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The Oregon State Guide to English Literary Terms

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In this free online video series, Oregon State English professors define common literary terms

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How Literature Can Change Your Life | Joseph Luzzi | TEDxAlbany

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The History of English - Languages: Anglo-Saxon (1/10)

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Mr. Osborne - British Literature Unit Preview 1 - Anglo Saxons

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The first in Mr. Osborne's series of videos discussing British Literature sets the stage for the course and discusses both the Anglo-Saxon invasion of England as well as the first major work for the course: the epic poem Beowulf. Special thanks to John Green and Crash Course for inspiring this series!

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Learn about the changing roles of women in Anglo-Saxon England, including status, slavery and powerful female leaders.

From the first Germanic settlement of England in the 5th century until the Norman Conquest in the 11th century, Anglo-Saxon society underwent dramatic social, economic and political change. Women as a whole were affected by these developments, but it is also clear that queens, abbesses and other intellectuals could be the instruments of change.

Anglo-Saxon women were the owners of jewellery and bejewelled gospel-books, and they were the patrons of the earliest known poetry written in English and some of the most complex poems composed in Latin. At various times, women were the subjects of epic literature (in the case of Judith, part of the Beowulf-manuscript), of narrative accounts (in the case of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle) and, in one instance, a political biography. Even women from the lowest ranks of society, such as slaves, came into contact from time to time with written culture.

At the same time, the surviving evidence throws little light on the lives of most Anglo-Saxon women, such as how old they were when they died, or which diseases they experienced. Women of lower status are often particularly hard to find in the fragmentary sources.

From paganism to Christianity

The first known English speakers, who lived in southern Britain from the 5th century onwards, came from a pagan Germanic culture. Most of our evidence for this period comes from archaeological discoveries, among which are the graves of a number of wealthy women.

The runes on the Loveden Hill cremation urn - one of the earliest extant examples of writing in English - may include the female name 'Sīþæbæd'. Other female graves sometimes contained ornate necklaces, sets of keys, combs and brooches. Analysis of early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries shows that different groups of women had very different levels of wealth and life expectancies, and that these varied between regions and over time.

The Anglo-Saxon kingdoms converted to Christianity in the late 6th and 7th centuries, beginning with the mission of Augustine (d. 604) to Kent in 597. The wife of King Æthelberht of Kent (d. 616) was Bertha (d. in or after 601), a Christian princess from Paris. Bertha may have been instrumental in helping the Christian missionaries from Rome to establish themselves at Æthelberht's court. Pope Gregory the Great (590-604) wrote to her, as recorded in Bede's Ecclesiastical History, urging her to make her husband sympathetic to Christianity. Many other women throughout the early Anglo-Saxon kingdoms helped promote Christianity and influence social and cultural change.

Tiberius Bede

Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People was created in 731. It tells the story of the conversion of the English people to Christianity (British Library, Cotton MS Tiberius C II, f. 5v)

The conversion to Christianity of elite members of Anglo-Saxon society brought about massive social change. Christianity was associated with the spread of new writing technologies and the knowledge of Latin. At the forefront of this movement was a group of women of high status, who presided over 'double monasteries'. These 'double monasteries' were staffed by both men and women, based on the Frankish model, and they were major economic and intellectual centres.

For example, the monastery at Whitby was governed in its early years by Hild (Hilda) (d. 680), a member of the Northumbrian royal family. Hild acted as an advisor to several princes and she helped to train no less than five bishops. She also promoted the work of Cædmon, the first-named English poet, a cowherd at Whitby and author of Cædmon's Hymn.

The story of Cædmon's Hymn

The earliest named English poet was a cowherd named Cædmon who lived at the Abbey of Whitby, as Bede describes (British Library, Cotton MS Tiberius A XIV, f. 1r)

The status of Anglo-Saxon women

The earliest extant law-code in English, issued by King Æthelberht of Kent, throws light on the role of women and on attitudes towards them. At least eight ranks of women are listed in this law-code, from 'grinding slaves' to free women of 'the foremost noble rank'.

This is similar to the ranks recorded for men, with the exception that women alone were divided by marital status: unmarried women or maidens, widows and married women. A woman was not entitled to receive compensation for any injuries done to her: any such compensation would instead be paid to her husband, father, guardian or slave owner.

Women are also under-represented in Domesday Book, which focuses on landowners (who were mostly men) and male workers. Great Domesday (the largest volume of the Domesday survey) mentions only 479 named women, as opposed to 16,667 individual men.

Anglo-Saxon queens

The Anglo-Saxon women we know most about are, unsurprisingly, those at the highest levels of society. Queens did not always wield significant power at this period. In his biography of King Alfred, Asser (d. 909) claimed that:

West Saxons do not allow a queen to sit beside the king, nor to be called a queen, but only the king's wife [because of] a certain obstinate and malevolent queen [from Mercia], who did everything she could against her lord and whole people.

Asser's Life of King Alfred

The earliest known source about an Anglo-Saxon king, a king often known today as 'Alfred the Great' (r. 871-899 CE) (British Library, Cotton MS Otho A XII, f. 1r)

It is unclear to whom Asser was referring, but there is at least one example of a powerful queen from the kingdom of Mercia. The only surviving coinage issued in the name of an Anglo-Saxon queen is that of Cynethryth, the wife of King Offaof Mercia(757-796). At the same time, it is possible that Cynethryth's coins were minted in order to promote the status of her son, Ecgfrith, who succeeded Offa briefly as king. After Offa's death, Cynethryth became abbess of the monastery at Cookham.

The only woman known to have ruled in her own right was Æthelflæd (d. 918), lady of the Mercians, daughter of King Alfred the Great. Æthelflæd's exploits are recorded in one manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. After her husband died, she led armies against Welsh and Viking forces, and fortified major centres throughout the Midlands, including Tamworth, Warwick and Stafford, eventually extending her authority as far as York.

Æthelflæd's conquests paved the way for the creation of the kingdom of England by King Æthelstan(924-939). She was succeeded by her daughter, Ælfwynn, but within a few months Ælfwynn had been deposed by her uncle, King Edward the Elder of Wessex (899-924).

Queen Emma, wife of two kings

One of the most prominent figures in 11th-century English politics was Emma of Normandy (d. 1052). Emma was the wife of King Æthelred the Unready (978-1016), and then of King Cnut (1016-1035). After the Danish conquest of England, she provided crucial advice to Cnut as he tried to establish his authority over his new territory. Emma and Cnut are shown together in a miniature at the beginning of the Liber Vitae ('Book of Life') of the New Minster, Winchester, standing before the altar in the church at that monastery.

