Emotional Alterity in the Medieval North Sea World (Palgrave Studies in the History of Emotions) 3031339649, 9783031339646

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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF EMOTIONS

Emotional Alterity in the Medieval North Sea World Edited by Erin Sebo Matthew Firth Daniel Anlezark

Palgrave Studies in the History of Emotions Series Editors

William M. Reddy Department of History Duke University Durham, NC, USA Erin Sullivan University of Birmingham Birmingham, UK

Palgrave Studies in the History of Emotions includes work that redefines past definitions of emotions; re-conceptualizes theories of emotional ‘development’ through history; undertakes research into the genesis and effects of mass emotions; and employs a variety of humanities disciplines and methodologies. In this way it produces a new interdisciplinary history of the emotions in Europe between 1100 and 2000.

Erin Sebo  •  Matthew Firth Daniel Anlezark Editors

Emotional Alterity in the Medieval North Sea World

Editors Erin Sebo Flinders University Adelaide, SA, Australia

Matthew Firth Flinders University Adelaide, SA, Australia

Daniel Anlezark University of Sydney Sydney, NSW, Australia

Palgrave Studies in the History of Emotions ISBN 978-3-031-33964-6    ISBN 978-3-031-33965-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33965-3 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: STEVEN CALCUTT / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Contents

1 Emotional  Alterity in the Medieval Northern Sea World  1 Erin Sebo, Matthew Firth, and Daniel Anlezark 2 Grotesque  Emotions in Old Norse Literature: Swelling Bodies, Spurting Fluids, Tears of Hail 17 Brynja Þorgeirsdóttir 3 “Þá  fær Þorbirni svá mjǫk at hann grætr”: Emotionality in the Sagas of East Iceland 43 Carolyne Larrington 4 On  the Wild Side: “Impossible” Emotions in Medieval German Literature 69 Sonja Kerth 5 “In  an Overfurious Mood”: Emotion in Medieval Frisian Law and Life 95 Rolf H. Bremmer Jr 6 The  Vasa Mortis and Misery in Solomon and Saturn II125 Daniel Anlezark 7 De  Profundis: Sadness and Healing151 Christina Lee v

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Contents

8 The  Hagiographers of Early England and the Impossible Humility of the Saints171 Rosalind Love 9 Rage  and Lust in the Afterlives of King Edgar the Peaceful201 Matthew Firth 10 ‘Shrink  Not Appalled from My Great Sorrow’: Translating Emotion in the Celtic Revival231 Kate Louise Mathis Index279

Notes on Contributors

Daniel  Anlezark  is McCaughey Professor of Early English Literature and Language at the University of Sydney, Australia Rolf  H.  Bremmer  is emeritus Professor of English Philology at the Universiteit Leiden Centre for the Arts in Society Matthew Firth  is Associate Lecturer in Medieval History and Literature at Flinders University, Australia Sonja  Kerth is Privatdozentin in German Medieval Studies at Universität Bremen Carolyne  Larrington  is Professor of Medieval European Literature at the University of Oxford Christina Lee  is Associate Professor of Viking Studies in the School of English at the University of Nottingham Rosalind  Love  is Elrington and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at the University of Cambridge Kate Louise Mathis  is an affiliate of the Sgoil nan Daonnachdan/School of Humanities at the University of Glasgow and Lecturer in Celtic at the Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann / University of Edinburgh

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Erin Sebo  is Associate Professor of Early English Literature and Language at Flinders University, Australia Brynja Þorgeirsdóttir  is Assistant Lecturer in Icelandic Literature at the Háskóli Íslands / University of Iceland

CHAPTER 1

Emotional Alterity in the Medieval Northern Sea World Erin Sebo, Matthew Firth, and Daniel Anlezark

In medieval texts, readers are often confronted with emotional reactions that seem incongruous or implausible, or even unimaginable. These texts rarely explain emotional responses or motivations. We are rarely told how people feel or why they do what they do. Nothing about the way these texts unfold suggest that there is anything surprising about them or that people would find them unusual. The implication is that the meanings communicated by such emotional display were obvious to their intended audience. So, can such meanings be recovered? This volume addresses the depiction of perplexing emotional reactions: displays of emotion that are improbable, physiologically impossible, or unfathomable in modern social contexts. Attempting to recover these meanings is the task to which the contributors to this volume have put themselves. In approaching this E. Sebo (*) • M. Firth Flinders University, Adelaide, SA, Australia e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] D. Anlezark University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 E. Sebo et al. (eds.), Emotional Alterity in the Medieval North Sea World, Palgrave Studies in the History of Emotions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33965-3_1

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question, this book does not set out to be a collection of literary studies that treat portrayals of emotion as simple tropes or motifs, isolated within their corpora. Rather, it seeks to uncover how such manifestations of feeling may reflect cultural and social dynamics underlying vernacular literatures from across the medieval North Sea world. An illustrative example of such unfathomable emotional response can be found in the story of Igraine’s rape,1 recounted in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae (c. 1136),2 Wace’s Roman de Brut (c. 1155),3 Laȝamon’s Brut (c. 1190–1215),4 and Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur (c. 1470).5 Igraine is the object of King Uther’s desire even though she is the wife of Gorlois, his best knight. In a fury, Gorlois leaves the king’s court and locks Igraine in his castle. The conflict between Gorlois and Uther devolves into civil war, ripping the kingdom apart, but Uther’s lust is such that he steals away from the battle at night and persuades Merlin to transform him to look temporarily like Gorlois so that Igraine will have sex with him. She is deceived and conceives Arthur; Gorlois is killed in the fighting; Uther, as the winner, marries Igraine.

1  Scholars have been cautious of understanding the episode in these terms and the trope is usually referred to, minimisingly, as ‘the bed trick’ or as a ‘seduction’. At least one early scholar refers to it as an “affair” (Robert Fletcher, “Some Arthurian Fragments from Fourteenth Century Chronicles” PMLA 18, no.1 (1903), 90). However, as Susan E. Murray notes, “Though it is possible to argue that Igerne [Igraine] is not technically violated by Uther, since it seems that she is a willing participant in the sexual encounter, the reader must keep in mind that she has been deceived by Uther who took on the appearance of the Duke through Merlin’s magic. There is a little question that, had she known her ‘lover’ to be Uther, she would have objected to his advances as strenuously as she previously had at Uther’s feast.” (“Women and Castles in Geoffrey of Monmouth and Malory” Arthuriana, 13 no. 1 (2003), p. 25.) For a fuller discussion of rape in this narrative, see: Gillian Adler “Writing History, Writing Trauma: The Rape of Igerna in the Medieval Brut Narratives,” Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality 56, no. 2 (2021), 48–72. 2  All quotations of Historia regum Britanniae are from The History of the Kings of Britain, An Edition and Translation of the De gestis Britonum [Historia regum Britanniae], ed. Michael D. Reeve, trans. Neil Wright (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2007). 3  All quotations of Wace’s Roman de Brut derive from Wace’s Roman de Brut: A History of the British, ed. Judith Weiss (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2010). 4  All quotations of Laȝamon’s Brut derive from Layamon’s Arthur: The Arthurian Section of Layamon’s Brut, ed. and trans. W. R. J. Barron and S. C. Weinberg (London: University of Exeter Press, 2001). 5  All quotations of Malory’s Morte Darthur derive from The Works of Sir Thomas Malory ed. Eugène Vinaver (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990).

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None of the versions of the story depict Igraine as having any reaction to being raped by her husband’s murderer or to marrying him: an experience which would now be considered, by international consensus and law, profoundly traumatic.6 This absence cannot be dismissed as a reluctance to depict emotion. Igraine shows emotion, but not for herself: “Igraine was sore and sorrowful at heart that so many men should lose their lives for her sake”.7 Moreover, the story itself is profoundly emotional in its concerns. It is dominated and driven by extreme male emotional responses to minor incidents, dramatic in their contrast to the absent female emotional response to traumatic events. The emotions of the men in the story, Gorlois and Uther, are so extreme that they lead to the deaths of hundreds of men in battle. Their emotions lead them to destroy their friendship, their social obligations to each other as lord and liege, and threaten the stability of the kingdom. Geoffrey of Monmouth has Uther say, “I burn with love for Igraine and I am in bodily danger if I cannot have her”.8 Similarly, Wace’s Uther says “Love for Igraine has cast me down, vanquishing and conquering me”.9 It is not only extremity but also complexity of emotion that is depicted in men. Monmouth writes that when Uther learns that his knight and friend, Gorlois, has been killed, though “pretending to be somewhat sad”,10 he rejoices that Igraine is now free to marry him. Yet, there is no sense of how Igraine feels or pretends to feel. The twelfth-century versions of the story make no reference to Igraine’s emotions after her second marriage, but Malory adds a scene in which Uther disingenuously asks Igraine who the baby’s father is in order to test her truthfulness. Igraine does not answer, but Uther, taking what seems to be a self-conscious pleasure in what he believes to be his own magnanimity, assures her that if she answers truthfully, she has nothing to fear. When she does, he reveals that it was he who tricked her and “the queen rejoiced”.11 A modern audience may speculate that Igraine’s joy is 6  Ann Wolbert Burgess, “Rape Trauma Syndrome,” in Rape and Society: Readings on the Problem of Sexual Assault, ed. Patricia Searles and Ronald J.  Berger (London: Routledge, 1995), 239–45. 7  Ygerne wes særi and sorhful an heorte | þat swa moni mon for hire sculden habben þer lure (ll. 9290–91). 8  Vror amore Igernae nec periculum corporis mei euadere existimo nisi ea potitus fuero (VIII, 478–80). 9  L’amur Ygerne m’ad suspris/Tut m’ad vencu, tut m’ad conquis (ll. 8659–60). 10  Subtristem se simulans (VIII, 478–80). 11  the quene made grete ioye. (I.iii).

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closer to relief at having survived a potentially very dangerous situation in which she might have incurred the king’s anger, but that is not the reason the text gives. Certainly, there is a gendered dynamic at play here in which men’s emotions are privileged over those of women. But it is more complex than that because she is also not displaying socially sanctioned emotions. For example, there is no depiction of Igraine’s distress that she has been deceived into actions which place her in a state of sin and no vilification of her complacency about the transgression. Murray argues that the fact that Uther falls sick within two years of raping Igraine would have been understood by a medieval audience as “righteous punishment exacted upon Uther by God”.12 Igraine, however, is not depicted as enduring suffering with fortitude out of a sense of religious obligation, so her lack of emotion at actions worthy of divine punishment is even more perplexing. Perhaps more surprisingly still, in Wace’s version, Uther’s counsellor, Ulfin, warns the king that fighting Gorlois will not endear him to Igraine.13 Of course, Ulfin’s empathy is limited and only extends to Igraine’s (potential) uxorious emotions for her husband’s distress. Even so, the fictional Ulfin shows more empathy than his author—Wace betrays no recognition in the way he writes Igraine that Uther’s killing of her husband is likely to create an unfavourable impression on her. How should we understand a medieval author who writes a character who seems to appreciate an emotional dimension of the story which the author ignores? It is possible to construct explanations for Igraine’s reaction but none of the possibilities are supported by the texts which, as stressed above, are silent on her motivation. Perhaps she hated her husband and is glad to be rid of him—but there is no indication of this. Perhaps we should understand marriage as her job and her emotions as more analogous with those of someone going through a workplace restructure. Even still, such a construction might imply less intense or different emotions but is it really possible that there would be no emotion—or at least none (apparently) worth speaking of? Perhaps she is simply terrified for her safety and understands that hiding her emotions so that each of her husbands may imagine she has a loyalty to him is the only possibility for survival, but there is no depiction of private emotion either. And it is remarkable that, over the centuries that the story was retold, no such display was introduced. Clearly,  Murray, “Women and Castles,” p. 25.  ll. 8895–98.

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it did not seem implausible to the story’s audience that a woman would exhibit no emotion in the face of such trauma. Should we conclude that medieval people have a different experience of emotion? And, can the study of the history of emotions help illuminate such apparent alterity? This collection seeks to address these questions from a range of theoretical and methodological perspectives. Studies of the history of emotions in medieval literature have tended to focus either on a single corpus of literature14 or on a single recognisable emotion.15 This book, however, approaches the subject matter of emotional display from the position that the extremities of feeling—whether unfathomable passivity or unfathomable reaction—manifest across cultural, literary, and emotional boundaries. It draws together studies of emotional performativity from experts in a range of medieval cultures that are often siloed in scholarship, including Celtic, Scandinavian, English, German, and Frisian. In so doing, this book seeks to demonstrate intercultural connection, cultural assimilation, literary parallelism, and variant emotional norms among societies of northern Europe. In approaching emotional alterity in medieval cultures, the volume’s contributors bring an interdisciplinary array of approaches to bear, their studies intersecting across a range of fields such as cultural studies, disability studies, and cognitive science. Yet, as each brings a unique perspective, all remain in conversation. This chapter offers an overview of current theories and understandings of ‘emotion’, particularly in relation to the fraught and complex question of the universality of emotion and its display before introducing these chapters.

14  For example, Glenn D. Burger and Holly A. Crocker, eds. Medieval Affect, Feeling, and Emotion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019); Maren Clegg Hyer, Gale R. Owen-Crocker, and Javier E. Díaz Vera, eds. Sense and Feeling in Daily Living in the Early Medieval English World (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2020). 15  For example, Katie Barclay and Bronwyn Reddan, eds. The Feeling Heart in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Meaning, Embodiment, and Making (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2019); Barbara Rosenwein, Anger: The Conflicted History of an Emotion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020).

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What Is Emotion?16 The study of emotion across a range of different fields is complicated by the fact that “there does not exist a consensual definition of what emotions are, either in philosophy or in affective science”,17 while any lexical inquiry demonstrates the complexity and fluidity of popular ideas about emotion. In the earliest form of English, the word mod refers to all the non-physical parts of a human: thoughts, feelings, qualities, disposition, and even character. It is the origin of the modern word mood which comes to have its modern sense in the fourteenth century. Emotion, on the other hand, is a sixteenth-century word, originally meaning agitation or even social unrest, literally a pushing outwards. Modern popular uses of emotion have moved away from this externalised, public sense towards an emphasis on interiority. In turn, modern research has moved away from the all-­encompassing idea of mod, aiming to distinguish the discrete elements of emotion: physiological expressions (such as raised heart rate), affect (the experience of emotion or feelings), cognition (thinking about affective triggers), and the behavioural changes associated with these (such as agitation). Although these elements typically occur in conjunction, they are distinct. The functionalist view18 of emotion has privileged physiological expressions, insisting that the “scientific concept of ‘emotion states’” should not be “based on conscious experience”.19 However, constructionalists reject this on the grounds that emotions do not have distinct and unique neurological markers: physiological expressions are not specific to emotion (e.g., heart rate changes in response to a range of non-emotional factors) and that physiological expressions are not specific to specific emotions (e.g., heart rate might change in response to fear or excitement). There is no established “objective criteria (perceiver-­independent criteria) 16  The authors are grateful to Farid Anvari for many illuminating conversations on interdisciplinary understandings of emotion, which helped shape this section of the Introduction. 17  Federico D’Agata and Laura Orsi, “Cerebellum and Emotion Recognition,” in The Emotional Cerebellum ed. Michael Adamaszek, Mario Manto and Denis Schutter (Cham: Springer, 2022), 41–51. See also Heather C. Lench and Noah T. Reed, “Comment: Can We Model What an Emotion Is? Comment on Suri & Gross (2022),” Emotion Review 14, no. 2 (2022), 114–16. 18  Lisa Feldman Barrett, “Functionalism Cannot Save the Classical View of Emotion,” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 12, no. 1, (2017), 34–6. 19   Ralph Adolphs, “How Should Neuroscience Study Emotions? By Distinguishing Emotion States, Concepts, and Experiences,” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 12, no. 1 (2017), 25.

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for when animals are in a particular emotional state and when they are not, despite over a century of trying”.20 If a person experiences sadness and another interprets it as anger, there is no way, scientifically, of determining who is correct.21 In short, there is no consensus as to how emotions “should be defined, on where to draw the boundaries for what counts as an emotion and what does not, on whether conscious experiences are central or epiphenomenal, and so on”.22 The above discussion deals with emotions theory at the broadest, most fundamental, macrocosmic level: how do we define and then identity emotions? However, perhaps the issue which has attracted the greatest interest is one level narrower: whether the experience of emotion is innate or culturally constructed.23 Although this dichotomy has dominated the discourse, studies increasingly conclude that emotions have both universal and cultural aspects. Jonauskaite et al. suggest that emotional associations with colours are reasonably consistent across cultures,24 and studies in non-verbal vocalisations have demonstrated a relatively high level of cross-­ cultural recognition and identification of emotions,25 although some emotions seem more easily identified than others.26 Valentina Ferretti and Francesco Papaleo suggest that this extends between species: [E]motion recognition abilities are largely conserved among different mammals and represent a critical aspect of social cognition. Despite the diversity in the modalities to express and/or perceive emotions, humans and other animals seem to share many homologies in their responses to others’

20  Ralph Adolphs, Leonard Mlodinow, and Lisa Feldman Barrett, “What Is An Emotion?” Current Biology 29, no. 20 (2019), 1061. 21  Ibid. 22  Ibid. 23  Barbara H. Rosenwein, “Problems and Methods in the History of Emotions,” Passions in Context 1, no. 1 (2010), 1–32. 24  Domicele Jonauskaite et  al., “Universal Patterns in Color-Emotion Associations are Further Shaped by Linguistic and Geographic Proximity,” Psychological Science 31, no. 10 (2020), 1245–60. 25  Aleksandra Ćwiek et  al., “Novel Vocalizations are Understood Across Cultures,” Scientific Reports 11, no. 1 (2021), 1–12. 26  Disa A. Sauter et al., “Cross-cultural Recognition of Basic Emotions Through Nonverbal Emotional Vocalizations,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107, no. 6 (2010), 2408–12.

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emotions. Some of these responses, such as emotion contagion, can be similarly observed in all the species we described, from humans to mice.27

On the one hand these examples suggest universal aspects of emotion, and, on the other hand, that culture alters the expression of emotion dramatically. Emotion words only map loosely across languages, with closer similarities in cultures that are linguistically related or in geographic proximity suggesting that the experience and perception of emotion is affected by culture.28 In fact, since emotional reactions have been demonstrated to be altered by expectation, the experience of emotion is, at least partly, culturally determined: what a culture deems unacceptable is more likely to elicit a negative emotional response than what is deemed acceptable. For historians of emotion, the focus has been one level finer again: it is this complex interaction between emotion and culture which is of most interest, since the elements which “combine to produce recognisable emotions are determined both by social context and by language, and are highly variable”.29 Study has focused on expressions of emotion and on how social attitudes and cultural forms (genres, tropes, customs, etc.) affect the experience and expression of emotion. As Stephanie Trigg notes, historians of emotion are concerned with: feelings and their relationship to social change. Work in this field analyses changes in the discursive representation of emotions and the terminology used to describe them. It is interested in the expression of individual, collective, private, and public emotions, and in the developing sense that emotions and passions can be governed or manipulated, whether individually or collectively.30

27  Valentina Ferretti and Francesco Papaleo, “Understanding Others: Emotion Recognition in Humans and Other Animals,” Genes, Brain and Behavior 18, no. 1 (2019). 28  Joshua Conrad Jackson et al., “Emotion Semantics Show Both Cultural Variation and Universal Structure,” Science 366 (2019), 1517–22. 29  Carolyne Larrington, “The Psychology of Emotion and Study of the Medieval Period,” Early Medieval Europe 10, no. 2 (2001), 251–6. 30  Stephanie Trigg, “Introduction: Emotional Histories—Beyond the Personalization of the Past and the Abstraction of Affect Theory,” Exemplaria 26, no. 1 (2014), 3–15.

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Humanities research focuses on emotions, not in evolutionary terms or even broadly as “a grammar for social living”,31 but in the microcosm: the nuances of emotions in culture. The idea that there could still be so much unknown about something so fundamental to human experience and so central to everyday existence is extraordinary. The ability to communicate and recognise emotions is a key survival skill, both in escaping danger and in social cooperation. In fact, there is evidence to suggest that language may have developed out of the facial and physical gestures associated with conveying emotion.32 The ability to recognise and interpret emotion is regarded as so important that experiencing difficulties with it is understood in medical terms. Given that some aspects of emotion appear to be universal (across cultures and between species) and that there is a high level of overlap in the construction of emotion cross-culturally, it becomes even more interesting that we find examples in literature and history of emotional experiences that seem perplexing or unimaginable like those in this collection. It also makes it more important to try to understand them.

The Chapters The chapters in this collection are arranged so that they loosely chart a course, starting with somatic, physical expressions of emotion (Chaps. 1, 2, and 3); through legal, philosophical, and theological constructions of emotion (Chaps. 4, 5, 6, and 7); and culminating in two chapters on historical reconstructions of emotion and their uses (Chaps. 8 and 9). The collection begins with Brynja Þorgeirsdóttir’s (Chap. 2) study of hydraulic emotional display in Old Norse narrative: the motif fluids—and particularly blood—marking out sorrow and grief. Brynja begins her discussion with episodes of physical emotion from two of the most famous Íslendingasögur: Egils saga and Njáls saga. As grieving father figures, Egill in the former saga and Þórhallr in the latter are described as swelling, as if their feelings were too great to be contained within their bodies. In Þórhallr’s case, blood spurts from his ears until he faints. Brynja locates 31  Dacher Keltner, Disa Sauter, Jessica Tracy, and Alan Cowen, “Emotional Expression: Advances in Basic Emotion Theory,” Journal of Nonverbal Behavior 43, no. 2 (2019), 133. 32  Brittany Florkiewicz and Matthew Campbell, “Chimpanzee Facial Gestures and the Implications for the Evolution of Language,” PeerJ 9 (2021); Jordan Zlatev, Przemysław Żywiczyński and Sławomir Wacewicz, “Pantomime as the Original Human-specific Communicative System,” Journal of Language Evolution 5, no.2 (2020), 156–74.

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such physical expressions of emotion in the context of other hydraulic emotional displays found in Old Norse texts across a range of genres. Such imagery is used to describe powerful, negative feelings such as anger and grief at high-tension points in the narratives, where they manifest in colour changes (pallor, blushing, and black colour), swelling, spurting blood, sweating, or crying tears of hail, intermittently using dramatic imagery such as blood  similes, tearing clothes, hair loosening, bursting, or collapsing. She explores these depictions in the framework of cognitive linguistics and examines the assumption that hydraulic expressions in Old Norse literature can be attributed to the influence of the Galenic theory of the four humours. In Chap. 3, Carolyne Larrington explores the widely accepted idea in Old Norse emotions scholarship that, despite the sometimes explosive physical expressions of emotion discussed by Brynja, saga narrators typically reveal little about how characters feel and that characters, in turn, show little emotion in speech or action. Larrington demonstrates that this assumption derives largely from analyses of a small corpus of very well-­ known sagas and does not necessarily hold true for the so-called post-­ classical sagas, nor for the often-overlooked group of sagas composed and copied in East Iceland. These include Hrafnkels saga and the interlinked narratives of Fljótsdæla saga and Droplaugarsona saga, all of which explore emotional empathy and performativity. Larrington offers a methodology in which prototypical generic emotional repertoires are analysed in relation to the whole corpus, including regional and chronological outliers, in order to allow a more accurate, nuanced, and complex picture of the medieval Icelandic literary emotion economy. The motif of hydraulic emotional display appears again in Chap. 4 by Sonja Kerth. Indeed, King Etzel’s physical response to deprivation brought about by his wife, Kriemhild, in Die Nibelungenklage is remarkably similar to that of Þórhallr: his heart fills with sorrow, blood flows from his ears and mouth, and he lapses into unconsciousness. This is only one of the highly unusual somatic expressions of emotion that Kerth explores across the medieval German texts Der Bussard, Engelhard, and Die Nibelungenklage. Odd or ‘impossible’ emotions, such as those displayed by Etzel in the last of these, violate courtly norms and threaten to exclude figures from the value-driven community that constitutes the nobility in fictional literature. Such figures often appear to be wild, out of control, destructive, or maybe even ‘insane’. In some cases, this appears to have been connected to specific motives and narrative schema and, as such, the semiotic meaning

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must have been familiar to medieval audiences. In contrast, other examples of emotional response appear to be so odd and so contradictory that the narrator needs to explain them to convey their meaning. Kerth examines such ‘impossible’ emotions in medieval German literature and seeks to uncover the significance of their depictions. This brings us to those chapters which consider social frameworks for understanding emotion: legal, philosophical, and theological. Here Rolf Bremmer in Chap. 5 looks at the role of four basic emotions (joy, fear, sadness, and anger) in the framing of medieval Frisian laws, and the way in which these laws inform us about the emotional life in the communities in which these lawbooks were written. Naturally, joy plays little role since it is not an emotion in need of redress. Similarly, there is little on fear, except for its use as a force to compel legal behaviour. However, the role of grief is more complex. In particular, Bremmer focuses on the extent to which laws recognise grief as something requiring redress, noting that early Frisian laws focus only on practicalities, while later codes, under the influence of Roman and canon law, tend to emphasise loss and mourning in their understandings of the same legal situations. Above all, Bremmer points out the pervasive concrete character of the laws. Finally, the chapter considers anger: an important emotion for laws developed to deal with a violent society. In addition to what these laws reveal about social attitudes to emotion, they offer extraordinary insights into private lives in which family tensions spilled into law courts. Chapter 6 by Daniel Anlezark turns from legal to philosophical understandings of emotion. His exploration of the Old English wisdom apocryphon Solomon Saturn II offers a reading of the notoriously enigmatic Vasa mortis (‘Instruments of Death’), described by Solomon early in the poem. The features attributed to this monstrous creature draw on a range of biblical and apocryphal intertexts but at its heart is the characterisation of the monster’s intense grief and distress. Anlezark argues that the Vasa mortis and its emotions provide the crucial metaphor establishing the central problem of the dialogue: why is it that some people are happy, while others are miserable? The account of the monster is followed immediately in the poem by a riddle about old age and death, which ‘subdues all’, and a sequence on the transience of nature and the folly of those who trust the permanence of wealth, honour, and worldly power. The poem’s interest in the relationship between an individual’s emotional state and fate is taken up in earnest in relation to the paradox of a hypothetical pair of twins, one

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of whom is ‘gloomy’, ‘unfortunate, ‘sorrowful’, and becomes a social outcast. This chapter explores in detail the emotional vocabulary of Solomon and Saturn II, and the ways in which the monstrous emotions of the Vasa mortis offer an ideational unity to this most enigmatic of early medieval texts. Christina Lee in Chap. 7 continues this exploration of sadness, grief, and trauma in early medieval religious writing, looking through a lens provided by explorations of emotion in the writings of Ælfric of Eynsham. Sadness is a complex emotion in Ælfric’s works and can mean different things depending on the situations in which it arises. For example, in his sermon in the Nativity, Ælfric indicates that if anger turns to evil it can easily lead to a debilitating sadness which leads to emotional indifference or ‘sloth’. Two types of sadness are more fully explored in Ælfric’s letter to Bishop Wulfstan. The first is that which leads only to evil; the second can be more beneficial and is a form of self-knowledge, expressed by Ælfric as a repentance for wrong or sin. While the second can be a remedy in itself, if remorse leads to reform, the first can also be healed by focusing on ‘spiritual happiness’ that the Christian should feel for God. This is rooted in the thinking of the writers of the monastic tradition in which Ælfric lived and was educated. The same contrast between two types of sadness is also developed by the ninth-century Frankish noblewoman Dhuoda in the Liber manualis written for her son William. An appreciation of the difference between the two types of sadness offers a way of reading the experiences articulated in Old English elegiac poems like The Wanderer and The Seafarer: the explorations of trauma and loss which point to healing rather than indulgence in misery and acedia. Rosalind Love in Chap. 8 also considers religious texts, but she explores the meaning of humility in hagiography. In particular, she examines the ways in which the ‘impossible’ humility that is often represented as a defining element in saints’ lives could provide an example for emulation on the part of their readers. Her close reading of what humility actually means in the writing of saints’ lives suggests that what is often meant by ‘humility’ is a form of self-knowledge, usually with reference to a saint’s particular calling. For example, Bede’s Vita S. Cuthberti, written around 720, explores the meaning of humility in a way that interprets it as a saintly virtue that contributes to community building, particularly important in monastic contexts. Community and humility are also concerns of Bede’s older contemporary, Aldhelm of Malmesbury, in his De uirginitate. He feared the nuns at Barking for whom his treatise was written

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might be tempted to pride in their higher state as virgins. His recommended remedy: humility. Aldhelm framed this as a form of self-­knowledge that could protect against complacency and the pitfalls of pride in the ascetical life. Love points out that this understanding of humility is also found in the hagiographic works of Goscelin of St. Bertin, writing for the restored community at Barking centuries later. However, for Goscelin, humility resided not as an abstract self-abasement, but rather in realistic self-appraisal. Finally, the collection turns to how later periods interpreted early medieval emotions. In Chap. 9 Matthew Firth analyses the transformation of the political depiction of Edgar the Peaceful (r. 959–75) who appears pious, good, and unemotional in tenth-century histories, but emerges as a very different figure in twelfth-century Anglo-Norman chronicles. Firth traces Edgar’s depiction through to William of Malmesbury’s recounting of rumours of Edgar’s lust, cruelty, and capriciousness: that Edgar killed a man who had married a woman Edgar himself lusted after, that he kidnapped a nun and forced her into concubinage, and that he ordered a nobleman’s daughter be brought to him to satisfy his lust and, when tricked into sleeping with a maid instead in the dark, raises the maid to overlordship of her former masters. Firth’s chapter sets out to examine the development of Edgar’s emotional afterlives through the framework of the cardinal sins, examining how emotive display was used to render reputations and legacies vulnerable, and how depictions of untempered and uncontrolled emotion could serve a pejorative purpose. In the last chapter (Chap. 10), Kate Mathis explores some of the ways in which modern audiences have sought to make sense of descriptions of somatic emotional display. Turning to Irish literature, Mathis considers how medieval Gaelic tales such as Táin Bó Cúailnge (The Cattle-raid of Cooley) were not simply retold through the Celtic Revival (c.1880–c.1920), but had their depictions of emotion ‘translated’ in ways that have shaped modern perceptions of the medieval. Revivalist authors’ depictions of characters such as Cú Chulainn, Fionn mac Cumhaill, Queen Maeve, and Deirdre retained their initial popularity post-Revival without recognition of the extent to which they had been revised, bearing often tenuous comparison to their alleged originals. This disparity emerges clearly from Revivalist renditions of episodes in medieval texts that convey violence or violent death, sexuality, bereavement, or other forms of heightened emotion, in which those episodes may be edited, bowdlerised, or omitted altogether. Gone is Deirdre’s frenzied display of grief at her brother’s

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grave; in its place is what Mathis describes as a “tepid, sanitized romance”. In this way, the emotional impact upon the character becomes minimised, diverted, or shaped to reflect the gaze of modern, not contemporary, moral codes. Mathis focuses on key episodes in a selection of Revival-era redactions of medieval Gaelic prose in which emotional activity has been subject to significant revision. As Mathis demonstrates, although extremities of violence could be omitted or retained arbitrarily, sorrow, regret, and displays of grief for the dead were most vulnerable to adaptation. While this could result from misunderstanding of a medieval source, it could also symbolise unusual familiarity with the nuance of an author’s original. Together these chapters offer a wide exploration of many different and under-explored aspects of the history of early medieval emotions.

Conclusion As Trigg notes, we are currently in the middle of an affective turn both expressed by and driven through social media.33 The internet acts to develop a common vocabulary for discussing emotion across a much larger group of people than at any time in history and like all mass communication it has the effect of standardising. Emojis offer a shared—but crucially, limited—vocabulary of emotions which encourages users to represent their feelings in these restricted terms.34 Memes not only rely on, but also reinforce, the idea of shared/similar emotional responses. In modern Australia (where this introduction is being written), government research and education policy for the last decade has prioritised ‘relatability’; the idea that literature, culture, and history are only worth studying if they mirror ourselves back to us, if they do not tell us anything we do not already know. This collection is an attempt to explore, understand, and celebrate the opposite, the unrelatable. Together this research acts to demonstrate the diversity and individuality of historical emotions and the possibilities of different ways of feeling.

 Trigg, “Emotional Histories,” p. 3.   Gaku Kutsuzawa, Hiroyuki Umemura, Koichiro Eto, and Yoshiyuki Kobayashi, “Classification of 74 Facial Emoji’s Emotional States on the Valence-arousal Axes,” Scientific Reports 12, no. 1 (2022), 1–10. 33 34

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Bibliography Primary Sources The History of the Kings of Britain, An Edition and Translation of the De gestis Britonum [Historia Regum Britanniae]. Edited by Michael D. Reeve. Translated by Neil Wright. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2007. Layamon’s Arthur: The Arthurian Section of Layamon’s Brut. Edited and translated by W.  R. J.  Barron and S.  C. Weinberg. London: University of Exeter Press, 2001. Wace’s Roman de Brut: A History of the British. Edited by Judith Weiss. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2010. The Works of Sir Thomas Malory. Edited by Eugène Vinaver. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990.

Secondary Sources Adler, Gillian. “Writing History, Writing Trauma: The Rape of Igerna in the Medieval Brut Narratives.” Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality 56, no. 2 (2021): 48–72. Adolphs, Ralph. “How Should Neuroscience Study Emotions? By Distinguishing Emotion States, Concepts, and Experiences.” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 12, no. 1 (2017): 24–31. Adolphs, Ralph, Leonard Mlodinow, and Lisa Feldman Barrett. “What is an emotion?” Current Biology 29, no. 20 (2019): 1060–64. Barclay, Katie and Bronwyn Reddan, eds. The Feeling Heart in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Meaning, Embodiment, and Making. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2019. Barrett, Lisa Feldman. “Functionalism Cannot Save the Classical View of Emotion.” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 12, no. 1, (2017): 34–6. Burger, Glenn D. and Holly A.  Crocker, eds. Medieval Affect, Feeling, and Emotion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Burgess, Ann Wolbert. “Rape Trauma Syndrome.” In Rape and Society: Readings on the Problem of Sexual Assault, 239–45. London: Routledge, 1995. Clegg Hyer, Maren, Gale R. Owen-Crocker, and Javier E. Díaz Vera, eds. Sense and Feeling in Daily Living in the Early Medieval English World. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2020. Ćwiek, Aleksandra, et al. “Novel Vocalizations are Understood across Cultures.” Scientific Reports 11, no. 1 (2021): 1–12. D’Agata, Federico and Laura Orsi. “Cerebellum and Emotion Recognition.” In The Emotional Cerebellum, edited by Michael Adamaszek, Mario Manto and Denis Schutter, 41–51. Cham: Springer, 2022.

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Ferretti, Valentina and Francesco Papaleo. “Understanding Others: Emotion Recognition in Humans and Other Animals.” Genes, Brain and Behavior 18, no. 1 (2019). Fletcher, Robert. “Some Arthurian Fragments from Fourteenth Century Chronicles.” PMLA 18, no.1 (1903): 84–94. Florkiewicz, Brittany and Matthew Campbell. “Chimpanzee Facial Gestures and the Implications for the Evolution of Language.” PeerJ 9 (2021). Kutsuzawa, Gaku, Hiroyuki Umemura, Koichiro Eto, and Yoshiyuki Kobayashi. “Classification of 74 Facial Emoji’s Emotional States on the Valence-arousal Axes.” Scientific Reports 12, no. 1 (2022): 1–10. Jackson, Joshua Conrad et al. “Emotion Semantics Show both Cultural Variation and Universal Structure.” Science 366 (2019): 1517–22. Jonauskaite, Domicele, et al. “Universal Patterns in Color-Emotion Associations are Further Shaped by Linguistic and Geographic Proximity.” Psychological Science 31, no. 10 (2020): 1245–60. Keltner, Dacher, Disa Sauter, Jessica Tracy, and Alan Cowen. “Emotional Expression: Advances in Basic Emotion Theory.” Journal of nonverbal behavior 43, no. 2 (2019): 133–60. Larrington, Carolyne. “The Psychology of Emotion and Study of the Medieval Period.” Early Medieval Europe 10, no. 2 (2001): 251–56. Lench, Heather C. and Noah T.  Reed. “Comment: Can We Model What an Emotion Is? Comment on Suri & Gross (2022).” Emotion Review 14, no. 2 (2022): 114–16. Murray, Susan E. “Women and Castles in Geoffrey of Monmouth and Malory.” Arthuriana 13, no. 1 (2003): 17–41. Rosenwein, Barbara H. Anger: The Conflicted History of an Emotion. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020. Rosenwein, Barbara H. “Problems and Methods in the History of Emotions”, Passions in Context 1, no. 1 (2010), pp. 1–32. Sauter et al. “Cross-cultural Recognition of Basic Emotions Through Nonverbal Emotional Vocalizations.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107, no. 6 (2010): 2408–12. Trigg, Stephanie. “Introduction: Emotional Histories  — Beyond the Personalization of the Past and the Abstraction of Affect Theory.” Exemplaria 26, no. 1 (2014): 3–15. Zlatev, Jordan, Przemysław Żywiczyński and Sławomir Wacewicz. “Pantomime as the Original Human-specific Communicative System.” Journal of Language Evolution 5, no.2 (2020): 156–74.

CHAPTER 2

Grotesque Emotions in Old Norse Literature: Swelling Bodies, Spurting Fluids, Tears of Hail Brynja Þorgeirsdóttir

The thirteenth-century Egils saga Skallagrímssonar does not include a single word that names Egill’s feelings when his most promising son, Bǫðvarr, whom he loved dearly, drowns. In this renowned scene from the Íslendingasögur (Sagas of Icelanders), the reader is left to infer Egill’s emotions from his actions and bodily expressions. When Egill receives the news, he hastily goes to find Bǫðvarr’s body, lays it in his lap, and rides to his father’s grave mound. While putting the body into the grave, Egill’s deep grief is communicated physically: “People say that he swelled so much that his tunic tore off him, and also his hose.”1 Egill’s feelings are 1  Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar, ed. Sigurður Nordal, Íslenzk fornrit II (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1933), 244: “þat er sǫgn manna, at hann þrútnaði svá, at kyrtillinn rifnaði af honum ok svá hosurnar.” All translations in this chapter are my own unless otherwise noted.

B. Þorgeirsdóttir (*) Háskóli Íslands / University of Iceland, Reykjavík, Iceland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 E. Sebo et al. (eds.), Emotional Alterity in the Medieval North Sea World, Palgrave Studies in the History of Emotions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33965-3_2

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portrayed as materially swelling so forcefully and intensely that they press outwards as if they are threatening to burst through his skin. Another and even more famous example of swelling emotions from the Íslendingasögur is the curious case of Þórhallr Ásgrímsson in the late thirteenth-­century Njáls saga. Þórhallr is said to have loved Njáll, his foster father, more dearly than his own father.2 When Þórhallr receives the news that Njáll has been burnt to death, his reactions are unequalled in their physicality and extremity: “His whole body swelled up, and blood spurted out of both his ears in a bow, and this could not be stopped, and he fainted, and then it stopped.”3 Þórhallr’s bodily reactions are grotesque—his emotions are so forceful that the build-up of outward pressure expands his whole body and then jets out of it with such uncontrollable force that his friends’ attempts to stop it are futile. The bleeding comes to a halt only when Þórhallr passes out. In this chapter, the somatic depiction of emotions in these scenes in Egils saga and Njáls saga will be examined in relation to bodily metaphors of feelings that appear in skaldic poetry, as verse is intrinsic to the narrative art of many of the sagas. The sagas will be explored within the framework of cognitive linguistics and put in context with hydraulic emotive displays in several Old Norse narratives of various genres, where emotions are conveyed in the form of a build-up of pressure in fluid form within the body that can overflow or burst through, possibly with a fatal outcome. Moreover, in the swelling expressions of Egill and Þórhallr’s emotions, several scholars have identified the influence of humoral theory4—the Galenic idea, omnipresent in medieval Europe, of the four humours of the 2  Brennu-Njáls saga, ed. Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, Íslenzk fornrit XII (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1954), 74. 3  Njáls saga, 344–45: “hann þrútnaði allr ok blóðbogi stóð ór hvárritveggju hlustinni, ok varð eigi stǫðvat, ok fell hann í óvit, ok þá stǫðvaðisk.” 4  Sif Rikhardsdottir, “Medieval Emotionality: The Feeling Subject in Medieval Literature,” Comparative Literature 69, no. 1 (2017): 80; Sif Rikhardsdottir, Emotions in Old Norse Literature: Translations, Voices, Contexts, Studies in Old Norse Literature (Cambridge: D.S.  Brewer, 2017), 76, 136–37; Lars Lönnroth, Njáls Saga: A Critical Introduction (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 112; Kirsi Kanerva, “Disturbances of the Mind and Body: Effects of the Living Dead in Medieval Iceland,” in Mental DisOrder in Later Medieval Europe, ed. Sari Katajala-Peltomaa and Susanna Niiranen (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 239–40. See also Edel Porter and Teodoro Manrique Antón, “Flushing in Anger, Blushing in Shame: Somatic Markers in Old Norse Emotional Expressions,” Cognitive Linguistic Studies 2, no. 1 (2015): 26–27, 39. They claim that words for swelling (þrútna) mostly appear in “relatively late texts, which could point to the influence of the humoral theory” (39). However, as argued below, swelling emotions can be found in what may be among the very earliest Old Norse poems.

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body (blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile), where an imbalance between the four was thought to cause both mental and physical problems. This chapter reconsiders this assumption and raises the possibility that this imagery can partly be understood in relation to vernacular metaphors of embodied emotions predating the emergence of Latin Christendom and Latin learning in medieval Iceland.

The Body as a Container for Emotions The imagery of swelling emotions as described above can be found in several emotive scenes in the Íslendingasögur and other sagas from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In Laxdœla saga, Bolli Bollason is described as “þrútinn … af trega” (swollen with sorrow) and Hrefna Ásgeirsdóttir bursts from grief over the death of her husband.5 Skarpheðinn Njálsson tries to repress his fury at his mother’s taunts in Njáls saga, but his body gives his feelings away as his rage distends his face, resulting in distinct red patches, and excretes out of his forehead in the form of sweat.6 In the fornaldarsaga (legendary saga) Völsunga saga, Sigurðr Fáfnisbani swells with grief, “his sides swelling so much that the rings of his armour burst asunder.”7 A constellation of emotions is at play in another fornaldarsaga, Ragnars saga loðbrókar, when Ívarr Ragnarsson (the boneless) learns of the circumstances under which his father was slain. Ívarr’s skin colours alternate between red, black, and pale, and “he was so swollen that his skin bulged from the fierceness in his breast.”8 The context of the depiction of Ívarr’s bodily reactions indicates that he is experiencing profound and conflicting emotions, intense rage, shock, and grief, though no absolute one-to-one relationship exists between a particular colouration of

 Laxdœla saga, ed. Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, Íslenzk fornrit V (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1934), 187, 158, respectively. 6  Njáls saga, 114–15. 7  Völsunga saga, ed. Guðni Jónsson, in Fornaldar sögur Norðurlanda (Reykjavík: Íslendingasagnaútgáfan, 1954), 1: 107–218 at 187. “svá þrútnuðu hans síður, at í sundr gengu brynjuhringar”; see also the accompanying stanza. 8  Vǫlsunga saga ok Ragnars saga loðbrókar, ed. Magnus Olsen (Copenhagen: Samfund til udgivelse af gammel nordisk litteratur, 1906–1908), 162: “hann var. sva þrutinn, at hans haurund var. allt blasit af þeim grimleik, er i briosti hans var.” 5

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the face and a certain emotion in the sagas.9 A similar notable scene of rapid colour change in the face of Flosi Þórðarson can be found in Njáls saga.10 The eddic elegy Guðrúnarkviða I further provides an excellent example of emotions thrusting their way outwards like a pressurised, capsuled force. The elegy is argued to be contemporary with Njáls saga, though its dating is uncertain.11 In the poem, the heroine, Guðrún Gjúkadóttir, is about to burst from grief and prepares to die because she cannot release her swelling feelings of sorrow after the slaying of her husband Sigurðr Fáfnisbani: þeygi Guðrún      Guðrún could not cry, gráta mátti,       she was so sorrowful, svá var hún móðug,     that she was about to burst. myndi hon springa.12

Attempts by others to induce Guðrún’s release by weeping to save her life turn out to be in vain. Their last resort is to get her to embrace the dead body of her husband. When she does, she collapses, her hair loosens, her cheeks redden, and “a drop of rain ran down to her knees.”13 The imagery in the poem is delicately soft. The release of Guðrún’s emotions is depicted by her collapsing, her hair flowing, and her cheeks flushing as her tears run down to her lap, a release that eventually saves her from bursting with grief. In contrast, we can observe the less-fortunate fate of Besse in the konungasaga (kings’ saga) Saga Óláfs konungs hins helga, who is unable to release his sorrow through weeping. His fatal feelings are aroused when he 9  As Kirsten Wolf’s extensive account of facial expressions in over 100 examples from the Íslendingasǫgur and þættr shows, in her “Somatic Semiotics: Emotion and the Human Face in the Sagas and Þættir of Icelanders,” Traditio 69 (2014): 132–8. 10  Njáls saga, 292. 11  See Lars Lönnroth, “Heroine in Grief: The Old Norse Development of a Germanic Theme,” in Inclinate Aurem: Oral Perspectives on Early European Verbal Culture. A Symposium, ed. Jan Helldén, Minna Skafte Jensen, and Thomas Pettitt (Odense: Odense University Press, 2001), 125. For a recent review of scholarship on dating eddic poetry, see Bernt Ø. Thorvaldsen, “The Dating of Eddic Poetry,” in A Handbook to Eddic Poetry: Myths and Legends of Early Scandinavia, ed. Carolyne Larrington, Judy Quinn, and Brittany Schorn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 56–69. 12  Eddukvæði, ed. Jónas Kristjánsson and Vésteinn Ólason, Íslenzk fornrit: Eddukvæði (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 2014), 2:329. 13  Eddukvæði, 331: “regns dropi ran niðr um kné.”

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learns that King Óláfr helgi has died: “It is said that Besse swelled and became red as blood in appearance and could not cry. He walked back into the city to Peter’s church and there he burst from the death throes he had by the fall of the holy King Óláfr.”14 In these representative but non-exhaustive dramatic examples from different genres of Old Norse literature from the thirteenth century, the inner state of the characters is expressed by imagery that epitomises emotions as a material force within a person that can fill up and even overflow. Emotions thrust their way outwards from the inside of the body and manifest externally in reddening or another colour change, red patches on the skin, or swelling that distends the body and even breaks through and flows out in the liquid form of tears, sweat, or gushing blood. Most decidedly, an inability to release one’s swelling grief is depicted as fatal. This imagery conforms to philosopher Robert C. Solomon’s conceptualisation of a hydraulic metaphor of emotions, where the human psyche is seen “as a ca[u]ldron of pressures demanding their release in action and expression,” such as when we might say that we are seething with anger or exploding with rage.15 This also corresponds with what the cognitive linguist Zoltán Kövecses defines as container metaphors of emotions; the conceptualisation of human beings as containers and of emotions “as some kind of substance (fluid or gas) inside the container.”16 In Old Norse literature, these kinds of corporeal expressions all convey negative emotions at points of high tension in the narrative, with anger and grief being the central feelings, emphasising the bodily affect. The body takes centre stage in these scenes and functions as a mediator of emotions that can be

14  Saga Óláfs konungs hins helga, ed. Oscar Albert Johnsen and Jón Helgason (Oslo: Jacob Dybwad, 1941), 2:830: “suo er sagt at Besse þrutnade ok gerde dreyr raudan yferlitz ok gat ecki gratit hann gek aftr j borgina til Petrs kirkiu ok sprak þar af helstride þui er hann hafde efter fall hins hæilaga Olafs konungs.” 15   Robert C.  Solomon, “Getting Angry: The Jamesian Theory of Emotion in Anthropology,” in Culture Theory: Essays on Mind, Self and Emotion, ed. Richard A. Shweder and Robert A.  LeVine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 81; Robert C. Solomon, The Passions: Emotions and the Meaning of Life (Garden City: Anchor Press/ Doubleday, 1976), 77–88. 16  Zoltán Kövecses, Metaphor and Emotion: Language, Culture, and Body in Human Feeling (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 146. On the container metaphor, see 146–63.

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meaningfully “read” by the audience through the saga composers’ creative use of somatic signifiers and stylised gestures.17 Such metaphors can be perceived in terms of cognitive linguistic theories, which hold that lexical categories and metaphors in language reflect how we conceptualise our knowledge and life experiences.18 The hydraulic metaphors of emotions in the sagas can thus be conceived of as creative reflections of the medieval composers’ knowledge and understanding of the affective body, carrying within them the artistic rendering of his or her own conceptions of embodied emotions. Consequently, hydraulic metaphors can function for a researcher of the past as “points of access” to the underlying knowledge structures at the time of composition.19 Humoral theory, the knowledge structure that has been argued to underlie the depictions of emotive swelling in Njáls saga and Egils saga, was central to medieval European conceptions of the body. In essence, the humoral schema is a type of hydraulic physical model. According to this ancient schema, derived from the Greek physician Hippocrates and developed by Galen in the second century and his medieval successors, an imbalance between the four bodily humours could cause various mental and physical health problems. A proper balance could be restored by regulating the humours, such as through ingesting medicaments and particular foods, and by purposefully excreting ill humours through bloodletting,

17  On the literary significance of the body in Old Norse and Early Irish texts, see Sarah Künzler, Flesh and Word: Reading Bodies in Old Norse-Icelandic and Early Irish Literature (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016). Kirsten Wolf has produced two essays that categorise gestures and facial expressions in a taxonomic manner in Old Norse literature, “Body Language in Medieval Iceland: A Study of Gesticulation in the Sagas and Tales of Icelanders,” Scripta Islandica 64 (2013): 99–122; “Somatic Semiotics.” Porter and Antón focus on words for blushing, swelling, and other somatic markers in their essay “Flushing in Anger.” 18  The foundational essay on this topic is by Charles J. Fillmore, “Frames and the Semantics of Understanding,” Quaderni di semantica 6 (1985): 222–54. Fillmore’s frame semantics theory is thoroughly summarised and expanded on in William Croft and D.  Alan Cruse, Cognitive Linguistics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 7–27. See also the milestone work on cognitive metaphor theory, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980). 19  Ronald W. Langacker, Foundations of Cognitive Grammar (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987), 1:63.

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cauterisation, vomiting, and sweating, to name a few cures.20 Certain ­temperaments and complexions made one predisposed to certain feelings and could cause extreme emotions and mental illnesses. Consequently, as stated in an Old Norse–learned treatise on the humours from the early fourteenth century, one who had too much black bile in the body was “heavy and silent, miserly and sleepy, hasty-tempered, and deceitful, envious, and of cold and dry nature.”21 According to the theory, emotions were thought to produce somatic modifications causing the blood and vital spirits in the bloodstream to flood, either from the heart to the limbs and skin (centrifugal) or towards the heart (centripetal), depending on the emotion. Anger was thought to be centrifugal and, thus, to cause heat and reddening in appearance, while fear was considered centripetal and would manifest as a pallor on the skin.22 Furthermore, a sudden forceful and extreme emotion could lead to fainting or death. For example, excessive fear could cause vital spirits to violently rush towards the heart with a lethal outcome. The manifestations of hydraulic metaphors for emotions in the Old Norse narratives named above have some basic resemblance to the hydraulic conceptualisations in the Galenic schema. The sagas were written after the emergence of Latin Christendom in the north, which had dramatic effects on the intellectual culture of medieval Iceland from the eleventh century onwards. It is to a large extent through ecclesiastical textual material that Latin ideas on the body and emotions were transmitted to Iceland, and texts relating to humoral theory are frequently woven into theological 20   This account is summarised from Damien Boquet and Piroska Nagy, Medieval Sensibilities: A History of Emotions in the Middle Ages, trans. Robert Shaw (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2018), 132–43; Naama Cohen-Hanegbi, “A Moving Soul: Emotions in Late Medieval Medicine,” Osiris 31, no. 1 (2016): 48–66; Simo Knuuttila, Emotions in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 212–17. Literature on the theory of the four humours and its influence and development in the Middle Ages is ubiquitous. Fine accounts are provided by Danielle Jacquart and Claude Thomasset, Sexuality and Medicine in the Middle Ages, trans. Matthew Adamson (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988); Nancy G. Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990). 21  Hauksbók, ed. Eiríkur Jónsson and Finnur Jónsson (Copenhagen: Det Kongelige nordiske oldskrift-selskab, 1892–96), 181: “þungr ok þỏgull. Sínkr ok svefnvgr. Styggr. ok prettugr. Aúfund siukr ok af kalldri nátturu ok þurri.” See further on this treatise, Brynja Þorgeirsdóttir, “Humoral Theory in the Medieval North: An Old Norse Translation of Epistula Vindiciani in Hauksbók,” Gripla 29 (2018): 35–66. 22  See Knuuttila, Emotions, 212–16; Boquet and Nagy, Medieval Sensibilities, 136–38.

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writings or compiled with them.23 Secular textual evidence from the thirteenth century also exists, such as an Old Norse–Icelandic-translated medical book; references to the humoral cures of bloodletting and cauterisation in the law book Grágás, the samtíðarsaga (contemporary saga) Sturlunga saga, and the saga of the medieval physician Hrafn Sveinbjarnarson; as well as in various encyclopaedic material.24 The religious literature belonging to this same Latin tradition is “rich in hydraulic model imagery, especially Gregory, Isidore, Bede, and the anonymous Latin homilies and hagiographies,” as Leslie Lockett points out.25 Religious texts in Old Norse are no exception. Hydraulic metaphors are, for example, used to indicate the love of God or portray the consequences of sinful behaviour, which could be cured by turning to God. In an account of the Virgin Mary’s miracles in the thirteenth-century Maríu saga, the face and body of the slave Boso swell up so forcefully after he commits blasphemy that his eyes almost pop out, he loses his speech, and his inflated appearance makes him cease to look human. By repenting at the altar of Saint Mary, Boso is liberated from his sins by the grace of the Virgin, and his body returns to normal.26 Likewise, by turning to God, one can prevent the dangers of swelling emotions, as discussed in the Old Norse translation of Alcuin’s De virtutibus et vitiis. In a section on the vice of anger, it is warned that anger leads to the swelling of the mind, with the grave consequences of one committing blasphemy and homicide.27  See further in Brynja Þorgeirsdóttir, “Humoral Theory in the Medieval North.”  See, respectively, on the medical book in AM 655 XXX 4to in Kristian Kålund, ed., Den islandske lægebog Codex Arnamagnæanus 434 a, 12 mo (Copenhagen: Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, 1907); Grágás. Lagasafn íslenska þjóðveldisins, ed. Gunnar Karlsson, Kristján Sveinsson, and Mörður Árnason (Reykjavík: Mál og menning, 1992), 267; Sturlunga saga, ed. Örnólfur Thorsson, 3 vols. (Reykjavík: Svart Á hvítu, 1988), 551; Hrafns saga Sveinbjarnarsonar, ed. Guðrún P.  Helgadóttir (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 5–6; Margaret Clunies Ross and Rudolf Simek, “Encyclopedic Literature,” in Medieval Scandinavia: An Encyclopedia, ed. Phillip Pulsiano and Kirsten Wolf (London: Garland, 1993), 164–6. 25  Leslie Lockett, Anglo-Saxon Psychologies in the Vernacular and Latin Traditions (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011), 108. These are among the many sources for medieval Icelandic homilies; see David McDougall, “Homilies (West Norse),” in Medieval Scandinavia: An Encyclopedia, 290. 26  Carl Richard Unger, ed., Mariu saga: Legender om Jomfru Maria og hendes Jertegn (Christiania [Oslo]: s.n., 1871), 666–7. 27  AM 619 4to, c.1200–1225. Alcuin, De virtutibus et vitiis i norsk-islandsk overlevering og Udvidelser til Jonsbogens kapitel om domme, ed. Ole Widding (Copenhagen: Ejnar Munksgaard, 1960), 123. 23 24

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According to the homily, this emotive swelling can be soothed with God’s help. These texts were brought into medieval Icelandic culture by the emergence of Latin Christendom and form a part of a Latin knowledge structure on the body and emotions. It can reasonably be assumed that these ideas were familiar to the literary elite in Iceland, learned people of high status comprising the social layer that commissioned and produced the sagas.28 Furthermore, many studies demonstrate how various aspects of Latin literature and learning had manifold effects on saga writing.29 As Annette Lassen concludes, the Latin tradition “lies in the background of the entire Icelandic saga corpus.”30

A Pectoral Model of the Mind It can thus be credibly surmised that the creators of the sagas were familiar with at least the outlines of the Galenic schema and Latin-learned ideas on the hydraulic physiology of emotions and might have creatively applied them in their artistic depictions of extreme emotions in their works. Nonetheless, hydraulic imagery of emotions also appears in the circumlocutions of skaldic poems, of which the earliest predate the influx of Latin learning in Iceland and thus might grant a window into pre-Latin knowledge structures. Skaldic poetry was composed from the ninth to the fourteenth century and much of it is included in numerous Old Norse– Icelandic sagas of all genres as a part of their prosimetric narratives.31 Metaphors of swelling feelings can be found across the corpus in several examples of emotions described as þrútna (swell, bulge) and svella (swell,

28  On the production of Icelandic sagas, see Carol J.  Clover, “Icelandic Family Sagas (Íslendingasögur),” in Old Norse-Icelandic Literature: A Critical Guide, ed. Carol J. Clover and John Lindow (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), 268–71; Lars Lönnroth, “Sponsors, Writers, and Readers of Early Norse Literature,” in Social Approaches to Viking Studies, ed. Ross Samson (Glasgow: Cruithne, 1991), 3–10. 29  Scholarly literature on Latin influences on Old Norse texts is vast. A good research overview is provided in Annette Lassen, “Indigenous and Latin Literature,” in The Routledge Research Companion to the Medieval Icelandic Sagas, ed. Ármann Jakobsson and Sverrir Jakobsson (London: Routledge, 2018), 74–87; and Jonas Wellendorf, “Lærdomslitteratur,” in Handbok i norrøn filologi, ed. Odd Einar Haugen (Bergen: Fagbokforlaget, 2013), 302–55. 30  Lassen, “Indigenous and Latin Literature,” 82. 31  On skaldic poetry and its history, see Margaret Clunies Ross, A History of Old Norse Poetry and Poetics (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2005).

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surge).32 Of particular interest are those that can be found in poetic compositions attributed to named pre-Christian poets, from the ninth and tenth centuries, prior to the influx of the Latin material. In their poems, we find móðr (wrath, courage) and heipt (hatred, fury) described by swelling or bulging, such as in the poem Ragnarsdrápa, attributed to the ninth-century poet Bragi Boddason inn gamli: “þá svall heipt í Hǫgna” (then hatred swelled in Hǫgni).33 Þjóðólfr ór Hvini (c. 855–930) similarly describes wrath as swelling in his poem Haustlǫng: “móðr svall Meila bróður” (the rage of Meili’s brother swelled).34 Correspondingly, wrath swells in a stanza attributed to the tenth-century poet Eyvindr skáldaspillir Finnsson: “malmhríðar svall meiðum móðr” (wrath swelled in the trees of the metal-storm [warriors]).35 These stanzas are generally considered to be correctly attributed to these early poets; overall, however, the preservation history of skaldic poetry makes individual surviving poems difficult to date with accuracy.36 The earliest poems have a long history of oral transmission before they were put down in writing, and the vellum manuscripts containing them date from only c.1200 onwards. If the attribution of these verses to ninth- and tenth-century poets is correct, these examples of the depiction of móðr and heipt as bulging and swelling in people suggest some type of a hydraulic metaphor of emotions being applied in Old Norse literature prior to the influx of learned Latin texts and the influence of Latin Christendom. Moreover, the model of the mind that appears in literary metaphors of emotions in both the skaldic poetry and the sagas is in some ways different from the Galenic schema. According to Latin ideas, feelings emanated from the movement of humours and vital spirits to and from the heart. However, the role of the brain and head was also thought to be of great 32  See examples under “þrútinn,” “þrútna,” and “svella” in Finnur Jónsson and Sveinbjörn Egilsson, Lexicon poeticum antiquæ linguæ septentrionalis, 2nd ed. (Copenhagen: Det kongelige nordiske oldskriftselskab 1931), 648, 551–52. 33  Snorri Sturluson, Edda. Skáldskaparmál, ed. Anthony Faulkes (London: Viking Society for Northern Research, 1998), 1:73. 34  Snorri Sturluson, Skáldskaparmál, 1:23. 35  Russel Pool, ed., “Eyvindr skáldaspillir Finnsson, Lausavísur 6,” in Diana Whaley, ed., Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 1: From Mythical Times to c. 1035 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012), 223. Translation informed by Pool, ibid. 36  On the dating of Ragnarsdrápa and Haustlǫng see Margaret Clunies Ross’s introductions in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold, eds., Poetry from Treatises on Poetics (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), 27, 431. See also, on dating, Kari Ellen Gade, “Dating of Poetry and Principles of Normalisation,” in Whaley, ed., Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 1, xliv–xlvi.

