METRICAL VERSION OF THE FOREGOING

POEM.

The mightiest of alle manne,
Was the gude kinge Athelstan.
Alle his knytis to hir medis
Weren riche and ryal wedis.
Edmond his brother, was a knyt
Comelich, brave, and fair to syht.
At Brunenbruc in stour they faught;
Fiercer fray was never wraught.
Maille was split, and helmis roven,
The wall of shieldis down they cloven:
The Thanis which cold with Edmond fare

To meet the fomen well were yare.
For it was comen to hem of kynde

Hir londis and tresoúrs to fend.

The kempis, whych was of Irlond, On ilka daie, on ilka strond,

Weted with blude, and wounded, fell

Rapely smatin with the stell.

Grislich on the grund they groned;

Aboven, alle the hyls resounéd.

What for laboúr, and what for hete,
The kempis swate til they wer wete.
From morrow til the close of day,
Was the tyme of that journée.

Monie mon from Dacie sprong The deth tholid, I underfong. The Scottis fell in that bataille, Whyche wer forwerid of travaille. The West Saxonis wer ware, When their foen away wold fare; As they fled they did hem sewe Wyth ghazand swerdis, that wel couth hew. The cokins they n'olden staie,

For thir douten of that fraye.

The Mercians fought, I understond;

There was gamen of the hond.

Alle that with Anlaff hir way nom,

Over the seas in the shippes wome,

And the five sonnes of the kynge,
Fel mid dint of swerd-fightinge.
His seven erlis died alswo;

Many Scottes wer killed tho.

The Normannes, for their migty bost,
Went hame with a lytyl host.

The kynge and frode syked sore

For hir kempis whyche wer forlore.
The kynge and frode to schyppe gan flee,
Wyth mickel haste, but hir meguie.
Constantine gude, and Anlaff,

Lytyl bost hadde of the laif.
Maie he nat glosen, ne saie
But he was right wel appaie.
In Dacie of that gaming
Monie wemen hir hondis wring.
The Normannes passed that rivere,
Mid hevy hart, and sory chere.
The brothers to Wessex yode;
Leving the crowen, and the tode,
Hawkes, doggis, and wolves tho;
Egles, and monie other mo,
With the ded men for their mede
On hir corses for to fede.

Sen the Saxonis first come In schippes over the sea-fome, Of the yeres that ben forgone, Greater bataile was never none.

CHAPTER II.

The same Subject continued.-Account of
Norman Poets in England.

Ir has been seen, that although the great mass of our language is derived from our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, the mechanism and structure of our poetry is to be referred to some other source; and it is generally supposed that all the modes of versification now in use, were borrowed from the French, who appear to have adopted them, together with the ornament of rhyme, in imitation of the Latin monkish versifiers. To whom we should ascribe the original invention of this ornament, is not quite so certain. Fauchet claims it for his countrymen ; but as he founds their pretensions on the Frankish translation of the scriptures by Otfrid, a monk of Weissembourg, who wrote about the year 870, succeeding antiquaries have opposed to this authority the superior antiquity of the Latin specimens, some of which are to be referred to the sixth century. This date is certainly anterior even to any that can be assigned to the Runic ode,

in

called Elgill's Ransom, which has been translated by Dr. Percy in his specimens of Runic poetry, and affords, perhaps, the earliest example of rhyme any modern language. But on the other hand it may be fairly argued, that as our stock of northern literature is very incomplete, we cannot draw any positive conclusion from the deficiency of specimens among the works of the Scalds :—that rhyme, which certainly is not congenial to Latin verse, may have been a natural appendage to a system of versification less strictly metrical; and that, as the date of its original introduction into Latin can only be conjectured, it is not more absurd to ascribe it to some northern proselyte, desirous of bestowing on the learned language an ornament which he admired in his own, than to suppose it was invented by the Italian monks, as a succedaneum for that regular prosody, the harmony of which had been lost in the corrupt pronunciation of the barbarous conquerors of Italy.

But be this as it may, the Norman poets were certainly our immediate masters: to them we owe the forms of our verse; and translations from them were among the earliest compositions of the English language; so that some notice of them is necessary to connect the links of our literary history.

Indeed it has not been sufficiently considered