Thanks to Geoffrey, at last, some time about 1200-1220, came an English poet, Layamon, a true poet (now and then), whose work reminds us occasionally at once of the Greeks whom he had never read, of masters whom he did not know; and of the things most romantic in the verses of the last great poet of England. Layamon, the author of "The Brut," had no ambition; he had no hope of gain; the king and the courtiers would never hear of him.
Layamon was an English priest in a quiet country parish, not far from the Welsh Border, at Ernley, near Radestone, on the Severn, as he tells us. Yet the new French culture had reached him and inspired him; he gave it to Englishmen in their own English language and he is therefore readable: is more than a mere name. It "came into his mind" to tell the history of England, in verse, and he says that he travelled far to get the books of Bede (in Anglo-Saxon), "the fair Austin and St. Albin," in Latin, and the book made in French by a French clerk, Master Wace, "who well could write". "Lovingly he beheld these books," but, in fact, he only used one of them, namely Wace's French version (1155) of Geoffrey of Monmouth's romance. Wace had altered Geoffrey as he pleased, and Layamon took the same liberty with Wace; his book is twice as long as that of the French clerk; he also inserted many things not to be found in the text of Wace as now printed, but derived partly from still unprinted manuscripts of Wace, partly from other sources; perhaps from Welsh legends known to this priest who dwelt beside the Severn. Wace added to Geoffrey's account of Arthur, the story wherever he found it,[Pg 49] of "The Table Round," so shaped that the knights could not quarrel about the highest place. Layamon adds that the Fairy ladies came to Arthur's birth—as in a very old belief, found in ancient Greece and ancient Egypt—and that they later carried him away to Avalon, there to be healed of his wounds.
He calls the fairy Queen "Argante," possibly a French corruption of a Breton name. His account of the birth of the enchanter Merlin, "No man's son," is romance itself. Merlin's mother, who had become a nun, knew not who was her child's father, only that in her dreams there came to her "the fairest thing that ever was born, as it were a tall knight, all dight in gold. This thing glided before me and glistened with gold. Oft me it kissed, and oft embraced."
What can be more romantic than this tale of the golden shadow of love that glides through the darkling bower—told by a nun with bowed head, shamefast! We are reminded of the lines in which Io, in ?schylus, tells of the shadowy approaches of Zeus, the king of gods; and the voice that spoke to her in dreams.
The Greeks had another such tale of the gold that fell in the tower of Dana? before the birth of Perseus. The origin of Layamon's story may be in some ancient Celtic myth of the loves of gods and mortal women, and of Merlin, son of a god.
From his shadowy nameless father, Merlin received his gift of prophecy, and, from the first, foretold the Passing of Arthur.
In Layamon's poem we find what does not occur in the older Anglo-Saxon poems, such as "Beowulf," the use of similes in the manner of Homer, whose warriors charge like lions, hungry, and beaten on by wind and snow. Thus, too, in Layamon's verse,
"Up caught Arthur his shield, before his breast, and he 'gan to rush as doth the howling wolf when he cometh from the wood, flecked with snow, and thinketh to seize what beasts he will."
Arthur defeats the Saxons, and drives them from the ford of the river, through the deep marshland,
"And as the wild crane in the fen, when the falcons follow him through air, and he wearies in his flight, but the hounds meet him in the reeds; as he can find no safety whether in field or[Pg 50] flood, even so the Saxons were smitten in ford and field, and went blindly wandering."
These similes give clear, vivid pictures of life in fen and forest, and enliven the poem in the true epic way, and Layamon gives, perhaps, the first English picture of an English fox-hunt. In his poem, Guinevere does not love Launcelot, but the traitor Modred, and when Modred is defeated by her husband, Arthur, she flies to Caerleon, where "she hooded her and made her a nun," and her end is unknown.
In the last great battle in the west, both hosts fall—it is a field of the dead and dying. Arthur bears fifteen wounds. He is alone with Constantine, to whom he entrusts his kingdom. "But I will pass to Avalun, to the fairest of all maidens, to Argante the Queen, an elf most beautiful, and she shall make my wounds all whole with draughts of healing. And afterwards I will come again to my kingdom....
