Student Resources

11.2 The Ormulum

Here is a ‘Rough Guide’ to this work:

• background: A collection of ‘homilies’ (religious texts intended to educate). It is 19,000 lines long. Just one copy exists, kept in the Bodleian Library in Oxford.
• authorship: Þiss boc iss nemmnedd Orrmulum/ forþi þatt Orr mitt wrohhte (‘This book is named Ormulum because Orm created it’). The author’s name ‘Orm’ is related to the Old Norse word for ‘worm’ or ‘dragon’. It was quite a common name in the Danelaw area. The writer was a canon, probably associated with the abbey at Bourne in Lincolnshire. The poem was finished in about 1180.
• content: the homilies start with a paraphrase of a Biblical text, associated with the life of Christ or the acts of the apostles. This is followed by a critical interpretation of it (an ‘exegesis’).
• value: the work is of little literary or theological value, and the text is full of tedious lists and repetitions. It has pedagogic value, intended to present religious texts in English, the language understood by all. But the Ormulum’s chief interest is linguistic. It provides information about Early ME, and about the East Midlands dialect in which it was written – particularly about pronunciation. Orm tries to make his spelling reflect pronunciation, and one of the ways he does this is to use double consonants to indicate that the preceding vowel is a short one. So our word ‘and’ is written annd, to show that the ‘a’ vowel is pronounced [æ]; the word ‘arm’ (which is not in fact used in The Ormulum) would be written ‘arm’ in this system, because the vowel is long. There are many examples of doubled consonants in the quotation below.
• quotation: the inspiration for the work, Orm claims, comes from his brother Walter, who urged him to write it to help the understanding of English readers. The Þu (‘you’) mentioned in this passage (which comes from the poem’s opening Dedication) is Walter:

Icc hafe wennd inntill Ennglissh
goddspelles hallȝhe lare,
after þatt little witt þatt me
min Drihhtin hafeþþ lenedd.
Þu þohhtesst tatt itt mihhte wel
till mikell frame turrnenn,
ȝiff Ennglissh folk, forr lufe off Crist,
itt wollde ȝerne lernenn;
annd forþi ȝerrndesst tu þatt Icc
þiss werrc þe shollde wirrken.

‘I have translated into English the gospel’s holy teaching, using the little intelligence that the Lord has granted me. You thought that it might well be turned to great benefit if English people, for love of Christ, would eagerly learn and follow it, fulfilling it in thought, word and deed, and therefore you wanted me to compose this work.’

Some questions about the quotation:

1. Find the word for ‘I’. It is rather different from the PDE (and the one found in the later ME quotations in Chapter 11 and associated CWs).
2. The word given as ‘translate’ literally means ‘turn’. Can you see a semantic connection between ‘translate’ and the PDE word wend?
3. Find the word translated as ‘intelligence’. The PDE equivalent of this word has a number of meanings. What are they? One of them is indeed ‘intelligence’. Think of a context where it might mean that in PDE.
4. What case is the word me in line 3?
5. Locate the word translated as ‘great’. Have you come across a related word in PDE that has this meaning?

11.3 Havelok the Dane

A ‘Rough Guide’ to this poem:

• background: an example of the popular ‘romance’ genre. Romances were fantastic tales of heroes, often with superhuman powers. They often had classical or French themes (with heroes like Alexander the Great, Charlemagne, and Roland). But there were also British heroes, like King Arthur. The poem is 3001 lines long, written in rhyming octosyllabic couplets.
• authorship: anonymous, written at the end of the thirteenth century. Based on the Anglo-Norman romance Lai d’Haveloc.
• content: Havelok is a Danish prince, dispossessed by his wicked brother who orders the fisherman, Grim, to drown the child. But Grim disobeys and takes Havelok to England, where Grim founds the port of Grimsby. Havelok grows into a charming, hard-working hero with near supernatural powers. He is married off to Princess Goldborough, also dispossessed by a wicked guardian. Eventually, Havelok and Goldborough become benign rulers of England and Denmark, as well as finding time to have 15 children.
• value: Drabble (1985: 441) says of the poem: ‘It is one of the most admired of all Middle English romances . . . because of its narrative coherence . . . and the sustained interest of its action.’ It is sometimes called a ‘bourgeois romance’ because is lauds the virtues of hard work, as our quotation shows.
• quotation: a portrait of the charming, hard-working hero:

He bar the turves, he bar the star,
The wode fro the brigge he bar,
Al that evere shulden he nytte,
Al he drow and al he citte -
Wolde he nevere haven rest
More than he were a best.
Of alle men was he mest meke,
Lauhwinde ay and blithe of speke;
Evere he was glad and blithe -
His sorwe he couthe ful wel mithe.

