Chapter 20 - Page 2

him, and Sunna her Sister: Then Frua beguiled him, and Folla her sister, Then Woden beguiled him, as Well he knew how; Wrench of blood, Wrench of bone, and eke Wrench of limb: Bone unto Bone, Blood unto Blood, Limb unto Limb as though Limèd it were.

[1] The original of this heathen charm is in the Old High German dialect; but it is quoted here as a good specimen of the early form of alliterative verse. A similar charm undoubtedly existed in Anglo-Saxon, though no copy of it has come down to our days, as we possess a modernised and Christianised English version, in which the name of our Lord is substituted for that of Balder.

In this simple spell the alliteration serves rather as an aid to memory than as an ornamental device. The following lines, translated from the ballad on Æthelstan's victory at Brunanburh, in 937, will show the developed form of the same versificatory system. The parallelism and alliteration are here well marked:--

Æthelstan king, lord of Earls, Bestower of Bracelets, and his Brother eke, Eadmund the Ætheling, honour Eternal Won in the Slaughter, with edge of the Sword By Brunnanbury. The Bucklers they clave, Hewed the Helmets, with Hammered steel, Heirs of Edward, as was their Heritage, From their Fore-Fathers, that oft the Field They should Guard their Good folk Gainst every comer, Their Home and their Hoard. The Hated foe cringed to them, The Scottish Sailors, and the Northern Shipmen; Fated they Fell. The Field lay gory With Swordsmen's blood Since the Sun rose On Morning tide a Mighty globe, To Glide o'er the Ground, God's candle bright, The endless Lord's taper, till the great Light Sank to its Setting. There Soldiers lay, Warriors Wounded, Northern Wights, Shot over Shields; and so Scotsmen eke, Wearied with War. The West Saxon onwards, The Live-Long day in Linkèd order Followed the Footsteps of the Foul Foe.

Of course no songs of the old heathen period were committed to writing either in Sleswick or in Britain. The minstrels who composed them taught them by word of mouth to their pupils, and so handed them down from generation to generation, much as the Achæan rhapsodists handed down the Homeric poems. Nevertheless, two or three such old songs were afterwards written out in Christian Northumbria or Wessex; and though their heathendom has been greatly toned down by the transcribers, enough remains to give us a graphic glimpse of the fierce and gloomy old English nature which we could not otherwise obtain. One fragment, known as the Fight at Finnesburh (rescued from a book-cover into which it had been pasted), probably dates back before the colonisation of Britain, and closely resembles in style the above-quoted ode. Two other early pieces, the Traveller's Song and the Lament of Deor, are inserted from pagan tradition in a book of later devotional poems preserved at Exeter. But the great epic of Beowulf, a work composed when the English