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G^DMON 
 
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 SPOTTISWOODK AXD CO., SKW-STUEKT SQLARE 
 
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C^DMON 
 
 THE FIRST ENGLISH POET 
 
 BY 
 
 ROBERT SPENCE WATSON 
 
 'university; 
 
 LONDON 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 1«75 
 
 All rightiS reserved 
 
5^/^-^ 
 
PEEFAGB. 
 
 This attempt to make the life and works of the First 
 English Poet more widely known springs from the 
 interest taken in the subject by an English Language 
 and Literature Class *of Men and Women which I 
 conducted for some years at the Literary and Philo- 
 sophical Society in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Lecturing 
 upon ' Csedmon' afterwards to the members of the 
 Society, I found that the idea of an English Litera- 
 ture prior to Chaucer was new to many of my hearers. 
 It is not creditable to us that we should know so little 
 about the Founders of our Literature. I am conscious 
 of the imperfections of my work, which has had to be 
 completed in the rare and brief intervals of a busy 
 professional life. I trust, however, that the interest 
 of the subject will atone in some measure for the 
 
vi PREFACE. 
 
 inability of the writer. I wish to express my warm 
 acknowledgments to the men who have preceded me in 
 this matter, and to none more than to Professor Henry 
 Morley, of University College, London. 
 
 Moss Cboft, Gateshead-ox-Tyxb : 
 October 9, 1875. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PREFACE ........ V 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 1. INTRODUCTOEY 1 
 
 II. ENGLAND IN THE SEVENTH CENTURY . . .11 
 
 III. CJJDMON 23 
 
 IV. CiEDMON's METRICAL PARAPHRASE — THE INTRO- 
 
 DUCTION . . . . . . . 33 
 
 V. THE HISTORY OF THE EARLY WORLD . . .57 
 
 VI. ISRAEL IN EGYPT 69 
 
 VII. THE CAPTIVITY 74 
 
 VIII. THE SECOND BOOK OF THE PARAPHRASE . . 80 
 
 IX. POEMS ATTRIBUTED TO CJ:DM0N . . . .87 
 
 X. THE RISE OF MODERN VERNACULAR POETRY IN 
 
 WESTERN EUROPE 102 
 
viii COXTUNTS. 
 
 APPENDIX PAGE 
 
 A. RADBOND, THE FEISIiN PRINCE . . . .121 
 
 B. STREONESHALH 121 
 
 C. WHITBY ABBEY 122 
 
 D. C^DMON 122 
 
 E. MILTON AND C^DMON 123 
 
 F. CLPHILAS'S BIBLE 123 
 
C^DMON AND HIS WOEKS. 
 
 CHAPTEEI. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 Before I proceed to speak of Cjedmon and his Works, 
 I shall endeavour briefly to explain the position of 
 that portion of the world which specially interests us 
 Western peoples during the period of his life, — the 
 seventh century. I shall speak first of the political 
 situation, and shall then show the intellectual con- 
 dition of the then existing nations, in order that we 
 may more truly estimate the precise place which the 
 Father of English Poetry holds in general literary 
 history. 
 
 The old Roman Empire had fallen before the 
 repeated attacks of the barbarians. By the middle 
 of the fifth century the Western Empire had ceased 
 to exist. It had long been moribund. The true 
 Roman people had steadily decreased in numbers. 
 
2 CMBMON AND HIS WORKS. 
 
 Marriage had become so exceedingly distasteful to 
 them that it could not be otherwise. Loving ease and 
 comfort, they dreaded the trouble of bringing up large 
 families. They were rich and selfish. The very oppo- 
 site of the Irishmen of to-day, they remind us forcibly 
 of the modem Frenchmen. The Eoman armies, which 
 had to contend with the barbarian invaders of Italy, 
 were themselves composed of barbarians ; and the 
 Eoman love of ease and luxury, the Eoman efieminacy 
 (a base false word, used here only faute de 'inieux), 
 seized with wondrous power upon the barbarians, who 
 settled amongst them, and played havoc with them 
 also. We are reminded, as we read this page of his- 
 tory, of the disappearance of the Eed Indian, as he 
 vainly seeks to struggle against the white man and 
 Ms fire-water and smallpox. Neither in the fifth, nor 
 I the nineteenth, nor any other century, has the experi- 
 < ment of putting new wine into old bottles been a 
 successful one. 
 
 But who were these barbarians, to whom Eome 
 looked for help in her hour of need, and before whom 
 she had at length to bow? The word has an ugly 
 sound, but it had really a very simple meaning. It 
 was synonymous with 'foreigner/ and was originally 
 applied to provincials whose dialect was uncouth and 
 difficult to understand. All speakers of unknown 
 tongues were ' barbarians ' to the Eoman, but the bar- 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 3 
 
 barians before "whom the Western Empire fell were 
 part of the great Teutonic race which made Hispania 
 Spain, Graul France, and Britain England, and which 
 created the new (the Holy) Eoman Empire. 
 
 Four centuries before Christ two great Teutonic 
 tribes had forced their way across the Alps, and had 
 settled in the fertile plains of Italy, and again and 
 again for eight centuries did the Teutons return to 
 attack the mighty power of Eome. In their greatest 
 days the Eomans never succeeded in subjugating the 
 country which we now call Grermany. The indomitable 
 courage of the Teutons, the poverty of their townless 
 land, and the vast impenetrable forests which covered 
 it, kept them free when all other peoples had to pass 
 under the yoke. The Eomans were fain to content 
 themselves with fostering intestine feuds, which were 
 of frequent occurrence amongst the many tribes into 
 which the Teutonic race was divided. Tacitus, in 
 speaking of one of these, in which sixty thousand 
 men perished, says: 'May the nations, enemies of 
 Eome, ever preserve this enmity to each other ! We 
 have now reached the extreme of prosperity, and have 
 nothing left to ask of fortune except the discord of 
 these barbarians.' But Eome rotted at the core, and 
 the inevitable end came ; and in the seventh century 
 we find that Italy has been invaded for the last time 
 imtil modern days by a Teuton tribe, and that the 
 
 B 2 
 
4 CjEDMON and his WORKS. 
 
 fierce Lombards, the ' Long-bearded men,' have taken 
 possession of it, and retain their hold. 
 
 There has been much speculation upon the causes 
 which led the Teutons from time to time to move 
 southwards to Italy, just as there has also been upon 
 the causes which led Celts and Teutons in more remote 
 times to move westward into Europe from their (possibly) 
 common Indian home. There does not seem to be much 
 real difficulty in accounting for it. They were a brave and 
 warlike people, with a contempt for settled life, with- 
 out towns or arts, or any but the rudest form of agri- 
 culture. They had a climate of intense severity ; they 
 had a childish love for the good things which they had 
 learned to believe Southern peoples possessed ; they had 
 an intense thirst for adventure, which indeed was neces- 
 sary to their very existence. With certain well-estab- 
 lished laws, with firm family ties, they had all the 
 restlessness which springs from curiosity, from the 
 absence of settled life, from the dearth of comfort. 
 They carried with them wherever they went their wives 
 and families, their only possessions ; and one place was 
 only better to them than another, in so far as it 
 afforded to them more scope for conquest, and more 
 spoil. Do not all migrations, Indo-European, Teutonic, 
 those of the present day, spring from similar causes, 
 from the causes which give to bachelors their want- 
 begotten freedom ? 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 6 
 
 Eome, at the end of the sixth and the beginning of 
 the seventh century, had probably touched the lowest 
 point in her long history. Her old social life, luxurious, 
 graceful, but false, had perished, from the corruption 
 and self-indulgence which wealth brings to all peoples. 
 Her power and dignity had fallen before the tread of 
 the successful invader. Her Emperor dwelt at Con- 
 stantinople; his exarch, or deputy, at Eavenna; the 
 Lombard conqueror at Pavia. Famine, flood, and pes- 
 tilence had laid their hands heavily upon her people. 
 Her old faith had died away in elegant nihilism ; her 
 splendid but deserted temples had fallen before earth- 
 quakes and tempests; the noble statues which had 
 once adorned them had been ruthlessly mutilated by 
 the holders of a new belief, unable or unwilling to 
 recognise the beauty of the old. The surrounding 
 country, abandoned and neglected, had exchanged fer- 
 tility for dreary and dangerous barrenness; and the 
 Queen of Nations bade fair, at one time, to vanish from 
 the face of the eartli. But the intensest darkness pre- 
 cedes the dawn. When she ceased to be the mistress 
 of the Old World, Eome became, in another and much 
 higher sense, the mistress of a new and far wider world. 
 The men, the holders of that new belief, conquered all 
 their conquerors. They had gone through many a 
 fierce and dreadful difl&culty ; they had gradually made 
 their ground secure, in the face of trials which astound 
 
6 C^DMOXAND HIS WORKS. 
 
 us as we read of tliem ; and the Bishops of Eome — not 
 yet insisting upon supremacy over the Church; not yet 
 claiming temporal power; submitting indeed with re- 
 markable prudence to the miserable temporal powers 
 that then were, and contented to derive their spiritual 
 authority from the Byzantine Emperor — by astute 
 statesmanship and able governance, preserved the ad- 
 mirable Eoman Law, perpetuated the idea of the sacred- 
 ness of the once Imperial City, and saved her from 
 perishing with the Empire she had lost. Wherever 
 the Teutons came in contact with the Church, they 
 acknowledged her power, and became her children. 
 But in that dark seventh century, the Church herself, 
 although frequently governed by men of remarkable 
 ability, and although destined ultimately to reign su- 
 preme, was far from being firmly established. She had 
 yet scarcely formulated her belief; many so-called 
 heresies abounded inside her borders; there were 
 dangers within and without. 
 
 Eome's noblest province, Graul, shared the fate of 
 its sovereign Power. It had become more perfectly 
 Roman than any other of the Imperial colonies, but, 
 whilst gaining polish and learning, and having peace 
 for some centuries secured to them, the Grauls lost all 
 self-reliance, all power of self-defence, and fell an easy 
 prey to the all-conquering Teuton. The Franks imder 
 Clovis and his successors made Graul their own, and 
 
INTRODUCTORY, 
 
 from them it received its modern name. They divided 
 it into several distinct kingdoms, which constantly 
 carried on cruel and desolating wars with each other. 
 The seventh century saw the royal power devolve upon 
 those miserable relics of the Merovingian Kings, mere 
 spectre monarchs, sunk in debauchery and effeminacy, 
 whom History has justly styled ' les vols faineants.'' 
 Clovis had become nominally a Christian, and his 
 services to the Church, and the facilities which he 
 granted her, procm'ed for the French Monarch the 
 title of ' Eldest Son of the Church.' But Sons of the 
 Church may yet be only indifferent characters, and 
 the Merovingian Christianity did not partake more 
 of the spirit of the Founder of the Christian faith 
 than the Napoleonic Christianity by which we have 
 been edified in our day. The Church got the position 
 it wanted, and did not attempt to prevent the treachery, 
 bloodshed, and cruelty which darken the pages of the 
 early history of France, an^ which sowed bad seed 
 the fruit of which France has continued to reap. 
 
 The state of the Eastern Empire during the seventh 
 century affords nothing to relieve the gloomy picture 
 which I have already drawn. Pressed upon from the 
 north and west by the Grothic peoples and the Tartar 
 tribes ; with the Persian Empire casting off its yoke, 
 carrying away its provinces of Egypt and Asia Minor, 
 and threatening Constantinople itself; with its many 
 
8 CjEBMON and his WORKS. 
 
 churches full of strange and irreconcilable beliefs, and 
 its own faith somewhat differing from that of Eome ; 
 stained from time to time by frightful religious perse- 
 cutions waged in the name of Christ ; with its people 
 presenting the melancholy spectacle of a dull uniformity 
 of vice and abject slavishness ; with its Emperor weak, 
 supine, and superstitious, or strong and tyrannical ; its 
 existence was a troubled and precarious one. We look 
 in vain for vestiges of the glories which had crowned 
 it when Constantino gave it power or Justinian gave 
 it law. 
 
 We tm-n with pleasure from this story of darkness, 
 ignorance, and cruelty to the yet farther East, the scene 
 of the most momentous event of the seventh century, 
 the rise of Mahommedanism. The Arabs, a brave and 
 generous, yet stern and unforgiving people, lived, for 
 the most part, a pastoral life. Isolated by their geo- 
 graphical position from the western world, they showed 
 little tendency towards aggression, but they were well 
 able to defend themselves, and, although attacked in 
 tm-n by African, Greek, and Eoman, they were never 
 subjugated. They were witty and fanciful, possessing 
 a noble language and a brilliant literatm-e. Idolaters 
 themselves, they had the virtue of tolerance, so rare 
 amongst Christian nations, and their land had become 
 the refuge of the oppressed believers of many creeds, 
 free there to worship as they chose. In the seventh 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 9 
 
 century these Arabs were suddenly aroused, by the 
 magic influence of Mahommed, into the intensest life ; 
 became a warlike and aggressive people ; spread over 
 Persia, Asia Minor, and Northern Africa, extirpating 
 the old faiths and implanting their new belief; took 
 possession of Spain, and threatened the whole of Europe 
 with similar conquest. Never in the history of mankind 
 has there been so marvellous' an uprising. None other 
 creed has spread with such astonisliing rapidity as that 
 which declared, as its beginning and its end, that ' there 
 is only one Grod, and Mahommed is his prophet.' Within 
 a single century the Caliphs, his successors, became the 
 most powerful and absolute monarchs of the globe, 
 their sway extending from India and Tartary to the 
 shores of the Atlantic Ocean. 
 
 With the exception of this doubtful and fitful light 
 of Mahommedanism, wherever we have turned in that 
 seventh century we have found darkness prevailing: 
 ' darkness which might be felt.' Everywhere was the 
 demon of war let loose ; everywhere did his faithful 
 attendants, plague and famine, follow in his train. 
 The Old World life was at an end : learning in the W^est 
 was dead : when Kings and Emperors could neither 
 read nor write, their peoples were likely to lack know- 
 ledge; men had little time for thought or study when 
 they could with difficulty save their lives. The order 
 and symmetry of Eoman rule was followed by chaos and 
 
10 a^DMOy AND HIS WORKS. 
 
 tumult. It was a time of breaking up, of lawlessness 
 and cruelty, from the contemplation of which we are 
 glad to turn. Let us turn, then, to our own land, where 
 darkness still hangs over the scene, but where we can 
 tell that the dawn is approaching. 
 
CHAPTEE 11. 
 
 ENaLAND IN THE SEVENTH CENTUKY. 
 
 I DO NOT propose to dwell upon the political history of 
 England during the seventh century. The Eoman rule 
 over Britain had ended nearly two centuries before, 
 and had been followed by a period of anarchy and 
 confusion, during which the English had appropriated 
 the Island in a long series of conquering colonisa- 
 tions, which were completed by the middle of the 
 sixth century. Although the Britons were not yet 
 finally conquered, they were everywhere driven back, 
 and the principal wars waged in this Island were those 
 for supremacy amongst the various tribes of successful 
 invaders. During the greater part of the seventh 
 century Northumberland held the supremacy, and was 
 at the height of its power, and it was in the early years 
 of that century that Edwin, one of its greatest Kings, 
 embraced the Christian faith. From that period the 
 warfare, which was constantly going forward, was no 
 longer one of extermination, but one for political 
 greatness. 
 
 From whatever point of view we regard the intro- 
 
12 CjEdmon and his works. 
 
 duction of Christianity into our country, we are led to 
 think gratefully of the good Pope Grregory, to whom 
 we are indebted for it. Its results were manifold. 
 England became an European nation, instead of a 
 remote and disregarded Island. New modes of life 
 sprang up : Englishmen began to dwell in cities ; in- 
 tellectual being was awakened and developed. Here, 
 as elsewhere, ' peace on earth, good-will towards men,' 
 was held to be figurative language, and neither the 
 preaching nor the acceptance of Christ's doctrines was 
 supposed to involve practising His precepts, but the 
 new faith did somewhat soften the cruelty of war, and 
 its promulgation was not attended by the hideous per- 
 secutions which disgraced it in other lands. 
 
 ^Mien we ask how it caijie that in England, with 
 wars constantly being waged, such different results 
 were attained to those upon the continent of Europe, 
 we must not forget to give great weight to our happy 
 geographical position. Even when the Eomans held 
 almost undisputed sway here the difficulties of com- 
 munication made them find it convenient to let Britain 
 be governed very much apart. The same difficulties 
 gave our early Church a peculiarly national character. 
 Eeverencing Kome, she, nevertheless, acted independ- 
 ently, and she had from the first got rid of that 
 shadow of Imperialism which so grievously encumbered 
 many of the continental States. But, further, this 
 
ENGLAND IN THE SEVENTH CENTURY. la 
 
 fortunate position saved England from the perpetual 
 dread of foreign invasion. The troubles which the 
 Norsemen gave her had not yet begun to be felt, and 
 the Tartars, Lombards, Franks, and Arabs carried on 
 their conquests at so great a distance that the sound of 
 them scarcely reached these shores. Thus the conflicts 
 from which England suffered, though frequent, were 
 comparatively small and local. Compared with the 
 continent, she was peaceful and settled. 
 
 I wish fully to acknowledge the great sverices of 
 the Church in giving the English nation a place 
 among the peoples of Europe, in mitigating the 
 horrors of war, and in changing the habits and dis- 
 positions of our forefathers. Yet I am anxious not to 
 permit gratitude to outrun judgment. Eeform must 
 be slow to be lasting, and must be from within, not 
 from without. Grreat changes are only good in the 
 fulness of time ; for change in advance of its time, how- 
 ever admirable, is lost, excepting in so far as it aids in 
 that slow process of education which will make it one 
 day of practical worth. When we read of the baptism 
 of our old English forefathers by thousands, we scarcely 
 expect to find that the ceremony had much effect. 
 It is not easy to get any trustworthy evidence of the 
 facts themselves, for the old chroniclers share the 
 sublime contempt for numerical accuracy of all writers 
 in the early days of any race. But the broad truth 
 
14 CJEDMON AKD HIS WORKS. 
 
 remains that, from the introduction of Christianity, 
 England began to take rank amongst the Western 
 nations, and Englishmen began to settle down into a 
 law-abiding and civilised people. 
 
 The English were never a lawless, nor quite an 
 uncivilised people : never, at all events, whilst in this 
 England. Before the introduction of Christianity we 
 find much about them which reminds us that we are 
 their children — much also which makes u^ take down 
 oiu- ' Catlin,' and look with brotherly interest upon the 
 Ked Indian in his war-paint. Big, loose-boned, red-haired 
 men, with cold, blue eyes ; adorning themselves with 
 bracelets and other trinkets ; imable to live without fight- 
 ing ; unwilling to settle in towns ; with small knowledge 
 of the mechanical arts ; ignorant of writing ; when at 
 home eating voraciously and di'inking deeply, at times, 
 from the skulls of their enemies. They submit to dis- 
 cipline ; have regular gradations of rank ; are chaste 
 and monogamists ; and woman is with them a person, 
 not a thing. She rises at times to the highest power ; 
 and although, for the most part, the useful squaw, 
 her position is even then higher, and has since re- 
 mained so, than amongst other peoples. They live 
 under certain laws, in the making of which every free 
 man has a voice. Slavery exists amongst them, but 
 it is as yet devoid of any features of atrocity. They 
 are a strong, energetic, self-reliant people, not sensitive 
 
ENGLAND IN THE SEVENTH CENTURY. 15 
 
 nor much troubled with thought ; but reverencing the 
 unknown, and pre-eminently truthful. 
 
