The Exeter Book of Old English Poetry
Created | Updated Dec 9, 2011
Compared to many national literatures, the body of Anglo-Saxon (Old English) poetry is quite small. Only four major original collections of verse have survived1, along with two collections of verse translations of Latin works2 and a scattering of parchment leaves with whole or fragmentary poems preserved on them. Only very few poems exist in more than one copy.
The Largest Book
The largest single collection of Anglo-Saxon Poetry is preserved in the manuscript catalogued by N. R. Ker3 as Exeter, Cathedral 3501, but more commonly referred to simply as The Exeter Book. The manuscript has been housed since 1072, if not earlier, in the Library of Exeter Cathedral, now administered by the University of Exeter. Part of a large collection of books donated by Leofric, the first bishop of Exeter, to his new chapter, the manuscript is described in a list of Leofric's donations as .i. mycel Englisc boc be gehwilcum ingum on leowisan geworht; 'one large English book about various things made in the form of poetry.'
The entire book has been published in six more or less complete editions, two German and four English4, and in a single facsimile edition published in limited number under the direction of Exeter Cathedral5. There have been numerous studies of the manuscript as well as individual editions of poems.
The Contents of the Book
The Exeter Book is an amazingly varied collection, from long narrative poems to brief, Zen-like riddles. There are poems with women's voices (rare in medieval literature) and poems that speak with the imagined voices of inanimate objects. There are prayers, homilies, epigrams and experimental works.
A Table of Contents
Modern scholars, beginning with Benjamin Thorpe in 1842, have divided the text of The Exeter Book into what they have seen as poems and have also provided titles for these poems. Clearly, The Exeter Book is a collection of poetry; the difficulty has been deciding where one poem ends and another begins. There is now general agreement on most of the divisions, and poem titles have generally become fixed by Krapp and Dobbie's 1936 edition in the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records series. The following is a description of the contents of The Exeter Book.
'Christ' - Usually divided into three parts based on differences in style and subject matter. The first part is a series of twelve 'Advent Lyrics', celebrations of the Advent of Christ. It begins in mid-sentence due to damage to the manuscript. The second part of 'Christ' is a description of the Ascension of Christ after the Crucifixion. The third section is a description of what the poet expects to occur on the day of Judgement.
- 'Guthlac' - A verse life of the English hermit Saint Guthlac. This piece is often divided into 'Guthlac A' and 'Guthlac B'.
- 'Azarias' - A versification of the songs of the three youths in the furnace from the Old Testament Book of Daniel. This piece is short and fragmentary.
- 'The Phoenix' - An allegorical poem about the legendary bird.
- 'Juliana' - A verse life of Saint Juliana, who chose martyrdom rather than marriage to a Pagan.
- 'The Wanderer' - A brief, intense poem that confronts head-on the problems of mortality, loss, and the transitory nature of all things on earth. Considered to be one of the truly great poems of world literature, it contains a passage that was later paraphrased by Tolkien and put into the mouth of Rider of Rohan:
Hwær cwom mearg? Hwær cwom mago? Hwær cwom maþþumgyfa?
Hwær cwom symbla gesetu? Hwær sindon seledreamas?
Eala beorht bune! Eala byrnwiga!
Eala þeodnes þrym! Hu seo þrag gewat,
genap under nihthelm, swa heo no wære.
Where has gone the horse? Where has gone the man? Where has gone the giver of treasure?
Where has gone the feasting place? Where be the hall-joys?
Alas bright cup! Alas the armoured warrior!
Alas the Prince's glory! How the time has passed away,
grown dark under night-cover, as though it never were. 'The Gifts of Men' - A verse catalogue of the various talents that God grants to people under Heaven.
'Precepts' - A collection of advice given by a father to his son. This poem is often compared to Polonius' 'Neither a Borrower nor a Lender Be' speech in Hamlet.
'The Seafarer' - Often seen as a companion piece to The Wanderer, The Seafarer uses many of the same images to treat the same themes of mortality and transience.
'Vainglory' - A condemnation of the foolish man who sits content in the luxuries of urban life without realising that all things must pass.
'Widsith' - A playful boasting poem told in the voice of an impossibly well-travelled entertainer. It has been much valued both for its poetic achievement and its wide range of allusion to history and legend.
'The Fortunes of Men' - A verse catalogue of the various nasty deaths that await people under Heaven.
'Maxims I' - A very infelicitously6 titled poem which has been ill-served by title makers: the poem is also known as The Exeter Book Gnomes. The poem is a collection of concise bits of wisdom and banality, from 'God alone knows when death will come,' to 'frost must freeze.'
'The Order of the World' - A verse argument that the obvious order of the universe is a demonstration of the nature of God.
'The Riming Poem' - A poem unique in the Old English corpus in that there is a conscious attempt to use rhyme as a poetic device. The poem uses many of the themes used in The Wanderer and The Seafarer apparently to treat similar themes, but the mad obsession with rhyming tends to obscure the point.
