The Church has paid a splendid tribute to Judith by applying to her who is pre-eminently the strong or valiant woman (mulier fortis) full of the strength that always wore the exquisite veil of humility, the words spoken to this valiant woman of the Hebrews by her countrymen, as they adored the Lord, who had given her the victory. See the lesson read on the Feast of Our Lady's Seven Sorrows.



CHAPTER X

Byrthnoth, the leader of the East Angles against Anlaf the Dane. Refusal to pay unjust tribute. Heroic fight.

We have in the "Battle of Maldon" a great patriotic poem, written about the "ealdorman"[H] of the East Angles, Byrthnoth, or Brihtnoth, who stood so valiantly against the Danes. It was he who was so good to the monks, helping to defend them against the "ealdorman" of the Mercians, and others who were turning them out: he also helped to found the Abbey of Ely. He was buried there, we are glad to know. Anlaf, known as Olaf Tryggvesson, afterwards King of Norway, came with two other Northmen, and harried Ipswich and other places, and then sailed up the Pant or Blackwater to Maldon, where the river divides into two parts. The beginning and end of the poem have been lost, and, as we have it now, it opens with the command of Byrhtnoth that every man should let his horse go, and march afoot to meet the enemy and strive with him hand to hand.

[Footnote H: "Alderman" is the modern form, but it does not mean the same thing.]

Then Byrthnoth 'gan array his men; he rode and gave the rede, He shewed the fighters how to stand and keep the place at need, Fast with their hands to hold the shields, nor be afraid indeed.

He took his place among his own bodymen, his immediate followers. On the other side of the stream the herald of the vikings (or pirates) stood, and with a loud voice gave the scornful message of the sea-folk to the English leader. If Byrhtnoth would be in safety he must quickly send treasure to the foe.

"And better 'tis for you buy off this onset of the spear With tribute than that we should deal so sore a combat here; We need not spill each other's lives if ye make fast aright A peace with us; if thou agree, thou, here the most of might, Thy folk to ransom, and to give the seamen what shall be Right in our eyes, and take our peace, make peace with told money. We'll haste to ship, we'll keep that peace, and go upon the sea."

This was Brythnoth's answer:

Dost hear, thou dweller on the sea, what this my people saith! Their tribute is the spear, the sword, the arrow tipt with death; War-harness that for you in fight full little profiteth.

Not he. He stood for his own soil, his prince's earth, the people and the land. We may compare with this St AElfeah's (Alphege) splendid stand even to death against unjust payment of tribute.

Byrthtnoth ordered his men to march on till they all stood on the bank of the river. The flood flowed in after the ebb, and the hostile armies could not reach each other, and it seemed too long to wait for the water to let them meet. Wulfstan, by race a warrior bold, held the bridge for his chief, and AElfhere and Maccus with him, the undaunted mighty twain. The Danes begged to be allowed to overpass the ford, and Byrhtnoth in his scorn allowed this.

Too much the earl in his disdain to that ill folk gave heed. The wolves of slaughter strode along, nor for the water cared; The host of vikings westward there across the Pante fared.

Byrhtnoth was awaiting them, and the fight began.

Then rose a cry as round and round the ravens wheeled in air, The erne all greedy for his prey. A mighty din was there. Oh, bitter was the battle-rush, the rush of war that day, Then fell the men; on either hand the gallant young men lay.

The battle-rage grew stronger and keener; the din of war grew louder and louder. Byrhtnoth fought hand to hand with a strong viking, and with yet another, dealing death to both.

The blither was the earl for that, out laughed the warrior grim, Thanked God because of that day's work which God had given to him.

But the brave man's time was come, and a dart pierced him, and he fell; and as he lay on the ground a young lad, a boy who stood beside him, drew the spear from his lord's body and cast it back to pierce the foe who had sorely hit his lord. An armed man came to the death-stricken leader of the English to rob him of his jewels and his warrior's gear and fretted sword of fame. The dying man struck him on the corslet, but

Too soon a seaman hindered him; that good arm's strength he marred.

The leader drops his gold hilted sword, no longer able to wield the weapon, powerless to hold the keen-edged falchion. No more deeds of valour for him; only to urge on his men, and to commend his soul to God.

