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The History of English Podcast
Episode 37: Seafarers, Poets and Traveling Minstrels
01:06:21
Old English poets were ‘word weavers’ who often created new words to comply with the strict requirements of Germanic poetry. In this episode, we explore the role of the traveling minstrel in Anglo-Saxon culture.
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Welcome to the History of English Podcast, a podcast about the history of the English language. This is episode 37, Seafarers, Poets, and Traveling Minstrels. In this episode, we're going to hitch a ride with the first Old English poets and minstrels, and we're going to take the history of English on the road. This is an episode about journeys, traveling minstrels, and the importance of Anglo Saxon poetry. But before I begin, let me remind you that the website for the podcast is historyofenglishpodcast.com and after receiving several requests from listeners, I recently added a donate button to the site. And several of you have been kind enough to make a donation to the podcast through the site. So let me take this opportunity to thank those of you who've done that. Those donations helped to offset some of the expenses and cost of putting this podcast together and the cost of maintaining the podcast. So thanks again to all of you who've been kind enough to support it. Now let's turn to this episode, and let's explore the culture of the Anglo Saxons and how that culture impacted the work of the Anglo Saxon poets and minstrels. A good place to begin is with the sea, because the early Anglo Saxons were ultimately a maritime people. And that aspect of their culture is reflected in the names of some of the earliest poems composed in the English language. Poems like the Seafarer and the Wanderer. In fact, sea travel is one of the most common recurring themes in Old English literature. The original Anglo Saxons lived along or near the North Sea coast in northern Europe. They were a maritime people even then. In fact, it's believed that coastal flooding may have been a factor which contributed to the original migrations from their homeland. And then they traveled by sea to Britain. Of course, Britain itself is an island, and many of the early Anglo Saxon settlements were along or near the eastern coast of Britain. And even in death, Germanic tradition held that there was a kingdom of the dead at the bottom of the sea. You might remember that when prominent tribe members or leaders died, a special ship was sometimes prepared for the deceased final voyage. So given the importance of the sea in early Anglo Saxon culture, it's probably no surprise that the sea features very prominently in early Anglo Saxon writings. Some scholars have noted that it's almost impossible to find a poem written in Old English which doesn't mention the sea or traveling by the sea in some way. Even the most famous Anglo Saxon poem of all, Beowulf, begins with Beowulf's arrival by sea from the homeland of the Geats. And as we'll see. The ocean and sea travel features prominently in several other passages of the poem. So I wanted to begin this episode by introducing that very important theme. And I also wanted to begin with that subject because it's the source of some great etymology. And in exploring that etymology, it provides a good review of some of the sound changes and spelling conventions which I've discussed in the past few episodes. So let's begin with the original Indo Europeans. They had at least two words which meant to move or transport, weg and purr. And those two simple root words ultimately gave us lots of modern English words associated with travel. The Indo European word wech ultimately made its way into both Latin and the Germanic languages. The Germanic version passed into Old English as we, meaning a road or path. Of course, we still have that word today, as in highway and hallway, doorway or get out of the way. The sense of movement associated with the word whey was also applied to the up and down movement of scales, which was how amounts were measured and balanced. So this process produced the verb weigh, W e I g h, as in how much does it weigh? And from that verb we got the noun weight, W e I g h t. Of course, today we pronounce both versions of way the same way, but they each have completely different spellings, except for that initial w. Originally, the word had a consonant sound at the end, which was represented by the letter g. As we saw over the past few episodes, the g sound evolved into several different sounds over time. And the two early versions of the word way each had a different g pronunciation during the period of Old English. In one version, the g shifted to the y sound, and that ultimately gave us the word way spelled W a y. In the other version, the G shifted to that Germanic fricative sound in the back of the throat, and that sound was usually spelled with a gh by the time of Middle English. And that version gave us the word wei, which is spelled W e I g h. And like most of the words spelled with gh, the gh eventually became silent. So both versions of the modern word way end in the e sound today. Neither of them, though, retain the original Germanic g sound at the end. But within the other Germanic languages, their version of the word did retain its g sound at the end. And when English later borrowed the Dutch and Old Norse versions of the word, those other Germanic versions came in with that original Germanic g sound. So the Dutch version came in as wagon and also as wiggle. Both versions have retained that g sound, and both relate to some aspect of movement. The Old Norse version came into English as wag and waggle. Again, they retain their Germanic g sound. So wiggle comes from Dutch and waggle comes from Old Norse. So those are the Germanic versions of the word. But I noted that the original Indo European word also passed into Latin. And as we know by now, the w sound often shifted to a V sound in Late Latin and Early French. So that original Indo European word was became via in Latin. And we still have that Latin word in English in pretty much its original form. And of course, via means by way of. And if we take off the original g sound, which once existed at the end of that word, and we replace it with a French g sound, we would get voyage, as in bon voyage. And of course, that produced the word voyage in modern English. And again, that's yet another synonym for traveling or moving around. A variety of Latin prefixes were also added to the word via to create many new words. The prefix con meant together, and con plus via produced the word convey. The prefix in meant on and en, vi produced the words envoy and invoice. The prefix d meant off and d vi produced the words deviate, deviant, and devious. The prefix ob meant against, and ob + via produced the word obvious. The prefix pre meant before and pre plus via produced the word previous. And the prefix ch tri meant three, and trie via produced the words trivia and trivial. So trivia is literally tri, via or three roads. And that connection makes sense in the word trivial because a place where three roads meet is a well traveled intersection. So a place that's well traveled is very familiar