Myth of the Anglo-Saxon Oral Poet, The

Western Folklore, Winter 2003/Spring 2003 by Niles, John D

The search for the Anglo-Saxon oral poet may seem to have hit a hard place when it encounters AEthelweard. That is perhaps one reason why modern bard-hunters have directed their chief attentions toward the formative years of the Anglo-Saxon period, despite the specters of the imagination that have haunted such quests into the mistier regions of the past. All the same, the relatively cosmopolitan period of the late tenth century remains a good hunting ground for anyone who seeks for evidence of the workings of oral tradition in Anglo-Saxon England and, in particular, who seeks to trace the idea of oral tradition in Anglo-Saxon England, for the late tenth century is the period when almost all extant Old English poetry was written down. It is also the time when Latin learning mixed easily with English lore in the form of bilingual charters, multilingual books of charms, AElfric's bilingual grammar and glossary, Latin books with continuous interlinear Old English glosses, and many similar examples of bilingual competence. Granted that the writings of a chronicler like AEthelweard may have little to do with the practice of oral poetry, it is nevertheless true that those writings may cast light on the bicultural conditions where the cult of the Anglo-Saxon bard could thrive in textual form. Whether or not that cult was thriving in the halls of kings and the refectories of monasteries, as it may once have done,38 at least it could bask in a warm afterlife on the writing desks of people who, while trained in Latin letters, were also attuned to the workings of oral tradition in their native English tongue.

DEOR, LEOFRIC, AND THE EXETER BOOK

So far I have wished to focus attention chiefly on two Latin histories in prose, those written by Bede and AEthelweard. I would like now to take a more sustained look at Old English verse, and in particular at some poetry that has an obvious relevance to the search for the Anglo-Saxon oral poet for the reason that it contains vivid portraits of the bard.

The parts of Exeter Cathedral Library MS 3501 that for simplicity's sake are called "The Exeter Book" were written out by a single scribe working in the south of England about the year 975. This wonderful florilegium therefore comes from AEthelweard's home turf, and it was written out at virtually the same time that yEthelweard was writing his Chronicon, which ends with the death of King Edgar in 975. Like AEthelweard, the scribe of the Exeter Book (which is almost wholly written out in the vernacular) was equally competent in both Latin and English letters, for two manuscripts written out in Latin have been ascribed to that same hand.39 Furthermore, the Exeter Book is obviously a learned compilation, though some parts of it may be based on popular sources. The book is of particular interest for the way it expresses the themes of Latin devotional literature in English poetic idiom. This is a statement that might wrongly be taken in a condescending way, for it is natural to assume that these English texts were mere derivative copies of Latin prototypes. On the contrary, the English contents of this book include some of the most sophisticated and original poems of the early Middle Ages. A comparison of the Exeter Book Riddles with the riddle collections of Aldhelm and Symphosius, for example, will convince any reader that these vernacular texts are not only longer than their Latin counterparts, as a rule; they are also often both more complex and more arresting from a literary perspective. We do not know who commissioned the Exeter Book or authored its parts, but apparently its contents were culled from various exemplars and were arranged according to a plan that was modified as the volume grew in length. It is one of about fifty-five volumes, chiefly written in Latin, that the prominent churchman Leofric (d. 1072) willed to the library of the new cathedral that he had established at Exeter in 1050 on the site of a former Benedictine monastery.