Contents 
Front Matter In the Listening Time Cattle Raid of Cooley Sorrows of Story-Telling A Literary Lie Story of Fingal Old Welsh Stories The Story of Arthur The Reading Time "The Passing of Arthur" Adventures of an English Book The Story of Beowulf The Father of English Song How Caedmon Sang The Father of English History Alfred the Great When English Slept Havelok the Dane About some Song Stories "Piers the Ploughman" "Piers the Ploughman" (cont) The Bible came to the People Chaucer—Bread and Milk Chaucer—"Canterbury Tales" Chaucer—Tabard Inn First English Guide-book Barbour—"The Bruce" "The Bruce" (cont) A Poet King The Death of the Poet King Dunbar—Thistle and Rose Sign of the Red Pale Beginning of the Theater How the Shepherd Watched The Story of Everyman How a Poet Comforted a Girl The Renaissance Land of Nowhere Death of Sir Thomas More The Sonnet Came to England Beginning of Blank Verse "Shepherd's Calendar" Spenser—"Faery Queen" Spenser—His Last Days About the First Theaters Shakespeare—The Boy Shakespeare—The Man "Merchant of Venice" Jonson—"Man in his Humor" Jonson—"The Sad Shepherd" Raleigh—"The Revenge" Raleigh—"History" Bacon—New Ways of Wisdom Bacon—The Happy Island About some Lyric Poets Herbert—Parson Poet Herrick and Marvell Milton—Sight and Growth Milton—Darkness and Death Bunyan—Pilgrim's Progress" Dryden—New Poetry Defoe—First Newspapers Defoe—"Robinson Crusoe" Swift—"Journal to Stella" Swift—"Gullivers Travels" Addison—"The Spectator" Steele—Soldier Author Pope—"Rape of the Lock" Johnson—Days of Struggle Johnson—End of Journey Goldsmith—The Vagabond "Vicar of Wakefield" Burns—The Ploughman Poet Cowper—"The Task" Wordsworth—Poet of Nature Wordsworth and Coleridge Coleridge and Southey Scott—Awakening of Romance Scott—"Wizard of the North" Byron—"Childe Harold" Shelley—Poet of Love Keats—Poet of Beauty Carlyle—Sage of Chelsea Thackeray—The Cynic? Dickens—Smiles and Tears Tennyson—Poet of Friendship

English Literature for Boys and Girls - H. E. Marshall




When English Slept


"William came o'er the sea,

With bloody sword came he.

Cold heart and bloody sword hand

Now rule the English land."

The Heimskringla


William the Norman ruled England. Norman knights and nobles filled all the posts of honor at court, all the great places in the land. Norman bishops and abbots ruled in church and monastery. The Norman tongue was alone the speech in court and hall, Latin alone was the speech of the learned. Only among the lowly, the unlearned, and the poor was English heard.

It seemed as if the English tongue was doomed to vanish before the conquering Norman, even as the ancient British tongue had vanished before the conquering English. And, in truth, for two hundred years it might have been thought that English prose was dead, "put to sleep by the sword." But it was not so. It slept, indeed, but to awake again. For England conquered the conqueror. And when English Literature awoke once more, it was the richer through the gifts which the Norman had brought.

One thing the Normans had brought was a liking for history, and soon there sprang up a whole race of chroniclers. They, like Bede, were monks and priests. They lived in monasteries, and wrote in Latin. One after another they wrote, and when one laid down his pen, another took it up. Some of these chroniclers were mere painstaking men who noted facts and dates with care. But others were true writers of literature, who told their tales in vivid, stirring words, so that they make these times live again for us. The names of some of the best of these chroniclers are Eadmer, Orderic Vitalis, and William of Malmesbury.

By degrees these Norman and Anglo-Norman monks became filled with the spirit of England. They wrote of England as of their home, they were proud to call themselves English, and they began to desire that England should stand high among the nations. It is, you remember, from one of these chroniclers, Geoffrey of Monmout (see chapter vi.), that we date the reawakening of story-telling in England.

