Bright's Anglo-Saxon Reader/Notes

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Bright's Anglo-Saxon Reader by James W. Bright
Notes

[edit] I. FROM THE GOSPELS.

There is only one known Anglo-Saxon translation of the four Gospels (the remaining books of the New Testament were not translated into Anglo-Saxon). The dialect is Late West-Saxon. It is not known by whom or at what place this translation was made; its exact date is also undetermined, but it is agreed that this must be close to the year 1000. The translator's original was one of the Vulgate manuscripts. The translation is for the most part clear and idiomatic in style and vocabulary, but a restraining regard for the original has to some degree unduly influenced constructions, and occasional errors point to misapprehension of the Latin. A critical edition of this version of the Gospels bas been published in four volumes of the Belles-Lettres Series of D. C. Heath & Co., Boston and London, 19O4 f. The Intoduction to the Gospel of St. John contains a discussion of the relation of the MSS. to each other and of special problems connected with the version.

1, 2. — tō, as prepositional adverb, governs the preciding him and by its position gains the accent of an verb; see also in line 5.

1, 6. — tō sawenne. The gerund (the dat. of the inf. with the prep tō expresses the purpose of motion.

[edit] II. ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE

This narrative (also chapters ix., x., and xi. , below) is taken from the so-called Alfredian version of the De Consolatione Philosophiae of Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius. Boethius, born at Rome about the year 475 A.D., was a man of senatorial rank and of high favor at the court of Theoderic. Among his notable acts in public life was his courageous defence of the senator Albinus against a charge of treason. This furnished his enemies an occasion to turn the accusation against himself. Their malignant purpose prevailed, and Boethius was unjustly condemned, and cast into prison at Titeinum (Pavia). It was during this imprisonment that he wrote the celebrated work on the Consolation of Philosophy. His goods were confiscated, and he was tortured and executed in the year 525.

Boethius was a renowned scholar and a skilful writer. He studied Plato and Aristotle with special ardor, and wrote and translated important works on philosophy, logic, mathematics, and music, by which he not only transmitted Greek learning to his contemporaries, but more especially exerted a marked influence upon medieval scholasticism. The De Consolatione Philosophiae is undoubtedly his most famous work. In form (prose intermingled with verse) it is in the tradition of the Menippean satire, and bears some resemblance to the De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii of Martianus Capella. The following summary of the work is taken from the ninth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica:

"The first book opens with a few verses, in which Boethius describes how hís sorrows had turned his hair gray, and had brought him to a premature old age. As be is thus lamenting, a woman appears to him of dignified lien, whom for a time he cannot distinguish in consequence of his tears, but at last recognizes her as his guardian, Philosophy. She, resolving to apply tbe remedy for his grief, puts some questions to him for that purpose. She finds that he believes that God rules the world, but does not know what he himself is; and this absence of self-knowledge is the cause of his weakness. In the second book Philosophy presents to Boethius Fortune, who is made to state to him tbe blessings he has enjoyed, and after that proceeds to discuss with bim the kind of blessings tbat fortune can bestow, which are shown to be unsatisfactory and uncertain. In the third book Philosophy promises to lead him to true happiness, which is to be found in God alone; for since God is the highest good, and the highest good ís true happiness, God is true happiness. Nor can real evil exist, for since God is all-powerful, and since he does not wish evil, evil must be non-existent. In the fourth book Boethius raises the question, Why, if the governor of the universe is good, do evils exist, and why is virtue often punished and vice rewarded? Philosophy proceeds to show that this takes place only in appearance; that vice is never unpunished nor virtue unrewarded. From this Philosophy passes, into a discussíon in reward to the nature of providence and fate, and shows that every fortune is good. The fifth and laet book takes up the question of man's free will and God's foreknowledge, and by an exposition of tbe nature of God, attempts to show that these doctrines are not subversive of eacb other; and the conclusion is drawn that God remains a foreknowing spectator of all events, and the ever-present eternity of his vision agrees with the future quality of our actions, dispensing rewards to the good and punishments to the wicked."

Translations of this work by King Alfred, Chaucer, and Queen Elizabeth testify to the esteem in which England has held it. Of the Alfredian translation only two complete manuscripts have become known; these are, however, later than Alfred's day, and represent the late West-Saxon dialect with more or less of an admixture of non-West-Saxon forms. The better copy (MS. Cotton, Otho A. 6), which was seriously damaged in the fire of 1731, is unique in containing a metrical version of most of the poems of the original; it apparently belongs to the first half of the tenth century. The second copy (MS. Bodl. 180) is entirely in prose, and as much as three-quarters of a century later than the first. The only available edition of this Anglo-Saxon is that of Samuel Fox (Bohn's Antiquarian Library, London, 1864); the Latin original is edited by Peiper (Teubner, Leipsic, 1871). Consult further: Teuffel, History of Roman Literatur (5th. ed.); Ebert, Allgemeine Geschichte der Literatur des Mittelalters im Abendlande (Leipsic, 1874—1887); Simcox, A History of Latin Literature from Ennius to Beothius.

