Old English wisdom poetry: elegies, gnomic verse, poetic riddles and charms

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Old English wisdom poetry: elegies, gnomic verse, poetic riddles and charms.

1. Cornerstones of medieval philosophy and the medieval Christian Weltanschauung (world-view):

• Logocentrism - in medieval understanding, the focus on the Holy Logos (the Scripture) and on the

power of words as an emanation of reality.

• Pansemiotism - the meaningfulness of everything (the idea of the divine plan and divine purpose of

everything that happens).

• Polysemy – multiplicity of the layers of meaning. The example of the Bible (the Holy Scripture): sensus

historicus (literal sense); sensus allegoricus (symbolic meaning); sensus tropologicus/moralis (moral
meaning); sensus anagogicus (the secret, gnomic meaning of the text).

• Universals – knowledge derived from the universal, not particular ideas. But how to distinguish one

from the other?

2. Old English wisdom poetry (gnomic verse) – the homiletic effect:

• Old English word giedd – multiple meaning: “song, lay, poem, speech, tale, sermon, proverb, riddle,

maxim, sentence, word.”

• Elegies (including love elegies): The Wanderer, The Seafarer, Deor’s Lament (interesting, as it

refers to Germanic past and legend), Wulf and Eadwacer, Wife’s Lament

• Gnomic texts – Maxims, The Order of the World, The Fortunes of Men

• Poetic riddles and dialogues – the Exeter Book riddles, Dialogue between King Solomon and Saturn
• Charms – remnants of old verbal magic, mixture of pagan and Christian beliefs and rituals

• Wisdom elements also present in other types of poems (e.g. maxims and instructions in heroic

poetry, gnomic elements in religious verse).

3. Old English elegiac poetry – existentialism among uncertainties.

a. Most of it preserved in the so-called Exeter Book (10th/11th c.);
b. frequent motifs of Old English elegies – the imagery:

• rough sea and the hostile nature (wintry landscapes, wind, ice, frost, hail, rain);

• the image of the sea as the mare vitae – “the sea of life”

a. the common motifs of Old English elegies – ideas:

• loneliness; separation; death of friends, families; the hopelessness of earthly existence;

• the voyage – life as a journey

• exile – understood both literally and as earthly exile

• wise suffering and moral lessons to be drawn from it.
• the search for some sense in life – both here on earth and beyond

• didactic value of such poetry

• gnomic elements of such poetry

4. The roots of Anglo-Saxon existentialism in the times of uncertainty:

a. the question of how to make sense in the world of instability;
b. wyrd – Old English fate, sense of fatalism and uncertainty of human existence, of the

impossibility of changing what cannot be changed and is beyond human control – possible
Germanic and Nordic influences (cf. Urðr, one of the Nordic Norns, women who rule the fate);

c. Transitoriness, evanescence of earthly things: ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerunt – “where are those

who were before us”;
sic transit gloria mundi – “thus passes the glory of the world”;

d. The influence of Christian philosophy – especially of King Alfred’s translation of Boethius De

consolatione Philiosophiae (On the consolation of philosophy)

But also the works of:

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Aristotle (Platonic philosophy), St. Augustine (of Hippo), Isidore of Seville (Etymologies),
Gregory the Great (Moralia in Iob, Moral teachings in the Book of Job)

Anglo-Saxon

scholars:

Bede (672?-735), Alcuin of York (735?-804), Aelfric (955?-1010?)

5. Christian elegies – The Wanderer and The Seafarer:

a. The Wanderer:

• a lamentation of a man deprived of his past happiness and security beside his lord and friends,
now searching for a new patron – also metaphorically
• The Wanderer and the idea of suffering as a blessing, a divine gift.
• the narrator of the poem as a man haunted by the memories of his happy past and who cannot
set himself free from them

b. The Seafarer:

• the conscious choice of the life of hardship on the sea – the desire to live life fully, to live it to
its extremes – also as a metaphor of choosing the difficult life “on the sea” and close to God,
over the easy life “on land.”
• The Seafarer and the idea of “the world being old” – an elegy describing the pitiful state of
what used to be a splendid, most probably Roman city.

6. The existential conflicts – internal and external conflicts in The Wanderer and The Seafarer poems:

– man vs. nature or the external world;
– man and the internal / external exile;
– man vs. himself;
– man and the memory of his past (as torment);
– man vs. other people;
– man and an exemplum [an example, a moral lesson];
– man vs. God;
– man and the quest for the sense of existence.

From the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the entry for the year 891:

Old English: Þrie Scottas comon to Ælfrede cyninge on anum bate butan ælcum gereþrum of Hibernia þonon hi
bestælon forþon þe hi woldon for Godes lufan on elþiodignesse [exile] beon hi ne rohton hwær… þus hie wæron
genemnde: Dubslane ond Maccbethu ond Mælinmun.

Modern English translation: Three Scots came to King Alfred [the Great] in a boat without a rudder from Ireland,
whence they had stolen away because they wished to be in a foreign land, they cared not where, for love of God…
Their names were Dubslane and Macbeth and Mælinmun.

7. Love elegies and love poetry – Wulf and Eadwacer, Wife’s Lament and Husband’s Message.

a. the passion, intense emotions and intimacy of expressing the pain of separation and longing for the
beloved;
b. the hopelessness of the situation in Wulf and Eadwacer and Wife’s Lament – the elegies narrated by
women separated from their lovers;
c. the hope and desire to be reunited in The Husband’s Message
d. the mysteries of the love poems – who are the speakers? What circumstances do they narrate?

