Write a note on Old English heroic poetry || Q.Give an account of the Old English heroic poetry, mentioning all the major and minor war-poems.

Write a note on Old English heroic poetry.

Q.Give an account of the Old English heroic poetry, mentioning all the major and minor war-poems.

Ans:The Germanic forefathers of the Saxons, described by Tacitus lived in caves or primitive huts, and lived on hunting and robbing of more civilised neighbours. The fierce love for war and bloodshed in a barbaric manner, as recorded in Icelandic Edda and Scandinavian Nibelungenlied, is much softened due to infusion of Christian spirit in the edited manuscripts of Anglo-Saxon war-poems like Beowulf, The Battle of Maldon and The Battle of Brunanburh. But battles and individual powers and heroic codes are always enthusiastically glorified.

The epical Beowulf is definitely the greatest specimen of heroic poetry in Old English. The poem relates the deeds of Beowulf, a valiant warrior of the people of Geata in Southern Sweden, who sails from his homeland in Sweden to help Hrothgar, the king of the Danes, whose royal hall, Heorot, is being regularly ravaged by a murderous cannibalistic human monster, named Grendel. This fiend is overcome by Beowulf in a memorable encounter, but he escapes only to die from his grievous injuries in his mother's cave-dwelling under the waters of a lake. Grendel's mother carries on the depredations. Beowulf pursues her to her den. In another fierce fight Beowulf kills this monster. Then he returns home to Sweden, and is proclaimed king of the Geats. After a glorious reign of 50 years, Beowulf has to wage another heroic fight against a fire-breathing dragon that had been devastating the countrysides. He is successful in killing this menace and assuring happiness to his countrymen. But in the process he receives a fatal wound. He meets the worthy end of a genuine hero. The poem ends with the burning of Beowulf's body and the treasures he recovers from the dragon's cave, on a funeral pyre on a head-land. Amid the lamentations of his people, a monumental barrow is built to perpetuate his memory. There is a deep sense of Wyrd or Fate ruling over human life. Beowulf's character is built on large simple lines: his passion for glory, his honest boasting as a warrior, his role of a disinterested crusader and purger of society. Some of the episodes of the poem are more tragic and sinister than the main story, and take us back into a wicked, old, unforgiving world where blood will have blood, and where men die in ways less satisfactory than end.

Finnsburh and Waldere are two epic fragments. The first, consisting of only 51 lines is conjectured to have been composed about AD 700. Finn, the son of a Frisian King, treacherously attacked the Danes he himself had hosted.

Later they retaliated by killing him. Dealing with several deadly fights,abduction, and short-lived truces, the story of Finnsburh is obscure in many respects. Waldere is found in two fragments of 31 lines each. In the first part a woman called Hildegund is found encouraging Waldere to fight with his pursuers. Waldere, Hildegund and Hagen were teamed together, but Hagenfled to the camp of Guthhere. In the final battle, Guthhere lost a leg, Waldere his right hand, and Hagen an eye.

A taste of the traditional heroic poetry of the Anglo-Saxons is found in the two poems, The Battle of Brunanburh and The Battle of Maldon. The first (of 73 lines) occurs in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles. It allows us a glimpse into the primitive barbaric mood of the people. The poet celebrates a victory won by King Aethelstan and his brother, Prince Edmund. They won a battle of life- long fame with the edge of the sword in the strife near Brunanburh, against Constantine, King of Scotland allied with Norwegians in the year AD 937. With patriotic pride the poet sings this victory over the combined forces of the Scots and the Danes. The field grew slippery with the blood of men before the sun sank to rest. Five young kings as well as seven earls of Anlaf, who 'sought this land in the bosom of the ship over the surging waves,' lay low on the field of the battle.

The fragmentary The Battle of Maldon (325 lines) in one of the most important Anglo-Saxon poems, because it deals with historical persons. A late example of the heroic tradition, it was written near the end of the 10th century, and was preserved in MS Cotton Otho A XII.

The battle took place in the late summer of 991 between Norwegian invaders under Tryggvason, and the Anglo-Saxon defenders under Earl Byrhtnoth of Essex. The scene was near the mouth of the River Blackwater, then known as the Panta. The poem has a stirring dramatic language and noble elegiac style of a characteristic Germanic epic. It is in fact a small scale counterpart of Beowulf. The language, full as it is of moral exhortation, is direct and forceful, and the patriotic motivation is extremely moving. The poet must have had eye-witness account of the battle, but did not himself take part in it.

The ethics of the 'comitatus' principle in The Battle of Maldon have been criticised by several ('comitatus' means the bond of loyalty between an aristocratic leader and his men). In lines 89 to 95, the poet criticises Byrthnoth's unwisdom in allowing the Vikings to cross the causeway and engage in battle, thereby nagating the advantage of the situation he enjoyed. The poem may be interpreted as an indictment by implication of the policy of buying off the Danes, and also against Englishmen who lacked loyalty to their leaders in those times.