New Minster Liber vitae

A record of the names of members and friends of monasteries or convents - the belief being that these names would also appear in the heavenly book opened on the Day of Judgement (British Library, Stowe MS 944, f. 13r)

Emma was also the mother of two kings: Harthacnut (1040-1042), her son by Cnut, and Edward the Confessor (1042-1066), her son by Æthelred. In 1041-42, she commissioned the biography known as 'In Praise of Queen Emma', which sought to justify her decisions and her political career.

Encomium Emmae reginae

Emma and her sons Harthacnut and Edward depicted in the Encomium Emmae Reginae (British Library, Add MS 33241, f. 1v)

Other Anglo-Saxon queens and princesses played an important dynastic function. No fewer than five of King Æthelstan'ssisters were married to powerful nobles in mainland Europe. Two of them had been offered in marriage to Otto, the future king of Germany (936-973) and emperor.

Otto chose Edith (Eadgyth) (d. 946) as his bride, and to mark that occasion he probably presented a Frankish gospel-book to Æthelstan, now known as the Coronation Gospels. Royal women were important in establishing diplomatic links through marriage and family networks.

Female slaves

All of the powerful women described above were extraordinary - but they were also out of the ordinary. Due to the fragmentary nature of the surviving sources, we know little about the lives of the majority of the female population.

Technological advances are enabling us to recover more information about women from the lower levels of Anglo-Saxon society, particularly slaves. Slaves were occasionally granted their freedom, and sometimes this was recorded in writing.

The freeing of slaves was often recorded in the margins of gospel-books, such as the Bodmin Gospels, made in Cornwall. These records - known as manumissions - were often erased by later owners of the manuscripts, but in the case of the Bodmin Gospels, multispectral imaging has been able to reveal parts of the erased text.

These include a record of a woman called Guenenguith, a slave who belonged to Bishop Comoere of Cornwall (d. after 981). Guenenguith and her son, Morcefres, were freed on the altar of St Petroc at some point during the 10th century. This newly-revealed text is our only evidence for their existence.

Even for powerful women in Anglo-Saxon society, we do not know much about many aspects of their lives. For instance, we know relatively little about childbirth in early medieval England. Medical remedies in manuscripts such as Bald's Leechbook and the Old English Herbal included charms that promised to help a woman give birth to a healthy child, while some medical recipes may have provided forms of contraception.

Old English Illustrated Herbal

Colourful illustrations of flora and fauna are embedded throughout the text of the Old English Herbal (British Library, Cotton MS Vitellius C III, f. 27r)

Books owned by women

There is evidence that Anglo-Saxon manuscripts were on occasion made for or owned by women, including nuns and noblewomen. For example, five of the six surviving prayer books from Anglo-Saxon England had female owners. One of these, known as the Book of Nunnaminster, probably belonged to Ealhswith (d. 902), wife of King Alfred the Great of Wessex (871-899), because its final page contains a description of her property in Winchester.

Perhaps the most spectacular examples of books owned by an Anglo-Saxon woman are the four gospel-books made for Judith of Flanders (d. 1095), the sister-in-law of Harold, the last Anglo-Saxon king of England. The jewelled covers of Judith's books are possibly of Continental workmanship, but it is likely that their finely illuminated pages were made in England. These books give us a glimpse of how luxurious the libraries of Anglo-Saxon noblewomen could be.

Usage terms

Copyright status unknown.

Female readers and writers

Women in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms occasionally had texts written specifically for them, or were the writers themselves. For example, Bishop Aldhelm of Sherborne (d. 709/10) composed one of the most complex Latin poems ever written in Anglo-Saxon England, On Virginity, which he dedicated to the abbess and nuns of Barking. Meanwhile, abbesses such as Hild of Whitbyaddressed letters to contacts throughout Europe, which also serves to show the networks of communication between England and lands overseas.

Wills and other documents

Wills and other documents provide evidence for female literacy in Anglo-Saxon England. One-third of all the surviving wills from this period were made on behalf of women. Wynflæd, a wealthy noblewoman who lived in the 10th century, left a variety of possessions in her will, including two highly skilled slaves, 'a woman-weaver and a seamstress'. To Eadgifu, her granddaughter, Wynflæd gave two chests, her best bed-curtain, her best tunic and cloak, her old filigree brooch, a long tapestry and a cook.

At the same time, women do not appear equally in all surviving forms of Anglo-Saxon writing. For instance, the witness lists of charters are usually dominated by the names of men, even when the property in question was being given to a woman.

Material culture

Inscriptions on jewellery and similar items are another important source for female written culture in Anglo-Saxon England. The gold and garnet brooch found at Harford Farm in Norfolk was made for a woman who lived in the early 7th century, at a time when the English were beginning to convert to Christianity.

This brooch was inscribed with writing in runes; its gold and garnet decoration resembles items found in Kent, Francia and the Low Countries, and it shows connections between members of the upper levels of society who lived in the regions surrounding the North Sea.

The Ædwen Brooch was made for a woman of that name in the 11th century. In contrast with the Harford Farm Brooch, Ædwen'sbrooch has writing in the Latin alphabet and the text includes references to the Christian God.

Its decoration also bears witness to changes that had taken place in East Anglia in the intervening centuries. The animals incised on the front of the brooch resemble motifs found in Scandinavian art, since that region had been invaded by Viking forces and had experienced Scandinavian settlement in the 9th century.

Also on this brooch is foliage which resembles manuscripts made in Wessex, reflecting the fact that by the 10th century, East Anglia had come under the dominion of the West Saxon kings, now rulers of all England.

Alison Hudson is Project Curator of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts at the British Library, working on the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms exhibition. Her doctoral research at the University of Oxford focused on the English Benedictine reform movement in the 10th century.

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Women in Anglo-Saxon England | The British Library

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Learn about the changing roles of women in Anglo-Saxon England, including status, slavery and powerful female leaders. From the first Germanic settlement of England in the 5th century until the Norman Conquest in the 11th century, Anglo-Saxon society underwent dramatic social, economic and political change.

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Religion in A-S Kingdoms

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Religion in the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms | The British Library

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From paganism to Christianity, we explore the religions of Anglo-Saxon England.

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CHRISTIANITY IN ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND

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Julius Caesar led the first Roman invasion of England in 55 BCE, but it wasn't until 43 CE, under the Emperor Claudius, that a successful invasion brought Britain under Rome's control as a colony. Roman rule over Britain lasted for more than three hundred years. It was during the Roman period that Christianity first came to Britain: in Book 1, Bede mentions the martyrdom of St. Alban, during the reign of Diocletian (1.7), and the rise of the Pelagian heresy in Britain in the 4 th century (1. 10).

