THE earliest English poetry of all, with its crude and unskilled thumping, or creaking, alliteration, echoes the sound of those earthy occupations which accompany the work of food-getting.
The creaking and thumping of the waggons, ‘the sharp sound of the flail threshing the corn, sound even in devotional poems, as in this excerpt from ‘The Orison of Our Lady’, a poem of which, says Saintsbury, ‘we have no copy certainly older than 1200, but which cannot be much later than that date, and is probably much older’:
Christis milde moder seynte marie
Mines liues leome mi leoue lefdi,
To the ich buwe and mine kneon ich beie
And al min heorte blod to the ich offree,
Thu ert mire soule liht, and mine heorte blisse,
Mi lif and mi tohope min heale mid iwisse,
Ich ouh wurthie the mid alle mine mihte,
And singge the lofsang bi daie and bi nihte
Vor thu me hauest iholpen aweole kunne wise,
And ibrouht (me) of helle into paradise.