Yet spake the word that warrior hoar, the young men's hearts he cheered, Bad the good comrades forward go, nor ever be afeard. No longer could he firmly stand on's feet; to heaven looked he— "Thanks, Lord of hosts, for these world-joys Thou here didst give to me. Now, merciful Creator, now, I stand in deepest need That Thou shouldst grant my spirit good, that thus my soul indeed Fare forth to Thee, travel with peace, O King of Angels, so: I pray Thee that the hell-spoilers nor work her hurt nor woe." The heathen varlets smote him down, and those that stood him by, AElfnoth and Wulfmaer, by the side of him in death did lie.

Then, alas! came the shameful flight of some whom he had loved and trusted, and graced with noble gifts. One Godric, to whom he had given many a goodly steed, leapt upon the horse in his trappings which his lord had owned, and his two brothers fled with him.

And with them more than had behoved if these had thought upon The gifts and goods so free bestowed by him, their mighty one.

But there were but few cowards and mean. Of his own hearth-comrades there went forth men, hasting eagerly,

One of two things their heart's desire, to avenge their lord or die.

Young AElfwine heartened them with noble words, and gave them the example of noble deeds. And Offa, and Leofsunu, and Dunnere, the old man, fought stubbornly. And a hostage from among the Northumbrian folk, a man come of gallant kin, helped them; and Edward the Long, and many another.

Then Bryhtwold spake, that comrade old, he raised the shield on high He shook the ashwood spear, he taught the men unfearingly: "The braver must our spirit be, our hearts the stronger far, The greater must our courage wax, the fewer that we are. Here lies our prince all pierced and hewn, the good one in the clay; Aye may he mourn who thinketh now to leave this battle-play. I am old in life; I will not hence; I think to lay me here, The rather by my chieftain's side, a man so lief and dear."

And the men grew bold in heart at his words and fought on. Godric full often sent the spear flying among the vikings, and fought till he too was laid low in the battle.

'Twas not that Godric who had turned his back upon the fight,

says the poet—and the end is lost! It will help us in appreciating this poem to remember that the battle of Maldon took place in the reign of that poor weak king AEthelred, known as the "Unready," or the Man of no Counsel. As Freeman the historian says, "No doubt he had to struggle with very hard times, but the times now were no harder than the times which AElfred had to struggle against, and we know how much he could do."



CHAPTER XI

The literature of one people owes a debt to that of others. Help-bringers. Great work of Benedictine monks. Our debt to Ireland. The English Chronicle's account of the Martyrdom of St AElfeah.

The literature of a country is not merely what the men and women born in it have written. The thought of one people is fed, or enlarged, or in some way strengthened by the thought of other peoples; and the literature of the times we are speaking of could not have been what it was, had it not had other sources than these purely English to draw from. And, of all kinds of help-bringers, we owe much to the monks, and chiefly the great Benedictine order. King Alfred had to do his work at a time when things were at a low ebb in the English monasteries. You will remember how he bewailed the poor state of learning in England, and the ignorance of the clergy; a state very different indeed from that of the old days of St Bede and Alcuin. After Alfred's time there came a revival—and revival in life means revival in work. So we get much good prose literature, and, through the monks, note well, we have it, fed from whatever old lore was then to be got at.

I have reminded you of England's great debt to Ireland through St Aidan and others. I must tell you of a record of St Bede's, which shows how gladly Ireland in old days, as ever, shared the priceless gift which she of all countries, received with the most passionate entireness and held with the most unswerving steadfastness. It was in the year 664 that there was a great pestilence, raging both in England and Ireland. At the time there were many Englishmen in Ireland who had gone there, "either for the sake of divine studies, or of a more continent life"; some of them, he says, became monks, and others devoted themselves to study, "going about from one master's cell to another." "The Scots (that is the Irish) willingly received them all, and took care to supply them with food, as also to furnish them with books to read, and their teaching, gratis."

Where should we be but for the work done in the monasteries? How can we be grateful enough for what went on there in the way of thought, research and the collecting of materials, in addition to the work of teaching: all fed by the life of prayer and praise and self-denial? Let us try to think about the quiet, patient work of scholars and students; about their noting of so many facts and detailing of them. Let us think of the beginnings of English history and literature; of the writing of precious manuscripts; the careful copying of them; each of them taking so much time to complete and being so costly in production, especially when there was added to care and skill the artistic beauty of decoration and illumination.

From these quiet abodes of the piety that transfused itself through loving toil and discipline, light streamed forth to go on shining and shining, on through the long centuries to come.