or commonplace. Thus the word trivial. But what about the word trivia? What's the connection to three roads? Well, the answer lies in the academics of the Middle Ages. In medieval education, there was an introductory course of liberal arts and an advanced course of math. Related subjects. The introductory course of liberal arts consisted of three subjects, grammar, logic and rhetoric. Those were called the trivium, and that meant the threefold way of learning. So that's the origin of the modern term trivia related to knowledge, by the way. The advanced course consisted of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music. And it was called the quadrivium because it consisted of four subjects. So as you can see, we get lots of words from the Latin word via. And in addition to the word via, Latin also derived another word from that same original Indo European root word. That other word was vejera, which meant to carry something from one place to another. And that word gives us the English word vehicle. And when that Latin prefix con is added to the beginning of the word. It gives us the word convection, as in convection oven, an oven which typically has a fan to move the air around. So all of those modern English words come from a single Indo European root word which meant to move around. But the Indo European language had another word which also meant to move back and forth. That word was per. And once again, the word passed into both Latin and the Germanic languages. The word barely changed at all in Latin. Latin has it as per, and it was often used as a preposition, meaning by through or by means of so percent meant by the hundred, and per capita meant by the head, per diem, by the day. And the combination per agar meant by land or through land. The Germanic version of agar is acre. So we can see the connection to land there. Now you're probably saying, I've never heard of per agger before. Well, you have. In a later version of the word. Perager meant someone who traveled across land, and it came into English as pilgrim, another kind of traveler. The word per, in its original sense of moving, also produced the Latin word port, which originally meant a passage or crossing and later came to mean a point of passage or crossing. Not only do we have the word port in modern English, we also have it in compound words like seaport and airport. And of course, we have it in the word portable. And thanks to all those Latin prefixes, it's also the root of words like deport, export, import, and transport. And believe it or not, it's also the ultimate root of the word sport. The word sport was ultimately derived from the word deport. D or d meant away from, so deportation meant away from the normal path or course. In other words, it was a diversion. And games were considered a type of diversion, a diversion from your normal work. In Old French, the word deport became desport, spelled d, e, s, P, o, r, t. And when the prefix d was later dropped, the word retained that s sound, which had developed in the middle in French. So now the s became the initial sound, and English took the word as sport. But if we think of sports as a diversion, we can see the connection to the root, which meant to move or travel. So English got a lot of words from the Latin and French versions of the word per. But that original word per also passed into the Germanic languages. And remember that the Germanic vocabulary was affected by Grimm's Law. And under Grimm's Law, the p sound became an f sound in a lot of words, in the same way that pater became father, per became fer or fair that gave us several native Old English words. For example, the word far means remote or distant, where a traveler ends up after a long journey. And of course, we can combine that word far with the other Old English word, well, which I discussed earlier, and we get far away. Or we can reverse those two routes and we get wayfarer, another Old English word. We can also add in the Old English word seafarer. Remember, that's also the name of a famous Old English poem. The Old English word yferer meant a traveling companion. It was later replaced by the French word companion after the Norman Conquest. That same root also gave us the word fairy. Fairy was both a native Old English word and an Old Norse word. So the original Old English version was reinforced by the later introduction of the Old Norse version after the Vikings. So the P to F sound change caused the word per to evolve into the later English words far and fairy. Well, the same thing happened to the Germanic equivalent of the Latin word port. The Anglo Saxons had the word as ford, and of course, Old Norse had it as fjord. Today, we see the Anglo Saxon version of that word most often as a suffix in place names like Stafford and Oxford. Oxford was literally the place where oxen crossed the river, the Oxford. You might remember that the Germans also had their own version of the same word, which was furtive. The furth, where the Franks crossed the river and established a permanent settlement was and still is, Frankfurt, Germany. So, as you can see, just a couple of basic Indo European root words can produce a huge number of common English words. The point of this exercise was to explore how our vocabulary expands and grows over time. And it was also to examine the related etymology of many of our modern traveling words. But it was also intended to make a basic connection between travel and literacy. I noted in the very first episode about the Alphabet that scholars believe that the Alphabet was invented once in Egypt. And from there it passed to the Phoenicians, thanks to traders and seafarers. And from there it passed to the Greeks and then the Etruscans, and then on to the Romans. As people traveled and traded, they carried literacy with them. And the story was similar in Britain. Travelers also brought the Alphabet to the Anglo Saxons. Thanks to those first missionaries, the Alphabet found new people in Britain eager to learn it and apply it to their own language. And as we've seen, the place where that Alphabet was first applied to the English language was in Kent in the laws issued by King Ethelbert. So let's take a look at what happened in Britain. As Ethelbert knew, near the end of his reign after he issued his laws in English early in the seventh century, Ethelbert continued to be the overlord, or Bretwalda of the Anglo Saxon kings for more than a decade. But during the later period of Ethelbert's rule, other powerful kings began to emerge in the north, and this foreshadowed the eventual shift of power to the north. After the death of Ethelbert, in the northernmost part of Anglo Saxon Britain, a king named Aethelfrith unified the separate kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira into a single kingdom, which became known as Northumbria. It appears that he combined the two kingdoms by conquering the kingdom of Deira. I say it appears that he conquered that kingdom, because the exact circumstances are unknown. But we do know that the son of the king of Deira was on the run during Aethelfrith's reign, and Aethelfrith was constantly pursuing him in an effort to eliminate any potential rival to the throne. That fleeing prince's