Plato as Bishop, and the poem closes with the description of his departure, such as the poet may have written when he read in Bwda how Ceolfrid went away from the shores of Tyne.
Then by the nesses of the sea they brought
The eager warrior to his wave-wood home,
And weeping after him, stood on the beach,
As long as they could see that Æthelings' joy
Sail o'er the seals'-path, on the tumbling
waves.
Then they gave glory to the glorious Lord,
Sang in their hosts, and this it was they
sang—
"One only is the eternal God! Of all
Created beings is his might and power
Lauded aloud; and over all, his joy,
On high a holy splendour of the Heavens,
Shines through the everlasting ages far,
In glory beautiful for evermore
With angel hosts—our Ætheling, our King."
The Dream of the Rood is in the Vercelli Book. There is great discussion concerning its authorship. A large number of critics allot it to Cynewulf, but they lessen the weight of their opinion by giving other poems to Cynewulf which have nothing in them of the artist. Ten Brink and Zupitza both maintained against Wuilker the authorship of Cynewulf. No assertion can be made at present on the subject. It is a matter of probabilities.
I not only think it probable that Cynewulf wrote it, but I believe it to be his last poem, his farewell to earth. It seems indeed to be the dirge, as it were, of all Northumbrian poetry. But I do not believe that the whole of the poem was original, but worked up by Cynewulf from that early lay of the Rood, a portion of which we find in the runic verses on the Ruthwell Cross. That poem was written in the "long epic line" used by the Cadmonian school, and I think that when in our Dream of the Rood this long line occurs, it belongs to or is altered from the original lay. The portions by Cynewulf are written in the short epic line, his use of which is almost invariable in the Elene.
What he did, then, was probably this. Having had a dream of the Cross in his early life which converted him and to which he refers in the Elene, he wished to record it fully before he died. But he found a poem already existing, and well-known, which in his time was attributed by some to Cadmon, and which described the ascent of Christ upon the Cross, His death and burial. He took this poem and worked it up into a description of the vision in which the Cross appeared to him. Then he wrote to this a beginning and an end of his own, and in the short metre he now used.
This theory, whatever its worth may be, accounts for the double metre of the poem, does away with the strongest argument—that derived from metre—against Cynewulf's authorship, explains the difficulty of the want of unity of feeling which exists between the dream-part and the conclusion, and leaves to Cynewulf a number of passages which are steeped in his peculiar personality, which it would be hazardous to allot to any one but himself.
The introduction is quite in his manner, with the exception of two long lines. The personal cry—"I, stained with sins, wounded with my guilt," is almost a quotation from his phrases in the Juliana and Elene. The impersonation of the tree, the account of its life in the wood, is like the beginning and the manner of some of the Riddles. The subjective, personal element, so strong in his signed poems, is stronger in his parts of this poem. It would naturally be so if the poem were written, when he was very near to death, as his retrospect and his farewell. It is equally natural, if this view of the date of the poem be true, that he would enshrine at the last, by means of his art, the story of the most important hour of his life, and leave it as a legacy to the friends of whom he speaks so tenderly. "Lo," it begins—
Listen, of all dreams, I'll the dearest
tell,
That at mid of night, met me (while I
slept),
When word-speaking wights, resting,
wonned in sleep.
To the sky upsoaring, then I saw,
methought,
All enwreathed with light, wonderful, a
Tree;
Brightest it of beams! All that beacon
was
Over-gushed with gold; jewels were in
it,
At its foot were fair; five were also there
High upon the shoulder-span, and beheld it
there, all the angels of the Lord,
Winsome for the world to come! Surely that
was not, of a wicked man the gallows.
These two last lines may belong to the original poem, which Cynewulf was working on. Now he goes on himself:—
But the spirits of the saints saw it (shining)
there,
And the men who walk the mould, and this
mighty universe!
Strange that stem of Victory! Then I, spotted
o'er with sins,
Wounded with my woeful guilt, saw the
Wood of glory,
All with joys a-shining, all adorned with
weeds,
Gyred with gold around! And the gems had
gloriously
Wandered in a wreath round this woodland
tree.
Nathless could I, through the gold, come to
understand
How these sufferers6 strove of old—when it
first began
Blood to sweat on its right side. I was all
with sorrows vexed,
Fearful, 'fore that vision fair, for I saw that
fleet fire-beacon
Change in clothing and in colour! Now
beclouded 'twas with wet,
Now with running blood 'twas moist, then
again enriched with gems.