After the collapse of the Roman Empire and the withdrawal of Roman legions from Britain in the fifth century CE, Britain came under increasing pressure from Germanic and Pictish raiders. The Germanic tribes crossed the sea from their homeland in northern Germany, while the Picts crossed the former Roman frontier from what is now Scotland. In the Historia (1.15), Bede discusses the coming of the Germanic tribes-the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes-and their division into separate kingdoms in Britain: Jutish kingdom of Kent; the kingdoms of the West Saxons (Wessex), East Saxons (Essex), and South Saxons (Sussex); and the Anglian kingdoms of the East Angles, Northumbria, and Mercia (including the Middle Angles). There were other minor kingdoms (Bede later mentions Lindsey and the kingdom of the Hwicce, for example), but these seven major kingdoms were the most significant and powerful, and the conflicts between them provide the political context for Bede's Historia ( map).

Because he was born and lived his entire life in Northumbria, that Anglian kingdom north of the Humber is his primary focus for much of the work. Northumbria was originally divided into two kingdoms: Bernicia (extending roughly from the River Forth in the north and the River Tees in the south) and Deira (extending from the Tees to the Humber) ( map). Northumbria was briefly unified under Æthelfrith, king of the Bernician dynasty, and again under Edwin, of the Deiran dynasty, who defeated Æthelfrith in battle in 616 CE. After the death of Edwin in 633, the kingdom split again until it was reunited roughly a decade later by Oswiu, the son of Æthelfrith.

Much of this period was marked not only by internecine fighting between the Bernician and Deiran dynasties, but also by the contest for overlordship with the Mercians to the south. Both King Edwin (d. 633) and King Oswald (d. 642) were killed in battle with Penda, the powerful pagan king of Mercia. With his defeat of Penda at the Battle of Winwaed in 655, Oswiu of Northumbria established himself as the most powerful of the Anglo-Saxon kings. Penda's death marked the end of pagan rule in Mercia.

Bede records that in the period of upheaval after the departure of the Romans from Britain, a Christian mission under St. Germanus came to Britain to combat the Pelagian heresy (1.17-21). But little could be done to stem the tide of the Anglo-Saxon invasion, which brought with it the pagan worship of the Germanic gods Woden and Thunor. The Britons who remained Christian looked westward to Ireland, where a bishopric was established in the fifth century under Palladius (1.13). Irish Christianity developed a number of traditions independent of Rome-notably, the method of calculating the date of Easter-that would put it at odds with the Roman Christianity that took hold among the Anglo-Saxons a century and a half later. Thus, when Augustine's mission arrived in Kent in 595, it faced the challenge of overcoming both Anglo-Saxon paganism and British (Irish) Christianity. With the exception of a story about King Edwin's chief pagan priest Coifi ( 2.13), little attention is given to the pagan religion. Bede considered the conflict with the British Christians over the date of Easter a much more serious issue.

At the same time, Bede recognized and appreciated the importance of the Irish for the establishment of the Church in his native Northumbria. After the death of Edwin, Northumbria's first Christian king, the Northumbrian church fell into disarray-its bishop, Paulinus, fled to Kent-until Oswald brought in Aidan, a monk from the Irish monastery of Iona, to reintroduce Christianity to Northumbria. Aidan's abbey on the island of Lindisfarne became an important center of missionary activity and of learning. The scriptorium at Lindisfarne produced the magnificent Lindisfarne Gospels in the early eighth century.

The illumination of the Lindisfarne Gospels shows the strong influence of Celtic art. At the same time, it has been suggested that the Codex Amiatinus, produced at Bede's monastery at Jarrow, exhibits the influence of Coptic art from Egypt (Mayr-Harting 1972, 155). That communities on the isolated Northumbrian coast could exhibit such diverse influences demonstrates the international nature of the Church, and the importance of trade and communication between distant parts of the Christian world. It is no coincidence that many of the most important monasteries were founded on the coast, near good harbors and landing places that facilitated trade.

Although the conversion of the rulers of Anglo-Saxon England took place fairly rapidly between Augustine's arrival in Kent in 597 and the conversion of Wessex and the Isle of Wight roughly a century later, it must be assumed that pagan beliefs and practices persisted among the common people. For example, although Æthelbert of Kent converted to Christianity in 597, in 640 Eorcenberht of Kent found it necessary to order the destruction of pagan idols. At the same time, there was an adaptation of some elements of paganism to a new Christian context. This kind of syncretism was encouraged by Gregory the Great, the pope who sent Augustine to Britain. In a letter to Mellitus, a member of Augustine's mission, Gregory encourages Mellitus to convert pagan temples into churches, and to adapt some pagan rituals, such as animal sacrifices, to Christian purposes: "Thus while some outward rejoicings are preserved, they will be able to share more easily in inward rejoicings" ( HE 1.30; trans. Colgrave and Mynors). Syncretism was a tool for weaning the English people from paganism.

The Church and the Anglo-Saxon kingship became mutually supporting institutions. It was through a dynastic marriage between Edwin of Northumbria and the daughter of Æthelbert of Kent that Northumbria was initially converted to Christianity. The Church brought with it a hierarchy of leadership, a developing monastic and episcopal infrastructure, and international connections that secular rulers could leverage to support and extend their own power. Christianity became a unifying force in Britain.

Discussing the importance of monasticism-and especially of convents founded for aristocratic women-Henrietta Leyser writes: "In exactly which ways their communities helped to consolidate both the newly emergent kingdoms and the new faith may even now not be fully understood, but it is abundantly clear that the contribution of royal women, both as abbesses and mothers-and often as both-was crucial" (Leyser 2016, 19). She cites the example of Seaxburh, the daughter of King Anna of East Anglia and widow of Eorcenberht of Kent (d. 664)-the king who demanded the destruction of pagan idols. Her daughter Eorcengota was a nun in the community of Faremoutiers in Gaul. Her sister Æthelthryth, though married to King Ecgfirth of Northumbria, refused to consummate her marriage, and retired to the monastery at Ely. Her sons with Eorcenberht, Ecgberht and Hlothhere, succeeded their father as kings of Kent; her daughter Eormenhild married Wulfhere, the first Christian king of Mercia (and after his death followed her aunt Æthelthryth and her mother Seaxburh as abbess of Ely). The example of Seaxburh suggests how dynastic marriages and political alliances went hand-in-hand with the spread of Christianity in England.

