Part 40 (1/2)

In this famous battle, the English, under their warlike king, defeated a most threatening combination of foes; Anlaf, the Danish prince, having united his forces to those of Constantine, King of the Scots, and the Britons, or Welsh of Strathclyde and Cambria. So proud were the English of the victory, that their writers break into poetry when they come to that portion of their annals. Such is the case with the writer of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, from whom the following verses are abridged. They have been already partially quoted in the text.

Here Athelstane king, Of earls the lord, To warriors the ring-giver, Glory world-long Had won in the strife, By edge of the sword, At Brunanburgh.

The offspring of Edward, The departed king, Cleaving the s.h.i.+elds.

Struck down the brave.

Such was their valour, Worthy of their sires, That oft in the strife They s.h.i.+elded the land 'Gainst every foe.

The Scottish chieftains, The warriors of the Danes, Pierced through their mail, Lay dead on the field.

The field was red With warriors' blood, What time the sun, Uprising at morn, The candle of G.o.d, Ran her course through the heavens; Till red in the west She sank to her rest.

Through the live-long day Fought the people of Wess.e.x, Unshrinking from toil, While Mercian men, Hurled darts by their side.

Fated to die Their s.h.i.+ps brought the Danes, Five kings and seven earls, All men of renown, And Scots without number Lay dead on the field.

Constantine, h.o.a.ry warrior, Had small cause to boast.

Young in the fight, Mangled and torn, Lay his son on the plain.

Nor Anlaf the Dane With wreck of his troops, Could vaunt of the war Of the clas.h.i.+ng of spears.

Or the crossing of swords, with the offspring of Edward.

The Northmen departed In their mailed barks, Sorrowing much; while the two brothers, The King and the Etheling, To Wess.e.x returned, Leaving behind The corpses of foes To the beak of the raven, The eagle and kite, And the wolf of the wood.

The Chronicle simply adds, ”A.D. 937.--This year King Athelstan, and the Etheling Edmund, his brother, led a force to Brimanburgh, end there fought against Anlaf, and, Christ helping them, they slew five kings and seven earls.”

v Murder of Edmund.

A certain robber named Leofa, whom Edmund had banished for his crimes, returning after six years' absence, totally unexpected, was sitting, on the feast of St. Augustine, the apostle of the English, and first Archbishop of Canterbury, among the royal guests at Pucklechurch, for on this day the English were wont to regale, in commemoration of their first preacher; by chance, too, he was placed near a n.o.bleman, whom the king had condescended to make his guest. This, while the others were eagerly carousing, was perceived by the king alone; when, hurried with indignation, and impelled by fate, he leaped from the table, caught the robber by the hair, and dragged him to the floor; but he, secretly drawing a dagger from its sheath, plunged it with all his force into the breast of the king as he lay upon him. Dying of the wound, he gave rise over the whole kingdom to many fictions concerning his decease. The robber was shortly torn limb from limb by the attendants who rushed in, though he wounded some of them ere they could accomplish their purpose.

St. Dunstan, at that time Abbot of Glas...o...b..ry, had foreseen his ign.o.ble end, being fully persuaded of it from the gesticulations and insolent mockery of a devil dancing before him. Wherefore, hastening to court at full speed, he received intelligence of the transaction on the road. By common consent, then, it was determined that his body should be brought to Glas...o...b..ry, and there magnificently buried in the northern part of the tower. That such had been his intention, through his singular regard for the abbot, was evident from particular circ.u.mstances. The village, also, where he was murdered, was made a offering for the dead, that the spot, which had witnessed his fall, might ever after minister aid to his soul,--William of Malmesbury, B, ii. e. 7, Bohn's Edition.

vi A. D. 556--Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

vii Wulfstan, and the See of Dorchester.