"Then came floating from the sea a little boat, and two women therein, shaped wonderfully; and they took Arthur anon, and bore him to that boat, and laid him softly down, and went their way. Bretons believe that he liveth yet, and wonneth in Avalun, with the fairest Queens of Faery."
Do we not already seem to hear the voice of Tennyson's weeping queens, as the king floats into the night?
Romance has come to England, and from the mingling of races and tongues—Celtic, French, English—an English poet has been born: a man who sees with the eyes of imagination, and who can make us share his visions of the golden shadow that was father of Merlin; of the wolf with the snow caked on his matted hide as he rushes from the wood; of the hawking party in the fens; of the battle by the tidal waters of the west.
Layamon is full of promise of good things to come, as in his description of Goneril and her husband, when she begins to grudge to her father, King Lear, the expensive service of his forty knights; while her husband feebly opposes her unnatural avarice. (The story of Lear is also in Geoffrey of Monmouth, and is based on a common folk-tale.)
Again, when Layamon's Arthur laughs over the slain Colgrem,[Pg 51] "...Lie there, now, Colgrem; high hadst thou climbed this hill, as if thou wouldst win heaven, now shalt thou fare to hell, and there find thy kinsfolk,..." we are carried back to the boasts over the dead that Greeks and Trojans utter in the Iliad. But these great touches are rare in the 30,000 lines of Layamon, the mass of his poem "is blank enough".
Layamon thought himself a chronicler in rhyme, a historian; in his book he has many tales, not that of Arthur alone; he has dull passages in plenty, none the less the good priest had many qualities of the great poet.
The verse of Layamon is sometimes of the old Anglo-Saxon sort already described, with alliteration and without rhyme; and in other parts consists of rhyming couplets varying in length, all intermixed. A rhyming couplet is
Thet avere either other
luvede alse if brother.
That ever either other
Loved as if brother.
In the words the tendency is to drop the old inflections, the language is shaking off its original grammar and approaching modern English. In the later of two manuscripts of the poem this tendency is much more strong. Thus the older manuscript has
He wes a swithe aehte gume
And he streonde (begat) threo snelle sunen.
The later copy has
He was a strong gome
And he streonede threo sones.
The word "snell" in the older version still survives in Scots,
"There cam a wind out o' the East
A sharp wind and a snell,"
snell meaning "keen".
Ormulum.
Layamon was too great a poet to mingle sermons with his song. The pulpit was his preaching place, he scarcely ever[Pg 52] preaches in his poem. On the other hand the worthy brother Ormin or Orm did nothing but preach in his versified book "The Ormulum". He was an Augustinian canon of the North Midlands who, about 1200, paraphrased the Gospels read on each day, and the homily which followed, often drawn from Bede (for Orm was not an advanced theologian), in a kind of blank verse. Nothing could be more simply edifying to plain congregations, but edification is not the aim of literature. Orm is best known for his determination to have English properly pronounced. A vowel, in English is, and was, sounded short before two consonants, and Orm was bent on making the reader pronounce the vowels thus and not otherwise. He therefore wrote the two consonants after every short vowel, and explained himself thus, the lines also give the metre of his verses:—
And whase wilenn shall thiss hoc
Efft others sithe writenn
Him bidde Icc thatt het write rihht
Swa summ thiss hoc him teachethh....
And tatt he loke wel thatt he
An bocstaff write twiyess
Eyywhaer thaes itt upo thiss boc
Iss written o thatt wise.
By using some Scots words we may translate this in the original metre.
And whasae willen shall this book
Another time be writing
Him do I bid that he write richt
Even as this book him teacheth.
And that he do look well that he
Ane letter writeth twice
Aye there where it upon this book
Is written in that wise.
The metre is very like that of the Scottish rhymed version of the Psalms, though Orm (as in the second verse above) only uses rhyme by accident. The "Ormulum" is not to be "read for human pleasure," though it is interesting to students of the language and versification while in a state of transition.
