The Coming of the Anglo-Saxons

In this episode, we get a little history about how Germanic peoples from northern Europe came to settle what is now Britain over 1500 years ago.  One of these tribes, the Angles, gave their name to this land (Anglelonde = England) and to the language (Anglisch = English).  We'll meet the first English historian, the first English poet, and we'll learn about some of the main characteristics of Old English language and poetry!

Music: "Rejoice" performed by The Advent Chamber Orchestra; "Dies Irae" by Dee-Yan-Key; "Sunday Morning in the Great Hall" by Fool Boy Media

Interstitial Announcement: She Who Must Be Obeyed

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Classic English Literature podcast!  I’m very glad you’ve joined us and I hope you are, too.  Or that you will be, at any rate.

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Today, we will travel back through the murky mists, to the very beginning of what we can call an English language, an English culture, and an English literature.  Come with me now, on a journey through time and space, to 5th and 6th century Britain where Roman civilization lies a-moulderin’ in the grave.

“The Ruin” from the Exeter Book

Wondrous is this wall-stead, wasted by fate.

Battlements broken, giant’s work shattered.

Roofs are in ruin, towers destroyed,

Broken the barred gate, rime on the plaster,

walls gape, torn up, destroyed,

consumed by age. Earth-grip holds

the proud builders, departed, long lost,

and the hard grasp of the grave, until a hundred generations

of people have passed. Often this wall outlasted,

hoary with lichen, red-stained, withstanding the storm,

one reign after another; the high arch has now fallen.

The wall-stone still stands, hacked by weapons,

by grim-ground files.

Mood-quickened mind, and the mason,

skilled in round-building, bound the wall-base,

wondrously with iron.

Bright were the halls, many the baths,

High the gables, great the joyful noise,

many the mead-hall full of pleasures.

Until fate the mighty overturned it all.

Slaughter spread wide, pestilence arose,

and death took all those brave men away.

Their bulwarks were broken, their halls laid waste,

the cities crumbled, those who would repair it

laid in the earth. And so these halls are empty,

and the curved arch sheds its tiles,

torn from the roof. Decay has brought it down,

broken it to rubble. Where once many a warrior,

high of heart, gold-bright, gleaming in splendour,

proud and wine-flushed, shone in armour,

looked on a treasure of silver, on precious gems,

on riches of pearl...

in that bright city of broad rule.

Stone courts once stood there, and hot streams gushed forth,

wide floods of water, surrounded by a wall,

in its bright bosom, there where the baths were,

hot in the middle.

Hot streams ran over hoary stone

into the ring.

That was “The Ruin” from a poetry collection called The Exeter Book which was probably produced in the 10th century or so. Somewhere near Exeter, I’d imagine.

It’s a bit gloomy, surely, but full of atmosphere and rich detail.  It’s told from the point of view of a traveller or an immigrant or an ordinary fella out for an afternoon ramble who has stumbled upon the ruins of a Roman bathhouse, perhaps Aquae Sulis itself (the modern city of Bath toward the southwest in England).  He wonders at the marvellous work that the ruins hint at, imagines the joy and splendour of life in the golden age when such civilization reigned.  He laments its destruction, is humbled by its antiquity – this was the work of giants!

And yet . . . 

This poem was written in a language we call “Old English” and it developed from the languages of 5th century Germanic peoples from the north of Europe (what is now Germany and Denmark).  So what is a Germanic speaker doing at the Roman ruins of Bath?

He may be among the people who caused those ruins . . . . 

You see, the fellow is what we now call an “Anglo-Saxon,” a descendent of those northern European tribes called the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes, and starting round about the year 450, they began settling in the land that was, at the time, called Britannia.

Britannia had been a part of the Roman Empire for about four centuries.  Julius Caesar himself had tried to conquer the island in 55 BC, a bit giddy from his successes in Gaul, but further glory was denied him here.  It wasn’t until nearly a century later that the emperor Claudius successfully brought Britannia into the empire in 43 AD.