Ely, of which Æthelthryth was the founding abbess, was a double monastery-a monastery with separate accommodations for women and men, and headed by an abbess. Double monasteries were a distinctive feature of monasticism in Gaul, which inspired the establishment of the institution in Anglo-Saxon England. In the selections from the Historia collected here, we will encounter four double monasteries and their abbesses: Hild's Whitby (Streanaeshalch), Æthelthryth's Ely, Æthelburh's Barking, and Æbbe's ill-fated Coldingham. Bede saw the fire that destroyed Coldingham as evidence of the immorality that was bred when men and women shared the same house, and, indeed, the foundation of new double monasteries was forbidden by the Second Council of Nicaea in 787 because living together in a double monastery "becomes a cause of scandal and a stumbling block for ordinary folk" ( Canon 20).

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Julius Caesar led the first Roman invasion of England in 55 BCE, but it wasn't until 43 CE, under the Emperor Claudius, that a successful invasion brought Britain under Rome's control as a colony. Roman rule over Britain lasted for more than three hundred years.

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The Canterbury Tales  | Summary & Analysis | Geoffrey Chaucer

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Oxford Academic (Oxford University Press)

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The Canterbury Tales  | Author Biography | Geoffrey Chaucer

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The Canterbury Tales  | Characters | Geoffrey Chaucer

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The Canterbury Tales  | Themes | Geoffrey Chaucer

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The Canterbury Tales  | Context | Geoffrey Chaucer

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The Canterbury Tales  | Prologue Summary & Analysis | Geoffrey Chaucer

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The Canterbury Tales  | The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale Summary & Analysis | Geoffrey Chaucer

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The Canterbury Tales  | The Miller's Tale Summary & Analysis | Geoffrey Chaucer

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The Unquiet Grave cover (15th century lyrics) By Jo Amies

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The Medieval Period: A Humerous Overview

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The Medieval Period: A Humerous Overview

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Mr. Osborne - British Literature Unit Preview 1.5 - Medieval Period

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The History of English - The Norman Conquest (2/10)

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Oxford Academic (Oxford University Press)

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What Did Chaucer Achieve? The New English Poetic Tradition

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Even though the article mentions ballads we haven't read, this is a wonderful introduction to the main characteristics of the genre.

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By Suzanne Gilbert

The ballad is by no means the sole property of Scotland, but it is rooted deeply in Scottish popular culture: in the hills of the Borders, the fishing villages of the northeast, the berry fields of Perthshire, the broadside collections of the national archives, and the venues of Glasgow's Celtic Connections folk festival. Its significance for Scotland has been documented over centuries. ¹

Many factors have contributed to the ballad's longevity and shaped its legacy in Scotland. The first has to do with the form itself, most observable in ballads that have been transmitted primarily through oral tradition over generations, many of which bear evidence of their medieval origins. This type of ballad is most commonly defined as a narrative song, that is, a song that tells a story. Scottish ballad stories are dramatic in nature, centring on moments of intense conflict and marked by violence, ranging over themes such as murder, fatal consequences, supernatural encounters, and treachery in love. The 'cruel mother' (20B) ² bears two babies in secret and murders them; 'she's howked a grave by the light o the moon' and is later confronted by their revenants. The sailor Sir Patrick Spens (58) mourns his fate, and that of his men, at the king's capricious order to sail during 'this time o' the yeir' when sailing the North Sea means probable death. The 'wife of usher's well' (79) defies the natural order by wishing for the return of her dead sons: 'I wish the wind may never cease, / Nor fashes in the flood, / Till my sons come hame to me, / In earthly flesh and blood'. Willie Macintosh (183B) seeks revenge for the murder of the popular Earl of Murray, the emotion depicted in a brief, intense conversation:

As I came in by Fiddich-side,
In a May morning,
I met Willie Mackintosh,
An hour before the dawning.

'Turn again, turn again,
Turn again, I bid ye;
If ye burn Auchindown,
Huntly he will head ye.'

'Head me, hang me,
That sall never fear me;
I'll burn Auchindown
Before the life leaves me.'

In 'Lord Thomas' (73), the young lord chooses to marry the wealthy 'nut-browne bride' rather than the Fair Annet, setting in motion a series of events ending in two murders and a suicide.

As ballad scholars have long observed, the traditional ballad is designed to tell a story through conventions which function to aid memory, and which have preserved narratives over centuries. It tends to begin in medias res - at the height of conflict - paced by the familiar ballad stanza of four lines in common metre, alternating iambic four- and three-stress lines (sometimes described as two seven-stress lines). The narrative often leaps from scene to scene, sometimes as in 'Willie Mackintosh' propelled by dialogue, producing ironic juxtapositions and leaving gaps that must be filled by the listener or reader. The language is simple and direct, heavily coded through the use of familiar phrases, while the emphasis is on action rather than motivation, for example on the cruel mother's act of infanticide with only shadowy hints as to why she has murdered her children. Through transmission, historical markers and geographical details are stripped away, 'worn by the friction of time' to expose an 'emotional core', what Tristram Coffin describes as 'a basic human reaction to a dramatic situation'. The emotional core of 'Mary Hamilton' may perhaps be exemplified by Mary's reflection from the gallows which features in the variants: 'Oh little did my mother think, / First time she cradled me, / What land I was to travel on, / Or what death I would die' (173B). ³

Ballads are also characterised by multiplicity and diversity. Many have led parallel lives, current in the oral song culture and printed in collections, taking different shapes according to the context. ⁴ Oral transmission results in multiple, regionally diverse variations. The obsessive Victorian ballad editor Francis J. Child tried to gather every possible variant of every 'popular' ballad (by which he meant as purely oral as possible), including 28 variations of 'Mary Hamilton' and 18 of 'Sir Patrick Spens' in his five-volume edition of The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (1882-1898). Further, he resorted to adding any texts he subsequently discovered to appendices in later volumes. When ballads appeared in collections or in cheap, popular broadsides, the texts became fixed, blurring the distinction between orality and print, and thus becoming memorable for different audiences and serving different functions.