We must now have a look into the pages of the great English Chronicle which we should not possess had it not been for these good monks, and we will take the account of the martyrdom of Archbishop AElfeah, whom you know best under the Latinized form of his name, Alphege. His heavenly birthday was the 19th of April. The king who is spoken of was AEthelred who was called the Unready, which word means without counsel, and then of ill-counsel. You know how we talk of "ill-advised" conduct or speech. There is a fourteenth century poem which speaks of Richard the Second as "redeless." And, because there is no such thing as being neutral; because, if we are not good, we are bad, the word got the meaning of foolish or worse. Freeman, the great historian says that AEthelred "was perhaps the only thoroughly bad king among all the Kings of the English of the West Saxon line; he seems to have been weak, cowardly, cruel, and bad altogether."

As long as St Dunstan lived, AEthelred was not so bad as he afterwards became. We must remember what a bad mother AEthelred had in AElfthryth, or Elfrida, who was an evil wife to her first husband, and most probably caused the murder of the king her step-son, the son of King Edgar, who was her second husband. This was the Edward known as St Edward the Martyr.

The story of AElfeah comes under the year A.D. 1011. "In this year sent the king and his witan to the (Danish) army, and desired peace, and promised them tribute and food on condition that they ceased from their harrying. They had then overrun East Anglia, and Essex, and Middlesex, and Oxfordshire, and Cambridgeshire, and Hertfordshire; and south of Thames, all Kent and Sussex, and Hastings, and Surrey, and Berkshire, and Hampshire, and much of Wiltshire. All these misfortunes befell us through ill counsel, that they were not in time (either) offered tribute or fought against, but when they had done the greatest ill, then peace and truce were made with them. And nevertheless for all the truce and tribute, they went flockmeal everywhere and harried and robbed and slew our poor folk. And then, in this year, between the nativity of St Mary and St Michael's Mass, they sat round Canterbury and came into it through treachery, because AElfmaer betrayed it, whose life the Archbishop AElfeah had before saved. And there they took the Archbishop AElfeah, and AElfweard, the king's reeve, and Abbot AElfmaer, and Bishop Godwin. And Abbot AElfmaer they let go away. And they took there within all the clergy, and men and women: it was untellable to any man how much of the folk there was. And they were afterwards in the town as long as they would. And when they had thoroughly surveyed the city then went they to their ships and led the Archbishop with them. Then was he a captive who erewhile had been the head of the English race and of Christendom.[I] There might then be seen misery there where oft erewhile men had seen bliss, in that wretched city whence had first come to us Christendom and bliss before God and before the world.

[Footnote I: i.e. of English Christianity.]

"And they kept the archbishop with them as long as to the time when they martyred him.

"A.D. 1012. In this year came Eadric the ealdorman, and all the chief witan, religious and lay, of the English folk of London, before Easter: Easterday was then on the date of the Ides of April (13th April). And they were there then so long as until all the tribute was paid, after Easter; that was eight and forty thousand pounds. Then on the Saturday (19th April) was the (Danish) army greatly stirred up against the bishop, because he would not promise them any money; but he forbad that anything should be given for him. They were also very drunken, because wine had been brought there from the south. Then took they the bishop, led him to their husting on the eve of Sunday, the octave of the Pasch; and there they then shamefully killed him: they pelted him with bones and the heads of oxen, and then one of them struck him with an axe-iron on the head, so that with the blow he sank down; and his holy blood fell on the earth, and that his holy soul be sent to God's kingdom."

A sorrowful story of evil folly and treachery: a splendid story of steadfastness to the end: of glorious martyrdom. The refusal to allow himself to be ransomed at his pillaged people's cost; the greed of the Danes; the death-stroke given him, we are told, in another chronicle, in mercy, to put an end to his sufferings, given him by a newly-made convert of his. And see how the Church has shown us, in her canonisation as a martyr saint, of this man, who died not directly to testify to the truth of the religion of Jesus, but for the sake of justice, that justice is the outcome of Christianity, and that he who dies for justice sake dies for God.

It was said by Lanfrane that AEfeah was not a martyr, because he had not died for the Faith; but St Anselm said he was a true martyr, because he died for justice and charity.



CHAPTER XII

Abbot AElfric, writer of Homilies, Lives of Saints, and other works. Wulfstan, Archbishop of Canterbury.