As a writer of history Geoffrey is bad. Another chronicler says of him, "Therefore as in all things we trust Bede, whose wisdom and truth are not to be doubted: so that fabler with his fables shall be forthwith spat out by us all."

But if Geoffrey was a bad writer of history, he was good as "a fabler," and, as we have seen in chapter vii., it was to his book that we owe the first long poem written in English after the Conquest.

The Norman came with sword in hand, bringing in his train the Latin-writing chroniclers. But he did not bring these alone. He brought minstrels also. Besides the quiet monks who sat in their little cells, or in the pleasant cloisters, writing the history of the times, there were the light-hearted minstrels who roamed the land with harp and song.

The man who struck the first blow at Hastings was a minstrel who, as he rode against the English, sang. And the song he sang was of Roland, the great champion of Charlemagne. The Roland story is to France what the Arthur story is to us. And it shows, perhaps, the strength of English patriotic spirit that that story never took hold of English minds. Some few tales there are told of Roland in English, but they are few indeed, in comparison with the many that are told of Arthur.

The Norman, however, who did not readily invent new tales, was very good at taking and making his own the tales of others. So, even as he conquered England by the sword, he conquered our literature too. For the stories of Arthur were told in French before they came back to us in English. It was the same with other tales, and many of our old stories have come down to us, not through their English originals, but through the French. For the years after the Conquest are the poorest in English Literature.

From the Conquest until Layamon wrote his Brut, there was no English literature worthy of the name. Had we not already spoken of Layamon out of true order in following the story of Arthur, it is here that we should speak of him and of his book, The Brut. So, perhaps, it would be well to go back and read chapter vii., and then we must go on to the Metrical Romances.

The three hundred years from 1200 to 1500 were the years of the Metrical Romances. Metrical means written in verse. Romance meant at first the languages made from the Latin tongue, such as French or Spanish. After a time the word Romance was used to mean a story told in any Romance language. But now we use it to mean any story of strange and wonderful adventures, especially when the most thrilling adventures happen to the hero and heroine.

The Norman minstrels, then, took English tales and made them into romances. But when the English began once more to write, they turned these romances back again into English. We still call them romances, although they are now written in English.

Some of these tales came to us, no doubt, from the Danes. They were brought from over the sea by the fierce Northmen, who were, after all, akin to the Normans. The Normans made them into French stories, and the English turned them back into English.

Perhaps one of the most interesting of these Metrical Romances is that of Havelok the Dane.

The poem begins with a few lines which seem meant to call the people together to listen:—

"Hearken to me, good men,

Wives, maidens, and all men,

To a tale that I will tell to

Who so will hear and list thereto."

We can imagine the minstrel as he stands in some market-place, or in some firelit hall, touching his harp lightly as he sings the words. With a quick movement he throws back his long green cloak, and shows his gay dress beneath. Upon his head he wears a jaunty cap, and his hair is long and curled. He sings the opening lines perhaps more than once, in order to gather the people round him. Then, when the eager crowd sit or stand about him, he begins his lay. It is most probably in a market-place that the minstrel stands and sings. For Havelok the Dane was written for the people and not for the great folk, who still spoke only French.

"There was a king in byegone days

That in his time wrought good laws,

He did them make and full well hold,

Him loved young, him loved old,

Earl and baron, strong man and thane,

Knight, bondman and swain,

Widows, maidens, priests and clerks

And all for his good works."

If you will compare this poetry with that of Layamon, you will see that there is something in it quite different from his. This no longer rests, as that does, upon accent and alliteration, but upon rhyme. The English, too, in which it is written, is much more like the English of to-day. For Havelok was written perhaps a hundred years after Layamon's Brut. These are the first lines as they are in the MS.:—

"Herknet to me gode men

Wiues maydnes and alle men

Of a tale pat ich you wile telle

Wo so it wile here and yerto dwelle."

That, you see, except for curious spelling, is not very unlike our English of to-day, although it is fair to tell you that all the lines are not so easy to understand as these are.