When Athelstane was dead, the Danes, both in Northumberland and Mercia, revolted against the English rule, and made Anlaf their king. Archbishop Wulfstan, then of York, sided with them, perhaps being himself of Danish blood. The kingdom was eventually divided between Edmund and Aulaf, until the death of the latter. When Edred ascended the throne--after the murder of Edmund, who had, before his death, repossessed himself of the whole sovereignty--the wise men of Northumberland, with Wulfstan at their head, swore submission to him, but in 948 rebelled and chose for their king Eric of Denmark. Edred marched at once against them, and subdued the rebellion with great vigour, not to say riqour. He threw the archbishop into prison at Jedburgh in Bernicia. After a time he was released, but only upon the condition of banishment from Northumbria, and he was made Bishop of Dorchester, a place familiar to the tourist on the Thames, famed for the n.o.ble abbey church which still exists, and has been grandly restored.

Although Dorchester is now only a village, it derives its origin from a period so remote that it is lost in the mist of ages. It was probably a British village under the name Cair Dauri, the camp on the waters; and coins of Cun.o.belin, or Ca.s.sivellaunus, have been found in good preservation. Bede mentions it as a Roman station, and Richard of Cirencester marks it as such in the xviii. Iter, under the name Durocina.

Its bishopric was founded by Birinus, the apostle of the West Saxons; and the present bishoprics of Winchester, Salisbury, Exeter, Bath and Wells, Worcester and Hereford, were successively taken from it, after which it still extended from the Thames to the Humber.

Suffering grievously from the ravages of the Danes, it became a small town, and it suffered again grievously at the Conquest, when the inhabited houses were reduced by the Norman ravages from 172 to 100, and perhaps the inhabitants were reduced in proportion. In consequence, Remigius, the first Norman bishop, removed the see to Lincoln, because Dorchester, on account of its size and small population, did not suit his ideas, as John of Brompton observes. From this period its decline was rapid, in spite of its famous abbey, which Remigius partially erected with the stones from the bishop's palace.

viii Anglo-Saxon Literature.

In the age of Bede, the eighth century, Britain was distinguished for its learning; but the Danish invasions caused the rapid decline of its renown.

The churches and monasteries, where alone learning flourished, and which were the only libraries and schools, were the first objects of the hatred of the ferocious pagans; and, in consequence, when Alfred came to the throne, as he tells us in his own words--”South of the Humber there were few priests who could understand the meaning of their common prayers, or translate a line of Latin into English; so few, that in Wess.e.x there was not one.” Alfred set himself diligently to work to correct this evil. Nearly all the books in existence in England were in Latin, and it was a ”great” library which contained fifty copies of these. There was a great objection to the use of the vernacular in the Holy Scriptures, as tending to degrade them by its uncouth jargon; but the Venerable Bede had rendered the Gospel of St. John into the Anglo-Saxon, together with other extracts from holy Scripture; and there were versions of the Psalter in the vulgar tongue, very rude and uncouth; for ancient translators generally imagined a translation could only be faithful which placed all the words of the vulgar tongue in the same relative positions as the corresponding words in the original. An Anglo-Saxon translation upon this plan is extant.

Alfred had taught himself Latin by translating: there were few vocabularies, and only the crabbed grammar of old Priscian. Shaking himself free from the trammels we have enumerated, he invited learned men from abroad, such as his biographer, a.s.ser, and together they attempted a complete version of the Bible. Some writers suppose the project was nearly completed, others, that it was interrupted by his early death. Still, translations were multiplied of the sacred writings, and the rubrics show that they were read, as described in the text, upon the Sundays and festivals. From that time down to the days of Wickliffe, England can boast of such versions of the sacred Word as can hardly be paralleled in Europe.

The other works we have mentioned were also translated by or for Alfred.

”The Chronicle of Orosius,” a history of the world by a Spaniard of Seville; ”The History of the Venerable Bede;” ”The Consolations of Philosophy,” by Boethius; ”Narratives from Ancient Mythology;” ”The Confessions of St. Augustine;” ”The Pastoral Instructions of St.