The Oldest English Lyric
— Two poems stand like warders at the gates of English song. One of them, unquestionably the oldest piece of our early literature, is the versified experience of some “metre ballad-monger” of that day, — a minstrel who calls himself Widsith, the Far-Wanderer, and tells what races he has visited, and what valiant kings and fair, gold-decked queens he has charmed with his singing. The other poem shows its antiquity not so much by its contents as by its form. True, it is purely heathen in its sentiment, and therefore belongs to that “ colonial ” period when all the stuff of which poetry was made had to be imported from the older England. But it is the poetic form which stamps it with its best quality, the old strophic arrangement which once characterized all Germanic poetry, and lingered longest in the songs of Scandinavia. Moreover, the minstrel of this second poem, Deor, is a much more interesting person than the shadowy and somewhat ineffectual Widsith. The latter gives us a catalogue of tribes, a bit of sleepy epic ; Deor tells us his wrongs, his sorrow and his comfort, — in a word, he sings us the first English lyric. The quality is not that of the Stanzas Written in Dejection near Naples ; but to have stanzas — real stanzas, too, my masters! — setting forth the dejection of an English poet who lived long before King Alfred is something to be thankful for. But who reads Deor, — who knows that Deor ever existed ? Let us try to bring him before modern readers as nearly as possible in his habit as he lived.
How-shall we translate this waif of early poetry ; how put in English of to-day the spirit, the manner, and the rhythmic form of an English lyric written over a thousand years ago, and, before that, passed down from mouth to mouth through countless generations ? The manner and the form of it we must reproduce faithfully, as by a tracing : only so shall we come at all near the spirit of it. Anglo-Saxon poetry is almost meaningless when separated from its peculiar diction and metre. The spirit of a poem needs the environment of its form, and will not be transplanted. It is vile anachronism to put the Saxon into later costume ; what comfort is there in seeing a morion under an opera-hat, or a hauberk smothered by a dress-coat? But this will be the fate of Deor so soon as the general scent a translatable bit of lyric ; it has been the fate of other Anglo-Saxon poems, of the Wanderer and the Ruin. Perchance the translator will come and see this lyric of Deor’s, and muse about it, and say, “ Go to, now, let us put this into Swinburnian Villonese ! ” A neat little bridge from the ninth to the nineteenth century ! To write in the manner of Villon is to strike that introspective, personal note, fatally familiar to us, but unknown to the generation of Deor. Alas, any fine morning we may see Deor thus Villonized in the London Academy, — perhaps the deed has been done already, escaping a careless eye,—and modern readers will say, “ How graceful ! ” and picture Deor lolling in doublet and trunk-hose at a Mercian tavern. But this is flat burglary on the manly old fellow who saw his ale and skittles in peril, after a hard struggle for them, too, and comforted himself with a bit of verse sung straight into the north wind ! No : if our translator must have the modern taste, and yet has conscience to desire some fidelity to his original, lot him give his days and his nights to the study of William Dunbar. Haply, however, there be those who would fain see old Deor as he was, and hear him somewhat as he sang. For such is meant the following translation. Be it remembered (avoiding intricate and minor questions) that all Germanic poetry of the early period was written in a rhythm which relied on the agreement of initial accented sounds, —an arrangement for which neither the word “ alliteration ” nor Worcester’s definition of it is correct ; and that AngloSaxon metre counted four accented syllables to the verse, two in each half, of which the third accented syllable set the sound. With this third accented syllable must agree one of the first two, and may agree both of them ; the fourth and the third never rhyme in good poetry.
The poet is in low estate. He comforts himself by recounting the misfortunes of divers personages, all belonging to the cycle of old Germanic sagas.
doughty earl, ills endur’d,
had for comrades care and longing,
winter-cold wandering ; woe oft found,
since Nithhad brought such need upon him,—
laming wound on a lordlier man.
That pass’d over, — and this may too !
wrought, no such ill as her own disgrace,
when she had openly understood
her maidhood vanish’d; she might no wise
think how the case could thrive at all.
That pass’d over, — and this may too !
heroes of Geat were homeless made,
and sorrow stole their sleep away.
That pass’d over. — and this may too !
Mærings’ burg,2 as many have known.
That pass’d over, —and this may too !
wolfish mind ; wide was his sway
o’er the Gothic race, —a ruler grim.
Sat many a man in misery bound,
waited but woe, and wish’d amain
that ruin might fall on the royal house.
That pass’d over, — and this may too !
all’s dark within him ; he deems forsooth
that his share of evils shall endless be.
Let such bethink him that thro’ this world
mighty God sends many changes :
to earls a plenty honor He shows,
ease and bliss ; to others, sorrow.
I was singer once to the sons of Heoden,
dear to my master, and Deor was my name.
Long were the winters my lord was kind,
happy my lot, — till Heorrenda now
by grace of singing has gained the land
which the “ haven of heroes” 3 erewhile gave me.
That pass’d over, — and this may too !
So much for honest Deor. When every singer of lyrics follows the example of this our oldest song-maker, and keeps his own personality out of sight until the last stanza, criticism may Certainly chant its nunc dimittis.