name was Edwin. And once again, we can return to our theme of traveling, because in an effort to avoid Aethelfrith, Edwin traveled all over southern Britain. He ventured west to Wales for a while. He then traveled back east into the Mercian kingdom in the center of Britain. But eventually he ended up in the kingdom of East Anglia in eastern Britain. That was the kingdom located between Ethelbert's kingdom of Kent to the south and Aethelfrith's kingdom of Northumbria to the north. So East Anglia was strategically located between those two powerful kings. And the leader of East Anglia was another powerful king named Redwald. Redwald took in the fleeing Edwin, and he gave him protection and refuge. So as we look at the landscape of Anglo Saxon Britain around the year615, we have three very powerful kings located in eastern Britain. But that landscape was about to change dramatically. Early in the year 616, Ethelbert died in Kent after a long reign. And with his death, his. His position as Bretwalda, or overlord, also went away. So the balance of power in Anglo Saxon Britain was in flux. Around this same time, Aethelfrith up in Northumbria became aware that the fleeing prince Edwin had taken refuge in East Anglia with Redwald. So Aethelfrith offered a bribe to Redwald. He offered to pay Redwald a large sum of silver and gold if he would kill Edwin. But rather than take Aethelfrid's bribe, Redwald ultimately decided to take the initiative. Rather than cooperate, Redwald decided instead to attack. The decision was actually very shrewd. If he could defeat Aethelfrith, he could then place the fleeing Prince Edwin on the Northumbrian throne. Edwin would then acknowledge Redwald as the new overlord of the Anglo Saxon kingdoms, thereby allowing him to become the new Bretwalda. And that's exactly what happened in the same year that Ethelbert died. 616, Redwald defeated and killed the Northumbrian king Aethelfrid. And the fleeing Prince Edwin returned home to become the new king of Northumbria. And Redwald became the new overlord of the Anglo Saxons. The net effect of all of this was a gradual shift of power to the north from Ethelbert's Kent. Power now shifted to the north, to East Anglia. For the time being, Edwin up in Northumbria deferred to the power of Redwald. But as we'll see next time, Edwin was destined for his own day at the top of the heap. But if there was ever a tendency to look past Redwald as merely a transitional figure, all of that changed with a discovery in eastern Britain in 1931. In that year, workers at a place called Sutton Hoo in eastern Britain discovered a ship buried in the ground. But it wasn't just any old buried ship. It was an Anglo Saxon ship loaded with ancient, priceless artifacts. And as I noted earlier, ship burials were common in the Germanic culture. They ensured passage by sea to the afterworld. And these type of burials were known to exist in many parts of continental Europe, but nothing like it had ever been found in Britain itself. The story of Beowulf had mentioned and described an elaborate ship burial. But even though Beowulf was written down in English, the story itself was actually set in Scandinavia. So there was no evidence that the Anglo Saxons themselves actually engaged in elaborate ship burials for their kings. But the discovery at Sutton Hoo confirmed that the Anglo Saxons did indeed use ship burials, at least in the region where it was found, in what had once been the kingdom of East Anglia. As archaeologists excavated the site, they retrieved many artifacts, including a jeweled sword, a scepter, elaborate shields, a battle axe and an Anglo Saxon helmet. They also found a broken harp like instrument called a lyre. And I recognize there are different pronunciations of that instrument, but lyre appears to be the most common pronunciation. So that's what I'm going to use here. In addition to that lyre, they also found silver bowls, drinking horns, silver spoons and jewelry. And they found 40 coins from the Frankish kingdom. And those coins were really the key because based on the coin inscriptions, it was determined that the coins were minted between the years 620 and 640. And based on all of that, scholars concluded that the ship burial was probably intended for for the East Anglian king Redwald. It was obviously intended for a king, and Redwald would have been the king during the early part of that period. And in fact, he was the only East Anglian Bretwalder or overlord. So even though there's no definitive evidence to confirm the identity of the person being commemorated, most scholars believe that it was probably Redwald. But did they actually find Redwald or some other king buried inside the ship? Well, that depends on who you ask. No actual body was found. The soil in the region is very acidic and human remains tend to be consumed by it, even the bones. Soil tests have been conducted, but they've never provided a definitive answer, or the answers which have been provided have been disputed. Typically when a body is buried like that, the person would have been wearing rings or clothing with buttons. And some of those artifacts typically survive even when the body itself doesn't. But no such rings or buttons were found. But in 1979, the original excavator's notes were re examined, and those notes revealed that a complete set of iron coffin fittings had been found there early on. They had actually been overlooked in most of the subsequent research, but they seemed to confirm the presence of a coffin. Either way, Sutton Hoo remains the most important archaeological discovery from the early Anglo Saxon period. And it shows just how sophisticated these early Anglo Saxon civilizations were. And it shows how mobile people were during this era. The artifacts in the ship came from all over Europe, including the Frankish kingdom and Sweden. And they actually came from as far away as Egypt and the Byzantine Empire. So once again we see the importance of travel, especially travel by sea in early Anglo Saxon culture. Though the Sutton Hoo ship burial did contain Frankish coins and a couple of spoons with Greek inscriptions, it didn't contain any artifacts with English inscriptions. But that doesn't mean we can ignore Sutton Hoo. It actually is relevant to our story in some interesting ways. As I noted, the Beowulf poem contains a description of a ship burial. And the poem's description is remarkably similar to the burial at Sutton Hoo. And the weapons and other artifacts described in Beowulf also tend to match those found at Sutton Hoo. Since it doesn't appear that ship burials of this nature were common or widespread in Anglo Saxon Britain, there are some scholars who believe that the original Beowulf poet must have been familiar with the Sutton Hoo burial. Perhaps the poet lived during the time of the ship burial or shortly afterwards, and that event influenced certain passages of the poem. Again, this is just a theory. No one really knows for certain when Beowulf was composed, but the best guess is that it was composed in the seventh or eighth century. So the early part of that time frame would be within the living memory of the Sutton Hoo ship burial. So there may be a connection between the Sutton Hoo burial and