Our Gentle Forefathers––Old English Riddles––The History of the Early English Literature takes us into other pleasant places. Here are two or three specimens of the riddles of the old bards, and in riddle and saga we get most vivid pictures of the life and thoughts, the ways and words of the forefathers whom we are too ready to think of as ‘rude,’ but who are here portrayed to us as gentle, mild, and large of soul; men and women whom we, their posterity, may well delight to honour.
I. Here is Cynewulf’s Riddle of the Sword.
’I'm a wondrous wight for warstrife shapen;
By my Lord beloved, lovelily adorned:
Many coloured is my corslet, and a clasping wire
Glitters round the gem of death which my wielder gave to me:
He who whiles doth urge me, wide-wanderer that I am,
With him to conquest.
Then I carry treasure,
Cold above the garths, through the glittering day;
I of smiths the handiwork! Often do I quell
Breathing men with battle edges! Me bedecks a king
With his hoard and silver; honours me in hall,
Doth withhold no word of praise! Of my ways he boasts
’Fore the many heroes, where the mead they drink.
In restraint he lulls me, then he lets me loose again,
Far and wide to rush along; me the weary with wayfarings,
Cursed of all weapons.’
Riddle xxi.
II. The helmet speaks:––
”Wretchedness I bear;
Wheresoe’er he carries me, he who clasps the spear!
On me, still upstanding, smite the streams (of rain);
Hail, the hard grain (helms me), and the hoar-frost covers me
And the (flying) snow (in flakes) falls all over me.”
Riddle lxxix., 6-10.
It is unnecessary to say a word about the literary value and importance of Mr. Stopford Brooke’s great work. ‘There is nothing like leather,’ and to parents all things present themselves as they may tell on education. Here is a very treasure-trove.