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The History of English Podcast
Episode 58: Bibliophiles and Bookworms
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The late 10th century and early 11th century was the Golden Age of Old English literature. But much of the literature produced during that period was lost to history. Thankfully, a handful of book collectors realized the value of those … Continue read...
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Kevin Stroud
Welcome to the History of English Podcast, a podcast about the history of the English language. This is episode 58, Bibliophiles and Bookworms. In this episode, we're going to take a closer look at the Wessex literary revival of the late 10th century. We'll also examine some of the more important texts which were created or preserved during that period. And we'll also look at the important role played by a handful of bibliophiles and book collectors in preserving those manuscripts. But before we begin, let me remind you that the website for the podcast is historyofenglishpodcast.com and you can always reach me directly@kevinistoryofenglishpodcast.com and I'm continuing to work on the ebook version of the podcast. Just to give you a quick update, I am planning on releasing that material in four parts. The first part will cover the pre English period. So the period from the original Indo Europeans through the Germanic tribes. That basically corresponds to episodes one through 27 of the podcast. I hope to have that version ready sometime in April. And that time frame will also roughly correspond to the conclusion of the Old English period of the podcast. So that will also allow me to gather all of the material on Old English and release it shortly thereafter. So that will cover episodes 28 through 60 or 61, and then we can turn our attention to Middle English. So that's the plan and the general time frame. So with that, let's turn to this episode and let's pick up where we left off last time with the golden age of Old English literature in the mid to late nine hundreds. Now, here at the end of the 10th century, we're really nearing the end of the Old English period. The Normans are on the horizon, and with them, the Old English period will give way to the Middle English period. But having spent so much of the last year and a half discussing Old English, I would be remiss if I just skipped over the period in which most of the surviving Old English literature was produced. So in this episode, we're going to explore some of that literature. As we saw Last time, the 10th century literary revival was a direct consequence of the monastic reforms spearheaded by clerics like Dunstan. All of those new monasteries meant there were lots of new monastic schools, and those new monastic schools produced lots of literate monks, and those literate monks produced and assembled lots of manuscripts. Some of them were new works, but very often a particular scribe would select existing or older works which appealed to him, and he would copy them down into a new collection. In the process, those older works were preserved. Sometimes the scribes copies were bound together with those of another scribe, and sometimes an old text was lying around and it was bound together with the newer text. So many of the manuscripts which were produced during this period were a bit of a hodgepodge. They were basically collections or anthologies of many different works. Sometimes they had a consistent theme, but sometimes they didn't. So in many ways, those 10th century scribes weren't just scribes. They were also book collectors and bookworms. Their efforts actually saved a lot of literature which would have otherwise been lost. But that was only the beginning. Once those manuscripts were assembled, they had to survive the test of time. I think we tend to assume that once those old books were written, they just lingered on bookshelves in some dusty old library, just waiting for someone to come along and read them. But the real story is far more dramatic than that. The fact is that most of those old books didn't survive the centuries. We've already seen that some were lost to fires. Some were damaged or worn down and thrown away. In England, the Vikings and the Normans had their way with those old libraries and book collections. Some were considered pagan or sacrilegious, and they were destroyed for those reasons. In the 1500s, Henry VIII broke with the Catholic Church, and he dissolved the monasteries in the process. Many of those libraries were cleared out, and lots of those books disappeared forever. So war and religion and politics all played a role in the loss of many of those old manuscripts. But one of the biggest factors in that loss was language change. By the time Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries, very few people in England could read or understand those old English books. Many people probably didn't even realize that the books were actually written in English. And what good is an old book if nobody can read it? Well, you can use it for a doorstop or paperweight, or you can do what the people of that period did with those old books. They used them for drink coasters and ironing mats. The vellum pages were removed to make drum skins and roof insulation and to line beer barrels. When those books were lost to history, all of the historical and literary knowledge contained in them was also lost. We may never know how much was lost along the way, but fortunately, a small handful of collectors did appreciate the value of those books, even if they couldn't read them. And thanks to their efforts, a significant amount of old English literature was preserved. So as we turn our attention to those old texts, let's also take note of those collectors and bookworms who saved them because this is their story as well. As we turn to the surviving manuscripts from the 10th century, lets begin with the Anglo Saxon Chronicle, because it was definitely being maintained during this period. As