the most famous of Old English poems. The Sutton Hoo ship burial also reminds us how limited Old English writing was in the early 7th century. Despite the extravagant burial, there are no inscriptions or other written references to the person who was being commemorated. Early in the 7th century, English writing was still somewhat of a novelty. It was primarily confined to Christian monasteries, and it was still limited to the region around Kent in the south and parts of modern day Scotland up in the north. So it was very likely that English writing hadn't really infiltrated East Anglia by that point. And even if it had, it's unlikely that a Christian monk would participate in a pagan ship burial with all of its associations with Germanic pagan religions. So that may also account for the lack of Old English inscriptions at the burial site. Sutton Hoo also provides a convenient link between the two major themes of this the importance of sea travel and the importance of poetry to the Anglo Saxons. The ship burial illustrates how the Anglo Saxons saw life and death in relation to the sea. Even in death, a prominent king needed a ship to take him to the afterlife. But that ship also contained a very important artifact, in addition to the things we would expect to find in an Anglo Saxon ship burial. Things like weapons and armor and valuables like coins and jewelry. We also have something that may be a little bit of a surprise. We have a musical instrument. Remember that the burial included the fragments of a broken lyre. So why would the East Anglian king need a lyre for his journey? The answer is actually quite poetry. The lyre was the tool of the poet, the traveling minstrel. And to understand Old English poetry, you have to understand the role of this instrument. Traditionally, poems were either sung or recited to music. The Germanic poet was a performer, not a writer. I mean, there wasn't really a concept of a fixed written text because there was no writing. So poets were kind of like jazz musicians. They worked off of a basic theme or storyline, but they improvised along the way. And they probably never performed the same poem the exact same way twice, especially the longer poems. And we'll explore how those poets compose their poems later in this episode, because that process explains how and why Old English poetry is structured the way it is. So let's begin with that lyre and its closely related cousin, the harp. Those instruments are some of the oldest instruments known to man. Archaeologists have found lyres and harps at the site of the first civilizations in Mesopotamia. And the remains of a 2,300-year-old lyre have been discovered in Scotland, making it Europe's oldest surviving stringed musical instrument. The instruments were also used very early on in Greece. In fact, they probably predate the arrival of the first Indo European Greeks, because the remains of a lyre have been found among the ruins of the Minoan civilization on the island of Crete. The word lyre actually comes from Greek, and the word passed from Greek into Latin. In Latin, something that was suitable for singing to a lyre was lyricus. That word passed from French into English as lyric. So a poet might compose lyrics to the sound of a lyre, both words being cognate. In Greek, the string of a lyre was a chord. And that Greek word gave us the English word cord, cord, meaning a thick string or rope. And it also gave us the word chord, spelled C H o R d, as used in music, meaning three or more strings or notes played in unison. That Greek word chord actually came from an original Indo European word which meant gut or intestine or entrail. And that word was used for musical strings because the strings of a lyre or harp were actually made from animal entrails. Middle English developed a similar word for the strings of an instrument. They called it catgut, and it's still called that today. In fact, even though some modern strings are made from steel or synthetic polymers, animal entrails are still used for some modern musical strings, especially those used by classical musicians. The original Indo European word, which meant gut or entrail not only gave the Greeks the word korda, it also passed through the Germanic languages, and it gave us the English word yarn. And while we tend to think of yarn in the context of knitting, let's not forget the phrase to spin a yarn to mean to tell a story. So even the English word yarn has an association with storytelling and lyrical poetry. Now, the reason why instruments like harps and lyres can be found in ancient civilizations throughout Europe and Asia is because they were a key part of the ancient oral tradition. As we know, before writing, people passed on histories and stories and morality lessons in the oral tradition. And when we think of works like the Iliad and the Odyssey in Greece and Beowulf in Britain, those are very long works. And even Though the ancient poets had very good memories, they had to develop a technique to help them remember those very long stories. And that technique was the poem. A poem was a type of wordplay, and when used as originally designed, it was a mnemonic device. It was a tool of the poet just as much as the lyre itself. So once upon a time, poems had a much more practical use beyond simply conveying emotion or sentiment. The unique way in which these poems were structured enabled poets to remember and recite long, detailed passages. And that's because it's much easier to remember poetic verse than it is regular, ordinary speech. Regular speech doesn't really have a specific structure other than the basic rules of grammar, so there's no particular order to it. But most traditional poetry or verse had a specific structure, and that structure was intentional. Most people today think of poems as rhymes, and that's one type of poetic structure. It's the way many of us learn to remember things. As children, you probably learned something as basic as the Alphabet by converting it into a poem. A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, N, V, W, X, Y and Z. And we learn nursery rhymes the same way. Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water Jack fell down, broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after we learned it as kids and we remember it word for word as adults, in part because of the specific way in which the words are arranged. The rhyme helps us to remember it. Now, those examples use rhymes, but the rhyming poem was not the standard type of poem in ancient history. Other techniques were often used, as we'll see. Alliteration was a very common technique and. And it was the standard technique used by Germanic poets, including Old English poets. That meant that certain sounds were repeated in a given line. And that's just a different kind of mnemonic device. So Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. How many pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick? It doesn't rhyme, but we remember it because of alliteration. Now, obviously, that's an extreme example, so extreme that it's intended to be a tongue twister, but you get the idea. And as I said, that was really the basic technique which Old English poetry used, alliteration or repeating