During those four centuries, the Celtic natives of the island, called “Britons,” were thoroughly Romanized.  Trade, manners, customs, and politics all eventually conformed to a Roman model.  Roman paganism, and eventually Christianity, supplanted indigenous religions.  For all intents and purposes, Britannia was as Roman as anywhere else in the empire.

But, beginning in the late 4th century, Rome felt the pressure of its own internal corruption and mismanagement as well as aggression from peoples on its frontiers, especially in central Europe, and so in 410, the emperor Honorius recalled the last legions to the Eternal City and the last vestiges of Roman rule from Britannia: “So long, and thanks for all the fish!”  Put out the cat, put out the light.  It’s bedtime.

This left the Britons in a bit of a muria, a giardiniera, a pickle, if you will (and I think you should). 

And this pickle was the garnish on the great charcuterie platter that comes to be called the “Adventus Saxonum” – the Coming of the Saxons!

There’s been a bit of a scholarly brouhaha over the last few years about whether or not the Angles and Saxons invaded Britannia.  It’s now pretty generally accepted that what we have over the course of the fifth century is a gradual incursion of Germanic peoples which simultaneously mingles with and displaces the Romano-British.  Surely, there was the strife and violence that accompanies many mass migrations, but the notion that there was a wholesale invasion and slaughter of the native peoples has pretty much been left behind.

So where did this somewhat erroneous notion come from?  From a Northumbrian monk called the Venerable Bede.  The first English historian.  His book, The Ecclesiastical History of the English People (from about the year 731) , tells the story of how the British King Vortigern invites the Anglo-Saxons to come as a hired army to protect Britons from marauding  Scots and Picts (since the Roman legions no longer provided that vital service).  Turns out, the Angles and Saxons would presume on that invitation and refuse to leave.  After all, they had the axes.

In the year of our Lord 449 . . . , the nation of the Angles, or Saxons, being invited by the aforesaid king [Vortigern], arrived in Britain with three ships of war and had a place in which to settle assigned to them by the same king, in the eastern part of the island, on the pretext of fighting in defence of their country, whilst their real intentions were to conquer it. Accordingly they engaged with the enemy, who were come from the north to give battle, and the Saxons obtained the victory. When the news of their success and of the fertility of the country, and the cowardice of the Britons, reached their own home, a more considerable fleet was quickly sent over, bringing a greater number of men, and these, being added to the former army, made up an invincible force. The newcomers received of the Britons a place to inhabit among them, upon condition that they should wage war against their enemies for the peace and security of the country, whilst the Britons agreed to furnish them with pay. Those who came over were of the three most powerful nations of Germany—Saxons, Angles, and Jutes. 

So there you have it.  Not, strictly speaking, historically accurate, but certainly a ripping yarn.  And while not particularly factual, it is “true” in the sense that this story functioned as the creation myth, the Genesis story, if you like, of the English identity: the idea that Englishness was a thing, distinct and whole unto itself.  Not Celtic, not Roman, not German.  This concept, as it develops, will have a massive impact on not only European, but global, history and literature.

Traditionally, the development of a distinct culture relies on three things: a defined territory, common gods, and a common language.  The language that developed after the Anglo-Saxon settlement is now called Old English.  This is a somewhat technical term – it’s not merely an older English – like my students complain about when I introduce Shakespeare: “Oh, I can’t read that old English!”  I gleefully, and pedantically, tell them that, since he’s writing in the 16th and 17th centuries, Big Bill uses early Modern English.  Old English is about a thousand years older than that.

It traces its origins to the West Germanic Ingvaeonic group of languages.  There are only roughly 200 manuscripts, with about 3.5 million words, containing any Old English still in existence, and these are quite late: from about 900 and 1100.  About 15% of our modern language comes from this earliest form: the common words you use every day – home, man, hand, this, that – that sort of thing.    As a result, Old English has a very different pronunciation, grammar, syntax, and even alphabet than Modern English.  To give you a sense of what Old English sounded like, let me read a text that may be familiar to you:

Fæder ure þu þe eart on heofonum; Si þin nama gehalgod to becume þin rice gewurþe ðin willa on eorðan swa swa on heofonum.  Urne gedæghwamlican hlaf syle us todæg and forgyf us ure gyltas swa swa we forgyfað urum gyltendum and ne gelæd þu us on costnunge ac alys us of yfele. Soþlice.