we know, the Anglo Saxon Chronicle was an attempt to record the annual history of the Anglo Saxon people in English. And that was really what made the Chronicle so unique. It wasn't written in Latin like most other chronicles in Western Europe, it was written in the local vernacular of England. It appears that Alfred the Great was instrumental in getting the Chronicle underway. The historical records which existed during his time were compiled into an early version of the Chronicle. Unfortunately, that original version was lost to history, but copies were sent out to various monasteries where local versions were maintained until the Normans arrived and for a short period after that. What survives today are a handful of copies and fragments and copies of copies. The oldest surviving copy is sometimes called the Parker Chronicle, after Matthew Parker, the Archbishop of Canterbury in the 1500s. He once owned the text. Its earliest history can be traced back to the 900s, where we are now in the overall story of English. Around that time, it was being maintained in Winchester, and as I've noted before, Winchester was essentially the capital of Wessex and therefore the de facto capital of England during this early period. But around this time in the late 900s, the second oldest copy of the Chronicles started to be maintained. Historians date it to around the year 977, and it was maintained in Abington, the location of that second Benedictine monastery, which I mentioned in the last episode. Over the next few decades, other copies were maintained at other locations. So each copy is a little different. Some copies include entries that are missing from the other copies. Now, historians tend to put a lot of trust and faith in the accuracy of the chronicle. Since it was a contemporary record. It was the closest thing to a newspaper or magazine which actually reported events as they happened, or at least a few weeks or months after they happened. So the Chronicle was a record of the news of the day. So let's consider the word news. New is an old English word, niwa, and it meant what it means, new. The plural form of new is news. But that construction didn't happen until the Normans arrived. In Latin, a novum was a new thing, and the plural was nova, literally new things. Now, there's a very famous urban legend about that word, nova. According to the legend, General Motors made a huge blunder when they produced the Chevy Nova and tried to sell it in Latin America. Supposedly, Spanish speakers refused to buy the car because no va meant no go in Spanish. In actuality the Chevy Nova sold quite well in Latin America, and the name was never really an issue. Despite the fact that the story was picked up in some textbooks as an example of a marketing failure, it actually appears to fall under the category of an urban myth. In fact, a brand of gasoline is still sold in Mexico under the name Nova. The confusion didn't really exist because Latin nova was understood as a distinct word separate from no and va. It's the same reason that we don't think a carpet is a pet who rides in the car. We understand that there's a difference between carpet and a car pet. Well, anyway, that Latin word nova passed into Old French, and when it passed into Old French, it was translated as nouvelles, which was spelled N O U V E L L E s. So it had an S on the end. And French used that S as a plural suffix on some words. And when the Normans came to England, they brought that same construction with an S ending, and they took the English word new and stuck the S on the end to convert singular new into plural news, again meaning new things. So that just reflects how certain English words were given a French spin to make them sound more like their French equivalents. Again, news literally meant new things, but over time, the use of the term evolved to mean any bit of new information. So if news came along a bit later, what did the Anglo Saxons call news? Well, they typically used the word tiedung, which survives as the word tidings. It comes from the same root as the word tide, which, you might remember, originally meant time, as in yuletide, meaning yule time. So both words had an original sense of something happening or occurring. The Vikings actually had their own version of the word tiding, which was very similar to the Old English version. In fact, many linguists think that the English and Norse versions blended together to produce the later word tidings. So the annual tidings or news was recorded in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle. Much of the chronicle concerns the comings and goings of political and church officials. So in any given year, someone became king, someone was appointed bishop, or someone passed away. As we might expect from a chronicle maintained largely by monks, it contains a lot of church business. So it notes when certain monasteries were established or re established. And sometimes it mentions when they were destroyed. But from time to time, we get some very specific information about political or secular events. For example, for the year962, the Chronicle mentions a great pestilence, and it says that there was a great fire in London. It states that St. Paul's Minster burned down and was rebuilt the same year. So it's remarkable to be able to put some specific dates on those types of events which occurred over a thousand years ago. Now, despite the general reliability of the Chronicle, the scribes were sometimes prone to the occasional exaggeration. They certainly had their own worldview, and that worldview occasionally seeps in. For the year 977, the Chronicle records an accident in Wiltshire in the southwest of England, where there was a meeting of royal advisors in a manor house. The Chronicle says that the royal advisors were meeting on the upper floor and the floor gave way and the council members fell through the floor to the ground level. Now, this account actually seems somewhat comical, but the Chronicle reports that several people