 Their religious belief was a rough and hard one. 
 Their priests had little power, although their temples 
 were reverenced with a feeling approaching ferocity. 
 Odin and his kindred gods were stern and cruel, and 
 were appeased at times by great human sacrifices. 
 These English were of a child-like, imaginative dis- 
 position, and the world of their lives was filled with 
 spiritual beings ; all nature teemed for them with 
 deities. Groblins dwelt in the woods, pixies in the 
 fields, giants in the hills, and gnomes in the mines. 
 The nursery tales which fascinated our childhood, and 
 which never lose their charm, are but so many traces of 
 these old beliefs. As the ancient Grreek, seeking for 
 the truth which is not far from every one of us, gave 
 to each work of nature its appropriate divinity, and 
 saw a Grod in each wonderful and beautiful object 
 around him, — so the rude Northman, impelled by the 
 same need of resting upon something higher and 
 better than himself, also peopled the earth with divine 
 life; but as the high culture of the Southern mind 
 lent a charm and beauty to its creations which make 
 us almost forgive and forget their grossness, so the 
 want of that culture in the Northman brings us into 
 contact with the coarse powers of evil rather than with 
 the gracious essences of good. About his faith there 
 
16 . CJEDMON AND HIS WORKS. 
 
 clung that sternness and gloom which is to this day 
 characteristic of the religion of the North — a gloom 
 which springs from the hard, imcertain, colourless 
 nature of our climate, — from the cloudy skies and 
 the sunless plains. Our forefathers were men of 
 fabulous courage; of the firmest truthfulness and 
 honour; of daring and discipline combined, which 
 have never been surpassed. Creeds which would teach 
 them to forgive injuries, to love their enemies, were 
 for long intolerable to them. Death in battle was the 
 crown of an honourable life : defeat was the one thing 
 which no man could suffer and live. Old Siward, the 
 Jarl of Northumbria, who, having become a Christian, 
 could not commit suicide, caused himself, in his last 
 moments, to be clothed in his trusty armour, and died 
 standing erect in his mail, that he might not expire in 
 bed, huddled up like a cow ; and Eadbond, the Frisian 
 prince,"^ was stepping into the font, when he asked what 
 was the fate of his ancestors who had died without 
 having been baptised : ' They are all burning in the 
 flames of hell,' was the reply of the eager monk. 
 ' Wherever they are, I will be,' answered the faithful 
 chief, and he stepped back into heathendom. They 
 were wrong, and they lost their cause in the long run, 
 these brave, simple, true-hearted Northmen ; but we 
 can understand why they hesitated before they left the 
 
 * See Appendix A. 
 
ENGLAND IN THE SEVENTH CENTURY. 17 
 
 life and faith which had given them what they wanted, 
 for one which to them seemed fraught with cowardice, 
 greediness, and cruel persecution. 
 
 When Christianity once began to spread amongst 
 Englishmen its progress was peculiarly rapid, thanks 
 to the wisdom of the monk-missionaries, who sagely 
 exacted little. The twelve centuries during which it 
 has held undisputed sway have not succeeded in de- 
 stroying several of the characteristics which I have 
 mentioned. Few men will deny that the natural pro- 
 gress of the human race (if we may speak of progress 
 at all as natural) is from an animal to a spiritual or 
 intellectual condition. As, amongst savages, we are 
 constantly reminded of wild beasts, so, amongst civilised 
 men, we are sometimes reminded of wild beasts, but 
 more frequently of savages. And the progress is a 
 very slow one ; it is a polishing rather than an uprooting 
 process ; reform, not revolution. In the Englishman 
 of to-day we find most of the features of the old Eng-*' 
 lishman ; changed, indeed, by the wear and tear of so 
 many centuries, polished and sometimes slightly con- 
 cealed, but still there. No longer universally w^riors, 
 but passionately addicted to every form of mimic war- 
 fare in the chase, and with that stern joy in overcoming 
 adverse circumstances which made the old Englishman 
 the stubborn foe he was ; still giving to woman a high 
 and worthy place in society, and, to some extent, in the 
 
 c 
 
18 C^DMON AND EJS WORKS. 
 
 State; still gloomy and fanatical in religion, though 
 still with small reverence for priests; stiU to some 
 extent fond of trinkets, although the leg has usurped 
 the place of the arm, and garters — not bracelets — are 
 the tokens of kingly favour ; still huge eaters and deep 
 drinkers ; we are more polished, but no better than our 
 fathers ; more polished and more comfortable, for there 
 was scant comfort in those old English halls, where the 
 guests sat around stone tables upon rude forms, eat 
 with their fingers, and slept where they fell senseless 
 from their deep carouse. 
 
 I have said that Christianity (in its negative out- 
 ward sense) spread rapidly in England. The desire for 
 monastic life was quickly developed, and monasteries 
 sprang up in many parts of the land. The various 
 feelings which then prompted men and women to with- 
 draw themselves from the world, lie on the siu*face and 
 are readily understood. Some were afflicted by the war 
 and tumult, the woe and misery, which everywhere 
 surrounded them, and longed to shut it all out, and to 
 live with their Divine Ideal ever before them, forgetting 
 that you best lionour those you love and reverence by 
 following their example and teaching. Others were 
 religious enthusiasts, upon whom belief acts like mad- 
 ness. Some were attracted by the wider sphere of 
 usefulness, the greater power for good, which association 
 with one common object gives; whilst others looked 
 
ENGLAND IN THE SEVENTH CENTURY. 19 
 
 for the distinction which accompanies the reputation 
 of superior holiness, and for the certainty of victuals. 
 In some places where isolation is a necessary condition 
 of safety, such a course of life may be tolerated ; and 
 benefit certainly accrued at that early date from mo- 
 nastic establishments when under able control, although 
 many of those which were carelessly looked after were 
 simply scandalous and abominable. They were filled 
 from all classes of the community, and were often pre- 
 sided over by persons whose worldly position gave them 
 the prestige which the monks fully understood and 
 valued. 
 
 Northumbria was the seat of some of the earliest 
 and most famous of these monasteries. When King 
 Edwin embraced the faith of Christ, through the per- 
 suasions of his wife Ethelburga and the missionary 
 Paulinus, Hilda, the daughter of his nephew Hereric, 
 followed his example. She was one of those women 
 who are born to rule, who possess an influence^j^fflfV^ 
 greater, and nobler than is given to men : she wJs of the 
 salt of the earth. Eesolved to lead a monastic lae^ she 
 thought of retiring to France, and had spent a year' at 
 the monastery of Chelles in preparation for the duties 
 which would devolve upon her, when Bishop Aidan, s 
 
 who had discovered her worth, gave her a small piece # 
 of land (the place of a single family — Bede calls it,) 
 upon the north bank of the river Wear, where she 
 
 c 2 
 
20 C^DMON AND HIS WORKS. 
 
 lived with a few companions for twelve months more. 
 She was at this time thirty-three years of age. 
 
 The first Northumbrian woman who had devoted 
 herself to a holy life, Heru or Heia by name, had 
 founded a monastery at Heruteu, the ' Stag Island,' our 
 modem Hartlepool, then no doubt an island covered 
 with the dense oak forest, portions of which are laid 
 bare at this day whenever excavations are made at 
 that part of our coast. Heru shortly afterwards re- 
 tiring to a more secluded spot, Hilda was appointed to 
 the charge of the monastery of Heruteu, and she spent 
 several years there. She soon showed what manner of 
 woman she was. She at once began to bring all things 
 into a regular system, acting under the instructions 
 and advice of Bishop Aidan and other religious men 
 who knew and loved her. Having governed this place 
 wisely and well, and King Oswy having made her a 
 grant of land sufficient for ten families at Streaneshalch,* 
 the ' port of the beacon,' the Whitby of to-day, she 
 imdertook to build or to take charge of a monastery 
 there. This monastery, under her wise care and benign 
 influence, rapidly became the chief seat of learning, 
 the head-quarters of religious training, in the North 
 of England. The great synod which settled the deeply 
 important question of whether Easter should be ob- 
 served as the Celtic missionaries observed it, upon the 
 
 * See Appendix B. 
 
ENGLAND IN THE SEVENTH CENTURY. 21 
 
 fourteenth day of the first lunar month of the Jewish 
 jear, or, as the Koman missionaries observed it, on the 
 Sunday after the fourteenth day of the month nearest 
 to the vernal equinox, was fixed by King Oswy to be 
 held at Hilda's monastery. The King himself presided, 
 and his son King Alchfrid, with Bishops Wilfrid and 
 Agilbert, argued the case for the Eomans, and Bishop 
 Colrdan for the Celts, whilst Bishop Cedd interpreted. 
 The decision in favour of Koman views was another step 
 towards England's European importance. 
 
 The monastery contained both monks and nuns, 
 and so excellent was its discipline and so great the 
 attention given to ecclesiastical training and education, 
 that persons of the highest rank flocked thither to 
 share in its benefits, and no fewer than six bishops 
 were brought up under Hilda's care. 
 
 Kings and princes sought for tlie counsel and aid 
 of this noble woman. She ruled her willing subjects 
 firmly but wisely; she maintained and enforced the 
 principles of justice, piety, chastity, peace, and charity. 
 Her daughters in Christ loved her with passionate 
 devotion. For the last six years of her beautiful life 
 she was afflicted with constant fever, yet none the less 
 did she continue publicly and privately to instruct and 
 admonish the flock committed to her charge. She 
 died in the year 680, admonishing her weeping brethren 
 ^nd sisters to preserve holy peace amongst themselves 
 
22 CJEDMON AND JSIS WORKS. 
 
 and with others. She was indeed a woman of whom 
 Northimibrians may be justly proud. She was herself 
 a light shining in darkness, and her monastery the 
 ' light-house monastery,' as her bay was the ' light-house 
 bay.' Ever throughout her period of power being on 
 the watch for merit of whatever kind which could be 
 turned to religious use, it came to pass that Cadmon, 
 our first English poet, was a dweller in the gentle 
 Abbess Hilda's monastery at Whitby. 
 
23 
 
 CHAPTER III-(('[Jin^'^^ "IT 
 
 The site which Hilda chose for her monastery was a 
 remarkable one. It looked less like luxury of living, 
 and more like work, than some of those which were 
 selected in later days, when monks began to wax fat. 
 Towards the north, the Eiver Esk flows through a deep 
 and rocky gully, spreading into a broad bay as it nears 
 the sea ; to the east, the dark shale cliffs fall abruptly 
 down to the Grerman Ocean, which spreads its vast 
 expanse of uncertain and dangerous waters to meet the 
 distant horizon; and, in all other directions, after a 
 brief interval of undulating green fields interspersed 
 with clumps of trees and glimpses of the winding river, 
 the great Yorkshire Moors stretch away into the land. 
 At the foot of the monastery, which she built upon this 
 wild and lonely spot, the picturesque and busy town of 
 Whitby has sprung up. Her own building was de- 
 stroyed by the Northmen towards the close of the 
 ninth centmy. No part of it is now standing — noji 
 part of any building earlier than the twelfth century;'^ 
 but of the abbey then erected there are still traces, 
 
24 C^DMON AND HIS WORKS. 
 
 although the principal portion of the north transept, 
 
 the choir and the nave, which alone remain in situ, are 
 
 of a later period.* The Lady Hilda's memory, however, 
 
 still clings round the spot. It is supposed that her 
 
 remains, which were taken to Grlastonbury when her 
 
 monastery was destroyed, were afterwards restored to 
 
 their proper resting-place. The ammonites of the lias, - 
 
 which abound here, are popularly supposed to be snakes 
 
 which, at her pious instance, were beheaded and turned 
 
 to stone ; and, if a man of robust faith, you may still 
 
 perchance see at certain favoured times, near the 
 
 northern window of the Abbey Church : 
 
 " Tlie very form of BQlda fair, 
 Hovering upon the sunny air." 
 
 A monastery was rather a collection of buildings 
 than a single structure. Not only were the monks and 
 nuns to be provided with accommodation for sleeping 
 and eating, as well as for the practice of their religious 
 exercises ; not only were there school-rooms and libra- 
 ries to be planned ; but there were chambers for the 
 guests who, from time to time, partook of the hospi- 
 tality of the Superior, or sought her advice and aid in 
 times of need ; and, in addition to all of these, there 
 were the kitchens, stables, and other offices, including 
 the dwellings of the churls who ministered to the 
 bodily needs of the community. 
 
 These dwellings probably constituted the nucleus 
 
 * See Appendix C. 
 
C^DMON. 25 
 
 of the little town which usually sprang up in the 
 vicinity of a great monastery. At the time when we 
 first hear of Csedmon such a town may already have 
 existed in the vicinity of the Lady Hilda's monastery ; 
 although the account given by Bede does not necessa- 
 rily infer that such was the case. Caedmon had evi- 
 dently occupied a menial position until he was well 
 advanced in years. He was probably the ferry-man of 
 the monastery, and assisted in the stables when his 
 ordinary services were not needed.* At night, when the 
 dependants met at supper and the meal was ended, the 
 harp was passed from hand to hand and each man was 
 expected to sing something. Csedmon had never 
 learned to make verses, and he used therefore to leave 
 the table when the singing began. One evening, when 
 he had done this, he went to the stable, where he had 
 to take care of the horses that night, and at the proper 
 time he composed himself to rest. As he slept, a person 
 appeared to him, and, saluting him, said, ' Csedmon, 
 sing me something.' ' But,' he replied, ' I do not 
 know how to sing ; and because of this I have left the 
 guest-chamber, and come hither.' The person who 
 spoke to him answered, ' Still, you must sing to me.' 
 * What,' he asked, 'must I sing?' 'Sing the begin- 
 ning of created beings,' was the reply ; and Caedmon 
 sang verses to the praise of Grod, and, when he awakened 
 from his sleep, he remembered the verses of his dream. 
 
 * See Appendix D. 
 
26 C^DMON AND HIS WORKS. 
 
 In the morning lie went to the town-reeve (the 
 steward of the town lands, or, as King Alfred calls him, 
 the ealdor-man), his superior, and told him of the gift 
 which he had received. He led him to the Abbess 
 Hilda, who, with many learned men, listened to his 
 story and his verses, and saw that Grod had given him 
 heavenly grace. 
 
 And this we also may see, whatever we make of the 
 dream which the Venerable Bede relates so graphically. 
 This rude, uncultivated boatman, silent until of mature 
 age, laughed at because no verse-maker, was in truth a 
 poet, could see clearly with the inner eye ; could also, 
 from this night — in which, after deep humiliation and, 
 doubtless, after long painful striving, he at length 
 found utterance — make and fashion strong, earnest 
 verses, which, twelve centuries after his voice has again 
 become silent, are still good to listen to. Bede, 
 in honest pride at his Northumbrian brother's excel- 
 lence, says, ' Others, in the English people, after him, 
 tried to make religious poems, but no one could be 
 compared with him : for he learned the art of singing, 
 not from men, but from Grod.' 
 
 The Abbess Hilda, having tested him, and found 
 that he was indeed a poet, gladly received him into 
 her monastery, where he became a monk, and she 
 caused him to be taught the whole series of sacred 
 history. He remembered that which he heard, and, as 
 it were ruminating it — ' chewing the cud of sweet and 
 
CjEBMON. 27 
 
 bitter thought ' — turned it into most sweet verse, and, 
 sweetly repeating it to them, he made his teachers, in 
 their turn, his hearers. He sang the creation of the 
 world, the origin of the human race, and the whole 
 history of Grenesis ; and made many verses upon the 
 departure of the Children of Israel from Egypt, and 
 their entry into the Land of Promise, with many other 
 stories from the Holy Scriptures, concerning the incar- 
 nation, passion, resurrection, and ascension of Our 
 Lord, the advent of the Holy Spirit, and the teaching 
 of the Apostles ; likewise of the terror of future judg- 
 ment and the horror of hell's pain, but of the sweet- 
 ness of the heavenly kingdom ; and many more verses 
 also about the Divine goodness and judgments, by which 
 he endeavoured to withdraw men from the love of evil, 
 and to excite in them the choice and practice of good. 
 For he was a very religious man, and humbly submissive 
 to regular discipline, but full of zeal against those who 
 wished to act otherwise. Hence he ended his life 
 beautifully. 
 
 I have so far followed the story, as told by the 
 Venerable Bede, for the most part translating his very 
 words, and I shall continue to do so in his account of 
 the closing scene of our poet's life, which is of singular 
 beauty. It is from Bede that we learn all that is 
 known about the life-history of this great and good 
 man, the true father of our English poetry. 
 
 When the time of his departure drew near he was 
 
23 CMBMON AND HIS WORKS. 
 
 fourteen days troubled with bodily infirmity, yet so mode- 
 rately that he could speak and walk all the time. There 
 was a house in his neighbourhood to which they were 
 wont to convey the weak and those about to die. He 
 asked his attendant in the evening of the night on 
 which he was to depart this life to prepare him a 
 place of quiet there. He, wondering why he asked 
 this, as he did not seem about to die, yet did that 
 which he wished. / When he had been placed there he 
 talked and joked cheerfully with those who had come 
 thither before him ; and, after midnight was passed, he 
 asked of them all if they had the Eucharist there? 
 They answered, ' What need is there of the Eucharist ? 
 for thou, who speakest to us so merrily as though in 
 ^ood health, art not likely to die.' ' And yet,' said he, 
 'bring me the Eucharist.' Ha\dng taken it in his 
 hand, he asked if they all had a peaceful mind towards 
 him, without enmity or rancour. They all replied that 
 they had the most peaceful mind towards him, free 
 from any anger ; and in their turn asked him whether 
 lie was at peace with them. He answered immediately, 
 I am at peace, children, with all the servants of Grod.' 
 And thus, strengthening himself with the heavenly 
 viaticum, he prepared to enter another life, and asked 
 how near the hour was when the brethren must be 
 awakened to say the nightly praises to the Lord. They 
 said, ' It is not long ;' and he, ' It is well ; let us wait 
 that hour,' and, signing himself with the sign of the 
 
 V 
 
C^DMON, 29 
 
 holy cross, he laid his head on the pillow, and, as 
 though falling asleep, quietly ended his life. 
 
 And thus it came to pass that, as he had served 
 Grod with a simple and pure mind and tranquil 
 devotion, so, leaving the world by as calm a death, he 
 went to His presence ; and that tongue, which had 
 composed so many salutary words in the Creator's 
 praise, spake its last words also in His praise^ signing 
 himself and committing his spirit into His hands. 
 And he seems to have had foreknowledge of his death. 
 
 The good Abbess Hilda died in the same year as 
 Csedmon, 680 a.d. Bede, writing some fifty years after 
 the events which he records, gives an interesting account 
 of her life and labours also. We have no other record of 
 the poet, excepting that contained in King Alfred's trans- 
 lation of the Ecclesiastical History^ and the statement 
 by William of Malmesbury that his bones were found 
 at Whitby in the early part of the twelfth century. 
 
 The question of the truth of Bede's story has been 
 repeatedly raised, and doubt has also been expressed 
 whether the paraphrase to which we now give Caed- 
 mon's name is really his production. In order that we 
 may come to a clear conclusion upon these points, I 
 must give a short account of the history of the one 
 manuscript of the poem which is now in existence. 
 
 This manuscript is in the Bodleian Library at 
 Oxford. It is a small folio of 229 pages ; the first 212 
 pages are written in a clear and careful hand, apparently 
 
so CJEBMON AND HIS WORKS. 
 
 in the tenth century ; the remaining seventeen pages 
 are more carelessly written, and are probably in a less 
 ancient hand, and are certainly copied by a different 
 person. The grammar and orthography of the latter 
 part (which forms a second book) are inferior in purity 
 and care to those of the iirst part. The manuscript is 
 illustrated up to the ninety-sixth page, and spaces are 
 left for further illustrations up to the two hundred and 
 thirteenth page. 
 
 It was at one time the property of the famous Arch- 
 bishop Usher, Primate of Ireland, who founded the Li- 
 brary of Trinity College, Dublin, early in the seventeenth 
 centmy, and whose reputation for learning was European 
 and just. He was the man who gave us the dates in 
 our reference Bibles to which, with the pride and 
 courage of Englishmen, we adhere as stoutly as to the 
 text itself. In his search for books for his college library 
 he discovered this manuscript. At this time (1620 to 
 1650) there was living in England, as librarian to the 
 Earl of Arundel, a learned and kindly man, Francis 
 Dujon the younger, the son of a Professor of Divinity 
 at Leyden. He was on friendly terms with most of 
 the men of niiark of that day, and intimately cultivated 
 the acquaintance of John Milton amongst others. 
 He is known in literature as ' Junius,' and aided in a 
 translation of the Bible into Latin ; but at this time 
 his favourite study was Old English, and in it he 
 
CALBMON. ^\ 
 
 thought to find the etymologies of all the tongues of 
 Northern Europe. To him Usher gave the manuscript 
 which Junius afterwards bequeathed to the Bodleian 
 Library. In the year 1655 he had it printed at 
 Amsterdam, and published it as a small quarto without 
 translation or notes. His verbal index to it is preserved 
 with his other MSS. in the Bodleian Library, but is 
 not printed with the book. 
 
