Читать книгу The Pageant of English Literature - Sir Edward Parrott - Страница 17
ОглавлениеCÆDMON.
“The first English poet in our England.”
A century and a half have taken wing since we heard the scop singing of Beowulf in the original homeland of the English. Now their conquest of all South Britain, save the rocky fastnesses of Wales, is complete. They have exchanged the swamps and forests of the Baltic shore for the broad meadows and fine hill pastures of Britain. From hard grinding poverty they have emerged into the rich plenty of flocks and herds, orchards, vineyards, and wheatfields. The land has been parcelled out amongst the tribes, and all over the country townships and timbered houses, byres and barns appear. Britain has become England.
Ease and plenty have dulled the edge of old English ferocity, and minds always susceptible to the serious and the sublime are ready for the new and wondrous influence which Christianity wields. Scottish missionaries from Iona precede Italian missionaries from Rome, and preach the mild gospel of mercy and peace with consuming zeal and untiring energy. In many a Northumbrian village the cross becomes the symbol of a brighter and more blessed hope.
At length a great meeting of nobles is held to discuss the new faith. The high priest of Northumbria rises in their midst, and, declaring the powerlessness of the old gods, proceeds, lance in hand, to demolish their temple. Then an old chief gives his testimony in words of eloquent melancholy that betray a yearning for the hope beyond:—
“You remember, it may be, O King, that which sometimes happens in winter when you are seated at table with your earls and thanes. Your fire is lighted, and your hall warmed, and without it is rain and snow and storm. Then comes a swallow flying across the hall; he enters by one door and leaves by another. The brief moment while he is within is pleasant to him; he feels not rain nor cheerless winter weather; but the moment is brief, the bird flies away in the twinkling of an eye, and he passes from winter to winter. Such, methinks, is the life of man on earth, compared with the uncertain time beyond. It appears for a while; but what is the time which comes after—the time which was before? We know not. If, then, this new doctrine may teach us somewhat of greater certainty it were well that we should regard it.”
Regard it they do; the king and his nobles are converted; wooden churches arise; religious houses are established, and amongst the monks who dwell therein literary culture finds its earliest home in England.
A noble figure now graces our pageant. Tall and stately, robed as an abbess, Hilda of Whitby passes by. Her royal lineage appears in her fearless gaze and her noble features. She is beloved and revered, a queen among women, and a model of Christian wisdom and grace. She presides over her monastery at Streoneshalh with lofty benignity and large discretion. She teaches the brothers and sisters “to practise thoroughly all virtues, but especially peace and love, so that, after the pattern of the primitive Church, no one there was rich and no one was poor, but all had all things in common, for nothing seemed to be the property of any individual.”
Her monastery becomes the most celebrated house of religion in all England, and so marked is her practical wisdom that not only ordinary folk resort to her in their necessities, but even kings and princes and bishops seek counsel of her and find it. When she is gathered to her fathers, legend will long linger about her name. Centuries will pass before Northumbrian peasants forget to relate that when she descended from her wind-swept promontory laden with creature comforts for the sick and distressed, the very sea-birds flocked around her and bowed themselves at her feet.
Why does Hilda of Whitby find a place in our pageant? She it was who discovered, drew from obscurity, and fostered the genius of the first English Christian poet whose work has come down to us. Let the story be told in the oft-quoted words of Bede, the great historian of the early English Church:—
“In the monastery of the abbess Hilda at Streoneshalh there was a certain brother specially distinguished and honoured by divine grace, for he was wont to make songs such as tended to religion and piety. Whatsoever he had learned from scholars concerning the Scriptures he forthwith decked out in poetic language with the greatest sweetness and fervour.... Many others also in England imitated him in the composition of religious songs. He had not, indeed, been taught of men, or through men, to practise the art of song, but he had received divine aid, and his power of song was the gift of God. Wherefore he could never compose any idle or false song, but only those which pertained to religion and which his pious tongue might fitly sing.