The same may be said of a number of works in prose or verse[Pg 53] which are to be found by students in editions published by learned societies. It is necessary to say something of them, because it is a kind of duty to be aware of their existence, though few but specialists can be enthusiastic over their merits, save in one or two cases. They show how the language and the modes of versifying were going forward, and becoming such as a great poet like Chaucer could improve; or, on the other hand; language and verse were going backwards, deserting rhyme and depending (as in Anglo-Saxon) on alliteration, or alliteration mixed with rhyme.
Ancren Riwle.
Among the works of this period which were useful or pleasant in their day, the longest book in prose is the "Ancren Riwle," or "Rule of Anchoresses," ladies who were not exactly female solitaries, but lived together religiously, each with her maid. The author, whoever he may have been, bids them say, if any one inquires, that they are "of the Order of St. James". There was no such Order, but St. James bids us visit the widow and the orphan, and keep ourselves unspotted from the world. This, says he, is true religion. The three ladies dwelt together at Tarente in Dorset. The language is of the same period as Layamon's "Brut," very early in the thirteenth century. The style is simple and free from decoration, the dialect is that of western England. The advice to the ladies is excellently pious; no severe austerities are recommended, except silence at meals. An anchoress "should not speak with any man often or long," and should have a witness (probably out of ear-shot), even when she confesses, since "the innocent are often belied for want of a witness". Flirting, and belief in luck and in dreams and witchcraft, are severely reprobated. Scepticism is attributed to intellectual pride. "Wear no iron" (James IV wore an iron girdle under his clothes), "nor hair cloth, nor hedgehog skins"; the ladies are not to flog themselves, unless their confessor permits, and their shoes are to be thick and warm. The author remarks that, God knows, he would rather set out on a voyage to Rome than write his book over again: he may have feared that the ladies would lose their copy.
Other religious books of the time are the "Poema Morale," in[Pg 54] lines of fourteen syllables ending in a double rhyme, as lorè, morè, deedè, redè, and a new metrical paraphrase of Genesis and Exodus. The story is told with some vivacity, in rhyming couplets of eight syllables.
The drempte pharaoh king a drem
That he stod by the flodes strem
And the then ut come VII neat
Everile wel swithe fet and gret,
And VII lene after the.
In places the metre of Coleridge's "Christabel," which was the model of Scott's "Lay of the Last Minstrel," is recognized in the casual couplets, thus:—
For sextenè yer Joseph was old
Quane he was into Egypte sold.
But it is a far cry from this to
The feast was over in Branksome tower;
and the metre, when Scott's "Lay" appeared, seemed to be a novelty.
The Owl and the Nightingale.
in rhyming eight-syllable couplets, seems to have been written about 1250 (?). The theme is a debate, in the fashion of French poetry, between the owl and the nightingale, as to the comparative merit of their songs. The nightingale, deserting her art, rather feebly asserts the moral influence of her own music, and attacks the owl in a very personal strain of invective, reflecting on his want of good looks, and on his taste in food. We are far indeed from Keats's "Ode to the Nightingale", "If you are so great a teacher," replied the owl, "why do you not sing to men in Ireland, Norway, and Galloway?" La Fontaine might have made a witty poem on the dispute of the owl and the nightingale, but the poet was not a wit, and made a poor use of his opportunities. He is supposed, but not with certainty, to have been Nicholas of Guildford, who is credited with being neglected by the Bishop in the distribution of patronage.
The owl quotes the "Proverbs of King Alfred," of which there[Pg 55] is a thirteenth century collection in rhyme; there are also the "Proverbs of Hendyng": the latter in stanzas of six lines each, the first two rhyming with each other, as do the last two, while the third line rhymes with the sixth: a very popular jingle.
Lyrics.
Far more interesting than these things, whether moral or religious, are the rhyming songs, the voice of the English people, laymen, not priests, the love lyrics (1300?), for example, one on Alison, beginning
Bytuene Mershe ant Averil
When spray biginneth to springe,
The lutel fowl hath hire wyll
On hyre lud to synge,
each stanza ending
From alle wymen mi loue is lent
Ant lyht on Alisoun.
