Many people who have read The Dream of the Rood have been struck by the poet's use of certain heroic phrases in describing the crucifixion. The tree from which the cross was made is said to have been cut down by bold enemies (strange féondas, 30b). The Lord is referred to as a young hero (geong hæleþb, 39a). He is said to be bold and brave (strang and stiþmód, 40a). The cross is said to be wounded with arrows (strælum forwundod, 62b). The Lord is said to rest for a while after the mighty conflict (æfter þám micelan gewinne, 65a). When the poet says that the Lord hastens with great courage (efstan elne micele, 34a), he uses a phrase strongly reminiscent of the one used to state that Beowulf hastened to do battle with Grendel's mother (efste mid elne, 1493). The executioners of the Lord are twice called warriors (hilderincas, 61, 72), the very compound used in Beowulf to refer to Beowulf twice (1495, 1576) and to Grendel once (986). The Lord is referred to as a famous ruler (mæran þéodne, 69a). This same phrase is used six times in Beowulf to refer to Hrothgar, four times to Beowulf, and once each to Heremod and Onela. The Lord is referred to as a prince (æðelinge, 58a). In Beowulf, this word is used three times to refer to Beowulf (1596, 2374, 2424), once to Scyld (33), once to Wæls (888), and once to one of the warriors at Heorot (1244). After the descent from the cross, the followers of the Lord sing a dirge for Him (sorhléoð galan, 67b). This is the same phrase that appears in Beowulf where Hrethel sings a dirge (sorhkléoð gæleþ, 2460) for his son Herebeald.

It must be apparent at the outset that this heroic language is strangely out of place in a poem about the crucifixion of the Lord. When the poet describes Christ as a bold hero hastening courageously to the mighty struggle, he directly contradicts the story of the crucifixion as related in the gospels; but, more important, he does a kind of violence to the spirit and doctrines of Christianity. The central paradox of Christianity is the everlasting victory through the apparent momentary worldly defeat and humiliation. Our poet seems to have reversed the softening tendency which so often creeps into heroic poetry: for example, in the Serbian heroic song of the Battle of Kossovo, the hero rejects an earthly kingdom in favor of the heavenly kingdom; and one of the heroic figures of the Mahabarata—Arjuna—appears in the heroic narrative frame of the didactic poem, the Bhagavad Gita, bewailing the senseless slaughter of the approaching battle. There seems to be a point in the heroic poetry of many peoples where the softening tendencies of a more ethical society begin to supersede the old heroic standards of vengeance and glory in battle. In The Dream of the Rood, however, the situation is just the reverse: supposedlya Christian poem, presumably informed by the spirit and doctrines of Christianity, it displays in some passages a seemingly atavistic reversion to the heroic spirit.

How can we account for this apparent inconsistency of tone in The Dream of the Rood? Scholars and critics have generally assumed that the poet was trying to make his Christian subject matter attractive to an audience that was accustomed to hear heroic poetry. But England had been solidly Christian probably for quite a long time when the poem was composed. It seems likely that the poet lapsed into heroic language not so much in order to please his audience as because hewas accustomed to compose in such language. This brings us, of course, to the subject of traditional diction in Old English poetry. Whether or not The Dream of the Rood and other such poems were composed orally or with pen in hand can probably never be settled to anyone's satisfaction, but they reflect a kind of oralformulaic diction, handed down from generation to generation, added to a little here and a little there, comprising a common stock of formulaic phraseswhich enabled the poets to express almost any idea in correct verses, without casting about for a felicitous turn of expression. A poet who was accustomed to compose songs on heroic subjects would quite naturally apply all the old heroic epithets and formulas to his matter. If he set himself to compose a song on a Christian subject, it was natural that diction reflecting an earlier society should creep in. And, as time went by, a stock of Christian formulas was developed. Many were, of course, formed on older models, using, for example, epithets for kings to refer to the first two persons of the Trinity.