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significance. In the Galenic schema, reason and “higher psychological activities” were associated with the brain, and in terms of emotions, it was assumed that the movement of the humours was partly caused by cognitive acts in the brain.37 In contrast, in the circumlocutions of the kennings in skaldic poetry, emotions are distinctly depicted as having a pectoral localisation; that is, feelings are physically associated with the breast or heart, without any reference to the brain or head. Additionally—and quite distinct from the modern tendency to distinguish between rational thought and emotions—in skaldic poetry, there does not appear a clear conceptual opposition between the emotional and the cognitive. When the circumlocutions in all the breast, heart, and head kennings in the corpus are examined, it becomes clear that, within the tradition of skaldic poetry, both emotions and cognitive qualities are depicted as residing entirely in the same place: the breast and heart, and never in the head38—setting aside one doubtful kenning, rýnnis reið (chariot of thought), the context of which is obscure.39 Across the entire skaldic corpus, spanning poetry from the ninth to fourteenth century, the breast and heart are vividly described as the container, abode, and hiding place of emotion, thought, and wits, while the head is described as merely the stump of the hat or a helmet-carrier, without allusions to cognition or feelings.40 This pectoral model of the mind holds true for poems that are attributed to both early and later skalds and regardless of whether the poem has a Christian theme or not. 37  Knuuttila, Emotions, 94–98, quote at 95; see also Julius Rocca, Galen on the Brain: Anatomical Knowledge and Physiological Speculations in the Second Century AD (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 17–47; Corinne Saunders, “Mind, Body and Affect in Medieval English Arthurian Romance,” in Emotions in Medieval Arthurian Literature: Body, Mind, Voice, ed. Frank Brandsma, Carolyne Larrington, and Corinne J.  Saunders (Cambridge: Brewer, 2015), 32–33. 38  For this particular survey in full, on all the kennings for breast, heart, and head in the corpus, see Brynja Þorgeirsdóttir, “The Head, the Heart, and the Breast: Bodily Conceptions of Emotion and Cognition in Old Norse Skaldic Poetry,” Viking and Medieval Scandinavia 15 (2019): 29–64. 39  Sonatorrek 19 in Egils saga 245. While this kenning presumably refers to a body part depicted as the carrier of thought or knowledge, it is uncertain whether the referent is the breast, tongue, or head. See, for example, Sigurður Nordal in Egils saga, 254n; Bergljót S.  Kristjánsdóttir in Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar, eds. Aðalsteinn Ingólfsson et  al., in Íslendingasögur. Íslendingaþættir. Heildarútgáfa (Reykjavík: Saga forlag, 2018), 1:3–153 at 128. See also discussion and citations in Brynja Þorgeirsdóttir, “The Head, the Heart,” 34–6. 40  Brynja Þorgeirsdóttir, “The Head, the Heart,” 43–8.

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This model is also reflected in the thirteenth-century poetic treatise Skáldskaparmál among Snorri Sturluson’s many recommendations for how to determine the various nuances of the concept of hugr, which is placed in the breast. Hugr is often translated in modern English as “thought” or “mind,” which glosses over the word’s finer nuances that can contain many contextual and situational meanings referring to a person’s mental faculties.41 Unlike the Galenic schema, in Snorri’s recommendations, hugr indiscriminately incorporates both cognitive qualities and emotions: “Hugr is called affection and fondness, love, infatuation, longing, desire … Hugr is also called disposition, attitude, energy, fortitude, efficiency, memory, wit, temper, temperament, loyalty ….”42 Correspondingly, in the sagas, emotions are clearly depicted as having a pectoral localisation; that is, feelings are physically associated with the breast or heart. As declared in the prologue of one Old Norse–Icelandic grammatical treatise: “Hiarta mannz kenner allz” (the heart of a man knows [or feels] everything).43 In the Íslendingasögur, the breast and heart are vividly presented as the seats of courage, fright, wrath, hatred, stinginess, joy, grief, love, and wisdom.44 The literature further contains some gruesome examples of the heart being physically inspected to discern its owner’s personal traits and emotions of courage or lack thereof. In 41  This versatile meaning of hugr is attested in countless examples in Old Norse texts; see long lists of examples and citations under the entry “hugr” in Richard Cleasby and Gudbrand Vigfússon, eds., An Icelandic-English Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1874); ONP: Dictionary of Old Norse Prose, Den Arnamagnæanske Kommission, accessed October 5, 2021 . 42  Snorri Sturluson, Skáldskaparmál, 1:108. Translation modified from Faulkes, in Snorri Sturluson, Edda, ed. and trans. Anthony Faulkes (London: Everyman, 1987), 154: “Hugr heitir sefi ok sjafni, Ást, elskugi, vili, munr … Hugr heitir ok geð, þokki, eljun, þrekr, nenning, minni, vit, skap, lund, trygð….” 43  Fabrizio D. Raschellà, ed., The So-Called Second Grammatical Treatise: An Orthographic Pattern of Late Thirteenth-Century Icelandic. Edition, Translation and Commentary (Florence: Felice Le Monnier, 1982), 27. 44  In Fóstbrœðra saga, courage (128, 133, 190, 210–11), cowardice (33–44), fear (144), stinginess (33), hatred (128), and joy (16) are described as situated in the heart and wisdom in the chest area (vizkunnar hverfi, 233–44). In Njáls saga, the heart is mentioned in the emotional contexts of grief and courage (273, 289–90, 193). In Finnboga saga (274) and Fljótsdæla saga (246), the heart is mentioned in the context of courage; Hávarðar saga Ísfirðings (336), depicts grief as situated in the heart; and Víglundar saga (82), the heart is mentioned twice, denoting feelings of love in both cases. For the breast, see harmr (grief) residing in the breast in Harðar saga (32), vitrleikr (wisdom) in Króka-Refs saga (145), and elska (love) in Víglundar saga (82, 103). References are per relevant Íslenzk fornrit volumes; see the bibliography in this book for full publication details.

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Fóstbrœðra saga, Þorgeirr Hávarsson’s heart is cut out of his dead body to satisfy the curiosity of people who want to know what the heart of such a brave man looks like. It turns out to be rather small: “And some people maintained that the hearts of courageous men are smaller than those of cowards, because men say that there is less blood in a small heart than in a big one, and that fear comes with the heart blood.”45 In the legendary Völsunga saga and the eddic poem Atlakviða, the hearts are cut out of the characters Hjalli and Hǫgni and examined. Hjalli’s heart reveals his cowardice by quivering and trembling, but Hǫgni’s courage is demonstrated by his heart remaining still.46 Like other poets in the prosimetric Íslendingasögur, Egill Skallagrímsson portrays his thoughts and emotions as residing in the pectoral area, referring to his breast through kennings such as hugar fylgsni (mind’s hiding place), hyggju staðr (place of thought), sefborg (fortress of the mind), munstrǫnd (shore of desire), munar grunnr (ground of desire), and hlátra hamr (laughter’s covering).47 Following Egill’s swelling of grief at the death of his son, we observe the expulsion of his harmful emotions in the form of his poem Sonatorrek, spurted out from his breast, as he himself conveys in the second stanza. The poem is composed after Egill has buried his son and closed himself off in his bed-closet, planning to starve himself to death on account of his grief. His release, or catharsis, is the composition of this masterful poem, where he laments the death of his sons and contemplates his life and relationship with the god Óðinn. In the second stanza, Egill describes how his heavy grief makes it difficult for him to articulate his thoughts and expel the poem from his breast, his place of thought: 45  Fóstbrœðra saga, 210–11: “ok hǫfðu sumir menn þat fyrir satt, at minni sé hugprúðra manna hjǫr tu en huglaussa, því at menn kalla minna blóð í litlu hjarta en miklu, en kalla hjartablóði hræzlu fylgja.” Fóstbrœðra saga is more occupied with the heart and the breast than other Íslendingasögur and mentions these consistently as the seat of various emotions, more often than any other saga. The saga furthermore places wisdom in the chest area (Fóstbrœðra saga, 233–44). However, in a learned passage in the Flateyjarbók version of the saga (GKS 1005 fol., late fourteenth century), we nevertheless find one clause that places memory in the brain (Fóstbrœðra saga, 226n1). This clause has Latin origins, as Jónas KristjÁnsson has demonstrated; see his Um Fóstbræðrasögu (Reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar, 1972), 240–47. 46  Völsunga saga, 208–09; Atlakviða 21–24, in Eddukvæði, 377. 47  Sonatorrek 1 in Egils saga, 246; Sonatorrek 2 in Egils saga, 247; Lausavísur 15 in Egils saga, 149; Hǫfuðlausn 1 in Egils saga, 185; Hǫfuðlausn 19 in Egils saga, 192; Hǫfuðlausn 20 in Egils saga, 193, respectively.

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Esa auðþeystr     It is not easily spurted out þvít ekki veldr     (heavy sorrow causes that) hǫfugligr,       from the place of thought [breast], ór hyggju stað     the find cherished by Frigg’s descendants fagnafundr             [gods > mead of poetry] Friggjar niðja,     that was carried long ago ár borinn      from the world of giants. ór Jǫtunheimum48

The poet’s sorrow is communicated in physical terms as heavy, preventing him from releasing his poem from his chest. The word used for composing a poem is þeysa, which means to spurt or gush out. It is used once previously in the saga, in the context of Egill vomiting in the face of a man who has insulted him: “Egill spurted out of himself a big gush of vomit,”49 an unforgettably graphic scene where the poet subsequently, in the words of Laurence De Looze, “transforms his vomit into poetry, and thus redeems baseness and outrage through poetry and art.”50 The verb þeysa evokes imagery from the Old Norse myth on the origins of poetic craft in which the god Óðinn regurgitates the poetic mead.51 Indeed, one can view the composition of the poem as a metaphorical purgative for Egill’s grief. During the composition, he gradually begins to heal, as is noted in the prose: “Egill started to get better as the composition of the poem progressed.”52 When the poem is finished, Egill has completely recovered: the composition (vomiting) of the masterpiece purges the poet of his grief. Egill rises from his bed and returns to his rightful place at the high seat. The scene thus illustrates the metaphorical expelling of the deadly swelling grief out from Egill’s body. Moreover, the notion of emotions as fluids here aligns with the Old Norse mythic conceptualisation of poetry and

 Egils saga, 246–47.  Egils saga, 226: “þeysti Egill upp ór sér spýju mikla.” 50  Laurence De Looze, “Poet, Poem and Poetic Process in Egils Saga Skalla-Grímssonar,” Arkiv för nordisk filologi 104 (1989): 134. 51  Snorri Sturluson, Skáldskaparmál, 1:5. This imagery conforms to the theme of Egill’s relationship to Óðinn reverberating through the whole poem. See, for example, De Looze, “Poet, Poem and Poetic Process,” pp. 134–35. Clunies Ross argues that Old Norse poets “are represented as mimicking Óðinn’s pseudo-procreative powers” by receiving the mead and by vomiting. See Clunies Ross, History of Old Norse Poetry, 93. 52  Egils saga, 256: “Egill tók að hressask, svá sem fram leið at yrkja kvæðit.” 48 49

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knowledge as a liquid substance.53 The whole Sonatorrek account ­demonstrates the portrayal of Egill’s intense grief and melancholy, paired with the description of the swelling, as pressing from the inside, a force needing to come out if Egill is going to live. Notably, Egill makes an association between his poetry and the emotional world within his breast. Similarly, in the poem Hǫfuðlausn, Egill refers to poetry as munstrandar mar (sea of the shore of desire).54 Here, poetry is characterised as liquid (the sea), kept in the breast, while the breast is simultaneously referred to as the shore of munr (desire, longing, delight, and joy). This emotional part of the body (the breast) is pictured as the repository or container of poetry, and it is from this place of both feeling and thought that poetry springs. In this way, Egill’s poetry conveys the imagery of the breast as the joint container of skaldic powers, emotions, and thought.

Tears of Hail In the sagas, when excessive emotions are depicted as materially overflowing, it is usually in liquid form. However, intermittently forceful, negative feelings are pictured as bursting the seal of the saga characters’ emotive containers in the hard, cold form of hail, sometimes red as blood in colour. Again, Þórhallr Ásgrímsson in Njáls saga serves as a prime 53  On poetry as liquid, see Carol J. Clover, “Skaldic Sensibility,” Arkiv för nordisk filologi 93 (1978): 63–81; Peter Orton, “Spouting Poetry: Cognitive Metaphor and Conceptual Blending in the Old Norse Myth of the Poetic Mead,” in Construction Nations, Reconstructing Myths: Essays in Honour of T.  A. Shippey, ed. Andrew Wawn, Graham Johnson, and John Walter (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), 277–300. Judy Quinn explores the metaphorical expression of knowledge as a liquid in eddic poetry and Old Norse myths; see her “Liquid Knowledge: Traditional Conceptualisations of Learning in Eddic Poetry,” in Along the Oral-­ Written Continuum: Types of Texts, Relations and their Implications, ed. Slavica Rankovic, Leidulf Melve, and Else Mundal (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012), 175–217. See also Stefka G. Eriksen, “‘Liquid Knowledge’ in Old Norse Literature and Culture,” Viator 49, no. 2 (2018): 169–98. 54  Hǫfuðlausn 1, Egils saga 185. See also Hǫfuðlausn 20, Egils saga 192. Additionally, the corpus of skaldic poetry includes a few breast kennings that have poetry as the direct determinant, such as óðrann (poetry house) and óðborg (fortress of poetry), in, respectively: George S. Tate, ed., “Anonymous Poems, Líknarbraut 1” in Margaret Clunies Ross, ed., Poetry on Christian Subjects, Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 7 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), 230; Katrina Attwood, ed., “Gamli kanóki, Harmsól 1” in Clunies Ross, Poetry on Christian Subjects, 73–4. See also Rudolf Meissner’s taxonomic study of kennings, Die Kenningar der Skalden: Ein Beitrag zur Skaldischen Poetic (Leipzig: Kurt Schroeder, 1921).

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example. At a high-tension point in the saga, when the men who burnt his foster father Njáll are about to be tried for their crime, Þórhallr first verbally emphasises the importance of restraint and composure to his companions. No sooner has he said this than his body reveals his own turbulent inner state: “His face was like blood in appearance, and big hail sprung from his eyes; he asked for his spear to be brought to him.”55 Þórhallr’s bodily reactions emphasise the tension in the scene through the hydraulic imagery of his feelings; they bulge up in his face and are shown by reddening, and they overflow through his eyes in the form of frozen tears. A handful of other examples exist of characters crying hail in Old Norse literature. Víga-Glúms saga describes hail-like tears coming from the eyes of Víga-Glúmr when he enters a battle mood: “Laughter came upon him … he became pale in the face, and from his eyes fell tears which were like hail, those which are big.”56 In Sturlunga saga, Gizurr Þorvaldsson also cries tears that appear like hail while gazing at the dead bodies of his wife and son who have been burnt to death, a reaction that foreshadows his revenge.57 In Ragnars saga loðbrókar, Áslaug (the daughter of Sigurðr Fáfnisbani and Brynhildr) cries tears “as if it were blood to look at, but hard as a hailstone” upon receiving the news of the slaying of her stepson.58 In all these cases, the hail foreshadows aggression or violence, thus standing as a vivid symbol for the overflowing feelings of spite or aggressive anger, combined with grief or sadness. In the Christian imagery of the Middle Ages, crying was a complex and multifaceted symbol, often considered to be the overflowing of true

55  Njáls saga, 378: “var andlit hans at sjá sem á blóð sæi, en stórt hagl hraut ór augum honum; hann bað fœra sér spjót sitt.” 56  Víga-Glúms saga, 26: “setti at honum hlátr … hann gerði fǫlvan í andliti, ok hrutu ór augum honum tár þau, er því váru lík sem hagl, þat er stórt er.” 57  Sturlunga saga, 642. 58  Ragnars saga loðbrókar in Vǫlsunga saga ok Ragnars saga loðbrókar, 142: “sem blod veri aliz, enn hart sem haglkornn.” Tears of hail upon receiving grave news are also mentioned in at least three medieval Icelandic romances: in the early fourteenth-century Mágus saga jarls (Gustaf Cederschiöld, ed., Fornsögur Suðrlanda: Magus saga jarls, Konraðs saga, Bærings saga, Flovents saga, Bevers saga (Lund: Berlings, 1884), 19); in the fifteenth-century Sigrgarðs saga frœkna (Agnete Loth, ed., Late Medieval Icelandic Romances (Copenhagen: Ejnar Munksgaard, 1962–1965), 4:75); and in Vilhjálms saga sjóðs in the manuscript AM 577 4to, 41r (c.1450–1499) where, in both the latter cases, it is noted that the hail is red as blood.

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feelings in the form of a bodily humour.59 An anonymous English homily from the twelfth century categorises “tears like snow water” as tears of compassion and remorse on behalf of others.60 While Njáls saga has a great deal of Christian imagery,61 in this case, it is preferable to consider Þórhallr’s tears of hail in light of Old Norse kennings for tears as they are referred to in Snorri Sturluson’s poetic treatise Skáldskaparmál: “Crying or tears can be called hail or snow-shower, rain or drops, showers or waterfalls of the eyes or cheeks.”62 Although no preserved examples exist of tears referred to as hail in the corpus of skaldic poetry, hail is used in kennings for weapons and in battle imagery, functioning to emphasise aggressiveness and force.63 Hail is hard, cold, and aggressive, thus insinuating an agitated, hateful, angry feeling of sadness. Þórhallr’s icy tears symbolise the overflow of his emotions through his eyes, feelings of grief, and agitation, foreshadowing revenge. Fittingly, Þórhallr asks for his spear immediately after he cries tears of hail and later effectively commences a battle by using it to kill the first man.64

59  An excellent account of the symbolism of crying in the Medieval West is found in Elina Gertsman, ed., Crying in the Middle Ages: Tears of History (London: Routledge, 2012). 60  On snow tears, see ibid., xii. Furthermore, the tears of the sinners in inferno were frozen in “Canto xxxiii” in Dante’s La Divina Commedia; see Piero Boitani, “Inferno XXXIII,” in Cambridge Readings in Dante’s Comedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). 61  Numerous studies have been conducted on the Christian narrative elements in Njáls saga. See, for example, Siân Grønlie, The Saint and the Saga Hero: Hagiography and Early Icelandic Literature (Cambridge: D.S.  Brewer, 2017); Daniel Sävborg, “Konsten att läsa sagor: Om tolkningen av. trosskiftets betydelse i Njáls saga,” Gripla 22 (2011): 181–210. Older key works include Lönnroth, Njáls Saga: A Critical Introduction. 62  Snorri Sturluson, Edda Snorra Sturlusonar: Codex Wormianus AM 242, fol, ed. Finnur Jónsson (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1924), 112: “Graat eða tár má kalla hagl eða él regn eða dropa skurer eða forsar augna eða kinna.” This text is not found in other manuscripts of Snorra-Edda, but a similar passage is found in the main manuscript on kennings for gold where tears of hail is mentioned. See Guðrún Nordal, Tools of Literacy, 246–47 and 294–96 on kennings for tears and crying. 63  Many such examples can be found, such as in Hallfreðr vandræðaskáld’s Hákonardrápa. Kate Heslop, ed., “Hallfreðr vandræðaskáld Óttarsson, Hákonardrápa 3” in Gade and Marold, Poetry from Treatises on Poetics, 218. 64  Njáls saga, 402–03.

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Un-sealed Emotive Bodies To summarise the features of the literary representations of embodied emotions that appear in the Old Norse works discussed here: feelings are portrayed as physically materialising as a force that has a fluid form within the body, which in turn functions like a pressurised container for the fluid. Such hydraulic metaphors for emotions are used to describe powerful and decidedly negative feelings such as anger and grief, at high-tension points in the narratives. During emotional upheaval, the fluids move towards and from the walls of the body, manifesting in colour changes (pallor, blushing, and black colour), red patches, and bodily swelling. If the emotions are not soothed or released through action, this can have grave physical consequences, such as fainting (Þórhallr in Njáls saga) or the risk of death (Egils saga, Guðrúnarkviða I, Laxdœla saga, and Saga Óláfs konungs hins helga). The body as the container of feelings is not “sealed”: it can overflow or burst in the case of extreme, forceful feelings. The force of the emotions presses outwards, and the feelings appear in the texts as sometimes overflowing in the liquid form of spurting blood, tears, and sweat, as well as hard hail. This is also intermittently conveyed through the use of dramatic imagery (blood-similes, tearing clothes, bursting, collapsing, fainting, hair loosening, etc.) or mythic connotations (the mead of poetry), as in Egill’s metaphorical purging of his melancholy through “vomiting” his emotions in poetic form. In the sagas, emotions are clearly depicted as residing in the pectoral area: the breast and heart. Additionally, in the periphrasis of skaldic poetry, a conceptual distinction between rational thought and emotions seems absent and cognitive qualities and emotions are portrayed as of the same kind and both as residing in the same place: the chest area, but not partly in the head, as the Latin tradition assumes. Egill Skallagrímsson’s poetry further conveys a conceptualisation of the breast as the joint container of skaldic powers, emotions, and thought. Some features of the model described here, namely metaphors of emotive swelling and the pectoral localisation of feelings and cognition, can be identified in what is believed to be the very oldest Old Norse poems, predating the influx of Latin knowledge by two centuries. At the same time, the model conforms in broad strokes to the Latin schema’s conceptualisation of emotions as hydraulic, behaving like a fluid in a container. The whole of the extant Old Norse manuscript corpus postdates the emergence of Latin Christendom in Iceland, and these

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circumstances make it difficult to evaluate the relationship between a possible earlier vernacular knowledge structure and the Latin system. Cross-cultural studies have shown that variants of hydraulic metaphors of emotions exist in a variety of languages across the globe, not only in cultures shaped by classical antiquity.65 As George Lakoff and Mark Johnson illustrate in their foundational study on cognitive metaphors, Metaphors We Live By, metaphors in language are a product of the interaction between cross-cultural shared human attributes and culture-specific knowledge.66 That is, the fact that human bodies are essentially the same all around the world and across time can account for the similarity in emotion metaphors across distant cultures.67 For example, common human biology exists behind the physical sensation of heat and the increased heart rate following anger, leading to a similar conceptualisation in various cultures of anger as something hot. In turn, the metaphors are also shaped by the knowledge, beliefs, and values of each place and time, which is seen as accounting for culture-specific variations.68 Accordingly, some attributes of the Old English hydraulic model of emotions, as described by Leslie Lockett, are dissimilar to the conceptualisations that appear in the Old Norse works explored in this chapter. In her monumental study on Anglo-­ Saxon psychologies, Lockett lists the core features of the Old English model as cardiocentric localisation, pressure, and heat, resembling “the behaviour of a fluid in a closed container.”69 However, in the Old English material, Lockett notes, the prominent feature is that the individual keeps the signs of “cardiocentric distress locked down in his chest cavity” and it is the 65  See examples from non-Indo-European cultures in Zoltán Kövecses, “Anger: Its Language, Conceptualization, and Physiology in the Light of Cross-Cultural Evidence,” in Language and the Cognitive Construal of the World, ed. John R.  Taylor and Robert E. MacLaury (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1995), 184–86. 66  Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, 19, 61–68. 67  See Kövecses, Metaphor and Emotion. Kövecses is a pioneer in the study of emotions and cognitive metaphors. Important cognitive studies on metaphors in literature include George Lakoff and Mark Turner, More Than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989); Raymond W.  Gibbs, The Poetics of Mind: Figurative Thought, Language, and Understanding (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). The latter provides a survey of Lakoff and Johnson’s work on metaphors and subsequent works. 68  Kövecses, Metaphor and Emotion, 154–81; Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, 17–19. 69  Lockett, Anglo-Saxon Psychologies, 5. Lockett further argues that the model is a manifestation of a pre-Latin folk psychology; ibid., 109, 280.

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internal bodily manifestations that are emphasised, rather than external visible signs on the outside of the body.70 In contrast, in the Old Norse sagas, the emotive container is clearly depicted as un-sealed; feelings can vividly be observed externally and sometimes overflowing in a dramatic way or even burst through.71 The Old Norse–Icelandic sagas were created at an intersection where various strands intertwine: the Latin learned and hagiographic, the continental chivalric, and the vernacular culture of poetry, myths, folklore, and oral transmission.72 It can be tentatively hypothesised that the artistic renderings of bodily affect as hydraulic and localised in the pectoral area in the earliest Old Norse skaldic poetry reflect an underlying vernacular knowledge structure of the body and emotions that predates the influx of Latin learning in medieval Iceland. From the eleventh century and onwards to an increasing degree, Latin culture introduced a new and, in some respects, different hydraulic conceptualisation of the body and emotions: the humoral schema. It may be surmised that this aligned with pre-existing vernacular conceptions, interacted with them, and added to them in time. A more comprehensive investigation of the genre-specific manifestations of emotive somatic signifiers in Old Norse textual material could be fruitful in revealing the specifics of this development. For the present purposes, it can be said that the hydraulic imagery of emotions as it appears in the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century sagas is rendered within an artistic framework in an intricate web reflecting the intersection of Latin and vernacular traditions in a creative fusion that is doubtful to attribute to the humoral theory alone.

Bibliography Manuscripts Copenhagen, Den Arnamagnæanske Samling, AM 242 fol. (Codex Wormianus). Copenhagen, Den Arnamagnæanske Samling, AM 468 4to (Reykjabók). Copenhagen, Den Arnamagnæanske Samling, AM 655 XXX 4to.  Ibid., 68, 146–47.  Such overflow can also be seen in some medieval Irish narratives; see ibid., 146–47. 72  On such interaction, see for example, the excellent study by Grønlie, The Saint and the Saga Hero; and the rich collection of essays in Stefka G. Eriksen, ed., Intellectual Culture in Medieval Scandinavia, c. 1100–1350 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016). 70 71

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Copenhagen, Den Arnamagnæanske Samling, AM 619 4to. Reykjavík, Stofnun Árna Magnússonar í íslenskum fræðum, AM 132 (Möðruvallabók). Reykjavík, Stofnun Árna Magnússonar í íslenskum fræðum, AM 133 (Kálfalækjarbók). Reykjavík, Stofnun Árna Magnússonar í íslenskum fræðum, AM 577 4to. Reykjavík, Stofnun Árna Magnússonar í íslenskum fræðum, GKS 1105 (Flateyjarbók). Reykjavík, Stofnun Árna Magnússonar í íslenskum fræðum, GKS 2870 (Gráskinna).

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Harðar saga Grímkelssonar eða Hólmverja saga. Edited by Þórhallur Vilmundarson. In Harðar saga. Íslenzk fornrit, XIII, 1–97. Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1991. Hauksbók. Udgiven efter de Arnamagnæanske håndskrifter no. 371, 544 og 675, 4 ̊ samt forskellige papirshåndskrifter. Edited by Eiríkur Jónsson and Finnur Jónsson. Copenhagen: Det Kongelige nordiske oldskrift-selskab, 1892–1896. Hávarðar saga Ísfirðings. Edited by Björn K. Þórólfsson and Guðni Jónsson. In Vestfirðinga sǫgur. Íslenzk fornrit, VI, 289–358. Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1943. Hrafns saga Sveinbjarnarsonar. Edited by Guðrún P.  Helgadóttir. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987. Króka-Refs saga. Edited by Jóhannes Halldórsson. In Kjalnesinga saga. Íslenzk fornrit, XIV, 117–60. Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1959. Laxdœla saga. Edited by Einar Ólafur Sveinsson. In Laxdœla saga, Halldórs þættir Snorrasonar, Stúfs þáttr. Íslenzk fornrit, V, 1–248. Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1934. Loth, Agnete, ed. Late Medieval Icelandic Romances. 5 vols., Editiones Arnamagnæanæ, Series B, vols. 20–24. Copenhagen: Ejnar Munksgaard, 1962–1965. Raschellà, Fabrizio D., ed. The So-Called Second Grammatical Treatise: An Orthographic Pattern of Late Thirteenth-Century Icelandic. Edition, Translation and Commentary, Filologia Germanica, Testi e Studi 2. Florence: Felice Le Monnier, 1982. Saga Óláfs konungs hins helga. Den store saga om Olav den hellige efter pergamenthåndskrift in Kungliga biblioteket i Stockholm nr. 2 4to, med varianter fra andre håndskrifter. Edited by Oscar Albert Johnsen and Jón Helgason. 2 vols. Oslo: Jacob Dybwad, 1941. Snorri Sturluson. Edda. Edited and Translated by Anthony Faulkes. London: Everyman, 1987. Snorri Sturluson. Edda Snorra Sturlusonar: Codex Wormianus AM 242, fol. Edited by Finnur Jónsson. Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1924, 1924. Snorri Sturluson. Edda. Skáldskaparmál. Edited by Anthony Faulkes. 2 vols. Vol.  I, London: Viking Society for Northern Research, University College London, 1998. Sturlunga saga. Edited by Örnólfur Thorsson. 3 vols. Reykjavík: Svart á hvítu 1988. Unger, Carl Richard, ed. Mariu saga: Legender om Jomfru Maria og hendes Jertegn. Christiania [Oslo]: s.n., 1871. Víglundar saga. Edited by Jóhannes Halldórsson. In Kjalnesinga saga. Íslenzk fornrit, XIV, 61–116. Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1959. Völsunga saga. Edited by Guðni Jónsson. In Fornaldar sögur Norðurlanda. 4 vols. Vol. I, 107–218. Reykjavík: Íslendingasagnaútgáfan, 1954.

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Vǫlsunga saga ok Ragnars saga loðbrókar. Edited by Magnus Olsen. Copenhagen: Samfund til udgivelse af gammel nordisk litteratur, 1906–1908. Whaley, Diana, ed. Poetry from the Kings' Sagas 1: From Mythical Times to c. 1035, Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 1. Turnhout: Brepols, 2012.

Secondary Sources Boitani, Piero. “Inferno XXXIII.” In Cambridge Readings in Dante’s Comedy, 70–89. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Boquet, Damien, and Piroska Nagy. “Medieval Sciences of Emotions During the Eleventh to Thirteenth Centuries: An Intellectual History.” Osiris 31, no. 1 (2016): 21–45. Boquet, Damien, and Piroska Nagy. Medieval Sensibilities: A History of Emotions in the Middle Ages. Translated by Robert Shaw. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2018. Brynja Þorgeirsdóttir. “The Head, the Heart, and the Breast: Bodily Conceptions of Emotion and Cognition in Old Norse Skaldic Poetry.” Viking and Medieval Scandinavia 15 (2019): 29–64. Brynja Þorgeirsdóttir. “Humoral Theory in the Medieval North: An Old Norse Translation of Epistula Vindiciani in Hauksbók.” Gripla 29 (2018): 35–66. Cleasby, Richard, and Gudbrand Vigfússon, eds. An Icelandic-English Dictionary. Based on the MS. Collections of the Late Richard Cleasby, Enlarged and Completed by Gudbrand Vigfusson. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1874. Clover, Carol J. “Skaldic Sensibility.” Arkiv för nordisk filologi 93 (1978): 63–81. Clover, Carol J. “Icelandic Family Sagas (Íslendingasögur).” In Old Norse-Icelandic Literature: A Critical Guide, edited by Carol J.  Clover and John Lindow. Islandica, 239–315. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985. Clunies Ross, Margaret. A History of Old Norse Poetry and Poetics. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2005. Clunies Ross, Margaret, and Rudolf Simek. “Encyclopedic Literature.” In Medieval Scandinavia: An Encyclopedia, edited by Phillip Pulsiano and Kirsten Wolf, 164–6. London: Garland, 1993. Cohen-Hanegbi, Naama. “A Moving Soul: Emotions in Late Medieval Medicine.” Osiris 31, no. 1 (2016): 46–66. Croft, William, and D. Alan Cruse. Cognitive Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. De Looze, Laurence. “Poet, Poem and Poetic Process in Egils Saga Skalla-­ Grímssonar.” Arkiv för nordisk filologi 104 (1989): 123–42. Eriksen, Stefka G., ed. Intellectual Culture in Medieval Scandinavia, c. 1100–1350, Disputatio, vol. 28. Turnhout: Brepols, 2016. Eriksen, Stefka G. “‘Liquid Knowledge’ in Old Norse Literature and Culture.” Viator 49, no. 2 (2018): 169–98.

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Fillmore, Charles J. “Frames and the Semantics of Understanding.” Quaderni di semantica 6 (1985): 222–54. Finnur, Jónsson, and Sveinbjörn Egilsson. Lexicon poeticum antiquæ linguæ septentrionalis. Ordbog over det norsk-islandske skjaldesprog. 2nd ed. Copenhagen: Det kongelige nordiske oldskriftselskab 1931. Gade, Kari Ellen. “Dating of Poetry and Principles of Normalisation.” In Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 1: From Mythical Times to c. 1035, edited by Diana Whaley. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 1, xliv-xlvi. Turnhout: Brepols, 2012. Gertsman, Elina, ed. Crying in the Middle Ages: Tears of History. London: Routledge, 2012. Gibbs, Raymond W. The Poetics of Mind: Figurative Thought, Language, and Understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Grønlie, Siân. The Saint and the Saga Hero: Hagiography and Early Icelandic Literature. Studies in Old Norse Literature. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2017. Jacquart, Danielle, and Claude Thomasset. Sexuality and Medicine in the Middle Ages. Translated by Matthew Adamson. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988. Jónas Kristjánsson. Um Fóstbræðrasögu. Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á Íslandi. Rit 1. Reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar, 1972. Kålund, Kristian, ed. Den islandske lægebog Codex Arnamagnæanus 434 a, 12 mo, Den Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskabs Skrifter, vol. 6. Copenhagen: Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, 1907. Kanerva, Kirsi. “Disturbances of the Mind and Body: Effects of the Living Dead in Medieval Iceland.” In Mental DisOrder in Later Medieval Europe, edited by Sari Katajala-Peltomaa and Susanna Niiranen, 219–42. Leiden: Brill, 2014. Knuuttila, Simo. “Emotion.” In The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy, 428–40. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Knuuttila, Simo. Emotions in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Kövecses, Zoltán. “Anger: Its Language, Conceptualization, and Physiology in the Light of Cross-Cultural Evidence.” In Language and the Cognitive Construal of the World, edited by John R.  Taylor and Robert E.  MacLaury. Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs, 181–96. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1995. Kövecses, Zoltán. Metaphor and Emotion: Language, Culture, and Body in Human Feeling. Studies in Emotion and Social Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Künzler, Sarah. Flesh and Word: Reading Bodies in Old Norse-Icelandic and Early Irish Literature. Trends in Medieval Philology. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016. Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. Chigaco: University of Chicago Press, 1980. Lakoff, George, and Mark Turner. More Than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.

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Langacker, Ronald W. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. 2 vols. Vol. I, Theoretical Prerequisites, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987. Lassen, Annette. “Indigenous and Latin Literature.” In The Routledge Research Companion to the Medieval Icelandic Sagas, edited by Ármann Jakobsson and Sverrir Jakobsson, 74–87. London: Routledge, 2018. Lockett, Leslie. Anglo-Saxon Psychologies in the Vernacular and Latin Traditions. Toronto Anglo-Saxon Series. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011. Lönnroth, Lars. “Heroine in Grief: The Old Norse Development of a Germanic Theme.” In Inclinate Aurem: Oral Perspectives on Early European Verbal Culture. A Symposium, edited by Jan Helldén, Minna Skafte Jensen and Thomas Pettitt. Odense: Odense University Press, 2001. Lönnroth, Lars. Njáls Saga: A Critical Introduction. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976. Lönnroth, Lars. “Sponsors, Writers, and Readers of Early Norse Literature.” In Social Approaches to Viking Studies, edited by Ross Samson, 3–10. Glasgow: Cruithne, 1991. McDougall, David. “Homilies (West Norse).” In Medieval Scandinavia: An Encyclopedia, edited by Kirsten Wolf Phillip Pulsiano, 290-92. London: Garland, 1993. Meissner, Rudolf. Die Kenningar der Skalden: Ein Beitrag zur Skaldischen Poetic. Rheinische Beiträge und Hülfsbücher zur germanischen Philologie und Volkskunde. Leipzig: Kurt Schroeder, 1921. ONP: Dictionary of Old Norse Prose. Den Arnamagnæanske Kommission, . Orton, Peter. “Spouting Poetry: Cognitive Metaphor and Conceptual Blending in the Old Norse Myth of the Poetic Mead.” In Construction Nations, Reconstructing Myths: Essays in Honour of T.  A. Shippey, edited by Andrew Wawn, Graham Johnson and John Walter. Making the Middle Ages, 277–300. Turnhout: Brepols, 2007. Porter, Edel, and Teodoro Manrique Antón. “Flushing in Anger, Blushing in Shame: Somatic Markers in Old Norse Emotional Expressions.” Cognitive Linguistic Studies 2, no. 1 (2015): 24–49. Quinn, Judy. “Liquid Knowledge: Traditional Conceptualisations of Learning in Eddic Poetry.” In Along the Oral-Written Continuum: Types of Texts, Relations and their Implications, edited by Slavica Rankovic, Leidulf Melve and Else Mundal. Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy, 175–217. Turnhout: Brepols, 2012. Rocca, Julius. Galen on the Brain: Anatomical Knowledge and Physiological Speculations in the Second Century AD. Leiden: Brill, 2003. Saunders, Corinne. “Mind, Body and Affect in Medieval English Arthurian Romance.” In Emotions in Medieval Arthurian Literature: Body, Mind, Voice, edited by Frank Brandsma, Carolyne Larrington and Corinne J.  Saunders, 31–46. Cambridge: Brewer, 2015.

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Sävborg, Daniel. “Konsten att läsa sagor: Om tolkningen av trosskiftets betydelse i Njáls saga.” Gripla 22 (2011): 181–210. Sif Rikhardsdottir. Emotions in Old Norse Literature: Translations, Voices, Contexts. Studies in Old Norse Literature. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2017a. Sif Rikhardsdottir. “Medieval Emotionality: The Feeling Subject in Medieval Literature.” Comparative Literature 69, no. 1 (2017b): 74–90. Siraisi, Nancy G. Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. Solomon, Robert C. “Getting Angry: The Jamesian Theory of Emotion in Anthropology.” In Culture Theory: Essays on Mind, Self and Emotion, edited by Richard A. Shweder and Robert A. LeVine, 238–54. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Solomon, Robert C. The Passions: Emotions and the Meaning of Life. Garden City: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1976. Thorvaldsen, Bernt Ø. “The Dating of Eddic Poetry.” In A Handbook to Eddic Poetry: Myths and Legends of Early Scandinavia, edited by Carolyne Larrington, Judy Quinn and Brittany Schorn, 56–69. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Wellendorf, Jonas. “Lærdomslitteratur.” In Handbok i norrøn filologi, edited by Odd Einar Haugen, 302–55. Bergen: Fagbokforlaget, 2013. Wolf, Kirsten. “Body Language in Medieval Iceland: A Study of Gesticulation in the Sagas and Tales of Icelanders.” Scripta Islandica 64 (2013): 99–122. Wolf, Kirsten. “Somatic Semiotics: Emotion and the Human Face in the Sagas and Þættir of Icelanders.” Traditio 69 (2014): 125–45.

CHAPTER 3

“Þá fær Þorbirni svá mjǫk at hann grætr”: Emotionality in the Sagas of East Iceland Carolyne Larrington

Back in 1993, William Ian Miller, a pioneer in the study of emotions in Old Norse literature, wrote the following: But how can we get at the emotional life of the saga world? First, we can look at the words themselves. Are people described as angry, envious, grieving etc; do the characters describe their own mental states or the psychological motivation of others? Second, we have somatic responses. People swell up, they turn red, they blanch pale, they shed tears, they laugh, smile and move their brows. Third, we have dialogue and the action itself, that is, the whole range of behaviors, which remain largely unmotivated and inexplicable unless we make certain inferences about the possible range and

C. Larrington (*) St John’s College, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 E. Sebo et al. (eds.), Emotional Alterity in the Medieval North Sea World, Palgrave Studies in the History of Emotions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33965-3_3

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styles of emotions that will give the action some sense. … Fourth, we have the whole system of beliefs.1

Miller here set out a fundamental methodological approach to the investigation of emotion in the Íslendingasögur (sagas of Icelanders), one which has shaped the study of emotions in the best-known Icelandic literary genre. Later and ongoing work on emotion in these sagas suggests that prosimetric verse is an important source of evidence for the interior states of saga-protagonists; more recent analytic categories can also be adduced.2 These include the concepts of performance and performativity and of the emotive; we can also draw upon community reactions embedded in the sagas themselves, the expression of public opinion as mediated through the narrative voice, usually prefaced by some comment such as: Menn sǫgðu (people said).3 Much work has been done on Old Norse emotion in Miller’s wake, taking up the challenge of excavating emotions from texts which tend to lack psychonarration or character comment on emotion, and which also have a limited display of somatic signs: “saga literature is of course notorious for its lack of emotional display,” comments Sif Rikhardsdottir.4 Thus we must fall back on inference, our understanding of generic and contextual emotion signals, in order to unpack emotions. That work however has principally focussed on certain fairly well-known and longer Íslendingasögur, with some limited investigation of the translated riddarasögur (chivalric sagas), a few eddic poems and the verse of Egill 1  William Ian Miller, “Emotions and the Sagas,” in From Sagas to Society: Comparative Approaches to Early Iceland, ed. Gísli Pálsson (Enfield Lock: Hisarlik Press, 1992), 93. 2  See the work underway on the “Íslendingasögur as Prosimetrum” project at the Universities of Cambridge and Tübingen. 3  See on performativity as a transhistorical construct, Elaine Tennant, “Prescriptions and Performatives in Imagined Cultures: Gender Dynamics in Nibelungenlied Adventure 11,” in Mittelalter: Neue Wege durch einen alten Kontinent, ed. Jan-Dirk Müller and Horst Wenzel (Stuttgart: S.  Hirzel, 1999), 273–316; for performance and performativity see Kathryn Starkey, “Performative Emotion and the Politics of Gender in the Nibelungenlied,” in Women and Medieval Epic: Gender, Genre and the Limits of Masculinity, ed. Sara S. Poor and Jana K. Schulman (London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 253–71; on emotives, see William R.  Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling: A Framework for the History of Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 105–11. 4  See Sif Rikhardsdottir, “Translating Emotion: Vocalisation and Embodiment in Yvain and Ívens Saga,” in Emotions in Medieval Arthurian Literature, ed. Frank Brandsma, Carolyne Larrington and Corinne Saunders (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2015), 187; see also Sif Rikhardsdottir, Emotions in Old Norse Literature (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2017), particularly 1–6, and Brynja Þorgeirsdóttir, Chap. 2 in this volume.

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Skalla-Grímsson.5 This investigation of a rather restricted Íslendingasögur corpus has tended to support Miller’s arguments, and to establish a strong sense of saga emotional style: that the ways in which both saga narrators and saga characters express emotions is reticent or laconic, reflecting a kind of authorial objectivity that may derive from the sagas’ literary roots in historical writing.6 However, if we expand our investigation of emotions in the sagas beyond the “usual suspects”: Egils saga, Njáls saga, Laxdœla saga, Eyrbyggja saga, and the two outlaw sagas, Gísla saga Súrsonar and Grettis saga, we will discover that not only the truisms about the unemotionality of sagas do not hold, but their narratology, schemas, and focalisation of emotion can be quite differently organised. Indeed, such organisation argues for the existence of distinct regional and perhaps chronological emotion repertoires. The so-called post-classical sagas, characterised by their hybridity with fornaldarsaga (legendary saga) elements (particularly with regard to supernatural or fantastical motifs) have been relatively neglected in literary analyses to date.7 Similarly, the sagas set in the East Fjords—with the exception of Hrafnkels saga—have not been a particular focus of critical attention.8 These sagas have particularly problematic 5  These are the works and genres analysed in Sif Rikhardsdottir, Emotions in Old Norse Literature; see also now Stefanie Gropper, “The Human Condition,” in A Critical Companion to Old Norse Literary Genre, ed. Massimiliano Bampi, Carolyne Larrington and Sif Rikhardsdottir (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2020), 177–91. 6  See, for example, Theodore M. Andersson, The Growth of the Medieval Icelandic Sagas (1180–1280) (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), 1–20. 7  On the post-classical sagas, see Rebecca Merkelbach, “‘I Had to Be Somewhere’: Spaces of Belonging in the ‘Post-Classical’ Sagas of Icelanders,” Viking and Medieval Scandinavia 16 (2020): 103–135; “‘The coarsest and worst of the Íslendinga Sagas’: Approaching the Alterity of the ‘Post-Classical’ Sagas of Icelanders,” in Margins, Monsters, Deviants: Alterities in Old Norse Literature and Culture, ed. Rebecca Merkelbach and Gwendolyne Knight (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), 101–27, and her chapter “Outlawed Bears and Trollish FosterParents: Exploring the Social Dimension of the “Post-Classical” Sagas of Icelanders,” in Unwanted: Neglected Approaches, Characters and Texts in Old Norse-Icelandic Saga Studies, ed. Daniela Hahn and Andreas Schmidt (München: Herbert Utz Verlag, 2021), 130–66. I am grateful to Dr. Merkelbach for sharing work in proof with me and for some useful discussion. 8  The exception here is the immensely valuable work of Gísli Sigurðsson in The Medieval Icelandic Saga and Oral Tradition: A Discourse on Method, Publications of the Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature 2 (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 123–250. Nevertheless, the focus of his argument is on the likely genesis of these sagas in local oral tradition; his analysis examines the probable textual relationships between key sagas, but only in a few cases where he is comparing the treatment of the same episode in different sagas is there any particular literary analysis. For bibliography on Hrafnkels saga, see below.

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preservation issues, but they do represent a closely linked group of texts, stories, and traditions, centring on the intergenerational feuds between two pairs of rivals: Brodd-Helgi and Geitir, friends and brothers-in-law, and two men called Helgi, Ásbjarnarson and Droplaugarson, along with their brothers, cousins, and supporters. There are also a group of related þættir, providing incidental or alternative versions of key narratives. As Gísli Sigurðsson has argued, these stories must have been produced for audiences who were well acquainted with the landscape and history of East Iceland, even if we cannot, given their chronological spread, identify a particular regional writing centre where they might have been composed. This chapter will explore whether we can reckon with a distinctive emotionology in the sagas of the Austfirðingar (people of the East Fjords).9

The Austfirðingasögur and Their Textual Relations The sagas edited in volume XI in the Íslenzk fornrit series (Austfirðinga sögur) are, as its editor Jón Jóhannesson notes, preserved in a range of sources of widely varying ages. Þorsteins saga hvíta survives only in paper manuscripts, none earlier than the seventeenth century.10 This and other Austfirðingasögur were probably once all collected in the great vellum AM 162 C, fol., of which only disparate single leaf-fragments, or some longer, often badly damaged, gatherings, survive. Þorsteins saga hvíta was probably composed in the last quarter of the thirteenth century. Vápnfirðinga saga is particularly poorly preserved across the tradition; it is edited from seventeenth-century paper manuscripts, since only a single decayed medieval leaf survives from AM 162 C, fol.; composition in the second quarter of the thirteenth century seems likely. Droplaugarsona saga, reckoned among the oldest of the Íslendingasögur, perhaps composed as early as 1200, is preserved in its entirety in the important Mǫðruvallabók codex (AM 132 fol.), and there was a likely earlier version, parts of which 9  I use the term “emotionology” in the sense of the range of emotions and emotion-related behaviours available within a culture at any one time; see Peter N.  Stearns with Carol Z. Stearns, “Emotionology: Clarifying the History of Emotions and Emotional Standards,” American Historical Review 90 (1985): 813–36. 10  Austfirðinga sögur, ed. Jón Jóhannesson, Íslenzk fornrit XI (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1950).

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survive in AM 162 C, fol. Hrafnkels saga looks to have been composed round 1300; it also survives only in paper manuscripts, descending very likely from the AM 162 C, fol. collection. The so-called Fljótsdœla saga follows a version of Hrafnkels saga in AM 551c. 4to (written in the first half of the seventeenth century and lacking both beginning and end). Its author may have known the Mǫðruvallabók version of Droplaugarsona saga and likely the other sagas originally contained in the AM 162 C, fol. compendium, but it seems unlikely that it was composed any earlier than the late fifteenth century and it is thus an outlier in the Íslendingasögur corpus as generally recognised.11 I also consider two briefer narratives set largely in the East Fjords which also relate stories about some of the characters of the main sagas: Brandkrossa þáttr and Gunnars saga Þiðrandabana. The first of these is preserved in a series of late paper manuscripts alongside saga texts that were originally copied in the AM 162, C fol. collection; the second has a similar preservation history to Þorsteins saga hvíta. Its relationship to Laxdœla saga suggests that it may have been composed in the early thirteenth century, shortly after Laxdœla saga itself came into existence. Gísli Sigurðsson notes that the seventeenth-century paper manuscripts in which Gunnars saga is preserved also contain sagas from the East Fjords.12 The highly disparate preservation contexts of the sagas make it difficult to assume an origin at a particular scribal centre, whether a monastery or farm. Nevertheless, the paper manuscript evidence shows that many of the narratives were already grouped together in the early fifteenth-century AM 162, C fol. collection, and very likely had been composed during the thirteenth century in the East Fjords, using oral traditions as well as (in certain cases) some written sources.13 Their styles vary considerably: Fljótsdœla saga hybridises substantial fornaldarsaga and konungasaga (king’s saga) elements; Droplaugarsona saga has a fornaldasaga-type prelude while Brandkrossa þáttr moves from a typical Íslendingasaga setting in Iceland to a distinctly legendary ancestor sequence in Norway, and back to the East Fjords once more. None of the sagas considered here 11  Gísli Sigurðsson, The Medieval Icelandic Saga, 249 argues for Fljótsdœla saga as an outlier, distinct from the other sagas in the quantity of explanation it offers and its assumptions that the audience are not necessarily familiar with East-fjord topography; see also Austfirðinga sögur, xciii. 12  Gísli Sigurðsson, The Medieval Icelandic Saga, 154: these are AM 158 fol., AM 426 fol., AM 496 4to and AM 552 e 4to. 13  See Gísli Sigurðsson, The Medieval Icelandic Saga, 247–50.

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contain verses, with the exception of Droplaugarsona saga; there Helgi Ásbjarnarson speaks a single verse to his wife, expressing foreboding that he will be attacked in his new farmstead (167) and there is a four-verse sequence spoken by Grímr Droplaugarson in triumph after he has avenged his brother (172–5).14 Gísli argues that the close inter-relations between the various Austfirðingasögur can be best accounted for by the assumption that the compilers of the sagas derived their material from local oral tradition rather than from written sources, and, importantly, “could rely on their audiences possessing a comparable supplementary knowledge of the same material and using this to interpret references and allusions.”15 I will argue here that those audiences also possessed a particular emotional repertoire and set of emotion schemas. An emotion repertoire may be understood as the range of possible emotions available within a culture. An emotion schema is a psychological concept, defined as “a particular totality of primarily affectively determined modes of responses and feelings toward people and events that can be transferred onto analogous situations and similar people. … tightly integrated slot-filler structures of eliciting situations, subjective feelings, and expressive and autonomic activity.”16 The schema therefore indicates a range of emotional responses that fit a particular situation, and which recurs in other analogous situations: the whetting scene is a familiar example in the Íslendingasögur. The Austfirðingasögur make use of a striking range of narrative techniques in order to engage with emotion. These include psychonarration, where the narrator directly ascribes named emotions to particular characters; characters commenting directly on other people’s emotions (particularly within the fornaldarsaga-type elements in Fljótsdœla saga and Droplaugarsona saga); the direct naming of emotions, and some unusual somatic indices of feeling. These are relatively unambiguous evocations of emotion; other emotions can be inferred from dialogue and 14  All in-text page references to the sagas or to quoted text are as per Austfirðinga sögur, ed. Jón Jóhannesson. All translations in this chapter are my own unless otherwise noted. 15  Gísli Sigurðsson, The Medieval Icelandic Saga, 201. 16  Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning, ed. Norbert M. Seel (Boston: Springer, 2012), accessed October 5, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1428-6_361. An emotion script is a term popularised by Silvan Tomkins. It is broadly understood as a pattern of elements that recur within an individual episode of emotion; not all of which will always be present. See “Script Theory,” in Exploring Affect: Selected Writings of Silvan S. Tomkins, ed. E.  Virginia Demos, Studies in Emotion and Social Interaction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 295–415.

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behaviour, depending on a readerly understanding of the emotional repertoire, not only of the Íslendingasögur in general, but also of the particular and specialised emotion scripts that these sagas of the East Fjords share.

Psychonarration and Character Comment In the “classic” Íslendingasögur it is rare that the narrative voice gives insight into the interior processes of the narrated characters. Typically, emotion is inferred from somatic indices, from action or from words. Although such psychonarration is not regularly deployed in the sagas of the East Fjords, it occurs somewhat more frequently than in sagas set elsewhere. So, in Þorsteins saga hvíta, the narrator notes that, when his wife dies, “to Þorsteinn that seemed a great loss.”17 Þorsteinn is by no means the only person whose emotional attachment to their wives is commented upon; these sagas habitually register the warmth (or lack of warmth) between husband and wife, an element in a particular thematics of emotion discussed further below. Similarly, in the dramatic sequence in which Sveinungr helps Gunnarr Þiðrandabani escape his pursuers, he orders his son to go up immediately into the mountains to round up sheep and without pausing to put on adequate clothing. His son obeys him, “because he was afraid of his father.”18 Elsewhere, the narrator explains and amplifies the emotions in play in places, even where an audience could easily infer them from the context. In Vápnfirðinga saga Brodd-Helgi displays the traditional heroic fatalism of a man who believes he is likely to die at his enemies’ hands before the day is out. Before he leaves home, he goes to speak to his fóstra (foster-­ mother) who is weeping and skapþungt (downcast) (48). She relays to him her dreams of oxen fighting one another (a nod to the story of how he gained his nickname), and Helgi correctly interprets them as presaging his death. He takes some comfort from the idea that his favourite son will avenge him, but the old woman contradicts him: it is the other son who will be the avenger. Helgi decries the fóstra’s clairvoyance and exits in a fury.19 When in Droplaugasona saga the two sons of Droplaug avenge Þorgrímr torðyfill (dung-beetle)’s insult of their mother by killing the  “Þorsteini þótti þetta skaði mikill” (5).  “því at hann var. hræddr við föður sinn” (274). 19  “hljóp hann þá út reiðr” (48). 17 18

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slanderous servant in the hay-field, his companion Ásmundr returns home to the farm and is said to be hræddr (frightened) at what has happened (146). That an unheroic emotion should be ascribed to a relatively unimportant low-status character is not surprising, but the narrative does not need this expansion, any more than the audience needs to be told that Brodd-Helgi is infuriated by his foster-mother’s information. When he takes vengeance for his father, Brodd-Helgi’s son Bjarni immediately regrets the killing of his maternal uncle Geitir,20 and cradles the dying man in his arms, a motif perhaps borrowed from Laxdœla saga, perhaps an independent invention.21 Þorgerðr silfra (silver)’s whetting of her stepson to this deed is only partially preserved, thanks to the damaged manuscript, but it seems as if she produces the blood-stained garment in which Helgi was killed and when Bjarni responds with fury to the provocation she refers to her own harmr (grief) at her husband’s loss. After the killing, a deed roundly deplored by the community, Bjarni drives his stepmother away and tells her never to come into his sight again. Grímr Droplaugarson is not at all kátr (cheerful) for some years after his brother Helgi’s death; the narrator notes that he never laughs.22 This motif anticipates a later narrative sequence. After Grímr has covertly slain Helgi Ásbjarnarson in his bed (in a scene highly reminiscent of the better-­ known murder in Gísla saga) he returns home to Krossavík.23 There he is playing a board-game with a Norwegian when a boy runs past, upsetting the board. The Norwegian kicks the boy who lets out a fart: and Grímr laughs heartily (172). Jórunn, his wife, notes this and asks him what he has accomplished on his recent journey that he should suddenly laugh once more. This triggers a series of verses (the only such verse-sequence in the whole Austfirðingasögur corpus) in which Grímr reveals that vengeance has been accomplished. The narrative information about Grímr’s lack of cheerfulness and the observation that he did not laugh after Helgi’s death is designed to prepare for the later scene.

 “þá iðraðisk hann,” Vápnfirðinga saga, 52.  Laxdœla saga, ed. Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, Íslenzk fornrit V (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1934), 154. See Gísli Sigurðsson, The Medieval Icelandic Saga, 188–90, on the possible relation between the two sagas. 22  Droplaugarson saga, 167. 23  Gísla saga, ed. Björn K. Þórólfsson and Guðni Jónsson, in Vestfirðinga sögur, Íslenzk fornrit VI (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1943), 53–4. 20 21

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Jórunn is by no means the only character to take note of and comment on the emotions of others, whether individual or collective. Both Droplaugasona saga and Fljótsdœla saga preface the main narrative action with fornaldarsaga-type preludes in which an Icelander travels abroad and encounters an unusual and emotionally fraught situation in a host’s household; this sequence ultimately results in his acquisition of a high-­ status wife. In Droplaugasona saga, Ketill þrymr is staying with a well-­ connected friend in Jämtaland, Sweden. Here he registers two unfamiliar women, an older one who sits and sews, and a younger who is occupied with menial work and who is often seen to weep: this causes Ketill some concern (138). In a private conversation by the river where the girl has taken the laundry—and where she takes the opportunity to wash her hair, thereby revealing her beauty and apparent highborn status—she relates, weeping once again, that she is Arneiðr, daughter of the ruler of the Hebrides. Ketill’s host killed her father while raiding and has enslaved mother and daughter. Ketill buys Arneiðr from his host and later offers to take her back to the Hebrides, but she prefers to go to East Iceland with him; they marry and settle at Arneiðarstaðir. Ketill’s empathy and attentiveness not only gain him a jarl’s daughter, Arneiðr also shows him the location of a chest of buried silver on the way home, repaying the cost of buying her and squaring her sense of obligation. Similarly, in the early chapters of Fljótsdœla saga, Þorvaldr from Njarðvík is wintering at the court of the Jarl of Shetland where he takes note of the lack of communal jollity and the jarl’s own low mood; he is distinctly ókátr (uncheerful) and the court itself becomes more unhappy (ógladdist) as Yule approaches (223). Although the retinue remains tactfully silent, Þorvaldr eventually challenges the jarl about his misery, commenting directly on his ógleði (224) and relates an unusual dream he has had. The jarl reveals that, just as is encoded in the dream, his daughter Droplaug has been kidnapped by a giant who is holding her prisoner. Þorvaldr feels compelled to rescue the girl and brings her back to the court. Despite Þorvaldr’s low birth, he is allowed to marry Droplaug and they return to Iceland together. Droplaug’s time in captivity with the giant has changed— even traumatised—her, however. Her father observes, when Þorvaldr asks for her hand, that Droplaug is now not such a good match as she was before her kidnap: “she is not now easy for everyone to deal with because

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of her temperament.”24 The narrator confirms Droplaug’s demeanour: though she and Þorvaldr get on well, towards others she is “arrogant, and unusually reserved and haughty.”25 Social emotion and its absence is often a matter of comment for the individual; whether it is the absence of gleði (cheerfulness) at the Shetland court, or the communal mourning at the death of the outstanding and much-loved Þiðrandi in Fljótsdæla saga. Þiðrandi has evoked strong emotion throughout his life; his popularity means he is feted on his return from Norway, while the shock that reverberates through the community at his death is unparalleled. This is not simply a romanticisation on the part of the author of this particular saga for Gunnars saga Þiðrandabana also notes: “Everyone grieved at this event, for Gunnarr was the most popular of men and was greatly esteemed.”26 Within small, tight-knit communities public opinion and public feeling are closely linked, and often play a key role in narrative developments.