were badly injured and some were actually killed. But the Chronicle also tells us that the old Archbishop Dunstan was there, presumably in his typical role as the king's advisor, and Dunstan alone was spared from the fall. He remained standing on a beam in complete safety. Now, we don't know if that was in fact the case. The scribe may have simply been trying to emphasize how great and holy Dunstan was. He was the only one pure and righteous enough to have been spared. The details are a little suspicious. The other notable thing about this particular entry is that it's the first recorded instance of a two story dwelling in England, but it appears that they hadn't quite mastered that type of construction yet. A little more advanced engineering might have prevented that fall, but the fact that the Anglo Saxons were building two story structures does suggest a gradual transition to a more sophisticated type of construction. In the years after the Normans arrived, the Chronicle was discontinued and most of the surviving copies of the Chronicle ended up in the hands of book collectors, including one in particular. That collector is someone I've mentioned before, Sir Robert Cotton. Among the many manuscripts in Cotton's collection were several copies of the Anglo Saxon Chronicle. I've noted before that there are seven surviving copies of the Chronicle, but there are also a couple of surviving fragments, and if you count the fragments, that brings the total up to nine. And six of those nine were once owned by Robert Cotten. I've mentioned Cotton before because he also owned the manuscript which contained the Beowulf poem. And last time I mentioned that he owned the book which described the hand signals used by monks in the monasteries. And get used to me mentioning Cotton's name because he collected a lot of Old English and Middle English text and his collection will continue to pop up as we move into Middle English. In fact, Cotton's collection was the largest collection of old English manuscripts. And it was later turned over to the government and became a major component of the British Library when it was founded. Since Cotton was one of the most important book collectors in English history, I want to tell you a little bit more about him. As I noted earlier, Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries in the 1500s, and a lot of books were lost at that time. Cotton was born in the late 1500s in the wake of that destruction. Now, he realized the value of those old books, so he set about trying to collect as many as he could to preserve them for history. He eventually became a member of Parliament, and In the early 1600s, he bought a big house practically next door to the Houses of Parliament in London, and that's where he maintained his massive library. In fact, Cotton opened his library to anyone doing research and study. Again, this was the early 1600s, and by 1625, Charles I was the king. And if you know a little bit about this period of history, you probably know that Charles was in constant conflict with Parliament. This was the period leading up to the English Civil War. During that period, Cotton's house became a regular meeting place for members of Parliament to discuss their grievances against the king. Remember, it was right next door to Parliament. And that library also became a thorn in Charles side. The struggle between Parliament and the king was raising a lot of unique and unprecedented issues. And the members of Parliament were trying to find a legal and historical basis for their rejection of the king's authority. And Cotton's library was the place to go if you wanted to pore through old books and records to justify whatever position you were taking against the king. Now, you might be thinking this type of thing wasn't exactly new. I mean, Magna Carta was produced when nobles stood up to the king in the 1200s. And in fact, Cotton's library had a copy of that, too. An original, exemplified copy of Magna Carta was sitting in his library. Now, all of this started to concern Charles, who wasn't happy with members of Parliament using the library to research and justify whatever legal position they were taking against him. So in 1629, Robert Cotton was arrested for distributing a pamphlet critical of the king, and the library was ordered to be closed. And even though Cotten was soon released from prison, the library remained closed for the rest of Cotton's life. But here's the great irony to this story. After Charles was defeated by Parliament's forces in the Civil War, Charles was brought back to London for his trial and what would ultimately be his execution. But while the trial was being held, Parliament had to figure out where to keep the king. And guess where they put him. You guessed it, they put him in Cotton's house, which still had its massive library. So despite Charles's efforts to shut that library down, he was actually confined there in his final days. And who knows, maybe Charles perused some of those Old English manuscripts while he awaited his fate. When Robert Cotton died, the library was left to his son, and it was eventually given to the government, and it was later moved to the appropriately named Ash Burnham House, which was the house that caught fire. And even though most of the books were saved, quite a few were destroyed in that fire, and that included almost all of one of the copies of the Anglo Saxon Chronicle. I noted earlier that the Parker Chronicle is the oldest surviving copy of the Anglo Saxon Chronicle. Well, there were actually two copies of the Parker Chronicle at one time, and Cotton had one of them in his library. But that copy was almost completely destroyed in that fire. Fortunately, a transcript of the book had been made a few years earlier, and that transcript survives also. The other copy of the Parker Chronicle survives. So the loss could have been much worse. As we've seen before, that fire also damaged the manuscript which contained Beowulf. It was charred and burned. In fact, it had