Old English was the vernacular language spoken
by the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Frisians, and other
Germanic tribes that began to migrate to Britain in
the fifth and sixth centuries. British resistance to
the Germanic invaders gave rise to the legends of
Arthur, who would reach great fame in the MIDDLE
AGES. The Germanic tribes brought with them a
non-Christian religion, deriving from Norse
MYTHOLOGY and accounted for in the early SAGAs.
New efforts to convert the Angles and Saxons
began in 597 with the missions of Augustine. The
Church taught and wrote in Latin, as did the ruling
class. Yet the Anglo-Saxon culture, which
flourished from the first settlements until the
time of the Norman Conquest in 1066, included a
vernacular poetry of a range, depth, and complexity
quite unrivaled by any other medieval European
literature. The Old English poetry that
survives shows a blending of the newer Christian
beliefs with the ancient heroic code adhered to
by the Germanic tribes, who were historically
governed by a warrior elite and bound by ties of
kinship and loyalty.
The greater part of Old English poetry is contained
in four surviving manuscripts. The BEOWULF
manuscript contains, among other fragments, the
famed EPIC poem of that name. Beowulf is the best
example of Germanic heroic poetry and the crown
jewel of the Old English poetic corpus. The Junius
manuscript contains various poems retelling stories
from the Christian Bible, including an intriguing dialogue,
Christ and Satan. The Exeter Book contains
the largest number of poems, which range from religious
verses and allegorical poems to charms, riddles,
and gnomic verses which offer priceless insights
into Anglo-Saxon folk wisdom. The Vercelli Book,
discovered in Italy, includes the innovative poem
thought to be the most beautiful of Anglo-Saxon religious
verse, The Dream of the Rood.
Due to the near-constant warfare of the Anglo-
Saxon period, first between neighboring tribes and
then against Danish invaders or Vikings who raided
the coast, the poems in the manuscripts are often
damaged and in many cases reduced to fragments.
Almost all the poems are anonymous. Old English
poetry was an ORAL LITERATURE, developed and
maintained by scops, or poet-singers, who functioned
like the bards of the celtic BARDIC POETRY.
The scops served as the living memory of the tribe,
recording their history, genealogy, and social codes,
all in rhymed verse. Evidence exists to suggest that
women served as scops, though they too remain unnamed.
The only Anglo-Saxon poet who personally
signed his works was the cleric Cynewulf,writing in
the late eighth century, who added his autograph so
that readers might pray for him.
Critical Analysis
Most Old English poetry employed a poetic line
with a four-beat meter, consisting of two half-lines
of two stresses each. The half-lines were typically
linked by alliteration, the use of similar-sounding
consonants, which gave the words an aural music
complemented by the accompaniment of a
stringed instrument, probably a harp. A distinct
feature of Anglo-Saxon verse is the use of the kenning,
a compound descriptor that employs a striking
image or metaphor to convey the qualities of
the thing it describes. Old English vocabulary included
a striking range of words to describe a single
thing (dozens of different words existed, for
example, as synonyms for “warrior,” “battle,” and
“sword,” suggesting that these items were featured
often in the poetry), and the use of varied adjectives
or kennings along with the strict alliterative
meter required no small skill of the poet. A brief
poem by CAEDMON encapsulates all of these features
in its opening lines on the creation:
Now must we praise heaven-kingdom’s
Guardian,
the might of the Measurer and his mindthoughts,
the Glory-Father’s work, since he . . . made
the beginning.
Caedmon’s achievement is remarkable because
he was supposedly an illiterate shepherd who,
some time between 658 and 680, spontaneously
began devising poetry after an angel visited him
one night in a dream. “Caedmon’s Hymn,” commonly
accepted as the oldest Anglo-Saxon poem
on record, is preserved in BEDE’s Ecclesiastical History
of the English People.
Anglo-Saxon poetry after Caedmon can be discussed
according to type. Excepting Beowulf, the
best example of heroic poetry is the Battle of Maldon,
composed to record the defeat of the famed
warrior and Essex ealdorman Byrhtnoth in a battle
against Danish invaders which took place at Maldon
in 991. Maldon aptly and lyrically expresses
the basic tenets of the warrior code: to fight bravely
no matter the odds, never abandon kin to the
enemy, and avenge fallen chiefs or fellow warriors.