Long the time I lay, lying where I was,
Looking, heavy hearted, on the Healer's
Tree—
Till at last I heard how it loudly cried!
These the words the best of woods now began
to speak—
"Long ago it was, yet I ever think of it,
How that I was hewed down where the holt
had end!
From my stock I was dissevered; strong the
foes that seized me there;
Made of me a mocking-stage, bade me lift
their men outlawed,
So the men on shoulders moved me, till upon
a mount they set me."
These lines seem to me partly Cynewulf's and partly of the old poem. He has introduced personal modifications to fit them into his dream. Now, he scarcely touches the old work: and the lines run on to a length which contrasts strangely with those of the conclusion to the dream itself:—
"Many were the foemen who did fix me there!
Then I saw the Lord, Lord of folk-kin he,
Hastening, march with mickle power, since he
would up-mount on me."
"But I—I dared not, against my Lord's word, bow myself or burst asunder, though I saw all regions of earth trembling; I might have felled His foes, but I stood fast:—
Then the Hero young, armed himself for
war,—and Almighty God he was;
Strong and staid of mood stepped he on the
gallows high,
Brave of soul in sight of many, for he would
set free mankind.
Then I shivered there—when the Champion
clipped me round;
But I dared not, then, cringe me to the earth.
A Rood was I upreared, rich was the King I lifted up; Lord of all the heavens was he, therefore I dared not fall. With dark nails they pierced me through and through; on me the dagger-strokes are seen; wounds are they of wickedness. Yet I dared not do them scathe; they reviled us both together. Drenched with blood was 1, drenched from head to foot—blood poured from the Hero's side when lie had given up the ghost. A host of wrathful weirds I bore upon that mount. I saw the Lord of peoples serve a cruel service; thick darkness had enwrapt in clouds the corse of the King. Shadow, wan under the welkin, pressed down the clear shining of the sun. All creation wept, mourned the fall of the King: Christ was on the Rood. I beheld it all, 1, crushed with sorrow.… Then they took Almighty God: from that sore pain they lifted him; but the warriors left me there streaming with blood; all wounded with shafts was 1:—
So they laid him down, limb-wearied; stood
beside the head of his lifeless corse.
Then they looked upon him, him Lord of
Heaven, and he rested there, for a little
time.
Sorely weary he, when the mickle strife was
done! Then before his Banes, in the sight of
them,
Did the men begin, here to make a grave for
him. And they carved it there of a glittering
stone,
Laid him low therein, him the Lord of victory.
Over him the poor folk sang a lay of
sorrow
On that eventide!
And there he rested with a little company." Here the old work ends, and Cynewulf, touching in what he had learnt from the Legend of Helena and the Cross, is told by the Rood to tell his dream to men, to warn them of judgment to come, and to bear, if they would be safe, the Cross in their hearts.
Now the Rood ceases to speak, and Cynewulf's personal conclusion follows. Its first lines are retrospective. They tell how he felt in early manhood, immediately after the dream which was the cause of his conversion. He felt "blithe of mood," because he was forgiven, "passionate in prayer, eager for death," a common mixture of feelings in the hearts of men in the first hours of their new life with God. "Then, pleased in my heart, I prayed to the Tree with great eagerness, there, where I was, with a small company, and my spirit was passionate for departure." But he did not die, forced to out-live many sorrows—"Far too much I endured in long and weary days." Then he turns from the past to the present—"Now I have hope of life to come, since I have a will towards the Tree of Victory. There is my refuge." Then he remembers all the friends who have gone before him, and sings his death-song, waiting in joy and hope to meet those he loved at the evening meal in heaven. "Few are left me now," he says, "of the men in power I knew":—
Few of friends on earth; they have fared from
hence,
Far away from worldly joys, wended to the
Lord of Glory!
Now in Heaven they live, near to their High
Father,
In their brightness now abiding! But I bide me
here,
Living on from day to day, till my Lord His
Rood,
Which I erst had looked upon, long ago on
earth,
From this fleeting life of ours fetch my soul
away—
And shall bring me there, where the bliss is
mickle,
Happiness in Heaven! There the High God's
folk
At the evening meal are set; there is
everlasting joy!
At last, with a happy reversion to that earlier theme he loved—the deliverance of the Old Testament saints from Hades—he turns from himself, now going home, to the triumphant home-coming of Jesus; soaring, as his custom was, into exultant verse:—
Hope was then
renewed,
With fresh blossoming and bliss, in the souls
who'd borne the fire!