Did you recognize it?  It’s the Lord’s Prayer from the Gospel of St. Matthew.  Now that you know, maybe some words become more recognizable: “fæder” for “father”; “heofonum” for “heaven”; “yfele” for “evil.”

Despite these faint glimmers of familiarity, Old English is basically a foreign language to native modern English speakers.  Few people, other than scholars, can speak or read it.  This foreignness is not only its strange sound.  It has letters that we no longer use.  For instance, the letter “æ” which sounds like a flat “a” and looks like an “a” and an “e” got smooshed together.  There’s “þ” which looks like a lower-case “p” with a long tail.  And “ð” which looks like a lower-case “d” with a little cross over its stem.  These two letters indicated the “th” sound.  

Old English also had a very different grammatical structure.  It is what is called an “inflected language,” which means that the spelling of a word will differ depending on what function the word has in a sentence.  We still do this today a little.  For instance, we add an “s” to a noun to indicate that it is plural: “cat” versus “cats.”  Such an added “s” is called an inflection.  The Anglo-Saxons used inflections all the time, to the point that word order was not necessarily the main determinant of meaning.  

For a long time, what we now call Old English literature was not written down.  Writing was primarily reserved for bureaucratic or political functions, like keeping tax records or promulgating laws.  The earliest literature was composed and transmitted orally.  In fact, the very first poem in the English language is a song.  It’s called “Caedmon’s Hymn.”

We can thank the Venerable Bede for preserving this poem for us.  In his history, he recounts the story of the poem’s composition.  Here is my liberally adapted version of events:

In the late 7th century, in what is now the Abbey of Whitby, there was a young lay brother who cared for the abbey’s livestock.  His name was Caedmon.  Now, every night after dinner, the monks of the abbey would tell tales and compose songs, but alas, poor Caedmon, he could not sing.  He knew not the art of making song.  And so, stoop-shouldered and bleary-eyed, Caedmon would slip unobtrusively out of the refectory to the stable and weep himself to sleep.

Until one night the spirit of the Lord came down and said, “Caedmon, you shall sing!”  And, prang!, Caedmon could sing!

Nota bene: from now on in this podcast, the onomatopoeia “prang” will be used to indicate anything magical or miraculous.

“Prang!” Caedmon could sing!

And here is what he sang:

Nū sculon heriġean　 heofonrīċes weard,

Meotodes meahte　 ond his mōdġeþanc,

weorc wuldorfæder　 swā hē wundra ġehwæs,

ēċe Drihten　 ōr onstealde.

Hē ǣrest sceōp　 eorðan bearnum

heofon tō hrōfe　 hāliġ Scyppend;

þā middanġeard 　 monncynnes weard,

ēċe Drihten　æfter tēode

fīrum foldan　 Frēa ælmihtiġ. 

There are a number of modern English translations, based on at least five Old English variants.  Here’s one by poet Michael Burch:

Humbly we honour  heaven-kingdom's Guardian,

the Measurer's might    and his mind-plans,

the goals of the Glory-Father.     First he, the Everlasting Lord,

established  earth's fearful foundations.

Then he, the First Scop,  hoisted heaven as a roof

for the sons of men:  Holy Creator,

mankind's great Maker!  Then he, the Ever-Living Lord,

afterwards made men middle-earth:  Master Almighty!

The translation is a bit loose, but it does a good job preserving some of the characteristic devices of Anglo-Saxon poetry.  Old English poetry is composed in “alliterative-accentual verse.”  That is, the poetic line is not measured by the number of syllables, but by the number of heavy stresses.  Those stresses are often combined with repeated consonant sounds – alliterations.  Alliteration is almost the opposite of rhyme: whereas rhyme matches the end sounds of words, alliteration matches the beginning sounds.  Think of the nursery rhyme “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.”  The repeated “p” sounds are alliteration.