already deteriorated by the time it made it to Cotton's library. Many of the pages were missing from the front and the back of the book. And as it turned out, the book contained five different works, and Beowulf was actually in the middle. So even though the front and back of the book were damaged, the Beowulf poem was largely preserved. Now, back when we looked at Old English poetry, I noted that most of the surviving poems from the Anglo Saxon period are contained in just four surviving manuscripts. This book with Beowulf in it was one of those manuscripts. And all four of the manuscripts were copied and preserved in the late nine hundreds during this great literary renaissance. So I want to spend the rest of this episode looking at the other three books. Now, of the four great codices of Old English poetry, only one lingered on a bookshelf over the centuries, and that was the book, which is known as the Vercelli book. In the 1800s, a German scholar named Friedrich Blum was in Italy looking for legal manuscripts. And in a cathedral library in Vercelli, he came across a book written in Old English. The book had been copied by a single scribe in the late nine hundreds. It had 23 prose texts and six poems. And since it was found in Vercelli, Italy, it's become known as The Vercelli book. It's believed that the book was taken to Italy in the 11th century by a group of pilgrims who were on their way to Rome. Most of the book is religious in nature, and the only complete version of the Dream of the Rood Poem is in that book. It also has several of Cunewulf's poems. He was the poet who sometimes incorporated his name into the poems with runic symbols. So that book survived the centuries because it was just sitting on a shelf in Italy. The third book of poetry is known as the Junius manuscript, and it's named after its former owner, Franciscus Junius. Now, Junius was a Dutch scholar and another avid book collector. He was also one of the leading scholars of the Germanic languages in the early 1600s. He actually was one of the first people to study the Gothic language. And he donated this particular book of Old English poetry to, to Oxford University, where it's still maintained today. It contains four poems which all relate to Christian subjects. There's a retelling or paraphrase of the books of Genesis, Exodus and Daniel, and there's a three part poem about the fall of Satan and the temptation of Christ called Christ and Satan. Now, all three of the manuscripts which I just mentioned are very important to scholars of Old English, but the fourth is the one which really tends to fascinate scholars. It's the famous Exeter Book, and it's the largest of the four collections. The known history of the Exeter Book really begins with a figure named Leofrich. He was a cleric who rose to become the first bishop of Exeter in 1050. He was another avid book collector, but when he became the bishop at Exeter, he was surprised to find that his new cathedral contained only a handful of books. So he tried to build a library there. On his death in 1072, he left over 60 books from his personal collection to the library. The cathedral catalog actually lists those books. And one was described in Old English as Mutual English book. Behe wheel que on Leoth wi san ye horacht. In modern English, it reads a large English book of poetic works about all sorts of things. And that was the earliest description of the Exeter Book. Now, let's break that description down a little bit. It uses the term leoth we san yehuaht, which literally meant poetic works. Leoth was an Old English word for poem. It had an Indo European root. And if we trace that common root through Latin, we get the word laud, meaning to praise, as in laudable or laudatory. But within English, we get laoth and again it meant a poem. Wisan meant wise or learned. So leoth wisun meant learned poems. And ye worked was the past participle of work. So it meant had been worked. And if we put all of that together, the phrase leoth wi san jorkt literally meant the learned poems which had been worked. But we can think of it as the poetic works. By the way, the word work has always had an association with literature. Today we speak of an author's works, meaning his books or stories or poems. And that Old English term you worked produce words like write, w r I g h t and wrought W r o u g h t. The word write still exists in a word like playwright. So a playwright is literally a worker of plays, not a writer of plays. The other word was wrought. We sometimes see that word wrought in a phrase like the biblical phrase what hath God wrought? And a lot of people think it's a past tense form of the verb wreak, but it isn't. It's actually a past tense form of work. And we get a better sense of that original meaning in a term like wrought iron. It literally means iron that's been worked or shaped into some form. But there's an old theater saying, plays are wrought, not written. And when we consider that playwright means a play worker, not a playwrighter, it all starts to come together. But the major point here is that the composition of literature has always had this connection to the word work and its derivative forms, write and wrought. But that's also why we can refer to the works of Shakespeare or the works of Chaucer, or in this case, the works of the Exeter Book. The description of the Exeter Book also tells us what the poems are about. It says that they are about hyahuilcum tingum, which is literally everything or all kinds of things. So if we put all of that together, this is a book of poetic works about all kinds of things. And that was probably the perfect description of the book. Today the book is a valued treasure, but let's just say that wasn't always the case. This is one of those books that people in the Middle Ages couldn't read anymore. So they used it as a drink mat, and they used it as a cutting board. And it even has a long diagonal burn across it, which has destroyed much of the text. In the last part of the book, it