Strong the Son with conquest was, on that
(soaring) path,
Mighty and majestical, when with multitudes
he came,
With the host of holy spirits, to the Home of
God—
And to all the Holy Ones, who in Heaven
long before
Glory had inhabited.—So the Omnipotent
came home,
Where his lawful heirship lay, God, the Lord
of all.
This is the close of the Dream of the Rood and the closing song of the life and work of Cynewulf. We see him pass away, after all storms and sorrows, into peace.
The most vigorous part of the poem is the old work, but its reworking by Cynewulf has broken it up so much that its simplicity is hurt. The image of the towering Tree, now blazing like a Rood at Hexham or Ripon with jewels, now veiled in a crimson mist and streaming with blood, is conceived with power; but, as imaginative work, it is not to be compared with the image of the mighty Rood in the Crist which, soaring from Zion to the skies, illuminates with its crimson glow heaven and earth, the angels and the host of mankind summoned to judgment. The invention of the Tree bringing its soul from the far-off wood, alive and suffering with every pang of the great Sufferer, shivering when Christ, the young Hero, clasped it round, longing to crush His foes, weeping when He is taken from it, joining in the wail of burial, conscious that on it, as on a field of battle, death and hell were conquered, is full of that heroic strain with which Cynewulf sympathised, and the subject was his own. It was he, more than any other English poet, who conceived and celebrated Christ as the Saviour of men, as the Hero of the New Testament.
Notes
1 "Who wrote the Andreas" has been debated over and over again. Ten Brink gives it to Cynewulf, so does Zupitza. Many others agree with this view. Professor Napier emphatically disagrees with them. Sievers, also, holds that Andreas cannot possibly be by Cynewulf, and regards this as one of the few certainties of criticism in Old English. Each person seems very sure of his own opinion. But it is plain that the only sure thing is that there is no certainty at all in the matter.
2 "Lo, from days of old," the poem begins in full English heathenism transferred to Christianity, "we have heard of twelve heroes, famous under the stars, thegns of the Lord! The glory of their warfare failed not when the helms crashed in fight. Far-famed folk-leaders were they, bold on the war-path, when shield and hand guarded the helm upon the battle-field." This preface, speaking of the Twelve, is a sort of prologue which makes it still more probable that the Fates of the Apostles is an epilogue to the Andreas. Its end is then linked to its beginning.
3 I give here a small piece of the original, translated by Professor A. S. Cook, to show how the English writer has worked up the poem with English manners, sea-terms, and natural description.
"Then Andrew arose early and went to the sea with his disciples, and when he had gone down to the sea-shore, he saw a little boat, and in the boat three men sitting. For the Lord had prepared a ship by His power, and He Himself was as a steersman in the ship; and He brought two angels, whom He made to seem as men, and they were seated in the ship. Andrew, therefore, when he saw them rejoiced with very great joy, and coming to them said, 'Whither go ye, brethren, with this little ship?' And the Lord answered, 'We are journeying into the country of the man-eaters."'
That is enough for comparison with the text above (see Cook's First Book in Old English).
4 I translate these passages from the Andreas into blank verse, in a different manner from the other passages in this book. Naturally, they are not, like the others, literal. A certain freedom is used in them.
5 Or (another reading), war-steppers=hild-stapan. I have already given this passage in another connection and in a literal translation.
6 That is, the Rood and the Saviour on it.
Works Cited
POETRY
I. THE MANUSCRIPTS
1. Beowulf.
The MS. is in the Cottonian Library in the British Museum (Codex Vitellius, A. xv.). It is a parchment codex in quarto, and was probably written in the tenth century. Two handwritings may be detected in it; one goes to the middle of 1. 1939; the other, a less skilful handwriting, runs on to the end. The MS. was originally kept in Deans Yard, Westminster, and was slightly injured in the fire which, in 1731, destroyed so many MSS. In 1753, having spent some time in the old dormitory at Westminster, it was transferred to the British Museum. Wanley, employed by Hickes, the Anglo-Saxon scholar, to make a catalogue of the old northern books in the kingdom, first drew attention to this MS. in 1705, and called it a tractatus nobilissimus poetice scriptus. Grimr. Jónsson Thorkelin, an Icelandic scholar, had two copies made of it in 1786, and published the whole of it for the first time in 1815. Through this edition the poem became known in England, Germany, and Denmark. But Sharon Turner gave the first account of it in 1805. In 1833 (2nd edition, 1835) John M. Kemble issued a complete edition of the text of Beowulf, and in 1837 translated the whole of it into English.