Emotion and Bodies The Austfirðingasögur deploy a number of the conventional somatic indicators of emotion found elsewhere in the genre; these are sometimes considerably elaborated. When Droplaug’s father is confronted about the prevailing misery in the court and he is forced to acknowledge the situation as Þorvaldr recounts his dream, “he became so red when he heard that you could almost draw out the blood with a finger”27; he also þrútnaði mjök (swelled up a good deal) (225). While reddening and swelling is usual, the detail of so much blood rushing to the face that pressure could have forced it to spurt out through the skin is not.28 Later in the saga when Sveinungr is successfully concealing Gunnarr Þiðrandabani from his enemies, he waits at the top of a path while the Droplaugarsons search his boathouse. As they return, he does not speak to them. He is visibly angry and his facial  “því at þessi kona er nú eigi allra færi sakir skaplyndis” (231), my emphasis.  “skapstór, ok þess í milli fálát ok steigurlát” (232). 26  “Allir men hǫrmuðu þessa atburði, því at Gunnarr var. manna vinsælastr ok þótti mikils verðr” (201). 27  “varð svó rauðr, er hann heyrði þetta, at honum mátti náliga einum fingrir dreyra vekja” (225). 28  On hydraulic emotive displays in Old Norse narratives, see Brynja Þorgeirsdóttir’s chapter in this volume. 24 25

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colour (litverpr) cycles through different shades. “At times he was as pale as birch-bark, at times as black as earth and nearly all his hair stood up on end.”29 The pursuers conclude not only that he has mikit í skapi (much on his mind), but also that, if they had located Gunnarr, Sveinungr would have turned into a troll and attacked them. Hair bristling up on end as a sign of suppressed aggression is unusual in Old Norse emotional schemas; so too, the birch-bark and soil with which his complexion is compared are not the usual elements invoked for comparison in such similes.30 Þorsteins saga hvíta records a physical emotional performance that is unique, as far as I know, in the Íslendingasögur, but which has an analogue in the Old English poem, The Wanderer, where it seems to be an element performed by the suppliant in an aristocratic gift-giving ceremony.31 Þorsteinn Þorfinnsson has killed in self-defence Þorgils, the oldest and most promising son of the popular goði (chieftain) Þorsteinn hvíti (the white). Þorsteinn had gone blind some years before and had relied on his son to run the farm for him. Þorgils’s death resulted from joining the pursuit of Þorsteinn after the latter had killed Einarr Þórisson. Earlier, Einarr had falsely claimed that Þorsteinn Þorfinnson had died a shameful death in Norway; this enabled him to marry Þorsteinn’s betrothed, Helga. Consequently, on his return to Iceland, Þorsteinn kills his rival and is duly sentenced to lesser outlawry. When, after five years, he returns from Norway, he goes straight to Þorsteinn hvíti’s farm, where Þorsteinn is raising Þorgils’s grandson, (Brodd-)Helgi, a major protagonist in other sagas of the East Fjords. The blind old man asks his namesake how he dares to come to his house to torment him further; Þorsteinn Þorfinnson offers him sjálfdœmi (self-judgement) in compensation for his son. The old man refuses, using the idiomatic expression that he will not “bear his kinsman in his purse.”32 Þorsteinn, whose nickname fagri (the fair) is now revealed by the narrator, springs up and lays his head in his namesake’s lap. Þorsteinn hvíti responds, saying that he will not strike that head from its neck, and refers to what seems to be a proverb: “ears fit best where they 29  “Stundum var hann bleikr sem bast, en stundum svartr sem jörð. Nær horfðu fram öll hárin eptir hans haus.” (277). 30  See Carolyne Larrington, “The Psychology of Emotion and Study of the Medieval Period,” Early Medieval Europe 10, no. 2 (2001): 251–56. 31  The Wanderer, in The Exeter Book, ed. George F. Krapp and Elliott v. K. Dobbie, ASPR III (New York and London, Columbia University Press, 1936), 135, ll. 41–3. 32  “bera … á sjóði” (17–18).

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grow.”33 He asks that his namesake sell his ship and move to Hof to run his farm and be as a son to him, and Þorsteinn fagri agrees so to do. Since Þorsteinn fagri has served his outlawry, he has no need to make any offer at all to the victim’s father, but the gesture functions as a powerful performative. It demonstrates submission and humility on the killer’s part, and it allows Þorsteinn hvíti to negotiate the situation so as to save face: he will not take material goods as compensation, but rather accepts his son’s killer as a de facto son in the dead man’s place. Þorsteinn fagri offers the eightyear-old Helgi a splendid inlaid spear as a gift which, on his grandfather’s advice, the boy accepts.34 The motif of avoiding material compensation in favour of forging a personal and supportive relationship with the aggrieved party reappears in Hrafnkels saga, coupled with powerful expressions of regret for the slaying of Þorbjǫrn’s son Einarr (see below). There the compromise is refused despite the evident disparity in the social power of the two parties; Þorbjǫrn’s stubborn insistence on legally arbitrated compensation precipitates the events that follow in the saga.

Women and Emotion Emotional relationships with (and between) women are particularly foregrounded in the Austfirðingasögur; daughters are named in genealogies and even their deaths in childhood are reported.35 When Droplaug leaves Shetland with her rescuer, her mother accompanies her, and her sister Gróa follows some time afterwards once she is widowed, intending to settle down alongside her female relatives. Droplaug, now widowed herself, helps Gróa set up her farm; though the sisters are not particularly fond of one another, Gróa forges a warm and lasting relationship with her nephews (237). Loving relationships between husband and wife are often noted; this follows immediately on report of a marriage, with such phrases as “tókusk með þeim ástir goðar” (they loved each other well) or “váru 33  See Richard Harris, Concordance to the Proverbs and Proverbial Material in the Old Icelandic Sagas, accessed October 5, 2021, https://www.usask.ca/english/icelanders/ proverbs_%DESH.html. 34  Þorsteinn’s gloss on the gift, that Helgi should take it ok launa sem bezt (and pay it back in the best way) (18) sounds somewhat equivocal. Later, however, Þorsteinn warns his namesake that he and his family should now leave Hof and emigrate, for Helgi is now of an age when he will likely seek vengeance on his father”s killer, despite the agreement between the namesakes. 35  Fljótsdœla saga, 216.

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samfarar þeira góðar” (they had a good relationship); conversely, some marriages are less happy.36 So in Fljótsdœla saga Droplaug’s second marriage with Hallsteinn is characterised by relations that were “not close, but not bad,”37 and a son is born. After seven years however, “their relations grew harder,”38 and soon Droplaug is conniving with her sons to bring about her husband’s murder. Marital feelings are not simply registered as warm or cold in these sagas, however; husbands suffer emotionally when they lose their wives. We saw above that Þorsteinn hvíti thinks it skaði mikill (5) when his wife dies. When the first Droplaug drowns in Droplaugarsona saga (144), her husband sells his farm and moves elsewhere, hoping that the change will help him recover: “it seemed to him then that he might get over Droplaug’s death more quickly.”39 A major plot element in Vápnfirðinga saga is the complex emotional situation between Brodd-Helgi and his wife Halla, sister of his good friend Geitir. This is left partly unresolved owing to the lacunae in the saga’s manuscripts. Although their marriage is registered as good when it begins, a few pages later Halla becomes seriously ill and tells her husband that she can no longer manage her domestic duties. Helgi is regretful: “I think I am well married and want to enjoy this while our life lasts.”40 Yet, hard on the heels of Brodd-Helgi’s affirmation of his continuing regard for his wife, the saga immediately notes that marital separation and division of property was customary at that time, and very soon afterwards Helgi betroths himself to another woman, Þorgerðr silfra. When Halla learns from her husband what he has done, she prepares to move to her brother’s home. Helgi stands by watching as Halla takes her moveable belongings with her, refusing to admit that she is leaving (37). Geitir, Halla’s brother, is keen to recover her share of the jointly held property, while Halla is content for it to remain with Helgi. Helgi himself seems to hope that Halla will return to him, despite the fact that Þorgerðr silfra moves in with him—a subject of unfavourable comment in the neighbourhood (36). Geitir sues Helgi for Halla’s property, but the suit fails and relations between the brothers-in-law, formerly the warmest of

36  Þorsteins saga hvíta, 6, 18; Fljótsdœla saga, 216, 232, 238; Vápnfirdinga saga, 28, 36, all in Austfirðinga sögur, ed. Jón Jóhannesson. 37  “ekki margt, enda ekki illa” (291). 38  “harðnaði þeirra samfarir” (292). 39  “þótti honum sér þá skjótara fyrnask líflát Droplaugar.” 40  “Ek þykkjumk vel kvángaðr, ok ætla ek at una þessu meðan okkart líf vinnsk” (36).

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friends (27) cool markedly.41 Halla’s illness gets worse, and she sends for her husband in her brother’s absence. When he arrives they greet each other warmly, and Halla shows him the site of her illness. Helgi touches it and a good deal of liquid is expelled. This immediately worsens Halla’s condition. She asks him to stay the night, but he refuses. Halla is angrsǫm (anguished by this) and rebukes him, “I think very few men would end things with their wives as you are with me.”42 Helgi returns home, “and was unhappy about his situation”43; Halla dies soon afterwards. The Halla sequence is inflected with a range of emotions, expressed through various psychonarrative comments, including a report of public opinion, and in highly charged dialogue. Halla’s announcement of her approaching incapacity to run the household elicits warm expressions of regard from Helgi. It is Þorgerðr silfra who takes the initiative in inviting Helgi to visit her, installing him in the high-seat, paying him great regard and spending the day in private conversation with him. The narrator relates the outcome with indirectness: “and before Helgi went home, it can be told, that he betrothed himself to Þorgerðr silfra.”44 The arrival home also is slightly delayed by the narrator reporting that nothing is related of Helgi before he gets back to Hof; when asked by Halla for news he says that “a woman has got engaged to a man.” Halla immediately guesses the woman’s identity and winkles the man’s name out of her husband. Her response, “Þat þykki þér eigi of brátt” (that didn’t seem too quick to you), communicates her disappointment at the speed with which she can be replaced; to save face she must now leave the marital home. Helgi himself seems torn; in part his deeds and actions suggest that he hopes Halla will return to her wifely duties, but it is also greatly to his advantage to withhold her marriage portion. He also needs a functioning wife as household manager, or so he seems to reason, and his pretending to ignore Halla’s moving out speaks to a profound denial of the implications of her illness.

41  The strong friendship between Brodd-Helgi and Geitir is a matter of comment in the neighbourhood: “þeir áttu hver leik saman ok ǫll ráð ok hittusk nær hvern dag, ok fannsk mǫnnum orð um, hversu mikil vinátta með þeim var” (they played together in all games and advised one another, and met one another almost every day, and people commented on how great their friendship was) (27). 42  “get ek at fæstir men munu lúka við sínar konur svá sem þú munt við mik” (44). 43  “ok unði illa við sinn hlut” (44). 44  “Ok áðr Helgi fór heim, er þat at segja, at hann fastnaði sér Þorgerði silfru” (36).

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When Halla finally sends for him, they are both glad to see one another—some of the old warmth remains. When she displays the extent of her illness, Helgi presumably hopes to help by expelling matter from the swelling, but his action seems to have the opposite effect. Helgi responds to emotional situations with practical, even impulsive, steps, but seems unable to engage sympathetically with his wife’s suffering. His refusal to stay the night is unfeeling, but perhaps is intended to spare himself emotional pain. The narrator’s noted comment, “and was unhappy about his situation,” points to the emotional ambiguities at play in this part of the narrative; the emotional scripts that the two characters follow seem unfamiliar, operating at cross-purposes and increasing the alienation between Helgi and Halla. Elsewhere the Austfirðingasögur offer dramatic versions of familiar motifs involving women from sagas set elsewhere in the country. Brodd-­ Helgi’s fóstra has ominous dreams that confirm that his journey to the regional þing-meeting will be fatal (48); similarly, Tófa, a close friend of Helgi Droplaugarson has premonitions about what should ostensibly be a straightforward journey for him to aid a kinswoman intending to divorce, and she weeps. Helgi gives her his own good belt and knife as a parting gift. Next, he stays with his aunt Gróa, and leaves his sword there, borrowing another for his onward journey (157–8). These intimations of tragedy are undercut by the comic elements in Rannveig’s confirmation of her decision to divorce her husband Þorgrímr skinnhúfa (leatherhat). Having named witnesses and declared herself divorced, she takes all her husband’s clothes and dumps them in a urine-pit (used for textile production); she and Helgi’s party ride away, with Helgi deciding to return later to claim Rannveig’s share of the property. Þorgrímr lurks in bed while the legal formalities are performed, but once his wife has gone he leaps up and, wrapped only in his bedclothes, runs to his neighbour at Hof. Þórarinn, the neighbour, deadpans when he sees Þórgrímr, “What brings you here so early, Þorgrímr, and why so underdressed?”45 But the advice he offers his friend, once he has given him some clothes and breakfast, is to ride to Helgi Ásbjarnarson, and tell him what Helgi Droplaugarson has done, demanding that Helgi support his þingmenn (political adherents). Helgi has been delaying making a decisive move against Helgi Droplaugarson, but now he has no choice. In a fierce battle, Helgi Ásbjarnarson kills his namesake, and thereafter lives in apprehension  “Hví ferr þú hér svá snemma, Þorgrímr, ok heldr fáklæddr?” (158–9).

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that Helgi’s brother Grímr will come to seek revenge. Moving home to be surrounded by his þingmenn and even constructing a closed sleeping-­ compartment will not save him: in one of the Austfirðingasögur’s rare verses he confesses to his wife his anxiety about the expected attack: in the night he has many forebodings (argspæing margan) of spear-bearing men coming for him through the woods (167). In both Droplaugarsona saga and Fljótsdœla saga Droplaug’s father attributes her difficult personality to her captivity with the giant Geitir; in Brandkrossa þáttr her namesake (and great-grandmother), the daughter of a quasi-supernatural figure called Geitir (see below) also has a similar range of character traits: umsýslumikil, ok drenglunduð ok ómálug … stórlát ok staðlund, ef í móti henni var gǫr t, fálát ok fengsǫm ok staðfǫst vinum sínum, en mjǫk harðúðig óvínum sínum (active, noble of temperament and of few words, grand and stubborn, when things went against her, taciturn, a good provider and a faithful friend, but very fierce against her enemies). (190)

In Droplaugarsona saga, Droplaug hears the slander about her fidelity to her late husband uttered by Þorgrímr torðyfill, repeats it to her young sons, but warns them not to act against the slanderer. The two boys, aged 13 and 12, nevertheless set out, ostensibly to hunt ptarmigan, and kill Torðyfill without delay. That the boys are forced by Helgi Ásbjarnarson to pay compensation for Torðyfill’s death is a major factor in the lifelong enmity between the two namesakes. In Fljótsdœla saga Torðyfill elaborates his slander; it is not simply a matter of infidelity, rather, Droplaug took a slave called Svartr to her bed (242), and he is said to be the father of Helgi. When news of this conversation reaches Arneiðarstaðir where Droplaug and her sons live, Droplaug becomes half-crazed (hálfær) and does not offer her sons the usual welcome when they return home from trapping birds. Helgi responds by suggesting his mother is indeed madly over-­ reacting to the slander that she repeats to him, reminding her twice that he is very young (twelve years old), and saying that he will comfort her by telling her not to feel angr (anguish) at these words (243). Droplaug is not satisfied and spends the winter “not as cheerful towards [her sons] as before.”46 When the equinox is past however, the two boys take vengeance  “eigi jafnblíð við þá sem áðr.”

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as in Droplaugarsona saga; Helgi notes to his brother as he rouses him for the moonlit journey that he has become tired of their mother’s fáleiti (withdrawnness). By the time the boys return home, their mother has heard the news of Torðyfill’s death and has cheered up a good deal.47 In this saga the boys’ aunt Gróa comes to a settlement with Torðyfill’s former master and there are no further repercussions. Droplaug’s highly performative behaviour is successful in removing the stain of Torðyfill’s slander from her and her sons—particularly crucial when Helgi’s paternity has been called into question. The Droplaugarsonar saga version is terse and effective; vengeance is not long delayed, but the consequences reverberate through the saga. Fljótsdœla saga elaborates the sequence considerably, building upon the memorable claim made by Helgi that they intended to hunt ptarmigan, but ended up hunting down a torðyfill (dung-beetle), to depict the boys coming home with gamebirds to be confronted with their mother’s rage and grief—a rage amplified by her consciousness of her own high birth in Shetland and the comparatively low status of the Icelanders among whom she now lives. Her excessive emotionality allows Helgi to demonstrate his maturity as he comments on her apparently confused state of mind, telling her to rise above the insult and to take no notice; she responds with a display of sulking that lasts for some months until vengeance is achieved. The emotion scripts employed in this saga—Droplaug’s passive-aggression and Helgi’s pretended indifference—are expanded and commented on by narrator and characters alike.

Grief Although women are often foregrounded in emotional situations in these sagas, men’s love for one another and their powerful grief when a beloved man dies is a key topos in the emotional repertoire. As related in Fljótsdœla saga, Hróarr, an old and childless goði living in Tunga dearly loves his foster-son Þiðrandi, the younger son of Geitir at Krossavík whom he fosters at the age of six. People soon notice that “Hróarr loved him greatly, beyond most people … and he kept that love for him until his

 “var í kátari lagi” (247).

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death-­day.”48 When Þiðrandi travels to Norway, Hróarr is very sad,49 though like a good father he gives him the resources for the trip, urging him to hurry back as Hróarr is now very decrepit.50 Þiðrandi does indeed come straight home after spending one winter with Hákon jarl, to Hróarr’s delight. Proposing a journey to visit kin and property east of Tunga, he declares emphatically: ek má eigi annat en vera ásamt við Þiðranda, svó ann ek honum mikit, ok hver stund þyki mér löng, ef hann er eigi hjá mér’ (I cannot bear not to be with Þiðrandi, I love him so much, and every hour seems long to me if he isn’t with me). (258)

Hróarr’s is indeed no ordinary love, though it is very clear that Þiðrandi is not merely popular, but actually elicits love and affection in everyone he meets. When Þiðrandi is killed then, as a bystander to a stupid quarrel in which he had no particular stake, it is no wonder that Hróarr does not survive him long, but rather “takes to his bed with grief, and dies an anguished death.”51 Þiðrandi’s brother goes to see Gunnsteinn, who bears most responsibility for the events leading up to the fatal fight, and asks for a full account of what has happened. Gunnstein relates the tale, not without emotion: “it seemed to him hard to talk about,”52 and he allows himself to be conscripted into the vengeance party. Brandkrossa þáttr provides some additional material about, and a fornaldarsaga-like prelude to, the lives of some important characters in the other sagas. In it we hear, for example, of the deep affection between Helgi Ásbjarnarson and Oddlaug, the sister of Bersi, an emotional bond that extends to her brother also, and partly explains Bersi’s prominent role in Droplaugarsona saga and Fljótsdœla saga. Grímr, the owner of the remarkable bull Brandkrossi, is exceptionally distraught when his prize animal apparently runs mad and plunges into the sea, swimming away out of sight. His brother Þorsteinn comes to try to comfort him and stays with him for an entire winter; despite the narrator’s note that the brothers love one another very much, Þorsteinn is unsuccessful: his advice goes in one 48  “Hróar unni honum mikit ok þar út í frá alþýða manns … ok þar helzt honum til dauðadags” (222). 49  “honum þótti mikit” (257). 50  “mjök hrumr af elli” (256). 51  “hann leggst í rekkju af harmi, ok deyr af helstríði” (267). 52  “þótti þó mikit fyrir at segja” (268).

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ear and out the other. Meanwhile Grímr displays the typical physical signs of misery: “He slept little and got little benefit from his food.”53 Finally, Þorsteinn hits on the idea of travel abroad, noting, “that slakes men’s anguish and diminishes thoughts about those anxieties that get in the way of people’s happiness and amusement.”54 The journey to Norway does indeed bring closure; Grímr discovers what happened to his ox, acquires a wife—Droplaug, the grandmother of that Droplaug who is mother to the Droplaugarsons—and acquires substantial treasure from her cave-dwelling, likely trollish, father, Geitir.55 Þorsteinn has the psychological acuity to realise that his brother needs distraction from his loss, and knows that travel is a well-established remedy for obsessive grief. Grímr’s malaise may be intensified by enchantment; Geitir reveals that he bewitched the bull in order to bring Grímr to him, for he wants to wed his daughter to him and establish a lineage in the East Fjords.

Emotion and Empathy in Hrafnkels saga Freysgoða The exception to the general critical neglect of the Austfirðingasögur is Hrafnkels saga Freysgoða. The saga’s critical history has taken in arguments about its moral aims—whether the tag skǫmm er óhofs ævi (short is the life of the immoderate) should be taken as encapsulating its didactic principles, its “realism” in terms of geography, and its apparent advocacy of ruthlessness as a chieftainly strategy.56 Miller’s recent study of the saga however unpacks the skilful narration in which “the impetus for action … comes from a mix of desires, emotions, motives, and goals, only some of which are known or articulable by the actor or knowable by others.”57 His  “Svaf hann lítit ok neytti lítt matar” (187).  “þat stríð manna stemmask ok dofna hugann af þeim áhyggjum, er fyrir standa gleði manna ok gamni” (187). 55  Gísli Sigurðsson notes the prevalance of this unusual name in the ancestry or origin stories of the Droplaugarsons and in place-names in the East Fjords, The Medieval Icelandic Saga, 160–1. 56   Key studies here include Hermann Pálsson, Art and Ethics in Hrafnkel”s Saga (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1971); Richard Harris’s summary in “The Proverbial Heart of Hrafnkels saga Freysgoða: ‘Mér þykkir þar heimskum manni at duga, sem þú ert’,” Scandinavian-Canadian Studies 16 (2005–06): 29–54; Henry Kratz, “Hrafnkels saga: Thirteenth-Century Fiction?” Scandinavian Studies 53 (1993): 420–46; O. Duncan MacraeGibson, “The Topography of Hrafnkels saga,” Saga-Book 19 (1975–76): 239–63. 57  William Ian Miller, Hrafnkel or the Ambiguities: Hard Cases, Hard Choices (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 12. 53 54

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study foregrounds the emotional expression of the saga, whether evident or to be inferred, demonstrating the many different ways in which emotion is explored in this relatively well-known text. Hrafnkels saga is the tale of a man who loves (elskaði) no other god more than Freyr, who also loves his horse very much,58 and whose horse has a keen sense of injustice.59 But in the phases of vengeance taken for the death of Einarr, the shepherd who rode Freyfaxi against Hrafnkell’s explicit instructions, there is a series of scenes which focus on emotional states, narrated with various techniques. When the rather disorganised Þorbjǫrn finally tells his eldest son that he needs to seek work in another household somewhat late in the season, he tries to ameliorate the blow by emphasising that it is not ástleysi (lack of love), but efnaleysi (lack of means), for Einarr is the most necessary (þarfastr) to him of his children (101).60 Einarr is unmoved by his father’s assurance of his love, noting how late he has left matters and he accepts Hrafnkell’s offer of the post of shepherd at his shieling with little grace. The narrator gives the audience some insight into Einarr’s thoughts when he decides to ride Freyfaxi; his calculation that Hrafnkell will never find out weighs heavily along with the anxiety that the missing sheep have been gone for a week. Einarr’s killing is a cool affair. Hrafnkell sleeps soundly all night before he rides up to the shieling to confront Einarr; the lad, for his part, is lying insouciantly along the shieling wall, counting the sheep as his slayer arrives. The narrator tells us Hrafnkell’s thought processes as he swings the axe; his disquiet at having to fulfil the conditions of his vow is clear in the scene with Þorbjǫrn when the latter comes to demand compensation for his son. Twice using the phrase mundum vit iðrask (we would regret) (106), Hrafnkell indirectly expresses his remorse for making the vow and he offers very generous compensation in kind to the impoverished father, an

 “hafði hann svá mikla elsku.”  Miller, Hrafnkel, 45 notes the possessive adjective “Freyfaxi sinn” and the affectionate term fóstri minn (my fosterling), when Freyfaxi makes known Einarr’s treatment of him. Hrafnkell tells Einarr that he will have particular care of the stallion during both winter and summer, foregrounding the horse in his command: “Honum skaltu umsjá veita vetr ok sumar” (102) (my emphasis). 60  See Miller, Hrafnkel, 26–78: “love has made it hard for him to make the tough call.” 58 59

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offer that is not without an element of self-congratulation at his own generosity.61 Hrafnkell underestimates Þorbjǫrn’s determination for legal recompense, and he is prone, so the narrator tells us, to think his opponents’ strategy is laughable. When Sámr takes up the suit against him and again when he hears that Sámr has come to the Alþingi, Hrafnkell finds it amusing.62 Once it becomes clear to Sámr and Þorbjǫrn that they will find no support for their suit among the other goðar, they are strongly emotionally affected; they become þungt í skapi (heavy in mood), cannot sleep nor enjoy their food and are afraid (uggðu) that their suit will end only in humiliation (110). Finally, Þorbjǫrn declares that they should give up. When Sámr reveals his determination to keep going, Þorbjǫrn weeps—an expression of emotion permitted to him because of his advanced age.63 Once Þorkell leppr (lock) decides to take an interest in their case, the affective stakes are raised and foregrounded, for it is Þorkell’s clever emotional manipulation of his brother that secures his support. First, Þorkell stages an extraordinary little drama to evoke empathy in his brother, drawing a comparison between the physical pain that Þorgeirr feels when Þorbjǫrn grabs hold of his sore toe and the emotional pain felt by the bereaved father at the lack of adequate compensation for his son. While this inducement of emotional empathy is only partly successful, Þorkell’s passive-aggressive conversation with his brother in which he threatens to leave Þorgeirr’s home and go elsewhere persuades the goði to take up the case, for he cannot bear that his brother is unhappy with him.64 Þorkell warns Sámr and his uncle to keep the new alliance secret, advising an emotional performance that conceals the changed situation. However, their greatly improved mood on returning to their booth is clear: both are ǫlteitir (as cheerful as if they had been drinking) and others are surprised, given how quickly their feelings seem to have changed, given how óglaðir (miserable) both had been earlier that day (116). After Hrafnkell loses the case, Sámr is puffed up by the victory, but Þorgeirr laughs at him for having no plans to execute the judgement. Thereafter direct reference to 61  See Miller, Hrafnkel, 85–7, for discussion of Hrafnkell’s iðrask as “a moral sentiment” (85) and for Hrafnkell’s “enormous self-satisfaction” (88). 62  Just so, Eyvindr will later claim that people would think it laughable if he were to ride away from Hrafnkell”s approaching party without enquiring what they wanted of him (128). 63  Miller, Hrafnkel, 109, n. 6, comments that tears are acceptable as a male emotional display, provided that they cannot be construed as elicited by fear. 64  “má þat eigi vita” (115).

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emotion vanishes in the saga; the protagonists’ feelings are, as in the Íslendingasögur more generally, to be inferred. Read in comparison with the sagas from elsewhere in the country, Hrafnkels saga seems unusually forthcoming and sophisticated in its description of emotion, whether related by the narrator, commented on by the characters in dialogue, inferred from action or as actualised through the drama of empathy that focuses on Þorgeirr’s sore toe. Yet, within the narrower corpus of the sagas of the Austfirðingar, the saga proves not to be such an outlier. As I have argued here, these sagas deploy an emotional repertoire that is markedly, if not wildly, different from the spare narrational style, terse dialogue and limited range of somatic and gestural indices that we find elsewhere. The sagas of the East Fjords, as Gísli Sigurðsson asserts, depend on concentrated and well-preserved local oral traditions, hinging on particular memorates, often incorporating highly emotional scenes or associations. In the case of Fljótsdœla saga, and its later date of composition, changing audience taste may have invited elaboration of key emotional episodes; hybridisation of the saga with generic features of the fornaldarsaga (as also in Brandkrossa þáttr and the early chapters of Droplaugarsona saga) allows a more expansive depiction of emotion and the utilisation of varying scripts.65 Even so, in the other, likely earlier sagas, there are many powerful emotional set-pieces: Droplaug’s whetting of her sons; Bjarni’s instant regret at killing his uncle and his efforts to put the feud to rest by making peace overtures to his cousin, concluded finally by the intervention of his cousin’s wife; Þorsteinn fagri’s establishment of a strong emotional bond with Þorsteinn hvíti. Particularly memorable is the warm regard between various pairs of brothers: Helgi and Grímr Droplaugasonar are noted as completely inseparable; so too is the vivid verse in which Helgi Ásbjarnarson discloses his midnight terrors to his wife. Women’s feelings are explored beyond the usual social and personal imperative to ensure that vengeance is initiated through a whetting performance. Marital happiness and discord are closely noted, and many of the saga’s most dramatic scenes involve confrontations between women and men. Notable too is the sagas’ interest in the love between older men standing in a fatherly relation to young men; these are epitomised by Bersi’s warm regard for Helgi Droplaugarson 65  Rebecca Merkelbach (pers. comm.) has compared this with fan-fiction; the authors invent and elaborate beyond the received tradition in order to explain motivation where the audience’s earlier inferential understanding and reaction can no longer be relied upon.

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whom he fosters (and who long regrets (aptrsjá) not marrying Bersi’s daughter) (238), and his ties to Helgi Ásbjarnarson, his son-in-law.66 Hróarr’s lifelong bond with Þiðrandi whom, despite his advanced age, he outlives is explored feelingly in Fljótsdœla saga, while Gunnars saga Þidrandabana confirms the enduring emotional attachment in popular memory to the East Fjords’ most outstanding and most beloved hero. The sagas of the East Fjords show us that, in this region of Iceland, the writing of emotion in the Íslendingasögur genre drew upon a shared repertoire of remembered stories, behaviours, characters, and feelings that set these sagas apart from their better-known counterparts from the West.

Bibliography Manuscripts Reykjavík, Stofnun Árna Magnússonar í íslenskum fræðum, AM 162 c fol. Reykjavík, Stofnun Árna Magnússonar í íslenskum fræðum, AM 426 fol. Reykjavík, Stofnun Árna Magnússonar í íslenskum fræðum, AM 496 4to. Reykjavík, Stofnun Árna Magnússonar í íslenskum fræðum, AM 552 e 4to. Reykjavík, Stofnun Árna Magnússonar í íslenskum fræðum, AM 158 fol.

Primary Sources Austfirðingasögur. Edited by Jón Jóhannesson, Íslenzk fornrit XI. Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1950. The Exeter Book. Edited by George F.  Krapp and Elliott v. K.  Dobbie. ASPR III. New York and London, Columbia University Press, 1936. Gísla saga. Edited by Guðni Jónsson. In Vestfirðinga sǫgur. Íslenzk fornrit VI, 3–118. Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1943. Laxdœla saga. Edited by Einar Ólafur Sveinsson. In Laxdœla saga, Halldórs þættir Snorrasonar, Stúfs þáttr. Íslenzk fornrit V, 1–248. Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1934.

Secondary Sources Andersson, Theodore M. The Growth of the Medieval Icelandic Sagas (1180–1280). Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006.

 See Gísli Sigurðsson, The Medieval Saga, 13.

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Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning, edited by Norbert M.  Seel. Boston: Springer, 2012. . Gísli Sigurðsson. The Medieval Icelandic Saga and Oral Tradition: A Discourse on Method. Publications of the Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature 2. Cambridge MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2004. Gropper, Stefanie. “The Human Condition.” In A Critical Companion to Old Norse Literary Genre, edited by Massimiliano Bampi, Carolyne Larrington and Sif Rikhardsdottir, 177–91. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2020. Harris, Richard. Concordance to the Proverbs and Proverbial Material in the Old Icelandic Sagas . Harris, Richard. “The Proverbial Heart of Hrafnkels saga Freysgoða: ‘Mér þykkir þar heimskum manni at duga, sem þú ert’.” Scandinavian-Canadian Studies 16 (2005–06): 29–54. Hermann Pálsson. Art and Ethics in Hrafnkel’s Saga. Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1971. Kratz, Henry. “Hrafnkels saga: Thirteenth-Century Fiction?” Scandinavian Studies 53 (1993): 420–46. Larrington, Carolyne. “The Psychology of Emotion and Study of the Medieval Period.” Early Medieval Europe 10, no. 2 (2001): 251–56. Macrae-Gibson, O. Duncan, “The Topography of Hrafnkels saga,” Saga-Book 19 (1975–76): 239–63. Merkelbach, Rebecca. “‘The coarsest and worst of the Íslendinga Sagas’: Approaching the Alterity of the ‘Post-Classical’ Sagas of Icelanders.” In Margins, Monsters, Deviants: Alterities in Old Norse Literature and Culture, edited by Rebecca Merkelbach and Gwendolyne Knight, 101–27. Turnhout: Brepols, 2020. Merkelbach, Rebecca. “‘I Had to Be Somewhere’: Spaces of Belonging in the ‘Post-Classical’ Sagas of Icelanders.” Viking and Medieval Scandinavia 16 (2020): 103–35. Merkelbach, Rebecca. “Outlawed Bears and Trollish Foster-Parents: Exploring the Social Dimension of the ‘Post-Classical’ Sagas of Icelanders.” In Unwanted: Neglected Approaches, Characters and Texts in Old Norse-Icelandic Saga Studies, edited by Daniela Hahn and Andreas Schmidt, 130–66. München: Herbert Utz Verlag, 2020c. Miller, William Ian. “Emotions and the sagas.” In From Sagas to Society: Comparative Approaches to Early Iceland, edited by Gísli Pálsson, 89–109. Enfield Lock: Hisarlik Press, 1992. Miller, William Ian. Hrafnkel or the Ambiguities: Hard Cases, Hard Choices. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Reddy, William R. The Navigation of Feeling: A Framework for the History of Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

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Sif Rikhardsdottir. Emotions in Old Norse Literature: Translations, Voices, Contexts. Studies in Old Norse Literature. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2017. Sif Rikhardsdottir. “Translating Emotion: Vocalisation and Embodiment in Yvain and Ívens Saga.” In Emotions in Medieval Arthurian Literature, edited by Frank Brandsma, Carolyne Larrington and Corinne Saunders, 161–79. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2015. Starkey, Kathryn. “Performative Emotion and the Politics of Gender in the Nibelungenlied.” In Women and Medieval Epic: Gender, Genre and the Limits of Masculinity, edited by Sara S. Poor and Jana K. Schulman, 253–71. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Stearns, Peter N. with Carol Z. Stearns. “Emotionology: Clarifying the History of Emotions and Emotional Standards.” American Historical Review 90 (1985): 813–36. Tennant, Elaine. “Prescriptions and Performatives in Imagined Cultures: Gender Dynamics in Nibelungenlied Adventure 11.” In Mittelalter: Neue Wege durch einen alten Kontinent, edited by Jan-Dirk Müller and Horst Wenzel, 273–316. Stuttgart: S. Hirzel, 1999. Tomkins, Silvan. “Script Theory.” In Exploring Affect: Selected Writings of Silvan S.  Tomkins, edited by E.  Virginia Demos. Studies in Emotion and Social Interaction, 295–415. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

CHAPTER 4

On the Wild Side: “Impossible” Emotions in Medieval German Literature Sonja Kerth

The question of how to adequately analyse emotions in premodern texts has kept the historical humanities busy for more than twenty years and is still subject of intense debate. It remains unclear if emotions are completely determined by culture and society or if some have a biological core that is more or less ahistorical. From the standpoint of historical linguistics, one needs to ask if historical vocabulary is suited to work on the semantics of emotions in premodern texts, keeping in mind that the vocabulary for emotions, mentality, and character traits is limited, with each term possessing a wide spectrum of meanings.1 For historical literary 1  See Eva Willms, “Einleitung,” in Thomasin von Zerklaere: Der Welsche Gast, ed. Eva Willms (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004), 19–20; Rüdiger Schnell, Haben Gefühle eine Geschichte? Aporien einer History of Emotions (Göttingen: V & R unipress, 2015).

S. Kerth (*) Universität Bremen, Bremen, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 E. Sebo et al. (eds.), Emotional Alterity in the Medieval North Sea World, Palgrave Studies in the History of Emotions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33965-3_4

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studies C. Stephen Jaeger names similar difficulties: “Emotions are notoriously hard to study in a systematic way …. The discomfort is caused by crowding. The subject has too many aspects, is too rich, too varied to allow comfortable systematization.”2 New literary studies on historical emotions try to get such methodological problems under control by focussing on specific texts3 and/ or single emotions’ respective affects.4 Some researchers differentiate between private, individualised emotions and public, ritualised sensibilities.5 Others distinguish between emotions placed inside a figure’s heart (especially in romances and love lyrics) and emotions acted out as part of the plot (especially in heroic epics).6 At the present time, literary historians often connect historical emotion studies with constructive and narratological methods. Literary historians ask, for example, if a figure’s gender, age, health status, and social group are connected to specific emotions that relay a certain degree of emotionality. For literary disability history, representations of emotions appear to be relevant because excessive emotions are often pathologised: sadness and grieving as melancholia7; love as the delusional illness amor hereos8. Heroic rage (furor heroicum) at times shows traits of insanity.9

2  C. Stephen Jaeger, “Emotions and Sensibilities: Some Preluding Thoughts,” in Codierung von Emotionen im Mittelalter/Emotions and Sensibilities in the Middle Ages, ed. C. Stephen Jaeger and Ingrid Kasten (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2003), vii. 3  See, for example, Elke Koch, “Die Vergemeinschaftung von Affekten in der ‘Klage’. Mit Untersuchungen zur Semantik von verklagen und klagen helfen,” in 11. Pöchlarner Heldenliedgespräch. Mittelalterliche Heldenepik—Literatur der Leidenschaften, ed. Johannes Keller and Florian Kragl (Wien: Fassbander, 2011), 61–82. 4  See, for example, Annette Gerok-Reiter, “angest/vorhte—literarisch. Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der Emotionsforschung zwischen Text und Kontext,” Zeitschrift für Kulturwissenschaften 2 (2010): 15–22. 5  Jaeger, “Emotions”. 6  Jan–Dirk Müller, Spielregeln für den Untergang. Die Welt des Nibelungenliedes (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1998), 203–4. 7  Andrea Sieber and Antje Wittstock, eds, Melancholie—zwischen Attitüde und Diskurs. Konzepte in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit (Göttingen: V & R unipress, 2009). 8  Werner Hoffmann, “Liebe als Krankheit in der mittelhochdeutschen Lyrik,” in Liebe als Krankheit, ed. Theo Stemmler (Tübingen: Narr, 1990), 221–57. 9  Dorothea Klein, “Nebukadnezar und seine Kinder. Wahrnehmung und Darstellung von Wahnsinn in deutscher und lateinischer Literatur des Mittelalters,” in WahnSinn in Literatur und Künsten, ed.  Gerhard Penzkofer and Irmgard Scharold (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2017), 73.

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Historical narratology asks if representations of emotions possess a privileged status in the analysis of literary figures. Such figures in premodern texts do not equate to “human persons” and, therefore, they cannot be analysed as coherent psychological “characters”. Still, their emotions seem to hold significant relevance for interpretation.10 Narratives of emotion draw attention to figures, they explain their actions and motivations, or they mark them as contradictory and mysterious.11 Thus, representations of emotions are part of the narrator’s steering of sympathy and evaluation of the figure. The recipient’s emotional status may even be affected when he/ she is hearing or reading narratives of emotion. Representations of emotions also call upon important medieval discourses: love scenes focus contemporary love discourse; discourse on violence is evoked by representations of rage, hatred, and revenge. Fear of death, desperation, or calm trust in God are important issues in the Christian discourse on good dying. Generally speaking, discourses determine what can be said at a time and what cannot be said. Thus, narratives of emotion are not independent from the rules set by such contemporary discourse, as observed in the strong taboo against homosexuality and suicide in medieval literature. When we look for what emotional experiments medieval discourses may allow, it can be helpful to consider Jaeger’s differentiation between ritualised, socially regulated “sensibilities” and “emotions” that are more individualised and variable: “Sensibilities are agreed-on modes of feeling, widely shared by consensus …. They have social and political significance beyond individual feelings.”12 On the other hand, emotions appear to be subjective, manifold, hard to define and categorise; they may present a “chaos of conflicting emotions”, “a wider spectrum of sensations and motivations”.13 It seems justified to assume that private emotions show a wider space of tolerance than public, ritualised sensibilities. Still, it remains 10  Armin Schulz, Erzähltheorie in mediävistischer Perspektive, ed. Manuel Braun, Alexandra Dunkel and Jan–Dirk Müller (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2012), 8–19. 11  For contradicting figures see Elisabeth Lienert, “Knowledges and Contradictions in Premodern Narratives,” in Spaces of Dissention: Towards a New Perspective on Contradiction, ed. Julia Lossau, Daniel Schmidt–Brücken, and Ingo H. Warnke (Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2019), 19–37; for enigmatic figures with unclear emotional attributions see Sonja Kerth, “Narratives of Trauma in Medieval German Literature,” in Trauma in Medieval Society, ed. Wendy J. Turner and Christina Lee (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 281. 12  Jaeger, “Emotions”, viii. 13  Ibid., vii.

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difficult to assign a specific narrative to one or the other category; only a profound literary historical analysis helps to avoid ahistorical, psychological interpretation that may lead to incorrect assumptions of meaning.14 Yet it is also clearly visible that literary texts explore the limits of what can be said within the named discourses. For this purpose they experiment with patterns of genre, narrative schemes, motives, and topoi, they open up an interdiscursive and intersectional narrative laboratory. As Tory Vandeventer Pearman states, “literary discourse’s proliferation … allows for a complex interrogation of the social, historical, and cultural understandings of the construction of the body and its race, sex, gender, class, and ability that does not exist in other discourses.”15 This is true for narratives of emotion as well, especially for emotions that appear to be extreme, odd, and “impossible” at the time. Emotions may seem to be odd and “impossible” for different reasons. An emotion may be impossible to verify in premodern narratives because it has not been conceptualised at the time and there may be no terminology to name it. The wide field of mental difference comes to mind: narratives of hysteria, trauma, dementia, borderline syndrome, and bipolar disorder, for example, which presuppose a modern psychology that developed only since the nineteenth century.16 They pose a challenge to historical humanities even though Sigmund Freud and C.G. Jung claimed that their research was valid for all times and cultures. Other emotions may be odd or “impossible” because they violate the consensus and the named rules of the discourses in their time.17 Emotions that violate the general command of emotional moderation may be placed in this category, unless they are set in a socially acceptable context. A widow mourning her dead husband with tears, screams, and expansive gestures is acting in the expected way of medieval grieving rituals. But a widow trying to throw herself on a sword like young Enite in Hartmann 14  See Sonja Kerth, “A Work in Progress: The Research Programme ‘Premodern Dis/ability History’. From the Literature Studies Research Laboratory,” in Dis/ability History der Vormoderne. Ein Handbuch/Premodern Dis/ability History. A Companion, ed. Cordula Nolte et al. (Affalterbach: Didymos, 2017), 29–30. 15  Tory Vandeventer Pearman, Women and Disability in Medieval Literature (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 21. 16  See Schnell, Haben Gefühle, 592–8; Turner and Lee, eds, Trauma. 17  Annette Gerok-Reiter, “Die Angst des Helden und die Angst des Hörers. Stationen einer Umbewertung in mittelhochdeutscher Epik,” Das Mittelalter. Perspektiven mediävistischer Forschung 12 (2007): 128.

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von Aue’s romance Erec (c.1180) is not acceptable—only within literary discourse may a figure act this way without losing her reputation. The suicide plan marks the figure to be excessively affectious after the (assumed) death of her husband. But Enite’s unwillingness to live without Erec is not marked as the mortal sin acedia (apathy) or even desperatio, the sinful despair of divine forgiveness and salvation, as it is when connected with the biblical figure Judas or the literary figure Faust in premodern versions. Nor does the narrator claim Enite is suffering from melancholia; both the biblical-theological and the medical discourses are subordinated to the romance elements of the narrative. Exaggerated pride, cockiness, and overwhelming ambition are also aspects of a mortal sin: superbia. In heroic epics like Chanson de Roland (French c.1100, German c.1170), a (male) figure is not automatically marked as transgressive for acting out these emotions, as the hero Roland proves. His behaviour at the battle field of Roncesvalles is judged as exorbitant. Still, he is not a sinner guilty of superbia. In later texts like Ariosto’s Orlando furioso (first printed in 1515) the protagonist is pathologised to suffer from insanity. His madness results from his love to Angelica, though, not from his excessive ambition to fight at any cost. The different portrayals of Roland and Orlando show that the discourses and writing traditions may be competitive or complementary as they relate to the emotional status of the protagonists.18 Very strong emotions and affects attract attention. The Christian-­ learned tradition, humoral pathology, and the secular-courtly worldview recommended a moderate or “medium” degree of emotions.19 The ability to control actions and emotions and the willingness to bring moderation to every aspect of life are characteristics of a courtier. Both virtues determine the world of courtly norms, emphasising zuht (courtly behaviour), mâze (moderation), and diemuot (reluctance). Extreme violations of these virtues threaten to exclude figures from the community 18  See Kathryn Starkey, “From Symbol to Scene: Changing Strategies of Representation in the Manuscripts of the ‘Welsche Gast,’” in Beweglichkeit der Bilder. Text und Imagination in den illustrierten Handschriften des ‘Welschen Gastes” von Thomasin von Zerclaere, ed. Horst Wenzel and Christa Lechtermann (Köln: Böhlau 2002), 123–4; C.  Stephen Jaeger, The Origins of Courtliness. Civilizing Trends and the Formation of Courtly Ideals, 939–1210 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985). 19   Armin Schulz, “Die Verlockungen der Referenz. Bemerkungen zur aktuellen Emotionalitätsdebatte.” Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 128 (2006): 489–90.

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of norms and values that the nobility constitutes in medieval courtly literature. These figures appear to be of wilder art (wild nature) and with wildem muot (wild attitude): out of control, destructive, maybe even insane.20 wilde stands for the untamed, unknown, and therefore for danger; the semantic spectrum opens it up to everything departing from the norm, everything strange and threatening. Finally it includes phenomena of naturalisation, fierceness, and irrationality in a psychological sense.21 In spite of this seemingly clear evaluation, it is striking that medieval literature uses extreme representations of emotions (mostly a “too much”, sometimes a “too little”) in order to draw attention to individuals and to discuss problems of courtly life, gender, and identity in a feudal warrior society. In this chapter, I analyse extreme, odd, and maybe “impossible” narratives of emotion in medieval German literature. Since the ability to control affects and emotions is mostly ascribed to, and demanded from, men in order to save their dignity,22 male figures are in the focus of my interpretations. The first example is the didactic text Der Welsche Gast (The Italian Guest) by Thomasin von Zerklaere. It presents a foundational position regarding the necessity of moderating emotions within the community of courtiers in the Middle Ages.

Thomasin von Zerklaere: Der Welsche Gast Der Welsche Gast was written in 1215/16 in Middle High German by a cleric from Friaul.23 The title describes the working situation of its author: a foreigner from Italy spends time at the court of a German nobleman, assumed to be Wolfger von Erla, then Patriarch of Aquileia.24 Thomasin 20  For the relevance of wilde for general issues of anthropology and matters of courtliness see Larissa Schuler-Lang, Wildes Erzählen—Erzählen vom Wilden. ‘Parzival’, ‘Busant’ und ‘Wolfdietrich D’ (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2014), 3, 13–34. 21  Wolfgang Haubrichs, “Wild, grimm und wüst. Zur Semantik des Fremden und seiner Metaphorisierung im Alt– und Mittelhochdeutschen.” Wolfram–Studien 25 (2018): 38. 22   See Ruth Weichselbaumer, Der konstruierte Mann. Repräsentation, Aktion und Disziplinierung in der didaktischen Literatur des Mittelalters (Münster: LIT, 2003), 260. 23  Thomasin von Zerklaere, Der Welsche Gast, ed. Eva Willms (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004); Heinrich Rückert and Friedrich Neumann, eds, Der wälsche Gast des Thomasin von Zirclaria (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1965); the English translation by Gibbs and McConnell was not available to me at the time of writing. 24  For information on the author, the context of writing and the recipients, see Kathryn Starkey, A Courtier’s Mirror. Cultivating Elite Identity in Thomasin von Zerclaere’s ‘Welscher Gast’ (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013), 22–7, 36–43.

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claims to know both the court life and the clerical world from his own experience. He possesses profound knowledge of the theological and philosophical debates of his time, knows historiography and literature, both elder and contemporary.25 In ten books, spanning over 14,700 lines in rhyming couplets, Thomasin discusses a wide range of topics and subjects, including courtly norms and behaviour, ethical virtues and vices, important rules of self-representation for noble men and women, for clerics, and especially for youths. The cleric gives spiritual guidance and “covers the entire representational system of the court that allowed those at court to distinguish themselves from those who were not”.26 Emotions are not the main focus of the text, but the loss of virtues like staete (constancy), mâze (moderation), milte (generosity) and reht (justice) leads to negative emotions connected to and caused by the vices, as Thomasin explains for “im/moderation”: unmâze ist des zornes kraft, | unmâze hât niht meisterschaft … unmâze ist des nîds vergift … unmâze ist vorht der zageheit … unmâze, diu ist âne zil, | si heizet “ze lützel” und “ze vil”. | der ist vervluochet und verwâzen, | der sîn dinc niht kan gemâzen. | diu mâze sol sîn an allen dingen, | von der mâze mac niht misselingen … Wizzet, daz diu mâze ist | des sinnes wâge zaller vrist (Immoderation is the power of anger, immoderation has no control over itself … Immoderation is the poison of envy … Immoderation is the fear of cowardice … Immoderation is without limit, it is called “too little” and “too much”. Everyone who cannot set his affairs moderate, is cursed and damned. Moderation should be in everything, nothing goes wrong with moderation. Be aware that moderation is always the balanced scale of the mind). (ll. 9899–936)

The argumentation Thomasin uses here is typical for the whole text: the virtues “constancy”, “moderation” and “generosity” are outlined by discussing their negative counterparts: unstaete (inconsistency), unmâze (immoderation), girescheit (avarice, greed) and, in general, erge (badness).27 Thomasin explains this with a psychomachia, the fight between virtues and vices within every Christian. This presents the vices as squad commanders and fighters going into battle: the squad commander unkiusche (ll.  Ibid., 26, 384.  Starkey, “From Symbol to Scene,” 123. 27  See Christoph Schanze, Tugendlehre und Wissensvermittlung. Studien zum ‘Welschen Gast’ Thomasins von Zerklaere (Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert, 2018), 115–16, 255–6. 25 26

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7401–10; immodesty, wrong desire) leads fighters like valschiu minne (l. 7408; wrong love,) and nach kurzer liebe langez leit (l. 7410; long lasting sorrow after short joy); the squad commander hôvart (ll. 7385–91; pride and cockiness) has zorn (l. 7391, anger) among his troops. Controlling the squads of vices brings victory to the virtues, and the same can be achieved by controlling extreme emotions and affects.28 The close connection between emotions and virtues and the threat posed by excessive and uncontrolled emotions can be seen best in Thomasin’s statements about the central emotion in the courtly culture and literature: minne (love). minne is a positive emotion when it units God and human, wife and husband, family members, friends, and in the meaning of charity.29 But since antiquity a threatening, pathological, even fatal potential is connected with love, too, when it gets out of control and grows excessively.30 Being wilde is the central metaphor of love in German courtly literature, as Wolfgang Haubrichs observes.31 Thomasin generally acknowledges the ambivalence of love. He praises its positive effects on courtiers: “the nature of love is this: love makes a wise man even wiser”.32 But love is also a power and needs to be controlled mit schoenem sinne (l. 1177; with a beautiful mind), if (male) courtiers want to live according to the norms. Der Welsche Gast warns the recipients that excessive, uncontrollable minne poses a threat to the prestige and courtliness of a lover: “love often turns to its opposite when it is not guided by the mind”; “I said [elsewhere] that the power of love should be endured with nobel decency if a person wants to live without disgrace”.33 In the following parts of this chapter I analyse three epic tales giving examples of extreme, odd, and “impossible” emotions like love, grief, and despair. They focus on male figures whose status as courtiers is questioned or denied.

 Ibid., 202–13.  For the semantics of minne see Hubert Heinen, “minne und liebe. Das Fluidum zur Interaktion,” in Ehre und Mut, Aventiure und Minne. Höfische Wortgeschichten aus dem Mittelalter, ed. Otfrid Ehrismann (München: Beck, 1995), 136–47. 30  This topos is connected to Ovid, see Hoffmann, “Liebe als Krankheit”. 31  Haubrichs, “Wild, grimm und wüst”, 43–5, with many examples. 32  Der minn natûre ist sô getân: | si machet wîser wîsen man (ll. 1179–80). 33  diu minn wirt dicke zunminne, | si enwerde gerihtet mit dem sinne (ll. 867–8); ich seit, daz man der minne kraft/mit schoenem sinne tragen sol,/swer âne schant wil leben wol (ll. 1176–8). See also Weichselbaumer, Der konstruierte Mann, 110–11. 28 29

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Der Bussard An ideal example of excessive love causing wilde is the courtly short tale Der Bussard. It was written by a man named Flagelin between 1270 and 1370, probably in the northern Alsace area.34 Der Bussard is part of the narrative tradition of Magelone and describes a courtship detailing escape, separation, and reunion of the loving couple. The tale has about 1140 rhyming couplet lines and reports that a nameless English prince is sent to Paris for his education. He gains access to the royal court of the king of France and falls in love with the (nameless) princess of France. She is promised to the king of Morocco, and the young couple decides to flee her father’s court. The prince returns to England and prepares everything for the escape; dressed up as a minstrel he returns to France on the day of the wedding. After they elope the couple rests at an idyllic forest clearing where the princess falls asleep. The young man stares at two valuable rings on the princess’s hand; when he takes them, a buzzard pushes down and steals one ring. The prince starts running after the bird, screaming and throwing his arms around. He gets lost in the forest and accuses himself desperately of having forsaken the princess without any protection. The young man turns insane and becomes an animal: he lives in the forest, walks on arms and legs, has a fur growing all over his body. The princess finds shelter at the court of a duke whose hunters later run into the wild man. They capture him and bring him to the castle where he is intensely cared for. When the people of the court think he is healed, he is supposed to go hunting to prove his restored courtliness. But when the prince sees a buzzard he sends his hunting falcon to defeat the buzzard as prey. Afterwards, the prince rips the buzzard’s head off and tears it to pieces. Then he hunts for a duck in courtly fashion in order to present it to the duke who later asks the prince what happened. The prince tells his story, and the princess listens to his words, too. They recognise each other, get married and live happily and in harmony with their families. The couple’s separation seems to result from a very small violation of courtly norms: the prince looks at the rings while the princess is sleeping in his lap and takes them from her fingers. When the buzzard steals one, the prince seems to severely overreact: he leaves the princess, fiercely 34  Der Bussard. Edition, Übersetzung und Kommentar, ed.  Daniel Könitz (Stuttgart: S. Hirzel, 2017). See also Uta Dehnert and Gudrun Felder, eds, “Der Bussard (Nr. 80),” in Deutsche Versnovellistik des 13. bis 15. Jahrhunderts, ed. Klaus Ridder und Hans–Joachim Ziegeler (Berlin: Schwabe, 2020), 2: 457–95.

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denounces himself, and turns into a wild animal that becomes part of the wilderness around him. Only knowledge of the literary tradition of Magelone and the  motive of the robbing of a ring, which has inherent within it reference to rape, may explain the situation adequately. The tale evokes erotic imagery at a locus amoenus; the buzzard translates the prince’s mental assault into action. The scene results in self-alienation, loss of human reason, and animalisation.35 On closer examination, the plot is not as contingent on the motive of the stolen ring as one may think. There are hints of little violations of courtly norms right from the beginning of the tale. The couple acts against the will of the princess’s parents, who had already arranged their daughter’s marriage (ll. 266–9, 276–81). They also set aside the warnings of the prince’s guardian (ll. 190, 199–206). When the young lovers see each other after the year of separation, out of joy they omit to greet each other and hurry to escape (ll. 551–4). Even though they have three horses at hand, they ride on the same one, holding and kissing each other: “Quickly she gave him her hand. He set her on his horse and rode away with her … The two lovers embraced each other. Their mouths and cheeks shared many sweet kisses”.36 Also, the princess rests in the lap of the prince. These small violations against courtly mores lead to the big violation after the separation. Now, the prince behaves himself in an uncourtly and immoderate manner, when he curses his own life in a plaintive speech (ll. 619–37). He cries out pitiably and sheds large tears, he pulls his hair and beats upon himself; his heart breaks (l. 639); he loses hirn und marc (mental and physical capacity) and turns insane (ll. 647–8). At this point, his emotions are pathologised, because these are symptoms of the love illness amor hereos. Since the prince suffers from an illness, he can be healed with diet, care, and affection in order to return to his mental and physical balance. Still, there is a narrative surplus that cannot be explained medically. It is the reason why the prince’s healing is not complete. The animalisation of 35  See Udo Friedrich, Menschentier und Tiermensch. Diskurse der Grenzziehung und Grenzüberschreitung im Mittelalter (Göttingen: V & R unipress, 2009), 143; Schuler-Lang, Wildes Erzählen, 319; Armin Schulz, “dem bûsant er daz houbt abe beiz. Eine anthropologisch–poetologische Lektüre des ‘Busant.’” Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 122 (2000): 441–4. 36  wie geswinde sie im die hant bôt, | dô huop er sie ûf den volen sîn, | und reit mit der juncvrouwen hin. … diu zwei geliebe, diu hâten sich | mit armen umbevangen. | ir munt und ouch ir wangen | gâben vil manigen süezen kus (ll. 555–62).

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the prince far exceeds other medieval narratives of insanity37; the lament, the stream of tears, the tearing off his clothing and the self-mutilation result in the loss of his human mind. The prince’s skin is grown over by fur, he cannot walk on two feet any more, and he loses his status as a courtier, as a human being altogether: “He lowered himself to the ground and ran on four legs like wild animals through bushes and thicket. The noble prince lost his human mind”.38 He is called a wild man, but behaves like an animal seeking shelter in a tree when hunters appear in the forest.39 This animalisation is overcome only superficially and incompletely by the intensive care programme at the duke’s court. The symptoms of amor hereos are healed, but the healing does not get to the core of the figure; even though the prince looks healthy and human and his mental and physical strength appear to be clear and powerful again (ll. 884–6), his inner balance and harmony are not fully restored yet. This becomes clear when he suffers from a fierce outbreak of affectivity while hunting. Once again he crosses the borders of human (courtly) action. When the prince sees a buzzard, he has his falcon kill it, and then mutilates the cadaver: “The young lord would sustain himself from biting the buzzard’s head off. He tore off skin and flesh and threw feathers and bones to the ground”.40 The other hunters assume that the prince turned wild and out of control again (ll. 918–19), but they worry without reason. The young lord returns to courtly behaviour and is able to explain his outbreak eloquently. The destruction of the buzzard’s body symbolises the destruction of wilde within the prince. This equates bird and man. But it also shows the prince’s liberation from the role of the bird of prey through his gruesome deed. This reading is supported by the way the prince acts towards the dead bird: Even though dictionaries do not explicitly translate Middle High German rîzen “tear (apart)” as “eat up”,41 the scene evokes the image of a bird breaking up the prey for eating. The prince throws the  See the commentary for ll. 646–58 in Dehnert and Felder, eds, “Der Bussard,” 476.  nider liez er sich zehant | und gienc ûf allen vieren, | glîch den wilden tieren, | durch dorne und durch hürste. | der hôch geborne vürste, | menschlîch sinne im gar verswant (ll. 653–8). 39  See Schulz, “dem bûsant”, 442. 40  der junge herre niht enliez, | er dem bûsant daz houbet abe beiz, | hût und vleisch er im abe reiz. | gebein und daz gevidere, | daz warf er vor im nidere (ll. 911–15). 41  For rîzen, see Mittelhochdeutsches Handwörterbuch, https://woerterbuchnetz.de/?sigle =Lexer&lemid=R00840%232#1, accessed 27 October 2021; Klaus Grubmüller, Die Ordnung, der Witz und das Chaos. Eine Geschichte der europäischen Novellistik im Mittelalter. Fabliau—Märe—Novelle (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 2006), 170, fn. 49. 37 38

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buzzard’s feathers and bones to the ground like a bird of prey’s regurgitations. But when the wilde is removed from him after this outbreak, he shows perfect courtly behaviour. His social healing and resocialisation are completed by the act of narration that reunites the couple for good.42 Even though the outbreak of insanity results from exceeding desperation and sadness over leaving the princess alone, the tale discusses a specific case of love: the wild, animalised man is a fool of love.43 This case connects the two buzzard scenes with the prologue and the epilogue that dispute matters of right loving; love works miracles if it is true and loyal (ll. 1–5). At the end, loyal love has proved itself and justifies the happy end because the two loved each other sincerely and truly (ll. 1132–6). This love does not pose a threat anymore, because it is no longer an overwhelming affect or an illegitimate sexual desire. Minne and triuwe lead to a marriage celebrated in public, accepted by both families. It brings harmony and stabilisation and meets the requirements the narrator laid out in the beginning: edele minne (fine love) should come together with smart senses (ll. 37–8), not with lack of courtliness. This may be an example for all courtiers to ban instinctuality by controlling emotions and acting in a courtly manner: “Because of this a wise man should have the favours of all ladies. In regard to their fine love he has senses so wise that he feels deep sorrow if anyone caused them to be unworthy”.44

Konrad von Würzburg: Engelhard Our next example deals with the opposite of an emotional “too much”: a case of (seemingly) emotional indifference and coldness towards loved familiy members. Konrad von Würzburg’s Engelhard is a courtly novel of c.6500 rhyming couplet lines.45 It was written around 1260, maybe in the Middle Low German speaking region. Engelhard tells the story of two extraordinary male friends in the tradition of Amicus and Amelius; two young noblemen, looking as similar as twins, live through challenges of 42  See Sandra Linden, “Erzählen als Therapeutikum? Der wahnsinnige Königssohn im ‘Bussard,’” in Texte zum Sprechen bringen. Philologie und Interpretation, ed. Christiane Ackermann and Ulrich Barton (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 2009), 178. 43  Friedrich, Menschentier, 382. 44  dar umb solte ein bescheiden man | wol aller vrouwen gunst hân. | umb ir edele minne | er hât sô kluoge sinne, | daz im waer inneclîchen leit, | swer ir taete unwirdecheit (ll. 35–40). 45  Konrad von Würzburg: Engelhard, ed. Ingo Reiffenstein. 3rd edition of the text by Paul Gereke (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1982).

