What for labour, and what for hete,
The kempis swate til they wer wete.
From morrow til the close of day
Was the tyme of that journee,

Monie mon from Dacie sprong The deth tholid, I underfong. The Scottis fell in that bataille, Whyche wer forwerid of travaille. The West Saxonis wer ware When their foen away wold fare; As they fled they did hem sewe Wyth ghazand swerdis, that wel couth hew.

The cokins they n'olden staie,

For thir douten of that fraye.

The Mercians fought I understond;

There was gamen of the hond.
Alle that with Anlaff hir way nom
Over the seas in the shippes wome,
And the five sonnes of the kynge
Fel mid dint of swerd-fightinge.
His seven erlis died alswo;
Many Scottes wer killed tho.

The Normannes, for their migty bost,
Went hame with a lytyl host.

The kynge and frode syked sore

For hir kempis whyche wer forlore.
The kynge and frode to schyppe gan flee
Wyth mickel haste, but hir meguie.
Constantine gude and Anlaff
Lytyl bost hadde of the laif.
Maie he nat glosen, ne saie
But he was right wel appaie.
In Dacie of that gaming
Monie wemen hir hondis wring.
The Normannes passed that rivere
Mid hevy hart and sory chere.
The brothers to Wessex yode,
Leving the crowen, and the tode,
Hawkes, doggis, and wolves tho,
Egles, and monie other mo,
With the ded men for their mede,
On hir corses for to fede.

Sen the Saxonis first come
In schippes over the sea-fome,
Of the yeres that ben forgone,
Greater bataile was never none. 19

CHAPTER II.

The same Subject continued.-Account of. Norman Poets in England.

Ir has been seen that, although the great mass of our language is derived from our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, the mechanism and structure of our poetry is to be referred to some other source; and it is generally supposed that all the modes of versification now in use were borrowed from the French, who appear to have adopted them, together with the ornament of rhyme, in imitation of the Latin monkish versifiers. To whom we should ascribe the original invention of this ornament is not quite s so certain. Fauchet claims it for his countrymen; but, as he founds their pretensions on the Frankish translation of the scriptures by Otfrid, a monk of Weissembourg, who wrote about the year 870, succeeding antiquaries have opposed to this authority the superior antiquity of the Latin specimens, some of which are to be referred to the sixth century. This date is certainly anterior even to any that can be assigned to the Runic ode,

called Elgill's Ransom, which has been translated by Dr. Percy in his specimens of Runic poetry, and which affords, perhaps, the earliest example of rhyme in any modern language. But on the other hand it may be fairly argued, that, as our stock of northern literature is very incomplete, we cannot draw any positive conclusion from the deficiency of specimens among the works of the Scalds ;-that rhyme, which certainly is not congenial to Latin verse, may have been a natural appendage to a system of versification less strictly metrical;-and that, as the date of its original introduction into Latin can only be conjectured, it is not more absurd to ascribe it to some northern proselyte, desirous of bestowing on the learned language an ornament which he admired in his own, than to suppose it was invented by the Italian monks, as a succedaneum for that regular prosody, the harmony of which had been lost in the corrupt pronunciation of the barbarous conquerors of Italy.

But, be this as it may, the Norman poets were certainly our immediate masters: to them we owe the forms of our verse; and translations from them were among the earliest compositions of the English language; so that some notice of them is necessary to connect the links of our literary history.

Indeed it has not been sufficiently considered;

that there was a period, and that of considerable duration, during which the English language did not exist, or at least was not, and could not be applicable to any literary purpose. The language of the church was Latin; that of the king and nobles, Norman; that of the people, Anglo-Saxon: the Anglo-Norman jargon was only employed in the commercial intercourse between the conquerors and the conquered. It was likely to be composed almost intirely of synonymous terms, which evidently can only incumber, without enriching the speech of any nation; and that this was the case, is proved by our existing language, in which the names of the necessaries of life, as ox and beef, sheep and mutton, flesh and meat, besides many other words of frequent recurrence, had originally an identical meaning. This state of things would necessarily continue so long as the Norman and Anglo-Saxon people were separated by mutual hatred and prejudice; and their languages could only be amalgamated into one common and consistent form of speech, when the conquerors and the conquered became confounded in the same mass, by intermarriages, and by a general unity of interest. Hence, the Norman and Anglo-Saxon, which for some time existed in England as distinct and rival tongues, have long since disappeared;