The greatest of English prose-writers before the Conquest was AElfric, who was educated at the school at Winchester which AEthelwold, a pupil of St Dunstan, had founded. His works are very numerous. He wrote Homilies, or Sermons, on Scriptural subjects, and Lives of the Saints. I have quoted a passage about "Judith," which occurs in the summary of the books of the Old Testament, written for a friend of his, one Sigeweard, who had often asked him for English writings, which he had delayed giving him until after he had, at Sigeweard's earnest request, come to his house, and then Sigeweard had complained to him that he could not get at his writings. This little incident reminds us how differently from now people had to arrange about books and writings, and how much more dependent they were on teaching through the ear and the eye.

I must give you a little specimen of AElfric's writing, a piece taken from his beautiful homily on Holy Innocents' Day. It is in very simple, direct language, and I think you will say it is not without a touch of that lovely thing which it is easy to feel and hard to define—poetry. I should like to have heard the sermon, and I hope you will feel somewhat as I do!

"Christ despised not His young soldiers, although he was not present in body at their slaughter. Blessed were they born that they might for His sake suffer death. Happy is that their (tender) age, which was not yet able to confess Christ, and was allowed to suffer for Christ. They were the Saviour's witnesses, although as yet they knew Him not. They were not ripe for the slaughter, but yet did they blessedly die to live! Blessed was their birth, for they found eternal life on the threshold of this present life. They were snatched from mother-breasts, but they were straightway given into the keeping of angel-bosoms. The cruel persecutor (Herod) could with no service benefit those little ones so greatly as he benefited them with the hatred of his cruel persecution. They are called martyrs' blossoms because they were as blossoms upspringing in the cold of earth's unbelief, thus withered with the frost of persecution. Blessed are the wombs that bare them, and the breasts which suckled such as these. The mothers indeed suffered in the martyrdom of their children; the sword which pierced the children's limbs pierced to the mothers' hearts: and it must needs be that they be sharers of the eternal reward, when they were companions in the suffering."

I will now tell you about a very different kind of sermon from AElfric's—one of the sermons preached by Wulfstan, Archbishop of York, who was not, like AElfric, leading a quiet life in an abbey, but throwing himself into the struggles and needs of a most disastrous time. He saw how the Danish inroads had terribly demoralised the English people, and he spoke out as God's preacher, who comes face to face with wrong, must speak.

He begins by telling his "beloved men" how evil will go on increasing till Antichrist's coming; and then will it be awful, and terrible all through the world. "Too greatly has the devil for many years led this folk astray, and little faithfulness has there been among men, albeit they spake well; and wrongs too many have ruled in the land; and not always were there many who thought earnestly about the remedy as they should; but day by day they added one evil upon another and they reared up wrong, and many evil laws all throughout this nation. And therefore have we suffered many losses and shames: and if we shall await any cure then must we deserve it from God better than heretofore have we done. For with great earning have we earned the miseries that oppress us, and with great earning must we obtain the remedy from God if from henceforth it is to grow better." He tells them how in heathen lands they dare not withhold what has been devoted to the worship of idols: "and here we withhold the rights of God. And everywhere in heathen lands none dare injure or lessen within or without any of the things offered to idols: and we have robbed God's houses within and without." And so he goes on pouring out from his very soul the fiery words that tell of the warning of God's laws, and the worsening of folk-laws; and how the Sanctuaries are unprotected, and God's houses are robbed and stripped of their property, and holy orders are despised, and widows forced wrongfully to marry, and too many are made poor and humbled, and poor men are sorely betrayed and cruelly plotted against; and far and wide innocent people are given into the power of foreigners, and cradle-children made slaves through cruel evil laws for a little theft: and freeman's right taken away, and thrall's right narrowed, and alms' right diminished. It goes on and on, the terrible list of wrongs that have brought God's wrath on the land. The sermon is not for the building-up of faithful ones, but for the rousing and stirring up of those whose baptismal vow has been terribly and shamefully broken, His words are clashed out as he brings men face to face with their sin.