‘He carried the peat and sedge (for burning), and he bore the wood from the bridge, as much as was needed. He hauled, he cut, and he never wanted a rest, any more than a beast would. He was the meekest of men, always laughing and speaking happily. He was always full of good spirits, and could hide his sorrow well.’

Some questions about the quotation:

1. The ME form here translated as ‘peat’ is like a PDE word. The PDE word is an irregular plural. So too in ME. What then might the ME singular be?
2. The quotation has two words for PDE ‘always’. Find these. Perhaps you have come across the shorter of the two in Shakespeare or in some pre-twentieth century context?
3. The word evere occurs twice. Look at the word order following it. Perhaps the different order on each occasion suggests a stage of word order flexibility or uncertainty in the language.
4. Find the word translated as ‘carried’ (or ‘bore’). What might be the ME infinitive of the verb?
5. An odd word is used for PDE ‘hide’. It has now completely died out of the language. What is it?

11.4 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Along with Piers Plowman, the major work of the Alliterative Revival is Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. It survives in just one manuscript, together with three other poems assumed to be by the same author: Pearl, Patience and Cleanness. Gawain was written around 1375, and is 2530 lines long. The poem is a romance, and tells a fascinating story that still holds audiences today – there are a number of modern translations available, and there is even an opera written by the English composer Harrison Birtwistle. It was first performed in 1991. Here is the poem’s story:

Arthur and his court are at Camelot celebrating the New Year when a green man enters carrying an axe. He delivers an open challenge for someone to use the axe to strike a blow at his head. The condition is that in a year’s time, the Green Knight will strike a return blow. Such ‘beheading games’ have been a folklore motif since ancient times. Sir Gawain takes up the challenge and his stroke beheads the Green Knight. The result is unexpected: the Green Knight picks up his gory head, waves it in front of a startled Queen Guinevere, and rides off.

A year later, Gawain sets out to keep the bargain. He comes to a castle lived in by one Bertilak de Hautdesert and his beautiful wife. The two men decide to spend a few days hunting, and agree at the end of each day to exchange spoils. On three occasions Lady Bertilak attempts to seduce Gawain, offering him first one kiss, then two. Gawain accepts the kisses, but he chivalrously resists further temptation. He passes the kisses on to husband Bertilak as part of the agreed exchange of spoils. Then on the third day, the lady gives Gawain a magic girdle that will save his life. Since Gawain is about to meet the Green Knight, he decides to keep this, thus breaking his promise to exchange spoils with Bertilak. Gawain is experiencing something also common in folklore – a ‘seduction test’.

When Gawain and the Green Knight meet, it transpires that the latter is none other than Bertilak, magically transformed. Because Gawain was chivalrous towards Lady Bertilak, the Green Knight does not behead him. He makes two strokes at Gawain’s head, stopping short each time. These strokes represent the kisses that Gawain exchanged as agreed. The third stroke just makes a nick on his neck – a small punishment to Gawain for failing to give up the girdle. Gawain is hence in the main ‘rewarded’ for his chivalrous behaviour. He and his head return intact to Camelot.

The Gawain story is a well-crafted one. Here is a quotation that illustrated the poet’s powerfully vivid descriptions. It takes up the story at the point when Gawain has set out with a guide from Bertilak’s castle to keep his appointment with the Green Knight:

Þay boȝen bi bonkkeȝ, þer boȝeȝ ar bare,
Þay clomben bi clyffeȝ, þer clengeȝ þe colde;
Þe heuen watȝ vp halt, bot vgly þer vnder,
Mist muged on þe mor, malt on þe mounteȝ,
Vch hille hade a hatte, a myst-hakel huge;
Brokeȝ byled, and breke, bi bonkkeȝ aboute,
Schyre schaterande on schoreȝ, þer þay doun schowued.
Wela wylle watȝ þe way, þer þay bi wod schulden,
Til hit watȝ sone sesoun, þat þe sunne ryses,
þat tyde;
Þay were on a hille ful hyȝe,
Þe quyte snaw lay bisyde;
Þe burne þat rod hym by
Bede his mayster abide

‘They went by banks where boughs were bare, they climbed by cliffs where the cold clung. the clouds were high, but it was threatening under them there was a damp mist on the moors, which dissolved on the mountains, each hill had a hat, a huge mist-mantle; brooks boiled and broke their banks, brightly breaking on their banks where they flowed down. Very wild was the way where they rode by the woods, till it was soon the time that the sun rises in that season They were high up on a hill, with white snow lying beside them; the man that rode with him asked his master to stop.’

The quotation gives one complete ‘verse’ (or stanza) from the poem. The verse form is both interesting and significant. Here is an activity (Bobs and wheels) which invites you to explore this. There are also some other questions on the quotation.

