Early English Hero Tales

best order. This is a simple and good definition of poetry. Yet there is even more than best words in their best order in the room beyond the door over which is

dmon was at first a servant in this monastery, but when the[Pg 31] power to sing came to him it lifted not only C?dmon himself to something better than he had been; it has also lifted men and women ever since to better ways of thinking and feeling and to greater happiness than they would ever have had without English poetry. Bede, who wrote about C?dmon, said, "H

ich C?dmon resung for the world is the stor

ich he had just leaped. He dug his toe in the sand a

as tossing his catch of fish to the sand; "

he Hall a man sang to the harp that Grendel was a moor-treader. Also he told of t

n of elves. There, he knew, for everybody said so, lived elf and giant and monster. There in the moor pools lived the water-elves. Across its flame of

n worshiped before the gentle religion of Christ was brought to England. There lived the Wolf-Man, too, so friendless and wild that he became the comrad

is was the gallows on which the village folk hung those who did evil. Finan could see the tree where it stood alone

g

d one raven, "ba-a

ang another r

heir wings and sett

aid, "I will go

h, and saw an immense white cross upright on the cliff's edge

Perhaps you will se

as to prove a night wonderful in its miracle. There was born that night that

the Great Hall. He went along slowly under the apple-trees. He saw a black-haired Welsh woman draw water. Little children not so big as Fina

s were leaving a little cottage which they were building. The road was full of men-swineherds and cowherds, plowboys and wood-choppers from the forest

, torches and firelight would soon begin to flame, and mead would

sharp stabbed Finan

from one of the household yards, flapping thei

armed, and unless they could find them there would be no more

ng to a low apple bough just above his head. They h

to the people who were crying out for their

g

and looked up at the

said, an

swarming bees," calle

m the roadside and flung them over the bees, and sang a

ghed, and the

a on the hive, and if ye would have them safe lay on the

etly, for C?dmon was attached to the Abbess Hild's monastery and had a right to go in and eat

then, and the word window meant literally "wind-eye

rp passed from hand to hand, s

the bees, he shook his head sorrowfully, saying that he

g

ed behind C?dmon. He wished to ask him why he could not sing. This he did not dare to do, either, but he went on to the fold where the cowherd had gone

dancing with the sheen of millions and millions of elves, and the sea down below the cliff

tood beside the sleeping co

ything. Therefore went I away from the mirt

s stranger spoke. "

p-bound voice of C?dmon

e stranger, "the begi

his song had all the [Pg 37]beat of sea waves in it-sometimes little waves that lapped gently on the shore and bore i

, and he remembered all that he had sung and the vision that had come to him. And he was glad. He

o the monastery, and she ordered that everything be done for him. And C?dmon became the first and one of the greatest of English poets. And even as Christ was born in a manger in Bethlehem, English poet

understand the speech we use among one another. But the English of fifteen or sixteen hundred years a

ode, thisse

Palace, some of whose doors are more than twelve hundred years old, is the same English, just as the oak-tree two hundred years old is the same

ay as the language we speak seems different from the language they

eam and o'er the mead; Gave thee clothing of delight, Softest clothing, woolly, bright; Gave thee such

g

first line rhymes with "thee" of the second, that "feed" and "mead" rhyme, and that "delight" and "bright" rhyme just as "voice" and "rejoice." Old English poetry was different, too, in that it did not count the syllables in a line of poetry. If you drum on the table and count the syllables of the

ere not counted and there was no rhyme, it had accents just as our modern poe

nters young wi

at is a big word, but it is not nearly so difficult as it seems, for it means simply the repetition of the same letter at the beginning of two or more words. Here it is, the letter "w"