And then comes the preaching of the true penance. "Let us do what is needful, bow to the right, and in somewise forsake the wrong, and mend where we have broken." And the preacher's voice now takes the tender tone of entreaty. "Let us creep to Christ and with trembling heart often call upon Him, and deserve His mercy; and let us love God, and obey His laws, and fulfil what we promised when we received baptism; or what those promised who were our sponsors at baptism. And let us rightly order word and work, and earnestly cleanse the thoughts of our hearts, and carefully keep oath and pledge and have honesty among us without weakness, and let us often understand the great judgement which we all must meet, and earnestly protect ourselves against the burning fire of the punishment of hell, and earn for ourselves the glories and the joys which God has prepared for them that do His will in the world. God help us. Amen."



CHAPTER XIII

Love of books is love of part of God's world. In books we commune with the spirit of their writers. The Church the mother of all art and all literature. Catholic literature saturated with Holy Scripture.

A man who made many a man and woman love literature and helped them to study it, the late Professor Henry Morley, has said that one who thinks that a bookroom is not a part of the world; one who thinks that, in leaving his books and going forth to commune with nature he is, as it were, passing from death to life, is one who has not yet learned to read. The good Professor saw that books have souls in them, so to speak, and that to love a book really and truly is to hold communion with that which is living and is a part of the great, beautiful scheme of God's great, beautiful world. To love one part of what Our Father has given us should never lead us to despise, or even undervalue, other parts. And we must remember, too, must we not? how one thing helps us to understand another; how great painters and great poets help us to understand the beauty of nature as we might not have understood it without them, just as they help us also to know men and women, and help us to know better some of the fair things in our great and glorious religion; things which God can and does teach without their help when He chooses, though He graciously and lovingly often uses their help—the help He has given them the power of giving—to teach others of His children. Our Father, being Our Father, not just your Father and my Father and his Father and her Father, but Our Father, the Father of us all as one big family of His, brothers and sisters in Him, wills that we all help one another with the gifts He has given us; and the more we can realise that all separate gifts are parts of one great harmonious whole, the more fully we shall live and feel and enjoy.

There is, of course, a delight in exquisite typography, and hand-made paper, and binding into which the soul of a true artist has gone. People may be willing to give large sums for these things, independently of the value of what is under them; or people may value books for their age, or because they are rare, or because they are records of facts which it is well to know and good to be able to verify.

But there is a better way of love than all of these. One may love the book through which one holds communion with the spirit of its writer, being ready to learn from him by direct learning, or by the learning received through suggestion, or through the rousing of the spirit of enquiry, or the spirit of opposition. Is not this the best kind of love, the love by which the thought of man is used by man, the spirit of man holds communion with the spirit of man?

All through the ages, great things have been handed down by written words, and people of all nations have shared one another's national heritage of written thought, and in that sharing made it larger and greater. We are now considering the earlier story of English Catholic literature, and it is surely well that people should know something of what things were said and sung in the olden time; the time when all art, all literature was fed by the great Mother of all Christian art and all Christian literature, the Holy Catholic Church.

You will find our Catholic literature saturated with sacred lore and knowledge of Holy Scripture. Before printing was invented people could not multiply copies of the Sacred Books as they can now, but they knew them probably much better than many of those who can easily now buy them for a few pence. We have translations of various parts of the Bible in these early times. You will remember how in St Bede's last days he finished his translation of part of St John's Gospel. We have lovely manuscripts, such as that of the Lindisfarne Gospels, written in fine clear writing, which can be seen at the British Museum; and facsimiles of parts of them can be had for a small sum. It is simply an uneducated error to suppose that the heretical editing, as I may call it, of Holy Scripture in the mother-tongue of English people, made by Tyndale and Coverdale, was the first attempt to put the Bible into English. We should have had plenty of printed copies of Holy Scripture in the mother-tongue of English people, had these versions never been made and circulated to attack and injure Holy Church, without whom the originals could never have existed.



CHAPTER XIV

Scattering of our old MSS. in Sixteenth Century. Same now in public libraries. Collections. Exeter Book and Vercelli Book.

Where are all our old manuscripts, our treasures from days of yore, the work of the cunning scribe, the pages whereon so many of our religious spent hour after hour, in patient and loving toil? They were scattered abroad in the sixteenth century by wholesale. Many of them found their way into private collections, and the collectors often generously gave them to college libraries. Matthew Parker, the Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury, was a great book-collector, and gave a good many volumes to Corpus Christi College at Cambridge. Among these is the oldest copy of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. John Bale, once a friar, afterwards, alas! a Protestant Bishop, says that some of the books from the monasteries were used to scour candlesticks or to rub boots; some were sold to grocers and soap-vendors; and whole ships-full went abroad.