Scottish ballads constituted much of the material chosen by the English collector Thomas Percy for his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765), one of the most influential publications of the eighteenth century. Percy was drawn to the ballads' poetic qualities, and he deemed them to be remnants of an ancient British poetry written by a formerly distinguished class, the minstrels. First published by Percy, 'Sir Patrick Spens' became a sensation. The version of 'The Bonny Earl of Murray' (181) that appeared in Allan Ramsay's Tea-Table Miscellany (11th edition, 1750) was an eighteenth-century hit. But much earlier, at the time of these ballads' composition, they served other functions in popular culture. 'Sir Patrick Spens' critiques the devastating effects of the Scottish ruler's thoughtless abuse of power. 'The Bonny Earl of Murray' was not merely an elegy calling on 'ye Highlands and ye Lawlands' to mourn the loss of a well-liked figure, but a robust public outcry against a very real political murder. ⁵

Over centuries, antiquarians' fascination with ballads linked them with a culturally-national narrative, which was perpetuated by their inclusion in print. Percy argued in the lengthy introduction to Reliques of Ancient English Poetry that ballads were the remnants - the reliques - of an ancient British poetry that could rival the classics: a poetry of Britain's own, so to speak. But subsequently, culturally-nationalistic Scottish ballad-collectors sought to shift that assignment of authorship. Concerned with preserving a post-Union cultural identity, Scots such as David Herd, Robert Burns, Walter Scott, Robert Jamieson, and James Hogg reclaimed these treasures for Scotland's own. Scott, for example, included in his collection many of the same ballads as Percy, but chose different variants; and he took great pains to document their Scottish geographical, historical, and cultural origins (despite his generally pro-Union sentiment). His collection was the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, representing Scotland's song rather than England's 'reliques'.

Other nineteenth-century collectors, such as William Motherwell and James Hogg, were careful to stress the living nature of ballads; real people were singing many variants of these songs. Hogg's famous report of his mother chastising Scott for printing her ballads because they were 'made for singing an' no for reading' ⁶ embodies the form: the ballad must be sung by a person in order to be itself. Collectors (and Hogg had also been complicit in Scott's project) were guilty of reducing the ballad by fixing it in print without the music, thus depleting the aesthetic experience. ⁷

Despite certainty among Enlightenment intellectuals that oral tradition was dying in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the mid-twentieth century saw an explosion of ballad-collecting in the Scottish 'folk revival'. It was a new kind of collecting, the emphasis not only on the words but on restoration of the music. The most influential collector, Hamish Henderson (1919-2002), camped out in the Perthshire berry fields, tapping into a rich stream of traditional ballads preserved among the travelling families of Perthshire and Fife - singers such as Jeannie Robertson, Belle Stewart, and Betsy Whyte, who became internationally renowned. Recording the songs for Edinburgh's School of Scottish Studies, which he co-founded, Henderson reported that it 'was like holding a bucket under Niagra Falls'. ⁸

There followed a rush of collectors into Scotland during this time. Others leaving lasting impressions were Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, who documented the richness of Scottish tradition and its translation overseas in a series of ballad recordings, The Long Harvest. The legacy continues: for example, the storyteller and singer Stanley Robertson has his own version of 'Willie Macintosh', learned orally from his travelling family. Ballads still hold a significant place in Scotland's cultural expression through their performance in folk clubs and festivals such as the increasingly influential Celtic Connections, held annually in Glasgow.

The ballad's representation and its identification with Scotland have been shaped by antiquarian ideals, but it has remained a functional part of Scottish life. Though academics - and even many ballad-singers - continue to recycle the notion that ballads represent a dying tradition, they might be described more accurately as a tradition always reinventing itself.

References & Further Information

¹ For introductions to the ballad, see Sarah Dunnigan, Scottish Ballads, Glasgow: ASLS, 2005; and Alan Bold, The Ballad, London: Routledge, 1979.

² Ballads are still classified according to the system devised by Francis J. Child in The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (five vols, Boston, 1882-1898; reprinted New York, 1965). Child identified 305 ballads that fit his criteria and gathered as many variants of each as he could discover. According to his system, 'The Cruel Mother' is ballad number 20, and the quotation comes from variant B, which he took from James Johnson's Scots Musical Museum (1787-1803).

³ See Thomas Pettit, '"Worn by the Friction of time": Oral Tradition and the Generation of the Balladic Narrative Mode', in Contexts of Pre-Novel Narrative: The European Tradition, ed. Roy Eriksen, Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1994; and Tristram Coffin, 'Mary Hamilton and the Anglo-American Ballad as an Art Form', in The Critics and the Ballad, ed. MacEdward Leach and Tristram P. Coffin, Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois UP, 1961, pp. 245-256.

⁴ On the role of print in ballad transmission, see Flemming Andersen, 'From Tradition to Print: Ballads on Broadsides', in The Ballad as Narrative: Studies in the Ballad Traditions of England, Scotland, Germany and Denmark, ed. Flemming G. Andersen, Otto Holzapfel, and Thomas Pettitt, Odense: Odense University Press, 1982, pp. 39-58; Joseph Donatelli, '"To Hear with Eyes": Orality, Print Culture, and the Textuality of Ballads', in Ballads and Boundaries: Narrative Singing in an Intercultural Context, ed. James Porter, Los Angeles: Department of Ethnomusicology and Systematic Musicology, UCLA, 1995; and Dianne Dugaw, 'Anglo-American Folksong Reconsidered: The Interface of Oral and Written Forms', Western Folklore 43.2 (1984): 83-103.

⁵ See Edward D. Ives, The Bonny Earl of Murray: The Man, the Murder, the Ballad, University of Illinois Press, 1997.

⁶ James Hogg, Anecdotes of Scott, ed. Jill Rubenstein, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999, p. 38.

⁷ In The Ballad as Song (Los Angeles, 1969), Bertrand H. Bronson argued cogently that a ballad is not a ballad without the tune, and he sought to provide what Child had omitted in The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads (4 vols, Princeton, New Jersey, 1959-72).

8 Quoted in Shelia Stewart, Queen Amang the Heather: The Life of Belle Stewart, Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2006, p. 67

The ballad is by no means the sole property of Scotland, but it is rooted deeply in Scottish popular culture: in the hills of the Borders, the fishing villages of the northeast, the berry fields of Perthshire, the broadside collections of the national archives, and the venues of Glasgow's Celtic Connections folk festival. Its significance for Scotland has been documented over centuries. ¹

Many factors have contributed to the ballad's longevity and shaped its legacy in Scotland. The first has to do with the form itself, most observable in ballads that have been transmitted primarily through oral tradition over generations, many of which bear evidence of their medieval origins. This type of ballad is most commonly defined as a narrative song, that is, a song that tells a story. Scottish ballad stories are dramatic in nature, centring on moments of intense conflict and marked by violence, ranging over themes such as murder, fatal consequences, supernatural encounters, and treachery in love. The 'cruel mother' (20B) ² bears two babies in secret and murders them; 'she's howked a grave by the light o the moon' and is later confronted by their revenants. The sailor Sir Patrick Spens (58) mourns his fate, and that of his men, at the king's capricious order to sail during 'this time o' the yeir' when sailing the North Sea means probable death. The 'wife of usher's well' (79) defies the natural order by wishing for the return of her dead sons: 'I wish the wind may never cease, / Nor fashes in the flood, / Till my sons come hame to me, / In earthly flesh and blood'. Willie Macintosh (183B) seeks revenge for the murder of the popular Earl of Murray, the emotion depicted in a brief, intense conversation:

As I came in by Fiddich-side,
In a May morning,
I met Willie Mackintosh,
An hour before the dawning.