appears that a firebrand fell onto the back of the book at some point and caused the damage. But thankfully, the book wasn't thrown away, and it remains one of the most important of all of the surviving Old English manuscripts. By the time Bishop Leofrich owned the book, it had already been in use for several generations. No one knows who compiled it or who owned it before Leofrich. Though the scribe or editor is anonymous, it's interesting to note what types of poems he chose to include in the collection. It contains over 30 individual poems and 95 riddles. The person who compiled the book may have intended it for his own personal collection. And if that was the case, we can assume that he had a fascination with traveling and journeys, because the book contains four very important poems which all have a common theme of traveling. Those poems are Widsith, Dare, the Wanderer and the Seafarer. And if you pick up any collection of Old English literature, you're likely to find one or more of those poems in it. In fact, you might find all four. They are all very highly regarded. I actually looked at the Widsith poem back in the earlier episode about Old English poetry, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it here. It's basically a poem told from the perspective of a poet or minstrel who traveled throughout continental Europe. The title, Widseth literally means wide traveler or far traveler. The poem begins with a long list of tribes and leaders, mainly of the Germanic world, but some places beyond there. And the setting is generally around the time of the fall of the Western Roman Empire and for a short period after then. The poet then mentions the leaders he met and the various gifts which he received from them. Now, there isn't really a lot of drama in the poem. It's basically a catalog of people and places. But what is so fascinating about the poem is that it includes a lot of obscure figures, and almost all of the references are to people and tribes who existed in the centuries before the Anglo Saxons migrated to Britain. It also contains several references to people and places and events mentioned in the Beowulf poem. So a lot of scholars think the poem originated in Germanic Europe in the pre English period. It's probably a composite poem that grew as various poets added to the narrative over time, and the scribe who compiled the Exeter Book finally captured it for posterity in the version we have today. Now, the key thing about this poem is that it involves the theme of a traveling poet and his wanderings around Europe. And the book contains another poem about a traveling minstrel. This poem is about a poet named Dare, so today it's generally known as Dare. The poem consists of six stanzas, and in the first five the poet mentions several heroic figures from the Germanic past on the continent. In each instance, the poem describes some hardship experienced by that figure or the people. And each stanza concludes with the following thas ova reorda, which is literally translated as as that passed over, so may this. So it was akin to the phrase this too shall pass. The poet then states that his name is Der. He once had a good position in the services of his lord, but now he's been replaced by a younger poet. The younger poet has received the land rights which he once had, but the poet states that he once had his day and now it's the younger poet's turn. Then he concludes that final stanza with the common as that passed over, so may this. Now. That poem Der reminds us of the crucial role of the poet or shop in Germanic culture. He was an important member of the tribe. He was the storyteller, the entertainer and. And the historian of the tribe. The theme of a wandering exile is also expressed in another poem in the book known as the Wanderer. It's a poem about a man who once enjoyed a high place, but has fallen on hard times. His lord has died and he's become a wanderer in strange and foreign courts. The poet describes the Anhaka, literally the solitary one. He says that the man enjoyed the favor and mercy of his lord, but sorrowful in heart, he finds himself in exile as he travels the waterways of the ice cold sea. The man's lord has died and he's been buried. The lonely man has been driven over the waves in search of a new lord or treasure giver who might provide comfort and support. So he's now lordless, unprotected and forced to live alone. The wanderer recalls the feasting and joys of the past. But now that is all gone. He sleeps in sorrow. When he awakes, he sees only waves and frost and sea birds. His sorrow is renewed as he recalls his lost kinsmen. The Wanderer adds that a man must weather his share of winters before he can become wise. He must be patient. The poem then emphasizes how fleeting and temporary earthly things are. The poem says that possessions, friends, relatives and people in general are all temporary. To express this idea, the poem uses the old English word lana, which is the original version of our modern word lend. So it had a sense of something temporary or borrowed. Now the Anglo Saxons had llan, and the Vikings had their own version of that word, which was lon. The English version survives as Lind, and the Norse version survives as lone. So lind and lone is another English Norse pair which still exists in Modern English. So going back to the wanderer, the poem expresses the temporary nature of earth earthly things with the following. Her be the. Literally, here be the property. Lent, but it meant here. On earth, possessions are temporary. The poem continues, her literally here be friends. Lent, but it meant friends are temporary. Then here beeth man lana. Here man is temporary, herbi meelana. Here kinsmen are temporary. Elthis ertha nj steel idil erthe. All this earthly foundation turns to waste. So we get that same sense of transience that we saw in that other poem. Der all things are temporary and fleeting, Even solitude and exile. All things will pass. The poem concludes with the reflection that it's