sounds. Old English actually used the same basic structure as all Germanic poetry. Scholars even have a specific name for it. They call it for stress, unrhymed alliterative verse. Now, that sounds very fancy, but it's actually quite simple. It was a Very effective way to remember long passages with this type of poetry. Each line of the poem was divided into two separate halves, what are sometimes called two half lines. And the sound at the beginning of the second half had to have a corresponding sound in the first half. So the way the second half line began was really the key because it dictated at least one of the sounds that had to be in the first half line. Or to think of it the other way, at least one of the sounds in the first half line had to be the initial sound in the second half. Now, just to make one clarification, I say the first sound of the second half line is the key. To be precise, it's really the first stressed sound in the second half line. But you don't have to worry about that technicality right now. So in order to illustrate how this worked, I want to give you some examples. And remember, almost all Old English poetry uses this structure, even Beowulf. So let's take the poem I used earlier, Jack and Jill, and let's convert it from a modern nursery rhyme with rhyming verse into an Old English poem with this type of alliteration. So let's start with the first line, Jack and Jill went up the hill. Remember that in Old English poems, each line was divided in half. So if we do that, the first half is Jack and Jill, and the second half is went up the hill. Now, the first word of the second half is went, which begins with a W sound. And under the rules I just mentioned, at least one of the words in the first half also needs a W sound. But the line is Jack and Jill went up the hill. So we don't have names with a W sound. We have names with a J sound. So it doesn't work as an Old English poem. In order to make it work as an Old English poem, the first word in the second half line needs to begin with a J sound, because then it would match the J sound in the names Jack and Jill. So if we change the verb walked to jogged, now we have a perfectly good old English opening line. Jack and Jill jogged up the hill. Jack, Jill jogged. Remember, the first stressed word of the second half, jogged, has to match one or both of the stressed sounds in the first half. And the J of jog now matches the J's in Jack and Jill. That's Germanic and Old English alliteration. So while we're at it, let's complete the poem. The second line is, to fetch a pail of water. We split that into two halves and we get to Fetch and then a pail of water. So pail is really the first stressed syllable of the second half. A is just an article. So the first half line needs a word with a P sound to match the word pail, but the first half is to fetch. So once again, we need to change the words. So if we play around with words a bit, we can change it from to fetch to in playful pursuit of. And now that works just fine. So we get in playful pursuit of a pail of water. Now we have a perfectly good line of Old English poetry. The P's in playful in pursuit match the P in pale. And using the same approach, we can change Jack fell down and broke his crown to Jack did drop, damaging. His crown did drop damaging. That's our alliteration. And lastly, we have the line and Jill came tumbling after. So if we rephrase it a little, we get a line like Jill tripped two tumbling after him. So here's our new Old English version of Jack and Jill. Read in the manner of an Old English poet, with an emphasis on the repeating sounds. Jack and Jill jogged up the hill in playful pursuit of a pail of water. Jack did drop, damaging his crown. Jill tripped too, tumbling after him. After a while, your ear actually starts to adjust to the specific rhythm of the poem. And I didn't really read it in the precise manner with all the rhythms of an Old English poet, but hopefully you get the idea. And after a while, you actually start to anticipate the first sound of that second half line. It's basically the same process that we use with rhyming poems, except that the stress has been shifted forward to a different place. If you think about it, rhyming and alliteration are actually quite similar. When we rhyme words, we're basically just repeating the sounds at the end of words. When we use alliteration, we're repeating the sounds at the beginning of words. So rhyming and alliteration are really the same thing, repeating certain sounds. It's just a matter of whether we repeat the sounds at the beginning or the end of the words. So why did Germanic poets prefer to repeat sounds at the beginning of words? Well, the answer lies in the way Germanic words were pronounced and the way inflections were used in Germanic grammar. You might remember from the episode about Germanic grammar that the pronunciation of Germanic words always required an emphasis on the first syllable, except for the occasional prefix. So, at least in the context of pronunciation, the natural tendency was to emphasize initial syllables, not final syllables. But that's not to say that the final syllables were unimportant. As we know, Germanic grammar used a lot of inflexive endings on words to indicate things like tense and case. And those endings had very specific meanings. So you used one ending for a noun when it was the subject of a sentence, and you used a different ending for a noun when it was the object of the sentence. But if you wanted to rhyme those two words, you had to use the same or very similar ending, and you couldn't just do that. That would have changed the entire meaning of the sentence. Instead of a subject and an object, you would have had two subjects and no object. So Germanic grammar inhibited the use of rhyming poetry, where the emphasis is on the repeating sounds at the end of words, and Germanic stress meant that the emphasis was always on the first syllable of words. And when you put those two facts together, you can see why Germanic poetry tended to use alliteration, which emphasized the initial sounds, rather than rhyming verse, which emphasizes final sounds. Also, Germanic word order was much more flexible than modern English word order. Those inflections on the end of the words told you what you needed to know, so it didn't really matter what order you put the words in. So that also made it easier to use alliteration in the specific way it was used in Germanic poetry. Since the alliteration patterns required those repeating sounds to appear in very specific places, you could do that in Old English, and the sentence still made perfect sense. And that's also why it's so difficult to do a word for word translation from Old English into Modern English. So the bottom line is that Germanic poets worked within the confines of their language, and the Germanic alliterative poem was a natural extension of that language. So let's listen to an actual example of Old English poetry, and I'm going to use what is probably the most famous Old English poem of all, Beowulf. Now, Beowulf is a very traditional Germanic poem, and it follows the same alliterative format which I've just described. The first three lines of the poem are, hoet WG ar