The Beowulf MS. contains also the poem of Judith.
2. The Exeter Book (Codex Exoniensis).
This MS. formed part of the library which Leofric, the first Bishop of Exeter, left to his Cathedral Church in 1071. He catalogued it himself as a mycel Englise boc be gehwilcum pingum on leodwisan geworht: "A mickle English book on all kinds of things wrought in verse." It is still kept in Exeter Cathedral. It has lost the first seven pages, and the eighth has suffered sorely, as well as the last page. The handwriting is clear, and is of the beginning of the eleventh century; it was probably written by a single hand. It was first mentioned in Wanley's Catalogue in 1705. It contains a varied anthology of poems in the following order: 1. The Christ. 2. Guthlac. 3. Azarias. 4. Phcenix. 5. Juliana. 6. Wanderer. 7. Gifts of Men. 8. The Father's Teaching. 9. Seafarer. 10. Spirit of Men. 11. Widsio (The Singer's Wandering). 12. Fates of Men. 13. Gnomic Verses. 14. Wonders of Creation. 15. Rhyme Song. 16. Panther. 17. Whale. 18. Partridge. 19. Address of the Soul to the Body. 20. Deor (The Singer's Consolation). 21. Riddles, 1-60. 22. The Wife's Complaint. 23. The Last Judgment. 24. A Prayer. 25. Descent into Hell. 26. Alms. 27. Pharaoh. 28. Fragments of a Paternoster. 29. Fragment of a Didactic Poem. 30. Another Form of Riddle 31, and Riddle 61. 31. The Husband's Message. 32. The Ruin. 33. Riddles, 62-89.
3. The Vercelli Book (Codex Vercellensis).
This is a large MS. volume of Anglo-Saxon homilies, among which are interspersed six poems. It was discovered in 1822, at Vercelli, in North Italy, by a German scholar, Dr. Blum. The handwriting is of the eleventh century, and the poems contained in this MS. are: 1. The Andreas. 2. Fates of the Apostles. 3. Address of the Soul to the Body. 4. Falseness of Men (a fragment). 5. Dream of the Rood. 6. Elene.
The MS. is still at Vercelli, in the Capitular Library, but an excellent photographic reproduction of it has been issued by Professor Wuilker.…
12. The Battle of Maldon exists only in a copy of the original MS. made by Thomas Hearne. (See vol. ii. pp. 570-577, "Johannis Glastoniensis Chronica sive Historia de Rebus Glastoniensibus," ed. Th. Hearnius, Oxonii, 1726.)
II. EDITIONS AND TRANSLATIONS
5. The Poems of Cynewulf, or attributed to him.
The Riddles.
There is no separate text or full translation of these in English. For a German translation see A. Prehu's "Ratsel" (Paderborn, 1883).
The text of seven of them is given in Sweet's Reader.
Riddles 2, 3, and 4 will be found translated on pp. 309, 310 of this book, and many others in "Early English Literature" (Stopford A. Brooke, London, 1892).
Juliana.
Text and translation in Gollancz's Exeter Book.
The Christ.
Edited with a modern rendering by I. Gollancz (D. Nutt, London, 1892).
Text and translation also in Gollancz's Exeter Book.
The Phoenix.
Text in Bright's Anglo-Saxon Reader.
Text and translation in Gollancz's Exeter Book.
Guthlac.
Text and translation in Gollancz's Exeter Book.
Fates of the Apostles.
Text and translation in J. M. Kemble's "Poetry of the Vercelli Book."
Elene.
Elene, edited by J. Zupitza (Berlin, 1877, 1883), a German edition.
Elene, edited by C. W. Kent (Boston, 1889; forming vol. iii. of the Library of Anglo-Saxon Poetry).
Elene, translated by J. M. Gamett (Boston, 1889).
A text and translation appear also in J. M. Kemble's "Poetry of the Vercelli Book" (1856).
Andreas.
Andreas, edited by W. M. Baskerville (Boston, 1889).
A text and translation are also to be found in J. M. Kemble's Vercelli Book.
Grimm's edition of Andreas and Elene (Preface and notes in German), though issued in 1840, and now out of print, is still exceptional value to the student.
Dream of the Rood.
Text in Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Reader.
Text and translation in Kemble's Vercelli Book.
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