 Is this paraphrase properly attributed to Csedmon ? 
 Those critics who answer this question in the negative 
 justify their unbelief in two ways ; they say, in the first 
 place, that the style and language of the paraphrase are 
 later than Csedmon's time; and, in the second place, 
 that the opening lines differ from those given by King 
 Alfred in his translation of Bede's Ecclesiastical History, 
 They argue from this that the paraphrase is the work 
 of some later imitator of Csedmon, but the contention 
 does not seem to me to be a just one. The lines which 
 King Alfred gives are but a free translation of those 
 contained in Bede's History. If in that History they 
 were said to be the opening lines of Caedmon's first 
 outburst into song, they would still have gone through 
 the process of translation from English into Latin, and 
 of retranslation into English by King Alfred, a process 
 in which much of the character of the original would 
 be inevitably lost. But Bede is careful to state 
 explicitly that he only gives Caedmon's meaning and 
 
32 C^DMON AND HIS WORKS. 
 
 not his words, and Alfred was never careful exactly to 
 reproduce his original. There is further no reason 
 whatever for supposing that the verses of Csedmon's 
 dream were the precise words which his scribe after- 
 wards wrote down amongst his poems. There is a 
 general resemblance to the opening lines of the 
 paraphrase, but it may well have been that Csedmon 
 himself composed more than the first verses which he 
 wrote upon this same great theme. 
 
 At the same time, we must not forget that the poems 
 which Caedmon made were written down from his dic- 
 tation, and that we have not even the original manuscript 
 thus written. In all such cases it is absurd to expect 
 perfect literal accuracy ; and, indeed, where religious 
 people have had to deal with such matters, we shall 
 generally find that they have been somewhat unscrupu- 
 lous in their treatment of their original ; they have been 
 ready to make it coincide with their ideas of what it 
 ought to be. I have no doubt that much which is not 
 Csedmon's has been interpolated, and that he had little 
 to do with the so-called second book. I shaU point out 
 my reasons for these conclusions, as I examine his poems 
 more carefully ; but I can see no good reason to doubt 
 that the greater portion of the first book is really the 
 work of the old poet of whom Bede so strikingly says : 
 ' None could ever compare with him, for he learned the 
 art of singing, not from men, but from Grod.' 
 
83 
 
 CHAPTEK IV. 
 
 C^DMON's metrical paraphrase — THE INTRODUCTION. 
 
 It has already been pointed out that there is a gap of 
 three centuries between the date of Caedmon's death 
 and the writing of the only manuscript of the paraphrase 
 which we possess : a period of time longer than that 
 which separates us from Shakspeare. What marvel 
 that in those centuries much injury should have been 
 done to the true old work! The familiarity of the 
 subjects dealt with must have frequently proved an 
 irresistible temptation to subsequent pious improvers, 
 and it is, in all probability, only in parts that we have 
 now anything like the original work of the old Whitby 
 monk. The grand points of the story, those in which 
 the poet thoroughly warms to his subject, are the 
 descriptions of battles. These are always powerful and 
 picturesque. But much of the work is the merest 
 paraphrase : a versified edition of portions of the Old 
 Testament, the monotony and wearisomeness of which 
 is from time to time relieved by a striking epithet, or 
 by some little touch speaking of Old English life and 
 thought, and showing that Csedmon had thoroughly 
 
^ 
 
 34 CjEDMON and his WORKS. 
 
 understood and vividly pictured to himself the things 
 which his fellow monks had taught him. 
 
 The earlier portion of the poem contains no doctrine 
 — Christ is not even mentioned in it. The later part 
 is much more theological but not so poetical ; it makes 
 up in theology what it lacks in poetry. This will be 
 more carefully gone into in its proper place, and I only 
 mention it here as another proof that the work has 
 been greatly tampered with. It is not probable that 
 Csedmon should have begun his work in a true, vigorous, 
 poetical spirit : should have flashed out from time to 
 time into bright bursts of poetic vision ; but should 
 have lapsed into mere piety as he approached the more 
 vital, though less comprehensible parts of Scripture. 
 I do not wish to insist upon this too strongly, because 
 I cannot but feel that this charge, made in so general 
 a manner, might, perhaps, apply to our great modem 
 religious poet, John Milton, who, in a measure, follow- 
 ing the course of the paraphrase, has similarly failed. 
 In considering the second book in detail I trust to 
 able to make my position clearer and more assured. 
 
 The Paraphrase is written in the Old English 
 alliterative verse. As alliteration now-a-days means 
 simply an adherence to a repetition of the same initial 
 letter without any reference to rule, it may be well 
 briefly to explain what this alliteration used to be. 
 There was no rhyme in the oldest English poetry: there 
 
C^DMOirS METRICAL PARAPHRASE. 35 
 
 was rhythm, and this was obtained by the certain re- 
 currence of the same letter. In true alliterative verse 
 each line is divided into two sections by a pause, 
 usually marked in manuscripts by a dot. Each section 
 or half-line contains two or more strongly accented or 
 loud syllables, two being the usual number. The initial 
 letters common to two or more of these loud syllables 
 are called the rime letters, and each line should have 
 two rime-letters in its first section, and one rime-letter 
 in its second section. The rime-letters in the first 
 section are called sub-letters, that in the second section 
 the chief or key letter. The key letter should begin 
 the former of the two loud syllables in the second 
 section of the line, but the other of such syllables 
 should not begin with a rime-letter at all. If the key 
 letter be a consonant, the sub-letters should be the same 
 consonant, or should have the same sound : if a vowel, 
 they should also be vowels, but not necessarily the 
 same vowels. 
 
 An illustration will make this very general expla- 
 nation of alliteration abundantly clear : — 
 
 AaeleS Aelm on Aeafod asette* ■] J)6ne full Aearde gpJand* 
 spenn mid s^angiini* wiste him s^raeca/ela* 
 
 wora tyorda* «;and him lip fanon* 
 
 ******* 
 
 o'S'Saet he adam* on eor'S-rice* 
 
 In the second section of the first line the key letter 
 
 D 2 
 
36 CJEBMON AKD HIS WORKS. 
 
 is A, whilst the initial letter of the other loud syllable 
 is 6 : in the first section there are three sub-letters (Ji), 
 In the second section of the second line the key letter . 
 is sp, the other loud initial letter /, and there are two 
 sub-letters (.9p) in the first section. In the third line 
 the key letter and sub-letters are w, the other loud 
 syllable in the second section beginning with )?. In 
 the fourth line the key letter is a vowel (e) ; the sub- 
 letters are also vowels, but different vowels, o and a ; 
 whilst the second loud syllable in the second section 
 of the line has a consonant (r) for its initial letter. 
 
 And now let us return to the Introduction to the 
 Paraphrase. It is much the finest and most complete 
 part of the whole work, and is altogether of greater 
 power than the remainder. It deals with the Eebellion 
 of the Angels, and the Fall of Man. It opens with an 
 ascription of praise to the ' AYard of the Skies,' ' The 
 Grlory-King of Hosts,' magnifying Him as ' The Source 
 of Might,' ' The Head of all high-shaped Ones,' 'The 
 Lord Almighty, without beginning or end.' It then 
 tells of the ' Bairns of Grlory,' ' The Bands of Angels,' 
 and of their bright bliss when, they knew not sin. 
 It next describes briefly the ward of the angels 
 erring through pride. He thought to divide Heaven's 
 kingdom, and persuaded his followers to aid him to 
 gain a home and lofty seat in the north part of 
 it. Then Grod was angry with that crowd whom He \/ 
 
C^DMOIPS METRICAL PARAPHRASE. 37 
 
 had before honoured with beauty and glory, and shaped 
 for them an exiled home. In that deep, dreamless 
 torture-house, charged with sulphur, furnished with 
 perpetual night, filled throughout with fire and sudden 
 chill, reek and red lowe, were hard punishments and 
 groans of hell. Then, in the old poem, we see Grod 
 arise in anger : it is as though we read of some great 
 English leader avenging himself on his adversaries. 
 'Stern of mood, grimly grieved, He griped them wrath- 
 fuUy in foeman's hands, and broke them in His grasp.' 
 He sent the hateful band, the groaning ghosts, on a 
 long journey. Their boast ('yelp' is the actual word 
 used) void, their strength bowed, their beauty waned, 
 they urged their darksome way into exile, where they 
 knew woe and pain and sorrow, for they had begun 
 with Grod to war. Then after, as before, was there 
 peace in Heaven. 
 
 What a dreadful fiend the Grod of the early Church 
 was ! Cruel, stern and vindictive, beyond all belief ! 
 The God of the Jews, with the worst attributes of the 
 pagan deities added to Him : and yet Csedmon's Grod 
 is not more cruel than Dante's ; and Christ had lived, 
 and Paul and John had written centuries before the 
 earlier poet sang. ' Grod is love ' must have had a 
 strange sound to some of those who listened to monkish 
 explanations of the Deity's delight in barbarous ven- 
 geance. 
 
 ^ 
 
38 C^DMOX AND HIS WORKS. 
 
 Compare with this opening of the Paraphrase the 
 commencement of ' Paradise Lost,' when IMilton speaks 
 of ' The Infernal Serpent ' :— 
 
 ' Wliat time his pride 
 Had cast Mm out from heaven, with all his host 
 Of rebel angels ; by whose aid aspiring 
 To set himself in glory above his peel's, 
 He trusted to have equal'd the Most High, 
 K he opposed ; and with ambitious aim 
 Against the throne and monarchy of God 
 Eaised impious war in heaven and battel proud 
 With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power 
 Hurl'd headlong flaming from the ethereal sky, 
 With hideous ruin and combustion, down 
 To bottomless perdition, there to dwell 
 In adamantine chains and penal fire, 
 
 Who durst defy the Omnipotent to arms. 
 
 ******* 
 
 A dungeon horrible, on all sides roimd, 
 
 As one great fiu'nace, flamed ! yet from those flames 
 
 No light, but rather darkness visible 
 
 Served only to discover sights of woe. 
 
 Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace 
 
 And rest can never dwell ; hope never comes. 
 
 That comes to all ; but torture without end 
 
 StiU urges, and a fiery deluge, fed 
 
 With ever-burning sulphur imconsumed.' 
 
 I have no wish to push matters too far in an 
 attempt to show that Milton was in a measure in- 
 debted to Csedmon, but it is difficult not to believe 
 that so true a poet and so keen an observer had not 
 
CJEDMON'S METRICAL PARAPHRASE. 39 
 
 appreciated, in the older poem, the grandeur of open- 
 ing the sacred theme in this manner, and taken a 
 hint from it. We do not expect to find much mental 
 introspection in the earlier poet's work: he seldom 
 adds the torments of the mind to those of the body- 
 in the way which in ' Paradise Lost' so intensifies 
 the terror. Our out-of-doors-living forefathers would 
 hardly hare understood him if he had been capable of 
 doing so, and had done it. 
 
 After this introduction there follows a brief account 
 of the Creation, over which we need not linger, al- 
 though it shows us the vivid way in which Csedmon 
 actually pictured to himself the things of which the 
 monks told him. He draws over and over again ' the 
 idle and useless ground over which the dark cloud 
 hung in constant night, swart under heaven, wan and 
 waste,' ere the Lord of life Fade light to come forth 
 over the wide deep, and the earth to take form. The 
 story of the creation is imperfect in the manuscript, 
 and breaks off when Adam has received from Grod a 
 noble woman, and they have been given their instruc- 
 tions and have entered into possession of their new 
 and beautiful world. It is worth noting that in thS 
 speaking of the sea as the ^' whale-road ' we find one of 
 those picturesque combinations which form a principal 
 feature of Old English poetry, and give it frequently 
 so rich a colour. 
 
40 C^DMON AKB jSXS' WORKS. 
 
 The poet now returns to heaven, and tells how, 
 amongst all the tribes of angels, one had been made 
 ' highest after Grod in heaven's kingdom, so fair, so 
 beauteous in form, that he was like to the light stars. 
 It was his to work the praise of the Lord ; it was his 
 to hold dear his dreams in heaven, and to give Him 
 thanks for the light he had so long enjoyed.' But he 
 grew proud and overbearing, and began to raise war 
 against ' Him who sitteth on the holy stool.' His 
 body was light and shining, white and bright of hue — 
 why should he serve Grod when he himself had a 
 greater power and force of followers! In the North 
 he would erect his throne. ' Why shall I toil ? quoth 
 he : I need no superior : with my hands I can work 
 as many wonders ; I have power to form a more god- 
 like and higher throne in heaven. Why shall I serve 
 for His favour ? bow to Him as vassal ? I may be a 
 god, as He. Stand by me, strong comrades, who will not 
 fail me in this strife. Heroes of hard mood, renowned 
 warriors, have chosen me for chief : with such I may 
 take counsel, with such gather followers. Tliey are 
 my faithful friends : I may be their chieftain, and rule 
 in this realm. Thus it seems wrong that I should 
 cringe to Grod for any good. I will no longer be His 
 vassal.' 
 
 Then he reaps the reward of his treason : Grod in ^ 
 anger hurls him from his lofty seat, and, with all his 
 
CJEDMON'S METRICAL PARAPHRASE. 41 
 
 comrades, lie falls three days and three nights into the 
 swart hell. 
 
 How this simple, powerful word painting of our 
 oldest poet recals the words which Milton puts into 
 Satan's mouth when he tells the faithful Abdiel — 
 
 ' Our own right hand 
 Shall teach us highest deeds, by proof to try 
 Who is our equal : then thou shalt behold 
 Whether by supplication we intend 
 Address, and to begirt the Almighty throne 
 Beseeching or besieging.' 
 
 The stirring lines in which Csedmon draws this 
 scene remind us also of the Old English ' Beowulf,' 
 the war romance which the English probably brought 
 with them from the true old England across the 
 German Sea. No doubt he knew it well, and it was 
 insensibly with him, when the fallen angels became 
 ^ renowned warriors,' ' hergefi-of- hard jnood.' In those 
 old fighting days strife of some sort was the one pos- 
 sible outcome for a healthy and vigorous man. Thought 
 was not : commerce was not : manufacture was not : 
 society was yet far too unsettled to admit of them. 
 With the struggle for existence going fiercely forward 
 it was impossible to abstract one's self from the actual 
 world, and to reflect systematically upon matters not 
 immediately connected with real life. But when men 
 withdrew from the conflict into the quiet cloister they 
 
42 CjEDMON and his WORKS. 
 
 gained time and leisure for meditation. Csedmon had 
 shared the active as well as the passive mode of life ; 
 and he entered into his lettered ease with his mind 
 stored with memories of the stirring past. He must 
 have heard the war songs sung; from his peculiar / 
 pleasure and power in the description of warfare we ^ 
 may readily infer that he too had marched to battle 
 with the whizzing^ of _axxows in his ears; now he 
 listened eagerly to the Bible tales, and he pictured 
 -them to himself as vivid and intense realities ; and, 
 when he at length found a voices he sang out of the 
 fulness of his heart that which had been stored up in 
 it through long patient and silent years ; and his Deityi- .^- 
 is his Northumbrian chief, his Satan and rebel angels, 
 the pretenders to the throne, and the strife in heaven, 
 such as he had himself assisted in. 
 
 In this and in the following portion of the Para- 
 phrase we are again constantly reminded of ' Paradise 
 Lost.' In both poems the general plan is similar ; in 
 each there are two descriptions of the fall ; in the later 
 poem, in the first book, are introductory and more 
 general statements, as in the Paraphrase, and in the 
 sixth book a more detailed account, given by the 
 angel Raphael to Adam. Then Csedmon gives us a 
 thrilling description of hell ; the fierce speech of Satan 
 boiling for vengeance against Grod, and resolving to get 
 it through the newly-created man ; the appeal to some 
 
CMBMOWS METRICAL PARAPHRASE. 43 
 
 follower to visit earth with this object ; the ascent of a 
 wily fiend, — not of Satan himself, as in Milton — the 
 temptation ; the fall ; and the bitter punishment. 
 This is the plan which Milton also adopts. It is not 
 necessary to make too much of this : both poets were 
 drawing inspiration from the same sources : both had 
 the same Scriptures, and the same legendary lore ; but, 
 in addition to this close similarity of plan, there are 
 many coincidences of detailed treatment which lead to 
 the inevitable conclusion that Milton knew the older 
 poem, and, like a wise man and a true poet, knew also 
 how to profit by it.* 
 
 In this belief there is surely nothing, in the smallest 
 degree, depreciatory to the great Puritan poet. We 
 do not think less of Chaucer's tales or of Shakspeare's 
 plays because we know the sources whence they sprang. 
 It is not an unworthy but rather a high and noble 
 thought that these two great Christian poets, 
 
 * Their god-Hke heads crown'd with spiritual fire 
 And touching other worlds/ 
 
 were not only bound together in the common brother- 
 hood of song, but that ' Paradise Lost,' that glorious 
 fountain of Divine majesty and truth, was fed and 
 nourished from the pure, though slender, well-spring of 
 all English verse ; that John Milton, in his blindness, 
 heaj-d the voice of the true old singer, and accepted 
 
 the aid he offered. 
 
 * See Appendix E. 
 
44 CJLDMOK AND HIS WORKS. 
 
 Before passing to the further consideration of Caed- 
 mon's treatment of his great theme, I may point out 
 that, whereas Csedmon says that ' the fiend with all his 
 comrades fell through as long as three days and nights 
 from heaven into hell,' Milton says, in the first place — 
 
 ' Nine times the space that measures day and night 
 To mortal men, he with his horrid crew 
 Lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf.' 
 
 But, in the second account, he gives the time to the 
 act of falling, not to the length of the stupor occa- 
 sioned by the fall — ' Nine days they fell.' 
 y'^Csedmon's description of hell is of great power. As 
 you read it you feel that he speaks of what he has seen ; 
 that, like Dante, he had passed through the Hope- 
 deserted portal, and gazed upon the dread torments of 
 the damned ones face to face. He tells of the grim, 
 bottomless abyss filled with intense burning heat, bitter 
 reeks of smoke, swart mists, night immeasurably long, 
 and, ere dawn, cometh the east wind and frost-bitten 
 cold. When, imable to bear the blending of fiercest 
 fire and most freezing frost, the lost ones seek another 
 land ; they come to one that is ' lightless and liges 
 full,' void of light and full of flame. I know none 
 other words which call up such a dread picture as these. 
 IVIilton has the same idea in a kindred passage, but it is 
 not so terse, so condensed, as Csedmon's : 
 ^ ./ 
 
CjEDMOJSf'S METRICAL PARAPHRASE. 45 
 
 ' Yet from those flames 
 No light, but rather darkness visible 
 Served only to discover sights of woe.' 
 
 In the 22nd verse of the 10th chapter of Job we 
 also find a similar idea : ' A land of darkness, as dark- 
 ness itself: and of the shadow of death without any 
 order, and where the light is as darkness.' 
 
 They are all powerful, all dreadful, but Csedmon's, 
 'without light and full of flame,' is much the strongest. 
 It is an Inferno in a line. ^ 
 
 It is followed by a soliloquy so vividly told, so grand, 
 so full of shadows of the not grander soliloquy in ' Para- 
 dise Lost,' that I give it in our modem English^ 
 although I find it impossible to preserve a tithe of the 
 force of the grand old mother tongue : 
 
 Within him welled his thought about his heart; 
 Hot was without him his wrathly woe : 
 He spake these words : 
 
 ^ This narrow place is most un-like 
 That which we knew once high in Heaven's realm, 
 Which my Lord gave me, though we may not own it. 
 To the All-powerful must yield our rule. 
 Yet hath He not done rightly us to fell 
 To the fiery bottom of this hot hell, 
 Bereaving us of Heaven's kingdom, and decreeing 
 Its peopling by man. 
 
 ^ This is of sorrows most 
 That Adam, wrought of earth, 
 Shall my strong seat possess. 
 And joy be his whilst we this woe, 
 This heU-harm must endure. 
 
46 C^DMON AND HIS WORKS. 
 
 * Oh could I but wield my iiands, 
 Might I for one tide be without, 
 
 Wer't but one winter's space, — then with this host, 
 I 
 
 * But about me lie iron bands, 
 Presseth this heavy chain, 
 
 I am powerless : 
 
 Hard hell-links firmly grasp me : 
 
 Above and below is mickle fire : 
 
 Never saw I loathlier landscape : 
 
 The flame never slackens, hot over hell : 
 
 Close-clasping rings, hard polished bonds. 
 
 Prevent my onward com*se. 
 
 My feet are bound, my hands are chained : 
 
 The ways from these hell-doors are vanished : 
 
 I cannot flee from my weary bonds : 
 
 Great girdles of hot iron lie about me 
 
 With which God fastens down my neck.' 
 