Byrhtnoth dies gloriously, due to a fatal move in
which he allowed the Danish armies to compensate
for a territorial disadvantage. The dramatic
tension of the poem lies precisely in this tragic defeat,
and the vividness with which the clash of battle
is evoked marks the anonymous poet’s skill:
Thus the brave men stood firm in battle,
each sought eagerly to be first in
with his spear, winning the life and
weapons
of a doomed warrior; the dead sank to the
earth.
A similar example of heroic poetry is preserved
in the ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE entry for 937, describing
the Battle of Brunanburh. The Anglo-
Saxon corpus also preserves a unique set of heroic
poems about women: Judith, Juliana, and Elene,
who are collectively referred to as the “fighting
saints.” Though they are about Christian warriors,
these poems preserve traces of the sacred role of
women in early Germanic society as advice-givers,
equal rulers, and weavers of peace.
A second well-represented type of Old English
poetry is the elegy.Much of the Anglo-Saxon corpus
touches on themes of separation and grief, but
the so-called elegies deal specifically and lyrically
with loss: loss of a spouse, loss of a beloved chief,
loss of hearth and family. The Seafarer evokes the
exile of a warrior who has left his home and is in
search of another lord who will take him on as a
retainer. The poet uses the natural imagery of his
current surroundings, the icy seas and the freezing
winds, to contrast the warm companionship of the
mead-hall:
The cry of the gannet was all my gladness,
the call of the curlew, not the laughter of
men,
the mewing gull, not the sweetness of mead.
The poet in The Wanderer sings a similar lament
as he searches for a new lord. This poem contains a
classic expression of the ubi sunt motif, which
mournfully asks, “Where?” The warrior laments:
Where has the horse gone? Where the man?
Where the giver of gold?
Where is the feasting-place? And where the
pleasures of the hall?
Two other elegies portray sadness from a woman’s
point of view. The wife in The Wife’s Lament
mourns her separation from her husband, and the
female narrator ofWulf and Eadwacer sorrows that
she was forcefully separated from her lover.
The religious poetry of the Anglo-Saxons is distinctly
compelling in the way it blends Christian
beliefs with the heroic inheritance of their Germanic
forebears. For instance, the Genesis poem
offers, in part B, a unique account of the biblical
book. Dealing with a culture in which women were
valued as counselors and it was reasonable for a
man to listen to the advice of his wife, the Genesis
B poet complicates the ancient story and distributes
the guilt equally.
The Anglo-Saxons were also hugely fond of riddles,
which survive in the Exeter Book, though
without solutions. The accompanying charms,
remedies, and bits of gnomic wisdom preserved in
verse offer a glimpse into a day-to-day life in which
ancient pagan beliefs and Christian doctrine existed
side by side.
The latest example of Anglo-Saxon poetry is
probably Layamon’s Brut, which is a translation of
Wace’s French version of GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH’s
History of the Kings of Britain. After the Battle of
Hastings in 1066, the introduction of French language
and culture turned the Anglo-Saxon world
into the Anglo-Norman world, and the language
evolved into Middle English. Some examples of
Middle English poetry attempt to preserve the
older alliterative verse forms; Sir Gawain and the
Green Knight, Pearl, and William Langland’s Piers
Plowman are examples. The English Renaissance
witnessed a fantastic rediscovery of and renewed
appreciation for the poetry that had formed so essential
a part of the native culture and literature.
English Versions of Old English Poetry
The Anglo-Saxon World: An Anthology. Translated by
Kevin Crossley-Holland. London: Oxford University
Press, 1999.
Beowulf. Translated by Seamus Heaney. New York:
W.W. Norton & Company, 2000.
Works about Old English Poetry
Klinck,Anne L. The Old English Elegies. Buffalo, N.Y.:
McGill–Queen’s University Press, 1992.
Lambdin, Laura Cooper and Robert Thomas. Companion
to Old and Middle English Literature.Westport,
Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2002.
O’Keefe, Katherine O’Brien, ed. Old English Shorter
Poems: Basic Readings. New York: Garland Publishing,
1994.
Swanton,Michael. English Poetry before Chaucer. Exeter,
U.K.: University of Exeter Press, 2002.