Old English Poetry
The poetry written in Old English or Anglo-Saxon which dates from roughly 700 and
1100. The total number of surviving poems is about 30,000 lines. Much poetry was
collected and preserved in four manuscripts, written down just before the 11th
century, though some poems are probably much older. These manuscripts are the
Junius MS, the Vercelli Book, the Exeter Book, and the Beowulf MS. As Old
English verse was composed for oral performance it has some specific characteristics,
and they are different from Latin and other European traditions. All this poetry was
created in essencially the same meter.The metrical unit is the rhythmic phrase (half-
line), usually with two stresses, linked into pairs by alliteration. End-rhyme is hardly
ever used, and the meter is not syllable-counted. Old English poetry certainly
developed from an inherited tradition.This poetic tradition was brought by the West
Germanic tribes in the fifth and sixth centuries, when they conquered and settled the
former Roman province of Britannia. Old English poetry is mainly about three types:
heroic, religious and lyrical. The poems with an heroic theme must have been brought
with the Germanic invaders and were passed orally. They were recorded first in
Northumbrian dialect, although they came down to us in West Saxon.The most
famous OE poem is Beowulf, an epic, which was probably written in the 8th century,
(though there is no evidence and scholars of OE still argue).The author is unknown. It
was found in a single surviving manuscript of the 10th century.The manuscript was
badly damaged in a fire. The historical events of the poem took place before the
Christianization of Scandinavia, yet the poem was recorded by unknown Christian
Anglo-Saxons who had converted from their native Anglo-Saxon paganism around
the 7th century. Thus, essentially pagan, the poem contains Christian elements. The
tale is legendary and is base not on Anglo-Saxon history but on Scandinavia. So the
hero Beowulf is not an Anglo-Saxon, but a Geat from southern Sweden. The poem
comprises over 3000 lines and is divided into two parts. It tells how the main hero,
Beowulf the Goth, as a young man slays the monster Grendel, and then Grendel’s
evil mother. Eventually he becomes King of the Geats, and fifty years later, when he
is an old man, he destroys an unnamed fire-dragon that threatened to destroy the
nation. He is mortally wounded in this last fight. The unknown author describes the
hero’s suffering and death, and records his farewell speech to his people. Later in the
10th century the heroic theme in verse continues, though it deals not with ancient but
with contemporary events, namely, wars against the Picts, the Scots and the
Scandinavians.These are: The Battle of Brunanburh and The Battle of Maldon.
Cædmon and Cynewulf are two named poets known from the Old English period.
Among the lyrical poems the most famous are: The Seafarer and The Wanderer.
The latter describes the tragedy of a man who once enjoyed a comfortable life and
fell on the evil times. The author expresses his sense of loneliness in exile, sorrow
and the bereavement of a poet, who cries for the death of his lord and his friends and
depicts his gloomy fate. The Seafarer is a monologue in which the speaker describes
the hardship of a sailor and his difficulties surviving the dark dangerous sea. Both
these poems are attributed to Cynewulf. He lived in Anglia about 800 and also wrote
a few other religious poems. Among them are Juliana, Elene, Christ and The Fates
of Aposles. The majority of Anglo-Saxon poetry refers to Christian subjects. They
are mainly translations and paraphrases of them Bible. They are the legends of saints
and some concern Christian didactic themes. The earliest English poet, as far as we
know, was Cædmon, though English poetry did not start with him. Cadmon’s
ancestors had migrated from the Continent to the British Isles and had brought with
them a well-developed poetic tradition shaped by centuries in the Germanic north.
The nine-line poem Cædmon’s Hymn is found in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History. It is
a story of how the illiterate cattle-herd Cædmon suddenly began to sing of Christian
subjects in the old heroic style. For the Anglo-Saxons Cædmon’s sudden acquisition
of poetic power inspired by a divine dream was a miracle. The poem shows a merger
of Christian and Old Germanic heroic traditions, which, which carries on in most Old
English poetry. The good sample of this merger is the religious poem The Dream of
the Rood that dates from the tenth century and found in the Vercelli Book, preserved
in the Cathedral Library at Vercelli, in northern Italy. It is a story of Christ’s Cross
and the tortures he experienced. The author of the poem depicts the heroism of Christ
and calls him a warrior-king doing battle with the Devil. He also uses personification
and gives the power of speech to the cross on which Christ died. It is also a
remarkable fact that some excerpts from the poem are written in the ancient runic
alphabet on the stone cross in the church of Ruthwell in Southern Scotland. Some
other minor poems are The Wife’s Lament, The Ruin, Exodus and Genesis.