 Thus, then, we find that the God whom Csedmon 
 worshipped dififers but little from Him whom Milton 
 inflicted so long upon our English faith : the Judaic 
 G-od, the G-od of Vengeance, delighting in the crueN 
 torments of His enemies; not the God of Love, of 
 whom Christ preached. Our sympathies are not with 
 Him, but with His victim in each case. The poet does 
 his work too well ; but it is humiliating to think that 
 ten centuries of prayer and preaching brought no truer 
 and brighter conception : that even now much of our 
 religious life groans beneath the burden of this dark 
 and un-Christian belief ; that the love of God, as shown 
 
CJEBMON'S METRICAL PARAPHRASE. 47 
 
 Tdj the love of man, has been and is so strangely misin- 
 terpreted. 
 
 It is perhaps convenient that, notwithstanding the 
 uncertainty as to the true authorship of the second 
 book of the Paraphrase, I should here give a portion of 
 one of Satan's soliloquies from it, in order that we may 
 have a fuller knowledge of this old conception of his 
 character. I am inclined to think that this passage is 
 really Csedmon's. In that which I have just quoted 
 actual physical torture is most strongly insisted upon -^ 
 there is, indeed, a comparison of the hell in which he 
 lies with the heaven from which he has fallen ; there is 
 also the bitter thought that the very paths between the 
 two are destroyed ; but the pains are nearly all material. 
 In this which I am about to quote the mental torments 
 are much more strongly insisted upon. As we read it 
 -we think of Milton's : 
 
 ^ Now conscience wakes despair 
 That sliimber'd 5 wakes the bitter memory 
 Of what he was, what is, and what must be, 
 Worse ; of worse deeds, worse suiferings must ensue/ 
 
 "We remember also Dante's — 
 
 ' Nessun maggior dolore- 
 Ohe ricordarsi del tempo felice 
 Nella miseria.' 
 ' For a sorrow's crown of sorrows is remembering happier things.' 
 
 I have, in this case, ventured to modernise the 
 extract more completely than in the preceding one. 
 
48 C^DMON AND HIS WORKS. 
 
 but I have tried, at the same time, to adhere faith- 
 fully to the spirit of the text : 
 
 Thus, as like fire-gleam, brilliant he stood, 
 The damned fiend spake- forth, througli that dread den, 
 His many woes in words with venom blended : — 
 
 * I am limb-fast and wounded sore with sins, 
 So that I cannot move in this bigh ball 
 TMiere hot and cold at times together mix^ ^^ - 
 "Where hell's disciples otherwhiles I hear, 
 A sorrowing race, deep down in the abyss. 
 Moaning their vanished earth ; and sometimes see 
 Serpents wind cruelly round naked men. 
 This windy ball is all with horror filled, — 
 Nor may I hope to find a happier home 
 In town orjburgjjior, on creation bright. 
 May I gaze once again with gladdened eyes. 
 Now is it worse to me that, in old days, 
 I ever knew the Angels' blessed song, 
 I ever was a form of heavenly light, 
 "Where all, I with them, ever circled round 
 The Blessed Child with Hallelujah song. 
 / may not claim allegiance from aught 
 Save those whom He rejects, — such may I bring 
 Down to this bitter gulf, sad captives, home. 
 W^e are not now as erst we used to be 
 WTien, high in heaven, graceful and glorious, 
 We raised the love-songs' woixis around our Lord. 
 Now I am sia-defiled and sin-defaced ; 
 Now I must bear this weary lead of woe, — 
 Burning in hottest hell, of hope bereft.' 
 
 Surely these lines must awaken our sympathy, as 
 the brave outburst of the preceding lines arouses our 
 admiration. Surely Bums must have had such a vision 
 
C^DMOirS METRICAL PARAPHRASE. 49 
 
 in his mind when, with that wondrous depth of love 
 which makes us love him so, he sang — 
 
 ' I'm waes to think upon yon den 
 E'en for your sake.' 
 
 Truly there is little to hate in the Satan of either 
 Caedmon or Milton. We find fierce revenge against 
 savage tyranny, but there is not much low, mean 
 cunning, and' there is infinite nobility under terrible 
 trial. Of the two I hold Caedmon's Satan to be the 
 nobler. 
 
 The beginning of the conference between Satan 
 and his followers, at which it is determined that an 
 attempt shall be made to win man from his allegiance 
 to God, is' imperfect. The manuscript, as we have it, 
 opens in the middle of a speech from the arch-fiend 
 himself, who seems indeed to have been the only- 
 speaker. He is urging that, although Grod can accuse 
 them of no sin. He has deprived them of light, 
 and cast them into the greatest of torments, nor can 
 they wreak vengeance upon Him, or reward Him with 
 open hostility. He has, however, made a world where 
 He has wrought man after His own likeness, and from 
 man He will obtain pure souls to re-people heaven. 
 Hence they must strive earnestly to pervert Adam, and 
 so atone for their wrongs by causing him and his chil- 
 dren to suffer. Grod's mind they cannot change ; never 
 again shall they know the angels' bliss ; let them turn 
 
50 C^DMON AND HIS WORKS. 
 
 it away from the children of men, so that they shall 
 not have the Kingdom of Heaven, but shall be cast 
 from Grod's favour, and seek the grim depths of this 
 Hell, where they shall be held as vassals. 
 ' Let us begin to think about this deed : 
 If I of old to any follower gave 
 A chieftain's gift whilst we in that good realm 
 Sat happily : never before could he 
 Repay me such rich recompense as now. 
 Let him pass through these cliffs and fly to where 
 Adam and Eve stand circled round with weal 
 TMiilst we are cast into this woeful dell. 
 They are held highly in the Lord's esteem, 
 And sorely doth it rankle in my thought 
 That they shall once our rightful realm possess. 
 If any of you can it so achieve 
 
 Thus they may break through guile the Lord's command 
 And become hateful to Him, I can rest 
 E'en in these chaios, and will him recompense 
 With seat for ever by my side.' 
 
 I have somewhat condensed the passage, but have 
 given nearly the words of the original, and have pre- 
 served its full meaning. How closely similar it is to 
 Beelzebub's counsel in ' Paradise Lost'! — 
 
 ' "WTiat sit we then projecting peace and war ? 
 
 War hath determin'd us, and foU'd with loss 
 
 Irreparable : 
 ******* 
 
 "WTiat if we find 
 
 Some easier enterprise ? There is a place, 
 
 (If ancient and prophetic fame in heaven 
 
 Err not) another world, the happy seat 
 
C^DMON'S METRICAL PARAPHRASE. 51 
 
 Of some new race called Man, atout this time 
 
 To be created like to us, tliougli less 
 
 In power and excellence ; but favour'd more 
 
 Of Him who rules above. 
 
 ******* 
 
 Thither let us bend all our thoughts to learn 
 "What creatures there inhabit ; of what mould 
 Or substance : how endued, and what their power, 
 And where their weakness ; how attempted best. 
 
 By force or subtlety. 
 
 ******* 
 
 Seduce them to our party, that their God 
 May prove their foe, and with repenting hand 
 Abolish his own works. This would surpass 
 Common revenge, and interrupt his joy 
 In our confusion ; and our joy upraise 
 In his disturbance : when his darling sons 
 Hurl'd headlong to partake with us 
 Their frail original and faded bliss. 
 Faded so soon.' 
 
 The acceptance of Satan's offer is missing from the 
 manuscript, and the tale opens again when a fiend with 
 a crafty soul, full of wary words, is preparing for his 
 earthward journey : — 
 
 * Sprang he up thence, 
 And shot him through hell's doors : strong heart had he. 
 Crafty and lion-like, — a mind of hate : 
 With a fiend's power he dash'd the fire aside.' 
 
 Compare this with Milton's description of how 
 
 Satan 
 
 ' With fresh alacrity and force renewed 
 Springs upward like a pyramid of fire, 
 Into the wild expanse :' 
 
 E 2 
 
52 C^DMON AND SIS WORKS. 
 
 * On eacli liand the flames 
 Driven backward slope their pointing spires, and, rolled 
 In billows, leave in the midst a horrid vale.' 
 
 The fiend finds Adam and Eve standing by the trees of 
 life and death, and, making himself into a 'worm ' (ser- 
 pent or dragon), and taking of the fruit, he tells Adam 
 that Grod has sent him to give to him to eat ; but Adam 
 in a noble speech rejects his offer as false. He turns to 
 Eve, whom he threatens with Grod's anger if she will 
 not eat of the firuit; and presages dreadful consequences 
 to her offspring. He tells her that, if she will eat it, 
 she may afterwards rule Adam, and that her obedience 
 will atone for Adam's refusal to accept God's offer. It 
 is a skilful piece of temptation, and succeeds but too 
 well. Grod has given to Eve the weaker mind; she 
 eats of the fruit; the fiend causes the earth to seem 
 fairer to her, and declares that her beauty shines with 
 the light which he had brought to her from Grod, and 
 then he persuades her to urge and plead with Adam, 
 until at last the frequent entreaties of the fairest of 
 women prevail ; the man's mind turns to her will, and 
 he takes from her hand hell and death. Surely there 
 is something in this grand old allegory which we may 
 apply to our own daily lives. 
 
 No sooner is the deed done than the successful 
 fiend, breaking into bitter laughter, exults in his dark 
 deed. Satan's will has been done ; Adam and Eve are 
 
C^DMON'S METRICAL PARAPHRASE. 63 
 
 led away from the love of God; they may no longer 
 hold heaven's kingdom, but must make the dark 
 journey to hell. No longer need their joy make Satan 
 mourn where he lies bound. Grod's favoured creature 
 Man must come to him in the flame. 
 
 ' To God is sorrow also given and harm : 
 On Adam is our misery avenged : 
 Hated by God, and with the pain of death ; 
 Plan's loss and misery shall heal my mind : 
 My heart is hig with joy that all our wrongs 
 Have found such sweet revenge. Now go I back 
 And seek out Satan neath the roofs of hell 
 Where mid the flames he lies in heavy chains.' 
 
 The sad time of bitter regret which followed the 
 Fall is powerfully depicted : the words of sadness, the 
 weeping of the woman, the mental agitation, the joint 
 prayers, and then Adam's fierce upbraiding of Eve: — 
 
 * Seest thou now the swart hell 
 Greedy and anxious ? 
 Now thou mayest its raging 
 Hear from hence.' 
 
 He bewails him for the hunger and thirst, the heat 
 and the cold, which hitherto they had never known, 
 and rues him that he had asked God to make him a 
 companion, and that he ever saw her. 
 
 The sheenest (brightest) of women, the most beau- 
 tiful of wives, answers him meekly : — 
 
 /^ 
 
54 C^BMON AND HIS WORKS. 
 
 * Thou mayest me blame 
 Loved Adam mine 
 Witli thy words, 
 Yet thee it camiot worse 
 In thy soul rue 
 Than it doth me at my heart/ 
 
 Then they both departed sorrowing into the green 
 wood, and decked their bodies with leaves, and waited 
 Grod's commands. The rest is an expansion of the 
 record in Grenesis, and has much solemnity and beauty. 
 It ends by recording that the Almighty Father, for 
 their solace, let the roof adorned with holy stars re- 
 main, and gave them amply of the riches of the earth. 
 
 Briefly to sum up the points of resemblance between 
 the story 
 
 ' Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit 
 Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste 
 Brought death into the world, and aU our woe — ' 
 
 as told by C^mon and by Milton : in each the subject 
 is introduced in a similar manner, a general account 
 of the rebellion of the Angels being given in the first 
 place, and a more detailed account afterwards. Csedmon 
 treats the fall, the discussion of the means of revenge, 
 the resolve to wound God through his new creature 
 man, the embassy to earth, the temptation, the dis- 
 obedience, and its consequences, in such a manner 
 that they seem to us as a shadow of ' Paradise Lost,' — as 
 
CJEDMOirS METRICAL PARAPHRASE. 55 
 
 the skeleton which Milton made the living body. The 
 Paraphrase is the sketch ; ' Paradise Lost ' the finished 
 picture : but the sketch is also the work of a master, 
 and has the strange interest which good sketches ever 
 possess. The conceptions of Satan and of Hell have a 
 remarkable similarity. In the dreadful pictures which 
 he draws Csedmon is in no way inferior in power to 
 Milton, but he gives us none of those exquisite love 
 passages in which Milton revels. Love, as we know it, 
 was unknown to our old English forefathers. Amongst 
 them, compared with Southern people, woman held 
 indeed a favoured place, varying then, as now, according 
 to her ability and merit, or the intelligence of the men 
 with whom she was associated. She was the powerful 
 ally and honoured equal, or the useful and estimable 
 drudge. But so far as we can judge from our early 
 literature, that which we call Love had no recognised 
 place. I do not, of course, mean to deny that natural 
 affection existed, that the relation of husband and wife 
 was a pure and noble one ; but the courtly and higher, 
 or perhaps lighter form of love, ' the maiden passion 
 for a maid,' was apparently absent. That came to us 
 from the south. Our forefathers lived an out-of-doors 
 life ; they were a somewhat grim, earnest people, with 
 more force than refinement. Their songs were of battle, 
 of religion, of death, solemn, grand, and gloomy ; as 
 far removed from the gay Provenpal songs in which 
 
56 CJEDMON AKD HIS WORKS. 
 
 love of a sort abounds and little else, but love re- 
 duced to a regular system of bright, thoughtless, 
 frivolous courtliness, as the stem Englishman living 
 only for war or the chase was from the merry French- 
 man loving to wile away the simny hours in song and 
 dalHance sweet. And, thanks to that gloom and serious- 
 ness, when our own poets learned to sing of love, it 
 was not in the idle and profligate way of those who 
 taught them; but womanly purity was still held in 
 honour ; and love, to be lovely, must still be honest. 
 Not until our own degenerate days did EngHsh poets 
 deliberately preach the beauty of woman's shameless- 
 ness, the rapture of unbridled lust. 
 

 57 
 
 Vhivbrsity; 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 f 
 
 THE HISTOEY OF THE EARLY WORLD. 
 
 The Paraphrase goes on systematically with the Bible 
 story, varying it in very few points from that given in 
 the authorised version, but introducing many explana- 
 tory speeches, weaving the incidents together in a 
 picturesque way, which shows how fully and vividly 
 Csedmon had realised them. From first to last we 
 learn to understand what Bede says, that when the 
 stories had been told him he ruminated them, and 
 turned them into vigorous verse. We have in the first 
 place the Murder of Abel by Cain : we hear how, when 
 Abel's offering was accepted in preference to his, anger 
 was heavy at Cain's heart, rage took away his mind ; 
 hate swelled in the chieftain's breast, ire with envy. 
 This multiplication of the same idea in different forms 
 is characteristic of Old English as of Hebrew poetry. 
 After his sentence Cain went, sad of mind, from the 
 sight of God — a friendless wretclT — and dwelt in the east 
 lands, far from his father's care, where a maiden fair 
 brought forth offspring to him. Who she was or how 
 she got there is not explained. 
 
/ 
 
 58 CjEDMON ANB SIS WORKS. 
 
 Caedmon adopts the Eabbinical tradition that 
 Lamech murdered Cain, the beloved kinsman of his 
 sons, well knowing that God's vengeance, sevenfold 
 great, would fall upon him for the crime, that it would 
 be visited upon him with grim horror after death. 
 
 There is but little to note in the account of the 
 patriarchs, excepting that they are constantly described 
 as the dispensers of gold. This is an interesting allu- 
 ^sion to the custom which obtained amongst the old 
 ^ y/fenglish chiefs of rewarding their followers by presents. 
 / We shall have to allude to this again. A leader was 
 esteemed noble who gave liberally to his adherents. 
 Nepotism was esteemed a virtue then, although now- 
 adays only spiritual leaders and judges are permitted to 
 look upon it as such, and to practise it freely. 
 
 The story becomes more interesting when we come 
 to the Deluge. This was an event which was certain to 
 make a vi^dd impression upon the simple, child-like / ^ 
 mind of the poet. He elaborates the strange Biblical 
 idea of the repentance of the Deity ; greatly He rued 
 that He had ever created man when He saw their 
 crimes, their admiration of the beauty of the women, 
 daughters of His enemies. He determined, grimly 
 and sorely, to punish them with hard might, to destroy 
 aU on earth save Noah, who was dear to Him, for he 
 was of good courage, just, and meek — him the Al- 
 mighty Helm promised ' Thou shalt have peace with 
 
THE HISTORY OF THE EARLY WORLD, 59 
 
 thy sons when the wail streams swell with wearied ones, 
 with rebels fall of sin.' Then Noah willingly built the 
 mickle sea-chest, and strengthened it within and with- 
 out against the flood with a wondrous kind of earth- 
 lime, ever the harder the harder the rough water beat 
 against it — a hint that concrete was not forgotten in 
 England, that some of the Koman lessons had borne 
 fruit. 
 
 When the dear chieftains and their incongruous 
 possessions had entered into the sea-house, and the 
 Lord had closed its mouth. He sent rain from heaven, 
 and let the well-burns throng in the world. The dread 
 streams swayed darkly, the waves up-rose over their 
 shore-walls; men's birthplaces were buried; the sea 
 gripped strongly the dying people ; and the ark rode 
 under the welkin over the sea's ring ; the sea-drenching 
 flood stood fifteen ells deep over the downs. 
 
 When it at length began to sink, the chieftains 
 and their wives also long that they might step over the 
 nailed boards, over the sea-strath, and lead forth their 
 possessions. Noah let a swart raven fly from the 
 house over the dark flood, thinking it must needs 
 return if it found not land over the wide water ; but 
 he was deceived, for the ' fiend perched on the floating 
 corpses, the sallow-feathered him would not seek.' 
 Then, seven days after, he let a dove fly far over the 
 deep water, but she found no rest : 
 
€0 CjEBMON and his WORKS. 
 
 * Went the wild fowl at even 
 The ark to seek over wan way, 
 Weary and hiingiy to sink 
 Into the hands of the holy man.' 
 
 The rest of the story has little in it that is striking, 
 and the Paraphrase is but an expansion of the BibKcal 
 narrative until it comes to the life of Abraham. As 
 this is one of its strong points I shall dwell somewhat 
 minutely upon it. 
 
 After mentioning the birth of Abraham and Haran, 
 two comely men, and of Haran's son Lot, lovely in life, 
 the story passes at once to Abraham's marriage. In 
 this part of the Paraphrase we have^^ more of female 
 beauty and sexual love than is at all usual in it or in 
 other old English poems, but, as in the Bible, we get 
 an unpleasant idea of Sarah. She does not seem at all 
 the help-meet for such a noble man as Abraham, so far 
 as intellectual matters are concerned, although her 
 loveliness is readily and fully acknowledged. She is 
 called, ' woman bright in beauty,' ' sweet bed-com- 
 panion,' ' may of elf-sheen,' ' winsome beauty,' ' bride 
 with blonde hair,' &c. Abraham, too, is spoken of as 
 the ' bairn blithe of mood,' ' wise-heedy,' ' war-board 
 swinger,' ' bracelet ward,' ' sage dispenser of gold.' 
 And, still showing the store our forefathers set on 
 jewels, ' the bride and her bracelets ' are specially dwelt 
 upon. 
 
THE HISTORY OF THE EARLY WORLD. 61 
 
 Abraham's leaving Haran and entering into the 
 Land of Promise are fully detailed, and then we hear 
 how, when the hard hunger was wail-grim to the 
 home-sitting men, Abraham sought a dwelling in 
 Egypt, where he 'Saw the white horn-halls of the 
 Egyptians, and their high burgh brightly glitter.' 
 We learn that Pharaoh, ' the dispenser of treasure,' 
 ' the helm (protector) of noble ones,' led Sarah to his 
 own hall, and gave Abraham honour ; but, when he 
 suffered from the untruths which that blessed man had 
 told to him, he gladly sent him and his wife away to 
 Bethel, where they set up their hall for the second 
 time. 
 
 Then we read of the separation of Abraham and 
 Lot, and how Lot chose Sodom to dwell in, taking 
 with him there bracelets and wound (twisted) gold. 
 There follows a very fine description of the war which 
 the four Northern kings waged against Sodom. We 
 find again how^^fighting always comes home to Csed- 
 mon, how he fires up when he speaks of it, and the "^- — 
 somewhat monotonous jog-trot of the Paraphrase 
 becomes really stirring verse. He tells us how many a 
 fearful bleak-faced girl must go trembling into a 
 stranger's arms ; how the warriors for brides and brace- 
 lets fell sick with wounds. The hostile troops came 
 spreading over the land and exacting tribute. 
 