'Turn again, turn again,
Turn again, I bid ye;
If ye burn Auchindown,
Huntly he will head ye.'

'Head me, hang me,
That sall never fear me;
I'll burn Auchindown
Before the life leaves me.'

In 'Lord Thomas' (73), the young lord chooses to marry the wealthy 'nut-browne bride' rather than the Fair Annet, setting in motion a series of events ending in two murders and a suicide.

As ballad scholars have long observed, the traditional ballad is designed to tell a story through conventions which function to aid memory, and which have preserved narratives over centuries. It tends to begin in medias res - at the height of conflict - paced by the familiar ballad stanza of four lines in common metre, alternating iambic four- and three-stress lines (sometimes described as two seven-stress lines). The narrative often leaps from scene to scene, sometimes as in 'Willie Mackintosh' propelled by dialogue, producing ironic juxtapositions and leaving gaps that must be filled by the listener or reader. The language is simple and direct, heavily coded through the use of familiar phrases, while the emphasis is on action rather than motivation, for example on the cruel mother's act of infanticide with only shadowy hints as to why she has murdered her children. Through transmission, historical markers and geographical details are stripped away, 'worn by the friction of time' to expose an 'emotional core', what Tristram Coffin describes as 'a basic human reaction to a dramatic situation'. The emotional core of 'Mary Hamilton' may perhaps be exemplified by Mary's reflection from the gallows which features in the variants: 'Oh little did my mother think, / First time she cradled me, / What land I was to travel on, / Or what death I would die' (173B). ³

Ballads are also characterised by multiplicity and diversity. Many have led parallel lives, current in the oral song culture and printed in collections, taking different shapes according to the context. ⁴ Oral transmission results in multiple, regionally diverse variations. The obsessive Victorian ballad editor Francis J. Child tried to gather every possible variant of every 'popular' ballad (by which he meant as purely oral as possible), including 28 variations of 'Mary Hamilton' and 18 of 'Sir Patrick Spens' in his five-volume edition of The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (1882-1898). Further, he resorted to adding any texts he subsequently discovered to appendices in later volumes. When ballads appeared in collections or in cheap, popular broadsides, the texts became fixed, blurring the distinction between orality and print, and thus becoming memorable for different audiences and serving different functions.

Scottish ballads constituted much of the material chosen by the English collector Thomas Percy for his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765), one of the most influential publications of the eighteenth century. Percy was drawn to the ballads' poetic qualities, and he deemed them to be remnants of an ancient British poetry written by a formerly distinguished class, the minstrels. First published by Percy, 'Sir Patrick Spens' became a sensation. The version of 'The Bonny Earl of Murray' (181) that appeared in Allan Ramsay's Tea-Table Miscellany (11th edition, 1750) was an eighteenth-century hit. But much earlier, at the time of these ballads' composition, they served other functions in popular culture. 'Sir Patrick Spens' critiques the devastating effects of the Scottish ruler's thoughtless abuse of power. 'The Bonny Earl of Murray' was not merely an elegy calling on 'ye Highlands and ye Lawlands' to mourn the loss of a well-liked figure, but a robust public outcry against a very real political murder. ⁵

Over centuries, antiquarians' fascination with ballads linked them with a culturally-national narrative, which was perpetuated by their inclusion in print. Percy argued in the lengthy introduction to Reliques of Ancient English Poetry that ballads were the remnants - the reliques - of an ancient British poetry that could rival the classics: a poetry of Britain's own, so to speak. But subsequently, culturally-nationalistic Scottish ballad-collectors sought to shift that assignment of authorship. Concerned with preserving a post-Union cultural identity, Scots such as David Herd, Robert Burns, Walter Scott, Robert Jamieson, and James Hogg reclaimed these treasures for Scotland's own. Scott, for example, included in his collection many of the same ballads as Percy, but chose different variants; and he took great pains to document their Scottish geographical, historical, and cultural origins (despite his generally pro-Union sentiment). His collection was the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, representing Scotland's song rather than England's 'reliques'.

Other nineteenth-century collectors, such as William Motherwell and James Hogg, were careful to stress the living nature of ballads; real people were singing many variants of these songs. Hogg's famous report of his mother chastising Scott for printing her ballads because they were 'made for singing an' no for reading' ⁶ embodies the form: the ballad must be sung by a person in order to be itself. Collectors (and Hogg had also been complicit in Scott's project) were guilty of reducing the ballad by fixing it in print without the music, thus depleting the aesthetic experience. ⁷

Despite certainty among Enlightenment intellectuals that oral tradition was dying in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the mid-twentieth century saw an explosion of ballad-collecting in the Scottish 'folk revival'. It was a new kind of collecting, the emphasis not only on the words but on restoration of the music. The most influential collector, Hamish Henderson (1919-2002), camped out in the Perthshire berry fields, tapping into a rich stream of traditional ballads preserved among the travelling families of Perthshire and Fife - singers such as Jeannie Robertson, Belle Stewart, and Betsy Whyte, who became internationally renowned. Recording the songs for Edinburgh's School of Scottish Studies, which he co-founded, Henderson reported that it 'was like holding a bucket under Niagra Falls'. ⁸

There followed a rush of collectors into Scotland during this time. Others leaving lasting impressions were Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, who documented the richness of Scottish tradition and its translation overseas in a series of ballad recordings, The Long Harvest. The legacy continues: for example, the storyteller and singer Stanley Robertson has his own version of 'Willie Macintosh', learned orally from his travelling family. Ballads still hold a significant place in Scotland's cultural expression through their performance in folk clubs and festivals such as the increasingly influential Celtic Connections, held annually in Glasgow.

The ballad's representation and its identification with Scotland have been shaped by antiquarian ideals, but it has remained a functional part of Scottish life. Though academics - and even many ballad-singers - continue to recycle the notion that ballads represent a dying tradition, they might be described more accurately as a tradition always reinventing itself.
(c) The Bottle Imp

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The ballad is by no means the sole property of Scotland, but it is rooted deeply in Scottish popular culture: in the hills of the Borders, the fishing villages of the northeast, the berry fields of Perthshire, the broadside collections of the national archives, and the venues of Glasgow's Celtic Connections folk festival.

