Published 1880; among ‘Translations’. Knowles requested it, 6 Jan. 1877, for the first number of the Nineteenth Century (see III 23; Lincoln; P. Metcalf, TLS, 23 June 1972; also her James Knowles, 1980, p. 277). T. said: ‘I have more or less availed myself of my son’s [H.T.’s] prose translation of this poem in the Contemporary Review (Nov. 1876).’ T. takes over much from H.T., e.g. ll. 23, 30, ‘the bark’s bosom’ (49), ‘on the fallow flood’ (61), 99, 110; but it is clear that T. also studied the original. Like H.T., he used the text and translation in E. Guest’s History of English Rhythms (1838); the copy at Lincoln has annotations by H.T. In Harold, written and published 1876, T. twice refers to ‘that old song of Brunanburg / Where England conquered’ (V i), and the verse (IV iii) breaks into such a style: ‘Marked how the war-axe swang, / Heard how the war-horn sang, / Marked how the spear-head sprang, / Heard how the shield-wall rang, / Iron on iron clang, / Anvil on hammer bang –.’ The tenth-century Old English poem is one of a group of panegyrics on royalty, using an earlier style both in metre and diction. T.’s is in general a close translation. His metre is unrhymed dactylics and trochaics: ‘In rendering this Old English war-song into modern language and alliterative rhythm I have made free use of the dactylic beat. I suppose that the original was chanted to a slow, swinging recitative’ (Harold, Eversley). T. wrote a few lines of a translation of Beowulf 258–63, including ‘The army’s leader / His wordhoard unlocked …’ H.Nbk 4 (c. 1830–1). T.’s headnote: ‘Constantinus, King of the Scots, after having sworn allegiance to Athelstan, allied himself with the Danes of Ireland under Anlaf, and invading England, was defeated by Athelstan and his brother Edmund with great slaughter at Brunanburh in the year 937.’ T. had a copy of Joseph Bosworth’s Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (J. Hixson and P. Scott, TRB ii, 1976, 197). On T.’s poem as a translation, see M. Alexander, TRB iv (1985).
I
Athelstan King,
Lord among Earls,
Bracelet-bestower and
Baron of Barons,
He with his brother,
Edmund Atheling,
Gaining a lifelong
Glory in battle,
Slew with the sword-edge
There by Brunanburh,
Brake the shield-wall,
Hewed the lindenwood,
Hacked the battleshield,
Sons of Edward with hammered brands.
Theirs was a greatness
Got from their Grandsires –
Theirs that so often in
Strife with their enemies
Struck for their hoards and their hearths and their homes.
III
Bowed the spoiler,
Bent the Scotsman,
Fell the shipcrews
Doomed to the death.
All the field with blood of the fighters
Flowed, from when first the great
Sun-star of morningtide,
Lamp of the Lord God
Lord everlasting,
Glode over earth till the glorious creature
Sank to his setting.
IV
There lay many a man
Marred by the javelin,
Men of the Northland
Shot over shield.
There was the Scotsman
Weary of war.
V
We the West-Saxons,
Long as the daylight
Lasted, in companies
Troubled the track of the host that we hated,
Grimly with swords that were sharp from the grindstone,
Fiercely we hacked at the flyers before us.
Mighty the Mercian,
Hard was his hand-play,
Sparing not any of
Those that with Anlaf,
Warriors over the
Weltering waters
Borne in the bark’s-bosom,
Drew to this island:
Doomed to the death.
VII
Five young kings put asleep by the sword-stroke,
Seven strong Earls of the army of Anlaf
Fell on the war-field, numberless numbers,
Shipmen and Scotsmen.
VIII
Then the Norse leader,
Dire was his need of it,
Few were his following,
Fled to his warship:
Fleeted his vessel to sea with the king in it,
Saving his life on the fallow flood.
IX
Also the crafty one,
Constantinus,
Crept to his North again,
Hoar-headed hero!
X
Slender warrant had
He to be proud of
The welcome of war-knives –
He that was reft of his
Folk and his friends that had
Fallen in conflict,
Leaving his son too
Lost in the carnage,
A youngster in war!
XI
Slender reason had
He to be glad of
The clash of the war-glaive –
Traitor and trickster
And spurner of treaties –
He nor had Anlaf
With armies so broken
A reason for bragging
That they had the better
In perils of battle
On places of slaughter –
The struggle of standards,
The rush of the javelins,
The crash of the charges,
The wielding of weapons –
The play that they played with
The children of Edward.
XII
Then with their nailed prows
Parted the Norsemen, a
Blood-reddened relic of
Javelins over
The jarring breaker, the deep-sea billow,
Shaping their way toward Dyflen again,
Shamed in their souls.
XIII
Also the brethren,
King and Atheling,
Each in his glory,
Went to his own in his own West-Saxonland,
Glad of the war.
Many a carcase they left to be carrion,
Many a livid one, many a sallow-skin –
Left for the white tailed eagle to tear it, and
Left for the horny-nibbed raven to rend it, and
Gave to the garbaging war-hawk to gorge it, and
That gray beast, the wolf of the weald.
XV
Never had huger
Slaughter of heroes
Slain by the sword-edge –
Such as old writers
Have writ of in histories –
Hapt in this isle, since
Up from the East hither
Saxon and Angle from
Over the broad billow
Broke into Britain with
Haughty war-workers who
Harried the Welshman, when
Earls that were lured by the
Hunger of glory gat
Hold of the land.
¶366 3–4. T.’s expansion of beorna beahgifa, ring-giver of warriors.
6. Atheling: a member of an English royal family.
12. 1880 note: ‘Shields of lindenwood.’
29. Glode: glided, suggested by the original’s glad and probably by Shelley’s usage, three times in The Revolt of Islam (M. L. Woods, Poetry Review xxxiii (1942) 277).
30. Sank] 1882; Sunk 1880–81. Corrected by T. in his copy of Works, 1881 (Lincoln).
37. We: added by T., as in l. 42.
43. Mighty: added by T.
50. this island: in the original simply land’.
61. fallow: yellowish, fealo.
66. warrant] 1882; reason 1880–81. Corrected by T. in his copy of Works, 1881 (Lincoln).
68. welcome of war-knives: literally ‘fellowship or meeting of…’, a kenning for battle.
79–80. T. freely adapts the original, literally ‘the grey-haired man, the old deceiver’.
88. rush: literally ‘meeting’.
89. 1880 note: ‘Literally “the gathering of men”’.
96–7. over/The jarring breaker: the original has on Dingesmere, probably the name of a part of the sea, but possibly from dinnes, noise.
98. 1880 note: ‘Dublin’.
102. The original has simply ‘both together’.
106. The original is agreed to apply not to the corpses, but to the eagle (dun-coated) and the raven (dark-coated). Cp. Boädicea 11–15; eagle, raven, carrion, carcase, ‘kite and kestrel, wolf and wolfkin, from the wilderness, wallow in it’.
123–4. The original is agreed to mean simply ‘glorious Earls’.