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their friendship, including a deceitful ordeal and leprosy.46 Konrad uses the narrative scheme innovatively; traditional  heroic elements step back in favour of courtly elements that are complementary to the traditional hagiographical elements of the Amicus-Amelius legend. The courtly elements include the excellence of the friends Engelhard and Dietrich in doing service at the court of King Fruote of Danmark. His daughter, princess Engeltrud, falls in love with both of them because she cannot keep them apart. Later on she decides for Engelhard, but this creates no problems for the friendship, which continues after Dietrich leaves Danmark to become ruler in Brabant. When Engelhard and Engeltrud’s love affair becomes public, Engelhard has to face an ordeal because he is accused of being disloyal to the king and swearing to perjury about the affair. In the ordeal, his lookalike Dietrich fights successfully for his friend and takes Engeltrud for his legal bride afterwards; still he does not consummate the marriage, but hands over Engeltrud to Engelhard. Dietrich returns to Brabant where he gets leprosy after some years. Konrad von Würzburg describes the illness, its symptoms and sociocultural consequences in detail and with profound medical knowledge; still it remains unclear why exactly Dietrich gets ill. An angel speaks to Dietrich in his dream and offers a way to be healed. If he takes a bath in the blood of Engelhard’s children, Dietrich can be saved. The prince of Brabant falls into melancholia due to the impossibility of his healing. But since he is becoming more and more isolated from his family and his courtiers, he decides to travel to Engelhard just in hope of good care and comfort through his friend. Engelhard welcomes Dietrich and offers the best care possible. When they talk he gets Dietrich to tell him his dream about the angel. After short consideration Engelhard decides to sacrifice his children for the sake of his friend and persuades Dietrich to accept the sacrifice. In a secret moment, Engelhard cuts his children’s throats and collects their blood in a bowl. He prepares a bath for his friend who is miraculously healed. When the servants look for the children later they are unharmed; only a fine red line on their necks remains as a reminder of Engelhard’s deed and the divine miracle. Human sacrifices and especially baths in the blood of innocent children are common motives in hagiographical leprosy narratives. The specific narrative scheme in Engelhard comes from the Amicus-Amelius tradition. 46  See Rüdiger Brandt, Konrad von Würzburg. Kleinere epische Werke (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 2009), 130–1.

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The dominantly hagiographical tales present leprosy as divine punishment and atonement, similar to the late thirteenth- or fourteenth-century Middle English romance, “Amys and Amylion”. The sacrifice of the children is part of the hagiographical scheme: a saint leaves all worldly ties (like family bonds) behind him, this is the requirement for the miracle.47 This narrative scheme can be seen in Engelhard alongside the reference to the sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham in the Old Testament. But in Konrad’s novel, hagiographical patterns are subordinated to courtly norms. Therefore, the killing of the children poses a problem for the narrator who struggles in justifying his protagonist’s deed. The sacrifice casts Engelhard in a negative light and cannot be explained easily with legal or hagiographical arguments. The ordeal was legally questionable48; Dietrich’s illness remains mysterious (a divine punishment for taking part in the deceitful ordeal?); the killing of the children appears ambiguous: Is Engelhard paying back an old debt? Is it an atonement, a repent or a criminal act? The sacrifice remains a strange and bewildering act. Engelhard himself explains the decision to sacrifice his beloved children with his extraordinary love for the exceptional and loyal friend who helped him in the ordeal. He also states that his innocent children would come to heaven as martyrs. This is an argument that remains more than questionable even for the time. Being a martyr presupposes a person willingly died for God, rather than being murdered.49 Engelhard’s further argument that Engeltrud would be able to give birth to new children is not valid from a courtly, ethical or dynastical point of view either. Engelhard gives himself over to scandal and gives up his succession and the future of his kingdom.50 Even if the recipient accepts the sacrifice as a compensation for Dietrich’s substitution in the ordeal, there seems to be an enormous imbalance that 47  Edith Feistner, Historische Typologie der deutschen Heiligenlegende des Mittelalters von der Mitte des 12. Jahrhunderts bis zur Reformation (Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert, 1995), 23–4, 138. 48  Daniela Karner, Täuschung in Gottes Namen. Fallstudien zur poetischen Unterlaufung von Gottesurteilen in Hartmanns von Aue ‘Iwein’, Gottfrieds von Straßburg ‘Tristan’, Des Strickers ‘Das heiße Eisen’ und Konrads von Würzburg ‘Engelhard’ (Frankfurt/Main: Lang, 2010), 125–31, 143–5. 49  Brandt, Konrad von Würzburg, 128. 50   Marion Oswald, “Aussatz und Erwählung. Beobachtungen zu Konstitution und Kodierung sozialer Räume in mittelalterlichen Aussatzgeschichten,” in Innenräume in der Literatur des deutschen Mittelalters, ed. Burkhard Hasebrink et al. (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 2008), 40.

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is only partly justified by the divine wish expressed in Dietrich’s dream.51 This imbalance does not seem to be lifted by the programmatic praise of triuwe (loyalty) between the exceptional friends that runs through the whole narrative, starting with the prologue.52 The great love for the friend is contrasted by a “too little” love for the family. Engelhard’s preference for Dietrich makes him look cold-hearted and unscrupulous towards his own children and wife. He appears uninterested in family and dynastic affairs and his rulership altogether. This would have been acceptable for a saint in hagiography, but it seems to be an “impossible” emotion in the context of courtly life, and it leads to warps in the narrative of Engelhard. Yet the narrator takes countermeasures to offset the possible loss of sympathy for the protagonist. He continuously mentions the loyalty between the friends and the noble nature of the two.53 Furthermore, he describes the emotional reactions Engelhard has in the killing scene in order to contradict the impression of emotional cold and unscrupulousness. Engelhard hides Dietrich’s tale with riuwe vil nâhe sînem herzen (ll. 6110–11; sorrow close in his heart). He cannot stop thinking of his friend’s suffering, keeps brooding over options and alternatives and finally asks God for his help. To let Dietrich die seems disloyal and would bring shame (ll. 6123–4); to kill his children would mean pain and sorrow just as well: “It is a painful lament if I kill these children who grew and developed from me. My heart lies in ties of strong worries. Two kinds of suffering hold me”.54 Engelhard excuses his decision for Dietrich with the argument that his children would achieve eternal life as martyrs and appeals to God’s commend to kill them (ll. 6150–69). He foresees eternal repentance for himself but he is willing to accept that (ll. 6170–3, 6192–5). On the one hand, Engelhard is a tool of God’s will: “God wanted to do a great miracle through him. God’s spirit had enflamed him and the fire of

 Brandt, Konrad von Würzburg, 141.  Ibid., 133–4. 53  Tomas Tomasek, “Kranke Körper in der mittelhochdeutschen höfischen Literatur. Eine Skizze zur Krankheitsmotivik,” in Körperinszenierungen in mittelalterlicher Literatur, ed. Klaus Ridder and Otto Langer (Berlin: Weidler, 2002), 104. 54  so ist aber daz ein grôziu klage, | ob ich getoete disiu kint | diu von mînem lîbe sint | gewahsen und erquicket. | mîn herze lît verstricket | in strenger sorgen bande | daz leit ist zweier hande | dar în ich nû gevallen bin (ll. 6134–41). 51 52

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the true love”.55 On the other hand, the killing remains inexplicable for a courtier and king: “something as inexplicable could not have happened by [human] nature”.56 Engelhard spies out a good opportunity to kill his children in a way that nobody at the court would notice his bad deed (ungelimpf, l. 6237). In the children’s room his eyes flow over with hot tears when he sees their sleeping bodies (l. 6253). He fights against himself harder than against two giants (ll. 6256–9), is paralysed with fear like a woman (ll. 6262–3). Engelhard turns around over and over and faints three times (ll. 6269–75). Only after God gives him strength he is able to kiss his children and cut their heads off with tears in his eyes (ll. 6278–88). In this scene, hagiographical and courtly narrative strategies oppose. A saint, feeling themselves to be a tool of God’s will, would not hesitate to fulfil God’s will. Inner turmoil and close ties to the worldly family contradict the exclusive love to God. But a courtly man, a father and ruler would not kill his children. The narrative remains ambiguous even after Dietrich is healed. Engelhard sits in his hall as a melancholicus, waits in leide and inneclîcher swaere (ll. 6392–3, in sorrow and deep pain) for the dead bodies to be found. When the children are brought in alive, he is shocked and happy at the same time. He thanks Christ for the miracle, cries in joy and tells the story to his friend who is his most important partner once again. Hagiographical and courtly narrative elements are harmonised in the happy end of the story. Also, the emotional “too little” is balanced out in order to save Engelhard’s status as a courtly figure. With a narrative of strong emotion and an introspective assessment, the figure Engelhard is saved from the accusation of insidiousness, of having no conscience or fatherly love. The outrageous and inexplicable deed of child killing is made plausible as the strongest test God and friendship may ask for. What seems to be a cold-hearted, even criminal figure turns out to be a courtly figure after all.

55  got … wolte an im erscheinen | sîn hôhez wunder aller meist. | in haete enzündet gotes geist | und der wâren minne gluot (ll. 6212–17). 56  von natûre enmöhte niht | sô grôz unbilde sîn geschehen (ll. 6226–7).

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Die Nibelungenklage Unlike in courtly tales and novels, figures in heroic epics usually act out their emotions and affects though deeds.57 Commentary by the narrators and insight into the heart of heroic figures are rare; the exorbitance of heroes does not ask for moderation. Die Nibelungenklage (Lament of the Nibelungen) is an exception to this rule.58 Like Der Welsche Gast, it shows a Christian-clerical and didactic point of view regarding sadness, grief, and mourning for the dead; desperation and sadness should be overcome by trust in God and the hereafter.59 Die Nibelungenklage is an anonymous heroic poem that follows Das Nibelungenlied in the majority of manuscripts. Both seem to have been written around 1200 at the court of Wolfger von Erla, then bishop of Passau. Das Nibelungenlied tells the wooing of King Siegfried of Niderlant for princess Kriemhild of Burgund. Her brother Gunther promises her hand to Siegfried if he helps him acquire the hand of Queen Brünhild of Island; they master Brünhild’s strength only through betrayal. After the weddings, the queens become rivals for the status of their husbands. Gunther’s vassal Hagen von Tronje decides to murder Siegfried in conspiracy with Gunther. After this, Kriemhild lives for revenge and marries powerful King Etzel of Hunnenlant. She deceitfully invites her brothers and Hagen to her court and starts a bloody feud. In the fighting, her brothers and their vassal Hagen, her little son, her brother-in-law, and thousands of warriors die. After Kriemhild has Gunther beheaded and kills Hagen with her own hands, she is cut into pieces. Die Nibelungenklage, a poem of c. 4400 rhyming couplet lines, summarises and comments on the events of Das Nibelungenlied and continues the plot. It describes the finding of the dead, their burials, and the laments of the survivors. Then the poem tells how the news spread to the relatives of the dead and what fates they meet. While some die from sorrow, others are predicted a better 57  For background on heroic anthropology, see Müller, Spielregeln, 201–48. For this section, see also Sonja Kerth, “in einem twalme er swebete. Konzeptionen von ‘Trauma’ in der Literatur des Mittelalters,” in Gewalt, Krieg und Geschlecht im Mittelalter, ed. Amalie Fößel (Bern: Peter Lang, 2020), 437–65. 58  Das Nibelungenlied und die Klage, ed. Joachim Heinzle (Berlin: Deutscher Klassiker– Verlag, 2014). English Translation from Winder McConnell, ed., The Lament of the Nibelungen (Div Chlage) (Columbia: Camden House, 1994). 59  Koch, “Die Vergemeinschaftung,” 67; Schnell, Haben Gefühle, 933; Weichselbaumer, Der konstruierte Mann, 260–1.

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future. Kriemhild’s widower, King Etzel, remains in despair and in a questionable state of mind. Jan-Dirk Müller declared the text to possess a traumatic structure of meaning, because it debates as to who is victim and who is perpetrator over and over again. Expressions of grief and mourning lead to a constant re-narrating of the plot and the horrors connected to it.60 I concretise the term “trauma” here,61 and use it for narratives of emotion like excessive sadness, grief, and despair. Narratives of trauma represent emotions that cause wounding in the hearts of figures and cannot be explained or healed within the narrative. Therefore, they are “impossible” emotions as well. Our example in this instance is Etzel, king of the Huns, who lost his wife, his only son, his brother and his warriors in his wife’s feud. He is an eyewitness to the events at his court and he helps with the burials and the mourning for the dead. Etzel demonstrates how violence and death result in an inner wound that opens up over and over again; a wound becoming more and more visible and disabling for the king, finally resulting in complete isolation from his courtiers. His emotional and his mental status are affected, just like his role as a king. Throughout the plot, Etzel mourns excessively for his losses and his own destiny. While he was introduced as a rich, powerful, and influential king (ll. 44–60, 967–9), later on he turns into a ruler who cannot use his potential, who is helpless and dependent on others. He seems no longer to be able to act by himself. His royal status collapses, in the end he lies unconscious on the ground and nobody cares (ll. 4200–3).62 This is the result of desperation, paralysis, and impotence. King Dietrich von Bern, another survivor of the catastrophe, accuses Etzel of unmanly behaviour. This sets aspects of gender and effemination into focus: “Alas the day, if this wretched tale circulates throughout the country, namely, that you are  Müller, Spielregeln, 118.  Turner and Lee, eds, Trauma; for the fine line between historical concepts of trauma and “insanity,” see Donna Trembinski, “Comparing Premodern Melancholy/Mania and Modern Trauma: An Argument in Favor of Historical Experiences of Trauma.” History of Psychology 14, no. 1 (2011): 80–99; for the historical complex of madness see Wendy J. Turner, Care and Custody of the Mentally Ill, Incompetent, and Disabled in Medieval England (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013). 62  See Florian Schmid, “(De–)Konstruktion von Identität in der ‘Nibelungenklage’. Überlegungen zu einem intersektional–narratologischen Zugriff auf mittelalterliche Texte,” in Intersektionalität und Narratologie. Methoden—Konzepte—Analyse, ed. Christian Klein and Falko Schnicke (Trier: WVT, 2014), 78, 83. 60 61

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standing here wringing your hands like some silly woman who is moping around pining for her friends. We are not at all accustomed to seeing you act in such an unmanly fashion.”63 Etzel’s bison-like wuof  64 (“wail”; l. 625) makes the towers and royal hall tremble (ll. 630–1, see also ll. 1572–6) and might be regarded as male agency leading to revenge. But when the king of the Huns embraces his own head, sits in a pool of blood, falls down in a faint and cannot speak or get up, it is a signal of weakness far beyond physical matters. In medieval thinking, this weakness is more fitting to a “silly woman”, as stated in line 1021, and it hurts his social standing as king. Etzel seems to realise this when he mourns for his dead wife, son, and brother; there is nobody to continue his dynasty: “To think of the bright future I have lost through their demise and the death of my own people!”65 But he cannot stop his desperation, his paralysis and his unproductive grief,66 all of which make the deficiencies of an unmanly, passive, and desperate ruler public. As a renegade, he cannot even find comfort in Christ.67 On the other hand, there are many statements that characterise the processes within the heart of Etzel as pain, sadness, and mourning, allowing a look inside the emotional centre of the figure: “With a deep sigh, terrible pain had taken hold of this nobleman’s heart”; “For such deep sorrow had filled his heart”.68 These comments made by the narrator can be understood as hints for a narrative of trauma and they correspond with

63  ach wê dirre maere, | gevreischet man diu in daz lant, | daz ir mit wintender hant | stêt als ein bloede wîp, | diu ir zuht und ir lîp | nâch vriunden sêre hât gesent! | des sîn wir von iu ungewent, | daz ir unmanlîche tuot (ll. 1018–25). Foundational for effemination is Andrea Moshövel, wîplîch man. Formen und Funktionen von “Effemination” in deutschsprachigen Erzähltexten des 13. Jahrhunderts (Göttingen: V & R unipress, 2009). On Etzel, see April Henry, “Melancholy and Mourning in the ‘Nibelungenklage,’” in Melancholie, ed. Sieber and Wittstock, 154, fn. 21; Nadine Hufnagel, “Die Darstellung der Trauer König Etzels. Geschlecht und Emotion in der mittelhochdeutschen ‘Nibelungenklage,’” in Literarische Männlichkeiten und Emotionen, ed. Toni Tholen and Jennifer Clare (Heidelberg: Winter, 2013), 68. 64  For the semantics of wuof see Hufnagel, “Die Darstellung,” 67–8. 65  waz ich trôstes hân verlorn | an in und an den mînen! (ll. 934–5); see also ll. 818–29; 866–9; 887–91. 66  Henry, “Melancholy,” 147–8. 67  Hufnagel, “Die Darstellung,” 83–4. 68  mit siuften veste hêt genomen | in des vürsten herzen | vil jaemerlîchez smerzen (ll. 594–6); wande im was an sîn herze kumen | diu riuwe alsô manecvalt (ll. 4192–3).

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the blood that wells up from Etzel’s mouth and ears (ll. 2310–13); the wound within the heart and its physical expression match.69 The worst element of unproductive grief is found in the statement that a figure’s senses fail. This happens to Dietrich von Bern, several female figures, and Etzel. Dietrich gets over it and leaves for Italy where, according to the Dietrich legend, he will later rule as king. The women are (re)married or die from grief. Etzel reacts ambiguously. He stays alive but cannot recover nor return to an active life as a ruler. This inability is connected to physical and mental symptoms that indicate weakness and disability: blood flows from Etzel’s ears and mouth, because of jâmer, wê, unmacht (“sorrow”, “grief”, “faint”; ll. 2308–9) and the lack of better means of consolation (l. 2324) threaten the king’s vital and social functioning.70 The once rich king is now only rich in sorrow. The loss of senses and his fainting combine social, emotional, and medical aspects and pathologise the figure; Etzel is disabled by weakness, loss of mind and senses and the exclusion from the group of active, noble man fit for a better future. The climax of this situation occurs when Dietrich leaves the Hun’s court. His departure confronts Etzel again with a situation of loss and makes him fall deeper into sorrow than ever (l. 4118–21). The old wound in his heart opens up again and Etzel passes into mental, physical, and social unconsciousness: im gap der jâmer solche nôt, | daz er der sinne niht behielt | und sô kranker witze wielt, | daz er unversunnen lac. | lebt er sît deheinen tac, | des hêt er doch vil kleinen vrumen, | wande im was an sîn herze kumen | diu riuwe alsô manecvalt, | daz in daz leit mit gewalt | lie selten sît gesprechen wort (His distress brought him into such a quandary that he lost his senses and became so distraught that he lay there unconscious. If he lived a day longer, it was scarcely to his advantage. For such deep sorrow had filled his heart that his terrible suffering prevented him from ever saying another word.). (ll. 4186–95)

Die Nibelungenklage does not offer Etzel a healing of the trauma or a positive outlook for life. The narrator claims to be incapable of telling the truth about Etzel’s end. He leaves him in a state that cannot be described or explained: “He was neither here nor there, he was neither alive nor  See also ll. 2762–5, 3082–5, 3662–5.  See Henry, “Melancholy,” 157. On the topic of somatic emotional display, especially in Old Norse-Icelandic literature, see Brynja Þorgeirsdóttir’s chapter in this volume. 69 70

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dead. … [H]e moved about as though he were in a trance.”71 None of the people present pays any attention to him, they let him fend for himself (ll. 4200–3). By this, the king of the Huns is not only excluded from the community of mourners within the plot,72 but also from the extradiegetic community of comforters the prologue evokes.73 Etzel is made an object of unscrupulous, merciless gazing, just like a madman. The narrator states that he will never stop asking himself what happened to the king of the Huns afterwards: weder er sich vergienge | oder in der luft enpfienge | oder lebende würde begraben | oder ze himele ûf erhaben | oder ob er ûz der hiute trüffe | oder sich verslüffe | in löcher der steinwende | oder mit welchem ende | er von dem lîbe kaeme | oder waz in zuo z’im genaeme, | ob er vüere in daz abgründe | oder ob in der tiuvel verslünde | oder ob er sus sî verswunden, | daz enhât niemen noch ervunden. (Whether he simply disappeared or went up into the air, whether he was buried alive or went up to heaven, whether he oozed out of his skin or slipped away into holes of the stone walls or how, in fact, he met his end, what might have carried him off, whether he fell into hell, or the devil devoured him or whether he simply vanished—no one has ever yet discovered what really happened.) (ll. 4335–48)

A return to a socially acceptable life as ruler with new warriors, perhaps a new queen and son at his side, seems to be impossible.74 Die Nibelungenklage creates the impression of an emotional state that is not only extreme, but radically different from other conceptions of “too much” or “too little” and cannot be told in a proper or conclusive way.

Conclusion The necessity of controlling affects and being emotionally moderate is observed in many contexts in the Middle Ages. A “too much” or a “too little” posed a threat to the community of male nobles and to the norms of the court. The texts analysed in this chapter focus on odd, even 71  ern was weder hie noch dort, | ern was tôt noch enlebete. | in einem twalme er swebete (ll. 4196–8). 72  See Schmid, “(De-)Konstruktion,” 78, especially his metaphor of a common body of mourning the figures construct. 73  Koch, “Die Vergemeinschaftung,” 80, 82. 74  Hufnagel, “Die Darstellung,” 78–9.

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“impossible” emotions: an extreme case of love in Der Bussard that makes the protagonist appear to be wild, animalised, and insane. Still, through an outrageous act of animalisation the prince is saved, returned to humanity and a courtly marriage in the end. Engelhard presents a (seeming) shortcoming of love  for familiy members. Hagiographic schemes and a later overlaid narrative of sorrow and pain bring the figure under control again and reintegrate him in the courtly world. King Etzel in Die Nibelungenklage is weakend by unproductive grief: He appears womanish and insane to the point where the narrator is not able to explain what is happening to Etzel. His emotional and mental status is described to be of radical emotional alterity and cannot be tied back to courtly behaviour and norms within the means of narration.

Bibliography Primary Sources Der Bussard. Edition, Übersetzung und Kommentar. Edited by Daniel Könitz. Stuttgart: S. Hirzel, 2017. Dehnert, Uta and Gudrun Felder, “Der Bussard (Nr. 80).” In Deutsche Versnovellistik des 13. bis 15. Jahrhunderts, edited by Klaus Ridder und Hans-­ Joachim Ziegeler. 6 vols, vol. II, 457–e95. Berlin: Schwabe, 2020. McConnell, Winder, ed. The Lament of the Nibelungen (Div Chlage). Columbia: Camden House, 1994. Das Nibelungenlied und die Klage. Nach der Handschrift 857 der Stiftsbibliothek St. Gallen. Edited by Joachim Heinzle. Berlin: Deutscher Klassiker–Verlag, 2014. Konrad von Würzburg: Engelhard. Edited by Ingo Reiffenstein. 3rd edition of the text by Paul Gereke. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1982. Der wälsche Gast des Thomasin von Zirclaria. Edited by Heinrich Rückert and Friedrich Neumann. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1965. Thomasin von Zerklaere. Der Welsche Gast. Edited by Eva Willms. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004. Thomasin von Zirclaria. Der Welsche Gast (The Italian Guest). Edited by Marion Gibbs and Winder McConnell. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2010.

Secondary Sources Brandt, Rüdiger. Konrad von Würzburg. Kleinere epische Werke. Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 2009.

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Feistner, Edith. Historische Typologie der deutschen Heiligenlegende des Mittelalters von der Mitte des 12. Jahrhunderts bis zur Reformation. Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert, 1995. Friedrich, Udo. Menschentier und Tiermensch. Diskurse der Grenzziehung und Grenzüberschreitung im Mittelalter. Göttingen: V & R unipress, 2009. Gerok-Reiter, Annette. “angest/vorhte—literarisch. Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der Emotionsforschung zwischen Text und Kontext.” Zeitschrift für Kulturwissenschaften 2 (2010): 15–22. Gerok-Reiter, Annette. “Die Angst des Helden und die Angst des Hörers. Stationen einer Umbewertung in mittelhochdeutscher Epik.” Das Mittelalter. Perspektiven mediävistischer Forschung 12 (2007): 127–43. Grubmüller, Klaus. Die Ordnung, der Witz und das Chaos. Eine Geschichte der europäischen Novellistik im Mittelalter. Fabliau—Märe—Novelle. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 2006. Haubrichs, Wolfgang. “Quod Alamanni dicunt. Volkssprachliche Wörter in der Lex Alamannorum”, in Recht und Kultur im frühmittelalterlichen Alemannien: Rechtsgeschichte, Archäologie und Geschichte des 7. und 8. Jahrhunderts, edited by Sebastian Brather, 169–209. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017. Heinen, Hubert. “minne und liebe. Das Fluidum zur Interaktion.” In Ehre und Mut, Aventiure und Minne. Höfische Wortgeschichten aus dem Mittelalter, edited by Otfrid Ehrismann, 136–47. München: Beck, 1995. Henry, April. “Melancholy and Mourning in the ‘Nibelungenklage.’” In Melancholie—zwischen Attitüde und Diskurs. Konzepte in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, edited by Andrea Sieber and Antje Wittstock, 145–58. Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2009. Hoffmann, Werner. “Liebe als Krankheit in der mittelhochdeutschen Lyrik.” In Liebe als Krankheit, edited by Theo Stemmler, 221–57. Tübingen: Narr, 1990. Hufnagel, Nadine. “Die Darstellung der Trauer König Etzels. Geschlecht und Emotion in der mittelhochdeutschen ‘Nibelungenklage.’” In Literarische Männlichkeiten und Emotionen, edited by Toni Tholen and Jennifer Clare, 57–87. Heidelberg: Winter, 2013. Jaeger, C. Stephen. The Origins of Courtliness. Civilizing Trends and the Formation of Courtly Ideals, 939–1210. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985. Jaeger, C. Stephen. “Emotions and Sensibilities: Some Preluding Thoughts”. In Codierung von Emotionen im Mittelalter/Emotions and Sensibilities in the Middle Ages, edited by C. Stephen Jaeger and Ingrid Kasten, vii–xii. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2003. Karner, Daniela. Täuschung in Gottes Namen. Fallstudien zur poetischen Unterlaufung von Gottesurteilen in Hartmanns von Aue ‘Iwein’, Gottfrieds von Straßburg ‘Tristan’, Des Strickers ‘Das heiße Eisen’ und Konrads von Würzburg ‘Engelhard’. Frankfurt/Main: Lang, 2010.

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Kerth, Sonja. “in einem twalme er swebete. Konzeptionen von ‘Trauma’ in der Literatur des Mittelalters.” In Gewalt, Krieg und Geschlecht im Mittelalter, edited by Amalie Fößel, 437–65. Bern: Peter Lang, 2020. Kerth, Sonja. “Narratives of Trauma in Medieval German Literature.” In Trauma in Medieval Society, edited by Wendy J.  Turner and Christina Lee, 274–97. Leiden: Brill, 2018. Kerth, Sonja. “A Work in Progress: The Research Programme ‘Premodern Dis/ ability History’. From the Literature Studies Research Laboratory”. In Dis/ ability History der Vormoderne. Ein Handbuch/Premodern Dis/ability History. A Companion, edited by Cordula Nolte, Bianca Frohne, Uta Halle and Sonja Kerth, 29–30. Affalterbach: Didymos, 2017. Klein, Dorothea. “Nebukadnezar und seine Kinder. Wahrnehmung und Darstellung von Wahnsinn in deutscher und lateinischer Literatur des Mittelalters.” In WahnSinn in Literatur und Künsten, edited by Gerhard Penzkofer and Irmgard Scharold, 43–79. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2017. Koch, Elke. “Die Vergemeinschaftung von Affekten in der ‘Klage’. Mit Untersuchungen zur Semantik von verklagen und klagen helfen.” In 11. Pöchlarner Heldenliedgespräch. Mittelalterliche Heldenepik—Literatur der Leidenschaften, edited by Johannes Keller and Florian Kragl, 61–82. Wien: Fassbander, 2011. Lienert, Elisabeth. “Knowledges and Contradictions in Premodern Narratives.” In Spaces of Dissention: Towards a New Perspective on Contradiction, edited by Julia Lossau, Daniel Schmidt–Brücken, and Ingo H.  Warnke, 19–37. Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2019. Linden, Sandra. “Erzählen als Therapeutikum? Der wahnsinnige Königssohn im ‘Bussard.’” In Texte zum Sprechen bringen. Philologie und Interpretation, edited by Christiane Ackermann and Ulrich Barton, 171–82. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 2009. Mittelhochdeutsches Handwörterbuch von Matthias Lexer, digitalisierte Fassung im Wörterbuchnetz des Trier Center for Digital Humanities . Moshövel, Andrea, wîplîch man. Formen und Funktionen von “Effemination” in deutschsprachigen Erzähltexten des 13. Jahrhunderts. Göttingen: V & R unipress, 2009. Müller, Jan-Dirk, Spielregeln für den Untergang. Die Welt des Nibelungenliedes. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1998. Oswald, Marion, “Aussatz und Erwählung. Beobachtungen zu Konstitution und Kodierung sozialer Räume in mittelalterlichen Aussatzgeschichten.” In Innenräume in der Literatur des deutschen Mittelalters, edited by Burkhard Hasebrink, Hans-Jochen Schiewer, Almut Suerbaum and Annette Volfing, 23–44. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 2008.

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Pearman, Tory Vandeventer, Women and Disability in Medieval Literature. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Schanze, Christoph. Tugendlehre und Wissensvermittlung. Studien zum ‘Welschen Gast’ Thomasins von Zerklaere. Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert, 2018. Schmid, Florian. “(De–)Konstruktion von Identität in der ‘Nibelungenklage’. Überlegungen zu einem intersektional–narratologischen Zugriff auf mittelalterliche Texte.” In Intersektionalität und Narratologie. Methoden— Konzepte—Analyse, edited by Christian Klein and Falko Schnicke, 61–86. Trier: WVT, 2014. Schnell, Rüdiger. Haben Gefühle eine Geschichte? Aporien einer History of Emotions. 2 vols. Göttingen: V & R unipress, 2015. Schuler-Lang, Larissa. Wildes Erzählen—Erzählen vom Wilden. ‘Parzival’, ‘Busant’ und ‘Wolfdietrich D’. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2014. Schulz, Armin. “Die Verlockungen der Referenz. Bemerkungen zur aktuellen Emotionalitätsdebatte.” Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 128 (2006): 472–95. Schulz, Armin. “dem bûsant er daz houbt abe beiz. Eine anthropologisch– poetologische Lektüre des ‘Busant.’” Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 122 (2000): 432–54. Schulz, Armin. Erzähltheorie in mediävistischer Perspektive, edited by Manuel Braun, Alexandra Dunkel and Jan–Dirk Müller. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2012. Sieber, Andrea and Antje Wittstock, eds. Melancholie—zwischen Attitüde und Diskurs. Kozepte in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit. Göttingen: V & R unipress, 2009. Starkey, Kathryn. A Courtier’s Mirror. Cultivating Elite Identity in Thomasin von Zerclaere’s ‘Welscher Gast’. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013. Starkey, Kathryn. “From Symbol to Scene: Changing Strategies of Representation in the Manuscripts of the ‘Welsche Gast.’” In Beweglichkeit der Bilder. Text und Imagination in den illustrierten Handschriften des ‘Welschen Gastes” von Thomasin von Zerclaere, edited by Horst Wenzel and Christa Lechtermann, 121–42. Köln: Böhlau, 2002. Tomasek, Tomas, “Kranke Körper in der mittelhochdeutschen höfischen Literatur. Eine Skizze zur Krankheitsmotivik.” In Körperinszenierungen in mittelalterlicher Literatur, edited by Klaus Ridder and Otto Langer, 97–115. Berlin: Weidler, 2002. Trembinski, Donna, “Comparing Premodern Melancholy/Mania and Modern Trauma: An Argument in Favor of Historical Experiences of Trauma.” History of Psychology 14, no. 1 (2011): 80–99. Turner, Wendy J. and Lee, Christina, eds. Trauma in Medieval Society. Leiden: Brill, 2018.

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Turner, Wendy J. Care and Custody of the Mentally Ill, Incompetent, and Disabled in Medieval England. Turnhout: Brepols, 2013. Weichselbaumer, Ruth. Der konstruierte Mann. Repräsentation, Aktion und Disziplinierung in der didaktischen Literatur des Mittelalters. Münster: LIT, 2003. Willms, Eva, “Einleitung”. In Thomasin von Zerklaere: Der Welsche Gast, edited by Eva Willms, 1–20. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004.

CHAPTER 5

“In an Overfurious Mood”: Emotion in Medieval Frisian Law and Life Rolf H. Bremmer Jr

The vernacular literary legacy of the medieval Frisians, written down between the early thirteenth century and the early sixteenth centuries, consists almost entirely of legal texts.1 These range from native customary laws, statutes, and extensive registers of compensations to legal riddles and learned comments based on Roman and canon law. Anyone looking for belles lettres composed in Old Frisian will be disappointed. Still, this warning should not imply that the laws make for dull reading. On the contrary, the legal regulations are often striking for their imaginative discourse and offer a wonderful window on life in medieval Frisia in many 1  I am grateful to George Ferzoco for angelic instruction and to the editors for polishing my English.

R. H. Bremmer Jr (*) Universiteit Leiden, Leiden, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 E. Sebo et al. (eds.), Emotional Alterity in the Medieval North Sea World, Palgrave Studies in the History of Emotions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33965-3_5

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respects. It should be borne in mind that Frisia in the High Middle Ages was a loose confederation of some twenty independent lands, called terrae “lands” or universitates “communities” in contemporaneous Latin sources. Each land was administered by a board of judges recruited from the ranks of the allodial peasants, rotating on an annual basis. Frisia hence lacked a central overarching government. Though Frisia was officially a part of the Holy Roman Empire, there were no counts who exercised their authority on behalf of the Emperor; indeed, the Frisians were free from feudal obligations.2 This chapter explores the role of four basic emotions— joy, sadness, fear and anger—in as far as they occur in medieval Frisian lawbooks.3 Within this corpus of legal texts, essentially two groups can be distinguished. The one, written down during the High Middle Ages, is based on traditional social customs as they prevailed among the freeholding peasants. The other is made up of late medieval lawbooks that were highly influenced by Roman and canon law.4 These later laws are also aimed at providing comprehensive access to judicial proceedings and the management of law for a growing number of educated people participating in the administrative agencies of urban and regional government. Despite the rapid growth of the history of emotions over the past two to three decades (witness also the present volume), legal sources have only recently started to be analysed in more detail.5 Laws, nonetheless, as pointed out by John Hudson, offer an attractive field of investigation for the study of emotions. They are designed for more than crime and subsequent litigation. They “make life more predictable, [they] can facilitate and promote certain actions, [they] can seek to prevent disputes by laying down rules, and provide routes to solutions other than litigation should

2  On the political situation, see Oebele Vries, “Frisonica libertas: Frisian Freedom as an Instance of Medieval Liberty,” Journal of Medieval History 41, no. 2 (2015): 229–48. 3  On some problematic aspects concerning “basic” emotions in the Middle Ages, see Barbara H. Rosenwein, “Thinking Historically about Medieval Emotions,” History Compass 8/8 (2010): 828–42. 4  Jan Hallebeek, “The Gloss to the Saunteen Kesta (Seventeen Statutes) of the Frisian Land Law”, Legal History Review 87 (2019): 30–64, esp. 60–64; Pieter Gerbenzon, “Canon Law in Frisia in the Late Middle Ages,” Proceedings of the Second International Congress of Medieval Canon Law: Boston College, 12–16 August 1963. Monumenta Iuris Canonici Series C: Subsidia, vol. 1 (Vatican City: Congregatio de seminariis et studiorum universitatibus, 1965): 467–72. 5  Merridee L. Baileya and Kimberley-Joy Knight, “Writing Histories of Law and Emotion,” The Journal of Legal History 38, no. 3 (2017): 117–29, at 118.

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disputes arise.”6 The nature of the medieval Frisian corpus of legal texts is rather one-sided, however. For example, detailed reports of court sessions, including those that pertain to ecclesiastical matters, are lacking. This absence is the more striking, since the requirement to record faithfully the proceedings of a legal case, promulgated at the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 and included in the second volume of Gratian’s Decretals in 1235, was certainly familiar in Frisia.7 It is therefore hard for us to see how the rules were applied in the assembly or in a court when a case was dealt with. Emotions have been given various definitions, but are here understood as internal states of mind that are experienced in the body—increased heartbeat, “cold” sweat, tense muscles, shedding tears, and so on—and find expression in the behaviour of people.8 They can also be seen as forms of intersocial conduct: “an emotion is often an act of relationship reconfiguration brought about by delivering a social signal.”9 Put differently, by

6  John Hudson, “Emotions in the Early Common Law (c. 1166–1215),” The Journal of Legal History 41, no. 2 (2017): 130–54, at 131. 7  X. 2.19.11: “Quoniam contra falsam assertionem” (Lateran Council, Canon 38), in Corpus iuris canonici. Pars I: Decretum magistri Gratiani. Pars II: Decretalium collectiones, ed. Emil Friedberg and Emil L.  Richter (Leipzig: Tauchniz, 1879–1881). The canon (in Latin) is included in the First and Second Hunsingo Manuscripts, see Jelle Hoekstra, De Eerste en de Tweede Hunsinger Codex. Oudfriese Taal- en Rechtsbronnen 6 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1950), 101–02 and 125–26, respectively. For a discussion and critical edition with Dutch translation of this particular redaction in its Frisian context, see Rolf H. Bremmer Jr, Hir is eskriven. Lezen en schrijven in de Friese landen rond 1300 (Hilversum: Verloren, 2004), 65–66 and 156–57 (Appendix 2). Cf. Richard H. Helmholz, “Quoniam contra falsam (X. 2.19.11) and the Court Records of the English Church,” in Als die Welt in die Akten kam. Prozeßschriftgut im europäischen Mittelalter, ed. Susanne Lepsius and Thomas Wetzstein (Frankfurt/M: Klostermann, 2008), 31–49. 8  The literature on this subject is vast; see, e.g., Paul Ekman and Wallace V.  Friesen, Unmasking the Face: A Guide to Recognizing Emotions from Facial Clues (Los Altos: Maolor Books, 2003); William W. Grings and Michael E. Dawson, ed. Emotions and Bodily Responses. A Psychophysiological Approach (New York: Academic Press, 1978). For the link between emotions and their somatic expressions, see e.g., Peter King, “Emotions in Medieval Thought,” in The Oxford Book of Philosophy of Emotion, ed. Peter Goldie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 167–87. On the difficulty of even properly defining the term “emotion,” see Robert C. Solomon, “The Philosophy of Emotions,” in Handbook of Emotions, ed. Michael Lewis, Jeannette M. Haviland-Jones and Lisa Feldman Barrett, 3rd edn (New York: Guildford Press, 2008): 3–16, at 3. 9  Paul E. Griffiths and Andrea Scarantino, “Emotions in the Wild: The Situated Perspective on Emotion,” in The Cambridge Handbook of Situated Cognition, ed. Philip Robbins and Murat Aydede (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 437–53, at 437.

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expressing emotions people consciously or unconsciously modulate the way they act upon one another.

Joy Law and joy prove an awkward match, for rarely is there occasion for joy to be mentioned in the many rules and stipulations. The Old Frisian lexicon of joy appears to be quite limited10; it includes blı ̄de adj. “happy” (< Gmc *blı ̄þe) and derivatives, such as blı ̄delı ̄ke, adj./adv., blı ̄dskip “happiness”, forblı ̄da vb., “to rejoice”; fre ̄ adj. “happy, delighted” (< Gmc *frawa-)11; and willa n. “pleasure, delight.”12 If at all, happiness occurs in a context of celebrating the conclusion of a transaction, for example, when Frisians are granted certain privileges by higher authorities. The Statutes of Magnus provides a good point in case. These statutes are encased in a pseudo-historical narrative that relates how the Frisians, led by their standard bearer Magnus, helped Charlemagne to reconquer Rome and free Pope Leo III from the cruel hands of the Romans, who had blinded the pope. In return for their bravery, Magnus successfully negotiated with Charlemagne and Leo seven statutes for the Frisians, which, we are told, were thereupon confirmed in a charter, with seal and all. Upon the Frisian warriors setting their eyes on this precious document, the author comments: “How joyful and happy was then many a noble Frisian!”13 Next, the charter is proffered to Magnus, who accepts it with both hands. 10  I have collected my lexical data mainly from Dietrich Hofmann and Anne T. Popkema, Altfriesisches Handwörterbuch (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2008). Especially useful is the Corpus Oudfries, a digitally searchable corpus based on a considerable number of Old Frisian tetxs, compiled by Rita van de Poel and hosted by the Instituut voor de Nederlandse Taal, Leiden, accessed 13 August 2021, https://corpora.ato.ivdnt.org/corpusfrontend/OFR/search/ 11  See Volkert F. Faltings, Etymologisches Wörterbuch der friesischen Adjektiva (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010), 134–36 and 209, respectively. 12  The basic meaning of willa is “will”; for the sense “pleasure, delight,” cf. Joseph Bosworth and T. Northcote Toller, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1898), s.v. willa n. VI. 13  “Hoe frij ende blij dae manich edel Fresa was”; Wybren Jan Buma, Wilhelm Ebel and Marina Tragter-Schubert, Jus Municipale Frisonum, 2 vols. Westerlauwersches Recht I. Altfriesische Rechtsquellen 6 (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1977), text V.11. The first element of the collocate frij ende blij is a variant of fre ̄ “happy,” not of frı ̄ “free”; cf. Willem L. van Helten, Zur Lexicologie des Altostfriesischen. Verhandelingen van de Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen. Afd. Letterkunde, Nieuwe reeks, Deel IX (Amsterdam: Mueller, 1907), 142, s.vv. fre ̄y and frei.̄

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Feelings of joy well up in his breast and he starts singing: “May Christ be our protection, kyrieleison.”14 For Magnus, clearly, there was no mental border line between brokering a series of political advantages for the Frisians and linking his diplomatic success to the heavenly source of secular security. Magnus’ narrative is a piece of thirteenth-century fiction, one of many in which the origin of Frisian legal traditions is projected back onto the times of Charlemagne. However, there are instances where happiness is requested in real history, for example, from the people of the district of Ferwerd (Westergo), when in 1491 they are asked collectively to accept “willingly and joyfully” the outcome that the Honourable Vybren Roerde will negotiate for a peace treaty with the town of Groningen.15

Sadness More room seems to be afforded for sadness and grief than for gladness and joy in the laws. But then, this is to be expected, perhaps, in a land where feuds were frequent and nature could be harsh, especially when inundations devastated the land or hunger reigned because of years of successive crop-failure and cattle disease.16 Experiences of loss and bereavement must have been an every-day reality. A range of words was available to express sadness: dro ̄f- “sad, depressed” (< Gmc *drōba- “mirky”); jāmer sb. “misery” (cf. OE ge ̄omor “sad”, of unknown etym.); le ̄th “unwilling, unpleasant”, hence “sad” (< Gmc *laiþa- “hateful”). In addition, Old Frisian possessed a number of verbs and phrases to give expression to a state of sadness, such as ke ̄ma “to 14  “Crist sie wse ghenade, kyrioleys!”; Buma, Ebel and Tragter-Schubert, Jus municipale Frisonum, V.12. All translations are mine, unless otherwise stated. 15  “villich ende blydelic”; Oebele Vries, ed., Oudfriese Oorkonden, vol. IV. Oudfriese Taalen Rechtsbronnen 15 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977), no. 86, line 9. 16   See, for example, Oebele Vries “‘Ic ontsidse jemme ende jemme onderseten.’ Bemerkungen zum friesischen Fehdewesen sowie zur Fehdeterminologie,” in Tota Frisia in Teilansichten. Hajo van Lengen zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Heinrich Schmidt, Wolfgang Schwarz and Martin Tielke (Aurich: Das Ostfriesische Landschaft, 2005), 121–42, and Heinrich Schmidt, “Eine friesische Fehde: Die ‘Menalda-Fehde’ von 1295,” in ibid. 143–72; Bernd Rieken, ‘Nordsee ist Mordsee’: Sturmfluten und ihre Bedeutung für die Mentalitätsgeschichte der Friesen (Münster: Waxmann, 2005); Henry S. Lucas, “The Great European Famine of 1315, 1316, and 1317,” Speculum 5, no. 4 (1930): 343–77, at 370: Fritz Curschmann, Hungersnöte im Mittelalter: ein Beitrag zur deutschen Wirtschaftsgeschichte des 8. bis 13. Jahrhunderts (Leipzig: Teubner, 1900), 23–24.

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moan, bemoan” (< Gmc *kūmō- “lament”); klagia, biklagia “to feel sorry; bemourn” (< Gmc *klagō- “lament”); riōwa, biriōwsigia “to mourn, lament” (< Gmc *hreuwō- “grief”); skrı ̄a “to cry” (< Gmc *skraiōn- “to cry, shout”); tzı ̄ra “to cry loudly” (unknown etym.); weinia “to weep”, biweinia “to bewail (a deceased person)” (< Gmc *wai- “woe” exclamation, so “to cry out ‘woe’”), we ̄pa, biwe ̄pa “to weep” (< Gmc *wōpjan-“to shout, cry”). In this respect, it is worth mentioning that some verbs that originally signified “to mourn, lament” also acquired the specialized meaning of raising a complaint in the assembly or before a court for injustices incurred: klagia and ke ̄ma. As a matter of fact, a similar semantic development underlies such legal terms as “com-plaint” and “plaint-iff”, which, via French, derive from Latin planctus, the past participle of plangere, “to beat, esp. to beat the breast as a sign of grief.”17 Where else should one go to express misery after having fallen victim to serious harm than to assembly or court? For example, shouting and crying were an essential requirement in Frisian law for a girl or a woman to make known that she had been raped or abducted.18 Apparently, only a thin line separated feelings of physical and material loss and deprivation of honour on the one hand, and the judicial steps to be taken in order to redress at least some of that loss on the other. A category in society that was prone to suffer from bloodshed were women who lost their husbands. Violence was so rife in Frisia that regulations were even drafted to provide for homicide of the bridegroom on his wedding day: If the bridegroom is killed in the bridal procession, then the bride follows the corpse to the churchyard and the grave and to [her in-laws’] house and with it obtains her payment for participation in the bridal procession and her dower, which is eighteen ounces, and the nearest and most distant cow, chosen unseen. Furthermore, the guardianless girl has the right to choose a strange (i.e. new) guardian (i.e. spouse). She bought this (right) with

17  Online Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879), s.v. plango II. 18  L.  L. Hammerich, Clamor. Eine rechtsgeschichtliche Studie. Det Kgl. Danske Vidensakbernes Selskab. Hist.-Filologiske Meddelelser, vol. XXIX, no. 1 (Copenhagen: Munskgaard, 1941), 94–103.

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property and money, (namely) the validity of the marriage. Her morning gift amounts to thirteen ounces and eight pennies.19

Not a word in this regulation betrays any commiseration with the bride or envisages her grief. Instead of celebrating a jubilant day that would be concluded by the consummation of the marital union,20 a scenario befitting the performance culture prevalent in contemporaneous Frisia is presented in painstaking detail. Lined up now in quite a different procession, we see the newly widowed bride following her groom’s lifeless body to the churchyard, stretched out on a litter. There the parish priest will be waiting, “with missal and with stole,” to conduct a proper Christian burial.21 Afterwards, the bride has to proceed to the estate of her in-laws where she would have settled after the wedding to become a partner in her husband’s ancestral property had he stayed alive. Once these ritual actions have been completed, she is entitled to the full status of the widow of her slain husband-to-be. Her new social position brings with it all kinds of economic and legal sureties: a reward for her involvement in the marriage ceremony, her marriage portion and two head of cattle, chosen in such a way so as to prevent selecting them for their qualities. Now a proper widow, she has also obtained the right to remarry with a man of her own choice. We do not learn here of any impediments on the speed with which she can enter a new marriage. However, things change when, towards the close of the Middle Ages, the influence of Roman and canon law can be seen upon legal thinking in Frisia. Time becomes an important element for widows desiring to enter a second marriage, while simultaneously the emotional side of widowhood receives more attention. Widows were now supposed to adhere to a period of mourning for a year after their husband’s death and were forbidden to 19  “Sa thi breydgoma slain is in drecht, sa fulgat thio breyde tha lyke to howe ende to grewe and to huse and wint thermithe here drechtpund and thene wetma, thet sent xviij enza, and thet inreste iefta thet vterste rider, vnschawidis kern. Sa ach thet mundlase meydene to kiasan hire fremeda formunde. Thet kapade se mith schette ende mith scillinge, tha capstedene. Hire halsepund: thet sen xiij enza ende viij panningan”; Wybren Jan Buma and Wilhelm Ebel, Das Fivelgoer Recht. Altfriesische Rechtsquellen 5 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1971), text XIV.4. 20  As discussed in Rolf H. Bremmer Jr, “The Orality of Old Frisian Law Texts,” in Directions for Old Frisian Philology, ed. Rolf H. Bremmer, Stephen Laker and Oebele Vries. Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 73 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2014), 1–48, at 17–18. 21  “mith boke and mith stole”; Wybren Jan Buma and Wilhelm Ebel, Das Emsiger Recht. Altfriesische Rechtsquellen 3 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1967), text A III.5.

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remarry within this period. If she preferred to do so, she would forfeit her dowry and all kinds of restrictions were imposed concerning which part of her possessions she could bequeath.22 For now it is sufficient to consider the terminology of mourning as it is presented in Jurisprudentia Frisica, a fifteenth-century comprehensive lawyer’s handbook amalgamating native Frisian, Roman and canon law: “A woman who within the time of bitterness or mourning, that is within the year of weeping, is in a hurry and takes another man—she is infamis, that is she is honourless.”23 Elsewhere, the period of mourning is phrased in similar terms: “which year is rightfully called a year of beweeping or sadness.”24 These last two passages are found in late fifteenth-century collections of Romano-­ canonical arguments, so-called posita, that probably had served in earlier lawsuits in Frisia.25 Both posita are followed in the respective manuscripts by references to and quotations from Roman law. One of these is a citation from the Code of Justinian, C.5.9.2., which gives the period in neutral terms:

22  On aspects of a second marriage, see Nicolaas E.  Algra, Oudfries recht 800–1256 (Leeuwarden: Fryske Akademy, 2000), 321–24. Algra does not address the timespan between a husband’s death and second marriage, however. 23  “Een frow deer bynna der tyt dis weermodis off der seerfaldicheed, dat is bynna da scryeljeer, is haesten ende nympt een oren man, dyo is infamis, dat is hio is eerloes”; Montanus Hettema, Jurisprudentia Frisica, of Friesche rechtskennis […], 2 vols. (Leeuwarden: H. C. Schetsberg, 1834), Tit. LXXXVII.1, “De secundis nuptijs.” I have gratefully profited from a new transcript of the manuscript (Leeuwarden, Tresoar, Hs R 6, c.1500; also known as Codex Roorda), made by Bram Jagersma, Leiden University. This transcript includes the Latin passages and marginal glosses, both in Old Frisian and Latin, which were not included in Hettema’s edition. A new edition of this manuscript is in preparation at the Fryske Akademy, Leeuwarden. On this handbook, see Pieter Gerbenzon, “Aantekeningen over de Jurisprudentia Frisica. Een laat-vijftiende eeuwse Westerlauwers-Friese bewerking van de Excerpta legum,” Legal History Review 57 (1989): 21–67; 339–74, with English summary 373–74. 24   “welk ieer haet ney ryucht een ieer dees byscryengha ofte droeffhedes”; Pieter Gerbenzon, ed., Codex Parisiensis. Oudfriese Taal- en Rechtsbronnen 9 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1954), text VII.253–54. 25  Pieter Gerbenzon, “Canon and Roman Law in the so-called Codex Parisiensis,” in Aspects of Old Frisian Philology, ed. Rolf H. Bremmer Jr, Geart van der Meer and Oebele Vries. Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 31–32 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1990), 125–45, at 129.

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“within the space of a year.”26 In other words, the editor-translators of these Latin texts added a subjective colouring to the period of mourning. They first of all branded it a time of bitterness, the word being employed to express this sentiment is wermo ̄d. This is a daring metaphorical use of the name of a plant known as “(common) wormwood” (Artemisia absinthium) and, as far as I am aware, unique in the context of mourning. The bitter extract of wormwood is a traditional ingredient in alcoholic drinks, such as Italian vermouth or French absinthe. In order to clarify the word wermod, the author supplied a synonym, se ̄rfaldichhe ̄d. The element -fald- in it is related to “fold” (i.e. “crease”) and is very aptly an allusion to the worry lines (“sore-folds”) in a face marked by se ̄r “sore, pain.”27 The words skrı ̄elje ̄r and biskrı ̄inge are based on the verb skrı ̄a “to cry, weep”, thus referring to an important part of the mourning process. Finally, the first element dro ̄f in dro ̄fhe ̄d “sadness” actually means “murky, dark, esp. of water”28; metaphorically used, it captures the mental disturbance caused by loss of a beloved. Widowhood, in short, tastes bitter, marks the face visibly, expresses itself audibly in sound and physically in shedding tears, and brings with it a gloomy state of mind. A widow’s precarious social situation, despite the legal protections she enjoyed, was fully recognized and acknowledged by canonists; consequently, the laws more

26  “intra anni spacium”; Timothy Kearley, The Codex of Justinian: A New Annotated Translation, with Parallel Latin and Greek Text, based on a translation by Justice Fred H.  Blume, 3 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 1144. The appeal to Roman law is remarkable here, because canon law did not impose a time restriction on a widow remarrying and exempted her from infamia, see James A. Brundage, “Widows and Remarriage: Moral Conflicts and Their Resolution in Classical Canon Law,” in Wife and Widow in Medieval England, ed. Sue Sheridan Walker (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1993), 17–32, at 23–24. 27  Lars-Erik Ahlsson, Die altfriesischen Abstraktbildungen (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1960), 191–92. 28  For a similar semantic development, cf. such cognates as Old English drōf “1. turbid, muddy; 2. afflicted with mental or emotional turmoil, troubled, distraught,” in Angus Cameron et al., eds., The Dictionary of Old English: A to I online (Toronto: Dictionary of Old English Project, 2018) and Middle Dutch droeve “1. zonder licht, duister; 2. troebel; 3. van den geest: a) van personen, somber, bedroefd, boos. b) van zaken, treurig, ellendig,” in J.  Verdam, Middelnederlandsch Handwoordenboek (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964). (“1. without light, dark; 2. murky; 3. of the mind: a) of persons: gloomy, sad, angry. b) of matters: deplorable, miserable.”)

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than once call the widow “the most miserable of all women,” deserving of pity and care.29 The laws also recognize the sorrow of orphans. For example, the second of the Twenty-four Landlaws, stipulates30: “This is the second landlaw that no mother may sell her child’s inheritance before the child is of age, unless one of three things forces her to do so: a (hostile) army or hunger or a violent conflict amongst relatives.” This regulation succinctly sums up under which exceptional circumstances a widow was allowed to pawn or sell (parts of) her child’s inheritance (i.e., his deceased father’s farmstead and land) ancestral possession in order to keep it alive. It appears, however, that this regulation in the course of time was somehow expected to require further explication. Hence, in some redactions of the Twenty-four Landlaws the second landlaw is followed by an extensive description of the three emergencies that permit a widow to deposit or sell her child’s patrimony. In doing so, she would alienate the ancestral property, even if in intention only temporarily, from the line of generations, a gruesome prospect for many an allodial peasant: The first emergent situation: if the child, young, is fettered and caught north across the sea or south across the mountain, then the mother is allowed to pawn and sell her child’s inheritance and ransom her child and help it stay alive. The second emergent case is: if an evil year comes about and a burning hunger fares over the land and the child is bound to starve to death, then the mother is allowed to pawn and sell her child’s inheritance and buy for her child cow and corn with which it can be kept alive. The third necessity is: if the child is stark naked or houseless, and when the dark mist and the disastrously cold winter and the long dark night spread over the fences, then each man goes to his yard and his house and his heated room, and the wild beast seeks the cover of the mountains and the hollow 29  Annemarth Sterringa, “‘The Most Miserable Women of All’: Widows in Medieval Frisia,” in Approaches to Old Frisian Philology, ed. Rolf H. Bremmer Jr, Thomas S. B. Johnston and Oebele Vries. Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 49 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998), 285–301; James A. Brundage, “Widows as Disadvantages Persons in Medieval Canon Law,” in Upon My Husband’s Death. Widows in the Literature & Histories of Medieval Euripe, ed. Louise Mirrer (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1992), 193–206. 30  “Thet istet other londriucht thetter nen moder ne ach te sellane hire bernes erwe, er thet kind ierech se, het ne se thetter hire binime thera thrira thinga en: here ieftha hunger ieftha friunda strid”; Wybren Jan Buma and Wilhelm Ebel, Das Hunsingoer Recht. Altfriesische Rechtsquellen 4 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1969), text III.2.