'The Panther', 'The Whale', and 'The Partridge' - The fragmentary remains of, or perhaps the fragmentary unfinished start of a verse Bestiary - a type of work common in the Middle Ages. A Bestiary is a collection of descriptions of animals designed to demonstrate the allegorical meanings of the various beasts. Tolkien's poem 'Fastitocalon' in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil is based on 'The Whale'.
'Soul and Body II' - A verse dialogue between the Soul and the Body intended to contrast the wondrous purity of the eternal Soul with the hideous putridity of the transitory Body.
'Deor' - A poem which has much in common with Widsith in its allusiveness through the voice of a fictional poet persona. Deor is unusual in Old English poetry in that it has a repeated refrain: 'that passed away; so may this.'
'Wulf and Eadwacer' - A somewhat obscure poem that seems to tell the story of a love triangle involving two men and a woman, told from the woman's point of view. The poem is at once fascinating and perplexing, leading critics to numerous varied and sometimes contradictory interpretations. The poem is well worth reading in a number of translations in order to get an idea of the ambiguity in the original.
'Riddles' - The Exeter Book contains almost one hundred verse riddles. Riddles were very popular in Medieval times, perhaps partly because a poem that had a bawdy meaning on the surface could be justified by its allegorical religious meaning. Many of the riddles may be read with enjoyment as puerile ribaldry, but there is always some deeper, sober, and ultimately quite boring alternative meaning. Between Wulf and Eadwacer and The Wife's Lament there is a block of some sixty riddles (critics vary in their divisions of the riddles). Some of these riddles were the direct inspiration for the Riddle Match between Bilbo and Gollum in Tolkien's novel The Hobbit.
'The Wife's Lament' - Often treated beside 'Wulf and Eadwacer', 'The Wife's Lament' is also told from a woman's point of view, and it is also a love story. In this case, the imagery familiar from 'The Wanderer' of exile and solitude are turned to the purposes of a love lament with startling results.
'The Judgement Day I' - A rather pedestrian and brief treatment of the topic covered to much better (and longer) effect in the third part of 'Christ' back at the beginning of The Exeter Book.
'Resignation' - A rather dull sermon on the virtues of accepting with humility the tribulations of this world secure in the knowledge that a special place is waiting in Heaven.
'The Descent into Hell' - A verse treatment of the story in the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus of Christ's Harrowing of Hell during his three days dead.
'Alms-Giving' - Another bit of advice on how to live a proper Christian life.
'Pharoah' - An obscure eight-line dialogue concerning the size of Pharoah's army that was destroyed by the un-parting of the Red Sea.
'The Lord's Prayer I' - A verse translation of the Lord's Prayer. The manuscript is damaged at the beginning of the poem:
...g fæder, þu þe on heofonum eardast,
geweorðad wuldres dreame. Sy þinum weorcum halgad
noma niþþa bearnum; þu eart nergend wera.
Cyme þin rice wide, ond þin rædfæst willa
ræred under rodores hrofe, eac þon on rumre foldan.
Syle us to dæge domfæstne blæd,
hlaf userne, helpend wera,
þone singalan, soðfæst meotod.
Ne læt usic costunga cnyssan to swiðe,
ac þu us freodom gief, folca waldend,
from yfla gehwam, a to widan feore.'Homiletic Fragment II' - A wonderful little exhortation to faith.
'A Few More Riddles' - Two riddles separate Homiletic Fragment I from 'The Husband's Message'. The first is a duplicate of a riddle which was in the first large block of riddles; the second seems to be a riddling treatment of the process involved in making a medieval writing instrument. The second riddle is an appropriate introduction to the next poem, and, indeed, many critics see the riddle as part of 'The Husband's Message'.
'The Husband's Message' - A very interesting poem told in the voice of a message from a husband on a ship at sea to his wife. That's right, the message itself is the voice of the poem, describing how it was made and the situations of the sender and the recipient.
'The Ruin' - A movingly beautiful poetic description of a ruined city. The poem is accidentally made more complete and beautiful by the fact that time and ill-use have damaged the manuscript quite badly at this point, and so The Ruin has itself become an inspiring and elusive ruin.
'The Rest of The Riddles' - The Exeter Book closes with a final block of about forty riddles that are progressively more fragmentary due to damage to the vellum of the manuscript. The Exeter Book's last words are:
ic monigum sceal
wisdom cyþan; no þær word sprecað
ænig ofer eorðan. þeah nu ælda bearn
londbuendra lastas mine
swiþe secað,ic swaþe hwilum
mine bemiþe monna gehwylcum.
I must make my wisdom known
to many. Nor is any word
spoken there on earth.
Though now land-dwellers, sons of men
fiercely seek my tracks,
at times I hide the swath I make
from each and every man.