Bobs and wheels

1. Look first at the quotation’s initial nine lines. Can you see any regularity in the use of alliterative words? Is there any rhyme?
2.  Now concentrate on the last five lines. Any alliteration? Any rhyme? If so, what scheme does the rhyme follow?
3. Each stanza of the poem has this same structure, with what is called a ‘bob and wheel’ in the last five lines. What do you suppose these terms mean?

More questions about the quotation:

1. (i) Clomben is ‘climbed’. What do you think the ME infinitive might be?
2. (ii) Find the word translated as ‘dissolved’. What do you think it means literally? What might be the infinitive of the ME verb from which the word comes?
3. (iii) The quotation contains something very much like an OE kenning (see 7.3). What is it?
4. (iv) Find the past tense of the verb ‘ride’. What do you think the ME infinitive might be?
5. (v) There is a rather strange word used for ‘man’. It was often written with an ‘e’ instead of a ‘u’, and the final ‘e’ was often missing. Do you perhaps know a PDE Scottish word meaning ‘child’ which has a similar form?

11.5 Troilus and Criseyde

Though the story has a classical setting (during the siege of Troy), it is mediaeval in origin, and is in fact a courtly romance. Chaucer took the story from the Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio’s poem Il Filostrato – the Italian title means ‘laid low by love’, which is exactly what happened to Troilus. Chaucer’s story begins inside Troy during its siege by the Greeks. Troilus falls in love with Criseyde, whose uncle Pandaro acts as a go-between (his name gives us our PDE verb to pander). They become lovers and enjoy three years of happiness. Criseyde’s father is the soothsayer Calchas. He has foreseen the fall of Troy and has defected to the Greek side. He wants his daughter Criseyde to join him outside Troy, and eventually this is arranged. Criseyde leaves the city but promises Troilus she will return to Troy within ten days. But once with the Greeks she falls in love with the warrior Diomede. Troilus, heartbroken by this betrayal, eventually dies in battle.

Here are three stanzas from the last part of the poem, Book 5. Criseyde has gone over to the Greeks, and Troilus, wandering disconsolate through the streets of Troy, is reminded of the love that he has lost:

‘O paleys, whylom croune of houses alle,
Enlumined with sonne of alle blisse!
O ring, fro which the ruby is out-falle,
O cause of wo, that cause hast been of lisse!
Yet, sin I may no bet, fayn wolde I kisse
Thy colde dores, dorste I for this route;
And fare-wel shryne, of which the seynt is oute!’

. . . . .

Fro thennesforth he rydeth up and doun,
 And every thing com him to remembraunce
As he rood forbi places of the toun
In whiche he whylom hadde al his plesaunce.
‘Lo, yond saugh I myn owene lady daunce;
And in that temple, with hir eyen clere,
Me coughte first my righte lady dere.

‘And yonder have I herd ful lustily
My dere herte laugh, and yonder pleye
Saugh I hir ones eek ful blisfully.
And yonder ones to me gan she seye,
“Now goode swete, love me wel, I preye.”
And yond so goodly gan she me biholde,
That to the deth myn herte is to hire holde’.

‘O palace, once the crown of all houses, illumined by the sun of all our bliss! O ring from which the ruby has fallen out, O cause of woe that was once the cause of contentment! Yet since I may do no better, I would willingly kiss your cold doors, if I dared amongst this crowd; and say farewell to the shrine, whose saint is missing.
. . . . . 

From that time on he rode up and down, and everything came back to his memory as he rode by the places of the town, which he had once delighted to see. ‘Over there I saw my own lady dance; and in that temple I first caught sight of my dear lady with her clear eye.

And there I heard my dear heart lustily laughing, and here I once saw her blissfully playing. And there once she said to me,
“Now, good sweet, love me well, I pray.” And over there is where she looked at me so kindly that my heart is bound to her till death.’

The rhyme scheme used in the poem was later named ‘rhyme royal’, possibly because it was used by James I of Scotland (he wrote a love poem entitled The Kingis Quair – ‘The King's Book"). Chaucer sometimes uses the scheme in the Canterbury Tales and elsewhere. It has seven line stanzas. Before reading on, work out how the rhymes occur.

The scheme is ababbcc. Part of the appeal of this seven-line pattern is that you can divide stanzas into 3+2+2 (a tercet plus two couplets), or 4+3, a quatrain plus a tercet. Any ideas about how a poet would decide which to use when?

Some questions about the Troilus and Criseyde quotation:

1. (i) Find the word for ‘once’. It is a common word in Chaucer.
2. (ii) Find the word for ‘contentment’. It looks as if it might be related to PDE ‘bliss’, but in fact it comes from the OE word liss, meaning ease.
3. (iii) Find the word for ‘crowd’. There is a very similar PDE word which often has a rather different connotation. What is it?
4. (iv) That word eye is here again. Look up what was said about it in 10.2.1.