This is the first sweet English love-song that has escaped the ruins of time. Everyone knows by heart
Sumer is icumen in;
and
Blow, northerne wynd,
Send thou me my suetyng,
reminds us of
O gentle wind that bloweth south
From where my love repaireth.
There were all the sounds and scents of spring in the hearts and songs of the poets:—
Lenten is come with love to toune,
With blosmen ant with briddes roune,
That all this blisse bryngeth.
This metre came to be used in telling stories in verse, a purpose for which it is not well fitted. But truly English poetry, with rich re-echoing rhymes and many forms of verse, is awake at last.
[Pg 56]
Political Songs.
To politics as well as to love and the delights of spring the Muse of the people was alive. The popular hatred of Richard of Cornwall, brother of Henry III, expressed itself thus after the battle of Lewes (1264). The English is here but slightly modernized:—
Be thou lief, be thou loth, Sir Edward,
Thou shalt ride spurless on thy lyard
All the right way to Doverward
Shalt thou never more break forward,
Edward, thou did'st as a shreward,
Forsook thine uncle's lore,
Richard, though thou be ever trichard
Trick shalt thou never more.
(A lyard is a grey, spoken of a horse,
The Dinlay snaws were ne'er so white
As the lyart locks o' Harden's hair,
says the ballad of "Jamie Telfer".)
The English view of Wallace, the patriot knight of Scotland, cruelly executed, is thus set forth:—
To warn all the gentlemen that be in Scotland
The Wallace was drawn, thereafter hanged,
Beheaded alive, his bowels burned,
The head to London Bridge was sent,
To abide
After Simon Frysel,
That was traitor and fickle
And known full wide.
(Frysel or Fraser; a later Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat of 1745, was traitor and fickle enough.)
Robert of Gloucester.
By no means so lively, though useful in its day, is the very long metrical chronicle (about 1300) of Robert of Gloucester, whether it be by two hands or by one. One, at least, named Robert, was living at the dates of a great Oxford town and gown row, which he describes, and of the battle of Evesham (1265).[Pg 57] He was fortunately not nearer than a distance of thirty miles from that stricken field, and records his own fear of a dense darkness which prevented the monks from reading service in church. Robert dwelt in Gloucester, as his minute local allusions prove. He began his chronicle by versifying the fabulous work of Geoffrey of Monmouth, but put into it not a glimmer of the poetry of Layamon. For the rest, till he reached his own time, he copied Henry of Huntingdon, William of Malmesbury, and "Lives of the Saints".
Robert's learned modern editor, Mr. Aldis Wright, outworn by all the tediousness which the poet bestows on us, says "as literature, the book is as worthless as twelve thousand lines of verse without one spark of poetry can be". But Robert's praises of England, "a wel god loud," and of English folk, so clean and handsome, have a sound spontaneous note of patriotism, and there is a swing in what Mr. Wright cruelly styles his "doggerel verse in ballad metre," which is not to be despised. To be sure he has, without knowing it, several different sorts of verse, and is nearly as irregular as Layamon himself, in his measures. His readers would not be offended by these defects, and they learned from him, with a great deal of inaccurate history, a sense of pride in their country, and to speak English, though the nobles and gentry, he says, spoke French.
Cursor Mundi.
A book in verse about twice as long as the lengthy world-chronicle of Robert is the "Cursor Mundi," "the Over-Runner of the World". The author, like the makers of many pretty lyrics on religious subjects, perceived that people preferred songs to sermons, and romance to homilies. To modernize his language
Men yearn jests to hear
And romances read in divers mannere.