Robert Bruce Cotton was another great book-collector. His library was sold to the nation about seventy years after his death. Many books and MSS. belonging to it were destroyed or injured by a fire that broke out where it had been placed; among those injured was the only copy of the old poem of Beowulf, which I have not talked about because it is apparently outside our Catholic Heritage in literature. The reduced library is now at the British Museum. It includes the beautiful Lindisfarne Gospels, or Durham Book, which once belonged to Durham Cathedral.

There is another collection which was bought for the British Museum, made by Harley, Earl of Oxford.

William Laud, who was Archbishop of Canterbury in Charles the First's time, and, like him, died on the scaffold, was also greatly interested in collecting books. He gave generously to Oxford University, and his books are in the Bodleian Library, with many other valuable literary treasures.

Francis Junius collected Anglo-Saxon literature, and other books. He left them to the Bodleian Library. Among them is the unique "Caedmon" Manuscript, given him by Archbishop Usher, who founded the library of Trinity College, Dublin. People are now alive to the value of these great possessions, and we must be glad that scholars have worked at them, and published many of them, and so made their contents accessible to everyone. But we must never forget our debt to the earliest writers, and chiefly to the monks who wrote and who copied, much and long and well. As we trust, they have their reward.

There are two specially interesting collections of manuscript Anglo-Saxon poems, known respectively as the Exeter Book and the Vercelli Book. The Exeter Book is one of some sixty volumes acquired by Leofric, Bishop of Crediton, when he was making his library for the cathedral of his new bishopric at Exeter. It is described as "a large English book of many things wrought in verse." It is one of the few of Leofric's books that remain at Exeter, where it has been over eight hundred years. It contains various poems by Cynewulf and others. Several leaves are missing, and ink has been spilt over part of one page. This Exeter library was scattered at the "Reformation." Some of its treasures are in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, or at Corpus Christi College, at Cambrige.

The Vercelli Book is so called because it was discovered in its home in the cathedral library at Vercelli in Italy a good many years ago. It contains twenty-two sermons in Anglo-Saxon, and six poems, among which is our beautiful "Dream of the Holy Rood." Perhaps some English pilgrim or pilgrims, on the way to Rome, left this book as a gift, or through inadvertence, at the hospice where hospitality had been received. Or perhaps Cardinal Guala, who was over here in the days of John and of Henry III, bought the book for his library at Vercelli. Or perhaps it was one of the books of which John Bale tells us whole ships-full went abroad. We have to be very grateful to the scholars whose researches have recovered for us so much of our old heritage, and to those who have made their contents in various ways so easy to get at.



CHAPTER XV

Runes. An early love-poem

I said I would tell you a little about runes, which I have had more than once occasion to mention. The runes were the alphabet used by the Teutonic tribes, to which the English belonged. This alphabet is very old, and it is not certain where it originally came from. The word "rune" means secret or mystery. To "round" in a person's ear means to whisper, so that what is said is a "secret" or a "mystery." The word comes from "rune." When we use the word to "write" we think of setting down words on paper with a pen or a pencil. But the old meaning of "write" is to incise, or to cut, or engrave. Probably the runes were at first cut in wood. A wooden tablet was called "boc," from beechwood being used for it. When we talk of a book we are away from the first idea of a book a good distance. Runes were also carved, or incised, in metal and in bone. They were associated, not only with secrecy or mystery, but with magic, and were supposed to possess power for good or evil. People thought that "runes could raise the dead from their graves; they could preserve life or take it, they could heal the sick or bring on lingering disease; they could call forth the soft rain or the violent hailstorm; they could break chains and shackles, or bind more closely than bonds or fetters; they could make the warrior invincible and cause his sword to inflict none but mortal wounds; they could produce frenzy and madness, or defend from the deceit of a false friend."

There is a story in an old Norse book telling that Odin, the Scandinavian god, learned them and used them. St Bede tells in his "Church History" a story which proves that the belief in the magic power of runes lingered on in England after Christianity had become the professed religion of the people. It takes a good while to lose superstition that has been with people for a long, long time. Because Christianity condemns anything like magic, the use of the runes, associated with it, gradually went out. The Irish missionaries in the North of England taught the people there a beautiful kind of handwriting from which the English handwriting of later times was formed. The "Lindisfarne Gospels" are written in the earlier Irish rounded characters. In a copy of St Bede's "Church History" written after A.D. 730, a more pointed hand is used. If we want to write fast, we do not write so round as when we write slowly. Afterwards, in the tenth century, the English began to use the French style of writing.