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We are pleased to announce that four of the British Library's Anglo-Saxon Chronicle manuscripts have been digitised in full as part of our Anglo-Saxon manuscripts digitisation project and are now available on our Digitised Manuscripts website:

'Always after that it grew much worse': end of the entry for 1066, from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle D-text, England, mid-11th century, Cotton MS Tiberius B IV, f. 80v

The term 'Anglo-Saxon Chronicle' refers to a series of annalistic chronicles, arranged by year, which were written primarily in Old English between the 9th and 12th centuries. These annals record information on a huge variety of subjects from major battles and Viking invasions to famines and agricultural issues, from ecclesiastical restructurings to notes on the death of notable people from across Britain. Some annals even include poems about kings and battles. Although all the annals share some core text-the so-called 'common stock', which seems to have been compiled at some point during the reign of Alfred the Great- each text of the Chronicle has its own variations, omissions, and additions. It is therefore perhaps more correct to speak of 'Anglo-Saxon Chronicles', as Simon Keynes has suggested.

The manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle are still known by the letters assigned to them in the 19th century. They are:

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle A: the earliest surviving copy, now Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 173, contains entries written at different times between the 9th and early 11th centuries, with a 12th century continuation. It is sometimes known as the 'Parker Chronicle', after Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury, who gave large parts of his collection of manuscripts to the University of Cambridge and particularly to Corpus Christi College, whose Parker Library is named after him.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle B: Cotton MS Tiberius A VI, copied in the late 10th century. This chronicle covers the period between 60 BC and 977 AD. It is sometimes called the 'Abingdon Chronicle' or 'Abingdon Chronicle I' because one of its last entries refers to Abingdon. Along with the C- and D-texts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, it also contains a series of annals known as the 'Mercian Register', which recount the activities of Æthelflaed, lady of the Mercians, in the early 10th century. The Mercian Register provides an important contrast to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle itself, which focuses on the exploits of West Saxon kings, at the expense of other perspectives.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle C: Cotton MS Tiberius B I, copied in the eleventh century and related to the B-text.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle D: Cotton MS Tiberius B IV, copied in the mid-late eleventh century. The added information it contains about Worcester and York has led some scholars to suggest it was written in the North or based on a 'Northern Recension.'

Page with the start of the entry for 1016, from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle D-text, England, mid-11th century, Cotton MS Tiberius B IV, f. 66r

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle E: copied and compiled in the twelfth century at Peterborough Abbey, and sometimes known as the 'Peterborough Chronicle'. It is currently in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud Misc 636.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle F: Cotton MS Domitian A VIII, written in the late 11th century at Christ Church, Canterbury. This is notable for being a bilingual version of the chronicle, with Latin versions of each annal following the Old English versions.

Additionally, several fragments of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle survive, which are kept at the British Library. These include the G fragment (in Cotton MS Otho B IX and Cotton MS Otho B X), which seems to contain early entries but was burnt in the Ashburnham House fire of 1731. Additionally, H, also known as the Cottonian Fragments, is contained in Cotton MS Domitian A IX.

The British Library has also recently digitised a separate series of Easter table annals that were kept and compiled at Canterbury in the mid-and late-11th century. These annals notably did not mention the Norman Conquest, although a later hand added 'Her co[m] Willelm' to the annal for 1066.

All these manuscripts have had varied and colourful histories, which are reflected in the medieval additions and early modern annotations scattered throughout, and in the modern period some of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle manuscripts have been bound with other interesting texts which we have now digitised as well. These include the 11th-century copies of the Old English version of Orosius's Historia adversus paganos and the poems Maxims II and the Menologium (in Cotton Tiberius B I); the earliest surviving fragments of the early twelfth-century Latin legal compilation Quadripartitus and a list of Welsh cantrefi (in Cotton Domitian A VIII); cartularies from Ely and Gloucester (in Cotton Tiberius A VI and Cotton Domitian A VIII, respectively); and a variety of anonymous late medieval and Anglo-Norman chronicles, all now available online.

Alison Hudson

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We are pleased to announce that four of the British Library's Anglo-Saxon Chronicle manuscripts have been digitised in full as part of our Anglo-Saxon manuscripts digitisation project and are now available on our Digitised Manuscripts website: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle B (Cotton MS Tiberius A VI) Anglo-Saxon Chronicle C (Cotton MS Tiberius...

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Background information on the Medieval period

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England in Literature - The Anglo Saxon Period

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17 Now the Philistines gathered together their armies to battle, and were gathered together at Shochoh, which belongeth to Judah, and pitched between Shochoh and Azekah, in Ephesdammim.

2 And Saul and the men of Israel were gathered together, and pitched by the valley of Elah, and set the battle in array against the Philistines.

3 And the Philistines stood on a mountain on the one side, and Israel stood on a mountain on the other side: and there was a valley between them.

4 And there went out a champion out of the camp of the Philistines, named Goliath, of Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span.

5 And he had an helmet of brass upon his head, and he was armed with a coat of mail; and the weight of the coat was five thousand shekels of brass.

6 And he had greaves of brass upon his legs, and a target of brass between his shoulders.

7 And the staff of his spear was like a weaver's beam; and his spear's head weighed six hundred shekels of iron: and one bearing a shield went before him.

8 And he stood and cried unto the armies of Israel, and said unto them, Why are ye come out to set your battle in array? am not I a Philistine, and ye servants to Saul? choose you a man for you, and let him come down to me.

9 If he be able to fight with me, and to kill me, then will we be your servants: but if I prevail against him, and kill him, then shall ye be our servants, and serve us.

10 And the Philistine said, I defy the armies of Israel this day; give me a man, that we may fight together.

11 When Saul and all Israel heard those words of the Philistine, they were dismayed, and greatly afraid.

12 Now David was the son of that Ephrathite of Bethlehemjudah, whose name was Jesse; and he had eight sons: and the man went among men for an old man in the days of Saul.

13 And the three eldest sons of Jesse went and followed Saul to the battle: and the names of his three sons that went to the battle were Eliab the firstborn, and next unto him Abinadab, and the third Shammah.

14 And David was the youngest: and the three eldest followed Saul.

15 But David went and returned from Saul to feed his father's sheep at Bethlehem.

16 And the Philistine drew near morning and evening, and presented himself forty days.

17 And Jesse said unto David his son, Take now for thy brethren an ephah of this parched corn, and these ten loaves, and run to the camp of thy brethren;

18 And carry these ten cheeses unto the captain of their thousand, and look how thy brethren fare, and take their pledge.