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tree where it can save its life. Then the underage child weeps and cries and bemoans its naked limbs and its homelessness and its father who should save it from the hunger and the misty cold winter, that he is so deep and so dark with four nails closed in and covered under oak and under earth. Then the mother is allowed to pawn and sell her child’s inheritance, because she has the care and duty as long as it is a minor, so that it perishes neither by frost nor hunger nor captivity.31

It is especially the third emergency which, in highly emotive tones, evokes a picture of a destitute orphan. The narrator has created a dramatic contrast between the stark naked, lonely, roofless child and the wild animals that successfully seek shelter. Wintry cold rages outside, the dark night is extra-­ long and people snuggle up in their warm houses, but the orphan has nowhere to go. Realizing his desperate situation, the child breaks. In almost one breath, three verbs are used—waina “to weep”, skrı ̄a “to cry” and bewe ̄pa “to bemoan”—to describe the way the child audibly expresses his grief over his state of deprivation due to the loss of his father who is irretrievably buried deep in the ground, the lid of the coffin being fixed for good with four iron nails.32 This graphic description is, in all likelihood, intended to make the three emergencies easy to remember for the legal expert. Commiseration with the fatherless child will have primed the 31  Thio furme ned: sa hwersa thet kind iung is fiterat and fensen nord vr hef iefta suther vr berch, sa mot thio moder hire kindis erue setta an sella an hire kind lesa and thes liwes hilpa. Thio other ned is: Jefter erga ier wert and thi heta hunger vr thet lond fareth and thet kind hunger stera wel, sa mot thio moder hire kindis erue setta an sella an kapia hire kind kv and corn, therma him thet lif mithe behelpe. Thio thredde ned is: sa thet kind is stocnakend iefta huslas and thenna thi thiuster niwel and nedcalda winter and thio longe thiustre nacht on tha tunan hliet, sa faret allera monna hwelic on sin hof an on sin hus an on sine warme winclen, and thet wilde diar secht thera birga hli and then hola bam, alther hit sin lif one bihalde. Sa waynat an skriet thet vnierich kind and wepet thenne sine nakene lithe and sin huslase and sinne feder, ther him reda scholde with then hunger and then niwelkalda winter, thet hi sa diape and alsa dimme mith fior neilum is vnder eke and vnder ther molda bisleten and bithacht. Sa mot thio moder hire kindis erue setta and sella, thervmbe thet hiu ach ple and plicht alsa longe sa hit vngerich is, thet hit noder frost ne hunger ne in fangenschip vrfare”; Buma and Ebel, Das Fivelgoer Recht, text III.2. 32  On the stylistic aspects of the three emergencies, see Rolf H.  Bremmer Jr, “Dealing Dooms: Alliteration in the Old Frisian Laws,” in Alliteration in Culture, ed. Jonathan Roper (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 74–92, at 81–82. On orphans in medieval Frisia in general, see Gisela Hofmann, “Das Kind im alten Friesland. Zeugnissen aus vornehmlich altfriesischen Schriftquellen,” Us Wurk 64 (2015): 11–48, at 36–41.

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audience to concur with the rule with which the narrative concludes, viz. that under extreme circumstances a widow has the right to alienate her son’s heritage in order to provide for him. Characteristic of Frisian law is the frequent absence of an analytical, abstract approach to matters. Instead, the anonymous lawmakers preferred to verbalize situations with close reference to the human lifeworld and lived experiences. It is an attitude that is typical of the time; only a few generations before, the rules of law were still passed on orally.33 Thus, in the following regulation practical observations are offered for gauging the degree of a victim’s unconsciousness in order to establish the appropriate compensations: The highest degree of unconsciousness is this: if someone has been struck so that he lies for dead and the priest is called for and he [i.e. the victim] receives the viaticum and wax is bought [for candlesticks] and he then comes to life again, [then the compensation to be paid is] fifteen shillings. The middle degree is: if someone is carried inside for dead, [and] people are beating themselves with their hands and bewail the victim with tears, eight shillings and two pence. The least degree is: if someone is struck on his head, so that he lies (flat) and he is soon helped back on to his feet, six shillings and two pence. The least degree of all is: if someone is struck, so that he falls unconscious and he gets back on to his feet without help, four shillings and two pence.34

As can be seen, establishing the degree of unconsciousness proceeds in a decreasing level of seriousness: the worst news is given first, as it were. Apparently, if the victim is seemingly lifeless—comatose presumably—the next of kin are presented as having overcome their first shock of bereavement and now focus on preparing a proper Christian burial for the victim. He is administered the last unction and candles are purchased for 33  Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy. The Technologizing of the Word, 3rd edn, with additional chapters by John Hartley (London: Routledge, 2012), 42–43; Bremmer, “The Orality of Old Frisian Law,” 11–13. 34  “Thi haghesta dathsuima is thit: alder hua eslein werth, thet hi dat ligth and ma thene prestere [halath] and ma him sina waringa deth and theth wax capath and hi thenna tho liwe werth, fiftene scillingar. Thi midlesta is: huene sa ma dath indreith, mit hondem bislagat and mith tarem biweinath, achta schillingar and tuene pennigar. Thi minnista is: huasa oppa sin haud eslein uuerth, thet hi dat lidse and ma hine son vpriuchte, sex schillingar and tuene penningar. Thi leresta is: huasa slein werth, thet hi a suima felt and hi alena upstonde, fiower scillingar and tuene penningar”; Buma and Ebel, Das Emsiger Recht, text A VII.138–41.

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the funeral mass. On the other hand, grief is given full reign, when a man is brought home unconscious, on a stretcher or a ladder perhaps. The dramatic sight causes such a shock that his dear ones assume their kinsman is dead and express their heartfelt sorrow by beating their breasts and shedding their tears. While weeping is still a common sign of showing grief today, beating one’s breast in the western world is no longer done. In the middle ages, though, it was a wide-spread gesture of mourning and contrition.35 It would seem that in later medieval Europe women more frequently beat their breast when grieving than men,36 but our text does not specify gender for the mourners. Lesser degrees of unconsciousness must make do with simple descriptions of recovery.

Fear The next basic emotion to be discussed is fear, a feeling of “pain or uneasiness caused by the sense of impending danger, or by the prospect of some possible evil.”37 Emotions of fear, as David Scruton has remarked in a classic study, are hard to define well, if at all; rather, we should investigate what part they play in our lives.38 With a slight twist, the question to be asked here is what role fear played in the Frisian laws. In order to discover this role, a closer look at the vocabulary will prove helpful. The Old Frisian lexis of fear includes the following words: ongosta, anxt(a) f. “fear” (< Gmc *ang- “narrow”) and the related angia, impers. vb. “to fear”; dre ̄de, f. “fear”39; duchta “to fear” (prob. < MDu duchten “to fear” of unknown etym.), and biducht, adj. “afraid”; fa ̄le adj. “frightening, dreadful” (< Gmc *fe ̄laz-; cf. ON fæla “to frighten”); forfe ̄ra “to be(come) afraid” (< Gmc *fe ̄ra- “danger”); bisorgia vb. “to fear” (< Gmc *sorg- “trouble; anxiety”); frāse, f. “fear; danger” (< Gmc *frais- “risk, danger”) and derivatives, such as frāshe ̄d; frucht(e) f. “fright, fear” (< Gmc *furht- “fear”) and derivatives, such as (und-)furchta “to fear.” 35  Wilhelm Frenzen, Klagebilder und Klagegebärden in der deutschen Dichtung des höfischen Mittelalters. Bonner Beiträge zur deutschen Philologie 1 (Bonn: Triltisch, 1936), 22. 36  J.  A. Burrow, Gestures and Looks in Medieval Narrative (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 40. 37  Online Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. fear 1. 38  David L. Scruton, “The Anthropology of an Emotion,” in Sociophobics: The Anthropology of Fear, ed. David L. Scruton (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1986), 12. 39  Rolf H.  Bremmer Jr, “The Old Frisian Component in Holthausens’ Altenglisches etymologisches Wörterbuch”, Anglo-Saxon England 17 (1988): 5–13, at 12–13.

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Law and fear belong closely together. As the thirteenth-century legal catechism Haet is riocht? (What is law?) puts it, “Why has law been established?” “For fear of retribution.”40 The author was not original in this opinion; he actually paraphrased his Latin source text, Elegantius de iure diuino, a mid-twelfth-century summa of canon law originating in Northern France.41 The answer, though, expresses a commonly held opinion, quoted, for example, in Gratian’s authoritative Decretal and ultimately going back to a statement in Isidore of Seville’s encyclopaedic Etymologies: “Laws are enacted in order to control human audacity through the fear they arouse.”42 Put another way, laws were thought to exercise by their authority a deterring, that is, literally, a “frightening” effect over people, thus making them stick to the established rules. Naturally, then, fear appears to have played an important role in the legal process. Judges, in particular, should adhere to the principle of law and it is their task “to advise honest things and to pronounce legally enforceable things, to prohibit injustice, to allow what is permissible and also sometimes (to allow) what is not permissible, for fear of worse.”43 “Fear is a bad advisor,” as the saying has it, but sometimes a judge is required to overlook the negative consequences a verdict may have and to act accordingly, even in defiance of the law. Meting out justice could be a life-threatening activity for a judge. For example, a violent death was included amongst the risks that might influence a judge’s impartiality, as appears from a number of oath formulas. Thus, the Oath of Office of the Administrators of Wymbritseradeel, cast as a dialogue between an oath 40  “Hweeromme is dat riocht set? Ty fruch der wreke”; Buma, Ebel and Tragter-Schubert, Jus municipale Frisonum, text II.h. 41  Pieter Gerbenzon, “Bijdrage tot het bronnenonderzoek van Haet is riocht,” Us Wurk 20 (1971): 1–18, at 12; idem, “Haet is riocht? (What is law?): An Old Frisian Introduction to Jurisprudence, Related to Elegantius in iure diuino,” Bulletin of Medieval Canon Law N.S. 1 (1971), 83–85; cf. Summa ‘Elegantius in iure diuino’, vol. 2, ed. Gérard Fransen and Stephan Kuttner (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1978) and review by Walter Ullmann in Journal of Ecclesiastical History 30 (1979): 381–83. 42  Decretum Gratiani, Pars I, Dist. iv, c. 1. “Qvare leges sint factae facta est lex? Factae sunt autem leges ut earum metu humana coerceatur audacia”; cf. Isodori Hispalensis Episcopi, Etymologiae sive Origines Libri XX, vol. 1, ed. Wallace M. Lindsey (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911), V.xx.24–25; The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, trans. Stephen A.  Barney et  al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), V.xx. 43  “Eerlic thing reda ende creftelic thing biada, wrbieda dat onriucht, henzia moetlikera thingha ende aeck byhwylum oenmoetlikera thingha om anxta des ierra.”; Buma, Ebel and Tragter-Schubert, Jus municipale Frisonum, text II.i.

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taker and future officials, ends in a long injunction to the men to be sworn in to behave exemplarily by not accepting bribes for whatever reason, but to judge poor and rich, non-relatives and relatives, alike. The judges-to-be must instead solemnly declare to always impart fair justice under all kinds of circumstances, no matter whether lords apply pressure for a particular verdict or a woman promises carnal services or the verdict results in the convict seeking revenge and take the judge’s life or goods.44 A similar awareness of the predicament a judge may find himself in appears from a marginal Latin gloss to the text of Jurisprudentia Frisica, which states that a judge makes his own case when he fails to speak justice because of fraud, favour or enmity.45 This statement is then supported by a mnemonic device: “Hence the verse lines: ‘These four: fear, hate, love, wealth, are often wont to pervert the proper emotions of men.’” This didactic distich enjoyed quite some popularity at the time.46 The glossator might have encountered it, for example, in a copy of Pope Gregory IX’s Liber Extra, such as one probably produced in Northern France in the late thirteenth-­ century and now preserved in St Petersburg, which contains a number of fourteenth-century marginalia, including the distich mentioned above.47 For various reasons, witnesses can feel too intimidated to speak out. This opinion is expressed, for instance, in a thirteenth-century guide for conducting a legal case, called Processus iudicii, translated and adapted for a Frisian audience.48 A citation letter from the papal legate, serving as an example, ends with the following instruction: “Witnesses who have been appointed for this case—if they do not want to say the truth and forbear to do so, because of friendship, hate, enmity or fear, you must force them

 Buma, Ebel and Tragter-Schubert, Jus municipale Frisonum, text XXXV.6.  Leeuwarden, Tresoar, Hs. R 6, p.  9, lines 40–41: “Judex facit litem suam si negligit facere justiciam propter dolum uel graciam uel inimiciciam negligit facere justiciam. In c licet de foro competenti.” 46  “Vnde versus: ‘Quatuor ista: timor, odium, dilectio, census/ sepe solent hominum rectos peruetere sensus’”; Hans Walther, Initia carminum ac versuum Medii Aevi posterioris Latinorum (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1969), no. 15330. 47  Elena Kazbekova, “[Mnemotechnic Latin Verses in the Manuscripts of the Liber Extra of the 13th and Early 14th Centuries (St Petersburg, N[ational] L[ibrary of] R[ussia], Lat. F. V. II. 8 and Lat. F. V. II. 24)],” in [Romance Languages and Cultures: from Antiquity to Modernity, ed. L. I. Zoludheva] (Moscow: MAKS-Press, 2016), 164–75, at 167. 48  On this text, see Buma and Ebel, Das Emsiger Recht, 13–14. For a useful introduction to the genre of the canon law of summons and the way such guides were transplanted to suit new legal and sociopolitical environments, see Heikki Pihlajamäki, “Summoning to Court: Ordines Iudiciarii and Swedish Medieval Legislation,” Scandinavian Journal of History 45, no. 5 (2020): 547–72. 44 45

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with the ban so that they produce the truth.”49 Fear of what is not further specified in this passage, but undoubtedly it will have been fear of retaliation. Other people involved in the process of justice, too, could be forced to tell the truth: “Priests and layfolks can be forced to speak the truth, even despite danger or fear or any other thing.”50 Unspecified fear, amongst other sentiments, may withhold a witness from testifying, yet he should nonetheless realize that in doing so he runs the risk of being excluded from the ecclesiastical community and face eternal damnation. Nothing in matters judicial is more important, it would seem, than finding the truth. What applies to witnesses, also holds for the defendant: a confession to a crime is invalid if it was made out of fear, under threat or in danger of life. The last of these three the author supports with a quotation from canon law: “What is not allowed in law, necessity makes allowed.”51 In certain cases, priests could be called upon to take the place of an oath-helper. Recourse was taken to this measure, according to the Statutes of Wymbritseradeel, if a man wishing to exonerate himself from an accusation is unable to find the required three men from within his parish and the three from his (wider) district. However, a priest was allowed to refuse this task when he dreaded the judge or district official because he feared repercussions for his support.52 The statutes do not state what measures must be taken when the priest is unwilling to cooperate and the defender cannot provide sufficient cojurors. While the law expected judges to fear mortals attempting to pervert their judgement, it required of them to show reverential fear towards God. A gloss on a judge’s duties in Jurisprudentia Frisica declares that: “This is proper for judges who must speak or find justice: wisdom and also

49  “Dae orkenen deer aldeer to disse secke namet wirdet – ief se dae wirde naet willet sidzia ende sie dat liete om frionsdchip, om haeth, om nyd, om anxsta, dattu se twinghe bie banne, dat hiae dae wirde foerdbrenghe”; Wybren Jan Buma, Pieter Gerbenzon and Marina TragterSchubert, eds. and trans., Codex Aysma. Die altfriesischen Texte herausgegeben und übersetzt (Assen: van Gorcum, 1993), text III.12b; cf. Hettema, Jurisprudentia Frisica, Tit. III.6. 50  “Presteren ende leken meyma twinga datze da wird sidze, al ist om fraesheed, om anxta jefta om oer tingh”; Hettema, Jurisprudentia Frisica, Tit. XVI.6; 51  “Qoud non est licitum in lege, necessitas licitum facit.”; ibid. I.543. The reference is to Liber Extra, X.41.4; cf. ibid. I.475. 52  Buma, Ebel and Tragter-Schubert, Jus municipale Frisonum, text XXXIV.15.

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fear of God.”53 The glossator continues his description of the ideal judge in Latin: “Hence a judge must have these four: justice, prudence, temperance and fear of God, as it is said in Holy Writ.” The reference to the Bible is only partly right: wisdom and the fear of God go hand in hand more than once to the extent that fear of God is said to be the source of wisdom (Prov. 1: 7 and 9: 10; Ps. 110: 10). However, the other three qualities proper for a judge are actually three of the four cardinal virtues, so that wisdom and the fear of God appear to have taken up the place of fortitude.54 Sometimes, as is the case with fra ̄se, words of fear may imply danger and its effects: peril may lurk around the corner.55 Without using one of the fear words, fear is clearly manifest in the three emergencies that allow a mother to sell or pawn her orphaned son’s property, discussed above. The fatherless child beweeps its naked limbs, for winter is imminent, bringing hunger along, and with it the risk of death. In the end, the most existential fear of all which someone may experience is loss of life. Fearing loss of life, for instance, was a legal excuse for a man to ignore a subpoena: an otherwise grave contempt of court that was heavily fined.56 Night was especially seen as a time of potential danger and, therefore, covered by law. Hence the night is sometimes qualified as being nare “narrow”, conveying a notion of confinement. Burglars may enter your house: “If a man steals someone else’s property in the frightening, pitch-­ dark night inside doors and inside thresholds.”57 Or worse: your enemy may visit you with an armed band “in the frightening night after sunset and before sunrise” and rob you.58 It has been argued that the meaning of nare nacht and its cognate collocates in Old English (nearwe niht) and 53  “Dit heert da riuchteren to deer riuchta off fynda schellet: wysheed ende Godes anxste mede”; Hettema, Jurisprudentia Frisica, Tit. II.13; Tresoar, Hs R 6, p.  23: “Vnde judex debet habere ista quatuor: justicia, prudencia, temperancia, et timor Domini. Vt habetur in sacra scriptura.” 54  On the cardinal virtues, see, e.g., István P. Bejzcy, The Cardinal Virtues in the Middle Ages: A Study in Moral Thought from the Fourth to the Fourteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2011). 55  Cf. OE fær “danger, fear,” and see Anatoly Liberman, “The Oxford Etymologist Waxes Emotional: a Few Rambling Remarks on Fear,” 20 June 2018, accessed 13 August 2021, https://blog.oup.com/2018/06/etymology-emotional-few-remarks-fear/ 56  Buma, Gerbenzon and Tragter-Schubert, Codex Aysma, text I.442. 57  “Hweer so en man oers goed stelt in der naera, niewiltioestra nacht binna dorum ende binna dromple”; Buma, Ebel and Tragter-Schubert, Jus municipale Frisonum, text XI.5. 58  “an der naera nacht efter senna-sedle ende eer senna-opghonghe”; Buma, Ebel and Tragter-Schubert, Jus municipale Frisonum, text XVIII.14.

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Old Saxon (narouua naht) had bleached to signify “pitch-dark.”59 True, especially emotional and affective words are prone to semantic bleaching,60 yet in my view nare in such examples as quoted above, describing a nocturnal situation of danger, has not yet downgraded to mean merely “with complete absence of light.” The adjective is intended to convey the scariness a night can effectuate, as it still occasionally does, even upon modern man in the middle of a moonless night without artificial light sources. In all instances mentioned thus far, fear is treated in a rather detached, almost abstract way. Rarely do these law texts mention the somatic effects that fear can bring about. The only exception seems to be connected with the ultimate trial at Judgement Day. This court session, to which all mankind will be summoned and which Christ himself will preside to judge “the quick and the dead”, is of such enormous proportions and charged with such vital consequences that it played a major role in the consciousness of medieval people, as borne out in theology, literature and visual arts alike. In order to be aware of its imminent arrival, people were incited to observe the signs of the time. A very popular guide was The Fifteen Signs of Doomsday, first included in the ninth-century Collectanea Pseudo-Bedae, but afterwards also circulating in the various vernacular languages of Western Europe, including in Old Frisian. The text sums up which unnatural portents will announce Judgement Day for each of the fifteen days preceding it. The first ten days are marked by extreme natural phenomena, such as an immense flood or, reversely, an immense drop of the water level. On the eleventh day people turn against each other and become unable to converse, “because of distress and fear, for then everyone is deprived of their senses.”61 The climax, though, comes after the fifteenth 59  Veronka Szöke, “Nearu and its Collocations in Old English Verse”, Linguistica e Filologia 34 (2014): 53–94, at 71–76; Tette Hofstra, “A Note on the ‘Darkness of Night’ Motif in Alliterative Poetry, and the Search for the Poet of the Old Saxon Heliand”, in Loyal Letters. Studies on Mediaeval Alliterative Poetry & Prose, ed. L. A. J. R. Houwen and A. A. MacDonald (Leuven: Peeters, 1994), 93–104. Hofmann and Popkema, Altfriesisches Handwörterbuch, s.v. 2nare, first gives a general meaning “eng, unheimlich” (narrow, eerie), but glosses the phrase on there/bı ̄ nara nacht simply as “nachts, mitten in der Nacht” (at night, in the middle of the night). 60  Dan Jurafsky, The Language of Food: a Linguist Reads the Menu (New York: Norton, 2014), 55. 61  “ne mi nen mon otheron ondwardia fon there nede and fon there ongosta, hwande thene is iahwelik mon thes sinne birauad”; Wybren Jan Buma and Wilhelm Ebel, Das Rüstringer Recht. Altfriesische Rechtsquellen 1 (Göttingen: Musterschmidt, 1963), text XI.12.

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day has passed and the Lord himself appears with all his angels and saints. The sight of him with the cross, the spear, the nails, the thorny crown and the five wounds which he suffered for humankind is so frightening that “all the world will tremble like an aspen leaf.” This conclusion is a later addition to the fifteen signs from Peter Comestor’s Historia scholastica, chap. 141, written between 1169 and 1175. Remarkably, the simile of the aspen leaf was added by the Frisian translator. With this graphic addition he intended no doubt to increase the terrifying impact on his audience of the tribunal of all tribunals.62

Anger Probably the most prominent emotion to be found in the laws is—not wholly surprisingly—anger. Nevertheless, the vocabulary connected with anger is not larger than any of the other three emotions discussed in this chapter. It includes: the adjectives forbolgen and overbulgen “very angry” (past participles of otherwise unrecorded OFris *-belga “to swell”); torn “anger” (derivative of Gmc *teran- “to tear”; anger tears you apart) and derivative tornich adj. “angry”; hāst “precipitance; anger” (< Gmc *haifsta“violence, strife”) and derivatives hāste adj. “angry”, ha ̄stich adj. “idem”; ire adj. “angry” (< Gmc *erzja- “gone astray”); ink adj. “angry” (< *inko ̄n- sb. “grievance, grudge” [?]).63 Anger, on the whole, was seen as an outburst of short duration and the damages could be compensated. It occurred typically, according to Daniel Smail, “between members of a kin group, real or fictive, who normally love one another—brothers and sisters, parents and children, lords and vassals, or God and his people.”64 The aptness of Smail’s list is partly borne out by the following short stipulation, which is announced in the manuscript with an ornamental initial to signal its importance:

62  “sa beuath alle thiu wrald alsa thet espenen laf”; Buma and Ebel, Das Rüstringer Recht, text XI.16. For an extensive discussion of this Old Frisian text, see Concetta Giliberto, “The Fifteen Signs of Doomsday of the First Riustring Manuscript,” in Advances in Old Frisian Philology, ed. Rolf H. Bremmer Jr, Stephen Laker and Oebele Vries. Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 64 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007), 129–52. 63  For hāst, ire, and ink, see Faltings, Etymologisches Wörterbuch, 250–52, 184, and 298. 64  Daniel L. Smail, “Hatred as a Social Institution in Late-Medieval Society,” Speculum 76, no. 1 (2001): 90–126, at 91.

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If someone kills his father or his mother, his sister or his brother in an overfurious mood, then no priest may hear his confession, assign penance and absolve him, but as long as he lives, he must wander and creep and fast. Or he must renounce the whole beautiful world and enter a monastery and become subject to the abbot, and do what he orders him to do, and never is he allowed to be in the house of God with other Christians, unless he stands behind the doors and begs for the host in his hiding place.65

Anger is considered a strong emotion, here indicated by the intensifying prefix “over-” in the adjective ovirbulgen.66 Though not stated in so many words, anger is a deadly sin, too, the consequences of committing it being explicitly spelt out. For the angry slayer of his next of kin there is no way to compensate; he is banned from society and must remain without recourse to the sources of grace offered by the Church—in short, the parricide is destined to live a life in misery, both here and in the hereafter. The only way for him to find a roof over his head is to don the habit; even then he is not welcome with the brethren in the convent chapel to attend mass, but he is excluded physically and spiritually from their core business. Fits of anger could result in exclusion from the family. Sons—and I assume daughters too, although they are not explicitly mentioned—whose anger resulted in violence ran the risk of being disinherited. A list of fifteen reasons enumerating why a father is allowed to disinherit his sons begins with a son who has attacked his father with a “‘hasty,’ i.e. irascible, hand,” a metonymical expression for “in anger.” More inclusively, “bern” (“children”) who attack their parents “mit haester hand” are liable to be excommunicated.67 Such measures are intended to punish the disregard of 65  “Sa hwasa sinne feder ieftha sine moder, sine swester ieftha sinne brother ovirbulgena mode to dada sleith, sa ne mi him nen prestere skriva, buta alsa longe sa’re libbe, skil hi wondria and kriapa and festia. Ieftha hi skile alle there skena wralde ofstonda and gunga anna en claster and wertha tha abbete underdenoch and dwe, alsa’re him dwa hete, and nammermar ne mot hi anda godishuse wesa mith ore kerstene liodon, hi ne gunge efta tha durum stonda and bidde to sinere helde Godis uses hera”; Buma and Ebel, Das Rüstringer Recht, text XVII. 66  The intensity of anger is also sometimes expressed by the superlative, e.g., mit jnxta mode, by irsten mode “in a very angry mood”, Buma and Ebel, Das Fivelgoer Recht, text XI.11, and Pieter Sipma, Oudfriesche Oorkonden, vol. 2 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1933), no. 10, lines 34–35, respectively. 67  Hettema, Jurisprudentia Frisica, Tit. LI.1 and Tit. LXXXI.14.20, respectively. For the meaning, see online Deutsches Rechtswörterbuch, s.v. Hand D II 40 “im Zorn, in der Erregung”, accessed 13 August 2021, https://drw-www.adw.uni-heidelberg.de/drw/ info/presse.htm

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reverential parental fear and not obeying God’s commandment to honour one’s father and mother.68 Reverential parental fear was hard to find in an incident that had occurred in the small town of Sneek. Two witnesses, called Renick Holtsager (“Woodsawyer”) and Goettie Douweson, were summoned before the town council to testify what they had recently seen. Enne Pierson and his mother Bot were chasing a stray cow. It seemed that mother and son disagreed on the catching strategy, for they started quarrelling. Renick, who was passing by, tried to calm them down. But Enne grew so angry (“haestich”) that he attacked his mother and seized her by the throat so that she fell into the water and was wet up to her middle. She then showed Renick how wet her shirt was. Goettie confirmed Renick’s report about the chase. He added that Bot suggested to leave the cow in peace until the next day, but Enne did not want to, even if he had to keep an eye on it all night long. Then they got angry (“haestich”) and started to attack one another. Enne hit his mother with his arm, once, twice, or three times and then started to scream, because Goettie tried to calm them down. Bot then told Goettie that Enne had struck her and showed him her soaking wet dress.69 Unfortunately, the town records do not tell what punishment, if any, was imposed upon the son for manhandling his mother and upon mother and son for disturbing the peace with their violent altercations. The alliterative collocate “hasty hand”, mentioned above, is old and also found, with slight variations in the sense, in Old High German haistera handi (dat. sg.) “with a vehement hand”,70 and Old Norse heiftugri hendi “with a malicious hand,” both to indicate hostile intent.71 The 68  On this topic, cf. R. H. Helmholz, The Spirit of Canonical Law (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996), 253–54. 69  Meinte Oosterhuis, ed., Snitser Recesboeken (Assen: van Gorcum, 1960), nos. 5190 and 5191. 70  Wolfgang Haubrichs, “Quod Alamanni dicunt. Volkssprachliche Wörter in der Lex Alamannorum”, in Recht und Kultur im frühmittelalterlichen Alemannien: Rechtsgeschichte, Archäologie und Geschichte des 7. und 8. Jahrhunderts, ed. Sebastian Brather (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017), 169–209, at 185–86. Cf. Katherine Fischer Drew, trans. and intro., The Lombard Laws (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1973), Rothar’s Edict 277: “Concerning haista, that is anger. He who enters the courtyard of another man in a state of rage (haistan), that is, with hostile spirit, shall pay twenty solidi as composition to him whose courtyard it is.” 71  J.  S. Love et  al., A Lexicon of Medieval Nordic Law (Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2020), 145, s.v. heiftugr.

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combination is also encountered in Frisian sources in an accumulation of expressions to bring home the intensity of anger: “If a man’s or a woman’s body is burnt more or less seriously and it is caused in an angry mood (“ira mode”), with an irascible hand (“haester hand “) or in a quick temper (“haeste”), then the compensation is twofold.”72 Elsewhere, it is stipulated that a church and its yard can be desecrated in two ways: “First, when a man has ejaculated seed there and it becomes public, the church or the yard must be consecrated again. The second (desecration is): with someone’s bloodshed and when the shedding was caused in anger or in a quick-tempered mood.”73 The rule is based on canon law,74 but the emotional circumstances under which the blood was shed is an addition by the Frisian translator/adapter. Perhaps he could not imagine such an atrocious deed to have been done in a sanctuary in cool blood. A family begins with matrimony which, though holy, was not always enduring. A divorce is permitted for four reasons, neatly summed up thus: if a couple is unable to have sexual intercourse or one of them is “of cold nature”, if one of them adheres to a non-Christian faith, has committed adultery, or has been proved a thief. The marriage can also be dissolved if one of the spouses wishes to enter a convent. Divorce is not permitted, however, if one of them is leprous (“has scurvy”), has a bad breath, is unreliable or easily angered.75 The four impediments prevailed despite their making it impossible to lead a proper social life as spouses, whether physically or mentally. In this respect it is remarkable that Welsh law

72  Buma, Ebel and Tragter-Schubert, Jus municipale Frisonum, text XVIII.255. See also Horst H. Munske, Der germanische Rechtswortschatz im Bereich der Missetaten. Philologische und sprachgeografische Untersuchungen (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1973), §§159–60; cf. Han Nijdam, Lichaam, eer en recht in middeleeuws Friesland. Een studie naar de Oudfriese boeteregisters (Hilversum: Verloren, 2008), 258–60. 73  “Aerst: mey wtstirtinghe mannis sedis ende hwanneer dat openbeer is, so schelma da tzercka off dat hoff weer wya leta. Ora tyd: mey menscha blodis wtstirtinge ende hwanneer dyo wtstirtinge schyd in quaedheed jeffta in haestiga moed”; Hettema, Jurisprudentie Frisica, Tit. LXXVI.1. 74  Decretalium Liber Sextus, ed. Friedberg, Lib. III. Tit. xxi. Cap. un, col. 1059. 75  “Fiouwerhanda wys meyma dat hellighe aeft scheda. Dat aerste: joff se mogen neen meenscip to gara habba joff dy ora kalder natura is. Dat oer is om diin mislauwa. Dat tredde is om wrhuer. Dat fyaerde om tijefte. Ende also wel joff hiara enthera wil to conweynt. Om ielkirs neen secken meyma dat aeft scheda: hor om schuur ner om dyn quada adema ner om onstedicheit iefta om haesticheed”; Hettema, Jurisprudentia Frisica, Tit. LXXXV.1.

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permitted a woman to divorce from her husband if he was either leprous or had a bad breath, in addition to his inability to have sex with her.76 Sexual misdemeanour can make a man lose his temper, notably when “he sees a priest kissing his wife or daughter, sister or mother with the intention of having sex—if he beats the priest for it, he is not liable then to be excommunicated, lest he kill him. However, if he catches them together in flagrante delicto, he may do in anger what he wants.” A proverb immediately follows to underscore the justification for such a violent deed: “Great injustice must be avenged with force.”77 In other situations, attacking a priest “mit haester hand” would lead to excommunication.78 Pulling a priest’s hair in anger, however, did not always entail such grave consequences, but the compensation was considerable nonetheless. According to the high-medieval Synodal Law of Frisia West of the Lauwers such an insulting deed required eight times the amount stipulated for pulling a layman’s hair; denying the deed needed the support of twelve cojurors.79 Besides next of kin, Smail’s list of groups of which members could easily be confronted with anger (see p. XX above) also includes lords and vassals and God and his people. About lords and vassals I can be brief: medieval Frisia remained outside the feudal system. The ruling elite instead consisted of allodial peasants, who partly relied for manual labour on paid servants. Of course, friction will at times have arisen between master and servant, but the laws do not accommodate for such situations. This is different for the interaction between God and his people, or rather between one of his celestial servants and churchgoers. The Synodal Law includes a stipulation concerning inappropriately fighting in a church during the 76  The Welsh Law of Women, ed. Morfydd E. Owen and Dafydd Jenkins (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2017), 21. 77  “Jeffter een man syucht een papa syn frowe kessen jeffta dochter, sister jeffta moder op byslepen – slacht hy him dan, so nis hy naet inda ban op datter hem naet deye. Mer bygeet hyse to gara inder meenscip, so dwere in hae[s]t so hy wil, want ‘graet onriucht moetma wrecke myt krefft’”; Hettema, Jurisprudentia Frisica, Tit. LXXII.8. On the function of proverbs in the Frisian laws, see Rolf H. Bremmer J, “The Fleeing Foot is the Confessing Hand: Proverbs in the Old Frisian Laws,” in La tradizione gnomica nelle letterature germaniche medievali, ed. Marina Cometta et al. (Milan: di/segni, 2018), 79–100. For a man killing in anger, but with impunity, both his wife and a prior when he caught them in the act, as told in a book printed by William Caxton in 1484, see Shannon McSheffrey, Marriage, Sex, and Civic Culture in Late Medieval London (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 142–43. 78  Hettema, Jurisprudentia Frisica, Tit. LXXXI.14.4. 79  Buma and Ebel, Das Fivelgoer Recht, text VIII.12.

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morning service of one of the three high holidays, Christmas, Easter and Pentecost. If because of the turmoil, the Host has been broken, the chalice toppled, the font toppled or broken, the holy relics damaged, the priest— God’s servant—beaten until he started bleeding, then sacrilegium has been committed and emunitas broken. Then the angel is angry.”80 The enumeration of impious acts, not presented in an increasing order of seriousness but randomly, ends in establishing the gravity of their nature: sacrilegium is “a crime that is committed directly or indirectly against the holiness of God,” while emunitas indicates “the sanctity of the place.”81 What angel is irate is not clear. It has been suggested that it is a covert reference to Revelation 21.9 or to a mural in the Church of the Frisians in Rome, dedicated to St Michael, on which the archangel is depicted with a bloody sword hovering over Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome.82 More likely, though, it is a reference to the angel who is mentioned in the Eucharistic Prayer I of the Roman Canon.83 Alternatively, it might be an honorific term for “bishop”, which is one of the meanings of angelus in medieval Latin.84 Even though the angel’s identity remains uncertain, the condition for taking his anger away is stated in no uncertain terms: seventy-­two pounds, that is, the amount equal to a priest’s wergild.85 Once the recompense was paid by the culprit(s) and the building reconsecrated by the bishop or his representative, the church would be fit again for its holy purpose. 80  “Fan strijde jn der tzercka. Als dat strijd is in ontijd oppehewen, an Cristismoerne ende an Paeschamoerne ende an Pingestramoerne in der tzercka, dattet hollige Corpus Domini britzen is, dy tzelck stort is ief di holliga funt stirt is ief britzen, dae holga birant, di prester ti dis bloedis wtgette slain is, zoe is deer britzen sacrilegium ende emunitas; soe is di engel ire”; Buma, Ebel and Tragter-Schubert, Jus municipale Frisonum, text IX.31. 81  Krysztow Burszak, Sacrilegium in Gratian’s “Decretum” (Lublin: Wydawnictwo KUL, 2012), 17 and 235, respectively. 82  M. P. van Buijtenen, De grondslag van de Friese Vrijheid (Assen: van Gorcum, 1953), 159, n. 2 83  Eucharistic Prayers I–IV (from the Roman Missal, English Translation, 3rd edn, 2011), Epiclesis, EP 1: “In humble prayer we ask you, almighty God: command that these gifts be borne by the hands of your holy Angel to your altar on high in the sight of your divine majesty, so that all of us who through this participation at the altar receive the most holy Body and Blood of your Son may be filled with every grace and heavenly blessing. (Through Christ our Lord. Amen.)”, accessed 13 August 2021, https://catholic-resources.org/ChurchDocs/ RM3-EP1-4.htm 84  Paul Lehmann and Johannes Stroux, ed., Mittellateinisches Wörterbuch (Munich: Beck, 1967), vol. I, col. 639, s.v. angelus II a. 85  As stipulated by the Second of the Seventeen Statutes, see Buma, Ebel and TragterSchubert, Jus municipale Frisonum, text VI.2.

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Conclusion In summation, to date no investigation has been conducted into the place of emotions in the medieval Frisian laws. My exploration has shown that the four basic emotions—joy, sadness, fear and anger—have indeed found a place in the medieval Frisian laws, if in different degrees. It appeared that the laws drafted in the late Middle Ages mention emotions more frequently than the older regulations of the High Middle Ages. On the other hand, these earlier regulations turned out to be more expressive, often graced with a narrative touch. They dimly reflect a time when rules were passed down orally and as such had to be formulated concretely, for the sake of easy memorization. Joy does not appear to play any significant role, unlike the other three emotions. It would be interesting for comparative purposes to find out whether a similar picture emerges from the laws of neighbouring cultures. In this respect, the medieval Frisian laws differ markedly from those circulating amongst the Anglo-Saxons. Whereas angry judges may have been of some concern to the Anglo-Saxons,86 the Frisians were apprehensive for factors that could thwart a proper course of the legal process, such as impressionable judges and witnesses. Casting the net wider to also cover other affections, such as rancour, shame and envy, but also gratitude and hope, will help to both broaden and deepen our understanding of the emotional world of medieval Frisians.

Bibliography Primary Sources Barney, Stephen A. et al., trans. The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Buma, Wybren Jan and Wilhelm Ebel. Das Rüstringer Recht. Altfriesische Rechtsquellen 1. Göttingen: Musterschmidt, 1963. Buma, Wybren Jan and Wilhelm Ebel. Das Emsiger Recht. Altfriesische Rechtsquellen 3. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1967.

86  The only clear reference to anger in the Anglo-Saxon laws, for example, is a remark that an angry judge disqualifies himself, because it makes him blind to “rihtes beorthnesse” (the brightness of law); see Rolf H. Bremmer Jr, “Looking Back at Anger: Wrath in Anglo-Saxon England,” The Review of English Studies, New Series 66, no. 275 (2015): 423–48, at 441.

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Buma, Wybren Jan and Wilhelm Ebel. Das Hunsingoer Recht. Altfriesische Rechtsquellen 4. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1969. Buma, Wybren Jan and Wilhelm Ebel. Das Fivelgoer Recht. Altfriesische Rechtsquellen 5. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1971. Buma, Wybren Jan, Wilhelm Ebel and Marina Tragter-Schubert. Jus Municipale Frisonum, 2 vols. Westerlauwersches Recht I.  Altfriesische Rechtsquellen 6. Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1977. Buma, Wybren Jan, Pieter Gerbenzon and Marina Tragter-Schubert. Codex Aysma. Die altfriesischen Texte herausgegeben und übersetzt. Assen: van Gorcum, 1993. Corpus Oudfries, compiled by Rita van de Poel, Instituut voor Nederlandse Taal, Leiden . Drew, Katherine Fischer, ed. and trans. The Lombard Laws. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1973. Fransen, Gérard, and Stephan Kuttner, eds. Summa ‘Elegantius in iure diuino’, vol. 2. Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1978. Friedberg, Emil, and Emil L. Richter, eds. Corpus iuris canonici. Pars I: Decretum magistri Gratiani. Pars II: Decretalium collectiones. Leipzig: Tauchniz, 1879–81. Gerbenzon, Pieter, ed. Codex Parisiensis. Oudfriese Taal- en Rechtsbronnen 9. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1954. Kearley, Timothy. The Codex of Justinian: A New Annotated Translation, with Parallel Latin and Greek Text, based on a translation by Justice Fred H. Blume, 3 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Lindsey, Wallace M., ed. Isodori Hispalensis Episcopi, Etymologiae sive Origines Libri XX, vol. 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911. Oosterhuis, Meinte, ed. Snitser Recesboeken. Assen: van Gorcum, 1960. Roman Missal, English Translation, 3rd ed. 2011, online: Eucharistic Prayers I–IV, . Sipma, Pieter. Oudfriesche Oorkonden, vol. 2, Oudfriesche Taal- en Rechtsbronnen 2. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1933 Vries, Oebele, ed. Oudfriese Oorkonden, vol. IV. Oudfriese Taal- en Rechtsbronnen 15. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977.

Secondary Sources Ahlsson, Lars-Erik. Die altfriesischen Abstraktbildungen. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1960. Algra, Nicolaas E. Oudfries recht 800–1256. Leeuwarden: Fryske Akademy, 2000. Bailey, Merridee L. and Kimberley-Joy Knight. “Writing Histories of Law and Emotion.” The Journal of Legal History 38, no. 3 (2017), 117–29.

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Bejzcy, István P. The Cardinal Virtues in the Middle Ages: A Study in Moral Thought from the Fourth to the Fourteenth Century. Leiden: Brill, 2011. Bosworth, Joseph and T. Northcote Toller. An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1898. Bremmer, Rolf H. Jr “The Old Frisian Component in Holthausens’ Altenglisches etymologisches Wörterbuch”, Anglo-Saxon England 17 (1988), 5–13. Bremmer, Rolf H. Jr Hir is eskriven. Lezen en schrijven in de Friese landen rond 1300. Hilversum: Verloren, 2004. Bremmer, Rolf H. Jr “Dealing Dooms: Alliteration in the Old Frisian Laws,” in Alliteration in Culture, edited by Jonathan Roper, 74–92. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Bremmer, Rolf H. Jr “The Orality of Old Frisian Law Texts,” in Directions for Old Frisian Philology, edited by Rolf H. Bremmer, Stephen Laker and Oebele Vries, 1–48. Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 73. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2014. Bremmer, Rolf H. Jr “Looking Back at Anger: Wrath in Anglo-Saxon England,” The Review of English Studies, New Series 66, no. 275 (2015), 423–48. Bremmer, Rolf H. Jr “The Fleeing Foot is the Confessing Hand: Proverbs in the Old Frisian Laws,” in La tradizione gnomica nelle letterature germaniche medievali, edited by Marina Cometta et al., 79–100. Milan: di/segni, 2018. Brundage, James A. “Widows and Remarriage: Moral Conflicts and Their Resolution in Classical Canon Law,” in Wife and Widow in Medieval England, edited by Sue Sheridan Walker, 17–32. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1993. van Buijtenen, M. P. De grondslag van de Friese Vrijheid. Assen: van Gorcum, 1953. Burrow, J. A. Gestures and Looks in Medieval Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Burszak, Krysztow. Sacrilegium in Gratian’s “Decretum.” Lublin: Wydawnictwo KUL, 2012. Cameron, Angus et al., eds. The Dictionary of Old English: A to I online. Toronto: Dictionary of Old English Project, 2018. Ekman, Paul and Wallace V. Friesen. Unmasking the Face: A Guide to Recognizing Emotions from Facial Clues. Los Altos: Maolor Books, 2003. Faltings, Volkert F. Etymologisches Wörterbuch der friesischen Adjektiva. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010. Frenzen, Wilhelm. Klagebilder und Klagegebärden in der deutschen Dichtung des höfischen Mittelalters. Bonner Beiträge zur deutschen Philologie 1. Bonn: Triltisch, 1936. Gerbenzon, Pieter. “Canon Law in Frisia in the Late Middle Ages,” Proceedings of the Second International Congress of Medieval Canon Law: Boston College, 12–16 August 1963. Monumenta Iuris Canonici Series C: Subsidia, vol. 1 (Vatican City: Congregatio de seminariis et studiorum universitatibus, 1965), 467–72.

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Gerbenzon, Pieter. “Bijdrage tot het bronnenonderzoek van Haet is riocht,” Us Wurk 20 (1971a): 1–18. Gerbenzon, Pieter. “Haet is riocht? (What is law?): An Old Frisian Introduction to Jurisprudence, Related to Elegantius in iure diuino,” Bulletin of Medieval Canon Law N.S. 1 (1971b), 83–85. Gerbenzon, Pieter. “Aantekeningen over de Jurisprudentia Frisica. Een laat-­ vijftiende eeuwse Westerlauwers-Friese bewerking van de Excerpta legum,” Legal History Review 57 (1989): 21–67; 339–74, with English summary 373–74. Gerbenzon, Pieter. “Canon and Roman Law in the so-called Codex Parisiensis,” in Aspects of Old Frisian Philology, edited by Rolf H. Bremmer Jr, Geart van der Meer and Oebele Vries, 125–145. Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 31–32. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1990. Giliberto, Concetta. “The Fifteen Signs of Doomsday of the First Riustring Manuscript”, in Advancves in Old Frisian Philology, edited by Rolf H. Bremmer Jr, Stephen Laker and Oebele Vries, 129–52. Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 64. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007. Griffiths, Paul E. and Andrea Scarantino. “Emotions in the Wild: The Situated Perspective on Emotion,” in The Cambridge Handbook of Situated Cognition, edited by Philip Robbins and Murat Aydede, 437–53. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Grings, William W. and Michael E. Dawson, eds. Emotions and Bodily Responses. A Psychophysiological Approach. New York: Academic Press, 1978. Hallebeek, Jan. “The Gloss to the Saunteen Kesta (Seventeen Statutes) of the Frisian Land Law”, Legal History Review 87 (2019): 30–64. Hammerich, L.  L. Clamor. Eine rechtsgeschichtliche Studie. Det Kgl. Danske Vidensakbernes Selskab. Hist.-Filologiske Meddelelser, vol. XXIX. no. 1. Copenhagen: Munskgaard, 1941, 94–103. Haubrichs, Wolfgang. “Wild, grimm und wüst. Zur Semantik des Fremden und seiner Metaphorisierung im Alt– und Mittelhochdeutschen.” Wolfram–Studien 25 (2018): 27–51. Helmholz, Richard H. The Spirit of Canonical Law. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996. Helmholz, Richard H. “Quoniam contra falsam (X. 2.19.11) and the Court Records of the English Church,” in Als die Welt in die Akten kam. Prozeßschriftgut im europäischen Mittelalter, edited by Susanne Lepsius and Thomas Wetzstein, 31–49. Frankfurt/M: Klostermann, 2008. van Helten, Willem L. Zur Lexicologie des Altostfriesischen. Verhandelingen van de Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen. Afd. Letterkunde, Nieuwe reeks, part IX. Amsterdam: Mueller, 1907. Hettema, Montanus. Jurisprudentia Frisica, of Friesche rechtskennis […], 2 vols. Leeuwarden: H. C. Schetsberg, 1834.

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Hoekstra, Jelle. De Eerste en de Tweede Hunsinger Codex. Oudfriese Taal- en Rechtsbronnen 6. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1950. Hofmann, Dietrich, and Anne T.  Popkema. Altfriesisches Handwörterbuch. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2008. Hofmann, Gisela. “Das Kind im alten Friesland. Zeugnissen aus vornehmlich altfriesischen Schriftquellen,” Us Wurk 64 (2015): 11–48. Hofstra, Tette. “A Note on the ‘Darkness of Night’ Motif in Alliterative Poetry, and the Search for the Poet of the Old Saxon Heliand,” in Loyal Letters. Studies on Mediaeval Alliterative Poetry & Prose, edited by L. A. J. R. Houwen and A. A. MacDonald, 93–104. Leuven: Peeters, 1994. Hudson, John. “Emotions in the Early Common Law (c. 1166–1215),” The Journal of Legal History 41, no. 2 (2017), 130–54. Jurafsky, Dan. The Language of Food: A Linguist Reads the Menu. New  York: Norton, 2014. Kazbekova, Elena. “[Mnemotechnic Latin Verses in the Manuscripts of the Liber Extra of the 13th and Early 14th Centuries (St Petersburg, N[ational] L[ibrary of] R[ussia], Lat. F. V. II. 8 and Lat. F. V. II. 24)],” in [Romance Languages and Cultures: from Antiquity to Modernity, edited by L. I. Zoludheva], 164–75. Moscow: MAKS-Press, 2016. King, Peter. “Emotions in Medieval Thought,” in The Oxford Book of Philosophy of Emotion, edited by Peter Goldie, 167–87. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Lehmann, Paul and Johannes Stroux, eds. Mittellateinsisches Wörterbuch, vol. 1. Munich: Beck, 1967. Lewis, Charlton T. and Charles Short. A Latin Dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879. Liberman, Anatoly. “The Oxford Etymologist Waxes Emotional: a Few Rambling Remarks on Fear,” June 20, 2018 . Love, J. S. et al. A Lexicon of Medieval Nordic Law. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2020. Lucas, Henry S. “The Great European Famine of 1315, 1316, and 1317,” Speculum 5, no. 4 (1930): 343–77. Lühr, Rosemarie et al., eds. Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Althochdeutschen, vol. 5. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014. Munske, Der germanische Rechtswortschatz im Bereich der Missetaten. Philologische und sprachgeografische Untersuchungen. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1973. Nijdam, Han. Lichaam, eer en recht in middeleeuws Friesland. Een studie naar de Oudfriese boeteregisters. Hilversum: Verloren, 2008. Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy. The Technologizing of the Word, 3rd ed., with additional chapters by John Hartley. London: Routledge, 2012.

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Owen, Morfydd E. and Dafydd Jenkins, eds. The Welsh Law of Women. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2017. Pihlajamäki, Heikki. “Summoning to Court: Ordines Iudiciarii and Swedish Medieval Legislation,” Scandinavian Journal of History 45, no. 5 (2020): 547–72. Rieken, Bernd. ‘Nordsee ist Mordsee’: Sturmfluten und ihre Bedeutung für die Mentalitätsgeschichte der Friesen. Münster: Waxmann, 2005. Rosenwein, Barbara H. “Thinking Historically about Medieval Emotions,” History Compass 8, no. 8 (2010): 828–42. Schmidt, Heinrich. “Eine friesische Fehde: Die ‘Menalda-Fehde’ von 1295,” in Tota Frisia in Teilansichten. Hajo van Lengen zum 65. Geburtstag, edited by Heinrich Schmidt, Wolfgang Schwarz and Martin Tielke, 143–72. Aurich: Das Ostfriesische Landschaft, 2005. Scruton, David L. “The Anthropology of an Emotion.” In Sociophobics: The Anthropology of Fear, edited by David L. Scruton, 7–49. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1986. Smail, Daniel L. “Hatred as a Social Institution in Late-Medieval Society,” Speculum 76, no. 1 (2001): 90–126 Solomon, Robert C. “The Philosophy of Emotions.” In Handbook of Emotions, edited by Michael Lewis, Jeannette M.  Haviland-Jones and Lisa Feldman Barrett, 3rd ed., 3–16. New York: Guildford Press, 2008. Sterringa, Annemarth. “‘The Most Miserable Women of All’: Widows in Medieval Frisia,” in Approaches to Old Frisian Philology, edited by Rolf H. Bremmer Jr, Thomas S. B. Johnston and Oebele Vries, 285–301. Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 49. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998. Szöke, Veronka. “Nearu and its Collocations in Old English Verse”. Linguistica e Filologia 34 (2014): 53–94. Ullmann, Walter. Review of Gérard Fransen and Stephan Kuttner, eds. Summa ‘Elegantius in iure diuino’, vol. 2. Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1978, in Journal of Ecclesiastical History 30 (1979): 381–83. Verdam, J. Middelnederlandsch Handwoordenboek. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964. Vries, Oebele. “‘Ic ontsidse jemme ende jemme onderseten.’ Bemerkungen zum friesischen Fehdewesen sowie zur Fehdeterminologie,” in Tota Frisia in Teilansichten. Hajo van Lengen zum 65. Geburtstag, edited by Heinrich Schmidt, Wolfgang Schwarz and Martin Tielke, 121–42. Aurich: Das Ostfriesische Landschaft, 2005. Vries, Oebele. “Frisonica libertas: Frisian Freedom as an Instance of Medieval Liberty.” Journal of Medieval History 41, no. 2 (2015): 229–48. Walther, Hans. Initia carminum ac versuum Medii Aevi posterioris Latinorum. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1969.

CHAPTER 6

The Vasa Mortis and Misery in Solomon and Saturn II Daniel Anlezark

The poem Solomon and Saturn II is one of the more enigmatic texts to survive from the literature of early medieval England. It is one of four extant Old English dialogues—two in verse and two in prose—in which the biblical King Solomon debates with the euhemerised god Saturn. Saturn’s characterisation across these works is most developed in Solomon and Saturn II 1: Saturn is a Chaldean prince who has travelled the world searching for wisdom before reaching Jerusalem and Solomon; he is a descendant of the builders of the Tower of Babel, and like Nimrod, who instigated that act of defiance towards heaven, Saturn may also be a giant. Beside these aspects, which have been well noted and discussed in previous 1  See Daniel Anlezark, ed., The Old English Dialogues of Solomon and Saturn (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2009), 31–2; this edition is cited throughout.

D. Anlezark (*) University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 E. Sebo et al. (eds.), Emotional Alterity in the Medieval North Sea World, Palgrave Studies in the History of Emotions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33965-3_6

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scholarship, one further distinctive feature can be observed.2 In the context of their debate, while “the wise” Solomon is presented as learned and dispassionate, Saturn is often guided by emotion: at the beginning of the poem he describes the motivation of his search for wisdom in his “deeply troubled” spirit; at its end, he laughs in joy at being overcome by Solomon’s superior insight. It is within this framework that the course of the exchange between the protagonists of Solomon and Saturn II explores the problem of what Saturn calls the geomrende gast (line 72, sorrowing, or grieving, spirit). The thematic unity of Solomon and Saturn II has proven difficult for modern critics to discern, though there is a pervasive interest across the poem in death and fate. This chapter will explore the contours of emotion within the poem as a way of understanding this aspect of its architecture. I will suggest that the poem’s interest in emotion, especially as this is introduced across the two tone-setting sub-narratives about “surging Wulf” and the monstrous bird Vasa mortis. The poem’s exchange offers a range of insights into the problem of unhappiness, most fully explored in relation to the example of the divergent fates of a pair of twins, one of whom is happy, the other miserable. This chapter will probe certain elements of the vocabulary of Solomon and Saturn II, and with this the ways in which the monstrous emotions of the Vasa mortis create and ideational unity for this most enigmatic of early medieval texts.

Introducing the Monster After an introductory section (now damaged by manuscript loss) that describes Saturn’s meandering journey through various nations (lines 4–29) and also (apparently) establishes the rules of their game, Solomon presents Saturn with the first “riddle.”3 Solomon expresses concern about possibly losing their debate, because Saturn will return home to the Chaldeans to boast of his defeat of gumena bearn (the children of men). 2  See Anlezark, Dialogues, pp.  33–4; Patrick O’Neill, “On the Date, Provenance and Relationship of the ‘Solomon and Saturn’ Dialogues,” Anglo-Saxon England 26 (1997): 157–8; Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe, “The Geographic List of Solomon and Saturn II,” Anglo-Saxon England 20 (1991): 137. See also Robert J. Menner, “Nimrod and the Wolf in the Old English Solomon and Saturn,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 37 (1938): 332–54. 3  The poem survives uniquely in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 422 (Part A), 1–26. For a full discussion see Anlezark, Dialogues, 1–4.

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This contrastive identification provides the first indication that Saturn himself should not be regarded simply as “human.”4 The biblical king characterises the Chaldeans as boastful, avaricious, and vain (gielpne; goldwlonce; mærða ðæs modige; lines 30–31), which is why they were sent a warning (moning) “south about the plain of Sennaar” (suð ymbe Sanere feld; line 32). It is this allusion to the destruction of the Tower of Babel that introduces Solomon’s first interrogation (lines 32–33):5 (Speak to me concerning the land where no man can step with his feet).6 Saturn answers with the thirteen-line story about se mæra … weallende Wulf (the great surging Wulf; lines 34–35), who is described with the epithet mereliðende (sea-­traveller; line 34).7 If Wulf (if this is a personal name) is defined by the company he keeps, as freond Nebrondes (a friend of Nimrod; line 36), then Wulf, like Nimrod, might be a giant. This would certainly explain his prowess in battle:8 (On that field he slew twenty-five dragons at dawn, and then death felled him; lines 37–38). “That field” (on ðam felda) apparently refers back to Solomon’s naming of Sanere feld, though this inference is complicated by the account of the place that follows (lines 39–44): forðan ða foldan   ne mæg fira ænig, ðone mercstede,   mon gesecan, fugol gefleogan   ne ðon ma foldan nita. Ðanon atercynn   ærest gewurdon wide onwæcned,   ða ðe nu weallende ðurh attres oroð   ingang rymað.

4  It is likely that early medieval readers would have taken Solomon’s concern as something of a joke; similarly, for the informed reader Saturn is not “a child of men,” but of the sky and earth. Solomon’s defeat of Saturn is inevitable, though the pathway to this eventuality is often obscure across the text. Despite (or perhaps because of) the heaviness of the subject matter explored, this note of lightness is reflected in the tone of other passages (see especially lines 149–53). The poem is related to the riddling genre of the ioca monachorum (monks’ game); see Anlezark, Dialogues, 12–15. 5  Sæge me from ðam lande | ðær nænig fyra ne mæg fotum gestæppan. 6  See Robert J. Menner, ed., The Poetical Dialogues of Solomon and Saturn (New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 1941), 121–3. 7  On the characterisation of Wulf as a sea-traveller see Daniel Anlezark, “All at Sea: Beowulf’s Marvellous Swimming,” in Myths, Legends and Heroes: Essays on Old Norse and Old English Literature in Honour of John McKinnell, ed. Daniel Anlezark (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011), 237–9. 8  He on ðam felda ofslog .xxv. | dracena on dægred, ond hine ða deað offeoll.

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(Because no man can seek that land, no one that border-land, nor bird fly there, more than any of the beast of the earth. From there first arose poison-­ kind, spread widely, those which surging now through poisonous breath make spacious the entrance.)

The reader might logically ask “the entrance to what”? The association between the site of Babel and poisonous creatures is found in Talmudic traditions, though how it reached this (probably) early tenth-century English poet is unknown.9 There is, however, ample evidence of the close influence of early Irish literary traditions on Solomon and Saturn II.10 This medieval Irish interest in esoterica and early contact with eastern traditions offers the most plausible explanation for elements of this creative variation on the Babel legend, though other literary influences can be discerned.11 A hint towards Wulf’s own monstrous connection is also found in his characterisation as a great mereliðende (sea-traveller). The West Saxon Liber Monstrorum describes the ability of giants to travel across seas (1.54).12 Solomon’s alternative answer to the same riddle of the place “where no one can walk with their feet” also playfully evokes the motif of the sea-­walking giant. Only fools would attempt to cross deep water, unless they could swim, or fly like a bird, had a ship, or could (lines 49–50)13 (reach the sea-bed with feet). It is difficult to understand this exchange, though significantly Solomon’s observation opens up a gap between literal and metaphorical reading, offering a guide to the reader of the poem. Saturn had taken his cue from the king’s reference to Sennaar, and provided a literal answer to 9  See Anlezark, Dialogues, 123–5; Robert J. Menner, “The Vasa Mortis Passage in the Old English Salomon and Saturn,” in Studies in English Philology: A Miscellany in Honor of Frederick Klaeber, ed. K. Malone and M. B. Ruud (Minneapolis, 1929), 240–53; Menner, ed., Poetical Dialogues, 127–9; Tristan Major, “Saturn’s First Riddle in Solomon and Saturn II: An Orientalist Conflation,” Neophilologus 96 (2012): 301–13. See also Major’s Undoing Babel: The Tower of Babel in Anglo-Saxon Literature (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018). 10  Anlezark, Dialogues, 15–30. 11  See T.A.  Shippey, Poems of Wisdom and Learning in Old English (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1976), 22–5; Daniel Anlezark, “Poisoned places: the Avernian tradition in Old English poetry,” Anglo-Saxon England 36 (2007): 103–26. Babel is important to the poet, and is referred to again at lines 149–53 (discussed below). 12  Liber monstrorum i.54, ed. and trans. Andy Orchard, in Pride and Prodigies: Studies in the Monsters of the Beowulf-Manuscript (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), 286–7. 13  mid fotum … mæg grund geræcan.

