Elfwine says: "Ne sceolon me on pære peode pezenas ætwitan, eard zesecan, nu min ealdor lizeð forheawen æt hilde; me is pæt hearma mæsst! Other speakers echo the words. by one they fall by the body of Offa may be applied to all. They fight on, slaying until one their lord. The words used of He hæfde deah zeforpod, pæt he his frean zehet swa he beotode at wid his beahzifan, þæt hi sceoldon bezen on burh ridan, hale to hame oððe on here crinczan, on walstowe wundum sweltan; he læz dezenlice deodne zehende.2 "He was both my kinsman and my lord," says Elfwine of Byrhtnoth. The root of Anglo-Saxon society at the end of the tenth century, as of the Germanic society on the continent at the end of the first, lay in this relation of kinsman to kinsman and of warrior to chief. Its ideals and motives were those of the brave and loyal warrior. Glory was the greatest good; and it was to be earned by valor and loyalty-by faithful service during the lord's life, and vengeance on his foes if he were slain. Around such duties life centered. It was a worthy code; but it emphasized rather the rugged than the tender emotions. Even the love of the chief had to be earned by the stern qualities of the warrior; while of all emotional satisfactions, triumph is one of the most powerfully expressed. On the side of painful emotions, the earlier Teutonic characteristics are somewhat modified in the Anglo-Saxon poetry. Early Teutonic poetry generally exhibits little sense of the pathetic, and the general tendency of the poetry here preserves an original racial characteristic. The Teutonic temperament was serious, even somber; but it felt rather the tragedy than the pathos of life-its pity was mingled with awe. X Even when death snaps the ties they cherish most, there is no 3 Cf. Heinzel, Q. und F., X, p. 25 ("Das angelsächsische und das deutsche Epos "). sentimentalism. "Lamenta ac lacrimas cito, dolorem et tristitiam tarde ponunt. Feminis lugere honestum est, viris meminisse."1 In the Anglo-Saxon poetry, on the other hand, this tendency is softened according to Heinzel's very plausible suggestion,' by the influence of Christianity. The elegiac motive is especially fruitful. Still, in the sense of the mutability of life, the uncertainty of power and happiness, the certainty only that even the most fundamental relations must be broken; in the Heimweh of the exile, and in grief for dead kinsman or lord; in all the occasions, in short, of Anglo-Saxon elegiac expression, the element of pure pathos is less important than that of tragedy. And Beowulf expresses the old Teutonic feeling even more strongly than it appears in the records of Tacitus (v. s.) selre bip æzhwæm pæt he his freond wrece, ponne he fela murne. Similarly in Anglo-Saxon original poetry fear of human enemies can find no place; but the sense of the terrible is repeatedly noticeable in superstitious feeling for the vague, unknown powers of the darkness and the storm. Such, briefly, were the native ideals and motives of the AngloSaxon, to which the conceptions of Christianity were introduced. These conceptions, however, as expressed in the Scriptures, were extremely various. The Anglo-Saxon, though regarding all with equal veneration, must instinctively have been drawn most strongly to those portions which expressed the conceptions and the life of a society not entirely dissimilar to his own. In the Old Testament he was brought into contact with the writings, diverse, indeed, through differences in date and in the conditions of their production, of wandering shepherd tribes, evolving through conquest and captivity, in constant conflict with other tribes and among themselves, under changing social organizations, and with unusually important interaction of religion and leadership, into national life. The New Testament, on the other hand, presented a society and a spirit entirely alien to the Anglo-Saxon. In the 1 Tacitus, Germ., cap. xxvii. 2 Q. und F., X, Section "Angelsachsen und Skandinavier;" especially p. 38. gospels, which would naturally claim first attention, the society is that of a subject race, among whom battle was little more than a hope or a tradition; and throughout the New Testament the spirit expressed is that of a peaceful religion, professed by a suffering minority-a spirit not calculated to attract the warlike. conquerors of the Britons. It was the heroism of action-of armed action-which appealed most powerfully to them, not the heroism of meek, unresisting endurance. Again, the religious teaching of the New Testament, with its emphasis on the spiritual aspect of God, could not appeal to the Anglo-Saxon mind as did the more primitive beliefs of the Old Testament, where traces of nature-worship and fetishism lingered, and where, even in the later-developed monotheistic religion, Yahweh was conceived as a tribal god, a god of battle, in whom awful attributes predominated. The religious conceptions of the gospels then had little influence in so far as they related to the present life; and even the contribution of the New Testament to the system of the universe is entirely transformed in spirit. The Anglo-Saxon, susceptible to a doctrine of love only in so far as it harmonized with the familiar feeling for kinsman and chief, conceived the redeemer of damned mankind