•62 CjEDMON and his WORKS, 
 
 ^ Tlien fared they togetlier, 
 
 Javelins were loud, 
 
 "Wroth wail-crowds, 
 
 Sang the wan birds 
 
 Under the harm-shafts. 
 
 Dewy feathered. 
 
 The rush looking for. 
 * * * * 
 
 There was hard play. 
 Wail-spears wrestled. 
 War-cry mickle, 
 Loud battle sway. 
 The heroes with their hands 
 Drew from their sheaths 
 The ring-mailed swords, 
 Doughty of edges. 
 There was easUy found 
 Death-bargain to the earl 
 Who was not early 
 Satisfied with strife.' 
 
 Then a warrior, leaving the war-wolves and the 
 weapons behind, seeks Abraham, and tells him the sad 
 tale. He gathers together his hearth-people, three 
 hundred ash-bearers, faithful to their lord, each of 
 whom he knew could well wage war with the fallow 
 linden ; and, with them, he attacks the north men 
 under the shade of night, and the lives of the foes 
 fell thickly where, laughing, they had borne the spoil. 
 There was again the din of spears and shields, and 
 the whizzing of arrows. Lot is rescued, and the poet 
 
THE HISTORY OF THE EARLY WORLD. 63 
 
 tells how the women, gladly returning, saw ' the birds 
 tearing amongst the battle corpses : ' 
 
 * The swoUen fowls upon the mountain cliffs 
 Sit bloody, with the slaughter of those bands 
 Filled grossly.' 
 
 Caedmon dwells at some length upon the blessing 
 which Melchizedek bestowed upon Abraham, and the 
 interview between Abraham and the prince of Sodom, 
 to whom all his possessions are restored, and the next 
 canto shows Abraham asking an heir from Grod. He 
 mourns his desolate state, and says that his steward, 
 elate with children, expects that his sons shall be 
 Abraham's heirs. Grod promises him heirs of his own : 
 
 < Behold heaven : 
 Count its ornaments 
 The stars of the sky 
 Which now widely deal 
 Their glorious beauty, 
 Over the broad ocean 
 Brightly shine : 
 Such shall be the number 
 Of thy strong children.' 
 
 Sarah, worn with sadness, gives her comely Egyptian 
 maiden to her lord, and is rewarded by Hagar's insults 
 and contempt. She upbraids Abraham, and the prudent 
 man tells her to do what she likes with her own. The 
 Bible story is very closely followed. Sarah was not 
 
64 C^DMON AND HIS WORKS. 
 
 unlike some women who have lived in later days. She 
 was hard and cruel, and her mind's hate spake fiercely 
 against the damsel who fled away to the wilderness. 
 When the angel, meeting the fugitive, questions her 
 as to where she is hastening, she replies : 
 
 * Poor and lacking eveiy wish 
 I fled from my dwelling, 
 From woe and my lady's hate, 
 From torment and wrong ; 
 Now shall I with tearful face 
 Abide in tlie wilderness my doom : 
 Until from my heart 
 Hunger or the wolf 
 Shall soul and sorrow 
 At once have torn/ 
 
 The angel comforts her with the promise of Ishmael, 
 a fierce and bloodthirsty son, a foe to the tribes of men ; 
 a promise more acceptable to a mother in the old English 
 days, more acceptable to one who had been treated like 
 Hagar, than to a mother of the present time. She 
 returns home. The promise of a son by Sarah, his 
 blonde haired wife, is again made to Abraham, but is 
 received slightingly by both. The portion describing 
 the visit of the angels is imperfect, but we read how the 
 messengers bent their steps rapidly towards Sodom, 
 the Son of Light Himself being their companion. This 
 is worthy of remark, for up to this point there is no 
 mention or hint of any person high in Heaven since 
 
THE HISTORY OF THE EARLY WORLD. 65 
 
 Satan's fall excepting the Deity Himself. He goes 
 with them 
 
 * Until they on Sodom's steep-walled burgh 
 Might look, might see its towering silver halls 
 And red-gold palaces.' 
 
 The angels rest with Lot until, ' forth went the evening 
 shine, and night came following after day, covering 
 the streams, the seas, and the wide land with the 
 darkness of this life.' Then follows a vivid description 
 of the sinfulness and the destruction of Sodom and the 
 surrounding land, and we hear how, as Abraham went 
 alone in the early day, ' he saw fly widely up from the 
 world the grim death-reek.' 
 
 I need not dwell upon Abraham's sojourn with Abime- 
 lech, but it is interesting to note that that great monarch 
 is described as lying ' drunken with wine,' just as the 
 Sodomites are spoken of as ' ale drunkards.' Abimeleeh 
 is also called ' the dispenser of treasure,' ' the brandisher 
 of the shield.' When we find that Grustave Dore, in in- 
 terpreting Scripture to the English people to-day, paints 
 Christ as descending from the Koman Prsetorium, we 
 are the more thankful that our old English poet drew 
 his scenery from that which was best known to him 
 and best understood by those to whom he sang. There 
 is much to be said for bringing such matters home by 
 following the example which the Master Himself set of 
 
 F 
 
66 CyEBMON AND HIS WORKS. 
 
 using the everyday language of the people spoken to ; 
 but it is not easy to justify the attempt to render a 
 sublime scene more impressive by making it an im- 
 possibility. 
 
 There can be little doubt that our forefathers, in 
 common with all other early European peoples, were hard 
 drinkers upon occasion, and that the idea of the sinfid^ 
 ness of drunkenness is a modem one. Even in the 
 Scriptures we read much more of its inexpediency, and 
 that especially to those in high places, than of its 
 intense wickedness. We see that then as now it made 
 a wise man a fool, but it did not make him a brute ; 
 it made the heavy-hearted oblivious, but it was sloth, 
 not drunkenness, that caused the weeds to grow in the 
 garden. It is since men began to congregate in brick 
 cattle-pens, and some to grow rich by the sale of liquid 
 fire, and others to grow poor and mad by the unquench- 
 able thirfet such fire produces, that the insane and 
 inhuman brutality which we have learned to associate 
 with drunkenness has characterised it. Howell, in his 
 merry Induction, airgues that ' Good wine leadeth a man 
 to Heaven.' If it be so we do not require even an 
 historiographer to teU us where bad beer and worse gin 
 will inevitably lead him to. 
 
 The Bible Story is continued — Isaac is bom, and 
 Sarah persuades her ' dear lord, ward of bracelets,' to 
 send Hagar and Ishmael into exile. The manuscript 
 
THE HISTORY OF THE EARLY WORLD. 67 
 
 is again imperfect, and this part of the Paraphrase ends 
 with the Offering of Isaac. It is curious that so striking 
 a story, one which is so pathetically worked out in 
 some of the old Miracle Plays, is told here in the most 
 prosaic manner. There are one or two striking bits of 
 scene-painting — Abraham wandering with the lad over 
 the desert until, on the third day, in glory bright over 
 the deep water the morn arose : their climbing up the 
 steep downs until they stood on the roof of the high 
 land — but beyond these all is very tame and dull, and 
 it is not easy to believe that Csedmon had anything to 
 do with it. 
 
 When speaking of Abraham and Sarah, I said that 
 we find in this portion of the Paraphrase more allusions 
 to female beauty and sexual love than is at all usual in 
 this or in the other old English poems. We must not 
 measure our forefathers by our standards in these mat- 
 ters. As I have already pointed out, that which we 
 call love now-a-days was unknown to them — un- 
 known probably to any of the ancient peoples. Our 
 love is a joint product of Mahommedanism and Chris- 
 tianity. The high position which woman receives, the 
 honour in which her chastity is held, the restraint, 
 the respect, the gentleness of modern love, are to a 
 great extent the results of the teaching of Christ ; but 
 the romance, the glamour, the dalliance sweet, the 
 ideality of modern love, are the results of the Moorish. 
 
 F 2 
 
68 C^DMON AND HIS WORKS. 
 
 influence upon Provenpal poetry, and come to us 
 so. The lover amongst the Norsemen did not come 
 'with a ballad made e'en to his mistress' eyebrow,' 
 but with the hair snatched from shrieking maids. 
 It was with him as with the Eed Indian : he was not 
 worthy to marry until he had proved his manhood in 
 the fight. Love was no pastime with him, it was a 
 business, and one in which little time was lost. The 
 hero did great deeds; he received the mead-cup from 
 the maiden's hand, and union followed. Marriage was 
 always honourable. The married woman was the ruler 
 of the household, and the counsellor of her husband 
 and his friends. There is of course only the purely selfish 
 side of married life to be foimd. The woman lives but 
 for and in and through her husband. His virtues, his 
 pleasures, his wishes, are her subjects of constant con- 
 templation, her joys, her only aims in life. The concep- 
 tion of her true position is a narrow and barbarous one 
 to the emancipated minds of the present day, but there 
 is a refinement, a purity, and an elevation about this 
 old English view which contrasts favourably with those 
 which we find prevalent amongst more southern peoples 
 of the same period. No doubt there is about northern 
 love, as about northern life, something grey, colourless, 
 stern, and sad; but there is depth, intensity, and 
 durability. 
 
CHAPTEE VL 
 
 ISRAEL IN EGYPT. 
 
 The tale turns abruptly to the oppressed Israelites in 
 Egypt, and, after a few lines descriptive of the excel- 
 lence and wisdom of their great leader Moses, it speaks 
 of the Death of the First-born. At midnight had the 
 Slayer gone forth, and fiercely felled many sinful ones. 
 The land mom-ned over the corpses of the dead; the 
 flower of the nation had faded; the hands of the 
 laughers were closed; wail was heard widely. Then 
 the proud leader of the tribes hastened the march past 
 fast and hostile towns, through narrow passes, an un- 
 known way. The lands they traversed were covered 
 with an air-helm, the moor held their tents. They 
 pressed closely to the northern ways, for on the south 
 they knew lay the scorched mountains of the Sun-men's 
 Land, a people brown with the hot coals of heaven. 
 God shielded them against the intense heat with a day- 
 shield's shade ; though men knew not the mast-ropes 
 nor could see the sail-rod. He had spread a sail over 
 the heavens, and all the people knew that the Lord of 
 Hosts was with them. The bold in mind raised the 
 
70 C^EDMON AND HIS WORKS. 
 
 war trumps with voices loud ; each evening the heavenly 
 beacon shone ; pale over the archers stood the clear 
 beams; the shades prevailed, yet the heavenly candle 
 rested over the hosts, lest horror of the waste, of the 
 hoar heath with its stormy weather, should overwhelm 
 their souls. Then the bright array shone, the shields 
 glistened, the bucklered warriors saw their course 
 straight before them, until suddenly in their onward 
 way the sea-barriers withstood their force. Then they 
 cast them wearily down ; fear came upon the people ; 
 in deathly horror the homeless awaited the foe who 
 had decreed him misery and torment : 
 
 * Then the men of Moses despaired -when they saw 
 The host of Pharaoh coming forth from the south, 
 Moving over the holt in a glittering band. 
 They trimmed their weapons, advancing to war ; 
 Their bucklers glistened, their trumpets sang, 
 Their standards thundered, they trod the people's bounds : 
 Around them the war-birds, gi'eedy of battle. 
 Dewy-feathered, wan choosers of corpses. 
 Screamed as though over the bodies of God's folk : 
 The wolves sang foul even-song, hoping for food, — 
 Reckless and lean for the death of the brave ones, — 
 The army birds flew on the ti*ack of the foe. 
 
 At mid-night the watch-men cried. 
 The Spirit of Death hovered over them, 
 The people were henmied in.' 
 
 The eager approach of the revengeful Egyptians, 
 and the hopeless affliction of the fugitive Israelites, are 
 
ISRAEL IN EGYPT. 71 
 
 dwelt upon at considerable length. At dawn Moses 
 bade his men gather the people together with brazen 
 trumps ; he divided the warriors into fifty bands, each 
 of a thousand men, and each man famed for courage. 
 He spake brave words to them, urging them to put 
 their trust in the eternal Grod of Abraham, and telling 
 them not to fear their foes, the space of whose fragile 
 lives was at an end. Then he struck the sea, which 
 divided on either hand, and he addressed the great 
 multitude, pointing out Grod's goodness to them, and 
 pressing them to pass over in haste. And then we read 
 how tribe followed tribe proudly over the salt marsh : 
 but just at this critical moment there comes a most 
 extraordinary piece of prosing. The progress of the 
 story is entirely stopped, whilst we are told, at tedious 
 length, the whole history of Noah over again, and then 
 have an abstract of Abraham's life : all in a very prosaic 
 improbable style. This is either an artistic manoeuvre 
 or an interpolation. It may have been introduced just 
 at this critical point in order to excite to a greater 
 pitch the anxiety and eagerness of the poet's audience, 
 but the style is so different from that of the preceding 
 recital, that I have no doubt some well-meaning but 
 stupid transcriber introduced it upon his own respon- 
 sibility. It is not to be believed that a man who saw 
 and pictured the rapid succession of great events so 
 intensely as Csedmon did, should have stopped in the 
 
72 CjEDMON and his WORKS. 
 
 yeiy middle of the tale to tell for the second time, 
 in a very inferior way, stories already well told, and 
 without the least immediate bearing on the work in 
 hand. 
 
 It is, indeed, probable that Caedmon composed 
 from time to time the finer portions, the active parts, of 
 the Paraphrase, and that these were strung together by 
 his more prosaic brethren. Let us turn back for a mo- 
 ment, so that we may get the narrative unbroken. The 
 Israelites had escaped from bondage but to find them- 
 selves, after a brief period of freedom, with the deep 
 sea before them, and their cruel pursuers behind. 
 Despite the Cloud of Safety by day, and the Fire of Hope 
 by night, well might their souls be heavy within them. 
 In battle lay their only chance of safety, and they 
 fought against fearful odds. The fearless warriors of 
 Egypt, the flower of her people, led by princes and 
 nobles, moved towards them with hostile eyes ; the 
 king clasped his visor, the guardian of his people his 
 grim helm ; the banners beamed in hope of the fight ; 
 the hoary army-wolves hailed the battle, thirsty for the 
 shock of war. The foe was determined and revengeful ; 
 the fugitives were hopeless, and sat clad in sad gar- 
 ments and with downcast faces. Then was the great 
 deep opened, and Moses led them by a way which they 
 knew not ; the trembling host, the hoary chieftains, the 
 fearless warriors, the sea vikings, marching in iron 
 
ISRAEL IN EGYPT. 73 
 
 companies, guided by him who was great and supreme 
 in dignity. 
 
 The sea walls stood firm until Pharaoh and the 
 flower of Egypt bravely followed the hosts of Israel, 
 and then they burst bloodily under Moses' outstretched 
 arm: — 
 
 ' Then ocean wailed with death, crying was in the deep, 
 The Egyptians were turned hack, tremhling they fled, 
 The flood-dread seized on their afirighted souls ; 
 The sea foamed gore, and a death-mist arose : 
 How gladly would that host now find their homes ! 
 Their boast grew sadder, whilst, as a fell cloud. 
 Against them rose the rolling of the waves. 
 Where ways had been the flood in mountains raged ; 
 With dying voices was the hlue air thick ; 
 The sea-walls, the proud ocean streams, arose. 
 The ever cold sea with its fierce salt waves — 
 And fettered fast the kingly might in death. 
 The Guardian of the flood, the foaming gulf, 
 With his old faulchion struck the unsheltering wave : 
 So, in the swoon of death, the army slept, 
 The flood-pale band sank with their sinful souls ; 
 There came not any of that host to home.' 
 
74 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE CAPTIVITY. 
 
 The Paraphrase does not attempt to deal minutely 
 with the history of the Israelites after they had en- 
 tered the Land of Promise. It sketches briefly the 
 period of their bright weal whilst they kept their 
 fathers' covenant with the Lord of glory ; their turning 
 away to many errors ; and their conquest and carrying 
 into bondage by the wolf-hearted King Nebuchadnezzar 
 with his wail-bearing host. It then relates the choice of 
 three clever noble youths to speak wise words to the hard 
 and high-minded prince. It tells of the dream which 
 showed him in his wine-drunken sleep the end of the 
 joys of earth, and of its interpretation by the truth-fast 
 Daniel ; and then it passes to the making, setting up, 
 and worshipping of the golden image. The manu- 
 script is somewhat defective, but we read how the 
 faithful and noble youths boldly said that they recked 
 nought of this idol, and how they could not be brought 
 to worship it. The king grimly told them that they 
 should yield, or suffer for their stubbornness ; but they 
 stood firm in the horn- of fierce trial. The scene is 
 
THE CAPTIVITY. ' 75 
 
 graphically described : the oven heated with a hugely 
 great fire until the iron glowed through and through ; 
 many servants casting wood upon it; the wolf-heart 
 king resolving to make a wall of hot iron round the 
 dear youths ; the hating men shoving them into the 
 flames, which rolled out from the holy ones upon the 
 heathen ; whilst they themselves were blithe of mood, 
 and the heat gave them, as they praised Grod, no more 
 sorrow than the shining of the sun : — 
 
 * Them nothing harmed, but it was likest 
 To when in summer the sun shineth 
 And in the day the dew-drops 
 Are scattered by the wind.' 
 
 This is one of the few instances in which we find a 
 simile made use of in Old English poetry. The inchoate 
 simile, the metaphor, is in constant requisition, but 
 the full simile is very seldom introduced, although 
 when it does occur it has considerable effect. 
 
 Of the ' Song of Azariah,' which follows, we have 
 also a version in the interesting collection of Old 
 English Poetry known as the Exeter Book, which 
 formed a portion of the library given by Bishop Leofric 
 to the church of Exeter in the earlier part of the 
 eleventh century. It is more correct than the Bod- 
 leian version, and throws light upon many obscure pas- 
 sages. It contains also ' The Song of the Three Chil- 
 dren,' and from the considerable difference between the 
 
76 C^DMON AND HIS WORKS. 
 
 two versions of this Song we can readily appreciate the 
 loss which we have sustained in having no copy of the 
 Paraphrase of a much earlier date, before so many 
 errors had crept into the text. 
 
 In both of these Songs the version now printed in 
 the Apocrypha is closely followed, but it is much con- 
 densed. In the passage connecting them, which tells 
 of the angel all bright sent from above to comfort the 
 beloved ones and to save them, there occurs a double 
 simile, suggested by the words of the original Scripture. 
 ' But the Angel of the Lord came down into the oven, 
 together with Azarias and his fellows, and smote the 
 flame of the fire out of the oven ; and made the midst 
 of the furnace as it had been a moist, whistling wind, 
 so that the fire touched them not at all, neither hurt 
 nor troubled them.' Csedmon says : — 
 
 ' Then, in the even, when the angel came, 
 Windy and winsome was it, likest when 
 In summer-tide the falling drops are sent, — 
 Warm shower in the day-time from the clouds. 
 
 Such as the weather's kindness was the help 
 Through the Lord's might e'en in the fire to those 
 The holy ones : the burning flame was quenched.' 
 
 In the Story of the Three Children occur the follow- 
 ing lines, which are manifestly not taken from the 
 Apocryphal version, but are a pious addition to com- 
 plete the Song in an inconsistent Christian manner : 
 
THE CAPTIVITY. 77 
 
 ' We bless thee, Lord of all folk, 
 Father Almighty, true Son of the Creator, 
 Saviour of souls, Helper of heroes — 
 And thee Holy Ghost, we worship in glory- 
 Wise (literally witty) Lord.' 
 
 The old writer was regardless of the fact that at this 
 period of Old World History the doctrine of the Trinity 
 had not been broached. He reminds us of many of 
 the great old painters, who absolutely refused to be 
 conditioned, but did their work in the way which most 
 fully expressed their meaning, making all such small 
 details as time and place suit their convenience. 
 
 The brief account which Daniel gives of the surprise 
 with which the King Nebuchadnezzar saw the three 
 Hebrews walking unharmed in the furnace, and dis- 
 covered the presence of a fourth, is greatly expanded 
 in the Paraphrase, and his wise and word-skilful minister 
 is made to explain to him that they have been deli- 
 vered from their peril, because they worship the one 
 eternal Grod and Him alone. That which occupies five 
 verses in the Scripture is spread over seventy-one full 
 lines in the Paraphrase. 
 