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his question about the place where no foot can tread. Solomon’s own answer develops the literal sense: the sea-bed is the place where no one can tread. But in context, a further meaning is indicated: Saturn is a traveller, and the dialogue the culmination of his journey across the waters. Debating with the wise king requires a complex approach to the use of language and one needs to be prepared:14 (line 47, Foolish is the one who goes into deep waters). Both Saturn and the reader are warned that an overly literal approach to meaning will soon find them out of their depth. The following exchange about books, their uses and powers (lines 52–68) confirms the impression that the opening gambit is designed to make the reader think about language and the act of reading itself.15 A key moment in defining the focus of the dialogue comes with Saturn’s declaration that a certain problem has been disturbing him for many years (lines 69–74): Saturnus cwæð: An wise is on    woroldrice ymb ða me fyrwet bræc   . L . wintra dæges ond niehtes    ðurh deop gesceaft: geomrende gast.   Deð nu gena swa, ærðon me geunne   ece dryhten ðæt me geseme   snoterra monn. (Saturn said: There is one circumstance in this worldly kingdom concerning which my curiosity has disturbed me for fifty years, by day and by night, throughout deep destiny: a sorrowing spirit. Even now it does the same, until the eternal Lord grant to me that a wiser man satisfy me.)

Saturn is defined as a character led by affect, with troubled emotion presented as the underlying reason for his quest and the basis of his oblique question about the geomrende gast (sorrowing spirit). This topic, or wise (circumstance, habit, matter, problem) emerges as the central concern of the poem, and the theme that the often tangential discussion persistently returns to; the poet’s use of wise is discussed further below. We have no indication of Saturn’s imagined age here, but fifty years in the early Middle Ages was roughly the span of a long human life, and it is the “eternal  Dol bið se ðe gæð on deop wæter.  See also lines 252–5. The same interest in books is found Solomon and Saturn I, where Saturn describes his troubled mind line 61 bisi æfter bocum (busy in pursuit of books). 14 15

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Lord” who must provide him with his answers; the poet is apparently aware of Saturn’s association with time.16 Solomon’s answer to Saturn’s quest to understand “the sorrowing spirit” is the history of the Vasa mortis (lines 75–103). The opening section of the account reveals the misunderstanding of the bird by its “Philistine” guardians, and Solomon’s superior understanding of the bird’s nature (lines 75–84): SALOMON cwæð: Soð is ðæt ðu sagast;   seme ic ðe recene ymb ða wrætlican wiht.   Wilt ðu ðæt ic ðe secgge? An fugel siteð   on Filistina middelgemærum;    munt is hine ymbutan geap gylden weall.   Georne hine healdað witan Filistina,   wenað ðæs ðe naht is, ðæt hiene him scyle eall ðeod    on genæman wæpna ecggum;    hie ðæs wære cunnon. Healdeð hine niehta gehwylce,   norðan ond suðan, on twa healfa   tu hund wearda. (Solomon said: What you say is true. I will satisfy you immediately concerning that wondrous creature. Do you want me to tell you? A bird sits in the middle of the borders of the Philistines; there is a mountain surrounding it, a vaulted golden wall. Keenly the wise men of the Philistines guard it; they expect—which is not at all so—that the entire nation should steal him away from them at sword’s edge; they warily know of that. Two hundred guards watch it on both sides, from north and south.)

It is not clear precisely what it is that Solomon agrees to be “true,” though the implication is that the wise king is agreeing that Saturn’s desire to understand the wise of the “sorrowing spirit” is of great importance to all who seek wisdom. It is evident that Solomon understands the monster better than the Philistines, who are mistaken in thinking that “the entire nation” will steal the creature. There is no indication who this “nation” might be: in the context of biblical history this might refer to the Israelites ruled by Solomon. Whatever the influences on this fantastic creation, and there are many, the poet has crafted an original creation suited to his 16  See Anlezark, Dialogues, 101, on the poet’s etymological pun on the Latin association of Saturn’s name in Cicero’s De natura deorum (II.24.64) and Isidore of Seville’s Etymologies (VIII.xi.29), centred on the idea of “satisfaction” (Latin satis, OE geseman). See note 22.

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purpose.17 What this might be is developed in the emphatic expression of the ignorance of the Philistines, who are not simply described as being wrong, though in almost abstract terms, as thinking a thought which has no corollary in the real world, but is founded on their fear:18 (they expect something that is not at all [so]).19 The question of “foresight” (warnung) will later loom large in the poem; Solomon points out early on that foresight can fail. The second part of Solomon’s account describes both the physical and emotional aspects of the marvellous bird (lines 85–95): Se fugel hafað   . iiii . heafdu medumra manna   ond he is on middan hwælen; geowes he hafað fiðeru   ond griffus fet. Ligeð lonnum fæst,   locað unhiere, swiðe swingeð    ond his searo hringeð, gilleð geomorlice   ond his gyrn sefað, wylleð hine on ðam wite,   wunað unlustum, singgeð syllice;   seldum æfre his leoma licggað.   Longað hine hearde, ðynceð him ðæt sie ðria . xxx .   ðusend wintra ær he domdæges   dynn gehyre. (The bird has four heads the measure of a man’s, and it is like a wheel in the middle; it has a vulture’s feathers and griffin’s feet. It lies fast in chains, gazes fiercely, strongly beats its wings and its gear rattles; it cries out sorrowfully and laments its grief, wallows in that torment, dwells unhappily, sings strangely; its limbs seldom ever lie still. It pines painfully, it seems to it that it should be three times thirty thousand years before it hears the roar of Doomsday.) 17  Menner’s suggestion, “The Vasa Mortis Passage,” 252–4, that the genealogy of the Vasa mortis owes a debt to the demonized Philistine fish-god Ashmodeus-Dagon may have some merit in this connection, though this creature is a bird. The name Vasa mortis is derived from Ps 7.14. 18   wenað ðæs ðe naht is. 19  This kind of abstraction returns later in the dialogue, when Solomon asks Saturn (line 161): Ac sæge me hwæt næren e wæron. (But tell me what things were not that were.) Both expressions imply an interest in abstraction on the part of a poet informed about debates about nominalism in the Carolingian schools. See Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe, “Source, Method, Theory, Practice: On Reading two Old English Verse Texts,” in Textual and Material Culture in Anglo-Saxon England: Thomas Northcote Toller and the Toller Memorial Lectures, ed. D. G. Scragg (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2003), 174–5; Anlezark, Dialogues, 129.

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Previous studies have focused on the bird’s physical attributes, though in context its feeling is more important. The Vasa mortis apparently embodies in some way the “sorrowing spirit” that Saturn has described as the burning question of his search, and which Solomon agrees to be “true.” The Philistines might be mistaken about the creature, but it is evident from his account that Solomon knows it well (lines 96–103): Nyste hine on ðære foldan   fira ænig eorðan cynnes   ærðon ic hine ana onfand, ond hine ða gebindan het   ofer brad wæter, ðæt hine se modega heht   Melotes bearn Filistina fruma,   fæste gebindan, lonnum belucan   wið leodgryre. Ðone fugel hatað   feorbuende Filistina fruma,   uasa mortis. (No man in the world, of the earthly race, knew about it before I alone found it, and across the broad sea ordered it bound, so that the brave son of Melot, the leader of the Philistines, commanded it to be firmly bound, locked in chains against the people’s terror. The distantly dwelling leaders of the Philistines call the bird Vasa mortis.)

The reader must be wary of distraction by the surface detail in the description of the Vasa mortis. The signalled line of inquiry concerns emotion, and Solomon describes a grief-stricken creature lamenting its sorrow and longing for the end of the world. This creature terrifies “the people” and is therefore firmly bound by the same people who mistakenly (and paradoxically) fear that it will be stolen from them. This misapprehension aligns with the poem’s depiction of Saturn’s own recurrent lack of comprehension, a subjective position shared by the constantly baffled reader.

Boethian Sorrow At the centre of the poem’s reading game is the Latin name of the Vasa mortis itself: “the instruments of death.” The intense emotions attributed to the Vasa mortis overlap with Saturn’s own sorrow and restlessness. It is unclear why the wondrous bird should “long” for Judgement Day, an aspect which has suggested demonic associations to some critics in the light of various scriptural passages which describe the unchaining of devils

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and other destructive forces at the end of time.20 Such a reading is not necessary and ultimately serves as a distraction: the bird more simply represents the inevitability of death which is also inseparably linked with the prospect of Doomsday. The focus of the “people’s terror” is not on the monster, but what it represents: death. From the fantastic description emerges a more mundane preoccupation: how emotion can govern reason, and how the fear of death can overwhelm it. Here we find ourselves in familiar early medieval philosophical territory. The contours of the Old English poem’s discussion embed certain prominent themes of Boethius’ De consolatione philosophiae, the most influential philosophical dialogue of the early medieval period. With the central focus on the matter of the “sorrowing spirit” introduced by Saturn and accepted by Solomon, their discussion takes as its philosophical point of departure the same problematic emotion that calls for remedy in Boethius’ work. Lady Philosophy (herself a giant)21 sets out to cure his sadness (tristitia, 1pr3), and Boethius complains of his “unrelenting sorrow” (1pr5),22 (when I had done thus baying my unabated sorrow).23 Boethius complains of his treatment by Fortune (1pr4), and laments the prosperity of the wicked’ (1m5); these are key concerns in Solomon and Saturn II.24 The themes of fate and fortune are centrally important in De Consolatione, introduced early in relation to the problem of Boethius’ sorrowful mind (1m4). It is unknown whether the Old English poet was directly familiar with Boethius’ treatise, though he was probably familiar with its Old English translation.25 The poem’s ideational development fuses the modern categories of philosophy and theology, loosely echoing 20  At times verbal parallels with the description of the Vasa mortis are very close. See Jude 1.6; 2 Pet 2.4; Rev. 9.7–10; Rev. 9. 15–17; Rev. 20.7. 21  The OE Boethius transforms the figure of Philosophia into Wisdom, and omits the Latin’s (1pr1) description of her towering stature. The editions cited are Boethius, Theological Tractates: The Consolation of Philosophy, ed. and trans. H.F. Stewart, E.K. Rand, and S.J. Tester (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973); Malcolm Godden and Susan Irvine, eds, The Old English Boethius: An Edition of the Old English Versions of Boethius’s De Consolatione Philosophiae, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 22  Haec ubi continuato dolore delatravi. 23  OE Boethius (C text), Prose 2.1–2, “geomriende asungen hæfde … min murnende mod” (had sung sorrowing … my mourning mind). 24  See lines 247–64, 166–9, 181–3. 25  See Daniel Anlezark, “Drawing Alfredian Waters: The Old English Metrical Epilogue to the Pastoral Care, Boethian Metre 20, and Solomon and Saturn II,” in Water in Early Medieval England, ed. Carolyn Twomey and Daniel Anlezark (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), 250–61. The Old English translation also associates Saturn with Nimrod and the Babel story; see Godden and Irvine, eds., Old English Boethius (B text), Chapter 35, lines 116–40.

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Boethius’ own syncretic approach, though he more carefully excludes specific Christian reference from his neo-Platonic work. The one notable exception to the exclusion comes with the work’s closing words (5pr6):26,27 (A great necessity is solemnly ordained for you if you do not want to deceive yourselves, to do good, when you act before the eyes of a judge who sees all things.)

Following Nature While a broad debt to Boethius is evident, the poem’s treatment of the same core concerns—sorrow, suffering, fate, fortune, free will, cosmic order—follows its own distinctive contours and develops its own interests.28 The poet’s interest in the Last Judgement is more pervasive, though even here Boethius’ ultimate appeal to the all-seeing iudex may have offered a lead. However, while time is an important theme in De consolatione Book 5, the Old English poet’s interest in the same theme shares none of Boethius’ philosophical abstraction. Saturn obliquely takes up the theme of time in his response to the Vasa mortis description (lines 104–13): Saturnus cwæð: Ac hwæt is ðæt wundor   ðe geond ðas worold færeð, styrnenga gæð,   staðolas beateð, aweceð wopdropan,    winneð oft hider? Ne mæg hit steorra ne stan    ne se steapa gimm, wæter ne wildeor   wihte beswican, ac him on hand gæð   heardes ond hnesces, micles ond mætes;   him to mose sceall

26  OE Boethius (C text), Pr33: “Ge habbað micle nedðearfe þæt ge symle wel don, forðæm ge symle beforan þam ecan ond þæm ælmihtgan Gode doð eall þæt þæt ge doð; eall he hit gesihð, ond eall he hit forgilt.” (You have the great necessity that you always do well because you always do all that you do before the almighty and eternal God. He sees and all and repays all.) 27  Magna vobis est, si dissimulare non vultis, necessitas indicta probitatis, cum, ante oculos agitis iudicis cuncta cernentis. 28  For example, the poem reveals no nostalgia for the lost Golden Age (De Consolatione 2m5, Felix nimium prior aetas, How happy that earlier age), but rather, with its allusions to Babel and the Fall of the Angels (see below), constructs a more pessimistic earlier age. The OE Boethius (Metre 5) is neither as enthusiastic about the early ages of the world as the Latin source, nor as pessimistic as Solomon and Saturn II.

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gegangan geara gehwelce   grundbuendra, lyft fleogendra,  laguswemmendra, ðria ðreoteno  ðusendgerimes. (Saturn said: But what is that wondrous creature that travels throughout this world, sternly goes, beats the foundations, arouses sorrowful tears, often forces its way here? Neither star nor stone nor the broad gem, water nor wild beast can deceive it, but into its hand go hard and soft, the great and small. Each and every year the count of three times thirteen thousand of the ground-dwellers, of the air-flying, of the sea-swimming, must go to it as food.)

That Saturn’s reply probes the significance of the Vasa mortis is implicit in the reference to ðæt wundor (that wondrous creature). His enigma draws together various motifs embedded in Solomon’s account: destruction and death, grief, and hyperbolic numerical rhetoric. Saturn’s riddle has a close analogue in the early medieval Hiberno-­ Latin Collectanea Pseudo-Bedae, which contains a sequence of three riddles, the first of which is particularly close to the poem’s phrasing (79):29 (Tell me, what is the thing which fills the sky and the whole earth, destroys forests and seedlings, and smashes all foundations, but cannot be seen with the eyes or touched with the hands?) In the Collectanea the riddle sequence is unanswered, though analogues provide the answer “wind.”30 Despite the analogue, Solomon’s solution to the riddle moves in an alternative, though ideationally related, direction (lines 114–23): Yldo beoð on eorðan   æghwæs cræftig; mid hiðendre  hildewræsne, rumre racenteage  ręceð wide, langre linan,   lisseð eall ðæt heo wile. Beam heo abreoteð   ond bebriceð telgum, astyreð standendne   stefn on siðe, afilleð hine on foldan;   friteð æfter ðam wildne fugol.   Heo oferwigeð wulf, hio oferbideð stanas,   heo oferstigeð style, hio abiteð iren mid ome,    deð usic swa.

29  Dic mihi quae est illa res quae coelum totamque terram repleuit, siluas et surculos confringit, omniaque fundamenta concutit: sed nec oculis uideri, aut manibus tangi potest?. 30  The third part of the sequence (81, in die iudicii) demonstrates the implicit association of the riddle with the Last Judgement; see Anlezark, Dialogues, 20.

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(Solomon said: Age is, of all things, powerful on earth. With plundering shackles, capacious fetters, she reaches widely, with her long rope, she subdues all she will. She destroys the tree and shatters its branches, uproots the upright trunk on her way, and fells it to the earth; after that she feeds on the wildfowl. She defeats the wolf, she outlasts stones, she surpasses steel, she bites iron with rust, does the same to us.)

The wundor is named by Solomon as yldo (eald). The term has a variety of meanings and encompasses “age” in the sense of “epoch” as well “age (of a person or thing).”31 In the context of Solomon’s answer, yldo has an agency that incorporates all natural forces of destruction. The riddle focuses attention firmly on the significance of the name of the Vasa mortis: yldo is an (or the) “instrument of death,” and makes physical dissolution inevitable for all material things. What is implicit at this point is as important as what is articulated: if foresight is an attribute of wisdom, how does it help emotionally to see a future of inevitable destruction, death, and doom? The exploration of emotion emerges as crucial in this context: while the mind can reasonably discern this material end, wisdom must also incorporate an emotional response to the inevitability of physical disintegration. The focus on physical suffering caused by natural forces is maintained across the following sequence, which is disrupted by loss of manuscript text. Suffering not only is an aspect of human experience, but also takes on a cosmic dimension. Saturn asks why snow falls (lines 125–26):32 (it encloses the shoots of plants, binds things that grow, crushes and inhibits them), and causes suffering to wild animals (lines 127–28)33 (Very often it distresses many wild animals too). The text resumes after the lacuna with Solomon describing someone being led “through deceitful malice” (line 131, se swipra nið) into hell. We do not know how their debate reached this point. Saturn’s gloomy view of the natural world returns with his complaint about night (lines 134–135):34 (Night is the darkest weather, need the hardest of fates, sorrow the most oppressive burden, sleep is most 31  See Dictionary of Old English: A to I online, ed. Angus Cameron, Ashley Crandell Amos, Antonette diPaolo Healey et  al. (Toronto: Dictionary of Old English Project, 2018), s.v. eald. 32  bewrihð wyrta cið, wæstmas getigeð,| geðyð hie ond geðreatað. 33  Full oft he gecostað eac | wildeora worn. 34  Nieht bið wedera ðiestrost, ned bið wyrda heardost, | sorg bið swarost byrðen, slæp bið deaðe gelicost.

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like death). Saturn’s focus is on the material world and its inherent sorrow. While Solomon also observes nature, he is less emotive, and more readily derives lessons from it: the fact that leaves fall and turn to dust teaches the folly of storing up riches (lines 136–44). This is a direct allusion to Matt 6:19–20, where Christ teaches his followers to store up treasures in heaven in advance of the Judgement. In this light, Saturn’s following observation (lines 145–48), that Doomsday will soon come, represents a logical, if pessimistic development. At this point Solomon finds a lighter note.35 He also looks to the Judgement, and recalls God’s earlier judgement at Babel (lines 149–53): Swa bið ðonne ðissum modgum monnum, ðam ðe her nu mid mane lengest lifiað on ðisse lænan gesceafte. Ieo ðæt ðine leode gecyðdon, wunnon hie wið Dryhtnes miehtum, forðon hie ðæt worc ne gedegdon. Ne sceall ic ðe hwæðre broðor abelgan; ðu eart swiðe bittres cynnes, eorre eormenstrynde. Ne beyrn ðu in ða inwitgecyndo! (Just so then will it be for these proud men, those who here now with evil live longest in this transitory creation! Your people made that known long ago: they strove against the Lord’s might, therefore they did not complete that work. However I shall not make you angry brother; you are of a very bitter nation, an angry and mighty race. Don’t you slip into that wicked nature!)

In this second reference to the Babel episode it is unclear exactly which nation or race (cynn, eormenstrynde) Solomon is referring to: is he describing the Chaldeans or the giants, or both? As in the case of the Vasa mortis, the reader must be careful not to be distracted by the surface details. The complex point made by Solomon (and the poet) concerns free will in relation to what might be called genetic inheritance.36 Whether Solomon is alluding to the proud giants or the raging Chaldeans, he is telling Saturn that despite a predisposition to a certain temperament, he can make choices about his emotions and thoughts, and not necessarily succumb to a predetermined inwitgecyndo (evil-nature).37 35  On humour in the poem, see T.A.  Shippey, “‘Grim Wordplay’: Folly and Wisdom in Anglo-Saxon Humor,” in Humour in Anglo-Saxon Literature, ed. Jonathan Wilcox (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2000), 35, 38. 36  There is evidence that the Anglo-Saxons believed in a type of genetic determinism in national character; see Daniel Anlezark, “Understanding Numbers in MS London, British Library Harley 3271,” Anglo-Saxon England 38 (2009): 137–55. 37  See O’Neill, “Date, Provenance,” 145–50.

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Fate Versus Choice This element of freedom versus fate is woven into the following sequence. Saturn’s first reaction to Solomon’s claim that there is a choice in responding to the vicissitudes of life is to assert the power of fate (lines 154–55): Saga ðu me, Salomon cyning, sunu Dauides, | hwæt beoð ða feowere fægæs rapas? (Tell me, King Solomon, son of David, what are the four ropes of the fated man?) Solomon will have none of this and suggests the only fates that can be seen to bind a person are found not in the future, but in things that have already happened, perhaps meaning “experience” (156–57):38 (Accomplished fates, they are the ropes of the fated man). At this point the logical development of the dialogue becomes even more opaque than usual: Saturn asks who will judge Christ on Doomsday (lines 158–59); Solomon asserts that no creature would dare and asks Saturn to tell him “what things were not that were” (160–61); Saturn responds with a question about sunlight and shadows (162–65); Solomon takes up the logic of the uneven distribution of light, and turns it into an observation about the uneven distribution of wealth (lines 166–69), stating that God will place those who seek goodness rather than riches eadgum to ræste (at rest among the blessed). Death and Doomsday, Solomon implies, need not be feared by everyone. The discussion of the uneven distribution of wealth and the happiness to be found by seeking the good, brings the philosophical aspect of the dialogue very close to issues discussed in far greater detail in Boethius’ De consolatione.39 The rapid exchange of brief ripostes continues around the problem of evil afflicting good people. Saturn accepts Solomon’s assertion that it is possible to be weorðgeornra (well-intentioned),40 but claims that this does not necessarily bring about emotional equilibrium (lines 170–73):41 (But why are the companions, weeping, and laughter, both together? Very often they destroy the happiness of the well-intentioned. How does that come about?). Saturn appears to advance a type of Stoicism, in which all extremes of emotion might be understood as disturbance of  Gewurdene wyrda | ðæt beoð ða feowere fæges rapas.  De consolatione Book 3 approaches the question of material wealth from various perspectives. 40  The unusual adjective weorðgeorn is found only in Solomon and Saturn II and the Old English Boethius (4x). 41  Ac forhwan beoð ða gesiðas somod ætgædre, |wop ond hleahtor? Full oft hie weorðgeornra |sælða toslitað. Hu gesæleð ðæt?. 38 39

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the soul—weeping and laughter are both capable of destroying “happiness.” The impact of Stoic thought on early Christianity and especially early monastic writing was pervasive though not indiscriminate.42 Solomon’s answer ignores the Stoic premise on which Saturn’s question rests, but nevertheless maintains his focus on the power of the will to govern emotion. His reply introduces into the poem the important figure of the unlæd man. The term connotes a range of related meanings: “unhappy,” “miserable,” “wretched,” “poor.” In the poem the word is invested with a distinctive meaning (lines 173–74):43 (He is miserable and despairing, he who always wishes to be sad in grief. He is most offensive to God). The unlæd man, in Solomon’s outlook, is one who chooses “to grieve” (geomrian), with a verbal parallel that evokes Saturn’s pivotal question (geomrende gast). With this association, the unlæd person compares with the Vasa mortis that gilleð geomorlice (cries out sorrowfully), wallowing in its misery and longing for the end of the world. Saturn is not so easily satisfied, and asks a question about the divergent fates of twins, one of whom is unlæd, the other eadig (happy, blessed, fortunate) (lines 186–92)44: Ac hu gegangeð ðæt,   gode oððe yfle, ðonne hie beoð ðurh ane   idese acende, twegen getwinnas?   Ne bið hira tir gelic; oðer bið unlæde on eorðan,   oðer bið eadig swiðe, leoftæle mid leoda duguðum;   oðer leofað lytle hwile, swiceð on ðisse sidan gesceafte   ond ðonne eft mid sorgum gewiteð. Fricge ic ðec hlaford Salomon,   hwæðres bið hira folgoð betra? (But how does this ensue, for good or for evil, when two twins are born from the one women? Their honour is not equal; one is unlucky on earth, the other is very fortunate, esteemed among companies of people; one lives a short while; the other falls short in this broad creation, and then later

42  See Marcia L. Colish, The Stoic Tradition from Antiquity to the early Middle Ages. Volume 2: Stoicism in Christian Latin Thought through the Sixth Century (Leiden: Brill, 1985). 43  Unlæde bið ond ormod se ðe a wile | geomrian on gihðe; se bið Gode fracoðast. 44  On medieval discussion of twins and determinism, see Menner, ed. Poetical Dialogues, 135; Thomas D. Hill, “Wise Words: Old English Sapiential Poetry,” in Readings in Medieval Texts: Interpreting Old and Middle English Literature, ed. David F.  Johnson and Elaine Treharne (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 176–7.

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departs sorrowfully. I ask you, lord Solomon, which of the two has the better career?)

The answer would seem straightforward: the eadig man is better off. But Saturn is using the term unlæd in a way that fails to acknowledge Solomon’s assertion that the unlæd man’s defective will is the problem in life. The framing of Saturn’s question implies a different kind of determinism which problematizes the twin’s divergent fates: born equal in opportunity, why should one fail and the other succeed? Solomon’s answer superficially ignores the problem of twins, but addresses the assumption that two people sharing the same opportunities should be expected to share a fate in life. He does this by focusing on the emotionally painful limitation experienced by a mother who sees one child going wrong, but can do nothing except grieve (lines 193–202): Modor ne rædeð   ðonne heo magan cenneð, hu him weorðe geond worold   widsið sceapen. Oft heo to bealwe   bearn afedeð, seolfre to sorge,   siððan dreogeð his earfoðu,  orlegstunde. Heo ðæs afran sceall   oft ond gelome grimme greotan,   ðonne he geong færeð, hafað wilde mod,   werige heortan, sefan sorgfullne,   slideð geneahhe werig, wilna leas,   wuldres bedæled. (A mother, when she gives birth to her child, does not direct how the long journey through the world will be shaped for him. Often she nurtures the fierce one for ruin, to her own sorrow, later endures his torment at the fated hour. She often and repeatedly must weep bitterly for her son, when young he goes about, has a wild mind, an unfortunate heart, a sorrowful spirit; he often slips, worn out, purposeless, cut off from glory.)

Solomon accepts a degree of determinism, but this is not to be discovered in the unlæd man’s fate, which is governed by a different force (lines 203–8): Hwilum higegeomor   healle weardað, leofað leodum feor;   locað geneahhe fram ðam unlædan,   ægen hlaford. Forðan nah seo modor geweald,   ðonne heo magan cenneð,

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bearnes blædes,   ac sceall on gebyrd faran an æfter anum.   Ðæt is eald gesceaft. (At times, gloomy in mind, he is wary in the hall, lives away from people, his own lord often ignores the miserable man. Therefore the mother does not have control, when she gives birth to her son, over her child’s success—but one must go after the other in birth. That is the ancient destiny.)

Solomon has asserted that the only fates that bind are in the past (gewurdene wyrda, accomplished fates). Insofar as the concept of “fate” or wyrd expresses human powerlessness, this is found in the mother’s incapacity to influence the course of her unhappy son’s life. Solomon’s pointed final assertion Ðæt is eald gesceaft, refers Saturn and the reader back to the initial framing of the dialogue’s central question: the matter of the “sorrowing spirit” (geomrende gast) that has disturbed Saturn ðurh deop gesceaft (throughout deep destiny). Like a number of key terms in the poem, gesceaft has a range of meanings: “creation,” “existence,” “decree,” “destiny,” “fate.” More than one is in play here. Saturn comes close to not accepting Solomon’s implicit claim that a person might willingly ruin their own life, as his reply expresses disbelief (lines 209–11):45 (But why would a man not work hard in youth for noble lordship and a leader, to advance in wisdom, to struggle for insight?). Solomon’s answer dodges the question, for now, focusing the distinction between the unlæd and the eadig person on the mind (lines 212–14):46 (Indeed, a blessed man can easily distinguish in his mind a kind lord, a prince. The unfortunate man cannot do so). That is, Saturn asks who would make such choices in life; Solomon answers, one whose mind lacks the capacity to make the right ones. The dialogue returns to the question of fate after a lengthy, and now damaged, discussion of the elements. As a result of the loss of text it is impossible to know how these cosmic observations might have connected with the preceding discussion of the unlæd man or with the following discussion about fate. The dialogue’s exploration of fate returns to various issues associated with the unlæd person’s “destiny.” Saturn reports that he has often discussed a certain “circumstance” with the wise (lines 247–51): 45  Ac forhwan nele monn him on giogoðe georne gewyrcan | deores dryhtscipes ond dædfruman, | wadan on wisdom, winnan æfter snytro?. 46  Hwæt! Him mæg eadig eorl eaðe geceosan | on his modsefan mildne hlaford, | anne æðeling. Ne mæg don unlæde swa.

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Full oft ic frode menn   fyrn gehyrde secggan ond swerian   ymb sume wisan, hwæðer wære twegra   butan tweon strengra, wyrd ðe warnung,   ðonne hie winnað oft mid hira ðreamedlan,   hwæðerne aðreoteð ær. (Very often of old I heard wise men speak and avow concerning a certain circumstance, whether without doubt either of two things was stronger— fate or foresight—when they struggle often with each other, with their mental oppression, which of the two becomes tiresome first.)

This problem is so difficult, Saturn claims (lines 256–57),47 (that there is not any man in this middle-earth who is able to apprehend the ambiguities of these two). It is necessary to explore certain elements of the poet’s use of vocabulary to understand what is at stake here. The semantic field of warnung encompasses the related but distinct concepts of “foresight” and “caution.” The noun wise is only superficially related to the adjective wis (wise), though the poet enjoys playing on the similar morphology. Wise is used with a variety of meanings across Old English48: “circumstance,” “habit,” “manner,” “fashion,” “custom,” “condition,” “cause.” The term is used twice by the poet (both times in the mouth of Saturn) at key moments of the dialogue’s development: at line 69 to describe the “circumstance” of the geomrende gast (sorrowing spirit), and at line 248, where the “matter” at stake is the relative strength of wyrd and warnung. In each instance Saturn states that comprehending these matters is very difficult, and that he has spent many years searching for answers; across the poem, this claim is made only in relation to these two “circumstances.”

Habits of Mind On the two occasions that the noun wise is used by the poet, I translate it as “circumstance,” but any choice limits the significance of the term and also the complexity of the psychological problem the poet is addressing. Saturn’s first use of the term in his pivotal question about the wise of the “sorrowing spirit” (lines 69–74) was answered with the story of the Vasa mortis. The second question about a problematic wise does not elicit

 ðæt nære nænig manna middangeardes |ðæt meahte ðara twega tuion aspyrian.   See J.  Bosworth and T.  Northcote Toller, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1898), s.v. wise. 47 48

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another graphic account of the monstrous creature, but a description of the emotional impact of an almost-personified fate (lines 258–64)49: SALOMON CWÆÐ: Wyrd bið wended hearde,   wealleð swiðe geneahhe; heo wop weceð,   heo wean hladeð, heo gast scyð,   heo ger byreð; ond hwæðre him mæg wissefa   wyrda gehwylce gemetigian,   gif he bið modes gleaw ond to his freondum wile   fultum secan, ðehhwæðre godcundes   gæstes brucan. (Solomon said: Fate is turned with difficulty, it surges up very often; it calls forth weeping, it loads up woe, it harms the spirit, it carries the years; and nevertheless the one wise in mind can moderate each fated event, if he is prudent in mind and will seek help from his friends, and moreover enjoy the divine spirit.)

As often in the poem, Solomon’s answer contains distractions: how does fate “carry the years”? But the key point is clear: fate is not the same as inevitability. The difference is to be found not only in the mind and agency of the person who experiences instances of fate, but more precisely in practice in their mental habits. The emphasis on affect aligns Solomon’s account of fate with the Vasa mortis, and the poet invites close comparison between fate and the monstrous bird. A further comparison is also invited between the emotional and mental responses of “the Philistines” to the monster, and the course of action prescribed here. The Philistines are consumed by fear, and irrationally believe that the Vasa mortis will be stolen; however, in discerning this future event, Solomon says they are utterly wrong. Overwhelmed by fear, foresight fails them. They live with this anxiety, despite the fact that the creature terrifies them and must be bound up because of their fear (wið leodgryre). Solomon’s dominance of the Vasa mortis is markedly different from the Philistines’ uncomprehending irrationality and fear: he alone discovered the creature, and it is bound at his command. His response to the monster anticipates the remedy that he now recommends for the misery and harm caused by fate, which is to be found in an ongoing rational response which 49  The classic study on the variety of meanings of wyrd is B. J. Timmer, “Wyrd in Anglo-­ Saxon Prose and Poetry,” Neophilologus 26 (1941): 24–33.

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incorporates not only a mental disposition, but seeking help from friends. In this context it would seem that the poet’s use of wise comes close to Pierre Bourdieu’s use of habitus.50 Wise here is not simply a “circumstance” or “habit,” but rather an expression of a mentality that has been habituated since childhood (demonstrated by the unlæd twin), social and emotional skills, and dispositions that are the product of cumulative life experiences. Saturn wishes to understand states of mind, that is the geomrende gast and the oppressive force of wyrd and warnung. The Philistines are overwhelmed by the raucous monster, which can also overwhelm the reader; Solomon explains that a person who knows “how to play the game” can deal with life’s unpleasant experiences, and with a degree of agency can avoid being oppressed by a sense that events are beyond control or an overly cautious outlook.51 Saturn accepts this logic, but insists that wyrd seo swiðe (line 265, fate the mighty), now more obviously personified, remains a powerful force and a cause of suffering. She is (lines 266–69): eallra fyrena fruma,   fæhðo modor weana wyrtwela,   wopes heafod, frumscylda gehwæs   fæder ond modor, deaðes dohtor (the origin of all torments, mother of all hostility, root of woe, source of weeping, father and mother of each ancient wickedness, daughter of death)

Saturn is puzzled, however, about why fate persists (line 269, Ac to hwon drohtað heo mid us? But for what reason does she persist with us?), and hopes that ultimately fate will just go away as a result of the discord she generates (line 271, ðæt heo ðurh fyrena geflitu fæhðo ne tydre, so that through the discord of wicked deeds she will no longer generate hostility). Solomon’s answer to this question involves a significant shift from the reason-based interrogation of experience to an appeal to Christian doctrine. He describes the fall of the angels at length, as the poet draws on a range of apocryphal traditions.52 Again, the surface detail can serve to  See Ian Buchanan, A Dictionary of Critical Theory, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 2018), s.v. habitus.  Similar advice is offer in The Wanderer, lines 65–69. 52  See Daniel Anlezark, “The Fall of the Angels in Solomon and Saturn II,” in Apocryphal Texts and Traditions in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. D.  G. Scragg, Manchester Studies in Anglo-Saxon 1 (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2003), 121–33. 50 51

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distract: the central point made is that it is demons, not fate, who cause human suffering (lines 281–82): Ðæt sindon ða feondas, ða usic feohtað on; |forðon is witena gehwam wopes eaca. (They are the enemies, those who fight against us; therefore, there is an increase of woe for each of the wise.) This theological turn—perhaps disappointing for the modern reader who prefers the application of reason in the exploration of the human condition—is unsurprising in the context of an intellectual culture that privileged the doctrinal truth of revelation over the capacity of the human mind to reach truth unaided. This hierarchy is an important part of the framing of the search for truth upon which the pagan Saturn is engaged. His search has brought him to King Solomon, a biblical author in medieval understanding, who is able to combine in his teaching the power of observation and reason with the voice of scriptural authority. His final word on the psychology of suffering comes in response to what appears to be (in another damaged part of the text) Saturn’s final question (lines 298–302): Is ðonne on ðisse foldan   fira ænig eorðan cynnes    ðara ðe an man age, ðe deað abæde,   ær se dæg cyme ðæt sie his calend   cwide arunnen, ond hine mon annunga    ut abanne? (Then is there any man in this world of earthly race, of those who might have a fault, who death might compel before the day should come, that the count of his months might be run out, and he should be summoned away forthwith?)

Reflected in his assumption that a person’s number of days is allotted is Saturn’s belief in determinism, in this last word tied to his preoccupation with death.53 The question fuses the personas of death and fate, and recalls the Vasa mortis counting of the years before Doomsday. Solomon’s reply has suffered loss in the manuscript, but implicitly reinterprets in a theological framework various aspects of human psychology that have been advanced earlier. He describes—in yet another example of the poet’s taste for rhetorical binaries—the daily work of the two attendant spirits that accompany each person (lines 312–19):  See also lines 181–85.

53

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oðer hine læreð   ðæt he lufan healde Metodes miltse   ond his mæga ræd, oðer hine tyhteð   ond on tæso læreð, yweð him ond yppeð   earmra manna misgemynda,   ond ðurh ðæt his mod hweteð, lædeð hine ond læceð    ond hine geond land spaneð oððæt his ege bið   æfðancum full, ðurh earmra scyld   yrre geworden. (One teaches him that he should keep the Maker’s love and mercy, and his kinsmen’s advice, the other tempts him and teaches him to ruin, reveals and brings out in him the misconceptions of wretched people, and in this way stimulates his mind, leads and deludes him, misleads him throughout the land, until his eyes are full of resentment, through wretched guilt have become enraged.)

The tempting demon is ultimately victorious, and the good angel “then departs weeping” (line 324, Gewiteð ðonne wepende). Here then, is the ultimate answer to Saturn’s question about the “sorrowing spirit.” The poem’s apparent ending, now detached from Solomon and Saturn II in the manuscript, suggests that Saturn is at last satisfied that Solomon has resolved the wise of the “sorrowing spirit.”54 This fragment tells (probably in the voice of Solomon) of a miserable soul being locked in the middle of hell,55 claims the victory in the debate to Solomon, and describes Saturn’s final reaction (Solomon and Saturn Poetic Fragment, lines 8–9):56 (Nevertheless, he was joyful, he who had come on the journey, travelled from afar; never before had his heart laughed.)

Conclusion This ending of Solomon and Saturn II reminds us that while much of the poem’s subject matter is the problem of misery and suffering, the text is playful, and was probably designed to be as entertaining as it was edifying. Saturn’s glum character finally laughs, but only at the moment when Solomon describes a miserable wretch confined to an eternity of suffering 54  See Daniel Anlezark, “The Stray Ending in the Solomonic Anthology in MS CCCC 422,” Medium Ævum 80 (2011): 201–16. 55  The fate of unlæd man is also referred to in Solomon and Saturn I, lines 21–35, where he is also damned solitary figure. 56  Hwæðre was on sælum se ðe of siðe cwom | feorran gefered. Næfre ær his ferhð ahlog.

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in hell. The apocalyptic features across the poem, and is first introduced in Solomon’s account of the Vasa mortis. To a certain extent the name given to the monstrous bird is straightforwardly meaningful: one of the crucial questions under consideration in the dialogue concerns the fear of death. But why “the instruments” of death? The inevitability and therefore foreknowledge of death makes Saturn pessimistic about life and leads into his focus on the fate of the unlæd person. It is in the discussion of this character that the poem’s interest in problematic emotion, initiated by the Vasa mortis, comes to the fore. The contention that unhappiness is the result not so much of choice, but of the accumulation of bad habits, social and emotional, locates the poet in a Christian monastic discourse on emotion that was deeply indebted to the Stoic tradition. For the poet, closely aligned with the school of thought of Evagrius Pontus and Gregory the Great, persisting in unhappiness is a form of sin.57 At the poem’s climax, Solomon points out that there is no difference between persistence in sin and eternal death. The Vasa mortis, like the unlæd person, wallows in misery. The imprisonment of the monster in chains by the greatest of the wise is the central metaphor of the poem: the pursuit of wisdom is identified fully with the pursuit of happiness, and at the heart of this quest is a refusal to give in to despair.

Bibliography Manuscript Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 422.

Primary Sources Anlezark, Daniel, ed. The Old English Dialogues of Solomon and Saturn. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2009a. Boethius. Theological Tractates: The Consolation of Philosophy. Edited and translated by H.F. Stewart, E.K. Rand, and S.J. Tester. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973.

57  See Simo Knuuttila, Emotions in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004), 141–42.

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Godden, Malcolm R. and Susan Irvine, eds. The Old English Boethius: An Edition of the Old English Versions of Boethius’s De Consolatione Philosophiae, 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Liber monstrorum. Edited and translated by Andy Orchard. In Pride and Prodigies: Studies in the Monsters of the Beowulf-Manuscript, 255–317. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003.

Secondary Sources Anlezark, Daniel. “All at Sea: Beowulf’s Marvellous Swimming.” In Myths, Legends and Heroes: Essays on Old Norse and Old English Literature in Honour of John McKinnell, edited by Daniel Anlezark, 225–41. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011. Anlezark, Daniel. “Drawing Alfredian Waters: The Old English Metrical Epilogue to the Pastoral Care, Boethian Metre 20, and Solomon and Saturn II.” In Water in Early Medieval England, edited by Carolyn Twomey and Daniel Anlezark, 241–66. Turnhout: Brepols, 2021. Anlezark, Daniel. “The Fall of the Angels in Solomon and Saturn II.” In Apocryphal Texts and Traditions in Anglo-Saxon England, edited by D.  G. Scragg. Manchester Studies in Anglo-Saxon 1, 121–33. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2003. Anlezark, Daniel. “Poisoned Places: The Avernian Tradition in Old English poetry,” Anglo-Saxon England 36 (2007): 103–26. Anlezark, Daniel. “Understanding Numbers in MS London, British Library Harley 3271,” Anglo-Saxon England 38 (2009b): 137–55. Barney, Stephen A. et al., trans. The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Bosworth, Joseph and T. Northcote Toller. An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1898. Buchanan, Ian. A Dictionary of Critical Theory, 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Cameron, Angus et al., eds. The Dictionary of Old English: A to I online. Toronto: Dictionary of Old English Project, 2018. Colish, Marcia L. The Stoic Tradition from Antiquity to the early Middle Ages. Volume 2: Stoicism in Christian Latin Thought through the Sixth Century. Leiden: Brill, 1985. Knuuttila, Simo. Emotions in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Hill, Thomas D. “Wise Words: Old English Sapiential Poetry.” In Readings in Medieval Texts: Interpreting Old and Middle English Literature, edited by David F.  Johnson and Elaine Treharne, 136–48. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

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Major, Tristan. “Saturn’s First Riddle in Solomon and Saturn II: An Orientalist Conflation,” Neophilologus 96 (2012): 301–13. Major, Tristan. Undoing Babel: The Tower of Babel in Anglo-Saxon Literature. Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2018. Menner, Robert J. “Nimrod and the Wolf in the Old English Solomon and Saturn,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 37 (1938): 332–54 Menner, Robert J., ed. The Poetical Dialogues of Solomon and Saturn. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 1941. Menner, Robert J. “The Vasa Mortis Passage in the Old English Salomon and Saturn.” In Studies in English Philology: A Miscellany in Honor of Frederick Klaeber, edited by K. Malone and M. B. Ruud, 240–53. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1929. O’Brien O’Keeffe, Katherine. “The Geographic List of Solomon and Saturn II.” Anglo-Saxon England 20 (1991): 123–42. O’Brien O’Keeffe, Katherine “Source, Method, Theory, Practice: On Reading two Old English Verse Texts.” In Textual and Material Culture in Anglo-Saxon England: Thomas Northcote Toller and the Toller Memorial Lectures, edited by D.G. Scragg, 161–81. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2003. O’Neill, Patrick. “On the Date, Provenance and Relationship of the ‘Solomon and Saturn’ Dialogues,” Anglo-Saxon England 26 (1997): 139–68. Shippey, T.A. “‘Grim Wordplay’: Folly and Wisdom in Anglo-Saxon Humor.” In Humour in Anglo-Saxon Literature, edited by Jonathan Wilcox, 33–48. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2000. Shippey, T.A. Poems of Wisdom and Learning in Old English. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1976. Timmer, B.J. “Wyrd in Anglo-Saxon Prose and Poetry.” Neophilologus 26 (1941): 24–33.

CHAPTER 7

De Profundis: Sadness and Healing Christina Lee

This chapter addresses emotions of sadness and loss in pre-Conquest England, with particular emphasis on some of the Old English elegies of the Exeter Book.1 The early medieval period in England was a time of challenge, including migration, invasion, political division and unification, as well as climate change and waves of infectious disease. These upheavals must have been felt by many, if not all, who lived through this time. Perhaps today, more than at any other point in the past decades we can empathise with the deep emotional impact that such events may cause. I would like to thank Dr Paul Cavill, who commented on an earlier draft of this chapter and for his feedback and suggestions. All mistakes are mine. My sincere thanks go to the editors of this volume, who have acted with kindness and who have accommodated the shifting sands which were the inevitable outcomes of changes to teaching in Covid. 1  The edition used for this chapter is The Exeter Book, ed. George F. Krapp and Elliott v. K. Dobbie, ASPR III (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936).

C. Lee (*) School of English, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 E. Sebo et al. (eds.), Emotional Alterity in the Medieval North Sea World, Palgrave Studies in the History of Emotions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33965-3_7

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The COVID-19 pandemic has taught us that while we may not be directly affected, we still need a way in which we can understand what happened. The images and the emotions will surely need some form of processing, and future plays, novels and films will thematise this period and will help people to adjust to the time after. It is often assumed that medieval people were more resilient to trauma since their lives were affected by so many calamities. However, even a fleeting glance at early medieval literature confirms that sadness, uncertainty and trauma cover a significant space. Of course, what remains of the period may not be representative of everything that was once written, or the experience of all that lived through it. Still the presence of such texts is a testament that people did not just experience sadness and depression, but also wrote about it. The study of depression and trauma in early medieval England is still fairly recent, and scholars such as Ruth Wehlau, Erin Sebo and others have begun to examine how such feelings are portrayed in literature.2 It is always important to remember that people in this period are not us and worked with different parameters of illness. However, modern theories can help us to “unlock” some of the thought processes and show the ways in which people in Early Medieval England described and dealt with strong emotions, such as sadness, anxiety and trauma. In this chapter I will consider if literature may have been a vehicle to address and perhaps even heal sadness and depression. Excessive sadness, as has been shown by Wehlau and others, was considered to be sinful.3 Sins had to be toned for, which could only be done by confession and penance. I suggest that we may consider that narratives, such as the elegies, may have also served as confession by proxy.

2  Ruth Wehlau, “‘Seeds of Sorrow’: Landscapes of Despair in The Wanderer, Beowulf’s story of Hrethel and Sonatorrek,” Parergon 15, no. 2 (1998), 1–17; Gwendolyne Knight, “‘The Night is Dark and Full of Terrors’: Darkness, Terror and Perception in Anglo-Saxon England,” in Darkness, Depression and Descent in Anglo-Saxon England ed. Ruth Wehlau (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2019), 37–60; Erin Sebo, “Ne Sorga: Grief and Revenge in Beowulf,” in Anglo-Saxon Emotions: Reading the Heart in Old English Language, Literature and Culture, ed. Alice Jorgensen, Frances McCormack and Jonathan Wilcox (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), 177–92; Christina Lee, “Healing Words: St Guthlac and the Trauma of War,” in Trauma in Medieval Society, ed. Wendy J.  Turner and Christina Lee (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 259–73. 3  Wehlau, “Seeds of Sorrow,” esp. 2–3.

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Emotion and Sin Excessive emotions, such as anger, which is also one of the eight cardinal sins, are generally frowned on in religious texts.4 For example, in his homily on the Nativity, Ælfric suggests that if anger is turned to evil, then it results in sadness and sloth:5 (if anger is turned to evil, from it will come sorrow and treason).6 He partly follows John Cassian (c., 360–435 CE) who regarded one of the causes of tristitia, which is debilitating sadness, in repressed anger or desire, but may also be mindful of distinctions made by Paul in 2 Corinthians 7.10, in which he reminds that God’s sorrow leads to repentance, but that worldly sorrow leads to death. The development of cardinal sins harks back to Cassian and is intrinsically linked to the development of penance.7 Tristitia is classed as the fourth cardinal sin by Cassian, and although dropped later, it continues to be regarded as a significant emotion in Christian thought. Tristitia is considered to be a sin because it is self-centred.8 However, Cassian takes the emotion seriously. He considers that it needs to be addressed, otherwise it has debilitating consequences. However, not all depressions have a discernible reason, and depression can have a destructive nature.9 Kenneth Russel underlines that Cassian regarded sadness as deadly because the depressed cannot live the life they are called to.10 In the seventh century tristitia gains aspects of acedia (sloth) when Gregory the Great, who wants to add envy to the list of cardinal sins, drops acedia (sloth) but not without transferring some of the aspects across.11 The concept of eight cardinal sins continues in early 4  See, for example, Rolf Bremmer, “Looking Back at Anger: Wrath in Anglo-Saxon England,” The Review of English Studies 66 (2015), 423–48. The world field of anger was also examined in Daria Izdebska, “The Semantic field of ANGER in Old English” (Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Glasgow, 2015). 5  “Gif þæt yrre bið on yfel awend, þonne cymð of þam unrotnisse and æmylnysse”. 6  W.  Skeat, ed. and trans, Ælfric’s Lives of Saints, EETS OS 76, 82 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1881–85), i:16. His source is Alcuin’s homily “De animae ratione,” M.R. Godden, “Lives 1 (Nativity of Christ) (C.B.1.3.2),” Fontes Anglo-Saxonici: World Wide Web Register, https://arts.st-andrews.ac.uk/fontes/ (accessed August 2021). 7  Wilhelm Kursawa, “Sin as Ailment of Soul and Repentance as the Process of its Healing: The pastoral concept of penitentials as a way of dealing with sin, repentance and forgiveness in the insular Church of the sixth to the eighths centuries,” Perichoresis 14, no. 3 (2016). 21–45. DOI: 10.1515/perc-2017-0002. 8  Kenneth Russel, “John Cassian on Sadness,” Cistercian Studies Quarterly 38:1 (2003), 10. 9  Ibid. 10  Kursawa, “Sin as Ailment,” 16. 11  Russel, “John Cassian,” 8.

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medieval England, as evident from the early eleventh-century Enchiridion by Byrhtferth, who names unrot, the Old English term for tristitia, as one of the eight.12

The Two Types of Sadness Not all forms of sadness are considered to be the same, and distinctions are made between righteous and self-indulgent sadness. An example is Ælfric of Eynsham’s letter to Wulfstan: Twa unrotnyssa syndon, swaswa us secgað bec. An is ðeos yfele ðe we embe sprecað, oðer is halwende swaswa we her secgað, þæt se man unrotsige for his ærrum synnum and hi behreowsige mid rædfæstum mode. Đe yfele unrotnysse byð eac oferwiðed þyrh ða gastliccan blisse, þe man fir Gode habban sceal. (There are two types of sadness as it is told to us in books: one is the evil kind, of which we have spoken before, and the other is the healing (kind), of which we will speak here, that is when one is sad on account of their previous sins and repents with a prudent mind. The evil sadness will be overcome by spiritual bliss that one should have for God.)13

Tristitia, he explains, is “sadness in English, which people suffer for various things that have happened (to them): violent death or loss and destruction or the passing of close friends.”14 Ælfric’s sources, as shown by Francis Leneghan, are the two Church Fathers, Evagrius Ponticus and Cassian.15 For the cleric Ælfric this life is transitory and sadness is only a passing emotion. He repeatedly emphasises the difference in his homilies between this life which is full of disease, pain and sadness and the next where all of these negative experiences are resolved in bliss.16 Indeed, too much sadness 12  Peter Baker and Michael Lapidge, eds, Byrhtferth’s Enchiridion, EETS SS 15 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 117. 13  Bernhard Fehr, Die Hirtenbriefe Ælfrics in Altenglischer Und Lateinischer Fassung. Bibliothek der Angelsächsischen Prosa 9 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1966), 210–1, the passage quoted is from manuscript x. 14  Ibid. While unrotness and variants appear frequently in the translation of the Cura Pastoralis, where it translates “sadness” in general, Ælfric largely uses it in the context of sin. 15  Francis Leneghan, “Preparing the Mind for Prayer: The Wanderer, Heyschasm and Theosis,” Neophilologus 100 (2016), 123. 16  See also Homily IX, where he repeats Christ’s promise to his apostles that “Ge beoð geunrotsode on þisum life, ac eower unrotnes bið awend to æcere blisse,” Peter Clemoes, Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: The First Series, EETS SS. 17 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 253. For further examples see Wehlau, “Seeds of Sorrow,” 2–3.

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prevents people from doing what is necessary for the departed: to pray for their souls. Thus the bereaved and traumatised should seek help from the true doctor, Christ, rather than wallowing in their misery. Nevertheless, it may be relevant that this statement is given to a peer, not a parishioner, someone who also shared pastoral care, and we do not know if priests ever told their grieving flock to pull themselves together. The distinction between different forms of sadness is not just evident in religious texts, but occurs in secular writings, albeit written by people who seem to have a good grasp of theological discourses. A case is the ninth century the Frankish noblewoman Dhuoda who sends a book of advice, the Liber Manualis, to her son William. Dhuoda at this point is removed from her children and her husband and no stranger to political turmoil and illness. The Liber Manualis remains a remarkable testimony since it is a rare document written by a woman from the Carolingian period. The handbook contains many interesting pieces of advice, including how to deal with sadness and grief. Dhuoda separates between tristitia saeculi “worldly sorrow” and tristitia spiritualis “spiritual sorrow.”17 The first is considered to be self-indulgent, the second is to be embraced since it profits the soul.18 Descriptions of sadness as an act of self-indulgence may sound rather unsympathetic, but it is worth remembering that inconsolable sadness is counted among the major sins by early medieval theologians. As such it had to be addressed, otherwise it had the potential to deprive the sinner of salvation. Sin, as Wilhelm Kursawa points out, “was seen as an ailment of the soul.”19 Sickness, then as now, needs a doctor, and, of course, the healing for any ailment that concerns the soul has to come from the repertoire of the religious healer. The first treatment for sin is confession and penance; these are acts which took a central stage in religious care. The frequency of penance changed from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages. Initially the sacrament of baptism was considered enough to save people from eternal damnation, but it came with a few teething problems.20 Prior to the stipulation of infant baptism some people deferred the sacrament until they were on 17  Marcelle Thiébaux, ed. and trans., Dhuoda: Liber Manualis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 164. 18  Ibid. 19  Kursawa, “Sin as Ailment.” 20  Ibid., 22.

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their deathbeds. Since the deferral of baptism is a somewhat risky undertaking, since not everyone may make it on time this left Christians in fear of dying in a state of sin. Coupled with a growing emphasis on individual atonement for sin which was linked to the understanding that each soul would be judged on their own, the church created regular rituals in which sinners could be relieved from sin through confession and penance.21 Mankind, born sinful and frail after the Fall, required care in body and soul, but it was especially the heavenly body and soul which needed intervention, since both could be resurrected perfect. Both Ælfric and his influential source, the writings of St Augustine, show examples of how the heavenly body will be made perfect through the act of salvation.22 Penance is universal to medieval Christianity, and  penitentials, which are handbooks of penitential tariffs, are strongly connected to the Insular Church from where they spread to the Frankish regions. The advantage of such set texts is that they prescribe a uniform penance across all regions of Christianity.23 Confession and penance in early medieval Europe could take two forms: public and private.24 Penitentials indicate a development of private confession which was between the penitent and the priest who would diagnose the severity of the transgression and levy the punishment.25 John Richards and Destin Steward have pointed out that medical analogies, as, for example, in the “Penitential of Cummean,” are deliberate, and they take into consideration the status of the penitent: age, preparedness to confess and the mental state in the same way as a doctor would adapt medical remedies.26 Considerations of the preparedness for confession are also recorded  in Early Medieval England. For example, Wulfstan reminds the confessor to “gehire him ærest geþildlice hu his wise 21  For a brief overview see Helen Foxhall-Forbes, “The Theology of the Afterlife in the early Middle Ages, c. 400–c.1000,” in Imagining the Medieval Afterlife ed. R.  Pollar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 164–6. 22  Clemoes, Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies, 311–12. For Augustine see, S. Aurelii Augustini Hipponensis Episcopi Enchiridion Ad Laurentium sive de Fide, Spe et Caritate, bk 1, ed. J. P. Migne, PL 40, ch. 88. 23  Kursawa, “Sin as Ailment,” 23. 24   John Richardson and Destin Steward, “Medieval Confession Practices and the Emergence of Modern Psychotherapy,” Mental Health, Religion & Culture 12 (2009), 473–84. 25  Ibid., 476. 26  For or an adaptation of medicine according to age see Jacqueline Fay, “Treating Age in Early Medieval England,” in Early Medieval English Life Courses: Cultural Historical Perspectives, ed. Thijs Porck and Harriet Soper (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming 2021).

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gerad sy.” (First listen to them patiently (to understand) in which condition they are.)27 Penance is a form of healthcare, and in the dispensation of penance “healing, not punishment was in the foreground.”28 The health-giving nature of penance is evident from the writings of medieval authors, who apply the trope of “penance as a remedy.” An example is the epistolary Ad Pueros Sancti Martini, advice given to the novices at the monastery of St Martin of Tours by the eighth-century scholar Alcuin of York, which, according to Alison Fiery, is a “landmark in the history of penance and was widely circulated.”29 In this treatise Alcuin stresses the necessity of confession:30 (Confess your guilt in order that you may be cured by the doctor.)31 Previously he stated:32 (Your confession is the remedy for your wounds and the most certain help for your salvation.)33 The doctor in question is of course Christ, who since late Antiquity was portrayed as a physician.34 The concept of the “physician of souls” is closely connected to the idea that Christ is the soðe læce [true doctor] and by extension his servants, his priests, become his registrars. We find examples of the concept in penitentials, as, for example, in Scriftboc:35 (I confess to God Almighty, and my Confessor, to the physician of souls.)36

Talking About It Confession is an act of verbalising transgression and guilt. As such it unburdens the penitent and offers an opportunity to wipe the soul slate clean. The act of confession is the first step towards healing and requires the penitent to be open about their misdeeds in order to be effective. Regardless of the religious interpretation of sadness as sin, secular writers 27  Roger Fowler, ed., “A Late Old English Handbook for the Use of a Confessor,” Anglia 83 (1965), 19. 28  Kursawa. “Sin as Ailment,” 23. 29  Abigail Firey, A New History of Penance (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 177. 30  “Confitere culpam, ut saneris a medico.” 31  M. Driscoll, ed. and trans., “‘Ad Pueros Sancti Martini’: A critical edition English translation, and study of the Manuscript transmission,” Traditio 53 (1998), 37–61, at 54. 32  “Confessio tua medicina est vulneram tuorum, et salutis tuae certissimum subsidium.” 33  Driscoll, “Ad Pueros,” 52. 34   Gerhard Fichtner, “Christus als Arzt: Ursprünge und Wirkung eines Motivs,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 16 (1982), 1–17. 35  “Ic andetteð ælmihtigum gode & minum scrifte þam gastlican læce.” 36  Frantzen, Handbook, D52.02.01 with very slight change to his translation.

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also consider that the condition must be addressed, not ignored. In her advice for William Dhuoda cautions:37 (Since sorrow springs up in the human heart from various sources, people of greatest experience declare it better to examine sorrow than consign it to oblivion.)38 Dhuoda’s observation chimes with modern treatments of depression, such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy in which a significant aspect is to direct the patient away from their perception of situations. The reasons for depression are manifold, but the repressions of feelings, such as guilt, loss and fear may eventually lead to trauma. While there is surely a difference between sadness, depression and trauma, unresolved experiences may cause significant damage in the long run, and may manifest themselves in other forms, such as violence and self-harm.39 While there are also differences between medieval and modern societies, human responses do not differ significantly. Unresolved emotions may thus be destructive, not just to the individual but also for social coherence. Whether medieval people connected such behaviour to stress and trauma needs to be explored, but they certainly understood the corrosive nature of prolonged emotional distress. Unsurprisingly for a woman of her time, Dhuoda’s response to mental anguish is focussed on the health of the soul and future life, rather than on the healing of any current hurt:40 (I urge you, in that day of hardship and adversity, for the recovery of your soul and equally of your body, if these befall it, to cry for help to the Lord, your protector.)41 The letter from Ælfric and Dhuoda’s handbook suggest that sadness is best resolved by talking to God or one of his representatives, but there is also indication that others sought comfort from their fellow women and men. Some of the most poignant examples of mental distress and hardship come from the so-called Boniface correspondence dated to the eighth century. This collection is centred around the monk Wynfrith/Boniface, who was born in England around 675 CE and who became a missionary in the territories which are now situated in Germany. In his letters he 37  “licet pro aliquibus certis causa tristitia in corde accedat humano, oblivioni censura pertissimi praeponenda esse fatentur.” 38  Liber Manualis, 165; translation by Thiébaux. 39  See, for example, Bessel van der Kolk, Alexander Farlane and Lars Weisaerth, Traumatic Stress: The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body, and Society (London: Guilford, 1996). 40  “ortur ut in die tribulationis et necessitatum, pro recuperatione animae, pariterque et corpori, si evenerint tuo, clames ad Dominum protectorem tuum.” 41  Liber Manualis, 176; translation by Thiébaux.

