? The bright wine-cup alas the burnie-warriors! The princes pride! How passes the timethe shadow of night as it never had been! The trusty troop now towers full highwall adorned with wondrous dragonsstrength of the spear has destroyed the earls, greedy weapons, Wyrd inexorable; the storms strike down on the stony cliffs, snows descend and seize all the earththe dread of winter.
4 . Early Christian Literature. Bible story in Old English verse. Caedmon, Bede, Cynewulf. King Alfred
The ancient Celts or Britons believed in a form of nature worship which assigned deities, both good and evil, to places and things. Their most important men, called Druids, were both priests and statesmen. To be a member of this class long and patient preparations were necessary. Great quantities of verse, containing religions and political matter and legends, had to be memorized. Some elements of this old faith are reflected in later English Literature. The oak and mistletoe were sacred elements in their worship. The invaders of Britain who came from Northern Germany and drove out the Celts brought with them the old Teutonic faiths., Or Woden was their chief god; his name is preserved in Wednesday raquo ;. Another powerful deity was Thor, god or rain and thunder, whose name remains in Thursday raquo ;. Other Teutonic deities have given names to Thursday raquo ;, Friday and possibly Saturday raquo ;. Some traces of the old faith are found in such customs as Harvest-home (Thanksgiving), May-day (Easter) an the like.the year 597 a Roman priest named Augustine came to northern England with a group of missionaries and began the work of converting the English to Christianity. Canterbury became the center of this movement which gradually spread throughout the land. Thirty years later Paulinus came to northern English, and a similar center of Christian teaching was founded at York. The story of the conversion of Edwin, King of Northumbria, is told by Bede, a great historian of the early English church. Paulinus called upon King Edwin to become a Christian. A great assembly was called and an old counselor made a speech in favour of the new faith that could teach the people of whence and whither they were going, explain more of the unknown. This new faith seemed deserving to be followed. England became Christian. With the coming of priests from Rome, who were scholars as well as missionaries, a great impulse was given to learning and to the writing of poetry and prose based on the new faith., One of the most learned of these early scholars and teachers, tells of the daily life at York. Grammar and rhetoric were taught, the elements of law and some classical literature. The English churchmen collected and copied manuscripts, founded libraries, taught young men. Travelers and merchants presented costly manuscripts brought from Europe to the monastic libraries; by the end of the eighth century the library at York was nearly equal to that at Rome. King Alfred was a translator, and took deep interest in promoting learning. Bede, one of the greatest of the scholars of his time, refused high office because he couldn t bear to leave his beloved manuscripts. For thirty years he studied the Bible, wrote treatises, perfected himself in learning. At the end of his great History of the English Church he records the scholar s prayer: And I pray Thee, good Jesus, that, as thou hast mercifully granted to me sweetly to drink in the words of Thy Knowledge, so Thou mayest grant me of Thy goodness some day to come to Thee , Fountain of all Wisdom, and to appear continually before Thy face raquo ;. Bede lived in the 8 th century, and his history of the church is as valuable as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for the infatuation it gives of these early times. The venerable Bede was educated at the monasteries and lived in the monastery at Jarrow devoting his life to teaching theology, Hebrew, Greek and Latin. His writings are characterized by a concise style and are full of piety. The most important of them are De Natura Rerum (a work on physical science), Historia Abbatum (a history of the abbots). He was particularly noted for Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation written in Latin. About a century later it was translated into Anglo-Saxon by King Alfred the Great. In Bede's Chronicle many stories about poets and learned men among them there is an account of the poet Caedmon, who had been a servitor at the monastery at Whitby in Northumbria. He had no learning and his evenings were spent with companions who used to sing to accompaniment of the harp. One night he went to sleep in the cattle-shed. In a vision an angel came to him and said, Caedman, sing something raquo ;. The angel told him that he should sing the beginnings of created things raquo ;. In his dream the words of the famous hymn...