denne on gjrdagem the ad kuninga thrym jeffronen hultha ethelingas elen fremodon. In Modern English, this passage can be translated as, listen. The spear Danes in days gone by, and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness. We have heard of those prince's heroic campaigns. So let's break it down line by line and see how the original poet constructed those lines. Again, the first line read with the traditional Old English pronunciation is hwe gardene. In Yerdogam, remember that Old English poetry was divided into two half lines. The first half is huatwe gardene. The second half line is ingierdogam. Now, if we do a word for word translation of the first half of the line, we have the word huat. And this is actually the original version of the modern word what. But here the word doesn't actually mean what. It was actually a standard word which was used to introduce a poem in Old English. And in this context, it meant listen or listen up or listen closely. And the fact that this word meant listen is kind of important because it reminds us that these poems were originally intended to be sung or recited. They weren't intended to be written down. The next word is we, which is the original version of the modern word we. And we can actually see some alliteration in those very first two words. What we both words begin with the w sound. Then that first half line concludes with the word gardene, which literally meant sphere. Danes. Denna is Danes, meaning the early tribe of Danes in Scandinavia. But the Beowulf poet described them in this line as gardene. Gar meant spear, so the name literally meant spear Danes. We've actually seen the word gar before. You might remember that the word leek, meaning onion, comes from Old English. And a leek that was spear shaped was called a gar. Leek, a spear leek. And we have that word today as garlic. So here's that word again. Gar, denna, spear, Danes. So why does the poet call them speardanes and not just Danes? Well, the answer probably has to do with alliteration, but we'll come back to that in a minute. But next, let's look at the second half of that opening line of the poem. The second half is ingerdagem. In means in. But the first stressed word is the next word, gaer, which meant year. And we've seen that word before. And then we have dogm, which meant days in Old English. So, Jared, dogem literally meant year days, but think of it more like days of yore or days gone by. So in yerdagm meant in the days of yore or in the old days. By the way, Dagum retained its original g sound in the middle. Here, as I noted a couple of episodes back, the German word for day is tag, as in Guten Tag. And in Old English it was originally dog. So here we see that original version with an inflexive ending, um, giving us dogm. And again, the entire term is jer dogm. So let's consider that word jer or year. It was spelled G E, A r. So that spelling tells us that the word was originally pronounced ger. But as we've seen before, the G sound shifted to a y sound in early Old English. And when the Normans arrived, they changed that spelling to reflect the later pronunciation, so it became Y E, A, r. So which pronunciation did the original Beowulf poet use? Well, based on what we know about Old English poetry, we can reasonably conclude that the original poet pronounced the word with a g sound when he sung it to his audience. So it was gaeter dogm, not the later and more traditional jardagm. And the reason why we know that is because that word is the first stressed word in the second half line. In other words, it's our keyword. And therefore it's the word which has to alliterate with one or more words in the first half line. But if it was pronounced with its later y sound, then there would need to be a word with the same Y sound in the first half, but there isn't. Remember, the first half is hwe gardena, and it doesn't have a word with a y sound, but it does have a word with a g sound, gardene. So, given the requirements of Germanic alliterative verse, we know that the word for year still had its original G sound when the poem was first composed, because gardene and gardagem alliterate perfectly. In fact, they not only have the same initial G sound, they also have the same D sound in the second part, gardena and garadagam. So by giving the word for year its original pronunciation, the Germanic structure of the poem is maintained. And as you can see here, there's a lot more going on in these poems than you might have realized. So, once again, here's that first line. Listen for the repeating W sounds at the beginning and the repeating G and D sounds in the rest of the line. What we gardene in ger dogem. So I hope you can hear that alliteration. And using that kind of deductive reasoning, we can not only make certain assumptions about the original pronunciation of a word like year, but we can also start to estimate when the original poet composed the poem. Since scholars have determined that the word for year switched from ger to jerry within the first half of the Old English period, that's actually a clue that the original oral version of the poem was composed during this earlier period before the sound changed. Now, before we move on, let's Take a quick look at the next couple of lines. And here the alliteration is more obvious. The second line is the. So in this case, each half line begins with the same th sound. Thead kuninge thrym jefrunen. And the third line of the poem is hu tha ethelingas ellen frimedan. So between the word Ethelingus in the first half and Ellen in the second half, we have the same e sound. So again, hutha ethelingus ellen frimedon. So as we go through the poem line by line, we can see and hear the structure of Old English poetry, and we can hear how the poets constructed those passages according to a specific formula. And if you continue through the entire poem, you'll see this same type of pattern. Now, the reason for this exercise was twofold. First, I wanted to introduce the basic structure of Old English poetry. But more importantly, I wanted you to see the impact that that poetic structure had on the overall history of the English language. One of the consequences of that structure is that it forced the creation of new words and compounds, and some of those words entered the general vocabulary of the language. So let me explain what I mean. Given the required structure of Old English poetry, poets had to make sure that the words alliterated in the right way. So the poet had to make sure that a word in the first half of a line began with the same sound as the first stressed word in the second half. That's the basic formula of Old English poetry. Now, in Modern English, that wouldn't really be a problem. Depending on how you count them. Modern English has nearly a million words at its disposal. But Old English only had about 50,000 words. So it wasn't as easy being an Anglo Saxon poet. Sometimes you had to be creative in order to express a particular thought or idea. There wasn't always a word available which began with a specific sound which you needed. So poets often had to make up new words, and they did that by creating compound words. I noted a few episodes back that the Anglo Saxons love to use compound