good that the wanderer has retained his faith in fader, in hevenum, Father in heaven. That faith is important because the only thing that is permanent is the next life after this one has come to an end. So the poem concludes on a Christian note. But most of the poem has the structure and feel of a traditional Germanic poem. The poem repeatedly refers to the role of fate and how one's fate is inevitable and can't be changed. Fate has caused the wanderer's circumstances and it will determine his future. The poem uses the traditional Old English word for fate, which was wird. The poem states that wyrd beeth vulla rad, literally, faith is inflexible. And it states, no ma weary mud wyrd wi standen, nor may the weary mind withstand fate. The fact that the poem uses the term wyrd, and the fact that it uses the term so prominently, is more evidence that this was originally an older Germanic poem. In Germanic mythology, gods were not the highest powers. The highest power was fate. Now, Christianity supplanted this notion by declaring that the Christian God was the master of fate. And that meant the Christian God was superior to all the Germanic gods. And that was one of the reasons why Christianity spread so quickly through the Germanic regions. To express this idea of fate, the Anglo Saxons sometimes used the word meted. And that word survives in the word mete, as in to mete out punishment. The original sense was to measure, consider, or take appropriate measures. So mete out punishment retains that sense. But metad was the fate which had been rendered by the world or by a higher power. And if we trace that word back to its Indo European roots and then into Latin, we get the word meditate. And we also get the Latin words medic and medical, which also relate to measuring or meting out some type of treatment. In addition to metad, the Anglo Saxons used this Other word, wyrd, spelled W, y, r, d. And that was the word used so prominently in the Wanderer. Now, that word has survived into modern English, but its meaning has changed considerably. Today, the word exists as weird, W, e, I, r, D, meaning strange or unusual. And we can probably thank Shakespeare for some of that change in meaning. In Middle English, the word still had its original meaning of fate. But in Macbeth, Shakespeare presented three witches who were prophets. Early in the play, they encounter Macbeth with predictions of his rise as king. The witches are referred to as the Weird sisters. So Shakespeare was using the term to mean the predictors of the fates. And after Shakespeare, the word weird came to mean the ability to control fate. So it acquired a sense of something magical or supernatural, and from there, it acquired the modern sense of something odd or unusual. Now, if we trace this word weird back to its Indo European roots, we'll find some interesting etymology. And this is where I tie together several loose ends. The original Indo European root word was wer, and it meant to twist or turn. Since your fate is unpredictable, it can twist and turn in unexpected ways. But regardless of the particular turn, it's always predestined. That sense of twisting and turning led to the English word worm, another creature known for its twisting and turning. And a worm which devours a book is a bookworm, a term which is used literally for a worm which devours bookbindings, and figuratively for a person who devours books. So worm and weird are cognate. But let's take that one step further. If we trace that root through Latin, where the W sound eventually became a V sound, we get the Latin word vertera, which meant to turn, as in a plowman turning the soil. By analogy, that word was applied to the process of reading poetry, where you turn from one line to the next. And that produced the word versus verse, which can refer to a part of a poem or can be used as a general term for poetry. So that means the words weird worm, as in a bookworm, and verse, as in poetry, are all cognate. They all came from the same Indo European root word. So we went through the Wanderer. Now let's tackle the poem which often accompanies it, the Seafarer. The themes which run through the two poems are very similar. They're both poems about a person in exile wandering the cold and icy sea. But in the Seafarer, the cause of the exile is unknown. It's also much more obviously the work of a Christian poet, whereas the wanderer is very Germanic and concludes On a Christian note, the seafarer has much more obvious Christian reverences throughout, but the overall theme is basically the same. The poet describes the perils and hardships of the sea. It evokes the same sense of desolation and loneliness and separation from loved ones. The imagery is vivid. The poet is written in first person and the poet describes a winter on the ice cold sea. The is Cheld Nasseur. He describes his exile, deprived of his kinsmen and surrounded by icicles, hail and ice. Ice cold waves. The singing of seagulls has replaced the merriment of the Mead Hall. He states that nothing on earth can overcome the longing of the seafarer to travel the sea and discover what the Lord ordains for him. So here it's not weird or fate, but the Lord who determines the seafarer's destiny. The poet states that the joys of the Lord are warmer to him than than this dead life fleeting on land. And here the poet uses that same word, lana, meaning lent or temporary. And to achieve the alliteration which Old English poets desired, he uses the phrase lana on landa literally lent on land, but it meant fleeting or transitory. On earth he says that earthly happiness is temporary and everyone will die due to disease, old age or attack of the sword. The only eternal life is the life in heaven. The poet states that wird is greater and meatud is mightier than any man's thought or conception. So the poet uses both traditional terms for fate, wiard and meotud, which is a variation of metud. But by this point, meotud was often used as a synonym for God. So the poet probably used the word with