Wulf and Eadwacer, a poetic translation by Burton Raffel (1998)

My people may have been given a warning:
Will they receive him, if he comes with force?
It is different for us [lit.: difference is us]

Wulf is on one island, I on another.
An island of forts, surrounded by swamp.
That island belongs to bloody barbarians:
Will they receive him if he comes with a force?

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It is different for us. [lit.: difference is us]

Hope has wondered in exile, with Wulf.
When the rain was cold and my eyes ran red
With tears, when heavy arms reached out and took me
And I suffered pleasure and pain. Wulf,
Oh my Wulf, it was hoping and longing for you
That sickened me, starved for the sight of you,
Bent with despair deeper than hunger.

Listen Eadwacer! The wolf will carry
Our wretched cub to the shade of the wood.
It’s easy to smash what never existed,
You and I together [lit. the song, poem, riddle of us two together]

8. Old English wisdom poems (e.g. Maxims, The Order of the World, The Fortunes of Men, The Dialogue of
Solomon and Saturn)

a. maxims, proverbs, moral and didactic instructions, dialogues / riddle contests (between King Solomon
and a man called Saturn),
b. their concern – discussing the nature of wisdom, the importance of exchanging and sharing wisdom,
the nature of life, the nature of things in the surrounding world
c. the form – often short, concise, sometimes unrelated statements – very proverbial and unclear.

9. Anglo-Saxon charms – short texts employing the belief in verbal magic.

a. Bald’s Leechbook – a 9th c. medical book containing sensible medical advice but also magical
medicine and charms.
b. belief in verbal magic and the power of words
c. pagan elements conjoined with Christian belief

From The Exeter Book Maxims:

Forst sceal freosan,         fyr wudu meltan,
eorþe growan,         is brycgian,
wæter helm wegan,         wundrum lucan
eorþan ciþas.         An sceal inbindan
forstes fetre         felameahtig god; [71-75/1-5]

[Frost must freeze, fire consume wood,
earth burgeon, ice build bridges,
water wear helm, wondrously confine
earth’s young sprouts. One alone shall
unbind frost fetters, Almighty God.]
Luis Rodrigues trans.

From The Order of the World:

Leorna þas lare.         Ic þe lungre sceal
meotudes mægensped         maran gesecgan,
þonne þu hygecræftig         in hreþre mæge
mode gegripan.         Is sin meaht forswiþ.
Nis þæt monnes gemet         moldhrerendra,
þæt he mæge in hreþre         his heah geweorc
furþor aspyrgan         þonne him frea sylle
to ongietanne         godes agen bibod; [23-30]

[Learn this lesson. I am soon to tell
you of God’s mighty power, greater than
thou, though wise, can internally grasp
in thy mind. Is your power great?
It is not meet for man, of those who move on earth,
to explore in his mind God’s noble work
any further than the Lord will allow
him to perceive what he himself ordains;]
Luis Rodrigues trans.

10. Riddles in literature and culture.

a. widespread form, conjoining the ideas of:

• verbal jokes, games, laughter, reversal of reality, creativity – the idea of guessing the secreted
identity.
• mystery, hidden knowledge, search for the meaning (in poetic riddles) as frequently leading to
a deeply Christian perspective, marvelling at divine creativity.

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b. the idea of making what is common strange, what is everyday, unusual;

estrangement as one of

the roles of literature.

11. Old English riddles.

a. influence of 7th/8th c. Anglo-Latin tradition – Latin riddles by bishop

Aldhelm

(639?-

709).

• Latin poetic riddles, frequently referring to etymologies, refined Latin poetic forms.
• popular in education.

b. about 90 riddles recorded in the Exeter Book (10th/11th c.)

c. mysterious, unclear until now solutions to some of them.

d. multiplicity of themes and solution – from serious (Creation riddle), existential

(Shield riddle),

religious (Bible riddle) to jocular and erotic (double entendre, i.e.

erotic riddles).

e. runic alphabet and runic signs employed by riddles – runic signs as bearing not

only phonetic

sense, but also semantic dimension (runic signs corresponded both to sounds/letters and words/concepts)

Riddle 7 (translated by Craig Williamson)
Hrægl min swigað, þonne ic hrusan trede, My gown is silent as I tread the seas,
oþþe þa wic buge, oþþe wado drefe.

Haunt old buildings or tread the land.

Hwilum mec ahebbað ofer hæleþa byht

Sometimes my song-coat and the

supple

wind

hyrste mine, ond þeos hea lyft,

Cradle me high over the homes of men,

5 ond mec þonne wide wolcna strengu

And the power of clouds carries me

ofer folc byreð. Frætwe mine

Windward over cities. Then my bright silks

swogað hlude ond swinsiað,

Start to sing, whistle, roar,

torhte singað, þonne ic getenge ne beom Resound and ring, while I
flode ond foldan, ferende gæst.

Sail on untouched by earth and sea,

spirit,

ghost

and

guest,

wing.

Riddle 44 (translated by Craig Williamson)
Wrætlic hongað bi weres þeo,

A small miracle hangs near a man’s thigh,

frean under sceate. Foran is þyrel.

Full under folds. It is stiff, strong,

Bið stiþ ond heard, stede hafað godne;

Bold, brassy, and pierced in front.

þonne se esne his agen hrægl

When a young lord lifts his tunic

5 ofer cneo hefeð, wile þæt cuþe hol

Over his knees, he wants to greet

mid his hangellan heafde gretan

With the hard head of this hanging creature

þæt he efenlang ær oft gefylde.

The hole it has long come to fill.