words. Well, one of the reasons why they used a lot of compound words is because that's how they made new words with their limited vocabulary. And those words created by poets actually filtered into the general vocabulary of the language. So, as we've seen, sea travel was a common theme in Old English poetry. So the poets had to find new ways to describe ships and the sea so that the words would alliterate with within the required structure of Old English poetry. So some of the compound words they created as euphemisms for ships included wave floater, sea goer, waterwood, sea steed, seahorse, and wave horse. And to describe the sea, poets would use words like seal, bath and fish home. These type of euphemisms were adopted as stock phrases. And in the course of reciting a poem, the poets could use them spontaneously when they needed to find a word which would alliterate the right way. So it was kind of like a jazz musician who uses certain stock phrases or riffs based on a particular chord. Many musicians rely on a handful of riffs which they use over and over. They just combine them and shift them around to make them fit a particular song. So when the musician needs to improvise over a particular chord, he or she can simply use one of those stock phrases or riffs. And that's what Old English poets did, too. They used those same kind of stock phrases. And when they needed to express a particular idea with a word which began with a specific sound, they just relied upon that stock phrase. So, for example, in Beowulf, the poet repeatedly needed to express the idea that something was crossing the sea. And to express that idea, the poet used a stock phrase or formula. He would use the phrase over rada, which literally meant over road. And the poet would just fill in a word in the blank space so that he could get the right alliteration. So when the poet described how the Danish king could command his men from across the sea, he wrote that the men obeyed him. And over hrun rada, which meant over the whale road. And the poet used that phrase because the second half line began with the phrase hrurenschulde, which literally meant hear, shall, but can be translated today as had to listen to. And since that second half line began with the word huron, meaning here, the poet had to find a way to express the idea of crossing the sea with a word or phrase which used the h sound. And in Old English, a whale was sometimes called a hron. So the poet called the sea the hron rada, the whale road. Later in the poem, the poet says that the Danish king Hrothgar sent out over the sea for someone to help him. In the passage, the second half line is is secien wolda, which literally meant seek, want, but meant really wish to seek or look for. So it began with an S sound. So the poet needed to express the idea that Hrothgar was seeking someone to cross the sea to help him. But the poet had to make sure that the phrase used the word with the s sound. So the poet went back to his stock Phrase over rada. And in this case, he decided to use the word for swan, and he ended up with the phrase over swanrada secewalda. So it meant over the swan's road, the king sought help. Now, even later in the poem, the Beowulf poet refers to the sea as the sailraad, literally the sailroad, the road of the sailing ships. So this stock phrase was used several times. And it wasn't just the Beowulf poet who used that kind of phrase. In the poem the Seafarer, the poet described the sea as the whale way, literally the whale way, very much like the Beowulf poets, the whale rode. So even though some of these words were likely made up for a particular poem, others were probably in more or less common use in the language. But the key point here is that Old English poetry resulted in lots of new compound words in the language. The poet had to create these words and phrases to fit the required alliterative patterns of the poem. This process was sometimes called word weaving, because the poet's job was to weave words together into a specific pattern. And that also explains the term which the Anglo Saxons used for poets. The word poet actually comes from French. After the Norman Conquest, but before the Normans arrived, the Anglo Saxon poet was called a shop. And the word shop comes from the same English root as the word shape. So a shop was literally a shaper, someone who shaped words, and those words had to be shaped to fit the particular pattern of Old English poetry. When a poet needed to describe a spider with a G sound, the poet created the word gongelwaver, which literally meant going weaver, but it's usually translated as walking weaver. And when a poet needed to describe a battle with an S sound, the poet created the word swordplay, one of many Old English poetic compounds that still exist in modern English. To describe the sun, poets used the stock phrase helvan blank, literally heaven's blank. And they filled in the blank with a word which satisfied the required alliteration. So they came up with words like helven kandl, literally heaven's candle or sky candle. And sometimes they use helven is yim, literally heaven's gem or sky's jewel. And when the Beowulf poet needed a word for body, the poet used the stock phrase bon blank, literally bone blank. So the poet used words like bon hus, literally bone house. And other times he used bon loka, literally bone locker. In another line, the poet used bone kofa, literally bone chamber. So in each case, the poet selected a term with the required sound, which he needed. And all of those compound words for body are also found in at least one other Old English poem. So these type of stock phrases apparently became common enough that some of these compound words began to filter into the general language. The words of poets had the ability to influence ordinary speech because the poets themselves were so influential. The Scopes and minstrels were the entertainers of their day. They were the rock stars or pop stars of the early Middle Ages. They traveled the country and sometimes traveled the world reciting poems. The important role of the poet in early Anglo Saxon culture is reflected in what some scholars think may be the oldest documented poem in Old English, a poem called Widsith. And I say maybe the oldest poem, because the poem itself is like most Old English poems. The only written version comes from a manuscript which was written down in the 10th century called the Exeter Book. And no one knows when the poem was originally composed, but the content suggests that it was composed in very early Anglo Saxon Britain. It was likely composed in the seventh century, but it was probably an even older Germanic poem which had evolved over the centuries. The poem is basically the story of a traveling minstrel, or schope. It describes his travels as a poet throughout Europe. It contains a long, detailed list of all the peoples and tribes who he met and performed for along the way. And many of those names date from the 4th and 5th centuries. So that suggests that the poem either originated at a much earlier date in continental Europe and then traveled with the Anglo Saxons to Britain, or it was a completely fictional account composed at a later date in early Anglo Saxon