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repeatedly asks for support in the form of prayers of intercession and copies of religious texts to help him overcome his sadness. One of his confidantes is Eadburg, Abbess of Thanet, to whom he relates his loneliness, but also how much comfort he derived from the written material that she sent to him. For example, in Letter No 30 he tells her that the religious writings she has sent are like a light in this dark corner of Germania without which one could fall to their death.42 While Boniface is less candid with his male correspondents than the women in his circle he occasionally confesses his thoughts to a fellow religious. For example, he asks Bishop Daniel of Winchester for help for his anxiatate mentis (fearful mind) when aliis triste (something sad) befalls him.43 Boniface speaks of exhaustion caused by constant battles with false priests and superstition and fears that his soul may be damaged unless he has the support of intercession. The importance of being able to confide in a kindred soul is exemplified in a letter from Abbess Eangyth and her daughter Haburg (Bugga) to Boniface, which is dated to around 719–720 CE.44 In the letter the women disclose a variety of hardships, including the loss of their parents and relatives, their poverty and the fact that they have enemies inside the court and the cloister. They write: quid dulciuss est, quam habeas illum, cum quo omnia possis loqui ut tecum? Et ideo pro his dumtaxat omnibus miseriarum necessitatibus, quae lacinioso sermone enumeravimus, nobis necessarium fuit, ut queremus amicum fidelem et talem, in quem confidamus melius quam in nosmet ipsos, qui dolores nostros et miserias paupertates suas deputaret et compatiens nobis fuisset et consolaret nos et sustentaret eloquiis suis et saluberiimis sermonibus sublevaret. (How sweet it is to have someone like you with whom one can talk about everything. And especially because of our problems and miseries which we have just enumerated in these few words we feel the necessity to find a faithful friend, one on whom we can depend more than ourselves, who understands our sorrows, our miseries and poverty as much as their own, who suffers with us and who consoles us, who supports and sustains us with their healing words.)45 42  Reinholt Rau, ed. and trans., Die Briefe Bonifatius, Willibalds Leben des Bonifatius (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1968), 104. 43  Ibid., 188. 44  Ibid., 2–61. 45  Ibid., 56.

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Eangyth’s letter is more than the usual exchange of requests for prayer and intercession support. It is a cri de ceur. There is not an immediate response but we know of other letters in which Boniface suggests that tribulations are a test of patience and faith.46 The images of sadness in these letters are replicated in one of the most distinct genres of Old English poetry: the elegies. Peter Dronke and Christine Fell have pointed out that there are similarities between the Boniface correspondence and the elegies.47 In these poems sadness, grief and loss are overarching themes, as many undergraduates who have been introduced to canonical Old English texts may testify. Weary wanderers trudge miserably through ice-cold landscapes, joy is fleeting and life is precarious. The hearts of the lonely travellers must inevitably be bound fast, lips must be sealed and minds must be sad. Just as with the missionaries’ letters, with their emphasis on personal experiences and the use of exile and darkness imagery, they acknowledge that feelings of sadness and loss are suffered by many, if not all. The overlap between the two genres is not accidental. While the origins of the elegies may never be determined, they are products of the same place: preserved and copied in a monastic environment. The idea that the elegies are connected to the religious environment of their time and present concepts which are influenced by theological learning is nothing new.48 For example, Francis Leneghan has argued that “The Wanderer” incorporates patristic ideas.49 He writes that the poem includes ideas by Evagrius Ponticus and Cassian and may have been used as a meditative tool for a monk, especially a young monk in training.50 The elegies tap into an established framework of conceptual metaphors to demonstrate the depth of human emotion, which allows the audience to sympathise. In a recent article Isabel Verdaguer and Emilia Castaño examined the conceptual metaphors of sadness in three of the elegies: “The  See, for example, letter 94; Rau, Briefe Bonifatius, 316–18.  Peter Dronke, Women writers of the Middle Ages: A Critical Study of Texts from Perpetua [d.] 203 to Marguerite Porete [d.] 1310 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Christine Fell, “Some Implications of the Boniface Correspondence,” in New Readings on Women in Old English Literature, ed. Helen Damico and Alexandra Hennessey Olsen (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 29–43. 48  There has been a raft of works which have looked at the ideas of exile in Old English poetry; for an excellent introduction see Christine Fell, “Perceptions of Transience,” in The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature, ed. Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 180–97. 49  Leneghan, “Preparing the Mind for Prayer.” 50  Ibid., 139. 46 47

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Wanderer,” “The Seafarer” and “The Wife’s Lament.”51 Conceptual metaphors explain abstract emotion or feeling by using concrete examples.52 Verdaguer and Castaño write that contemporary conceptualisations of sadness draw on bodily states, such as posture (slumped), low body temperature, weakness and discomfort,53 which find similar representation in Old English. Here, sadness is conceptualised as an illness or an unpleasant condition, illustrated in words such as modseocnes “mind-sickness.”54 They conclude that such metaphors are not just stylistic devices, but are reflections of actual emotions.55 There are metaphors which seem to transcend time. One is that of “disease as an enemy” which occurs in modern discourses on cancer, which needs “battling,” as well as in Old English charms where “flying venoms” attack the body.56 Therefore, while the wording of the symptoms may be unfamiliar we may consider that observations of bodily symptoms are not dissimilar. In modern research mental disorders are categorised by a range of diagnostics, which include the symptoms and severity.57 For depressive disorders there are five major diagnostic criteria, including (1) feeling sad or hopeless most days, and (2) marked loss of interest/joy.58 These are suffered by the speakers of our poems, who describe the conditions: sleeplessness (“The Wife’s Lament”), a catatonic state (“Wulf ond Eadwacer”), the inability to move away from traumatic events. It is tempting to compare such emotions with modern diagnoses of depression, and while back-diagnosing should be avoided, descriptions 51  Iseabel Verdaguer and Emilia Castaño. “The Metaphorical Conceptualization of Sadness in Anglo-Saxon Elegies,” Journal of Literary Semantics 47, no. 2 (2018), 85–102. 52  Definitions of conceptual metaphor theories go back to George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s influential work Metaphors We Live by (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980). 53  Verdaguer and Castaño, “Metaphoric Conceptualisation,” 86. 54  Ibid., 90. 55  Ibid., 98. 56  These metaphors have been explored by Stefanie Künzel, “Þu miht wiþ þam Laþan ge geond lond færð: Conceptualisations of Disease and Disability in Anglo-Saxon Charms,” in New Approaches to Disease, Disability and Medicine in Medieval Europe, ed. E. Connelly and S. Künzel (Oxford: BAR, 2018), 5–18; Stefanie Künzel, “Concepts of Infectious, Contagious, and Epidemic Disease in Anglo-Saxon England” (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Nottingham, 2017). The “flying disease” occurs, amongst other places, in the “Nine Herbs Charm.” 57  One of the most widely referred to is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders [DSM-5] which has been released by the American Psychiatric Association American Psychiatric Association Task Force in 2013 (Arlington: American Psychiatric Association, 2013). 58  Ibid., 160–8.

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of “sadness” here may be a closer to what we would describe as depression, rather than just sadness. The elegies draw a sharp distinction between stages of being, and while the literal state of being out of place (exiled) is one condition of human nature, it is clear that the characters in them suffer more than their fellow human beings.

Canst Thou Not Minister to a Mind Diseased?59 While Cassian and Ælfric may consider depression a sin, they must have been aware that such emotions were suffered by their flock, and perhaps even themselves.60 Moreover, those who were able to read the Bible must have been aware that even biblical figures suffered periods of depression. Monks and nuns in early medieval England were familiar with the psalms, which contain elements of dejection, sadness and fear. These should not be confused with other forms of hardship which are ubiquitous depictions of martyrdom or as part of homiletic writings. Pain and hardship are described as important aspects of salvation, but the experience is largely physical. Esther Cohen describes the contradictory function of pain in her examination of late medieval culture; as a universal human experience pain is a useful tool for theologians, but also a tool for social coherence: “Pain was a source of salvation and punishment, said theologians. Pain was a source of justice and truth, said jurists.”61 The idea that suffering is a useful tool can also be found in Gregory the Great who connects sinfulness with wounding in his Regula Pastoralis, which was an important source for King Alfred and Ælfric alike.62 Saints’ lives and sermons served the purpose of reminding the audience of the sacrifices that were made on their behalf and exhorting them to live better lives. Depictions of physical pain were not meant to be emulated, rather, they emphasised the difference between the saint and their audience. Depictions of sadness and mental anguish, however, are different. First and foremost, because few saints’ lives contain descriptions of mental anguish or sadness suffered by the holy  William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 5, scene 3.  Russel points out that Cassian speaks of having experienced acedia when he first went into the Egyptian desert, “John Cassian,” 11. 61  Esther Cohen, The Modulated Scream: Pain in Late Medieval Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 145. 62  John Hosler, “Gregory the Great’s Gout,” in Where Heaven and Earth meet: Essays on Medieval Europe in Honor of Daniel F. Callahan, ed. M. Frassetto, J. Hosler and M. Gabriele (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 11–32. 59 60

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woman or man. Instead, narratives around sadness, while clearly steeped in theology, are not set in a religious environment, but in spaces which are characterised by physicality—from the cold that engulfs the seafarer to the remote place inhabited by the “Wife” of the “Wife’s Lament” poem. In contrast to saints’ lives which are normally written in third-person narrative, these apply first-person narration, with the result that they portray highly personal descriptions of emotions. The elegies give a voice to feelings which may have been experienced by members of the audience, but which are difficult to express as individuals, because they are associated with shame, such as rape or sexual violence. Scientific research has shown that only a minority of the population develops PTSD, but that the likelihood of developing trauma is cumulative: those who have experienced traumatic events before are at much higher risk.63 The experience of trauma is therefore not even, gender and status must also have been factors in the ways in which forms of restitution, such as criminal justice, could be a form of healing. For some individuals it may have been impossible to voice their experiences, partly because they found that others denied the severity of their experience, or that it would challenge brittle treaties, or, as in the case of male rape, because it undermined their status and personhood. Whereas the learned monk and nun had recourse to texts, such as the psalms that acknowledge suffering and mental pain, for lay communities listening to poetry that talks about pain and suffering in a “safe” space is a place where mental anguish and pain is acknowledged and, to a certain extent, processed. Old English heroic poetry celebrates those who sacrificed themselves, but it leaves open the question of what happens to those who grow old and who  have to continue living with the memories of loss. Did they repress their feelings because they contained an element of stigma, or because they felt that it was inappropriate to complain when others suffered worse fates? Women and children were also affected by war, although they were not involved in combat. While war and the heroic life were considered to be particularly masculine experiences, we need to remember that conflict affects both genders. As mothers and widows women could be affected by the outcomes of fighting, and in some cases it may have affected them more since the death of a husband or son may 63  A large-scale world-wide study is discussed in R. Kessler et al., “Trauma and PTSD in WHO World Mental Health Surveys,” European Journal of Psychotraumatology 8 (2017) DOI: 10.1080/20008198.2017.1353383.

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have meant a loss of livelihood. Women may also have experienced rape and physical assault, or suffered the consequences of their husband’s or family’s political moves. Since war, famine or epidemics are collective experiences, women and men who found themselves unable to cope with traumatic stress may not have been able to share their feelings with members of their community, or even their confessor. Caruth has shown that literature can mirror traumatic evidence and even make visible traumatic encounters.64 Of course, sadness is not necessarily related to trauma, but many of the elegies depict death, loss and abandonment. Literature gives form to the feelings that have been experienced by several members of a group, such as violence through war, slavery or genocide, but which may have to be suppressed by the individual. Judith Lewis Herman writes: The ordinary response to atrocities is to banish them from consciousness. […] Atrocities, however, refuse to be buried. […] Remembering and telling the truth about terrible events are prerequisites both for the restoration of social order and for healing of individual victims.65

The feelings depicted in the elegies are not egalitarian, they are related to an elite group of men and women who had much to lose from social deprivation. The poems are thus able to voice emotions which victims may not have been able to express. The Wanderer in the poem of the same name tells us:66 (There is now no-one among the living to whom I openly dare tell my mind) (ll. 9b-11a) at the very moment when he shares his story of grief and loss. The juxtaposition of not being able to tell anyone and yet telling everyone mirrors the experience of the audience member who listens to the most personal account in a public setting. Michael Matto in his essay on “The Seafarer” has suggested that the technique of “confessional performance” allows the “I” of the speaker to become everyone’s experience.67 The contribution that literature can make to healing has been discussed since the last decades of the last millennium, but the knowledge that 64  Cathy Caruth, Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press: 1996). 65  Herman, Trauma and Recovery, 16. 66  “Nis nu cwicra nan þe ic him modsefan mine durre sweotule asecgan”. 67  Michael Matto, “True Confessions: ‘The Seafarer’ and the Technologies of the ‘Sylf,’” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 103, no. 2 (2004), 174–5.

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literature can play a role in healing goes back a millennium and more.68 Daniel McCann has recently explored therapeutic reading in later medieval England and uses the term the term “soul health.”69 He points out that reading was regarded as medicinal in antique sources, such as Celsus’s De Medicina.70 Private reading is not the norm in early medieval societies and we can only speculate where encounters with such texts took place. While written forms survive, they are normally considered to derive from an oral culture in which a group of people listens to the poetry.71 The communal setting may be an important aspect, since it is a “safe space” in which the individual memory is expressed by the narrator. Judith Herman suggests that trauma recovery requires three stages: sharing the traumatic experience in a safe space, remembrance and mourning and reconnection.72 In several of the elegies, including “The Wanderer” and “The Seafarer,” there is a process which takes the speakers from past experience to a point of acceptance. To a certain extent, the narrators in the elegies become proxy confessors. These confessions, include admittances of sadness—the wanderer tells us that despite everything his mind does not darken (ll. 58–9). Wehlau observes that there is a difference between the figure of the Wanderer and the seafarer in so far as the Seafarer’s world has fallen and he is merely passing through.73 The poem presents the futility of the world and worldly ritual, which will not be of help to the dead: Ne mæg him þonne se flæschoma, | þonne him þæt feorg losað, ne swete forswelgan | ne sar gefelan, ne hond onhreran | ne mid hyge þencan. Þeah þe græf wille | golde stregan broþor his geborenum, | byrganbe deadum, maþmum mislicum | þæt hine mid wille, ne mæg þære sawle | þe biþ synna ful gold to geoce | for godes egsan, þonne he hit ær hydeð | þenden he her leofað. (ll. 94-102) 68  For an overview see Paul Crawford et  al., “Applied Literature,” Health Humanities (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 38–59. 69  Daniel McCann, Soul Health: Therapeutic Reading in Later Medieval England (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2018). 70  Ibid., 7–9. 71  For textual communities see Hugh Magennis, Images of Community in Old English Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), esp. 9–12. 72  Herman, Trauma and Recovery. 73  Wehlau, “Seeds of Sorrow,” 9.

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(Then, when his life is perished his body cannot taste sweetness, nor feel pain, nor move the hand, or think with his mind. Although a brother wants to strew his sibling’s grave with gold, bury the dead with many treasures that he wants to be with him, the soul which is full of sins cannot be aided with gold, that he has hidden before while he lived, against God’s anger.)

While both Wanderer and Seafarer confess their troubled states, there is indeed a subtle difference: the Wanderer is at the point of confession whereas the seafarer is at the point of acceptance. In many, but not all, of the elegies there is resolution to the current state of mind. The Seafarer is promised a different life in which sadness is replaced by joy “hyht in heofonum” (hope in the heavens) (l. 122a), the Wanderer may get his bot (l. 113b), a word which can mean remedy as well as recompense and which is of course a component of dædbot “penance.” Both Wehlau and Leneghan have shown that the poems reflect religious ideas that sadness is overcome by joy, and this is mainly the joys of the next life.74 Similar to the penitent who confesses their sins and is now ready to accept the punishment that is meted out to them, the poems take the audience from sadness to a point of acceptance with a view that their pain in this life will be resolved in the next. It is interesting that at such detachment is not granted to the female speakers of two of the canonical elegies: “The Wife’s Lament” and “Wulf and Eadwacer.” While both Wanderer and Seafarer are on a journey which essentially also allows them to move away fron their troubles, the women are rooted in a hostile landscape from where they cannot escape. For both female speakers, sadness is the result of man-made hostilities, and they are not able to move forward, partly because the men they love have changed.75 It is possible that the heardsæligne (l. 19 a) man in the “Wife’s Lament” is the same person whom she loved and longed for, but who is now changed underneath his cheerful demeanour. There is no recourse or restitution from a man who is damaged by trauma, who has closed himself off in some form of mental exile. The poems may indeed give voice to women who “lost” a loved one to trauma and who have to live with changes to personhood in a loved one which they may not be able to confide—even to their confessor. There is no resolution “nemne deað ana” (l. 22, apart from death) which can resolve this situation.  Wehlau, “Seeds of Sorrow,” 3; Leneghan, “Preparing the Mind for Prayer,” 122.  I am greatly indebted to Paul Cavill here for his comments and suggestions.

74 75

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Conclusion The “Wanderer” and “Seafarer” poems demonstrate that sadness is curable. We may consider that depictions of depression may not be the best cure for those who are living with a serious ailment, but we may consider that early medieval medicine, just as other medieval medicines, had a concept of “sympathetic medicine” in which conditions are treated through like-with-like remedies. Similar to religious acts of confession, or even influenced by such processes, the elegies, letters and Dhuoda’s Handbook show the importance of verbalising feelings so that they can be resolved. In the process of listening the audience, far from being passive bystanders, thus become actively involved in the process of reliving, resolving and healing. While the focus of the “Wife’s Lament” is different since it does not offer a solution, the depiction of the anguish suffered by a woman seeing a loved one retreating into darkness may also be helpful, since it acknowledges that this situation is “real” and that feelings of loneliness and pain are justifiable. While the saints of hagiography lead by example, these poems offer sympathy to those who experience the darkness of the soul.

Bibliography Primary Sources Augustine. S. Aurelii Augustini Hipponensis Episcopi Enchiridion Ad Laurentium sive de Fide, Spe et Caritate. Edited by J.-P. Migne. Patrologiae cursus completus, series Latina 40. Paris: Gaume Fratres, 1863. Baker, Peter and Michael Lapidge, eds. Byrhtferth’s Enchiridion. Early English Text Society, Supplementary Series 15. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. Clemoes, Peter. Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies, First Series. Early English Text Society, Supplementary Series 17. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Driscoll, Michael S. “Ad Pueros Sancti Martini: A critical edition English translation, and study of the Manuscript transmission.” Traditio 53 (1998): 37–61. The Exeter Book. Edited by George F.  Krapp and Elliott v. K.  Dobbie. ASPR III. New York and London, Columbia University Press, 1936. Fehr, Bernhard. Die Hirtenbriefe Ælfrics in Altenglischer Und Lateinischer Fassung. Bibliothek der Angelsächsischen Prosa 9. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1966.

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Fowler, Roger, ed. “A Late Old English Handbook for the Use of a Confessor.” Anglia 83 (1965): 1–34. Frantzen, Allen J. Handbook D. Anglo-Saxon Penitentials: A Cultural Database . Godden, Malcolm R. “Lives 1 (Nativity of Christ) (C.B.1.3.2),” May 20, 2002. Fontes Anglo-Saxonici: World Wide Web Register . Skeat, Walter, ed. and trans. Ælfric’s Lives of Saints. Early English Text Society Original Series, 2 volumes 76, 81, 94 and 114. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1881/1885. Thiébaux, Marcelle, ed. and trans. Dhuoda: Liber Manualis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Secondary Sources Bremmer, Rolf H. Jr “Looking Back at Anger: Wrath in Anglo-Saxon England,” The Review of English Studies, New Series 66, no. 275 (2015), 423–48. Caruth, Cathy. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. Cohen, Esther. The Modulated Scream: Pain in Late Medieval Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010. Crawford, Paul et al. “Applied Literature.” In Health Humanities, edited by Paul Crawford et al., 38–59. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Dronke, Peter. Women writers of the Middle Ages: A critical study of texts from Perpetua [d.] 203 to Marguerite Porete [d.] 1310. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Fay, Jacqueline. “Treating Age in Early Medieval England.” In Early Medieval English Life Courses: Cultural Historical Perspectives. Explorations in Medieval Culture 20. Edited by Thijs Porck and Harriet Soper. Leiden: Brill, 2022. Fell, Christine. “Perceptions of Transience.” In The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature, edited by Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge, 180–97. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Fell, Christine. “Some implications of the Boniface Correspondence.” In New Readings on Women in Old English Literature, edited by Helen Damico and Alexandra Hennessey Olsen, 29–43 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990). Fichtner, Gerhard. “Christus als Arzt: Ursprünge und Wirkung eines Motivs.” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 16 (1982): 1–17. Firey, Abigail. A New History of Penance. Brill’s Companions to Christian Tradition 14. Leiden: Brill, 2008.

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Foxhall-Forbes, Helen. “The Theology of the Afterlife in the early Middle Ages, c.400–c.1000.” In Imagining the Medieval Afterlife, edited by Richard Pollar, 153–75. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Hosler, John. “Gregory the Great’s Gout.” In Where Heaven and Earth meet: Essays on Medieval Europe in Honor of Daniel F. Callahan, edited by Michael Frassetto, John Hosler and Matthew Gabriele, 11–32. Leiden: Brill, 2014. Izdebska, Daria. “The Semantic field of ANGER in Old English.” Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Glasgow, 2015. Kessler et  al. “Trauma and PTSD in WHO World Mental Health Surveys.” European Journal of Psychotraumatology 8 (2017). Knight, Gwendolyne. “‘The Night is Dark and Full of Terrors’: Darkness, Terror, and Perception in Anglo-Saxon England.” In Darkness, Depression, and Descent in Anglo-Saxon England, edited by Ruth Wehlau, 37–60. Berlin, Boston: Medieval Institute Publications, 2019. van der Kolk, Bessel, Alexander Farlane and Lars Weisaerth, Traumatic Stress: The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body, and Society (New York and London: Guilford, 1996). Künzel, Stefanie. “Concepts of Infectious, Contagious, and Epidemic Disease in Anglo-Saxon England.” Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Nottingham, 2017. Künzel, Stefanie. “Þu miht wiþ þam Laþan ge geond lond færð: Conceptualisations of Disease and Disability in Anglo-Saxon Charms.” In New Approaches to Disease, Disability and Medicine in Medieval Europe, edited E.  Connelly and S. Künzel, 5–18. Oxford: BAR, 2018. Kursawa, Wilhelm. “Sin as Ailment of Soul and Repentance as the Process of its Healing: the pastoral concept of penitentials as a way of dealing with sin, repentance and forgiveness in the insular Church of the sixth to the eighth centuries,” Perichoresis 14, no. 3 (2016): 21–45. Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980. Lee, Christina. “Healing Words: St Guthlac and the Trauma of War.” In Trauma in Medieval Society, edited by Wendy J.  Turner and Christina Lee, 259–73. Leiden: Brill, 2018. Leneghan, Francis. “Preparing the Mind for Prayer: The Wanderer, Hesychasm and Theosis.” Neophilologus 100, no. 1 (2016): 121–42. Magennis, Hugh. Images of Community in Old English Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Matto, Michael. “True Confessions: ‘The Seafarer’ and the Technologies of the ‘Sylf’.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 103, no. 2 (2004): 156–79. McCann, Daniel. Soul Health: Therapeutic Reading in Later Medieval England. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2018.

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CHAPTER 8

The Hagiographers of Early England and the Impossible Humility of the Saints Rosalind Love

Humility is making a modest come-back these days, at least in some circles, as suggested by popular books like Radical Humility: Essays on Ordinary Acts, which focus on humility as reflected in day-to-day behaviour towards others.1 As a subject of academic study, it has recently been the focus of a handbook of forty-one essays, looking at humility in politics, religious thought, psychology, and much more.2 Nonetheless humility has  Rebekah Modrak and Jamie Vander Broek, eds, Radical Humility: Essays on Ordinary Acts (Cleveland, OH: Belt Publishing, 2021). 2  The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Humility, ed. Mark Alfano, Michael P. Lynch, and Alessandra Tanesini (London: Routledge, 2020). 1

R. Love (*) Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 E. Sebo et al. (eds.), Emotional Alterity in the Medieval North Sea World, Palgrave Studies in the History of Emotions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33965-3_8

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a long way to claw itself back from the losses of the Enlightenment era and the often-quoted derision of David Hume, who included it among the “monkish virtues” which “stupify the understanding and harden the heart.” Victorian-era caricatures such as Charles Dickens’s Uriah Heap or the odious product of the same decade, Anthony Trollope’s Obadiah Slope (Barchester Towers and The Warden), with his tissue-thin veneer of humility, did nothing to help. The fact that the early twenty-first century added to the English dictionary a new noun and matching verb, “humblebrag” and “to humble-brag,” suggests that we have not got past an attitude of suspicion towards humility, at a time when the ego seems to have the upper hand in public discourse and social interaction.

Is Humility an Emotion? What is a study of humility doing in a volume on the unfamiliarity of the emotions depicted in medieval literature? Is it an emotion at all? In fact, just as in the patristic and medieval period theologians debated humility’s status as a virtue, there is no consensus on whether humility belongs on the emotional spectrum, but within the field of academic psychological assessment, there are those who argue compellingly for humility as affective, displaying some features that are typical of more well-defined and recognisable emotions (e.g., it is preceded by “cognitive appraisal” of a situation, a self-evaluation perhaps, which could be said to trigger the emotion), alongside other features that would categorise it rather as an attitude of mind and a character trait.3 The same research group identified humility as a so-called emotion plot, that is, a complex combination of several basic emotions or affective responses that involves an unfolding narrative—a concept very relevant for considering humility as presented in hagiography.4 They concluded from a variety of studies of living subjects that as an emotion, humility has two dimensions, on the one hand what they term appreciative, “other-oriented,” humility, prevailingly viewed as positive, over against self-abasing humility, which leads to submissive 3  Aaron C.  Weidman and Jessica L.  Tracy, “Is Humility a Sentiment?” Behavioural and Brain Sciences 40 (2017): e251. See also V. Saroglou, C. Buxant, and J. Tilquin, “Positive Emotions as Leading to Religion and Spirituality”, The Journal of Positive Psychology 3 (2008): 165–73. On emotional plots, see P.  Ekman, “An Argument for Basic Emotion”, Cognition and Emotion 6:3–4 (1992): 194. 4  Aaron C. Weidman, Joey T. Cheng and Jessica L. Tracy, “The Psychological Structure of Humility”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 114(1) (2018): 153–178, at 155.

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behaviours, is linked to feelings of shame, and is what the authors term the “darker side” of humility.5 This “darker side” is the stereotype of fawning submission that tends to be assumed as the meaning of humility by many twenty-first-century readers of medieval literature and felt to be the most alien to the average modern psyche. The study by Weidman and colleagues included a brief appraisal of late antique and medieval conceptions of humility, summarised as “a low opinion of oneself, correspondent with frequent and demonstrative self-­ abasement before a greater, divine power”, most decidedly a manifestation of the “darker side”.6 With all due respect to the specific expertise of the authors, that necessarily brief summary is an over-generalisation of the stance of Christian writers. It is arguable that the humility referred to in Christian literature can just as easily be the appreciative humility described by Weidman and colleagues as it can be their “darker” self-abasing form. The need for greater nuance is highlighted in two relatively recent examinations of the question in the realm of medieval literature and theology, namely Jane Foulcher’s Reclaiming Humility. Four Studies in the Monastic Tradition and a 2019 Duke University doctoral thesis by Grace E.  Hamman, “Matter of Meekness: Reading Humility in Late Medieval England”.7 The former places humility within the context of a monastic understanding of human life as a journey towards God and notes that “humility and humiliation are necessarily, if dangerously, related.”8 Of particular value for the present enquiry, Foulcher offers a careful analysis (Chap. 3) of Benedict’s understanding of humility, as presented in his Rule. For her part, Hamman examined texts such as Pearl and the Showings of Julian of Norwich, and advanced the powerful argument that our modern post-enlightenment (mis)conception of humility prevents an adequate appreciation of the significance of the virtue to medieval thinkers and writers. Her introductory chapter sets out the issues very persuasively. She contends that humility came to be about honest self-knowledge that leads not to blind submissiveness, degrading self-deprecation, but “true self-knowledge that embraces creatively our limitations in order to  Weidman, Cheng and Tracy, “The Psychological Structure of Humility,” 154.  Ibid. 7  Jane Foulcher, Reclaiming Humility Four Studies in the Monastic Tradition (Collegeville, MN: Cistercian Publications, 2015); Grace Hamman, “Matter of Meekness: Reading Humility in Late Medieval England” (Unpublished PhD thesis, Duke University, 2019). https://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/dspace/handle/10161/18676 8  Foulcher, Reclaiming Humility, 174. 5 6

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recognise the vastness of the love of God”.9 Hamman identifies a “conceptual slippage” by which modern ideas of humility are projected back on to medieval texts; she notes, “its ubiquity in medieval texts lends itself to impressions of clichéd dullness,” impressions which certainly tend to arise from a cursory reading of medieval hagiography.10 In the light of these two profoundly insightful discussions, the present essay will attempt to ask whether a survey of the presentation of humility in hagiography from early England can confirm the stereotype or nuance it. Did hagiographers simply present their subjects as self-abasingly humble, unappealingly grovelling as it might seem to modern eyes, acting out a trope, or is there more to the humility of the saints?

Early Hagiography in England: Cuthbert of Lindisfarne and Wilfrid of Ripon The foremost task of hagiographers of every era was to present their saint as Christ-like, and central to that was the humility of the Incarnation: the choice to put aside lofty status and become lowly, a choice to which all followers of Christ are called in Matthew 11.29: “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me: for I am meek and humble in heart.” Accordingly, humility and meekness are attributes mentioned extremely frequently in hagiographical character-sketches and might perhaps seem to have become a feature of sanctity that can be taken for granted. Here is humility as character trait, a virtue claimed as possessed life-long by the saint. How often, though, is that virtue dwelt upon and exemplified, with what particular nuance, and to what end? Can we see it moving from character trait to “emotion plot”? Does saintly humility become more or less alien or alienating for modern readers when it makes that transition? And what was its intended effect upon medieval readers? Hagiographers had nearly as many purposes in writing as there are varieties of text about saints, and not all of them especially lofty, but at least part of the genre’s intention was to model patterns of behaviour in the same way that medieval spiritual handbooks did.11 This chapter will conclude with a look at just such a  Hamman, “Matter of Meekness”, 16.  Ibid., 10. 11  On hagiography as normative and creating an “emotional community” thereby, cf. Barbara Rosenwein, Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), 25. 9

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handbook, written by a hagiographer. Hagiography was a protean literary genre that spreads across all eras, languages, and regions, but this essay has the modest aim of examining the presentation of humility in a relatively small representative slice of textual evidence that happens to be very familiar to the present author, namely life-writing in Latin from early England, from its beginnings in the late seventh century up to the years just after the Norman Conquest. The earliest surviving saint’s life from England is the biography of St Cuthbert written on Lindisfarne, presumably by a member of the community there, and dated to somewhere between 699 and 705.12 Shortly after its completion, Bede wrote a poetic version of that text’s narratives, but then in about 720, he thoroughly rewrote the anonymous prose Vita at the request of the Lindisfarne community, for a variety of reasons.13 In what follows, we will read the two prose versions side by side. The anonymous Vita S. Cuthberti is a text that depends quite heavily and visibly on earlier hagiographical models, and this is very much the case for the sketch of Cuthbert’s character which the unknown author provides at the point when the saint is consecrated as bishop. To highlight the fact that he was unchanged by his elevation to high office, remaining constant to his former demeanour, the hagiographer exclaims “he showed the same humility of heart, the same poverty of dress”.14 This, indeed the whole passage, draws verbatim on the late-fourth-century Vita of St Martin of Tours by Sulpicius Severus, a leading hagiographical model for episcopal confessor saints. The topos is thus handed on from model to new saint, in that manner peculiar to hagiography which tends to bleach out the authentic meaning of such statements. That said, the anonymous hagiographer was extremely intentional in his borrowings, carefully applying subtle modifications where appropriate. That is noticeable, for example, in the case of the non-biblical source he turns to next, namely Isidore’s De ecclesiasticis officiis. This he uses to continue his portrait of the ideal bishop, emphasising again the same attributes, among them “fulfilling

12  Bertram Colgrave, ed. and trans., Two Lives of St Cuthbert, reprint (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985 (1940)), 60–139. 13  See the summary in Alan Thacker, “Wilfrid, his Cult and his Biographer,” in Wilfrid: Abbot, Bishop, Saint, ed. N.J. Higham (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2013), 11–13. 14  Anon., Vita S. Cuthberti IV.1 (Colgrave, Two Lives, 110–1): “eadem in corde humilitas, eadem in uestitu eius uilitas erat”.

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the duty of peace among his brethren, holding fast to humility”.15 It is noteworthy that the hagiographer omitted Isidore’s coupling of humility with authority (humilitate pariter et auctoritate) in order to harmonise with the emphasis on the hermit’s natural sense of lowliness which he picked up from Sulpicius Severus.16 That same passage of Isidore was lifted, again verbatim and indirectly via the intermediary of the Lindisfarne Vita of Cuthbert, into the Vita of St Wilfrid of Ripon by Stephen (written between 712 and 714), including the statement about holding fast to humility.17 Such hagiographical plagiarism had its ecclesio-political reasons in this particular case, reflecting a jostling for power and status between Ripon and Lindisfarne, but it is also within the rules, so to speak, of hagiography, making saint after saint follow the same model, the humble Jesus.18 This seems like exactly the “clichéd dullness” of references to saintly humility which Hamman had in mind in her study.19 In the case of Wilfrid, other evidence suggests that there was a far-from-meek side to his personality, but to Stephen, his hagiographer, that would be neither here nor there, and in fact, the saint’s humility, as we shall see in a moment, emerges as a theme that is given strong emphasis in that particular biography. First let us return to St Cuthbert. One of the ways that Bede rewrote the anonymous narrative was to eliminate almost completely its extensive verbatim dependence on earlier hagiography and other texts. Thus at the moment of Cuthbert’s elevation to the bishopric, instead of the borrowings from Sulpicius Severus and Isidore, Bede offered a tighter, more biblically-based sketch of the character of the ideal bishop: a man who prays constantly for his flock, 15  Colgrave, Two Lives, 112–13: “cum fratribus pacem implens, tenens quoque humilitatem…”. 16  Isidore, De ecclesiasticis officiis II.v.17, ed. C.W. Lawson, Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 113 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1989), 63. This difference is picked out in the careful analysis of these texts by Clare Stancliffe in “Disputed Episcopacy: Bede, Acca, Stephen’s Life of Wilfrid and the early prose Lives of St Cuthbert,” Anglo-Saxon England 41 (2014), 16. 17  Bertram Colgrave, ed. and trans. The Life of Bishop Wilfrid by Eddius Stephanus 11, reprint (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985 (1927)), 24–5. The precise dating for the text was proposed by Clare Stancliffe, “Dating Wilfrid’s Death and Stephen’s Life,” in Wilfrid: Abbot, Bishop, Saint, 17–26. 18  As Thacker put it, “Stephen’s own contribution to the debate was to appropriate and upstage the Lindisfarne Life’s presentation of its hero’s sanctity;” “Wilfrid: His Cult and His Biographer,” 12. 19  Hamman, “Matter of Meekness”, 10.

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teaches them, leads by example, tends to the poor and needy, comforts the sorrowful, practises frugality, and “rejoiced to preserve the rigours of monastic life”.20 The emphasis on humility as flowing seamlessly from the reclusive ways of a hermit to a bishop’s public-facing manner has disappeared or, perhaps, is subsumed into the “the inward virtues” (internis … uirtutibus) proper to a leader of the church in the Gregorian mould.21 After this, explicit reference to the value Cuthbert placed on humility only resurfaces in Bede’s account when the saint comes to his dying moments; in a section of narrative with no parallel in the earlier Vita he reported that Cuthbert’s last utterance is “a few weighty words about peace and humility”.22 What the dying saint had to say on the subject of humility turns out to be a clear description of appreciative “other-oriented” humility: “do not despise those of the household of faith who come to you for the sake of hospitality, but see that you receive them, keep them, and send them away with friendly kindness, by no means thinking yourselves better than others who are your fellows in the same faith and manner of life.”23 Hospitality turns out to have an intimate connection to depictions of humility in action. The one other time that the anonymous Lindisfarne hagiographer referred to Cuthbert’s own humility is within a story from the saint’s early life (II.2) when, as a novice at Ripon, he was given the task of serving guests and offered hospitality to a figure whom he presumed to be a mortal but who was an angel. We learn that Cuthbert received the figure kindly, as was his custom, washed his hands and feet, “humbly rubbing them to warm them on account of the cold”.24 This is a simple gesture of loving service to another, Christ-like in its imitation of the moments on the first Maundy Thursday when Christ washed the feet of his disciples. The author was doubtless aware of the Gospel echo but did not feel the need to refer to it explicitly, not least because his focus is chiefly on highlighting another typological resonance, with the Old Testament story 20  Bede, Vita S. Cuthberti 26 (Colgrave, Two Lives of St Cuthbert, 242–3): “monachicae uitae rigorem sollicitus obseruare gaudebat”. 21  On Bede’s recourse to Gregorian stylisation of Cuthbert as ideal monk-pastor, see Alan Thacker, “Bede’s Ideal of Reform,” in Ideal and Reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Society, ed. P. Wormald (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983), 138–42. 22  “pauca sed fortia de pace et humilitate”. 23  Bede, Vita S. Cuthberti 39 (Colgrave, Two Lives of St Cuthbert, 282–3). 24  Anon., Vita S.  Cuthberti II.2 (Colgrave, Two Lives of St Cuthbert, 76–7): “humiliter propter frigorem fricans et calefaciens”.

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of Abraham and the hospitality he offered, unknowingly, to three divine guests.25 In the anonymous hagiographer’s simple narrative, humility is bodied forth in action, evinced in one’s behaviour towards others, that is, appreciative, “other-oriented” humility. Of course, one can construe serving others in this way negatively as a submissive gesture, but I would argue that that is a mis-reading of this scene and its intention. Bede’s Vita S. Cuthberti retains this anecdote without much alteration but, as part of the text’s agenda to call for a reform of pastoral care on the part of the church’s leaders, adds at the end of it a more pointedly didactic commentary, that the incident prompted Cuthbert to give “greater heed for this reason to works of virtue”.26 There are two other occasions when the unknown Lindisfarne hagiographer refers to humility explicitly, and in both cases, it is with reference to non-human characters in the narrative. The first is in an anecdote which comes immediately after that of the angelic guest in the Vita. The story relates to Cuthbert’s stay at the monastery of Coldingham, during which he took to walking on the seashore by night and immersing himself in the chilly waves of the North Sea. As he emerged from the sea, two aquatic animals approached “humbly prostrate on the ground, licking his feet … and warming them with their breath”.27 The Latin adjective humilis and its related noun and adverb derive from the Latin word for soil or earth, humus, and so in a sense it is stating the obvious to say that the animals, usually presumed in this narrative to be sea-otters, are literally “close to the soil” or perhaps “earth-bound”.28 But the author, I would suggest, is more intentional in his use of the adverb than mere literal description. The sea-otters could be seen as behaving tamely and submissively in the presence of a holy person, a recognisable topos in hagiography that has been suggested as evoking “the Edenic obedience of animals to their true

25  Genesis 18.1–8. The anonymous writes sicut patriarchae Abrahe in ualle Mambre angeli in forma uirorum apparuerunt (“just as angels appeared to the patriarch Abraham in the valley of Mamre in the form of men”), Colgrave, Two Lives of St Cuthbert, 76–7. 26  Bede, Vita S. Cuthberti 7 (Colgrave, Two Lives of St Cuthbert, 176–9). On Bede’s pastoral agenda, see Thacker, “Bede’s Ideal of Reform”. 27  Anon., Vita S.  Cuthberti II.3 (Colgrave, Two Lives of St Cuthbert, 80–1): “humiliter proni in terram, lambentes pedes eius …. et calefacientes odoribus suis”. 28  In Bede’s version of the story, he specifies that the animals are quadrupedia quae uulgo lutraeae uocantur (“four-footed creatures which are commonly called otters”); Vita S. Cuthberti 10 (Colgrave, Two Lives of St Cuthbert, 190–1).

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superior, the saint.”29 That the anonymous hagiographer placed this story immediately after his account of the saint’s own gentle service to an angel can also be seen as a commentary on the nature of humility as an instinctive God-like approach to interactions with others: Cuthbert humbly ministered to a messenger of God and in his turn received ministry from God’s creatures. Bede includes this story also but separates it from the account of the angelic visitation by the interposition of other narratives and shifts the emphasis subtly to make the anecdote more clearly about the natural authority of the holy man.30 The second narrative involving the humility of non-human creatures which the anonymous hagiographer offers concerns some ravens caught stealing nesting material from the thatched roof of a shelter on Cuthbert’s hermitage island, Inner Farne. Cuthbert waves the birds away, but when they ignore his gesture, he then banishes them more pointedly, and they fly off but three days later return penitently, “with humble cries asking his pardon and indulgence”, also bringing a gift of lard, and thus are allowed to resume dwelling on Inner Farne.31 The story is told thus straightforwardly. Again, Bede retained this anecdote, but this time reframed it, to bring out the didactic point more strongly. He introduced the tale already in this spirit, as one “in which human pride and contumacy are openly condemned by the obedience and humility of birds”. Then the narrative follows the same pattern as in the anonymous Vita—Cuthbert banishes the birds; one of them returns seeking forgiveness, humiliata uoce; they bring an offering of lard and are permitted to stay on Inner Farne. Bede noted that Cuthbert kept the lard and offered it to visitors, along with an exegesis of the story, “declaring how carefully men should seek after obedience and humility, seeing that even a proud bird hastened to atone for the wrong that it had done to a man of God.”32 Again Bede’s approach to a story told simply by the anonymous author is influenced by Gregory the Great’s earlier presentation of animal interactions with a saint whose clear authority is

29  Dominic Alexander, Saints and Animals in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2008), 46. 30  Bede, Vita S.  Cuthberti 10 (Colgrave, Two Lives of St Cuthbert, 190–1). Alexander observes, “at the core of the story, in terms of animal miracles, is the symbolism of divine hierarchy,” Saints and Animals, 46. 31  Anon. Vita S. Cuthberti III.5 (Colgrave, Two Lives of St Cuthbert, 102–3): “humili uoce ueniam indulgentie deposcens”. 32  Bede, Vita S. Cuthberti 20 (Colgrave, Two Lives of St Cuthbert, 222–5).

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recognised by obedient and submissive creatures.33 The lesson he wishes his readers to draw from the ravens’ behaviour is one of the need for submissive humility in relation to figures of authority and humiliation at the uncovering of wrong-doing, underlined much more emphatically than in the anonymous telling of the story. These two presentations of Cuthbert have comparable but distinct approaches to the saint’s humble demeanour—the anonymous hagiographer’s monk-bishop who, in the mould of Martin, clings to his early humility when raised unwillingly to high office, holding it in tension with the dignity of his new role, alongside Bede’s holy man whose episcopal authority springs from his recognition for the need for virtue. Of the two writers, Bede is at the same time more inclined to take saintly humility for granted as a character trait but also uses references to the need for humility as teaching points. We have already seen that Stephen’s Life of St Wilfrid appropriates the language of the anonymous Life of Cuthbert, itself directly indebted to an earlier source. It is striking to find that apart from the character-sketch we have already noted, Stephen applies humilis or the cognate noun and adverb some twenty-six times in relation to the saint or his behaviour. That is not surprising for a text that has been described as “a defensive work” seeking to prove divine sanction for Wilfrid’s attainment of high office: in other words, the emphasis on humility seems purposeful in this case.34 It would be tedious to discuss every instance—humility is placed foremost amongst Wilfrid’s character traits, and it is an insistent theme that he “replied humbly” or similarly, or alluded to his lowly estate in a speech to a superior. That said, it is instructive to observe the way Stephen sets things up early on. In chapter 2 of the Life, Wilfrid is portrayed as a child who “skilfully served humbly” (humiliter … edocte ministrauit) in his father’s house, a rather unusual combination of adverbs, and then, as yet untonsured, among the monks on Lindisfarne he showed himself fully committed to a desire to pursue the monastic life “in humility and obedience” (in humilitate et obedientia).35 The emphasis at this point in Stephen’s narrative is strongly on humble service, so that he concludes this particular chapter with a comparison of the young Wilfrid to the boy Samuel serving Eli the priest in the Temple, as depicted in 1 Samuel 3—a  Alexander, Saints and Animals, 44–6.  Nick Higham, “Wilfrid and Bede’s Historia,” in Wilfrid: Abbot, Bishop, Saint, 56. 35  Colgrave, The Life of Bishop Wilfrid, 6–7. 33 34

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canny use of typology to foreshadow Wilfrid’s future greatness after the image of the prophet Samuel.36 The same pattern is observable in the next reference to humility in this text in a very striking turn of phrase used as Wilfrid, still a young man, arrives for the first time at Rome. Stephen compares his coming there to seek wisdom from his elders to St Paul’s journey to Jerusalem to preach, quoting the Apostle’s words in Galatians 2.2, “lest I should run or had run in vain.” But in the very midst of presenting Wilfrid’s preparation to become a preacher of the Gospel “among the nations” as in a line of succession from Paul, Stephen refers to the saint as iste humillimus gentis nostrae igniculus, literally “this most humble little flame of our race” (or as Colgrave translated it, “this lowly spark of fire, kindled in our race”).37 In this way Stephen firmly rooted Wilfrid’s eventual status as wielder of significant power in virtuous soil, along the same lines as Bede’s later treatment of Cuthbert, yet in a limited way he also astutely drew upon the anonymous author’s depiction of a certain natural humility, which is coupled with obedience. This means that Stephen was able to show the taking up of high office as a response to divine calling and not as an act of self-willed ambition.38 For me this calls to mind one of the many apt comments by Thomas Merton, “There is a danger that men in monasteries will go to such elaborate efforts to be humble, with the humility they have learned from a book, that they will make true humility impossible.”39 The diminutive humillimus … igniculus has more appeal as a depiction of that true humility than the authoritative lessons on humility handed down by Bede’s Cuthbert, as if “learned from a book”.

Humility in Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum Bede embedded several hagiographical vignettes in his Historia ecclesiastica, and although humility is not a quality he routinely accorded to every saintly figure he depicted, he placed it centre-stage on a few occasions that 36  On Stephen’s use of biblical typology see Mark Laynsmith, “Anti-Jewish Rhetoric in the Life of Wilfrid,” in Wilfrid: Abbot, Bishop, Saint, 71–3. 37  Colgrave, Life of Bishop Wilfrid, 12–13. 38  Stancliffe, “Disputed Episcopacy,” 17. 39  Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions Publishing, 2007), 190.

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warrant a closer look. In Book 3 of the Historia ecclesiastica Bede presents two royal martyrs: first Oswald, king of Northumbria, slaughtered in a battle in 642; and then Oswine, king of Deira until his murder at the behest of Oswiu, king of Bernicia, in 651. Both figures later came to be venerated as saints, Oswald to a far greater extent than Oswine (while Bede calls Oswald sanctissimus he does not refer to Oswine as a saint), and in both cases it is noteworthy that Bede took great care to highlight their innately godly qualities aside from the martyr-like circumstances of their death.40 In each case too, this includes explicit reference to their humble manner. For Oswald, this is strongly relational humility: he listened humbly and gladly (humiliter ac libenter) to St Aidan’s words and was “humble, kind and generous” (humilis benignus et largus) towards the poor and to strangers.41 Crucially this last point is given the emphasis that despite his elevation to significant power—ruler of “greater earthly realms than any of his ancestors”—he was “nonetheless” (nihilominus) humble. Clare Stancliffe has suggested that we can see Bede’s Oswald as the embodiment of his ideal Christian king, based on his reading of Gregory the Great’s political theology, where, just as in his characterisation of Cuthbert, humility—in its “other-oriented” form, or perhaps more accurately, in its inverse form, lack of pride—combines productively with authoritative rule, rather than being in conflict with it.42 Bede accorded King Oswine nowhere near as much close attention and narrative space as Oswald, but his character is still established very carefully with a telling anecdote: as Bede put it, “among the other graces of virtue and modesty and—if I may put it this way—special blessing, his humility is also said to have been the greatest, as one example will suffice to demonstrate.”43 Bede then unfolds a story of how Oswine gave Aidan a horse, which the latter then gave away on the first occasion he rode it and encountered someone in need. Later Oswine asked him why he had done 40  This was demonstrated in great detail for the case of Oswald by Clare Stancliffe, “Oswald ‘Most Holy and Most Victorious King of the Northumbrians’,” in Oswald. Northumbrian King to European Saint, ed. C.  Stancliffe and E.  Cambridge (Stamford: Paul Watkins Publishing, 1995), 33–83. 41  HE III.3.2 and 6.2, ed. M. Lapidge, trans. P. Chiesa, Beda. Storia degli Inglesi, 2 vols. (Rome/Milan: Valla/Mondadori, 2008–10), II.22 and 34. 42  Stancliffe, “Oswald,” 63–4. Stancliffe subsequently (65–6) suggests that Bede’s attribution of humility to Oswald, under the influence of his own monastic background, was doubtful as a reflection of reality. 43  HE III.14.4, ed. Lapidge, Beda, II.68.

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that when there were less valuable things that could be given to the poor than a royally-equipped horse. Aidan asked him whether the son of a mare was more valuable than a son of God. Oswine, mortified at this brisk riposte, gave away his own sword to a thegn and swore to Aidan that he would never again question what or how much of his wealth should be given in alms. Aidan wept and, when asked why, spoke prophetically: “I know that the king will not live long; for I have never before seen a humble king.”44 The story exemplifies the kind of humility that recognises its own mistakes, and it is the closest we have come so far to a presentation of humility as an “emotion plot,” that is, an affective response to events. One of Bede’s other anecdotes relating to humility has a similar quality. In Book III of the Historia ecclesiastica he introduces Chad of Lichfield, who, upon being consecrated as bishop, devoted himself “to the practice of humility and temperance” among other virtues.45 So far, so stereotypical. In Book IV Chad’s story unfolds a little further, with the arrival of Archbishop Theodore, who took it upon himself to make visitation to all the churches under his care and to straighten out any irregularities. He reached Chad, to whom he made it plain that his consecration had been irregular, for reasons that we do not need to go into here. Bede reports Chad’s unflustered reaction, given “in the humblest tone” (humillima uoce): “If you think that I received my episcopacy irregularly, I willingly demit office, since indeed I did not ever consider myself worthy of it, but out of obedience I agreed to submit to it when instructed to, although unworthy.”46 Theodore’s response was to recognise that Chad’s humility precisely suited him for high office, and to consecrate him correctly. It is of course possible to read this cynically, as the depiction of someone who knew that self-deprecation would be the “right” answer. But I am sure that is not how Bede intended the story to be read. This is a double “emotion plot”, Chad’s meek reaction to Theodore in which he voices his humility, folded in with an earlier response to circumstances, his acceptance of high office out of a monk’s instinctive obedience, despite feeling unfit for the role. A chapter further on in the Historia ecclesiastica, Bede provides a tiny scene (again involving a horse) that shows one further encounter between these two men, inadvertently rendered somewhat comical in the most  HE III.14.6, ed. Lapidge, Beda, II.70.  HE III.28.3, ed. Lapidge, Beda, II.146. 46  HE IV.2.3, ed. Lapidge, Beda, II.172. 44 45

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widely used translation into English (in the Colgrave and Mynors edition), and giving the impression that Chad’s humility was infuriating to Theodore. Chad is brought out of retirement to serve as bishop to the Mercians; Bede then reports: because it was the most reverend bishop’s habit to carry out the work of the Gospel by walking to places rather than riding, Theodore ordered him, whenever a longer journey lay ahead, to ride, and when Chad greatly resisted, out of zeal and love for his devout labour, Theodore himself lifted him on to a horse with his own hand, since he found him to be indisputably a holy man but also compelled him to be conveyed by horse when it was needful.47

There is much that is of interest in this little story, which is amenable to more than one reading. In his determination to go humbly on foot Chad is like Cuthbert and Aidan, both of whose hiking habits Bede especially highlighted, and it would seem that even obedience to Theodore, his superior, who can—and does—order and compel him to do things, does not overcome that disinclination to take a nobler, but also easier, form of transport (his earlier “I am not worthy” echoes on here). Walking is the harder way, and literally humbler, for being closer to the ground, as well as being the only option for the poorest in society. Bede seems to show Theodore considering such humble self-mortification to be embarrassingly unfitting for such a holy man, but a more likely reading is that he meant the archbishop to be implying that the determination to walk is counterproductive, deliberately making a task harder. Perhaps Bede’s point is really about balance: just as too humble a king cannot be a king (Oswine), so also too much humble self-mortification can hinder the carrying out of God’s work. It is rather telling that in the preface to his commentary on the Song of Songs, Bede wrote dismissively of the treatise, De amore, by Julian of Eclanum, in the midst of which he compares an insistence upon human free-will instead of dependence on God’s grace to

47  HE IV.3.1, ed. Lapidge, Beda, II.174. This is my translation; Colgrave translated the phrase manu sua leuauit (where the word for “hand” is in fact singular) as “lifted him on to the horse with his own hands”, which presents a funnier scene of holy man-handling than giving someone a hand up on to a horse really is, I think.

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the choice to make a journey on foot when horses are to hand to make it easier.48 Up to this point, Bede is the only writer to record biographies of holy women, which he does albeit briefly in the Historia ecclesiastica, with portraits of the early abbesses of Barking, of Hild, and of Æthelthryth of Ely.49 It is worth noting that humility is not explicitly highlighted among their array of saintly qualities. This may simply be that Bede had other concerns in these cases—Hild’s innate wisdom, Æthelthryth’s virginal state and ascetic practices—or that stories had not reached him which spoke to this particular virtue or that to emphasise women’s humility did not serve his agenda. But perhaps Bede took their humility as too obvious to need pointing out. A momentary step aside from conventional hagiography and slightly backwards in time from Bede is instructive here: Aldhelm of Malmesbury, writing his influential De uirginitate, had a group of nuns as his primary audience, for whom he produced what is effectively a handbook of sanctity, not so very different from the one with which this chapter will conclude. His focus was, of course, chiefly on the importance of virginity, that most alien of virtues to modern eyes.50 More importantly for our purposes, Aldhelm, following his patristic models, placed virginity alongside two other states, chastity (specifically denoting those who had previously been married) and marriage, and compared them all at length, using obvious metaphors like gold, silver, and bronze.51 Needless to say, virginity gets first prize every time, but a key point nonetheless emerges from the comparison: chastity can overtake virginity in the race, says Aldhelm, through tearful self-knowledge, especially if the virginal fails to “turn away the most cruel monster Pride … with the nose-­ ring of humility”.52 Virginity, he goes on to confirm, is nothing if it is without humility (“let the true and not trivial glory of delicate virginity be 48  Bede, In Cantica Canticorum Libri VI, pref., ed. D.  Hurst, Bedae Venerabilis Opera, Pars II: Opera Exegetica, 2B, Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 119B (Turnhout: Brepols, 1983), 167. 49  HE IV.6–10 (Barking), IV.17–18 (Æthelthryth), IV.21 (Hild). 50  Aldhelm, De uirginitate prose and verse, ed. R. Ehwald, Aldhelmi Opera, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 15 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1919). 51  Prose De uirginitate 8–9, ed. Ehwald, Aldhelmi Opera, 235–8; M.  Lapidge and M. Herren, eds and trans., Aldhelm. The Prose Works (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1979), 64–6. On Aldhelm’s relationship to earlier writing on virginity, see Lapidge and Herren, Aldhelm, 55–6. 52  De uirginitate 10, ed. Ehwald, Aldhelmi Opera, 239; Lapidge and Herren, Aldhelm, 67.

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protected by the true and not false precaution of humility”), which is synonymous with spiritual purity, as Aldhelm calls it, such that “carnal integrity is in no way approved of, unless spiritual purity is associated with it as companion.”53 This is humility as self-knowledge, realistic guard against complacency. To return to Bede: his account of Queen Æthelthryth, while forefronting the preservation of her virginity, goes on to report that once she had escaped from her second marriage into a monastic community, she did not rest complacently on her virginal laurels but tested her body with fasting, vigils, woollen clothing, cold baths, and the service of others, gestures that Aldhelm would doubtless have labelled spiritual purity, that is, humility, but which Bede left to speak for themselves.54

Tenth-Century Humility It is time to move on from the era of Bede to take a look at the hagiography of home-grown saints produced later on in England, stopping first in the late tenth century, which saw a remarkable burst of literary activity. The hagiography composed at this period focused in particular, though not exclusively, on recent leading figures of the English church. This era of monastic reform looked back to the age of Bede for inspiration, and it is no surprise to find hagiography which reverts to the monk-pastor model and an emphasis on authority grounded in obedience and humility. Just as we noted in the earliest Lives that humility could be closely linked with hospitality, so now, under the stronger influence of the Benedictine Rule, we find that manual labour in the domestic sphere can be used as an outward sign of the saint’s inner humility. For example, Wulfstan Cantor’s Vita S. Æthelwoldi, written not long after the death of Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester in 984, emphasises the monk-bishop’s early humility, both in his deference to Dunstan, his abbot at Glastonbury (“devoting himself humbly to his rule”), and in that when he himself was promoted as dean, he did not become proud. To give visible proof of this, Wulfstan notes, “he set those below him such a standard of humility that he performed manual labour every day, cultivating the garden and getting fruit and different kinds of vegetable ready for the monks’ meal,” mindful of

 De uirginitate 16, ed. Ehwald, Aldhelmi Opera, 245; Lapidge and Herren, Aldhelm, 72.  HE IV.17.2, ed. Lapidge, Beda, II.246.

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Matthew 20:26–7.55 The performance of menial tasks is at once a form of humiliation yet also, since it is ministry to others, a form of “other-­ appreciation” and in this case shows the saint’s humility to be more than token, bodied forth in Christ-like action. As Foulcher put it in her discussion of the Rule, “in the kitchen, commitment to common service to Christ is enfleshed in a practical way in the life of the community.”56 Wulfstan, a pupil of Æthelwold, shows himself well-schooled in the values of the Benedictine Rule in putting this emphasis on humility alongside manual labour in a portrait of the figure who was so central in promulgating the Rule. Other biographies of the prominent figures of the period, Dunstan and Oswald, by the hagiographer known as B. and by Byrhtferth of Ramsey, respectively, refer to humility only in passing among other virtues. One other text from this period which merits brief notice is the influential and popular Passio of Edmund, the ninth-century king of East Anglia, composed by Abbo of Fleury in the 980s, supposedly after a conversation with Dunstan about the story of the saint’s martyrdom at the hands of Vikings. Abbo wove a sophisticated portrait of Edmund, offering a mirror of Christian kingship in which humility was one clearly visible strand (Edmund is humilitatis gratia precluis: “outstanding for the grace of humility”).57 In fact, Abbo goes well beyond anything claimed for the martyr-kings of the early period, such as Oswald, by making Edmund firmly Christ-like in opposition to the Satan-like Scandinavian invaders.

Humility in the Hagiography of Goscelin of Saint-Bertin As we move into the eleventh century hagiography truly dominates England’s literary landscape. I want to focus mainly on the most prolific of all the hagiographers of this period, not least because, alone among his contemporaries, he wrote extensively about female saints as well as male saints. Goscelin of Saint-Bertin, who came to England in the early 1060s, 55  Vita S. Æthelwoldi 9, ed. and trans. Michael Lapidge and Michael Winterbottom, in Wulfstan of Winchester, Life of Æthelwold, Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 16–17. 56  Foulcher, Reclaiming Humility, 88. 57  Passio S. Eadmundi 3, ed. Michael Winterbottom, Three Lives of English Saints, Toronto Medieval Latin Texts (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1972), 70.

