In other days he frowned on Eching fort, While his glad horn for Mordei made good cheer. In other days he blended mead and ale; In other days Gwarthlev-"the Voice of Blame"- Had stall-fed steeds, who safely, swiftly bore In other days he turned the ebbing tide, And bade the flood of war sweep high, spread wide. XVII. Light of lights-the sun, Leader of the day, First to rise and run His appointed way, Crowned with many a ray, Seeks the British sky; The horn in Eiddin's hall Had sparkled with the wine, He went, to share the feast Escapes the shock, To the field They fiercely flock, There to fall. But of all Who struck on giant Gwrveling, Whom he would he struck again, XVIII. These gathered from the lands around: To breast the darts the sullen Deivyr throw. XIX. I drank the Mordei's wine and mead; In the green dawn, he raised a shout Son of the star-wise Syvno, he Knew that his death that day should be By spear or bow, not by sword-blade, And not a sword his havoc stayed Or could against his sword a strife sustain. He gave his own life, took a host; Blaen Gwynedd knew his ancient boast Of the brave toilers piled whom he had slain. xx. I drank the Mordei's wine and mead, I drank, and now for that I bleed, XXI. To Cattraeth's vale in glittering row Chains of regal honour deck, Wreathed in many a golden link : Nectar that the bees produce, Or the grape's extatic juice. Flush'd with mirth and hope they burn: But none from Cattraeth's vale return, First English Initial. CANDINAVIAN and Teutonic, the incoming population, allied in race as closely as the Gael and Cymry, were immigrant from all lands on the other side of the sea opposite Eastern Britain. One of those tribes, who were to blend with one another and with the Celts whom they at first partly displaced, was that which gave afterwards its name to the united people. By this name the people, in later time styled Anglo-Saxons, called themselves. They were the English folk; the language proper to them, formed here by a fusion of dialects and cultivated by their writers as the language of the country, they called English, although in later days some have been taught to call it Anglo-Saxon. It was our first English; and by that name of First English we can simply and sufficiently distinguish it from English of any later time. First English, so developed, was watched over by scholars in the monasteries, and remained for about 1 From the MS. of Cadmon's Paraphrase in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Copied from the fac-similes of the illuminations in the Cadmon MS. published by the Antiquarian Society. four centuries a fixed language, with some such variety of gender and inflexion as we may still find in modern German. An aptitude for work in fellowship, and a religious sense of duty, were the qualities by which especially these races became builders of the rising power of the country. Except where there could be a dash of Celtic blood in his family, there was no vivacity of genius in a First English poet. The first and best of these poets, Cadmon, belonged to a corner of Yorkshire-Whitby-where the two races lived in contact with each other. Until the fourteenth century-by which time men of all races in the land had been drawn together in London and elsewhere, and there was no longer a very definite line of division-not one man arose in this country who showed much quickness of fancy or any bold originality of thought, except in the north or west of England, along the line of contact between Celt and Teuton, where men and women of the two races were fellow-citizens, and intermarried. But throughout the land good men there were in plenty, studious men, hard workers, who lived lives of duty for the love of God, and strenuously sought to find and uphold the right, find and cast out the wrong. Cadmon's Paraphrase of Bible story, written A.D. 670-680, will have its place in that section of our Library which is designed to illustrate the course of English religious thought. The heroic strain known by the name of its hero, Beowulf, hardly less ancient, is in more than six thousand lines, and cannot therefore be included among shorter poems. Nearly all the rest of the First English poetry deals with the life of Christ, or with legends of saints, or is otherwise directly religious in its nature. There is a famous collection of it known as the Exeter Book, given by Bishop Leofric, between A.D. 1046 and 1073, to the library of Exeter Cathedral, of which it is still one of the treasures. Another collection is known as the Vercelli Book, because it was discovered in 1823 in a monastery at Vercelli, in the Milanese. First English poetry is without syllabic quantity or rhyme or assonance, but with alliteration; that is to say, in two successive short lines, three chief words-two in the first line and one in the other are made to begin with the same letter. If one of these words has a prefix, the alliteration is with the first letter of the root-word, not that of the prefix. When the chief words begin with vowels the rule is reversed, and the vowels differ. The following short poem from the Exeter Book I have endeavoured to put into modern English with alliteration according to the First English method of versification. THE FORTUNES OF MEN. Whom they care for and cherish, Until the time comes, Beyond the first years, When the young limbs increasing, One die in war. THE NEW-BORN CHILD. From part of the Illustration of the birth of Abel in the MS. of Cadmon, published by the Antiquarian Society. Grown firm with life's fulness, Are formed for their work. So guide it and feed it, Give gifts to it, clothe it: What lot to its latter days Life has to bring. To some that make music In life's morning hour Pining days are appointed Of plaint at the close. One the wild wolf shall eat, The small strength of a man. One shall live losing Feel blindly with fingers; And one, lame of foot, With sinew-wound wearily Musing and mourning, With death in his mind. One, failing feathers, Shall fall from the height Of the tall forest tree: Yet he trips as though flying, Plays proudly in air Till he reaches the point Where the woodgrowth is weak; Life then whirls in his brain, Bereft of his reason He sinks to the root, Where the stranger may strike, For being sad. DESTROYED FY DATS. From a First English MS.-Harleian, 603, fol. 2. U U IN GRASP OF THE GALLOWS. From a First English MS.-Cotton. Claudius, B. IV., fol. 60. One the great gallows shall Have in its grasp, Strained in stark agony Till the soul's stay, The bone-house, is bloodily All broken up; When the harsh raven hacks Eyes from the head, The sallow-coated slits The soulless man. One shall handle the harp, From the will of his lord; Still quickly contriving The nail nimbly makes music, THE HARPER. Harleian, 603, fol. 55, part f a sketch. While the heart of the harper One shall find how fierce wild birds, Silver rings on his feet, And feeds thus in fetters The feather-proud bird; Confined to a perch, Till the Welsh bird is wrought, So the good God of each of us Divides and disposes, And deals out to each Of his privileged people A portion in life. Then to God let each gratefully CHAPTER III. TRANSITION ENGLISH: FROM THE CONQUEST TO AFTER the Conquest there was no verse of any note Then Walter Map, a chaplain to King Henry II., and the Englishman of greatest genius in Henry's reign, a man who united lively wit with a profound religious earnestness, blended Arthurian romance with the legend of Joseph of Arimathea and the Holy Graal visible only to the pure in heart. Taking the |