 The story passes on to Nebuchadnezzar's Dream of 
 
 the great tree, the refuge-place for fowls, which was to 
 
 be hewn down, and Daniel's explanation of it : 
 
 ^ As the tree waxed high to heaven 
 So thou to men art alone to all 
 Earth-dwellers, ward and guide ; 
 To thee is no with-stander, man on earth, 
 
78 CMBMON AND HIS WORKS. 
 
 Save the Creator alone, who cutteth thee off 
 
 From the kingdom, and friendless 
 
 Into wreck sendeth, and then turneth 
 
 Thine heart, that thou not carest 
 
 After men's dreams, nor knowest aught 
 
 But the wild beasts' thews, but thou living 
 
 For a long season with harts' leaps 
 
 Among holts must dwell. No meat is for thee 
 
 Save the moor's grass, nor rest given, 
 
 But thee the rain shower waketh and beateth, 
 
 As the wild beasts, until, after seven winters, 
 
 Thou shalt truly believe that one Creator 
 
 Over all men ruling and king 
 
 Is in the heavens.' 
 
 He counsels the King as in the Scripture, and the 
 poet adds a short reflection on the way in which Grod 
 often lets men run into sin. The story is continued 
 until the comrade of beasts, the way-goer of the wilds, 
 returns humbled and wise to be again the Chaldeans' 
 King. 
 
 The first book of the Paraphrase ends with an ac- 
 count of Belshazzar's Feast ; but the manuscript is 
 imperfect, and the tale breaks ofif when Daniel has 
 entered into the hall of feasting, and to the King and 
 his kindred, flushed with wine, is boldly telling the 
 dread meaning of the scarlet-book staves upon the 
 w^all. 
 
 Although the History of the Captivity, as told in 
 the Paraphrase, is not without interest, and here and 
 
THE CAPTIVITY. 79 
 
 there contains passages of some interest, it lacks the 
 vigour and picturesqueness of the earlier portions, and 
 I doubt whether we have Csedmon's work in it at all. 
 The text of the Scripture is closely adhered to, and 
 where it is expanded it is simply diluted. There are 
 no longer vivid pictorial interpolations, fresh and 
 powerful, showing clear poetic insight. The poet is 
 the shaper, not the maker. He repeats in verse that 
 which has been told to him in prose, but there is no 
 sign that he has turned it over in his mind, and that 
 he is the seer as well as the hearer. The history of the 
 manuscript prevents the attempt to prove verbal dif- 
 ferences which point to this conclusion. It must 
 necessarily be purely a matter of opinion, and I do not, 
 therefore, wish to insist upon my view too strongly, 
 but, taking a broad and comprehensive survey of 
 the work as we have it, and contrasting the story 
 of the captivity with that of Abraham or of the 
 Exodus, the differences which I have pointed out seem 
 to me to justify the conclusions I have come to. 
 
80 
 
 CHAPTEK VIII. 
 
 THE SECOND BOOK OF THE PAEAPHRASE. 
 
 The second book of the Paraphrase opens with a 
 dark saying : 
 
 * That was im-darkened 
 To the earth-dwellers 
 That the Creator had 
 Might and strength 
 When he fastened 
 The comers of the ground.' 
 
 Wlio the earth-dwellers were before there were sun 
 or moon, stones or streams (for the creation of these is 
 treated of immediately afterwards), it is hard to say. 
 Probably the writer had heard some faint whisper of 
 the curious legends respecting the beings who enjoyed 
 the closest intimacy with the old world's fathers, the 
 Liliths, and the like. But the work goes on briefly to 
 mention the Creation, and then turns to the Fall of the 
 Kebel Angels. It gives the speech accursed which Satan 
 utters out of hell with icy voice, but it is a feeble echo 
 of the fierce, proud words which he pours forth in the 
 first book. The swart and sinful ghosts answer him 
 
THE SECOND BOOK OF THE PARAPHRASE. 81 
 
 with bitter reproaches, and he replies in a second speech, 
 in which he owns the justness of their attacks, and 
 hewails his own sad fate. It is still the wail of a weak 
 and broken spirit — a spirit far inferior, incomparably- 
 lower, in every respect, than the powerful, impenitent, 
 wrathful fiend-god which Cgedmon drew. It is im- 
 possible that these lines are his unless he had cast away 
 his poetry to become theologian. When we come to 
 Satan's third speech, part of which I have already given 
 (p. 48), we get, indeed, to something better and higher, 
 and which savours more of the old man's power. This 
 third speech is in subject-matter so like to the second 
 that I believe them to be simply different versions of 
 the same, the second being much the later and poorer. 
 There is a remarkable outburst of angry, but despairing 
 sighs in the third speech, which is well worthy of 
 notice. Immediately after the lines which I have 
 given before follow these words : 
 
 ' Then yet in speech the foul wretch out of hell 
 Weary with woe still praised his many crimes, 
 In words which flew like sparks from adder's tongue : 
 power of God ! covering of the good I 
 might of the Creator ! O mid-earth ! 
 light of day ! O dream of God ! O hosts 
 Of Angels ! high Heaven ! O I bereft 
 Of all eternal joy ! ' 
 
 And then he muses upon the hardness of the punishment 
 which has followed his attempt to drive the Euler of 
 
82 C^DMON AND HIS WORKS. 
 
 Hosts from his throne. He and his greedy followers 
 turn back to the hot hell, whilst the writer takes occasion 
 to enforce upon men the remembrance of the Holy Lord, 
 and urges them to pray that when they hereafter seek 
 another life they may find a land fairer than this earth, 
 where beauteous and mnsome fruits shine, and where 
 the Saviour Lord Himself sitteth, white hosts of angels 
 standing around his throne, praising him in words and 
 works. 
 
 ' Their beauty with the King of Glory shines 
 Over the world of aU worlds.' 
 
 And after all this the story goes back again to the 
 rebel angels, and describes their bliss in Heaven before 
 their revolt, and how Satan advised them to rebel, and 
 how they were driven forth into the grim abyss, and 
 how they wonder if the Eternal will ever allow them a 
 home in Heaven's kingdom as erst he did. And upon 
 this there is again a sermon upon the need of remember- 
 ing the power of God, and banishing wicked thoughts, 
 and upon the happiness in store for the blessed souls 
 parted from sorrows. Yet once again the tale returns 
 to the wretched state of the lost ones in Hell. It describes 
 them wailing woefully through the windy hall ; tells 
 how they may not share the holy joys of heaven, but 
 must have chill and fire in their dim home for their 
 only hope. He who was twelve miles near to Hell 
 
THE SECOND BOOK OF THE PARAPHRASE. 83 
 
 might hear the loud and woeful teeth-grinding of Grod's 
 Deniers. And this portion ends with words of warning 
 and exhortation almost identical with those which have 
 been already repeated so often. 
 
 Surely this constant sermonising, this reiteration of 
 the old story, this sad tale so repeatedly yet so dully 
 told, point to the very confused state of the manuscript. 
 Some fragments of it may have been suggested by the 
 old words dictated by Csedmon himself, but this portion 
 of the Paraphrase, as we have it, is a mere jumble of 
 the unimaginative piety of many monkish writers. 
 
 But the tale now turns to that apocryphal portion 
 of the History of Christ which is contained in the so- 
 called ' Grospel of Nicodemus,' and which is so great a 
 favourite with our old English poets and homilists, the 
 Harrowing of Hell. The narrative is so mysterious 
 and picturesque that it was certain to be popular. It 
 is founded upon the verses in 1 Peter, c. iii., 18, 19, 
 which say : ' For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, 
 the just for the unjust (that He might bring us to Grod), 
 being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the 
 Spirit, by which also he went and preached to the 
 Spirits in prison.' 
 
 The Paraphrase follows closely the version given in 
 the Apocryphal Grospel. It begins by describing the 
 dread of the lost angels when their Judge brake and 
 bent the doors of Hell with the noise of thunder. They 
 
 G 2 
 
84 C^DMON AND HIS WORKS. 
 
 moaned affrighted through the windy halls, for they 
 anticipated the truth, that the souls they had held in 
 bondage would be released, whilst they themselves 
 must for ever afterwards continue to endure punishment 
 for their work of wrath. 
 
 ' This is strong-like : now this storm hath over-come 
 Thane and vassals : the Lord of Angels 
 A fairer light before him than we e'er before 
 Saw with eyes save when with the angels 
 We dwelt on high, cometh.' 
 
 For them there was no hope, but many thousands 
 of their captives would be led to the heavenly country. 
 The blessed race of Adam ascended, but Eve might not 
 look on glory until she bitterly acknowledged her grievous 
 fault, and prayed that she and her kindred might be 
 released from the hot den. The manuscript is defective, 
 but we learn how everyone, even in the horror of hell, 
 rejoiced, in spite of their dreadful sufferings, as Adam — 
 
 * Eaising his hands to the great King of Heaven 
 Prayed him for pity for dear Mary's sake. 
 
 " On mid-earth thou wast from my daughter bom, 
 And for men's help : now, Lord, let it be seen 
 That thou thyself art the Eternal God, 
 And Author of aU Creatures." ' 
 
 Then they were permitted to ascend to their heavenly 
 home, but the Lord Eternal fastened bonds of torment 
 
THE SECOND BOOK OF THE PARAPHRASE. 85 
 
 on the fiends and the poor wi*etch Satan, and thrust 
 them further into deep darkness. 
 
 The ' Paraphrase ' goes on to tell how the Firstborn 
 of God explained to the released spirits the story of the 
 Creation and the Fall, of His own life on earth, His Cruci- 
 fixion, and His Intercession for them. Then it speaks 
 of Christ's appearance to His followers in Gralilee after 
 His death, of His ascension, and His sitting in Heaven 
 as judge, ' where we ourselves may sit with the Lord, 
 
 ^ Among the angels, having the same light. 
 Let us strive ever that we him ohey, 
 And give him pleasm^e, then we shall have life 
 Oouther than we on earth could e'er enjoy.' 
 
 After this follows an account of Doomsday and a 
 sketch of the dreadful fate which awaits the condemned, 
 and of the joys of heaven. From the praises of the 
 angel-spirits the tale turns to the Temptation in the 
 Wilderness, and a vivid description of the Keturn of 
 Satan to Hell after his great discomfiture. Christ had 
 bidden him to measure the height and depth of his 
 grim grave-house with his hands, and when he again 
 stood in it he seemed a hundred thousand miles distant 
 from Hell's door. The multitude of devils begin to 
 curse him, but the manuscript is again very defective, 
 and ends with the words 
 
 ^ Lo ! thus be now in evil : thou wouldest not good before.' 
 
86 C^DMON AND HIS WORKS. 
 
 It is abundantly evident that this second book of 
 the ' Paraphrase ' is not only in a very defective and 
 mutilated condition, but that it is also so confused as 
 to show unmistakably that it is a piece of patchwork. 
 We may have some pieces of Caedmon's work in it, but 
 it i» impossible to say which they are. 
 
 I have thus, then, gone through the salient points 
 of the entire ' Paraphrase.' It is a work full of imperfec- 
 tions, indeed, but of great interest. At times it attains 
 to a high standard of poetical excellence, although, for 
 the most part, it is barren and weary enough. I do 
 not think that it is unfair to credit Caedmon with the 
 best parts of it. He was, in the opinion of those who 
 lived nearest to him, a man of mark — a man specially 
 called to do a special work, and one who, in their 
 opinion, did it well. We do not find in his work any 
 high flights of fancy ; we have but little reflection, and 
 that of the simplest kind; but we certainly do find 
 strong imagination ; we certainly do hear a powerful 
 voice. It is the voice of one speaking that which he 
 has seen, not merely that which he has heard. It 
 would scarcely be too much to say that, in the introduc- 
 tion and in the story of the Exodus, the vigour, the 
 picturesque power, the living energy of his language 
 have not been surpassed by those upon whom the mantle 
 of the oldest English poet, the true father of English 
 poetry, has fallen. 
 
87 
 
 CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 POEMS ATTRIBUTED TO C^DMON. 
 
 The one manuscript of Caedmon's ' Paraphrase ' which 
 we now have is very imperfect. It evidently contains 
 much which he did not write, and probably does not con- 
 tain much which he did write. Amongst the poems and 
 fragments of poems which have come down to us from 
 the old English days there are two which have been fre- 
 quently attributed to Csedmon, one of which is sup- 
 posed to have formed a portion of the ' Paraphrase,' and 
 the other to have been an independent poem: and 
 I propose now briefly to explain what these poems are. 
 
 The most perfect and most important of them is 
 that known as the ' Dream of the Holy Eood.' This 
 poem is so curiously connected with philological diffi- 
 culties and research that I must tell its entire story. 
 
 Amongst the few remains of monuments which 
 existed in this country before the Eoman letters had 
 been generally introduced, and which therefore bore 
 inscriptions in the earlier symbols, the Euns, of the 
 country itself, the most perfect and important is un- 
 doubtedly the Euthwell Cross, now standing in the 
 Manse Garden, at Euthwell, near Annan, in Dumfries- 
 
88 C^DMON AND HIS WORKS. 
 
 shire. A full account of it, with a careful and well- 
 executed drawing of the stone itself, showing all four 
 sides, with the inscriptions, may be found in Professor 
 Greorge Stephens's ' Old Northern Kunic Monuments of 
 Scandinavia and England,' vol. 1, p. 405. It is now 
 seventeen feet six inches in height, although it has 
 been much knocked about and sadly defaced. Indeed, 
 in 1642, the Greneral Assembly of the Presbyterian 
 Church, conceiving it to be idolatrous, made an order 
 for its destruction. It was thrown down, broken into 
 several pieces, and its inscriptions partly obliterated ; 
 but the fragments continued to lie in the Church until, 
 at the beginning of last century, they were removed 
 to the churchyard to make way for modem improve- 
 ments. Here they were being rapidly demolished 
 when, in 1802, an enlightened incumbent took pos- 
 session of them, and put them once more together 
 where the Cross now stands. 
 
 The stone of which the Cross is made is a hard red 
 grit, found in the district although not in the imme- 
 diate vicinity. All the four sides are covered with 
 sculpture, in a framing of Eoman or Kimic inscrip- 
 tions. The Roman inscriptions which are on the back 
 and front of the Cross surround figures of Christ, the 
 Virgin, and certain of the apostles and saints of the 
 early Church. The Eunic inscriptions, which are on 
 the sides proper of the Cross, are a framing to a bold 
 
POEMS ATTRIBUTED TO C^DMON. 8£> 
 
 conventionalised vine-scroll, with the figures of birds 
 and animals devouring the fruit. 
 
 So much for the Cross itself: but before I speak of 
 the interpretation of its inscriptions I should explain 
 briefly what runes are. They may, perhaps, be not 
 improperly described as the indigenous alphabets or 
 symbolical letter-systems which obtained everywhere 
 in the North of Europe at all events, before the 
 Eoman alphabet obtained the sway. They are relics 
 of the old life in England, Grermany, and Scandinavia. 
 ' Eun' meant originally a secret ; ' run-wita' a secret- 
 witter, a secret-knower, hence a privy counsellor, the 
 man who knows the secrets of the prince — as secretary 
 is ' secret-haver' ; 'rynan' meant to whisper, then to tell 
 secrets, whence the expression 'to round it in the 
 ear' — 'runa' meant a whisperer, one who dealt in runes, 
 a magician : and truly in those old days, when reading 
 and writing were practically unknown, runes must 
 have been very effectual secrets indeed, save to a 
 favoured few. 
 
 The earliest runes were cut or carved in wood or 
 stone ; they were afterwards engraved on rings, belts, 
 swords, &c. ' Writan' meant to cut or carve, until 
 writing, as we know it, was introduced with the advent 
 of pens, ink, and parchment. 
 
 Eunic letters vary in form in different lands. The 
 English runes are not the same as those found in 
 
90 C^DMON AND HIS WORKS. 
 
 Norway or Denmark, although they shew signs of a 
 common origin, and, doubtless, all came from the 
 East, the joy, and hope, and fountain of all life. Pro- 
 perly speaking, we should call runes 'futhorcs', not 
 alphabets, the first symbols having the powers of the 
 letters/ u^ ^ (th' hard), o, ?% and c. Now the Phoe- 
 nician Hebrew alphabet, from which ours comes directly, 
 was (as all writing at first was) pictorial, symbolical ; 
 ' Aleph' was an ox, 'Beth' a house, 'Grimel' a camel, 
 ' Daleth' a door — and so the futhorc begins, 'Feoh' an 
 ox, ' Ur' a bull, ' Thorn' a tree, ' Os' a door, and so forth. 
 We have seen that 'run ' means a secret, and ' writan' 
 means to cut : now let us carry this a few steps further. 
 Runes were engraved, not on stone or metal only, but 
 also on wood or on the bark of trees. Long after 
 paper had been introduced we find that, when it ran 
 short, beech-bark was a substitute ; and as the Latin 
 ' liber,' a book, means also bark, so the old English ' boc,' 
 book, means also the beech-tree. Again, ' poet ' is a foreign 
 word meaning originally a maker ; the old English bard 
 was called a ' scop,' from ' scapan,' to shape or make ; and 
 thus, before pens, paper, or ink had appeared, before 
 Christianity had begun to spread her blessings over our 
 land, the scop wrote runs on boc, the shaper wrote secrets 
 on beech-bark, to be deciphered only by those who under- 
 stood their meaning, as before then and since then, and 
 even to-day, the poets have written the Secrets of Grod 
 
POEMS ATTRIBUTED TO CJEBMON. 91 
 
 and of Nature, Grod's Work, and of the Spirit of Man — 
 His work too, — in books to be understood and inter- 
 preted aright bj those alone who truly love them. 
 
 Now, as these runes were secrets, and as the power 
 of using them involved learning, they fell of course into 
 the hands of the only class who in semi-civilised countries 
 possess learning, the priests — the men who mediate 
 between their fellow-men and the unknown gods. 
 They used runes for their own purposes, and chiefly to 
 obtain more influence over the laity ; and thus runes 
 became part and parcel of the miracles, auguries, and 
 general paraphernalia which were made use of in the 
 mysterious rites of religion, and aided to impress with 
 awe and reverence a simple, superstitious, and credulous 
 people. When, therefore, the change came, and the 
 Christian monks replaced the priests of the older faith, 
 the harmless symbols were ruthlessly destroyed wherever 
 they were met with, although the ideas to which they 
 gave form could not be blotted out. Indeed, the monks 
 themselves were at times obliged to make use of them 
 along with the orthodox symbols, as the inscriptions on the 
 Ruth well Cross and similar monuments abundantly prove. 
 
 To return to the Euthwell Cross. Such a splendid 
 relic had, of course, long been well known to antiqua- 
 rians ; but it remained a puzzle, shirked by the most 
 learned philosophers, until two bold and able Icelanders, 
 Mr. Eepp and Finn Magnusen, attempted to translate 
 
92 C^DMON AND MIS WORKS. 
 
 its runic inscriptions. They Ixjth succeeded in de- 
 ciphering the letters with tolerable accuracy, but when 
 they came to fit them together they differed widely. 
 Eepp said that the cross recorded the grant of 
 a font, called a Christ-bason, and of some cows and 
 land in a place which never existed, and by the 
 advice of monks whose monastery must have been in 
 Spain. Finn Magnusen, on the other hand, made the 
 cross the record of Ashlof 's marriage settlements, ex- 
 plained who Ashlof was, her birth, parentage, and 
 education, and ended by a hundred and five pages of 
 (so-called) Anglo-Saxon history, which have been well 
 described as a wild and extravagant dream. His 
 translation of the inscription itself runs thus — 
 
 * I, Of£sL, Wodin's kinsman, transfer to Eska's descendant ; to you 
 two the property, field, meadow, give we Ashlof. The words of 
 the noble I below make known. To Erinc young promised she 
 riches, estates good ; I for the marriage-feast prepare in the mean- 
 time. Received he now — the noble spoke — the gift, and aye 
 preside in the hall over the guests. I have magnanimity — I bring 
 
 rings These three estates Erincred possesses — Christ 
 
 was amongst. .... When to aU we gave all that they 
 owned — the married pair : At their home, the rich women's, you 
 were a guest, theu* down dweUing. Give every .... the 
 advice is willing. Back spoliation, if yet living on earth. WeU, 
 the aEtheling possesses now me this property. Saw I us my Son. 
 Everywhere again rule.' 
 
 There is not much satisfaction to be got out of 
 this. It reads like the mysterious advertisements in 
 
POEMS ATTRIBUTED TO CMBMON. 93 
 
 the second column of the Times or the last column of 
 the Daily Telegraph, blended here and there with a 
 tip for the Derby. 
 