that later meaning. Here the poet concludes by stating that the heavenly home is the only home worth seeking when one is lost and wandering and homesick. So again, the Christian influences are very apparent in this telling of the seafarer's journey. But overall, the mood and the subject matter hearken back to the earlier Germanic culture of the Anglo Saxons. Now, all of these poems have elicited a great deal of study. But the most fascinating part of the Exeter Book may be more than 90 riddles which were included by the scribe. They suggest that the Anglo Saxons were fascinated by riddles and wordplay. But the tradition of composing riddles was much older than the Anglo Saxons. As early as the 4th century, the Romans were composing riddles in Latin. During the 4th century, the author Symphosius had composed a collection of 100 Latin riddles. That collection was commonly known as enigmata. It literally meant riddles because the Latin word for riddle was enigma, and that word entered English in the 1500s as enigma. And it still has a sense of something with a hidden or obscure meaning. It was Christian missionaries who brought the practice of composing riddles to Britain. In an earlier episode, I briefly mentioned the 7th century abbot of Malmesbury named Aldhelm. He was the abbot who stood on the street and sang religious songs in English to get people to attend mass. Well, he composed a lot of poems in Latin as well, and he specifically composed a collection of 100 riddles in Latin. So it appears to have been a tradition to assemble riddle collections into groups of 100. And that takes us to the Exeter Book. It's the only surviving book which contains riddles in Old English. And since the book has been damaged over the centuries, some of the surviving riddles are just fragments. It's also unclear where one or two end and another begins. So some scholars count 94 surviving riddles and some count 95. Regardless of how you count them, it's possible that the book originally contained 100 riddles, in keeping with that tradition of compiling them into collections of 100. The Exeter book riddles are somewhat unique in that they're longer than traditional Latin riddles, which were usually just three lines. And the Latin riddles usually gave the answer to the riddle in the title, whereas the Exeter riddles forced the reader to guess the answer. So there's still a lot of disagreement about the answers to many of the riddles. It appears that the riddles are part of the Anglo Saxon love of wordplay. Back when we looked at Old English poetry, we saw how poets used poetic compounds called kennings to get the required alliteration in a poem. So instead of a body, you had a bone house, and instead of the ocean, you had the whale road or the swan's way or the seal's bath. Well, those compounds were sort of like mini riddles. It was a form of wordplay where the listener, reader, had to figure out what the poet was referring to. And we also looked at the dream of the rood poem where the cross is speaking in first person, describing itself and what it had experienced. And this was also the same technique used with many of the riddles. The object describes itself and asks the reader to guess what it is. So let me give you an example of one of the riddles. I was alive, but said nothing. Even so, I die back I came before I was. Everyone plunders me, keeps me confined and shears my head, bites my bare Body breaks my sprouts. No man I bite unless he bites me. Many there are who do bite me. Can you guess what it is? Most scholars agree it's an onion. By the way, that translation is from Paul F. Baum, who was a scholar who translated all of the riddles in the first half of the 20th century. And all of his translations are accessible online. If you're interested in them, I'll put a link on the text tab of the website historyofenglishpodcast.com if you want to look those up, here's another one for you. I saw a thing in the homes of men which feeds the cattle. It has many teeth. Its beak is useful. It points downward. It plunders gently and returns home. It hunts along the walls, reaches for roots. It always finds those that are not fixed. It leaves the fair ones in place by their roots, standing quietly in their proper place, brightly shining, growing and blooming. Did you get it? It's a rake. Here's another. This one may be a little tougher. Again, this is Paul F. Baum's translation. I saw four things in beautiful fashion journeying together. Dark were their tracks, the path very black, Swift was its moving faster than birds. It flew through the air, dove under the wave, labored, unresting, the fighting warrior who showed them the way. All of the four over plated gold. To get the answer to this one, you have to think about the scribe who was transcribing it. The answer is a quill or a pin. It begins, I saw four things journeying together. That's two fingers and a thumb and the quill. Dark were their tracks. The path was very black. So those are the words or markings. They flew through the air like birds and dove under the wave. So they scribbled on parchment and then dipped into the ink well for more ink. Here's another riddle from the Exeter book, and if you've paid attention throughout this episode, you shouldn't have any problem coming up with the answer. A moth ate words that seemed strange when I heard of this wonder that a worm swallowed some man's speech. A thief in the dark swallowed a glorious speech with its strong foundation. The thief was not at all wiser when he had swallowed the words. In case you haven't figured it out, the answer is a bookworm. And that illustrates the Anglo Saxon fascination with books and those who devour books, whether they be bugs or moths or worms or people. Along the same lines, here's another riddle. This one is longer. And again, this particular translation was prepared by Paul F. An Enemy came and took away my life and my strength also in the word. Then wetted me, dipped me in water, then took me thence, placed me in the sun, where