By the way, I’ve always been troubled by the erroneous chronology of that nursery rhyme: can you pick a pickled pepper?  Surely, it must be picked before being pickled.

To undigress:  If we return to the original Old English version of the poem, we can clearly see (and hear) the alliterations.  Line 3 is a good example: “weorc wuldorfæder　 swā hē wundra ġehwæs.”  Here, we get four “w” sounds, two in the first half of the line and two in the second.  This is pretty typical of Anglo-Saxon verse: their lines often (but hardly invariably) contain four heavy beats reinforced by alliterative sounds, two in each half.  The line is split in half by what is called a “caesura” – a pause in the middle.  Modern editors often mark the caesura by adding extra spaces between the two halves of the line.  The caesura not only helps control the line length, it’s also a very practical device.  For oral poetry, poetry recited or sung aloud, it’s very handy to include a place for the poet to breathe.

The translation does a good job trying to preserve those devices (which can be difficult to accomplish) like in the last line: “afterwards made men middle-earth:  Master Almighty!”

A final hallmark of Old English poetry is a device called the “kenning.”  It’s a type of metaphor made up of two compound nouns.  So “thoughts” are described as “mind-plans” or “mōdġeþanc”; God as the “Glory-Father” (“wuldorfæder”) and Earth as “middle-earth” (“middanġeard”).  Some of you of the nerdier persuasion might recognize Middle Earth from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.  In fact, Tolkien was an Oxford professor of Anglo-Saxon and is quite responsible for the fact that Old English literature has been treated over the last century or so as art and not just an anthropological curiosity.  

The poem praises God as the creator of the world and portrays that creation as both an intellectual and physical task – it is work.  Here, the work is planned and measured.  Heaven is a roof whose rafters and joists are hoisted into place.  God is a worker – a builder, a carpenter, joiner, and draftsman.  Caedmon calls him a “sceop,” which literally means “shaper.”

The singers of Anglo-Saxon poems and tales were called “scops” because they used words to shape stories.  God is the great shaper, the great storyteller.  It’s reminiscent of the way God creates the world in the Genesis story: by speaking – “And the Lord said . . . .”

Interestingly, the word “scop” is where we get our modern word “shop” as in “shop class,” where students are taught carpentry, metalwork, and mechanics.  They learn to become shapers.  And, as consumers, we “shop” for the goods they produce.

Not only is God the great maker, but Caedmon insists that he is a father, a guardian, who works for the protection and provision of humanity.  The making has a purpose: us!  Heaven and middle-earth are made “for the sons of man.”  One gets the sense that this creation, this building is eternal – that the work of God is “ever-living” like God itself.  Quite the opposite of the building in “The Ruin” that opened today’s show.  In that poem, the overwhelming sense is of temporality – time’s passage – and mutability – the inevitable changeableness of all things.  The Roman baths of “The Ruin” too were created by makers – masons and carpenters.  But their work, their human work is “wasted by fate.”  There is no wasting in Caedmon’s poem.  For Caedmon, the mind-plans established by the wuldorfæder are ever-lasting.

This notion of permanence, eternity, immutability will feature in much Old English literature and even beyond.  “Caedmon’s Hymn” is a quite orthodox poem (unsurprisingly for a poet from an abbey) and hints at many of the themes and obsessions of medieval literature. Very appropriate that the first creation of English poetry is about the creation itself and that language is one of the primary tools of that creative activity.

Well, I think that’s a good place to leave it today.  Please remember to "like" and subscribe to The Classic English Literature Podcast. I would greatly appreciate positive reviews.  If you have suggestions you can email me at classicenglishliterature@gmail.com or find me on Facebook and Instagram.  Show notes for this episode will be on the website shortly.

Thank you so much for stopping by; I do appreciate the company.  I’ll see you next time!