with the full vigor of motives and ideals thoroughly Teutonic. Scriptural story, motive, and conception were modified, therefore, at the points where the temperament, the ideals, and the structure of society which they expressed or embodied, failed to harmonize with those of the Anglo-Saxon. The transforming influences were related, and operated both in preserving old conceptions and in shaping new. In the latter case it must be noticed that very frequently the difference between the early Teutonic and Christian conceptions lay, not in the elements present in the conception, but in their proportion; and the transformation consisted in change of proportion, bringing into dominance elements previously subordinated. Warrior-motives, for example, occurring only incidentally in the Vulgate, are habitually developed by the Anglo-Saxon poets, and a material change of effect is thus produced.' 1 Cf. pp. 16, 17, 29 ff. In this connection, the influence of a traditional vocabulary máy be considered.' Says Kemble: To this is owing the retention, even in Christian works, of modes of expression which must have had their origin in heathen feeling and which in order to fit them for their new application, are gradually softened down, and gain less personal and more abstract significations ... Even translations become originals from the all-pervading Teutonic spirit, which was unconsciously preserved in the forms and phrases of heathen poetry. The first sentence quoted seems to exaggerate the loss of significance of the traditional phrases. Some, especially those fixed by alliteration, doubtless tended to become conventional; but more frequently it seems probable that the use of "the forms and phrases of heathen poetry" implies not only the preservation of "the all-pervading Teutonic spirit," but its living and active application. The continued life of this spirit has already been explained; and the Maldon and Brunan burh poems show it in undiminished vigor at the very close of the period of Anglo-Saxon cication. poetic production. Here it cannot be explained simply by the assumption of a traditional vocabulary, for it appears, not in single phrases, but as the essential motive and inspiration of the poems. Similarly in the specifically Christian poems, the Teutonic spirit is preserved, not only in phrases which can be isolated, but in conceptions, emotions, and ideals. While old conceptions lived, as well as the old phrases, the association between the two could scarcely be forgotten. Christianity could be realized only through known conceptions; and the familiar motives and emotions thus retain potency in their new connection. The supposition that heroic phrases used of saints and martyrs were merely conventional seems to arise only from a modern sense of incongruity. There appears no sufficient reason to doubt that they were used with a sense of their real force, thus indicating the Anglo-Saxon tendency to conceive as heroic the persons and events of Christian story. The existence of a poetic vocabulary, marked by peculiarities not shared by the vocabulary of prose, is, however, beyond doubt; 1 Cf. Professor Toller's History of the English Language, chap. vii, from which the quotation is borrowed. and its character, as well as that of the metrical form employed, (cf. pp. 24, 25) emphasized the effect of the older motives and ideals in harmony with which it was itself evolved. It is impossible to isolate any single transforming influence. Temperament is the most fundamental, determining in great measure the ideals and motives, and the organization of society, which more frequently form the immediate sources of transformation. Its influence through direct emotional differentiationthrough the comparative power and familiarity of various moods may be considered first in cases where these related causes do not operate. The joy of victory has been placed among the satisfactions most natural to the Anglo-Saxon mind. Naturally the literature of the wandering, fighting Hebrew tribes does not lack expressions of this feeling, which especially inspires the Judith. Even in this case, however, where the story is told in the original with outbursts of savage triumph unsurpassed in Hebrew Scriptures, the Anglo-Saxon poet does not for a moment lag behind. Though the story possesses for him no immediate national inspiration, its spirit is so congenial to him that it bursts out in his verse with undiminished power. This instinct exercises a definite transforming influence by seizing on opportunities for the expression of triumph not taken in the Vulgate. Thus in the account of Abram's victory over the four kings, in the Vulgate the simple fact is recorded: Et divisiis sociis, irruit super eos nocte; percussitque eos, et persecutus est eos usque Hoba, quae est ad laevam Damasci. Reduxitque omnem substantiam, et Lot fratrem suum cum substantia illius, mulieres quoque et populum.' In the Anglo-Saxon paraphrase, these two verses are elaborated to fifty-one lines (Gen., 11. 2045-95). A very brief quotation will show how thoroughly the Anglo-Saxon poet appropriates his materials: 1 Gen. 14: 15, 16. Þa ic neðan zefræzn under nihtscuwan hæled to hilde: hlyn weard on wicum scylda and sceafta, sceotendra fyll, zuðflana zezrind; zripon unfæzre |