I lost all my hair. The knife's edge cut me, its impurities ground away. Fingers folded me, and the bird's delight with swift drops made frequent traces over the brown surface. Swallowed the tree dye with a measure of liquid. Traveling across me left a dark track. A good man covered me with protecting boards, which stretched skin over me, adorned me with gold. Then the work of smiths decorated me with strands of woven wire. Now may the ornaments and the red dye and the precious possessions everywhere honor the guardian of peoples. It were otherwise folly. If the sons of men wish to enjoy me, they will be the safer and surer of victory and the stronger of heart and the happier of mind and the wiser of spirit. They will have more friends, dearer and closer, truer and better, nobler and more devoted, who will increase their honor and wealth with love and favors and kindnesses. Surround them and clasp them close with loving embraces. Ask me my name. I am a help to mortals. My name is a glory and salvation to heroes and myself am holy. Can you answer that one? It's a book, and most agree that it's specifically a Bible. Some have suggested that it was intended to be a reference to the Lindisfarne Bible. What's fascinating about the riddle, though, is the way it describes the bookmaking process. The procurement of vellum is described, the cutting of the leaves, the folding of the pages, the writing of the book, the preparation of the decorated cover. So these particular riddles show a fascination with books and reading. And that isn't the only connection between riddles and reading. In fact, the words riddle and read are cognate. They share the same Germanic root. That root was redan, and it meant to counsel or advise someone. So it had a sense of interpreting and guiding and becoming better informed. One way to become better informed was to be advised by an advisor. But if you were literate, you could become better informed by consulting the written text. And that's the sense that led to the word read. It meant to become better informed by reviewing written text. But some things are difficult to discern even if you read them. They require a lot of interpretation. You have to read between the lines to discern their hidden meaning. And sometimes you might need additional counsel or advice to discern the answer. In English, those things are called riddles, and that's the common connection to the word read. They both involve some sense of discerning the meaning of something either by reading or reading between the lines. As I noted earlier, Latin used the word which gave us enigma. And to a certain extent, the words riddle and enigma are synonymous in modern English. One is native English and one is Latin. And Winston Churchill once made famous use of those synonyms when referencing Russia during World War II. He said, I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. But perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest. Now, that quote has lived on and given birth to an abbreviated version. Today you might hear someone say that something is a riddle wrapped up in an enigma. And that description certainly applies to many of the Exeter Book riddles. Even scholars have a difficult time discerning the meaning of some of those riddles. The very last riddle in the book is actually one of the most difficult to discern. It's subject to many different interpretations. Again, here is a more or less literal translation of the riddle prepared by Paul F. I am a lordly thing known to nobles, and often I rest famous among peoples, the mighty and the lowly. I travel widely and to me first a stranger remains, to my friends the delight of plunderers. If I am to have success in the cities or bright reward. Now wise men exceedingly love my presence. To many I shall declare wisdom There they speak not none the world over. Though now the sons of men who live on the earth eagerly seek the tracks that I make, I sometimes conceal those paths of mine from all mankind. Now, one interesting answer to this riddle is that it refers to the moon. But two of the other possible solutions are more intriguing, especially given the themes of this episode. One other solution is that the riddle refers to a traveling minstrel. After all, a minstrel would be known to nobles, would be famous among peoples, would travel widely, and wise men would love his presence. But the last few lines suggest another possible solution. What would leave tracks that are sought by men or people? And what would conceal its path from all mankind? Some scholars suggest that the answer is in fact a riddle. So that this is in fact a riddle of about a riddle, and that's why it's placed at the very end of the collection. So maybe this really is a riddle wrapped up in an enigma. So with that, I'm going to conclude this episode about riddles, enigmas, book collectors and bookworms. Next time, we may explore a few more of those Anglo Saxon riddles before we move on to the end of this golden age of Old English literature. The king who had ruled during this period of peace and prosperity was King Edgar. His coronation was actually delayed to the end of his reign and I didn't have time to get to that coronation this time. So next time we'll explore why that late coronation was so significant and then we'll see what happened after he died. And to give away part of the story, a lot of bad stuff started to happen to the young English English nation. The Vikings were about to return. Edgar's son and successor was about to be murdered. And the crown was about to pass to the youngest son, a son who was so ill prepared for the job that he acquired his own historical nickname, Athelred the Unready. And Athelred's abbreviated rule will provide the first substantial links between England and Normandy. So we'll start to set the stage for the Norman Conquest with the events of the next episode. So all of that and more in the next episode of the podcast. Until then, thanks for listening to the History of English podcast.