19 Now Saul, and they, and all the men of Israel, were in the valley of Elah, fighting with the Philistines.

20 And David rose up early in the morning, and left the sheep with a keeper, and took, and went, as Jesse had commanded him; and he came to the trench, as the host was going forth to the fight, and shouted for the battle.

21 For Israel and the Philistines had put the battle in array, army against army.

22 And David left his carriage in the hand of the keeper of the carriage, and ran into the army, and came and saluted his brethren.

23 And as he talked with them, behold, there came up the champion, the Philistine of Gath, Goliath by name, out of the armies of the Philistines, and spake according to the same words: and David heard them.

24 And all the men of Israel, when they saw the man, fled from him, and were sore afraid.

25 And the men of Israel said, Have ye seen this man that is come up? surely to defy Israel is he come up: and it shall be, that the man who killeth him, the king will enrich him with great riches, and will give him his daughter, and make his father's house free in Israel.

26 And David spake to the men that stood by him, saying, What shall be done to the man that killeth this Philistine, and taketh away the reproach from Israel? for who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?

27 And the people answered him after this manner, saying, So shall it be done to the man that killeth him.

28 And Eliab his eldest brother heard when he spake unto the men; and Eliab's anger was kindled against David, and he said, Why camest thou down hither? and with whom hast thou left those few sheep in the wilderness? I know thy pride, and the naughtiness of thine heart; for thou art come down that thou mightest see the battle.

29 And David said, What have I now done? Is there not a cause?

30 And he turned from him toward another, and spake after the same manner: and the people answered him again after the former manner.

31 And when the words were heard which David spake, they rehearsed them before Saul: and he sent for him.

32 And David said to Saul, Let no man's heart fail because of him; thy servant will go and fight with this Philistine.

33 And Saul said to David, Thou art not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him: for thou art but a youth, and he a man of war from his youth.

34 And David said unto Saul, Thy servant kept his father's sheep, and there came a lion, and a bear, and took a lamb out of the flock:

35 And I went out after him, and smote him, and delivered it out of his mouth: and when he arose against me, I caught him by his beard, and smote him, and slew him.

36 Thy servant slew both the lion and the bear: and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be as one of them, seeing he hath defied the armies of the living God.

37 David said moreover, The Lord that delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and out of the paw of the bear, he will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine. And Saul said unto David, Go, and the Lord be with thee.

38 And Saul armed David with his armour, and he put an helmet of brass upon his head; also he armed him with a coat of mail.

39 And David girded his sword upon his armour, and he assayed to go; for he had not proved it. And David said unto Saul, I cannot go with these; for I have not proved them. And David put them off him.

40 And he took his staff in his hand, and chose him five smooth stones out of the brook, and put them in a shepherd's bag which he had, even in a scrip; and his sling was in his hand: and he drew near to the Philistine.

41 And the Philistine came on and drew near unto David; and the man that bare the shield went before him.

42 And when the Philistine looked about, and saw David, he disdained him: for he was but a youth, and ruddy, and of a fair countenance.

43 And the Philistine said unto David, Am I a dog, that thou comest to me with staves? And the Philistine cursed David by his gods.

44 And the Philistine said to David, Come to me, and I will give thy flesh unto the fowls of the air, and to the beasts of the field.

45 Then said David to the Philistine, Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield: but I come to thee in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied.

46 This day will the Lord deliver thee into mine hand; and I will smite thee, and take thine head from thee; and I will give the carcases of the host of the Philistines this day unto the fowls of the air, and to the wild beasts of the earth; that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel.

47 And all this assembly shall know that the Lord saveth not with sword and spear: for the battle is the Lord's, and he will give you into our hands.

48 And it came to pass, when the Philistine arose, and came, and drew nigh to meet David, that David hastened, and ran toward the army to meet the Philistine.

49 And David put his hand in his bag, and took thence a stone, and slang it, and smote the Philistine in his forehead, that the stone sunk into his forehead; and he fell upon his face to the earth.

50 So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a stone, and smote the Philistine, and slew him; but there was no sword in the hand of David.

51 Therefore David ran, and stood upon the Philistine, and took his sword, and drew it out of the sheath thereof, and slew him, and cut off his head therewith. And when the Philistines saw their champion was dead, they fled.

52 And the men of Israel and of Judah arose, and shouted, and pursued the Philistines, until thou come to the valley, and to the gates of Ekron. And the wounded of the Philistines fell down by the way to Shaaraim, even unto Gath, and unto Ekron.

53 And the children of Israel returned from chasing after the Philistines, and they spoiled their tents.

54 And David took the head of the Philistine, and brought it to Jerusalem; but he put his armour in his tent.

55 And when Saul saw David go forth against the Philistine, he said unto Abner, the captain of the host, Abner, whose son is this youth? And Abner said, As thy soul liveth, O king, I cannot tell.

56 And the king said, Enquire thou whose son the stripling is.

57 And as David returned from the slaughter of the Philistine, Abner took him, and brought him before Saul with the head of the Philistine in his hand.

58 And Saul said to him, Whose son art thou, thou young man? And David answered, I am the son of thy servant Jesse the Bethlehemite.

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Bible Gateway passage: 1 Samuel 17 - King James Version

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Now the Philistines gathered together their armies to battle, and were gathered together at Shochoh, which belongeth to Judah, and pitched between Shochoh and Azekah, in Ephesdammim. And Saul and the men of Israel were gathered together, and pitched by the valley of Elah, and set the battle in array against the Philistines.

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Bible Gateway passage: Matthew 1 - King James Version

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The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat Judas and his brethren; And Judas begat Phares and Zara of Thamar; and Phares begat Esrom; and Esrom begat Aram; And Aram begat Aminadab; and Aminadab begat Naasson; and Naasson begat Salmon; And Salmon begat Booz of Rachab; and Booz begat Obed of Ruth; and Obed begat Jesse;

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Preface | Dickinson College Commentaries

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The Historia Ecclēsiastica Gentis Anglōrum, completed in 731 CE, remains our best source of knowledge about early Anglo-Saxon history. The author, popularly known as The Venerable Bede (ca. 672–735), was born on the lands of the monastery of Wearmouth and Jarrow, in the Kingdom of Northumbria. He entered the monastery at the age of seven, and made it his home for the rest of his life. He was the author of nearly fifty works, written in Latin, including grammatical and metrical textbooks, Biblical exegesis, and church history.

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Patience Agbabi - 'The Wife of Bafa' - July 2013

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The emergence of drama as a literary art - Mindy Ploeckelmann