Britain. Either way, it survived all the way to the end of the Anglo Saxon period to be written down in the Exeter Book. The name Widsith meant far wanderer. It was literally wide traveler, wydd was wide, and sith meant journey. Coming from the same root as the word send, it was also given as the name of the minstrel. And in the poem, we get a sense of the status held by the poet or minstrel in Germanic society. Remember that the poets or Scopes, came from a time before writing, so their poetry was the only historical record. And the kings of that period wanted to ensure that their legacy was preserved for future generations. So many kings had their own poets who documented all of the great things about that particular king. And those poets or minstrels would then travel to various other courts to recite their poetry. So, in addition to being entertainers who composed and performed their own works, the minstrels also served as reporters and historians. They would bring stories about the people and events in other kingdoms. So those performances were a combination of news and history and entertainment. And so these minstrels were the preservers of the oral history and tradition of the Germanic peoples. And they preserved that history in the specific poetic structure that we looked at earlier, because it was the way in which the poets memorized and retained all those stories, and sometimes those poets borrowed from each other. If one minstrel had an interesting story to tell, the other minstrels might incorporate that story into their own work, so that over time, some of the poems developed into a collection of bits and pieces from various poets. And Widseth appears to be an example of that. In Widsith, the poet describes his far flung travels, but the kings and tribes which he references existed over a period of more than two centuries, so no one poet could have actually experienced the events in the poem firsthand. The first line of the poem is Widsith Mathilada Wardhard Onliac. The line literally reads, widseth spoke word horde unlocked. So Widseth unlocked his hoard of words when he began to speak or sing to his audience. And he then described the people that he had heard about on his travels. He mentions Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and Attila the Hun. And he also mentions a long list of Germanic tribes throughout Europe. In the middle of the poem, Widseth describes the life of a traveling minstrel. In one modern English translation, which I like because it preserves a lot of the original alliteration, the passage reads, so I fared through many a foreign realm this wide earth o'er as weel or ill came to my kin of my kin bereft Far from my folk I followed onward Wherefore I sing and say my tales to men in the mead hall make my lay how high born heroes heaped me with gifts. He then mentions more tribes which he encountered. Some of those names, like the Swedes and Goths and Danes and Geats, are well documented. And some of the other tribes which he mentions have completely disappeared from history. But one of the tribes which he mentions is particularly interesting. He mentions a tribe in Scandinavia called the Vikings. And this is generally considered to be the first documented reference to the Vikings. And given the fact that the poem was likely composed in some form around the time the Anglo Saxons were settling in Britain, it's a fascinating historical nugget because the Viking age didn't really begin until very late in the 8th century. So two or three centuries earlier, we have this passage referencing them. And even though the term Viking was later used as a general term for all of the Scandinavian invaders. In the context of this particular poem, it appears that the Vikings were originally a specific tribe. After listing some more tribes, Witseth describes how he and his traveling companions sang their songs to the accompaniment of a harp, probably the same kind of instrument found at Sutton Hoover. And the poem concludes with a passage which reflects the important role of the traveling minstrel in early Germanic societies and the fame which those poets offer to their patrons. It describes how prominent kings would often seek out minstrels to secure their legacy. This particular translation uses a more contemporary version of modern English, and the passage reads, wondering like this. Driven by chance, minstrels travel through many lands. They state their needs, say their words of thanks, always south or north. They find someone well versed in songs, generous in gifts, who wishes to raise his renown with his men to do great things until everything passes light and life together. He who wins fame has everlasting glory under the heavens. And this passage may actually help to explain why a minstrel's lyre was buried with that ship at Sutton Hoo. After all, how else would the king's legacy be preserved in the afterlife? Every king needed a minstrel or shope to spread the word of his good deeds. But minstrels were only needed when there was no one who could write down that legacy. So as the Anglo Saxons gradually began to adopt writing, the role of the minstrel began to decline. Minstrels were no longer needed to secure the fame of kings. At that point, kings could now record their own legacies in writing written documents that would survive for centuries. So the oral tradition gradually began to wane. And when the Norman French arrived in 1066, the traditional Germanic minstrel with his alliterative verse all but disappeared. About a generation after the Normans arrived, a passage was written down by an anonymous scribe, and it was preserved in a manuscript in the library of Worcester Cathedral. The passage is a specific reference to Old English poetry and literature, and it laments the loss of that tradition in the wake of the French dominance. The original passage was written in Germanic and literative verse, perhaps as an ode to the dying art form in modern English. The passage reads, these taught our people in English. Their light was not dark but shone brightly. Now their teaching is abandoned and the people are lost. Now our people learn other languages and many of the teachers are perishing and the people with them. So old English poetry gradually faded into history. The advent of writing meant that long passages didn't need to be remembered for oral delivery. Now they could simply be written down and read later. And as English became less and less Germanic, the structure of the Old English poem didn't really fit the language as well as it once had. And not surprisingly, the first examples of rhyming poetry in English came near the very end of the Old English period, as Old English transitioned into Middle English. So that seems like a fitting conclusion to this episode about traveling and Old English poetry. Next time, we're going to move the story forward and explore the rise of Northumbria as a center of literacy and learning. And we'll explore some of the early English writings which emerged from that kingdom. And then we'll look at how the rise of literacy in monasteries brought about the first great deposit of Latin words into English. So until next time, thanks for listening to the History of English podcast. Sa.