 But at length England's greatest philologer, J. M. 
 Kemble, entered the lists. Satisfied with neither of 
 the previous efforts at deciphering these defaced 
 but deeply-interesting inscriptions, he examined them 
 for himself, placed his own interpretation upon 
 them, and (in the year 1840) in a masterly and ex- 
 haustive essay on ' Anglo-Saxon Eunes ' he gave the 
 result of his labours to the Society of Antiquaries. He 
 conceived that the inscription set forth four lines of a 
 poem, and he wrote them down thus — 
 
 1st line. . . ^ me. The powerful King, the Lord of Heaven I 
 dare not hold. They reviled us two, both together. I 
 stained with the pledge of crime. . . . 
 
 2nd line. . . ' prepared himself; he spake benignantly when he 
 would go up upon the cross, courageously before men. . 
 
 3rd line. . . ' wounded with shafts. They laid him down, limb- 
 weary. They stood by him. . . . 
 
 4th line. ' Christ was on the cross. Lo ! Then with speed came 
 from afar nobles to him in misery. I that all be (held) 
 . . . I was with the cross.' . . , 
 
 Now here, at length, were the relics of what had 
 evidently been a noble inscription. Finn Magnusen 
 at once acknowledged its force, and that he had been 
 wrong; but many persons, with the full sagacity of 
 doubt, said that he who had pointed out the errors of 
 
94 CyEDMON AND HIS WORKS. 
 
 his predecessors miglit himself be in fault. The 
 matter was not, however, to remain micertain. In 
 1823,Dr. Friedrich Blumehad discovered a manuscript 
 A'olume of Old English Homilies with six poems at the 
 end, in the old Conventual Library at Vercelli, near 
 Milan. The English Eecord Commission had them 
 copied, and printed them as an Appendix to their 
 jReport in 1836 or 1837. Kemble was at work upon 
 them in. 1842 ; and in examining one of the shorter 
 poems, the ' Dream of the Holy Rood,' he was agree- 
 ably surprised to find that it contained all that had 
 been recovered of the Ruthwell Cross inscription, to- 
 gether with much more which had perished. It was 
 clearly shown that the lines on the Cross were an 
 extract from a longer poem, and that he had frequently 
 succeeded in getting the exact words of the original. 
 
 In this poem, the ' Dream of the Holy Rood,' the 
 dreamer sees suddenly in mid-air a marvellous tree, 
 which the Angel-hosts of endless beauty look on wist- 
 fully. It sparkles from the bright flashes of many 
 gems, and rays and beams of light pass over it. Yet 
 grim ones have gashed it through its golden surface, 
 and red drops trickle down it. At length it speaks, 
 and tells how, of yore, it was hewn down at the wood's 
 end, and borne away upon men's shoulders, and fastened 
 down upon an hill. Then it saw the Freer of Man- 
 kind eager to mount it. — 
 
POUMS ATTRIBUTED TO CMDMON. 
 
 ' Up-girded him then the young hero. 
 That was God Almighty, 
 Strong and steady of mood, 
 Stept he on the high gallows : 
 Fearless amongst many beholders 
 For he would save mankind. 
 Trembled I when that " beorn " climbed me, 
 But I diu:st not bow to earth.' 
 
 It must stand fast whilst dark-hued nails were 
 driven through it, and it and its holy burden were 
 basely mocked and handled. There it saw the Lord of 
 Hosts hanging, whilst gloomy and swart clouds drifted 
 over him, the shadow went forth wan under the welkin, 
 and all Creation wept the fall of their King — 
 
 ^ Christ was on Rood — 
 Thither from afar 
 Men came hastening 
 To aid the noble one. 
 Everything I saw. 
 Sorely was I 
 With sorrows harrowed, 
 Yet humbly I inclined 
 To the hands of his servants 
 Striving much to aid them.' 
 
 When Christ is taken down from the cross it stands 
 steaming with blood-drops — 
 
 ' They laid him down limb-weary ; 
 They stood at his lifeless head, 
 Gazing at Heaven's Lord, 
 And He there rests awhile 
 Weary after his mickle death-fight.' 
 
96 C^DMON AND HIS WORKS. 
 
 Then the braves dig a mould-house for him, and 
 set there the Sovran Victor, chanting sadly, that even- 
 tide, their grave-lays ; for they must drag them wearily 
 away from their loving Captain, left in his lonesome 
 and narrow chamber. 
 
 Soon battle-men dug down the Rood and hid it 
 deep in a pit ; but the Lord's friends found it, and 
 drew it out, and decked it with gold and silver, and it 
 was raised high in Heaven, to be the healer of those 
 who bow before it. 
 
 The dreamer is then exhorted to tire not to tell of 
 the Tree of G-lory, where the Prince of Peace bore His 
 passion for the many sins of man's children. He is 
 reminded that the Lord who ascended to Heaven will 
 revisit the earth in the Day of Doom ; but is comforted 
 by the assurance that no one need pale, panic-stricken, 
 at the words which he then will speak if he but bear 
 in his breast the blessed token of the Cross of Christ. 
 
 Then the dreamer in his humble homestead bowed 
 blithely to the Tree of Triumph, and his worldly hopes 
 -and desires passed away, and — his friends rent from 
 him — he gladly longed until the Cross-tree should call 
 and fetch him from the coils of this care-world to the 
 City of the Lamb. Then he prayed that He would be 
 his friend — He who on earth underwent torture, yet 
 gave joy to His angels and to His saints. His saved 
 ones, when the Lord Grod Almighty gained his old 
 home halls. 
 
POEMS ATTRIBUTED TO C^DMON. 97 
 
 From this brief account of this interesting and 
 beautiful poem it will be seen that it is of quite a 
 different character to any portion of Csedmon's ' Para- 
 phrase.' It is not merely highly imaginative, but it 
 exhibits flights of fancy which are quite unknown to the 
 Old English poet. Mr. Haigh attributes the inscrip- 
 tion upon the cross to Csedmon, and this view is 
 strongly supported by Professor Stephens. He even 
 goes so far as to say that he has discovered (work- 
 ing not from the cross itself, but from an old plate 
 of the top-stone, and from rubbings and casts of 
 this portion which have been supplied to him) the 
 words ' Csedmon me fawed,' which he interprets, ' Csed- 
 mon made me.' Even if this be the fact it scarcely 
 proves that our Csedmon was the author of the lines 
 carved upon the cross. . It rather points to the possi- 
 bility that Caedmon was not an unknown name, and 
 that some rich man of that name had the cross carved 
 and raised at his expense, or that Csedmon was the 
 name of the man who made the cross itself. As this 
 top-stone is probably later in date than the rest of the 
 cross, and as the workmanship of the cross then, as 
 now, was likely to cause far more interest and wonder 
 than its mere inscription, this seems to be the natural 
 and proper inference. I do not wish to insist too 
 strongly upon this. It is of course possible that we 
 have in these four strong striking lines the relics of an 
 
 H 
 
98 a^DMON AND HIS ) WORKS. 
 
 j 
 
 old poem by the Csedmon, '\dlich has served as the 
 basis for the poem which the Vercelli Manuscript con- 
 tains ; but I do not think that the evidence upon the 
 matter is by any means conclusive. 
 
 There was evidently quite a great outburst of 
 English song in the centuries from the seventh to the 
 eleventh. Much that was written has no doubt been 
 lost, but we have not only the direct testimony of Bede 
 that many men after Caedmon tried to make pious 
 songs, but we have in the Vercelli Manuscript six 
 poems of varying merit, differing in length from a 
 hundred and ninety to three thousand four hundred 
 and forty-four lines, and the Exeter Book contains 
 many hymns and short poems, some of which 
 are of considerable beauty. There is, indeed, abundant 
 evidence that when English has once become an 
 object of earnest and systematic study to English- 
 men, we shall learn clearly that the first of the 
 Western European lands to break forth into sing- 
 ing was our own England, and that singing was 
 indeed a part and parcel of the English people, came 
 with them from the old England of the Danish penin- 
 sula, and shows itself to us now in no slender love 
 song, no doubtful babblings of rhyme, but in strong, 
 manly alliterative verse, often no doubt bald and tame 
 enough, always serious and somewhat tinged with sad- 
 ness, but with a rough, fresh beauty and power which 
 is all its own. 
 
POEMS ATTRIBUTED TO CJEDMON. m 
 
 One of the most important of all of these poems is 
 a fragment contained in the Beowulf Manuscript, and 
 entitled ' Judith.^ From its character, and from the 
 manner in which it deals with the apocryphal history 
 of that heroine, Professor Stephens has claimed it for 
 Caedmon, and Dr. Grrein prints it in its supposed place 
 as an extract from the ' Paraphrase.' Although there 
 are points not without difficulty, such as the direct 
 reference to the three persons of the Trinity, which is 
 probably an interpolation, I do not dispute the decision 
 at which they have arrived. It is of course quite 
 impossible to speak with any degree of certainty 
 upon such a point, but there are frequent passages of 
 clear-sighted vigorous description which recall the best 
 portions of the ' Paraphrase.' Many of the poems to 
 which I have alluded contain much mild reflection of 
 the kind which belongs to the later portion of any 
 poetical epoch ; to the time when men have begun to 
 think rather than to observe, to imitate seers rather 
 than to see for themselves. In ' Judith,' as in the 
 rest of the ' Paraphrase,' it is nearly all action. There 
 is much repetition, considerable diffuseness, but every 
 now and then a few strong stirring lines, showing that , 
 the poet had not only heard the tale, but had truly 
 made it his own. 
 
 The manuscript is imperfect. It begins when 
 Judith — ' damsel elf-bright, skilful in thought ' — has 
 
 H 2 
 
100 CJEDMON AND HIS WORKS. 
 
 already been four days in the camp of Holofernes. 
 The Apocryphal version is closely followed, and the 
 noble story is nobly told. We have one glimpse of Old 
 English life in it, which is of great interest and value. 
 Nearly the first of the remaining lines contain a vivid 
 picture of the feast given by Holofernes to the ' bold 
 armed warriors, his evil comrades,' on the day which 
 was to be his last — 
 
 * Along the benches oft were deep bowls borne ; 
 Often cups and bowls to the palace sitters. 
 They, brave shield warriors, djdng, ate, 
 Although their dreadful lord dreamed not of it, 
 Then, in the guest hall, Holofernes, 
 The liberal friend of men, laughed aloud. 
 Shouted and made great noise, that men might hear 
 How the stem-minded one stormed and rejoiced. 
 Moody and mead-merry ; often he urged 
 The bench-sitters that they should bear them well. 
 So he, deceitful one, through the whole day 
 His followers drenched with wine, until they lay 
 His nobles all, as over-drenched and dead, 
 Empty of every good — Thus bade this prince of men 
 To fill to the couch-sitters, until night 
 !Drew near the sons of men.' 
 
 No doubt the poet had seen many a sight of this 
 kind, when the leader of men confirmed their alle- 
 giance by taking away their minds. Times change, 
 but not so much as we sometimes think. Would-be 
 
POEMS ATTRIBUTED TO C^BMON. 101 
 
 leaders of men, in our own day, have won the hearts 
 of their followers by somewhat similar proceedings, 
 and commissions to inquire into corrupt practices have 
 resulted. Now-a-days political death follows where 
 physical death used to follow. 
 
 The description of the Jews issuing from the Holy 
 City at dawn, recalls forcibly those descriptions in the 
 earlier part of the ' Paraphrase,' which I have given 
 at pp. 62 and 70 — 
 
 ' They l)ore the banners straight forth to the fight ; 
 The brave men under helms, from their holy burg. 
 The shields dinned, loudly they hlummed (roared) — 
 This rejoiced the lank wolf in the wold, 
 And the wan raven, wail-greedy fowl, — 
 Both from the desert, — that for them of men 
 They, thought to get their fill irom the dying : 
 And after them flew the eagle eager for food, 
 Hoary feathered, sallow-beUied, 
 Horn-nebbed.' 
 
 The tale of the glorious deliverer of her people is 
 but little known in these days, but it was certain to 
 awaken responsive echoes in the breast of our great 
 Old English poet. This part of his work he has done 
 right well. 
 
 If it be indeed Ca3dmon's, it is amongst the best 
 portions of the 'Paraphrase' — if not his, it is well 
 worthy of him. 
 
102 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE RISE OF MODERN TERNACULAR POETRY IN WESTERN 
 EUROPE. 
 
 The fact that England had a Vernacular Literature of 
 considerable excellence at a time when all other Euro- 
 pean countries were intellectually in Cimmerian dark- 
 ness, has often been dwelt upon with much patriotic 
 fervour. I propose in this chapter to examine this 
 matter, to glance at the growth of Vernacular Litera- 
 ture amongst the nations of Western Europe, and to 
 inquire into the reasons for the peculiar position held 
 by the English people in this respect. I shall deal 
 chiefly with poetry in this examination, for the first 
 endeavours of a nation to express itself in its own 
 tongue are generally made in verse. 
 
 The great nations which sprang from the ruins of 
 the mighty Roman empire were the slowest to develop 
 Vernacular Literatures. This is readily accounted for. 
 They had to form languages : they lacked letters : 
 they were for centuries in a state of flux. The inroad 
 of Teutonic peoples into France, Italy, and Spain ; the 
 conquest of the Peninsula by the Moors; the long 
 
VERNACULAR POETRY IN WESTERN EUROPE. 103 
 
 wars which attended these great events ; and the un- 
 settlement which followed them ; were all inimical 
 to literature. The breaking down of the old Koman 
 tongue, and the springing up of several separate, but 
 closely allied, languages ; the destruction of learning 
 save amongst a small though powerful class ; the con- 
 sequent want both of the materials for a vernacular 
 literature, and of the power to use such materials had 
 they existed ; — made for these nations such a literature 
 impossible. We must remember also that there was 
 no desire upon' the part of the small class who held 
 knowledge in their hands to part with the possession 
 which gave them their great power over the minds of 
 the unlearned. So great was the reluctance of learned 
 men to lose the privileges which their learning con- 
 ferred upon them ; so strong were the fetters imposed 
 by priestcraft ; so determined the opposition to letting 
 all knowledge have free course ; that, even in England, 
 learned works were written almost exclusively in Latin 
 until the middle of the seventeenth century, and it was 
 not until nearly our own day that, in Grermany, it was 
 considered according to learned etiquette to use the 
 mother tongue in works which were really of a serious 
 character. 
 
 But I must go more closely into this matter, and 
 must point out the beginnings of vernacular literature 
 in those countries to which I have alluded, and it will 
 
104 C^DMON AND HIS WORKS. 
 
 be seen that just in proportion as their lands were 
 removed from the great and immediate influence of 
 Rome, whilst still experiencing the benefits of her 
 civilisation, did they develop literature in the tongues 
 spoken by their peoples. 
 
 I shall speak first of the nations whose languages 
 are allied to the Roman language, the classical or 
 Romance speaking peoples. It must be borne in mind 
 that there is always a difference between the literary 
 and the spoken languages of every people. The 
 literary language is ever somewhat archaic, and is 
 more precise than the language of every-day use. This 
 was peculiarly the case with Latin. As we know 
 it in the writings of the great Latin authors it is 
 not the spoken language of the Latin peoples, and 
 it is to the spoken language, the popular tongue, that 
 the so-called Romance languages are most closely allied. 
 The great Teutonic immigrations afiected this popular 
 tongue to a considerable extent; they may be said to have 
 completely broken it ; but from its ruins were to arise 
 the languages which are now spoken by all the classical 
 peoples of Europe, languages in which there are constant 
 traces of the Teutonic influence, but which are, never- 
 theless, the descendants of the old popular Latin, the 
 lingua rustica. The Teutonic peoples, although 
 conquerors, had to abandon their own tongue. They 
 were much fewer in numbers than the peoples they 
 
VERNACULAR POETRY IN WESTERN EUROPE. 105 
 
 conquered ; they found existing laws and institutions 
 which they frequently adopted ; they found learning to 
 which they had to submit ; they came under the power- 
 ful influence of the Church of Kome ; and, from the 
 very confusion of tongues which they themselves occa- 
 sioned, they had to adopt Latin for their own laws. It 
 may be laid down as a rule that the structural part of 
 the classical languages is derived altogether from the 
 Latin. Grammar, the life blood of a language, is only 
 affected by foreign interference to a slight extent. The 
 vocabulary of a language may be blended and altered 
 to any extent, but the grammar may be simplified, may 
 be reduced until there is little of it left, yet what is 
 left will show clearly the source from which it sprung. 
 The Grerman language never became the ruling tongue 
 in the south of Europe. Latin kept its supremacy for 
 all civil and ecclesiastical purposes ; its spoken dialect 
 formed the base of the Eomance languages : German 
 feebly held its own even in France, where it had the 
 gTeatest power, but for a few centuries, and it was 
 everywhere extinct by the end of the ninth century ; 
 having, nevertheless, contributed a large number of 
 words to all of the Eomance vocabularies. 
 
 The purest of the Eomance languages, and that 
 most closely resembling the parent Latin, is the Italian. 
 It vvas not employed for literary purposes until the 
 twelfth century, and it was at the Court of Palermo 
 
106 C^DMON AND HIS WORKS. 
 
 that the Italian muse was first heard. South 'Italy had 
 been brought under the cultivating and civilizing 
 influences of the Grreeks, the Saracens, and the 
 Normans, and had sufifered little from the rude re- 
 generating force of the Teutons. It was to be expected 
 that literature should be first developed in this favoured 
 portion of the peninsula, where the inhabitants were 
 surrounded by the luxuriance of nature and the benefi cence 
 of climate which make the enjoyment of the outer world 
 not simply possible but certain, and were interpenetrated 
 by Greek devotion, by the beautiful Arabic fire of 
 intellect, and by Norman energy and resolution. But in 
 the thirteenth century there was a wide and general 
 outburst of speech and song throughout the land. 
 Tuscany became a great literary centre, and the 
 Italian tongue, in the hands of Dante, attained that 
 power, polish, and perfection which continue to charac- 
 terize it at this day. He gave to it the first position 
 amongst European languages, and stamped a permanent 
 value upon vernacular literature. 
 
 When we turn to France, we find that the Grerman 
 immigration had much greater effect upon its language 
 than upon that of Italy. It was not there merely an 
 addition to a Dative language — it was a grafting upon 
 an imported tongue. The original Celtic had been 
 driven out by the speech of the Eoman conquerors. 
 Gaul was not merely conquered by the Eomans ; it was 
 
VERNACULAR POETRY IN WESTERN EUROPE. 107 
 
 colonized by them. But when Eome succumbed to 
 peoples who preferred iron to gold, action to rest, health 
 and strength to luxury, the Teutons took possession of 
 the land. Tribe after tribe forced its way into the rich 
 and desirable country; the Visigoths held Southern 
 Gaul from the Loire to the Pyrenees ; whilst the Franks, 
 a confederation of several Teutonic clans, pushed through 
 Belgium into Northern Graul, and ultimately gave their 
 name to the entire land. The Komans had given their 
 lingua rustica to the Celtic inhabitants of Graul, and 
 there, as elsewhere, it became the language of the 
 conquering Teutons. The French language was thus 
 established with Latin for its base, and it is yet gram- 
 matically a Latin language and nothing else ; but its 
 inflexions were destroyed, its vocabulary was revolu- 
 tionized, and its entire phonetic cliaracter was altered 
 by the Teutonic influences to which I have referred. 
 
 These changes differed in degree in different parts 
 of the land. In the North of France alone four distinct 
 dialects were spoken up to the fourteenth century ; and 
 it was not imtil then that the dialect of the district 
 known as the ' He de France ' became the predominant 
 language of France generally. But there was a strong- 
 line of demarcation between the dialects spoken to the 
 north and south of the Loire ; between the ' Langue 
 d'Oil ' and the ' Langue d'Oc' We shall speak of the 
 first as French, and of the second as Provenpal. 
 