The tale of Orpheus and Eurydice, in the form of a poem, closes the third book of the original. In the Anglo-Saxon version only the introductory lines, which precede the tale itself, are in metre (Grein, Vol. II., p. 326, no. xxiii). Notice the characteristic pointing of the moral at the end, On the life and works of Alfred the Great, see Stephen's Dictionary of National Biography, Freeman's History of the Norman Conquest of England, Vol. I., Green's Conquest of England, ten Brink's Early English Literature, and Earle's Anglo-Saxon Literature.

[edit] III. ACCOUNT OF THE POET CÆDMON

This extract (also 'The Conversion of Edwin,' below) is taken from the so-called Alfredian version of Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum. Bede (Bæda or Beda) was born in the neighborhood of Wearmouth about the year 673, and died in tbe year 735. At the age of seven he was placed under the charge of Benedict Biscop, abbot of Wearmouth, and while yet a child was transferred to the neighboring monastery at Jarrow, where, ordained a deacon at nineteen and a priest at thirty, he spent the remainder of his life. He was a man of gentle and devout spirit, zealous in religion, and assiduous in study, of wide and varied learning, and a voluminous writer. He wrote in Latin. See Ebert, Teuffel, Stephen, ten Brink, and Earle. Bede's greatest work, the Church History of the English People, was completed in the last years of his life, and is therefore "the ripest fruit of his pen." It is thus summarized by Ebert:

"This work is divided into five books. The first twenty-two chapters of the first book form only an introduction, wherein after a short decription of Britain and its ancient inhahitants we have the history of the country reaching from Julius Cæsar (with particular reference to its earlier conversion to Christianity, on the basis of Orosius, whom Beda often follows word for word, and especially Gildas, whose history here supplies the clue throughout) to the introduction of Christianity among the Angles by Gregory's missionaries. Only from this point (chap. 23) begins the wor proper and independent research of Beda. The church history of the Angles is then carried down in this book to the death of Gregory the Great, A.D. 604. The second book begins with a long obituary of this pope so important for England's church, and ends with the death of Edwin, king of Northumberland, A.D. 633. The third book reaches to 665, when Wighart went to Rome to be consecrated archbishop of Canterbury; but as he dies in Rome, Theodore, the monk of Tarsus, is consecrated by the pope in his room. Here begins the fourth book, extending to the death of Cuthbert (687), the famous saint already twice celebrated by Beda himself. The last book (to the year 731) concludes with a survey of the several sees and of the general state of Britain in that year, when profound peace led many nobles to exchange arms for cloister life" (Mayor and Lumby's edition of the third and fourth books of Bede's Hist., Cambridge, 1881).

The complete Latin text is accessible in a convenient edition by G. H. Moberly, Oxford, 1881, and in another by A. Holder, Freiburg and Tübingen, 1882. A valuable historìcal study based on Bede is embraced in Chapters on Early English Church History, by William Bright, Oxford, 1888.

The Anglo-Saxon version of this work has recently been published by the Early English Text Society; the editor, Dr. Thomas Miller, argues that "the evidence of the dialect favours production on Mercian soil" (see his Introduction).

Bede's account of the earliest named English poet possesses genuine interest; though clothed in a legend which, with variations, is found recurring in literature since the Dream of Hesiod, in other respects tlle details are to be accepted as trustworthy (see ten Brink's Appendix A). Cædmon is supposed to have died in the year 680.

[edit] IV. CYNEWULF AND CYNEHEARD

This chapter introduces the student to the famous Anglo-Saxon Chronicles.

" As a body of history [these annals] extend from A.D. 449 to 1154 — that is, exclusive of the book-made annals that form a long avenue at the beginning, and start from Julius Cæsar. The period covered by the age of the extant manuscripts is hardly less than three hundred years, from about A.D. 900 to about A.D. 1200. A large number of hands must have wrought from time to time at their production, and, as the work is wholly anonymous and void of all external marks of authorship, the various and several contributions can only be determined by internal evidence" (Earle, Anglo-Saxon Lit.). Earle himself has examined and set forth this evidence (Two of the Saxon Chronicles, Oxfrod, 1865; see also ten Brink, Early English Lit.).

The annal of 765 (written at least as late as the year 784, and apparently entered later than the annal of that year) is a remarkable example of early vernacular prose. "We do not meet wìth so vivid and circumstantial a piece of history till more than a hundred years later" (Sweet). "The syntaxis not more rugged than that of Thucydides. It corresponds well to the time which produced it, in which brief efforts of diction had been long familiar, but a sustained narrative not often attempted in writing" (Earle, English Prose, London, 1890).

The Parker MS., from which the text is taken, represents the Early West-Saxon dialect, the language of Alfred the Great (see Sievers' Grammar, Appendix).

[edit] V. WARS OF ALFRED THE GREAT

The reign of Alfred the Great (871-901) was begun on the battlefield against the incursions of the Danes. The following annals belong to the warmest and most detailed narratives of some of the king's military campaigns. "The style assumes a different aspect; without losing the force and simplicity of the earlier pieces, it becomes refined and polished to a high degree" (Sweet). Freeman's History of the Norman Conquest of England, Vol. I., and Green's Conquest of England are important for the history of these times.

Bright's Anglo-Saxon Reader/Notes

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Contents

[edit] I. FROM THE GOSPELS.

[edit] II. ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE

[edit] III. ACCOUNT OF THE POET CÆDMON

[edit] IV. CYNEWULF AND CYNEHEARD

[edit] V. WARS OF ALFRED THE GREAT

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