He gives the themes of the romances, "Matter of Rome"—which includes all antiquity, Troy, and Greece as well as Rome—"Matter of Britain," the stories of Arthur and his Knights—and "Matter of France," concerning Charlemagne, and his Twelve Peers. Nothing is in fashion but love and lovers: but this poet will sing of Her whose love never fails, namely Our Lady. He begins before Satan and his angels fell, and goes on endlessly, yet, to his readers, perhaps not tediously, for he enlivens the Biblical[Pg 58] narrative with legends to the full as fantastic as could be found in any romance. There is the story of how Moses found, through a dream, three wands that grew from three pips placed under Adam's tongue. David, through another dream, found these wands in the grave of Moses, which, like that of Arthur, "is a mystery to the world". The wands turned ugly black Saracens into handsome white men: the branches grew into a tree, and round that tree were thirty circles of silver. The wood was made into the True Cross, and Judas received the thirty pieces of silver. The most absurd tales are told of the boyhood, by no means exemplary, of our Lord, variegated by miracles not wholly beneficent.
Thus the "Cursor Mundi" may have been found amusing enough in its day, when the ceaseless octosyllabic rhyming couplets were not reckoned tedious (they are sometimes varied), and adventures wholly unknown to the authors of the Gospels occur in every page.
Devotional Books.
Books more purely devotional are "The Ayenbite of Inwyt" ("The Biting of Conscience") and "The Pricke of Conscience". The former states itself to be written "in English of Kent," by "dan Michelis of Northgate," and to be in the library of St. Austin's of Canterbury. The author, or rather translator from a French book of 1274, finished his writing in 1340. The author of "The Ayenbite" classifies sins and virtues in the allegorical manner: his moral advice, for example, as to the duty of giving alms promptly, gladly, and without the discourtesies with which too many accompany them, is excellent. But nothing, he says, is to be given to minstrels, he "calls their harmless art a crime". The dialect is uncouth and rather difficult.
"The Pricke of Conscience" is in octosyllabic rhyming couplets, about 10,000 lines in all, and is the work of a singular person, Richard Rolle, who, after being a wandering hermit, settled at Hampole, and died in 1349. A Latin biographer of Richard states that he was born at Thornton in the diocese of York, was well educated by the care of his parents, was sent to Oxford by Thomas Neville, Archdeacon of Durham, and made good progress in his studies, especially in theology. In his nineteenth year he left the temptations of Oxford, went home, and turned two dresses of his sister's, one white, one gray, into what he thought the appropriate costume of a hermit, covering his head with his father's rain-hood. His sister fled from before him, thinking him insane: he took Lady Dalton's seat in church, was allowed to preach a sermon, and was kindly received by the lady's husband, Sir John. In a cell provided by the knight he had unspeakable raptures, and felt as if he were being burned by a physical fire, which proved to be that of Divine love. Some ladies found him writing at a great pace, while he simultaneously discoursed to them for two hours. It seems to follow that either his writing or his preaching was "automatic". He wrought some miracles of healing, and he must have written rapidly indeed if he produced all the works attributed to him, His prose treatises of religion are as fervent as the Letters of Samuel[Pg 59] Rutherford, the Covenanter: his anecdotes of his own temptation by the phantasm of "a full, fair young woman" who loved him dearly; and of a repentant scholar, who wrote out a list of his own sins which vanished from the paper, are interesting. He allows that the brains of eagerly pious people sometimes "turn in their heads," thereby causing empty hallucinations, and the hearing of wonderful songs that are merely subjective impressions. This strange being, with the ardour of Crashaw, had something of Crashaw's poetic fire.
Minot.
The verses of Laurence Minot, celebrating events from 1333 to 1352 are of almost no literary merit. The Muse of Laurence is the patriotic; he crows, for example, over the defeat of the Scots by English archers at Halidon Hill, in 1333, but he merely babbles in the vague, and does not give a single detail as to the fighting. When he promises to tell of the battle of Bannockburn, in place of doing that he glories in the recovery of Berwick by Edward III.
The best praise we can give him is that he loved to celebrate the victories of his countrymen; and had at his command many metres that were ready for some better poet to use. It must also be admitted that there are very few successes in our British essays in patriotic poetry, and that an enemy of the Scots, as Minot was, may be not impartially judged by a critic of that race.