All of pasties beth the walles, Swithe likeful for to see, The rote is gingeur and galingale, Of baume and eke piement Ever ernend to right rent. Though paradis be merri and bright, The reader will observe that in this poem and many others belonging to the Transition Period there is no alliteration as in the Anglo-Saxon poems, and that the lines rhyme either consecutively or alternately. The rhythm is very imperfect. It was a favorite custom with the writers. of this period to write in trimeters, throwing two lines together, thus: Jesu for thi muchele might, Thou zef us of thi grace. In this way, by the careless or sometimes intentional. combination of two lines into one, the Alexandrine, or hexameter verse, came into use. Sometimes several short lines were thrown together like prose. As thus: A wayle white as whalles bon | a grein of golde that godly shon a tortle that min hart is on | in tonnes trewe | Hire gladship nes never gon | while y may glewe. The earliest love-song written in English and still in existence was composed probably about the year 1200. It is preserved in the British Museum. The rhymes are very irregular, and it abounds in alliteration. In the following extract the spelling has been modernized: Blow, northern wind, send Thou me thy sweeting; blow She is crystal of clearness, She is lily of largess, She is parnenke pronesse, She is salsecle of sweetness And lady of lealty. The following little poem on the coming of spring was written doubtless in the twelfth century, and is rich with the true poetic feeling: Sumer is i-cumen in, Lhude sing, cuccu; Groweth sed, and bloweth med, And springeth the wde nu. Sing, cuccu, cuccu, Awe bleteth after lamb Louth after calve cu, Bulluc sterteth, bucke verteth: Murie sing, cuccu, Well sings the cuccu, Ne swik thou never nu. Sing, cuccu, nu, Sing, cuccu. In the Bodleian Library there is a manuscript containing a metrical version of the Psalms, written not later than the thirteenth century. I quote a few verses of the nineteenth psalm: Hevenes tellen godes blis And wolken shows hond werk his. And wisdom shewes niht to niht, Of whilke that noht is herde thar steven, And in ende of erthe of tham the worde. But the chief productions of this period were poetical romances and so-called verse-histories, and most of these were written in French. For, not only were the writers Norman, but they wrote for Norman readers. About the year 1150, Geoffrey of Monmouth, a Welsh priest, wrote in Latin prose a history of the British kings. This work purports to relate the story of Britain from the time of Brutus, the great-grandson of Æneas, to the death of Cadwallader, a Welsh king, in GSS. Notwithstanding the fabulous character of this story, it attained to a great popularity, and was for a long time the store-house from which the writers of verse-historics drew their material. A Frenchman named Wace (sometimes miscalled Robert Wace or Richard Wace) undertook to popularize the work by translating it into French. He accordingly reproduced it as a French metrical romance, to which he gave the name of the Brut. The work consisted of 15,300 lines, and was completed, as appears from the concluding couplet of the poem, in the year 1155. As a matter of course, it was not an exact translation. Sometimes the author adhered pretty closely to his original, sometimes he paraphrased, sometimes he added fresh material or inventions of his own. An English priest named Layamon, about this time, conceived the idea of constructing, from such materials as he could command, a story in English verse which would be acceptable to his countrymen and understood by them. He accordingly made a long journey in search of the books upon which he intended to found his narrative. These were, first and chiefly, "a book that a French clerk hight Wace made;" second, "the English book that St. Beda made;" third, two obscure Latin writers, Albinus and Austin; and, no doubt, fourth, Geoffrey of Monmouth's fabulous history. When he returned home with these books and made ready to begin his work, as he says, "Layamon laid them down and turned the leaves; may the Lord be merciful to him!" And the result was the most important literary production of the Transition Period. Layamon's Brut contains 32,250 lines, and nearly twice as much matter as its prototype, Wace's Brut. The story commences with the destruction of Troy and the flight of Eneas, and extends to the reign of Athelstan, king of AngloSaxon England. Some of the less important passages of Wace are omitted, and their place is supplied by additions from other authorities, or from Layamon's own fancy, or from his personal knowledge of British tradition. The portions thus added are the finest parts of the work, and the only parts, in fact, which possess any special poetical merit. The versification is exceedingly irregular. Sometimes it is the unrhymed alliterative measure peculiar to Anglo-Saxon poetry, then it is rhymed like its French model; sometimes the lines are divided into regular feet, sometimes they are merely rhythmical after the manner of Anglo-Saxon verse. This irregularity in the structure of the poem has led some to suppose that it is not the work of a single author, but rather a patchwork constructed by many hands. But the unity of design running through the entire poem, and the close connection between the parts, render this supposition highly improbable. In the English of the poem we discover the first marked differences in grammatical structure, the carelessness in the use of inflections, and many other of those changes which led soon to the complete development of the new language. We have the poem in two manuscripts, one written early in the thirteenth century, and the other some fifty years later. In the second manuscript many changes have been made, but the language in both is essentially the AngloSaxon as it then existed in the rural districts among the common people. In the earlier manuscript, with its 32,250 lines, there are not more than fifty words of Norman derivation. To give the student some further notion of the character of this poem, of its language and peculiar structure, we quote a short passage wherein the author describes the flight of Childric to the forest of Caledon. The first column exhibits the oldest known text, written during Layamon's own time; the second is from the later manuscript: Nis hit a nare boc idiht that balu weore swa riue. the eorthe ther dunede. & there weoren mid him, & heo forth riht anon and flugen forth riht anan to the wude of Calidon. Nis hit in.none boke idiht thar was mochel blod igote. death thar was riue. Childrich the kayser and isehge that hire folke And hii forth riht anon an mid hire brunies and flogen ut of castle and flogen forthriht anan The following is a literal translation : In no book is it written that ever there was such fight in this Britain; the mischief was so rife |