OLD ENGLISH

Detail from the sole surviving manuscript of Beowulf. England,

4th quarter of the 10th century or 1st quarter of the 11th
century. Cotton MS Vitellius A XV, f 132r.
 The End of Roman Britain
• Until AD 410: Most of Britain had been under
Roman control.
The native inhabitants were Celts, speaking various
forms of Celtic, which gave rise to present-day
Welsh, Irish, Gaelic and (in Brittany) Breton, as
well as now-dead languages Cornish and Manx.
• AD 410: The Romans left Britain to defend Italy.
The departure of the Romans left a power vacuum,
which the continental Germanic tribes were able
to exploit.
The Anglo-Saxon Settlement
It is likely that the Anglo-Saxons came from the area of north-west
Germany and Denmark, and perhaps also the north-east of the
Netherlands, the area known today as Friesland.
 Bede’s Account
IN the year of our Lord 449, ... the nation of the Angles, or Saxons,
being invited by the ... [Celtic] king [Vortigern], arrived in Britain
with three long ships, and had a place assigned them to reside in by
the same king, in the eastern part of the island, that they might
thus appear to be fighting for their country, whilst their real
intentions were to enslave it. Accordingly they engaged with the
enemy, who were come from the north to give battle, and obtained
the victory; which, being known at home in their own country, as
also the fertility of the country, and the cowardice of the Britons, a
more considerable fleet was quickly sent over, bringing a still
greater number of men, which, being added to the former, made up
an invincible army. The newcomers received of the Britons a place
to inhabit, upon condition that they should wage war against their
enemies for the peace and security of the country, whilst the
Britons agreed to furnish them with pay.
Those who came over were of the three most powerful
nations of Germany Saxons, Angles, and Jutes. From the
Jutes are descended the people of Kent, and of the Isle of
Wight, and those also in the province of the West Saxons
who are to this day called Jutes, seated opposite to the Isle
of Wight. From the Saxons, that is, the country which is
now called Old Saxony, came the East Saxons, the South
Saxons, and the West Saxons. From the Angles, that is, the
country which is called Anglia, and which is said, from that
time, to remain desert to this day, between the provinces
of the Jutes and the Saxons, are descended the East Angles,
the Midland Angles, Mercians, all the race of the
Northumbrians, that is, of those nations that dwell on the
north side of the river Humber, and the other nations of the
English.
(Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, Book I, Chapter
XV)
 The Venerable Bede
Bede (c. 672–735 CE) was born in Northumbria in the late 7th century,
and at the age of seven entered the monastery of Wearmouth and
Jarrow near Newcastle, where he spent all of his adult life. In the
Middle Ages, Bede was famous for the works he wrote on the
interpretation of scripture, on the natural world and on how to
calculate the date of Easter. Bede produced English translations of
the Lord’s Prayer, Creed, and (at least part of) the Gospel of John,
but these works no longer survive.

Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People was completed in

731. It tells the story of the conversion of the English people to
Christianity. It is the chief source of information about English
history from the arrival of St. Augustine in Kent in 597 until 731. ...
It draws upon several other sources, each of which Bede
acknowledges.
The Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms in the 7th
Century (Heptarchy)
 Language
Old English was part of a Germanic dialect (or
language) continuum which stretched across
northern Europe from Schleswig-Holstein through
Frisia and the Netherlands to Britain.
Old English is traditionally held to be the form of
the English language used until about the 12th
century (c. 1150). When some of the inflectional
endings began to disappear, the language begins
to be identified as Middle English.
Germanic Languages in Northern
Europe
Germanic Languages: A Family Tree
Diagram
 The Earliest Records
The earliest records of Old English are short
inscriptions found in runic and non-runic form.
Before 650-700: Fifteen to twenty inscriptions, all
on portable objects and almost all on metal.
Because of the nature of this material, it is
unclear whether the objects were inscribed in
Britain, and therefore whether or not they
represent the language of Germanic-speaking
settlers in Britain. The texts are all very short
(three words or less).
 Later Inscriptions
Post 650-700: Hundreds of coins with runic or
mixed-script (Roman and runic) legends. The
texts are much more substantial, some with a
literary character (in poetic form), most notably
on the Ruthwell Cross (8th century) and on the
Franks Casket (early 8th century).
Many of the inscriptions are from historical
Northumbria and from the eastern or
southeastern parts of England (notably Kent and
East Anglia).
 Anglo-Saxon Literature
Among the types of texts that we will encounter
in this course are:
• Scholastic and scientific texts (Ælfric's
Grammar and the Wonders of the East);
• Prose translations of the Bible;
• The Exeter Book riddles;
• Prognostics;
• Homilies.
 The Study of Latin Grammar
The Latin grammars of Donatus (the Ars minor and
the Ars maior, ca. 350) and Priscian (Institutiones
grammaticae, ca. 500) written in Latin and
accessible to the continental audiences
The first vernacular grammar of Latin produced by
Ælfric (c. 955-1010), abbot of Eynsham, and
supplemented by the Glossary and Colloquy for
the purpose of teaching young boys whose first
language was Old English
 Ælfric’s Grammar
Based on the Excerptiones de Prisciano, Ælfric’s
Grammar contains sections dealing with syllables,
vowels, consonants, diphthongs, the eight parts
of speech, and various other subjects, focusing
particularly on declension, conjugation, and
lexicon.
Some sixteen manuscripts of the Grammar survived
the Middle Ages in whole or fragmentary form,
attesting to its popularity as a pedagogical text.
 Writings about the Exotic East
The Wonders of the East is preserved in three early medieval copies:
two 11th-century manuscripts (London, British Library, Cotton
Vitellius A XV, the Beowulf manuscript, c. 1000; and London, British
Library, Cotton Tiberius B V, c. 1050) and one 12th-century
manuscript (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 614, c. 1150).