Such a poet, then, is in some sense a captive of his traditional diction. There are not an infinite number of ways to express an idea in correct verses; there are only the traditional ways. While the poet can rely on the traditional diction to help him out of tight places in composing, he is also caught in the net of tradition, so to speak—he cannot compose in any other way. This applies not only to his actual choice of words, but to the themes and narrative technique of his work. The tradition in which the poet was composing was a narrative tradition. Dogmatic or introspective subject matter would most likely be passed over in favor of something that gave the poet a story to tell. To call the thing by its right name: the poets tended to choose subjects from Christian story that were rather sensational.

A good example is the Cynewulf poem on the acts of Saint Juliana, which relates a succession of lurid events. Whereas hagiography does not lend itself particularly well to the kind of narrative treatment the Anglo-Saxon poets customarily gave their work, the Apocryphal book of Judith is admirably suited to this kind of narrative treatment and makes an excellent heroic poem. The setting and the proper names are all that distinguishes Judith of Bethulia from a Germanic heroic figure. In The Dream of the Rood, the central section of the poem, describing the actual crucifixion, the section where most of the heroic diction occurs, is handled in this narrative manner. The story of the events of the crucifixion is told in a series of swift-moving actions, with little delay.

A strong indication that the poem was composed in the traditional oral-formulaic style is the number of repeated verses. Checking every verse against the entire corpus of Old English poetry reveals that 67 of the 311 verses are repeated elsewhere at least once. This is 21.5 percent, more than one in five. Of course, this poem has a great number of hypermetric verses, 64 to be exact. As one can rarely find a hypermetric verse repeated in its entirety, it is interesting to examine the figures for the normal verses only: 27 percent of the normal verses are repeated elsewhere. This is more than one in four. Such a high percentage of repeated verses would be unthinkable in a poem composed in the modern way. This is not to deny originality to the poet of The Dream of the Rood: the dazzling conceit of the cross which tells its own story is not dimmed by the fact that the poet used traditional diction. Within the framework of the tradition in which he was composing, he displayed great inventiveness.

What kind of society can give rise to poems which represent such a strange blend of heroic and Christian elements? It would be no more accurate to say that Beowulf is a heathen poem with Christian coloring than that The Dream of the Rood is a Christian poem with heathen coloring. Both poems are clearly the work of believing Christians, composed in the traditional style for Christian audiences who were accustomed to certain standards and conventions of composition. They both represent a blend of traditional and Christian elements.

Perhaps we can account for the persistence of the traditional style of poetic composition by assuming that Anglo-Saxon England, while firmly Christian, still preserved many of the conditions of the heroic age. That epoch, from which the traditional style of composing and many of the themes of the poetry can be traced, is usually assumed to be over by the time most of the extant Anglo-Saxon poetry was composed. It is interesting to note, however, that the Cynewulf-Cyneheard episode, related in the Chronicle as having taken place in the year 786, occurred fifty years after the death of Bede. Here we have a typically heroic situation, with the loyalty to the comitatus taking precedence over kinship loyalty—half a century after the death of the man whose career surely represents the pinnacle of Christian civilization in Anglo-Saxon England. If the comitatus and the meadhall were still functioning so vitally, we can assume that there were two kindsof societies simultaneously in pre-Conquest England: one centering around the great monasteries; and the other a military society depending on the comitatus relationship. We know that oral composition was practiced in the monastic society—from Bede's account of Cædmon and his vision; and we know that heroic themes were sometimes of interest to the poets of this society—from Alcuin's letter mentioning Ingeld. As clerical communities constantly recruit members from lay society, young men who were in contact with the military society and its style and taste in poetry must have been drawn into the monastic centers—and they must have brought the traditional style of poetry with them. If they had not done so, none of the poems would have been preserved, for meadhall composing was for entertainment and not to be written down. It is natural that when the traditional style came to the monastic centers, it should be used for the most part to compose poems on Christian subjects.

It seems likely, then, that the contact between these two societies, the military and the religious, or, if you prefer, these two important and dominant segments of Anglo-Saxon society, gave rise to poetry which preserves the old clichés and formulas of heroic poetry but applies them to Christian subjects.