“The man had lived in the world till the time that he was of advanced age, and had never learnt any poetry. And as he was often at a feast when it was arranged, to promote mirth, that they should all in turn sing to the harp, whenever he saw the harp come near him, he arose out of shame from the feast and went home to his house. Having done so on one occasion, he left the house of entertainment and went to the stables, the charge of the horses having been committed to him for that night.
“When, in due time, he stretched his limbs on the bed there and fell asleep, there stood by him in a dream a man, who saluted him and greeted him, calling on him by name: 'Cædmon, sing me something.' Then he answered and said, 'I cannot sing anything, and therefore I came out from this entertainment and retired here, as I know not how to sing.' Again he who spoke to him said, 'Yet you could sing.' Then said Cædmon, 'What shall I sing?' He said, 'Sing to me the beginning of all things.' On receiving this answer, Cædmon at once began to sing in praise of God the Creator verses and words which he had never heard.”
Then the historian goes on to tell that when Cædmon awoke he remembered the verses which he had sung in his dream, and so wonderful did the circumstance appear to him that he opened his heart to the steward of the household, who led him to Hilda and told her the whole story. She called the brothers together, and they listened in rapt amazement to the magical verses which flowed from Cædmon's lips. They cried out that God had touched the lips of this poor ignorant man and had given him the divine gift of song. Hilda then urged him to abandon his worldly calling and become a monk. He did so; the brothers read the Scriptures to him, and
“all that he could learn by listening he pondered in his heart, and, ruminating like some clean beast, he turned it into the sweetest of songs. His song and his music were so delightful to hear that even his teachers wrote down the words from his lips and learnt them. He first sang of the earth's creation and the beginning of man and all the story of Genesis, which is the first book of Moses, and afterwards about the departure of the people of Israel from the land of Egypt and their entry into the land of promise; and about many other narratives in the books of the canon of Scripture; and about Christ's incarnation, and His passion, and His ascension into heaven; and about the coming of the Holy Ghost, and the teaching of the apostles; and again about the day of judgment to come, and about the terror of hell to men, and about the kingdom of heaven he composed many a song. And he also composed many others about the divine blessings and judgments.”
Cædmon sang of Eastern saints and sages, Oriental peoples, strange lands, and distant scenes quite unknown to him, and he sang of them all in the Old English way. The spirit of the Beowulf was in all his verse; it had the same metrical form, the same rugged northern vigour and grim, ruthless power. Christ and His apostles became English kings and chiefs, with English habits and modes of life. Southern Christian and Northern pagan commingled in his verses. The learning and literature of the Continent met and coalesced with the speech, ideas, and points of view of an earlier, fiercer, and more fatalistic age. The ancient dreams of the old pagans inspired him as he recounted the beginnings of things; his Satan was the fierce northern warrior of the old minstrelsy; his hell of fire, broad flames, smoke, and darkness was an ancient dream of the sagas. In like manner centuries later did Milton take up the same strain in his Paradise Lost.
One other song-smith of Old English Christian poetry is known to us, but only by name. He is Cynewulf, who is said to be the author of four well-known poems marked as his own by the insertion of his signature in a kind of acrostic written in runes. His Crist, which has been preserved for us in the Exeter Book, is full of spring-like joy at the certainty of the new revelation. His Elene, his masterpiece, tells the story of the discovery of the true cross by Helena, the mother of the Emperor Constantine. Pagan and Christian ideas are strangely blended in this work; the fierce delight of his sires in the pomp and glamour of war, the gleam of jewels and the sight of ships dancing on the waves still inspire the Christian bard. Thus he ends his poem:—
“I am old and ready to depart, having woven word craft and pondered deeply in the darkness of the world. Once I was gay in the hall and received gifts, appled gold and treasures. Yet was I buffeted with care, fettered by sins, beset with sorrows, until the Lord of all might and power bestowed on me grace and revealed to me the mystery of the holy cross. Now know I that the joys of life are fleeting, and that the Judge of all the world is at hand to deal to every man his doom.”