Vitellius preserves the Old English version.

Tiberius includes both the Old English and Latin texts.
Bodley transmits the Latin version.

The survival of the Wonders in two languages and in three illuminated

versions suggests the popularity of this type of literature.
 Prognostics
Prognostic texts are used to predict future events based
on the observation of meaningful signs or on outcomes
of divinatory activities.
Anglo-Saxon prognostic texts comprise 40-50 items of
various lengths in Latin and Old English. They include:
• predictions based on the day of the week on which
something occurs;
• predictions based on natural phenomena such as
thunder or wind;
• lists of lucky and unlucky days of the year;
• alphabetical lists giving the meaning of objects seen in
dreams.
 Riddles
The riddle genre was established in England by
Aldhelm (d. 709), who wrote 100 enigmata
('mysteries') in Latin hexameter. These riddles
became popular as school-texts, and they
exemplify a fascination with etymology,
classical mythology, and the Latin language.
 Aldhelm
Aldhelm (d. 709) was an Anglo-Saxon bishop and
abbot, scholar and poet. He was a man of very
broad learning, and his works were copied and
studied in the school curricula of later Anglo-
Saxon England. He is known principally for his
substantial corpus of Latin works (prose and
verse), written in a difficult, hyper-learned
register known to modern scholarship as the
‘hermeneutic style’. Aldhelm also reputedly
composed Anglo-Saxon poetry, but none has
survived.
 Vernacular Riddles
About 100 Old English riddles which vary in
length from one line to more than a hundred
are preserved in the Exeter Book.
The Exeter Book riddles are highly allusive and
metaphorical in their treatment of a subject
matter that encompasses the sublime and the
ridiculous and that ranges from descriptions
of down-to-earth objects to topics of abstruse
learning.
The Old English riddles “clearly were designed
for the appreciation of discerning Anglo-Saxon
readers, who would have been puzzled,
entertained, edified and, in the case of the
riddles with sexual content, shocked by what
they read" (Magennis, 2011, p. 150).
 Old English Gospels
A "literal but relatively idiomatic" (Liuzza 1994-
2000) translation of the Gospels, generally known
as the West-Saxon Gospels, is preserved in six
eleventh-century manuscripts, two fragments,
and two twelfth-century copies.
Liuzza (1994-2000) finds that the Old English
translation contains in excess of 650 divergences
from the Vulgate, with about half of these unique
to the Old English version.
The translation shows more than a few errors, and
its original purpose is unclear.
 Homilies
Written homilies are set texts designed for the
portion of the mass or other liturgical rite
devoted to preaching.
Some of the Old English homilies were
composed for the use of preachers celebrating
the mass before the laity on Sundays and feast
days. Others were also devised either for
private study or, most commonly, for the
internal use of religious houses.
Most of the surviving manuscripts containing
homilies transmit the homilies by Ælfric of
Eynsham and Wulfstan (d. 1023), archbishop of
York.
Among the most important anonymous collections
are the Blickling (preserved in the manuscript
written in an unknown scriptorium c. 1000, but
the individual homilies must have been
composed earlier in various periods and places)
and Vercelli Homilies (preserved in the Vercelli
Book traditionally dated to the second half of the
tenth century, although individual homilies might
have been composed earlier).
 Old English Poetry
About 30,000 lines of Old English poetry survive, mostly in four manuscripts
copied during the late tenth and early eleventh centuries:
• the Exeter Book, a collection of religious and secular poetry donated to
Exeter Cathedral by Bishop Leofric in 1072
• the Vercelli Book, a collection of religious poetry and prose probably taken
to Vercelli in Italy during the eleventh century by pilgrims on their way to
Rome;
• the Junius manuscript, an illustrated collection of four long religious
poems bequeathed to the Bodleian Library in Oxford by an early owner,
Francis Junius;
• the Beowulf manuscript, a collection of poetry and prose concerning
marvels, once owned by Sir Robert Cotton and now in the British Library in
London.
A smaller amount of poetry survives in other sources, such as the Anglo-
Saxon Chronicle, whose annals are mainly in prose but occasionally in
poetry.
 The Wife's Lament
The Wife’s Lament is one of only two poems with a female persona,
the other being Wulf and Eadwacer. It is a powerful articulation of
the physical and psychological hardships of an isolated individual.

The poem is preserved in the Exeter Book where it immediately

follows Riddle 59. Because the scribe continues the format he uses
for the riddles and because the poem begins with the first person
pronoun, like most riddles in this collection, some critics have
grouped this poem with the riddles. Others have read it as an
allegory of the Church's longing for Christ, a retainer's lament for
his lord, a speaking sword, and even the cry of a lost soul speaking
out from beyond the grave. Scholars today mostly agree that it is a
poem of love and lament, spoken by a woman who has lost her
husband, who is also her lord.