Caedmon's Dream, Part I

Periodically, I rediscover an interest in Anglo-Saxon, or "Old English". This is yet another example of a road not taken, a blue remembered hill glimmering in the distance where, almost certainly, I shall now never live. Nevertheless, I still find myself from time to time idly browsing through the travel brochures.

Anglo-Saxon is the bane of those who study English at the older universities. Back in the days when English was first established as a subject of study at university level, there was much sneering at this new, soft subject. It would be little more than the swapping of subjective opinions about leisure reading, they said, mere "higher gossip". To counter these jibes, the curriculum was stiffened with a hefty dose of philology and, above all, the compulsory study of Anglo-Saxon. There, you mocking classicists, how's about that for a "soft" option, then?

From the series "Ring Hoard" *

Now, let us be clear. Old English is not the language of the Tudors, a familiar tongue quaintly bespattered with "thee", "thou", and "wherefore". Nor is it even the language of Chaucer, a vaguely familiar face seen in a distorting mirror. It is the name given to the dialects spoken by the Germanic tribes that invaded and settled the southern parts of these islands after the Roman legions caught the last bus home in the 5th century. It's about as different from modern English as a pig is from a sausage -- it takes some explanation to see how one has become the other.

Most students of English grit their teeth and get their Anglo-Saxon over with. It's a rite of academic passage equivalent to those Teutonic duelling scars. I think it would be fair to say most find the subject difficult, dreary, and demoralising. Anglo-Saxon is an inflected language, and tables of declensions and conjugations must be learned. As far as I know, no audio-visual immersive learning package has been developed for the language, and this is a bit of a shock for students brought up in modern classrooms. There are no interactive sessions on the PC, no friendly characters with instructive adventures to follow ("Lesson 6: The Alderman's wife has a wart charmed").

There is also, unfortunately, no Saxon Ovid to discover. Very few Old English texts have survived, and those that have are either Eeyore-ish moaning about the weather and the unfair fixity of fate, or strange texts re-upholstered with Christianized stretch covers, through which pagan patterns still peep (rather like churches in South America where ancient local gods are worshipped under the names of Catholic saints). It can be a glum prospect, a bleak upland barrier to the lush valleys of Keats and Shakespeare beyond.

I wish I could say "good teaching helps", but it usually doesn't. Scholars of Anglo-Saxon tend to be specialists, and -- like all enthusiasts -- they can be engaging personally, but tend to ignore the fact that the perceived attractions of their subject are often the very same elements that others find less than compelling. Listening to a recorded reading of Beowulf -- which is rather like listening to someone trying to read the weather forecast with a mouthful of salty gravel -- is not the seductive experience it is imagined by some to be.

Unless, that is, you have some predisposition. As did the young W.H. Auden when he heard J.R.R. Tolkien recite a passage of Beowulf: "I was spellbound. This poetry, I knew, was going to be my dish". It also helps if you have studied German, and already coped with the grammar of Latin.

If you can imagine yourself wielding a spear in the battle line at Maldon, or scratching away at manuscripts in a monastery at Whitby, or if you can respond to the atavistic allure of a tribal time, embodied in the gorgeous, gaudy treasures of Sutton Hoo, then you may find much of interest in the pages of Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Reader and the volumes of the Early English Text Society, where the footnotes swarm over the text like ivy over ruins.

From the series "Ring Hoard"

So, I think of Anglo-Saxon as an interesting stopover in the Great Three Year Trek through Eng Lit. A place where I thought, "I could live here, if I had to. Perhaps, some day, who knows, maybe I'll come back". But then our little company crested the brow of that bleak hill, and we were gazing upon the fertile fields below, where sonnets grazed and great novels sparkled in the sun.

Next: Bede and the venerable sparrow.


* The images in the "Ring Hoard" series are my only substantial venture, so far, into digital imaging. These images are "lens-based", but clearly the result of much spell-casting in PhotoShop.