The runes were sometimes used as ordinary letters, without any thought of the old connection with magic. So the great Christian poet, Cynewulf, wrote his name in runes, which is how we know him to be the author of some of the poems we have been considering.

The portions of the "Dream of the Holy Rood" which are on the Ruthwell Cross (see Chapter IV) are carved in runes. There is a small sword in the British Museum with runes on it, which was found in the Thames.

In connection with the runes I want to tell you of two old poems, which may be related to each other. One is known as "The Wife's Complaint," the other as, "The Husband's Message." The first of them is apparently spoken by a woman who laments her hard fate, her husband having gone over the sea, away from her. She is imprisoned in an old earthen dwelling under an oak; she has no friends near, and she tells how vain were the vows of love exchanged between her and her husband. Now the second poem, "The Husband's Message," may be written for this wife; we do not know; at any rate it conveys a message from an absent husband to a wife; and I will give it to you as an early love-letter. It consists of two parts, one of which has been thought to be a riddle, but they have been put together by a learned Professor, and if they do belong to each other, the arrangement is as interesting as it is beautiful. The message is given by the letter itself—the slip of bark or wood on which it was carved—and this wood speaks. First it tells us about itself. It had dwelt on the beach near the sea-shore: there were few to behold its home in the solitude, but every morning the brown wave encircled it with a watery embrace. Then it little thought that even, though itself mouthless, it should speak among the mead-drinkers and utter words.

A great marvel it is, Strange in the mouth that knoweth it not, How the point of the knife and the right hand, The thought of a man, and his blade therewith, Shaped me with skill, that boldly I might So deliver a message to thee In the presence of us two alone, That to other men our talk May not make it more widely known.

The letter then tells how it had come in the keeled vessel, and how the lady would now know how in her heart she may think of the love of her lord. "I dare maintain," says the letter, "that there thou wilt find true loyalty." He that carved the characters on the wood, bad it pray her, the lady decked with jewels, to remember the vows they twain had often made when they dwelt together in their home in the same land.

Force drove him Out of the land. Now hath he bidden me Earnestly to urge thee to sail the sea When thou hast heard on the brow of the hill The mournful cuckoo call in the wood. Then let no living man keep thee From the journey, or hinder thy going. Betake thee to the sea, the home of the mew, Seat thee in the boat, that southward from here Beyond the road of the sea thou mayest find the man Where waits thy prince in hope of thee.

We hope the lady betook herself to the sea-mew's home, and found her beloved at the end of the journey! Her beloved had no thought of any greater joy than the granting of Almighty God that together they should be givers of treasure to men. The beloved has enough of beaten gold and wealth, and a fair home among the strangers, the noble warriors that obey him. Banished from home, gone forth a homeless one, in the stranger-land good has come to him; he has no lack of anything but of her, who had with him come under an old threat, and had been parted from him. He vows to fulfil his pledge and love-troth, and he writes in runes some message, which she, as it appears, would understand, and she alone.

The old, old story, written fair and full.

You will have noticed in the literature we have been considering the absence of certain elements which are an integral part of our modern literature. This poem, for instance, is, as far as I know, the only love poem before the Conquest which has come down to us. There is no romance either, and there is, we may say, no humour. Life is a very serious thing, so often lying close to the sword-edge; and the duties of life are simple. There is to be a great, very great enlargement of the borders of English literature later on. Prose and poetry are to have new developments. Romances are to show us heroic ideals. Lyrics of joy, of sorrow, of passion, of emotion natural and spiritual, are to be sung. The sense of beauty is to grow. The drama is to arise from beginnings to be but faintly traced in early days. Epic poetry is to take a great place. Character modified, enriched by foreign strains, is to mould a noble literature—noble through many and many a gift and grace. A great poet is to arise with sympathies large and wide, to show us, in verse most musical, in words full meaning, with that grace of humour which is a fresh light upon life, how men and women lived: and to be the great precursor of a greater than he. Geoffrey Chaucer is to come to us. After him William Shakespere.

THE END



THE MERCAT PRESS, EDINBURGH.