108 CJEDMON AND HIS WORKS. 
 
 The Langue d'Oc, the Provenpal, had less of the 
 Teutonic element than the Langue d'Oil. The South 
 of France had been subjected to some of the same 
 humanizing influences as the South of Italy. It had 
 been the dwelling-place of Greek colonists, and the 
 Moors had held it under their sway. The Provencal 
 language attained its maturity and power in a sudden 
 and unprecedented manner. It became at once the lan- 
 guage of European courts ; hundreds of poets who used it 
 sprang into existence ; and, during the twelfth and thir- 
 teenth centuries. Southern France was the chosen home 
 of song. The earliest specimens of Provencal literature 
 are found in manuscripts of the eleventh century, and 
 they probably belong to the preceding century, but 
 they are of no value. The Troubadom's, as the Provencal 
 poets were called, flourished for two centuries, and then 
 their reign was over and their language died away, 
 excepting as a local dialect. Their poems were almost 
 invariably light love-songs, often in the form of dialogues 
 between the suppliant lover and his scornful mistress. 
 They are gay and graceful, but lack streng-th and 
 earnestness ; they are passionate, and frequently gTOSS 
 and licentious; they have an unreal effect. It is a 
 remarkable fact that, although probably there were 
 more writers of Provencal poetry during those two 
 centuries than there ever were in a similar period in 
 any other land, they have not left a single masterpiece : 
 they have vanished and made no sign. 
 
VERNACULAR POETRY IN WESTERN EUROPE. 109 
 
 The first work in the vernacular French language 
 is a poem on the Martyrdom of St. Eulalia, in the 
 ninth century ; and there are two short poems, one on 
 the Passion of Christ, and the other one the Life of St. 
 Leger (Leodegarius), of Autun, which probably belong 
 to the end of the tenth century, but they are written in 
 a semi-Provenpal dialect. From the beginning of the 
 twelfth centm-y the true existence of the French nation 
 may be said to commence. Grerman invasion or con- 
 quest is at an end, and to these centuries in all pro- 
 bability belong the legends and songs of which there 
 are no existing proofs of so early a date. The Trou- 
 veres, as the true French bards were called, exercised 
 an important influence upon English literature in the 
 succeeding centuries, and to them we may trace the 
 romances in which the early English abounds. 
 
 We need not linger over the vernacular literatures 
 of Spain and Portugal. They are of a somewhat later 
 date than those of Italy and France.. The Peninsula 
 had for six hundred years been subject to Rome, when 
 it also had to submit to the conquerors of its conqueror. 
 For three centuries did the Teutonic emigTation into 
 Spain go forward, and it had scarcely ended when the 
 Moors made their appearance in the South and spread 
 rapidly throughout the land. The potent influence 
 exercised by the polished and brilliant followers of 
 Mahommed upon the Provenpal literature, and, through 
 it, upon the literatures of Europe, has been already 
 
110 C^DMON AND HIS WORKS. 
 
 glanced at. That influence was enormous upon Spain 
 itself, but was not immediate. There the changes were 
 too rapid and sudden, the unsettlement was too great, 
 to permit of the development of a national literature. 
 A people in bondage has something else than singing 
 to think about. ' We hanged our harps upon the 
 willows in the midst thereof.' The famous epic of the 
 ' Cid,' one of the most ancient poems in the Spanish 
 language, is of not earlier date than the middle of the 
 twelfth century. 
 
 But when we turn from the Eomance to the Teu- 
 tonic languages we find quite another condition of 
 things. They were indeed mother tongues, more com- 
 parable in their nature to the old Latin itself than to 
 the modern Eomance languages. We find also that in 
 the Teutonic lands there was less war during the cen- 
 turies we are speaking of — the sixth to the twelfth, than 
 in the Eomance lands ; less war, that is to say, upon a 
 gigantic and revolutionizing scale. There was constant 
 fighting going forward, but it was rather a succession 
 of extensive . family feuds, than a . vain struggle for 
 liberty and national life. This fighting was not the 
 hopeless striving against foreign foes, which was the 
 lot of the Eomance nations ; it was the stem pastime 
 of a strong people, a people of vast super-abundant 
 energy. 
 
 There is evidence that even in the fifth and sixth 
 
VERNACULAR POETRY IN WESTERN EUROPE. Ill 
 
 centuries minstrels were to be found amongst the 
 Teutonic tribes, singing of the deeds of prowess of 
 their great warriors. Of their songs we have no re- 
 mains, unless they are to be found in the Old English 
 poem of ' Beowulf,' which I shall come to shortly, 
 Charlemagne caused a collection of these old ballads to 
 be made, and there is no doubt that they were the 
 origin of the noble series of romances well-known as 
 the ' Mebelungen Lied,' which date from the middle of 
 the twelfth to the middle of the thirteenth century. 
 Prior to this time literature was chiefly in the hands of 
 the monks, one of whom, in the ninth century, pro- 
 duced, in the old Saxon tongue, a Life of Christ, said 
 to be of some merit, and known as the ' Heliand.' 
 About the same time appeared a harmony of the 
 Gospels, Der Krist, the work of the monk Otfried, and 
 the oldest Teutonic work in rhyme. It was not until 
 the twelfth century that the Teutonic wealth and 
 power of song really showed itself, although the works 
 already mentioned were truly national vernacular 
 works. 
 
 But we cannot speak of the growth of modern 
 vernacular poetry in Europe, especially in that portion 
 of Europe which is emphatically Teutonic, without a 
 passing allusion to the work of that enlightened man, 
 enlightened in a time of outer darkness. Bishop 
 Ulphilas. The earliest of the Teutonic dialects which 
 
112 C^DMON AND HIS WORKS. 
 
 lias been preserved to us is that in which he wrote, the 
 Moeso-Grothic. It was the dialect spoken by the Grothic 
 tribes which, in the fourth and fifth centuries, settled in 
 Moesia, the modern Servia and Bulgaria, south of the 
 Danube. They had embraced such Christianity as was 
 then to be had, and were fortunate enough to have over 
 them a man of mark. He was made Bishop about the yesir 
 360, and, being wise and daring above his fellows, he 
 concluded that it was well that his people should 
 understand that which they heard, and he translated 
 for them the whole Bible, except the Book of Kings, 
 into their own tongue. What that tongue was has 
 long been a matter of dispute. It has frequently been 
 called Moeso-Grothic, a term which is calculated to 
 mislead, as Moesia had nothing to do with the lan- 
 guage. It was simply the part of the continent in 
 which the G-oths at that time happened to be settled. 
 As this translation of the Bible was used by other 
 Gothic tribes. Max Miiller calls its language Grothic, 
 whilst Dr. Bosworth holds it to have been the pure Grer- 
 man of the period in which it was written. There is 
 nothing to justify the idea that there were fewer Grerman 
 dialects at that early date than there are now. The dif- 
 ferences between Low Grerman and High Grerman were 
 probably clearly marked, and we may therefore look 
 upon this Bible of Ulphilas as the earliest specimen 
 extant of a Teutonic tongue, that tongue being one of 
 
VERNACULAR POETRY IN WESTERN EUROPE. 113 
 
 the High Grerman dialects. It is a noble monument 
 to the wisdom and courage of Ulphilas, and is a store 
 of treasures to the modern philologist.* 
 
 From the home of the Teuton, the true Dutchland, 
 so great in area and so dense in population, we pass 
 northward to Scandinavia, to the peninsula of Norway 
 and Sweden, that bare, scantily peopled, but beautiful 
 land, the birth-place of the Northmen who have exer- 
 cised so great an influence upon the history of Europe, 
 who have been for so many lands the little leaven which 
 leaveneth the whole lump. Wherever they have gone 
 they have put pith into the people, and freedom has 
 triumphed in spite of every obstacle. For France they 
 stemmed the tide of Turkish invasion ; for Christendom 
 they formed the flower of the Crusades ; they wrested 
 Sicily from the hands of the Saracen ; they conquered 
 Burgundy and England ; they gave to -the Netherlands 
 the heart to bear up against the woes and pains of 
 Spanish dominion ; and to the men of Schwyz, Uri and 
 Unterwalden, the strong and stubborn courage before 
 which Austria quailed. 
 
 We cease to wonder at the success of these North 
 men when we consider whence they sprang, and what 
 manner of men they were. Even to-day, in the long 
 and barren peninsula of Norway you have a land three 
 times as big as England, and with one-third of the 
 
 * See Appendix F. 
 1 
 
114 C^DMON AXD HIS WORKS. 
 
 population of London. There the peculiar physical 
 conditions produced a peculiar race of man. The land 
 is bare, rocky, and sterile — beautiful to look upon in 
 the few places which summer clothes with verdure, but, 
 in its general aspect, cold, stem, and forbidding : it 
 offers but small inducement to agricultural pursuits. 
 Far up into this land the sea thrusts itself — the sea, 
 teeming with food, lovingly bearing in its breast the 
 plenty which the land denies. Brought up from 
 earliest infancy to look upon her as no cruel foe, but 
 rather as the true and constant friend of those who 
 know how to woo and to win her favours, the sea is the 
 playmate, the companion, the more than mistress of 
 the Northman, and upon her he finds his true home. 
 He is naturally a rover — all sea-loving people are — 
 having slight inducement to stay on land, and strong 
 inducement to leave it, he grows up upon the face of 
 the great deep ; he is a sea-king by right of birth. 
 But his beloved sea is as treacherous as she is beautiful, 
 and those who love her and live with her ever carry 
 their lives in their hands. The habit of looking death 
 in the face makes men strangely indifferent to it, and 
 amongst simple and unlearned people, whose possessions 
 are few and to whom luxury is unknown, there are 
 many things more to be feared than death. The North- 
 men were emphatically fighters, as all men of courage 
 and energy must ever be, whether they fight against 
 
VERNACULAR POETRY IN WESTERN EUROPE. 115 
 
 Saxons or sewers. To them, too, defeat and life were* 
 alone impossible. ' Better a death when work is done 
 than life's most favoured birth ; ' and the lifeless 
 warrior was laid upon the bosom of his favourite keel, 
 and his war-weapons placed about him, and many a 
 gift from those who had fought with him, and learned 
 to honour him, laid by his side, and with a golden 
 ensign, the symbol of true Victory, floating above his 
 head, they let the sea which he had loved so well bear 
 him lovingly away. Men who lived such lives as these 
 Norsemen lived could not fail to be heroes, could not 
 fail to be poets, could not fail to receive from the stern 
 nature which surrounded them some insight into her 
 mysteries. Their faith was indeed idolatrous, but it 
 was full of grandeur, and instinct with wild and solemn 
 beauty. It was intensely earthly and manly, and the 
 new theories of the sanctity of sorrow, and the duty of 
 forgiveness, were simply intolerable to the worshippers 
 of the sun-god. Balder the beautiful, and of Hoder, 
 the god of war. 
 
 And yet, can we not understand how it came to 
 pass that these Norsemen, settled in Normandy, and, 
 leaving their first love, became doughty champions of 
 the Church; and that to them she owed many a 
 triumph, not of peace ; and that to them we owe those 
 stone-poems, the Cathedrals of Winchester and Ely, of 
 Kouen and Palermo ? 
 
116 CJEDMOX AND HIS WORKS. 
 
 * When at length, in the 9th century, Harold Har- 
 fagr, Harold the fair-haired, obtained the supreme 
 power in Norway, many of the independent nobles, too 
 proud to be subjects, but too weak to resist, fled to 
 Iceland, which had been discovered or re-discovered 
 but a short time before, and carried with them their 
 native tongue and, no doubt, their native songs. 
 These songs are evidently of great age, and they are of 
 the deepest interest. They seem to carry us back to 
 periods prior even to the migi'ation of the Scandi- 
 navians from their remote Asian home. They have a 
 grandeur and a strength which is all their own. They 
 have served as a mine of wealth for other peoples : 
 the ' Niebelungen Lied ' itself, if not in fact a more 
 modem version of one part of the early ' Edda,' is its 
 lawful child ; and the good old nursery tales which 
 delighted our infancy, and which true children and 
 true men will always revel in, all have their origin from 
 the same source. It was not until the eleventh century 
 that Samund Sigfusson Hinn Frode, Saemund the 
 Wise, collected the poems forming the elder 'Edda' 
 and committed them to writing. This is not the place 
 to dwell upon the Eddas and Sagas in detail: but I 
 must simply Bay that although there have been many 
 earnest men at work upon them, there yet remains 
 n them much to reward patient and zealous workers. 
 I trust that I have made it clear that I do not 
 
VERNACULAR POETRY IN WESTERN EUROPE. 117 
 
 claim for England the possession of songs, poems, and 
 romances, in the people's tongue, at a time when all 
 other nations were without them. 1 simply state that 
 in England, first of all modern countries, we are able 
 to speak with some degree of certainty of the author 
 of a great poem, and that there was existing here 
 a considerable literature in the people's tongue at a 
 very early period. The actual dates of the earliest 
 manuscripts in the vernacular of the lands I have 
 mentioned may be summed up thus — 
 
 Southern Italian 
 Northern Itahan 
 
 . nth cei 
 . 12th 
 
 atury. 
 
 Provenfal . 
 
 French (Northern) . 
 
 Spanish 
 
 German . . . . 
 
 nth 
 
 9th 
 12th 
 
 9th , 
 
 } 
 ) 
 > 
 
 Norse 
 
 Caedmon . . . . 
 
 nth , 
 
 7th , 
 
 > 
 > 
 
 The earliest manuscript of the 'Paraphrase' is of 
 the tenth century, but we have positive evidence in 
 Bede's ' Ecclesiastical History,' and in King Alfred's 
 translation of Bede, that it was written in the seventh 
 century. 
 
 There was, indeed, a great literature in the people's 
 tongue existing in this country before Britain became 
 England, before the English conquered and colonised it. 
 In (jaelic and Cymric alike there are numerous manu- 
 scripts dating from the eighth and ninth centuries, 
 
118 C^DMON AND HIS WOBKS. 
 
 ^ and containing spirited war-songs and love-songs, and 
 tales of high imaginative merit. Fergus, Oisin, and 
 Caeilte, the earliest Graelic bards whose names are pfe- 
 
 *" served, are claimed for the third century ; and Taliesin, 
 Aneurin, and Myrddin, the greatest of the Cymric 
 singers, for the sixth century. I do not speak of this 
 Celtic verse except at second-hand, but it seems to 
 have considerable historic interest, and to abound in 
 fancy; to have more dash and gaiety, more bright 
 colour, than the early English verse. We must not 
 speak of Graelic and Cymric as dead languages, al- 
 though the day is apparently not far distant when to 
 speak so would be correct. There is some thing pecu- 
 liarly sad in the death of a tongue which has held its 
 own for countless centiu-ies gallantly and well ; and it is 
 perhaps not altogether a matter for congratulation that 
 we should (in what we call a free country) make the 
 speaking one's mother-tongue a punishable ofifence. I 
 was told but recently by a Highlander, who has settled 
 amongst the Southrons, that the severest thrashing he 
 ever got at school was for inadvertently replying in 
 Gaelic to a question asked by the dominie in English. 
 But little later in date than Csedmon's ' Paraphrase,' 
 and possibly even earlier, is the grand Old English 
 romance of ' Beowulf.' This poem, it has been con- 
 tended, was probably brought by the English with 
 them when they came from the main land, but it has 
 
VERNACULAR POETRY IN WESTERN EUROPE. 119 
 
 also been ably argued that it is a truly English poem 
 in our sense of the word, and that the scene of the 
 strange deeds which it relates is Hartlepool, in the 
 county of Durham. In the earlier part of the poem 
 the destruction by Beowulf of Grendel, a man-eating 
 monster of the moor, is dwelt upon ; and it has some- 
 times occurred to me that, for our Durham legend of 
 ' the Lambton Worm,' we may be indebted to this Old 
 English romance. Whatever be the fact about its true 
 birthplace, it cannot be disputed that it is the oldest 
 romantic poem in the language of any modern Euro- 
 pean people. We had thus in England, at a very 
 early date indeed, certainly before the close of the 
 eighth century, developed a literature of no mean 
 kind, but containing two poems, one religious and the 
 other romantic, which can still be read with pride and 
 pleasure, and which afford us a deeply interesting 
 glance into the minds and manners of our forefathers. 
 It is not too much to say that they are alike worthy to 
 be admitted into the long list of glorious poems to 
 which our country's bards have given birth. They 
 stand far back and alone, like two noble hills forming 
 the portal to a goodly land. 
 
 To sum up the results of this chapter, I say that to 
 our geographical position, to the diversity of natural 
 riches with which our island is stored, to the admixture 
 of Celt, Englishman, and Northman, of which its 
 
120 C.EDMON AND HIS WORKS. 
 
 people are composed, to its internal resources, to the 
 many external influences to which it has been subjected, 
 and to its happy sea-surroundings, do we owe it that we 
 have been able to extend our empire far beyond the 
 greatest dreams of the leading nations of antiquity ; do 
 we owe it that our tongue bids fair to become the 
 language of the earth — that tongue which found its 
 voice in Csedmon's 'Paraphrase,' and its noblest ex- 
 ponent in the acknowledged world-master, William 
 Shakespere. 
 
121 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 *radbond', the feisian prince.' 
 
 I have quoted Radbond's speech, because there can be 
 little doubt that the Frisians (by which I mean the people 
 who occupied the Frisian Islands and the Coast between 
 Denmark and Holland) formed a considerable part of 
 the Teutonic tribes which conquered Britain and made 
 it England. 
 
 B. 
 
 STREONESHALH. 
 
 Bede translates Streoneshalh by Sinus Phari, the Bay 
 of the Light-house. Streoneshalh is the true Old English 
 name, Whitby being its Norse substitute. Many different 
 meanings have been assigned to it, and it has been held 
 literally to mean the hole or cave of the watch tower. 
 There is a more probable interpretation still, which takes 
 the first part of the word to be a proper name — the name 
 of some well-known person of the district — in which case 
 it is simply the hole or hall of Streone. There is no in- 
 herent difficulty in the watch-tower theory if we were 
 quite sure that Streone really ever had the force of that 
 expression. 
 
 K 
 
122 APPENDIX. 
 
 C. 
 
 WniTBT ABBEY. 
 
 It must be borne in mind that §11 along the Coast of 
 Northnmbria the sea has been constantly and steadily 
 encroaching npon the land. At Whitby itself, the soft sea 
 cl^s have suffered within recent years from frequent land- 
 slips, and the same process has no doubt been going on 
 for the twelve centuries which divide us from Cagdmon. 
 If Abbess Hilda's monastery occupied the site of the 
 present abbey, it must in her day have been very much 
 further from the cliffs than it is at the present time. Even 
 now the sea is only visible from the upper windows. In 
 all probability the famous synod was held on the broad 
 level grass plateau between the abbey and the ocean. 
 
 D. 
 
 C^DMON. 
 
 Sir Francis Palgrave suggested that the name Caedmon 
 was either assumed by the poet from the name of the 
 Book of Genesis (so called from the first words in the 
 Chaldee Paraphrase or Targum of Onkelos, b'Cadmin or 
 b'Cadmon, meaning 'in the beginning'), or that the poet 
 was a stranger from the East, and was called Cadmon, a 
 Hebrew epithet meaning 'from the East.' He urged that 
 the word has no strict value in Old English. This is 
 scarcely correct — for (as Dr. Bouterwek and Professor 
 Sandras point out) the word ' Ced ' in Old English means 
 'a boat,' and I conclude that the poet was employed to 
 ferry visitors to the monastery across the River Esk, and 
 received his name from his employment. I must, how- 
 
APPENDIX. 123 
 
 ever, point out that the word * Csedmon' is only once used 
 by Bede, and it is addressed to the poet by his angel 
 visitor, who tells him to sing of the beginning of created 
 things. This fact gives, of course, more weight to Sir 
 Francis Palgrave's Biblical theory ; and, indeed, either 
 origin of the name will do very well indeed, if we agree 
 that the poet was so called, and do not adopt the pre- 
 posterous notion of his being an Eastern wanderer. The 
 names Cadmon and Sedmon (a corruption of Cadmon) are 
 still to be found upon the coast of Yorkshire, and, I be- 
 lieve, at Whitby itself. 
 
 E. 
 
 MILTON AND CADMON. 
 
 It is certain that Milton, when writing his ' History of 
 England,' made much use of Bede's ' Ecclesiastical His- 
 tory,' and he must have known the account which Bede 
 gives of ' Csedmon.' His ' History of England ' was not 
 published until the year 1670, but he was at work upon it 
 in 1647 and 1648. His friend Junius printed the ' Para- 
 phrase' in 1655. 'Paradise Lost' was begun in 1658, and 
 was sold to the publisher in 1667. It is certainly highly 
 probable that Milton would inquire carefully into the 
 treatment by the older poet of the very subject to which 
 he was about to devote all the energies of his mighty mind. 
 
 F. 
 
 ULPHILAS'S BIBLE. 
 
 It is to Junius that we owe the discovery of this pre- 
 cious manuscript. He published it at Dordrecht in 1665, 
 and it is now the chief treasure of the Royal Library at 
 Upsala. 
 
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