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produced dozens of texts and was a gifted teller of vivid stories. On a few occasions he used that gift to weave anecdotes illustrative of his subject’s humility in particular. From these scenes, we can glean some sense of what this hagiographer thought it meant to be humble, not always completely conforming to our assumptions. On the whole, humility and how it is lived out is not dwelt upon especially in Goscelin’s hagiography of male saints; a saint might be referred to as “humble and meek in heart” (humilis et mitis corde), but then it is taken for granted. This in itself may be telling for Goscelin’s ideas about what was exemplary in men and women and how to construct an engaging narrative on that basis. But one anecdote touching on this theme that is of interest is Goscelin’s reworking of a story that Bede told (Historia ecclesiastica II.2.3) about seven bishops of the Britons who come to meet with St Augustine, which occurs in his lengthy Historia maior de aduentu S. Augustini c. 33, composed in the 1090s for St Augustine’s, Canterbury.58 According to Bede, these bishops were advised that a way to discern whether Augustine should be taken seriously as a true homo Dei, in the vein of Matthew 11:29 (“the Lord said, ‘take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and humble of heart’”), would be to observe his behaviour upon their arrival to the assembly. Augustine’s Christ-like humility would be proven if he stood up to greet them, and if he chose to remain seated, a mark of pride and disrespect, there should be no dealing with him. It so happened that Augustine did not stand up when they arrived, and the British clergy therefore dug in their heels and refused to accept his authority and to take a share in the spread of the Gospel. As Bede described it, Augustine, “man of God” (implicitly emphasising the Britons’ erroneous assessment of the situation), therefore issued a threat that refusal to cooperate would lead ultimately to death, which Bede then pointed out subsequently came to pass “diuino agente iudicio” (“by the operation of divine judgement”), his only editorial comment on the story.59 Goscelin retold these events in a form close to Bede’s but then glossed them more fully: Therefore it is plain with what meek and humble heart that faithful and prudent representative of Christ, who stayed seated, bore Christ’s yoke, and with what stiff neck and swollen heart those who remained standing showed  Printed in Acta Sanctorum, Maii VI (1688), 375–95.  Bede, HE II.2.3, ed. Lapidge, Beda, I.182–4.

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themselves rebellious against the Lord’s yoke. But a man of God is recognisable neither in sitting nor rising, but in gentleness and affection towards others, since he can be found both very merciful while seated and very stern while standing up.60

Goscelin’s point is that humility is not about outward appearances but an attitude of mind reflected in how you treat others. Writing for St Augustine’s, Goscelin was looking back to the distant past, but some of his compositions commemorate relatively recent figures. At Barking, he rewrote the biographies of the early abbesses which Bede had embedded in the Historia ecclesiastica and added to them an account of the tenth-century abbess, Wulfhild, perhaps best known for the fact that Goscelin depicts the saint wooed to the point of persecution by none other than King Edgar the Peaceable.61 In the Vita S. Wulfhilde Goscelin includes a strangely ordinary, perhaps therefore quite believable, tale from her time as abbess, to which he gives the title “a specimen of her humility” (c. 7): One day, when she and Lifleda [Wulfhild’s successor as abbess] … were carrying a jar full of water borne on a pole resting on their shoulders and they both, flagging with their feeble strength, had to stop and put down the burden, Wulfhild said, despising herself, “It is clear how useless we are and that the more able servants of the world are so much more rightfully provided for.” Beautifully she turned a failure of the power she needed into an opportunity to show humility, because out of her very bodily weakness she accrued greater strength since in her great robustness of spirit she was found stouter than her own physical might.62 60  “Liquet ergo quam miti et humili corde iugum Christi tulerit ille Domini fidelis et prudens uicarius, qui assidebat; et quam dura ceruice ac tumido corde se iugo Domini rebellare prodiderint, qui astabant. Nec uero in sessione uel assurrectione, sed in mansuetudine ac dilectione fraterna cognoscitur homo Dei, cum et sedens clementissimus et stans seuissimus possit reperiri” (Acta Sanctorum Maii VI.389). 61  The Vita was edited by Marvin L. Colker, “Texts of Jocelyn of Canterbury which relate to the history of Barking Abbey,” Studia Monastica 7 (1965): 383–460. 62  “Hoc etiam inter preclaras uirtutes humilitatis eius exemplum uidetur memoratu iocundum, quod quadam die dum hidriam aquae plenam cum … Lefleda subiectis humeris in uecte portaret et utraeque deficientes inualidis uiribus onus deponerent, ut sibi despicabilis dixit, “Apparet quam inutiles habeamur et quanto rectius efficaciora seculi mancipia pascantur.” Pulcre autem defectum affectatae uirtutis in materiam retorsit humilitatis, cum ex ipsa imbecillitate maior ei uirtus accumularetur quod robustissimo animo suis uiribus fortior inueniretur” (Colker, “Texts of Jocelyn,” 427; my translation).

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It might feel like Goscelin is scraping the bottom of the barrel to find a suitable story about the saint and provides one that is not necessarily conforming with our notion of humility. Yet as this “emotion plot” plays out, it shows us the hagiographer’s definition of humility as realistic self-­ appraisal. Goscelin anticipates Bernard of Clairvaux who defined humility as “the virtue by which humankind has a low opinion of itself because it knows itself well” (De gradibus humilitatis I.2).63 Wulfhild’s vocal frustration at the way her feeble physical strength renders her useless in practical matters seems entirely recognisable. At the same time the narrative can also be read as a variant on the theme of humility as expressed in menial tasks undertaken even by those in high office, in this case the abbess and her successor. Goscelin wrote a long and ornate biography of the saintly daughter of King Edgar, Edith, who spent all her life in the convent at Wilton.64 Many of the incidental details in the text give the impression that this regal retirement was one of luxury, but Goscelin takes pains to find every way possible to present Edith as a living like a hermit. Not surprisingly, then, he includes an anecdote which centres on the physical manifestation of humility. We are told that only the senior nuns are party to Edith’s practice of wearing a hair shirt under her fine purple-dyed garments, which themselves are an explicit flouting of the conventual custom to wear black, as Goscelin notes. His next comment seems at first sight rather odd logic, though backed up both by earlier hagiography and by Scripture: Without doubt she made her humility more glorious by public elegance, so that together with the gold-clad Cecilia she might please the Father, who alone sees in secret, with her hidden pearl, and visible frivolities might conceal hidden martyrdom.65

63  Bernard of Clairvaux, The Steps of Humility and Pride, trans. M.  Ambrose Conway OCSO, Cistercian Publications (Kalamazoo MI: Cistercian Publications, 1973), 30 modified. Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, secunda secunda pars, 161.2.1 “Ergo videtur quod humilitas maxime sit circa cognitionem, quam de se aliquis aestimat parvam” (“Therefore it would seem that humility is mainly about knowledge, by which someone has a low estimation of themself”). 64  Vita S. Edithe, ed. André Wilmart, “La légende de Ste. Édithe en prose et vers par le moine Goscelin,” Analecta Bollandiana 56 (1938): 5–101, 265–307. 65  Vita S. Edithe I.12, ed. Wilmart, “La légende,” 70; trans. Michael Wright and Kathleen Loncar in Writing the Wilton Women. Goscelin’s Vita S. Edithe and Liber Confortatorius, ed. Stephanie Hollis (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), 38.

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The tension between inner state and outer appearance is brought to a head during a visit to Edith by Bishop Æthelwold, who tuts over her finery, prompting a crisp and spirited response: Believe, O reverend father, that a mind by no means poorer in aspiring to God will live beneath this covering than beneath a goatskin. I have my Lord, who pays attention to the mind, not to the clothing.66

Humility in hiding clearly does not have to mean an obsequious manner of speech, in Goscelin’s estimation: as with his depiction of Wulfhild, there is a sort of groundedness of confident self-knowledge in the humility he envisages for this holy woman. This scene also bears comparison with his gloss on Bede’s anecdote about Augustine and the British bishops mentioned above. Shortly before this, Goscelin had already (I.10) highlighted other aspects of Edith’s journey upwards on “the heaven-­ reaching ladder of humility” (alluding to chapter 7  of the Benedictine Rule). She did not put on airs as a king’s daughter but “showed herself to her sisters as Martha, to Christ as Mary”; with literal humility, singulis in ministrando humotenus inclinabatur (“in serving each and every one she bent low to the ground”) in unspecified acts of service.67 Her royal connections bring other problems in the form of letters and gifts from foreign dignitaries, of which Goscelin observes, “her struggles with the flattery of the world and the evidence of her virtues gave her new, more brilliant, accolades for humility.”68 This is astute rhetoric: all the trappings of royalty, as they crowd in, are not written out of the story or diminished but instead are used to magnify the distance that needs to be travelled to stay down-to-earth. That nobility of descent makes humility feel keener is a repeated theme in Goscelin’s hagiography of holy women. Mildthryth, descendant of King Æthelbert of Kent, when she succeeds her mother as abbess “appeared all the humbler, for that she was the more excellent”, and she 66  “Crede, o pater reuerende, nequaquam deterior mens Deo aspirante sub hoc habitabit tegmine quam sub caprina melote. Habeo Dominum meum, qui non uestem, sed mentem attendit” (Wilmart, “La légende”, 70); trans. Wright and Loncar, Writing the Wilton Women, 42–3, modified. 67  Vita S. Edithe I.10, ed. Wilmart, “La légende,” 70; trans. Wright and Loncar, Writing the Wilton Women, 37. 68  Vita S. Edithe I.10, ed. Wilmart, “La légende,” 70; trans. Wright and Loncar, Writing the Wilton Women, 39.

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“preferred ministry to mastery, to be of use rather than in charge, to teach love’s obedience by service rather than instruction,” where the Latin has word-plays, including one borrowed from the Rule of St Benedict (prodesse / praeesse), which are hard to put into English convincingly: “Ministra esse malebat quam magistra, prodesse quam praeesse, famulatu quam precepto caritatis obsequium docere.”69 The same word-play recurs in his depiction of Mildburh, abbess of Much Wenlock and likewise a descendant of Æthelbert and of the Mercian royal line too; “the more humble a caretaker and minister she was to them all [her nuns], the more truly she was their mother and mistress.”70 This particular manifestation of humility seems, at least in Goscelin’s writing, to be distinctively a part of female sanctity—if his male saints are of noble extraction (he did not write about any saints who had been kings or princes, but it was a hagiographical commonplace to assign aristocratic birth to a saint) it is not something that presents any narrative tension.

“Heading for the Stars in a Four-Horse Chariot”: Humility in Goscelin’s Liber Confortatorius Goscelin wrote just one work that is not hagiographical, namely his extraordinary Liber Confortatorius (“Book of Encouragement and Consolation” as Otter renders it in her translation).71 Ostensibly the work is a long private letter to a beloved former pupil, Eve, who left England to become an anchoress in France seemingly without telling Goscelin of her intention or waiting to say goodbye. Accordingly the text is full of grieving, if sometimes indignant, affection, addressed to Eve by “someone most 69  Vita S.  Mildrethe 23, ed. David W.  Rollason, The Mildrith Legend: A Study in Early Medieval Hagiography in England (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1982), 136, my translation. Cf. The Benedictine Rule 64 (on abbots), sciat … sibi oportere prodesse magis quam praeesse (“let him know that he ought to be of use more than to be in charge”). 70  Vita S. Milburge 18 (“eo uerior ipsa mater et magistra, quo humilior erat omnium procuratrix et ministra”), from my own critical edition and translation, forthcoming; the text, not otherwise published, can be consulted in A.J.M. Edwards, “Odo of Ostia’s History of the Translation of St. Milburga and its Connection with the Early History of Wenlock Abbey” (Unpublished master’s thesis, University of London, 1960). https://repository.royalholloway.ac.uk/items/ee96d12e-8ebc-405b-9121-6698d3ce9eb1/1/ 71  Charles H. Talbot, ed., “The Liber Confortatorius of Goscelin of Saint Bertin”, Analecta Monastica 37 (1955): 1–117; Monika Otter, trans., Goscelin of St Bertin. The Book of Encouragement and Consolation (Liber Confortatorius), Library of Medieval Women (Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 2004).

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humble and once most devoted to you”.72 From Goscelin’s grief grows a wide-ranging handbook for the anchoritic life, full of practical advice and encouraging stories. It may thus be taken as representing Goscelin’s exposition of the theory of holiness that underpinned his construction of hagiographical narratives, distilled from his many hours reading about saints, thinking about what made them saintly; the ideas in the text reflect his theological reading too. Humility lies at the heart of his message, which turns out to be as much for his own fallen self as it is for Eve. Goscelin opened the Liber Confortatorius with a poem summarising the content of its four books. Line 4 reads “the fourth, in humility, heads for the stars in a four-horse chariot”.73 Correspondingly, Book 4 begins with the heading De humilitate (“On humility”). Its placement within the whole and its content give a clear sense of Goscelin’s conception of humility’s fundamental role in the making of sanctity. He begins with a quotation from Revelation whose relevance for the topic seems at first sight less than obvious, “Your streets, Jerusalem, are paved with pure gold and clear glass” (21:21).74 Rebecca Hayward noted the extent to which the Liber confortatorius was influenced by the four ways of reading the Scriptures.75 And it is through that exegetical lens that we see the pertinence of Revelation 21.21: commentaries on Revelation tended to read the golden pavement as referring to the humble. Most strikingly, by a process of “concordance exegesis”, the early fifth-century exegetical handbook of Eucherius of Lyons, Formulae spiritalis intelligentiae, drew Revelation 21:21 into relation with Psalm 118.25 in much the same way that Goscelin does. Eucherius wrote “the pavement is humiliation or spiritual affliction, or turning towards earthly things; in the Psalm ‘My soul has cleaved to the pavement.’”76 Thus Goscelin, following the quotation from Revelation, goes on to say “my soul, my special one, I would 72  Talbot, “Liber Confortatorius”, 84: “Quidam humillimus et tibi quondam deuotissimus”. 73  Talbot, “Liber Confortatorius”, 25: “Ex humili sumptis quartus petit astra quadrigis”. Otter, Goscelin, 19, modified. 74  Talbot, “Liber Confortatorius”, 91. 75  Rebecca Hayward, “The Anchorite’s Progress: Structure and Motif in the Liber Confortatorius”, in Writing the Wilton Women. Goscelin’s Legend of Edith and Liber Confortatorius, ed. Stephanie Hollis, with W.  R. Barnes, R.  Hayward, K.  Loncar and M. Wright (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), 371. 76  Formulae 9, ed. Carmela Mandolfo, Eucherii Lugdunensis Formulae spiritalis intelligentiae; Instructionum libri duo, Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 66 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), 68: “Pauimentum humiliatio uel afflictio animae siue in terrena declinatio; in psalmo: Adhaesit pauimento anima mea”.

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like you to travel by the roads of humility. I know that you devoutly strive for ever greater humbleness; you say entreatingly, ‘My soul has cleaved to the pavement; quicken me, Lord, according to your word.’”77 So it is that he starts his dissertation on humility from what seems like an emotional position of self-abasement, humility’s unappealing “dark side”, yet by opening with the line from Revelation about the Heavenly Jerusalem’s golden pavement, he hints at humility’s true value and ultimate destination. Hayward showed compellingly that this opening is part of the upward-­ ascending journey with which Goscelin framed the whole work.78 This directional drive is clear too from the headings Goscelin gave to the subsections of Book 4, which, after the first, “On humility”, are labelled “Ab imo stabiliendum cacumen” (“A tall structure must rest on a firm foundation”), “Merces elationis et humilitatis” (“The rewards of pride and humility”), “Humilitate ascendendum” (“Progress in humility,” as Otter has it, or more literally “By humility we must ascend”), and finally “Timendum iustis sperandum lapsis” (“The righteous must fear, the fallen must hope”).79 The concept of humility as upwards-driven, perhaps counter-intuitive to modern eyes, no doubt intentionally echoes the image of the ladder of humility presented in chapter seven of the Benedictine Rule; indeed at one point Goscelin points Eve explicitly to that text (“Benedict, the teacher of virtue, has set up twelve grades of humility for you”).80 There is some, presumably unintended, irony in his recommendation because Benedict set his teaching on humility firmly within the loving context of community life: “the monk lives with the long view, under the judgement of God, but lives this long view in the present, in view of the abbot and the brothers,” writes Foulcher.81 But an anchoress lives in a community of one, and yet … Undoubtedly Goscelin imaginatively posited himself as part of Eve’s community, physically distant, yet united in Christ. After this opening what does Goscelin wish to tell Eve about humility? The humble road goes heavenwards, but there are dangers en route: pride and presumption lie in wait.82 Here we are back with Aldhelm and his  Talbot, “Liber Confortatorius”, 91; Otter, Goscelin, 112.  Hayward, “The Anchorite’s Progress”, 378–9. 79  Talbot, “Liber Confortatorius”, 92, 95, 99 and 100; trans. Otter, Goscelin, 114, 118, 124 and 125. 80  Talbot, “Liber Confortatorius”, 93; Otter, Goscelin, 115. 81  Foulcher, Reclaiming Humility, 95. 82  Talbot, “Liber Confortatorius”, 92. 77 78

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necessary pairing of virginity with humility. Goscelin advises that the Devil will tempt you to think you are saintly and, having failed to cut you down on the open battlefield, will try to catch you unawares in the safe fortress of your own conscience through flattery. Goscelin’s Devil has a sugary tone, cleverly rendered by Otter: “What a blessed little thing, what a good little saint you are; you are so close to heaven, sweetheart.”83 But Isaiah 3.12 counters “they that call you blessed, even they are deceiving you.” The good reception and hospitality Eve has received in France so far is a good sign, Goscelin feels, like foreign kings receiving the elect in the Old Testament. Yet Pharaoh’s heart could harden at any moment, so make sure your devotion is beyond reproach, he warns. “Firmly ground yourself in the peace of Christ through your humility”. Be watchful, be grounded: all sound practical advice. The next section (“A tall structure must rest on a firm foundation”) advises on how exactly to stay grounded, which turns out, as the section unfolds, to mean keeping mindful of one’s position in the firmament. In placing humility at a building’s foundations, Goscelin, whether knowingly or not, follows Augustine, who in describing his own spiritual progress, wrote of his own arrogant youth “where was that love building on the ‘foundation’ of humility ‘which is Christ Jesus’?” (Confessions 7.20, quoting 1 Corinthians 3:11).84 At this point Goscelin offers Eve a rather Boethian account of God’s workings to show that all is in His hands and due to Him, the One who judges all, turns and overturns things, and puts the highest low and the lowest high. And why does He do so? So that nobody should think anything is due to their own powers but also so that whatever is brought low, overturned, uprooted, can be wrought anew. In the midst of this Goscelin injects a characteristic personal note. Speaking of himself, he writes “I, a useless little man (inutilis homuncio), who only encumber the ground”, alluding to Luke 13:7, from Christ’s parable of the barren fig-tree, of which the vine-dresser said “cut it down … Why cumbereth it the ground?”85 This is a powerful expression of the affect 83  Goscelin uses a string of invented diminutives: Beatula es, sanctula es, celo proximula es. Talbot, “Liber Confortatorius”, 92; Otter, Goscelin, 113. 84  “Ubi enim erat illa aedificans caritas a fundamento humilitatis, quod est Christus Iesus?” 85  Talbot, “Liber Confortatorius,” 93; Otter, Goscelin, 115. As an aside it is rather fascinating that Goscelin’s confrère at Saint-Bertin, Folcard, reminisced in the preface to his life of their patron, Bertin, that their abbot, Bovo, had excoriated him thus “that I only take up the ground, like that useless fig-tree” (“quod solum terram occupem, ut ficus illa inutilis”, Vita S. Bertini, prologue, Acta Sanctorum, Septembris, II.604–13 at 604). One wonders whether both hagiographers were recalling the humiliations of the classroom at Saint-Bertin.

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arising from self-appraisal; Goscelin then goes to use an extraordinarily striking architectural metaphor. Barren tree that he feels himself to be, when he looks at simple little churches he longs in his imagination to tear them down and see more splendid temples go up in their place: “soaring, vast light-flooded and exquisitely beautiful” buildings, perfect Norman cathedrals.86 If that is the desire of a lowly mortal, what then must be the aspirations of the Divine Architect for his own creations, in other words, for us mortals, to build back better? This allows Goscelin to loop back round to the image from Revelation 21: God will only build the eternal city out of the best materials, gold, silver, and gems, tearing down what is useless and “making all things new”. So good can come from what is unpromising: there is hope (though this goes unsaid) for the inutilis homuncio. All the time humility is about process and movement from one state to another, not necessarily an inborn quality but a way of reacting, to oneself, to circumstances, to others, and to the One. In this regard, Goscelin shows the extent to which he was influenced by Augustine’s Confessions, one of the books he recommended to Eve in the Liber confortatorius, because it “will instill in you a deeper love for the divine”.87 Grace Hamman noted that “for Augustine, true humility can never be separated from the immense love of God who becomes incarnate. In this way of understanding moral and spiritual formation, living the life of charity towards God and neighbor hinges on humility.”88 From this point, Goscelin meditates on notable stories of failure in the Bible, such as David’s adultery, Peter’s denials, and then comes a supplementary point that God apportions gifts “so that each may see in the other what is admirable and in himself that which humbles him”. That appraisal of one’s position still depends on the attitude of mind with which it is undertaken, since arrogant persons start from the wrong emotional standpoint, whereas the humble “in their own minds occupy the last place”. Goscelin uses Biblical and other examples to suggest that humility comes from remembering where you came from—King David the shepherd, Peter, prince of apostles, the fisherman. This leads to the conclusion that for all of us the clearest inducement to keep perspective is God’s message to Adam, “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall

 Talbot, “Liber Confortatorius”, 93; Otter, Goscelin, 115–16.  Talbot, “Liber Confortatorius”, 80. 88  Hamman, “Matter of Meekness”, 5. 86 87

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return” (Genesis 3:19).89 It is from this viewpoint that Goscelin was able to write about saints who were born as princesses: remembering where they came from is no help unless they can reach back past noble birth to a recognition of common mortality. Thus from his own self-abasement and sense of valueless humiliation in the Liber Confortatorius Goscelin progresses towards recommending a relational model of humility, an Augustinian one, that is both appreciative of others and also aware of ones standing in the most important relationship of all, with the Divine: wish hovels into soaring cathedrals, wish ordinary mortals into saints, be built up from lowliness by a loving God. The next part of Book 4 considers the different rewards of pride and humility, which have much in common with Aldhelm’s treatise on virginity, since Goscelin takes as the focus for his consideration of pride Isaiah 3:16–26, a condemnation of the virginal but haughty daughters of Zion. Contrastingly, the rewards for humility turn out chiefly to be the ability to persevere in virginity or preserve in the face of persecution, exemplified by a story from Ambrose’s De uirginibus about a virginal couple united in their martyrdom. Thence we move on to a brief section headed “progress in humility”, which touches on the required state of mind.90 Do you insist on being first? Insist on being angelic? Is God’s goodness not enough for you? Wrong, wrong, wrong!91: “Weeping about your sins would become you more than insisting on your rights,” as Otter has it, with a modern twist on iustitia (“righteousness” or “justice”) which has some pungency for our twenty-­first-­century self-exculpating mindset.92 This point leads directly into the final section of Goscelin’s dissertation on humility, called “The righteous should fear, the fallen should hope.” Again Goscelin uses narrative to shape his discourse, this time the contrast between the prostitute who anointed Jesus’s feet (Luke 7) and the Pharisee who criticised his acceptance of her gesture. This leads to a lyrical evocation of the sanctifying process of gaining forgiveness, again made vivid by a personal anecdote, Goscelin’s recollection of the dank billet he was given when he first arrived in England as a very young man which quickly, once cleaned out, seemed lovely, “as different from its previous state as honour is from shame.” As with the architectural metaphor, he compares his own  Talbot, “Liber Confortatorius”, 94; Otter, Goscelin, 117–18.  Talbot, “Liber Confortatorius”, 99; Otter, Goscelin, 124. 91  “Tristior erit defleta culpa quam iactata iustitia.” 92  Talbot, “Liber Confortatorius”, 99; Otter, Goscelin, 124. 89 90

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mortal reaction to the Almighty’s desire to inhabit restored humanity: “from a sinner sanctified can be fashioned the likeness of God.”93 As Goscelin rounds off his disquisition on humility for Eve, he gives one final characterisation: “humility is accompanied by hope.”94 As with everything else he has said on the subject, there is a kinetic energy, so to speak, implicit here. Humility is no static thing but an emotional response to both self-appraisal and appraisal of one’s standing in relation to others, and in particular in relation to the divine, and all of these things happen in a spirit of optimism, of resurrection hope. Just like the depiction of Cuthbert’s humble washing and warming the feet of his angelic visitor, which we saw at the beginning of writing hagiography in England, for Goscelin humility is far from being grovelling humiliation in the face of an almighty Other, but rather a joyful response to the loving humility of the Incarnate.

Bibliography Primary Sources Bernard of Clairvaux. The Steps of Humility and Pride. Translated by M. Ambrose Conway OCSO. Kalamazoo MI: Cistercian Publications, 1973. Colgrave, Bertram, ed. and trans. The Life of Bishop Wilfrid by Eddius Stephanus. Reprint. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1927 (1985). Colgrave, Bertram, ed. and trans. Two Lives of St Cuthbert. Reprint. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985 (1940). Colker, Marvin L. “Texts of Jocelyn of Canterbury which relate to the history of Barking Abbey.” Studia Monastica 7 (1965): 383–460. Ehwald, Rudolf, ed. Aldhelmi Opera. Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 15. Berlin: Weidmann, 1919. Folcard. Vita Sancti Bertini. Acta Sanctorum, Septembris II.604.13. Goscelin. Historia maior de aduentu S. Augustini. Edited by Daniel Papebroch. Acta Sanctorum, Maii VI (1688): 375–95. Hurst, David, ed. Bedae Venerabilis Opera, Pars II: Opera Exegetica, 2B. Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 119B. Turnhout: Brepols, 1983. Isidore. De ecclesiasticis officiis. Edited by C.W. Lawson. Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 113. Turnhout: Brepols, 1989.  Talbot, “Liber Confortatorius”, 102; Otter, Goscelin, 128.  Talbot, “Liber Confortatorius”, 103; Otter, Goscelin, 129: “ipsa est humilitas spe comitata”. 93 94

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Lapidge, Michael and Michael Herren, eds and trans. Aldhelm. The Prose Works. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1979. Lapidge, Michael, ed. P. Chiesa, trans. Beda. Storia degli Inglesi. 2 vols. Rome/ Milan: Valla/Mondadori, 2008/2010. Otter, Monika, ed. and trans. Goscelin of St Bertin. The Book of Encouragement and Consolation (Liber Confortatorius). The Library of Medieval Women. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2004. Talbot, Charles H. “The Liber Confortatorius of Goscelin of Saint Bertin.” Analecta Monastica 37 (1955): 1–117. Wilmart, André. “La légende de Ste Édithe en prose et vers par le moine Goscelin.” Analecta Bollandiana 56 (1938): 5–101, 265–307. Winterbottom, Michael, ed. Three Lives of English Saints. Toronto Medieval Latin Texts. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1972. Wulfstan of Winchester. The Life of St Æthelwold. Edited and translated by Michael Lapidge and Michael Winterbottom. Oxford Medieval Texts. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991.

Secondary Sources Alexander, Dominic. Saints and Animals in the Middle Ages. The Boydell Press: Woodbridge, 2008. Alfano, M., M.  P. Lynch, and A.  Tanesini, eds. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Humility. London: Routledge, 2020. Edwards, A. J. M. “Odo of Ostia's History of the Translation of St. Milburga and its Connection with the Early History of Wenlock Abbey”. Unpublished master’s thesis, University of London, 1960. Ekman, Paul. “An Argument for Basic Emotions.” Cognition & Emotion 6:3–4 (1992): 169–200. Foulcher, Jane. Reclaiming Humility Four Studies in the Monastic Tradition. Collegeville, MN: Cistercian Publications, 2015. Hamman, Grace. “Matter of Meekness: Reading Humility in Late Medieval England”. Unpublished doctoral thesis, Duke University, 2019. Hayward, Rebecca. “The Anchorites’s Progress: Structure and Motif in the Liber Confortatorius.” In Writing the Wilton Women. Goscelin’s Legend of Edith and Liber Confortatorius, edited by Stephanie Hollis, with William R.  Barnes, Rebecca Hayward, Katherine Loncar and Michael Wright, 369–83. Turnhout: Brepols, 2004. Higham, Nick. “Wilfrid and Bede’s Historia.” In Wilfrid: Abbot, Bishop, Saint, edited by N.J. Higham, 54–66. Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2013. Hollis, Stephanie, W. R. Barnes, Rebecca Hayward, Kathleen Loncar, and Michael Wright, eds. Writing the Wilton Women. Goscelin’s Legend of Edith and Liber

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Confortatorius. Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts 9. Turnhout: Brepols, 2004. Laynsmith, Mark. “Anti-Jewish Rhetoric in the Life of Wilfrid.” In Wilfrid: Abbot, Bishop, Saint, edited by N.J. Higham, 67–79. Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2013. Mandolfo, Carmela, ed. Eucherii Lugdunensis Formulae spiritalis intelligentiae; Instructionum libri duo. Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 66. Turnhout: Brepols, 2004. Merton, Thomas. New Seeds of Contemplation. New  York: New Directions Publishing, 2007. Modrak, Rebekah and Jamie Vander Broek, eds. Radical Humility: Essays on Ordinary Acts. Cleveland, OH: Belt Publishing, 2021. Rollason, David W. The Mildrith Legend: A Study in Early Medieval Hagiography in England. Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1982. Rosenwein, Barbara H. Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006. Saroglou, V., Buxant, C. & Tilquin, J. “Positive Emotions as Leading to Religion and Spirituality.” The Journal of Positive Psychology 3 (2008): 165–73. Stancliffe, Clare. “Dating Wilfrid’s Death and Stephen’s Life.” In Wilfrid: Abbot, Bishop, Saint, edited by N.J. Higham, 17–26. Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2013. Stancliffe, Clare. “Disputed Episcopacy: Bede, Acca, Stephen’s Life of Wilfrid and the Early Prose Lives of St Cuthbert.” Anglo-Saxon England 41 (2014): 7–39. Stancliffe, Clare. “Oswald ‘Most Holy and Most Victorious King of the Northumbrians’.” In Oswald: Northumbrian King to European Saint, edited by Clare Stancliffe and Eric Cambridge, 33–83. Stamford: Paul Watkins Publishing, 1995. Thacker, Alan. “Bede’s Ideal of Reform.” In Ideal and Reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Society, edited by Patrick Wormald, 130–53. Oxford: Blackwell, 1983. Thacker, Alan. “Wilfrid, his Cult and his Biographer.” In Wilfrid: Abbot, Bishop, Saint, edited by N.J. Higham, 1–26. Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2013. Weidman, Aaron C., J.T. Cheng, and J.L. Tracy. “The Psychological Structure of Humility.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 114, no. 1 (2018): 153–78. Weidman, Aaron C., and J.L. Tracy. “Is Humility a Sentiment?” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 40 (2017): e251.

CHAPTER 9

Rage and Lust in the Afterlives of King Edgar the Peaceful Matthew Firth

There is a duality to the medieval legacy of King Edgar the Peaceful († 975). On the one hand there is a pious and dutiful king, described in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle D- and E-texts as being “honoured widely throughout the lands”,1 by William of Malmesbury as “the honour and delight of Englishman”,2 and by John of Worcester as “no less memorable

1  ASC D–F 959: “He wearð wide geond þeodland swiðe geweorðad”. Citations to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle are by manuscript and annal year per the relevant volume of the Collaborative Edition (see bibliography). 2  William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum (G.Reg.) ii.148.1, ed. R.A.B. Mynors, R.M. Thomson and M. Winterbottom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 1:238–9: “honor ac delitiae Anglorum”.

M. Firth (*) Flinders University, Adelaide, SA, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 E. Sebo et al. (eds.), Emotional Alterity in the Medieval North Sea World, Palgrave Studies in the History of Emotions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33965-3_9

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to the English than Romulus to the Romans”.3 Here, the king is a lawmaker and defender of the Church, an ally of righteous men, a protector of the kingdom. With this strong rule came the stability that earned Edgar his sobriquet; John names him pacificus rex Eadgarus seven times in his account of the reign.4 This Edgar is a largely unemotive figure. No glimpse is given of his inner life: his motivations are ascribed to piety, and his successes are the rewards of that piety. On the other hand, in the alternative image of the king adopted by certain Anglo-Norman writers, Edgar is an overtly emotional figure. And this is not usually intended to his credit. Reporting the rumours of the early twelfth century, albeit with some scepticism, William of Malmesbury relates stories of envy and of cruelty and, above all, of lust and anger. He places a summary of this Edgar in the mouth of King Cnut († 1035): “a vicious man, an especial slave to lust, and more tyrant than king”.5 It is a later adaptation of his reputation that is scarcely reconcilable with the former depiction of Edgar. The annals in the various Chronicle texts make no mention of Edgar’s anger or lust, nor does Æthelweard’s late tenth-century Chronicon, nor do any of the early vitae of the churchmen associated with his reign. This raises two linked questions. Firstly, how did Edgar’s reputation shift in certain historiographical traditions between the tenth and twelfth centuries? Secondly, what meaning was coded within the accounts of his anger and lust? This study is, foremost, one of historiography. It examines the adaptation of reputation in the writing of history and questions the ends to which emotions and their depictions could be turned. Portrayals of emotion are informed by changing cultural contexts, their meanings are mutable, and the boundaries between what constitutes acceptable or excessive emotion are socially constructed. Edgar’s emotional afterlives are not written per the emotive scripts of his own time or, rather, have a complex relationship with them. These are posthumously constructed displays of emotion that demonstrate the reception of his legacy, show how it was 3  The Chronicle of John of Worcester (JW) 975, ed. by R.R.  Darlington and P.  McGurk, trans. by Jennifer Bray and P.  McGurk (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 2:424–5: “non minus memorabilis Anglis quam Romulus Romanis”. 4  JW 964, 967–69, 972–5. See also Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum (HA) v.24–26, ed. Diana Greenway (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 318–23, which uses the phrase Edgarus pacificus three times. 5   William of Malmesbury, Gesta pontificum Anglorum (G.Pont.) ii.87.7, ed. M.  Winterbottom with R.M.  Thomson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007), 1:298–9: “qui uitiis deditus maximeque libidinis seruus in subiectos propior tiranno fuisset”.

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shaped in its transmission, and illuminate perceptions of untempered emotion in the intellectual culture of early twelfth-century England. The most contemporary account of Edgar’s reign, mainly covering the years 972–975, is shared by the Chronicle A–C-texts. B and C have a common source for these years which must have been present very shortly after Edgar’s death in 975, given that B was compiled in the 970/980s. These annals were copied into A around the turn of the eleventh century.6 They give a sense of the historical Edgar, though are very much suspect of their own agendas and influences. This early tradition of Edgar’s reign only sparsely engages with the language of emotion. Yet, Edgar’s legacy is founded on such tenth-century documentary evidence, and it provides a basic narrative of what is known of the king against which to analyse what is later told of him. For their part, the Chronicle D- and E-texts may preserve some sense of how Edgar’s reign was remembered by the early eleventh century. Though they date to the mid-eleventh and early-twelfth centuries respectively, D and E incorporate material for Edgar’s reign likely composed by Archbishop Wulfstan II († 1023). This includes a retrospective assessment of Edgar’s kingship as the 959 annal in D and E and an addition to the 975 entry in D.7 The archbishop was himself working from, and interpolating his views into, a yet earlier Chronicle tradition in which the 972–975 annals varied from those of A–C.8 In as far as later traditions of Edgar’s reign go, they enjoy a long afterlife that frequently maintains a negative emotionality as an element of his character. This has its origins in early twelfth-century Anglo-Norman histories, at least in the extant historical record, and as such, this study focuses on the works of the foremost historians of the period: William of Malmesbury, Geffrei Gaimar, John of Worcester, and Henry of Huntingdon. John and Henry’s accounts of Edgar’s reign are wholly laudatory to the point of panegyric. William and Geffrei also engage with these positive traditions but counterbalance this by recounting Edgar’s displays of excessive emotion. Their depictions of Edgar inform his 6  Pauline Stafford, After Alfred: Anglo-Saxon Chronicles and Chroniclers, 900–1150 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 61–2, 82–6, 156. 7  Ibid., 155–8, 160–3, 184, 240–5, 297. 8  On the relationship between Wulfstan, the D- and E-texts, and their accounts of Edgar’s reign, see Thomas A. Bredehoft, Textual Histories: Readings in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), 102–10; Leonard Niedorf, “Archbishop Wulfstan’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People”, English Studies 97 (2016): 213–19; Stafford, After Alfred, 160–3.

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emotional afterlives in subsequent centuries, a fact demonstrated by England’s two most widely disseminated histories of the later Middle Ages. The prose Brut (1270 × 1275) tells of Edgar arranging the death of a man who had treacherously married a woman Edgar himself lusted after, subsequently marrying her (story 2).9 It is a tale drawn from Geffrei’s Estoire des Engleis (also recorded in earlier form in William’s Gesta regum Anglorum)10; its remarks on the king’s lust and the admonitions of St Dunstan († 988) mirror those of Geffrei, and its ending is rewritten to more explicitly parallel David’s desire for Bathsheba.11 In turn, Ranulf Higden’s Polychronicon (1342 × 1357) replicates William’s story of an enraged Edgar challenging the King of Scots to a duel (story 1).12 Clearly the image of a lustful, rageful king who threatened other rulers and stole other men’s wives resonated with later historians and their audiences just as well as that of a pious and dutiful lord with a reputation for maintaining peace across his kingdom. Wherever the Anglo-Norman histories relate Edgar’s displays of excessive emotion, these draw attention to him. They mark him out as a transgressive figure in the history of pre-Norman England and make him memorable in the historical discourse of later generations. He is not alone in this. The language of emotion, and particularly depictions of its unchecked indulgence, renders reputations vulnerable. William tells of King Æthelstan’s († 939) unbridled anger leading to murder13 and of King Eadwig’s († 959) uncontrolled lust leading to the exile of St Dunstan.14 Like Edgar’s emotive displays, these are events that leave little mark on the contemporary historical record.

9  Julia Marvin, ed. and trans., The Oldest Anglo-Norman Brut Chronicle: An Edition and Translation (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006), 208–11. 10  Geffrei Gaimar, Estoire des Engleis (Estoire) ll. 3939–60, ed. and trans. Ian Short (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 214–17; G.Reg. ii.157. See also A.R. Press, “The Precocious Courtesy of Geoffrey Gaimar”, in Court and Poet, ed. Glyn S. Burgess (Liverpool: Francis Cairns, 1981), 270–4; R.M.  Thomson, William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum: General Introduction and Commentary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 2:137–8. 11  2 Samuel 11. 12  G.Reg. ii.156; Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden Monachi Cistrensis, ed. Joseph Rawson Lumby (London: Longman, 1876), 6:466–9. 13  G.Reg. ii.139.3–4. 14  G.Reg. ii.147. On this episode and its political and literary influences, see Matthew Firth, “Deconstructing the Female Antagonist of the Coronation Scandal in B’s Vita Dunstani”, English Studies 103, no. 4 (2022): 527–46.

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The introduction of such stories into otherwise positive legacies raises questions around the reception and reinterpretation of historical narrative. It is difficult to comprehend how a king such as Edgar—lauded in contemporary histories—was rendered vulnerable to accusations of anger and lust. In patristic discourse, as detailed below, these were two of the cardinal sins (or principal vices). Part of the answer may simply be that England’s twelfth-century historians had access to non-extant sources, and Edgar’s reputation was not quite as unblemished as the Chronicle accounts seem to imply. Making particular remark on the traditions of Edgar’s lasciviousness, Barbara Yorke suggests: “it seems likely that various oral traditions circulated about the reign of Edgar”.15 Rumours of his inappropriate sexuality were certainly in place by the end of the eleventh century, entwined with the vitae of St Dunstan and traditions around Edgar’s relationship with his leading cleric.16 William’s interest in this dynamic is certainly one factor that underlies his accounts of Edgar’s misdeeds. However, William did not simply record received knowledge; he sought to turn it to didactic purpose. As he states in a letter to Empress Matilda († 1169) that accompanied a copy of Gesta regum, “in the old days books of this kind were written for kings or queens in order to provide them with a sort of pattern for their own lives”.17 Through his accounts of Edgar’s rage and lust, William seeks to offer behavioural models of kingship for a twelfth-­century audience. It is a practice characteristic of his wider approach to pre-­ Norman history, as Alheydis Plassmann observes: William rigorously subjected the events of the Anglo-Saxon past to a didactic pattern. By rewriting stories found in his Anglo-Saxon sources, and by interpreting them in the prism of his own ideas, he managed to draw a new pattern of history that concurred with his ideas.18

15  Barbara Yorke, “The Women in Edgar’s Life”, in Edgar, King of the English 959–975: New Interpretations, ed. Donald Scragg (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2008), 154–5. 16  Osbern, Vita S.  Dunstani, in Memorials of St Dunstan, ed. William Stubbs (London: Longman, 1874), 111–2. 17  G.Reg. ep.ii.4: “huiusmodi libri regibus siue reginis antiquitus scribi, ut quasi as uitae suae exemplum”. 18  Alheydis Plassmann, “Æthelred the Unready and Edward the Confessor in William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon: Two Sides of the Same Coin?”, in Rewriting the Central Middle Ages, ed. Emily A. Winkler and C.P. Lewis (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), 245.

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As Björn Weiler highlights, this ‘didactic pattern’ as it relates to kingship is a complex one. For William, kings were not simply bad or good.19 They were morally fallible figures who could embody both bad and good behaviours, who could, for example, indulge in cardinal sins and yet be champions of justice. This is an ambiguity that characterises Edgar’s afterlives as, through both his transgressions and penances, he becomes an exemplar for later kings.

The Historical Edgar While emotion words are sparse in contemporary records for Edgar’s kingship, they are not entirely absent. As opposed to William’s account of the reign, and to a lesser extent that of Geffrei, these earlier histories almost exclusively purpose emotion words to Edgar’s praise. Positive depictions of his rule are hardly in short supply in the late-tenth century. This was assured by Edgar’s support for the Church and the proponents of England’s tenth-century Church reforms, though his reputation for lawmaking and proactive defence also fed into this. Edgar’s reign was a period of relative peace following decades of viking raids, military conflicts, and dynastic disputes. His sobriquet, pacificus rex Eadgarus, is best understood as “King Edgar the Peacemaker” as opposed to the traditionally used “Peaceful”. The latter implies an evenness of temper not inherent in the byname’s origin. The cognomen was in use within decades of his death and certainly by the turn of the millennium.20 While the positive traditions of his kingship have origins in the latter years of his reign, it is at this time in the early eleventh century that Edgar’s reputation began to soar. Simon Keynes observes that this was a period of renewed viking activity and political infighting, which in the minds of the clerics writing England’s histories and hagiographies, brought the stability of Edgar’s reign into stark relief.21 Once introduced into traditions of his reign, this vision of Edgar as an ideal king became the dominant narrative of English histories in subsequent centuries. William and Geffrei may depict a king given to occasional displays of unchecked emotion, but they first  Björn Weiler, “William of Malmesbury on Kingship.” History 90 (2005): 3–22.  See for example, Adelard, Lectiones in depositione S. Dunstani iii, viii, in The Early Lives of St Dunstan, ed. Michael Lapidge and Michael Winterbottom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2012), 120–1, 103–1. Adelard composed Lectiones 1006 × 1012. 21  Simon Keynes, “Edgar, rex admirabilis”, in Edgar, King of the English, 3–4. 19 20

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emphasise the virtues of his reign. William goes so far as to state that, upon Edgar’s birth, a heavenly voice declared that “peace would be to England as long as this boy is king”.22 The histories of William, Geffrei, John, and Henry emerge within an intertextual network of history writing in medieval England. Foundational to this as it concerns the history of the tenth century are the various redactions of the Chronicle that seem to have circulated in the early twelfth century.23 All four historians make some use of a Chronicle text as the framework for their narrative of Edgar’s reign,24 which is a story quickly told. Edgar took the English throne in 959 on the death of his brother Eadwig. Eadwig had sought to establish his own power base and push aside the influence of ecclesiastical advisors such as St Dunstan. Dunstan outlived Eadwig and was brought back into the fold by Edgar as a factional ally. Eadwig’s attitude to the senior cleric goes some way to explaining why, relatively soon after his death, clerical authors evoked or fabricated rumours of his youthful lust to tarnish his reputation.25 Likewise, Edgar’s positive legacy in the dominant traditions of his reign can be explained by his attitude towards the ecclesiastical leaders of his day, and it is ecclesiastical matters that dominate the Chronicle entries for his reign. The annal for 959 in the D- and E-texts, one of Wulfstan’s interpolations,26 tells of the peace of his reign, the praise (lof ) he gave to God, that he loved (lufode) God’s law. The same entry does make the judgement that he loved (lufode) foreign customs too greatly, but in the author’s assessment Edgar’s virtues outweighed his vices (at least he hoped they did for the sake of Edgar’s soul). In the following years, Edgar was involved in the elevation of Dunstan to the archbishopric in Canterbury and of his fellow reformer St Æthelwold († 984) to the bishopric in Winchester. In 964 Edgar began to enforce the ecclesiastical reforms championed by Dunstan and Æthelwold, and in 965 he married Ælfthryth († c.1000). Ælfthryth occupies a special place in this analysis: according to Geffrei and William, she is the married

 G.Reg. ii.148.1: “Pax Angliae quam diu puer iste regnauerit”.  Stafford, After Alfred, 24, 45, 134, 140–1. Most of these are non-extant, though are in many cases akin to extant Chronicle texts. 24  On the sources for Edgar’s reign, see Keynes, “Edgar”, 3–59. The version of events that follows is taken from ASC A and D for the years 959–975. 25  Firth, “Deconstructing the Female Antagonist”, 530–3. 26  Stafford, After Alfred, 161–3, 183. 22 23

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woman Edgar seeks to court (story 2), his unrestrained lust, anger, and envy leading him into a course of action that ends in murder.27 The next event recorded by the Chronicle texts is Edgar’s second crowning in Bath in 973, with the A–C-texts sharing a different annal to D and E.  The remarkable pageantry of this event, its connections with Dunstan and Æthelwold’s reforms, and the subsequent political implications as Edgar took the fealty of various regional subreguli are, unfortunately, beyond the scope of this discussion.28 The entry found A–C is a laudatory, poetic composition, the phrasing emotive and hyperbolic, but only once labelling an emotional response, recounting the “great joy” (blis micel) all people felt at Edgar’s crowning. The annal shared by D and E is largely free from such rhetorical flourishes, though it does record the submission of the subreguli in a subsequent ceremony at Chester, a detail absent in A–C.  Finally, all extant texts of the Chronicle report Edgar’s death in 975. A–C and D and E again preserve two distinct annals, both emotive and eulogistic, but also both absent of language of emotion. This typifies the Chronicle accounts of Edgar’s reign: emotion words are few, and where they appear, they are purposed to provide a positive impression of his kingship. Little sense is given of the king himself, his motivations or inner life beyond his piety, and no medieval historian claims to have knowledge that may fill that gap until the early twelfth century.

King Edgar and William of Malmesbury Among early twelfth-century Anglo-Norman historians, William of Malmesbury provides the fullest reports of Edgar’s emotional intemperance and thus provides the structure for this analysis. His Gesta regum narrates four discrete tales of emotions which, when unrestrained, lead Edgar into error and sin. These are here termed stories 1–4 in order of their appearance within William’s text, and this study examines each in the light of the emotions they display.

 Estoire, ll. 3939–60; G.Reg. ii.157.3.  On this topic, see Julia Barrow, “Chester’s Earliest Regatta? Edgar’s Dee Rowing Revisited”, Early Medieval Europe 10 (2001), 81–93; George Molyneaux, “Why Were Some Tenth-Century Kings Presented as Rulers of Britain?”, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 21 (2011), 67–72; Ann Williams, “An Outing on the Dee: King Edgar at Chester, A.D. 973”, Mediaeval Scandinavia 14 (2004), 229–43. 27 28

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Story

Event

Gesta chapter

1 2 3 4

Edgar challenges Kenneth, the King of Scots Edgar seeks to marry another man’s wife Edgar abducts and rapes a nun Edgar is tricked into sleeping with a maid

ii.156.1–2 ii.157.1–3 ii.158 ii.159.1–2

Anger is a common thread through all these tales, with lust taking a close second place. Envy is, arguably, another emotion common within the stories, with pride also occasionally rearing its head. While anger, lust, envy, and pride are not all always understood to be emotions in themselves, it is important to bear in mind Barbara Rosenwein’s admonition to be “sensitive to the ever-changing shape of the category of ‘emotions’ and of the terms that belong within it”.29 Anger, lust, envy, and pride have a specificity within medieval Christian thought and, taken together, point to the framework of emotions within which William was operating. These are four of the eight cardinal sins. The cardinal sins are entwined with the idea of excessive emotion, which invariably attracts the negative commentary of clerical writers. William, arguably twelfth-century England’s pre-­ eminent historian, was assuredly aware of the implicit censure encoded in these accounts of Edgar’s rage and lust. William presents two versions of the king in Gesta regum. The first is a historical Edgar modelled on his depiction in the Chronicle. This version of the king would seem to be that with which William himself agreed. He intersperses the narrative of Edgar’s reign with digressions on the lives and deeds of leading ecclesiastical figures, painting the king as their patron and supporter, and even extensively quoting Edgarian charters for the abbeys at Glastonbury and Malmesbury (authenticity notwithstanding).30 In recounting Edgar’s accession, William notes that “his record still shines, bright and popular in our own day”.31 This is oddly inconsistent with the second of Edgar’s characterisations, the version of the king’s reign that is interspersed with outbursts of rage, envy, and lust. 29  Barbara H.  Rosenwein, “Thinking Historically about Medieval Emotions”, History Compass 8, no. 8 (2010): 863. 30  G.Reg. ii.150c, ii.153, cf. S783, S796 in Anglo-Saxon Charters: An Annotated List and Bibliography, ed. P.H.  Sawyer, rev. S.E.  Kelly, R.  Rushforth et  al., accessed 9 November 2021, . 31  G.Reg. ii.148.1: “Res eius multum splendide etiam nostro celebrantur tempore.”

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Gesta regum makes clear that its reports of Edgar’s indiscretions are derived from rumours current in William’s own time. This implies that the duality of Edgar’s legacy was already present by the twelfth century: at once the dutiful, pious peacekeeper, and the rageful, lustful sinner. It is not unprecedented for William to report what is, seemingly, oral lore that undermines his otherwise positive assessments of pre-Norman kings. Both Edward the Elder († 924) and Æthelstan, Edgar’s grandfather and uncle respectively, who are largely lauded by William, are diminished through his recounting of a tale of Edward’s amor (love) for a shepherd’s daughter for a single night, the result of which was Æthelstan. William also reports that Æthelstan exiled and killed his younger brother, believing that he plotted against him, a vengeance sought in ira (anger) and characterised by crudelitas (cruelty).32 Often, William is the sole or foundational source for these stories. Of those connected to Edgar, there is no external support for either story 1 or story 4 (excepting its coda). Among his contemporaries, John records none of these negative rumours and largely eschews emotion words; his is a more dispassionate history for those years that are central to this discussion. John is invariably positive in his portrayal of all three men to the point mythologising their reigns, suggesting, for example, that Edgar maintained an implausibly large defensive fleet of 3600 ships.33 Henry is, if anything, even more laudatory of the three kings (though does reserve judgement for the manner of Edward the Elder’s annexation of Mercia in 920). There is no hint here of Edgar’s vices, and his manifest virtues motivate Henry to the composition of panegyric verse.34 This is a regular idiosyncrasy of Henry’s writing and representative of the fact that Henry, while rarely using words of emotion, is often emotive in his expression. Turning to Geffrei, he reports neither Edward the Elder’s nor Æthelstan’s supposed transgressions, but he does relay one of the four salacious tales William appends to Edgar’s reign (story 2). Geffrei does this with greater detail than William, and within a different emotional schema, one more interested in courtly love than cardinal sin.35 Yet, for 32  G.Reg. ii.139.1–4. This story is reported as early as the 960 s, though Thomson argues that “William’s account seems to have been based on popular legend”, Thomson, Gesta regum, 2:127. 33  JW 975. See also Matthew Firth and Erin Sebo, “Kingship and Maritime Power in tenth-­ Century England”, International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 49, no. 2 (2020): 331–3. 34  HA v.17, 26. 35  Estoire, ll. 3598–920.

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any variations, William and Geffrei’s versions of story 2 share the same characters, the same narrative framework, and the same outcomes, perhaps suggesting that this alone of William’s accounts of Edgar’s private life enjoys the unambiguous support of an independent tradition. A.R. Press casts doubt on this hypothesis, arguing that William was Geffrei’s source36; William wrote Gesta regum in the 1120s, whereas Geffrei composed Estoire in the 1130s. Press, however, provides little by way of support for this assertion beyond the fact that the bones of the two versions of the story are more or less the same. There is no obvious ground for doubting William’s assertion that he derived the tale from oral lore, and there is no reason Geffrei could not have drawn on the same traditions. John Gilliam points out that Geffrei’s sources for Edgar’s reign are unrecoverable and very probably included oral accounts.37 Significantly, Geffrei’s most recent editor, Ian Short, does not note any explicit contact between Gesta regum and Estoire.38 Of the four stories of Edgar’s rage and lust, story 2 is one of those most likely to have provenance outside of Gesta regum. The fact nevertheless remains that William’s stories of Edward, Æthelstan, and Edgar’s excessive emotions are largely uncorroborated by his contemporaries. This raises two possibilities. Either William fabricated the tales, or he drew on non-extant sources or otherwise unrecorded traditions. Geffrei’s parallel account of story 2 might indicate the latter, and this possibility is also supported by the structuring of the Gesta regum’s biographical accounts of these monarchs and William’s own comments on the passages in question. He demarcates the stories of the three kings’ reputed wrongdoings by locating them in discrete sections that follow the primary biographies and by prefacing them with statements expressing his scepticism and reluctance to report them. In the case of Edward and Æthelstan, William indicates that he is drawing on songs (cantilenae) that have “suffered in transmission”.39 He goes on to indicate their inclusion was driven by a desire to be wholly transparent with his readers. While this statement cannot be taken at face value, William’s sequestering of the stories may recommend it to be true. He clearly perceived them to be distinct from the more conventional political biographies of the kings. Moreover,  Press, “Precocious Courtesy”, 270–3.  John Gillingham, “Gaimar, the Prose Brut and the Making of English History”, in L’Histoire et les Nouveaux Publics dans l’Europe Médiévale (XIIIe–XVe siécle), ed. Jean-­ Philippe Genet (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1997), 166. 38  Estoire, ed. Ian Short, 401–2. 39  G.Reg. ii.138: “per successiones temporum detritus”. 36 37

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there is a stylistic shift from the staid prose of historical narrative to the salacious tales and emotional motivators in the passages that William characterises as derived from rumour. In the case of Edgar, William introduces the intemperate version of the king at the open of story 2 with the statement: Sunt qui ingenti eius gloriae neuum temptent apponere, dicentes primis temporibus (Some people try to identify blemishes in his immensely distinguished record, saying that in his early years he was cruel to his subjects and lecherous with young women.)40

William expresses a similar sentiment in his Gesta pontificum Anglorum when placing the summary of Edgar’s reign in Cnut’s mouth, stating that it derived from the latter’s insolence rather than any direct knowledge.41 Nonetheless, as Yorke, Keynes, and Shashi Jayakumar all highlight, there are enough hints of the king’s inappropriate sexuality across various sources to suggest that twelfth-century historians “had access to a common stock of legend and scurrilous ballads dealing with Edgar’s private life”.42 William did not invent his tales of Edgar’s wrongdoings—at least, not all of them and not in their entirety. It is interesting then that he reports them despite his doubts about their veracity. Again, however, William is not simply recording the past. These episodes are highly structured: curated and repurposed for a twelfth-century audience. They respond to William’s views on kings and their relations with their clerical advisors, and consciously access the language and ideas of the principal vices in order to create didactic exemplars. As a result, while William’s stories purport to offer glimpses into Edgar’s inner life at a 150  year remove from his reign, this is unlikely. Rather, they demonstrate how the less virtuous elements of Edgar’s legacy were recalled at the turn of the twelfth century and show how such stories could be given instructive purpose in response to contemporary concerns. As such, the four stories, as constructed by William, display the attitudes of twelfth-century English intellectual culture towards specific emotions and emotional display, prominent among them rage and lust.  G.Reg. ii.157.1.  G.Pont. ii.87.7 42  Quote from Shashi Jayakumar, “Eadwig and Edgar: Politics, Propaganda, Faction”, in Edgar, King of the English”, 96. See also Keynes, “Edgar”, 4–5; Yorke, “The Women”, 154. 40 41

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Anger and Socially Constructed Emotion Anger is one of the more widely theorised emotions in the field of the history of emotions. It is at once accessible and understandable as a basic human emotion,43 and adaptable to the emotive scripts of different cultures and literatures.44 Within the intellectual culture of early twelfth-­ century England, anger was understood to be able to code vice or virtue depending on context. Particularly pertinent here is the theory put forward by James R. Averill, among others, that anger is socially constructed, its form defined by its cultural environment.45 This is especially applicable to the analysis of literary expressions of anger, and particularly where such are distant from the society they purport to describe. Variations of this social-constructivist model of emotions, which can be applied to emotions other than anger, have experienced broad uptake in the study of the history of emotions and, to an extent, in literary criticism.46 No matter how emotions manifest or are witnessed or are experienced in the moment as personalised expressions of self, any recollection of that manifestation is always mediated. Literary historical representations of emotion are necessarily subject to authorial intervention. All literatures intend to impart meaning to an audience, medieval histories no less so than the literary traditions of other genres and times. To borrow from Guillemette Bolens, “emotions necessarily take place in contexts. They are understood via systems of communication and of relevance that pertain to given periods”.47 The boundaries between what constitutes acceptable or excessive emotional display are culturally negotiated and socially constructed. William, 43  See, for example, Paul Ekman, “Are There Basic Emotions?” Psychological Review 99, no. 3 (1992): 550. 44  Barbara H.  Rosenwein, Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), 81–3, 179, 185–7. 45  James R.  Averill, Anger and Aggression: An Essay on Emotion (New York: Springer-­ Verlag, 1982), 3–32. See also Rolf H.  Bremmer Jr., “Looking Back at Anger: Wrath in Anglo-Saxon England”, Review of English Studies 66, no. 275 (2015): 426–7. 46  For overviews, see Guillemette Bolens, “Emotions in History and Literature”, postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies 8 (2017): 120–33; Melissa Raine, “Searching for Emotional Communities in Late Medieval England”, in Emotions and Social Change: Historical and Sociological Perspectives, ed. David Lemmings and Ann Brooks (London: Routledge, 2014), 65–81; Peter N. Stearns, “History of Emotions: Issues of Change and Impact”, in Handbook of Emotions, ed. Michael Lewis, Jeannette M. Haviland-Jones and Lisa Feldman Barrett, 3rd ed. (New York: The Guildford Press, 2008), 18–23. 47  Bolens, “Emotions in History”, 122.

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Geffrei, John, and Henry’s histories of Edgar’s reign are parsed to create meaning for Anglo-Norman readers. The four historians locate Edgar’s emotional responses within the emotive scripts of their own time; these are not intended to be, nor could they be, historical representations of Edgar’s inner life. The tradition of Edgar’s anger develops within a cultural context informed by time and place. It is a product of the intellectual culture of twelfth-century England, though influenced by earlier thought, if William’s claim to have made use of oral lore is to be credited. Ultimately, Edgar’s reputation for anger is a later adaptation of his legacy, inauthentic to the historical record of his own time. By William’ time, it was well established within discourse on the cardinal sins that anger was multi-faceted. In his Moralia in Iob Pope Gregory the Great († 604) took the position that anger was not invariably a vice and that anger derived from “righteous zeal” could constitute acceptable rather than excessive emotion.48 Such righteous anger, as Lester K. Little explains, was understood to grant clarity and foresight. In contrast, anger which derived from impatience “renders one blind” and, if allowed to continue “unrestrained, can bring one to catastrophe”.49 As such, while actions made in anger could inform where emotional display sat on a culturally constructed spectrum of acceptable to excessive, such judgement was more accurately predicated on what motivated the emotion in the first instance. William was conscious of the bipartite nature of anger and ascribes both righteous and unrighteous expressions of it to Edgar at different points of his biography. Story 1 serves as an exemplum of righteous anger. This story is told immediately prior to William’s statement that he is reporting rumour and thus structurally falls outside of that material he holds to be dubious and to reflect negatively on Edgar. In a somewhat rare physical description, William indicates that Edgar was slight of stature but gifted in strength. Indeed, the king was so strong, he states, that he feared (timens) that others would fear him if challenged to friendly feats of strength. This foregrounds what follows. Kenneth, the King of Scots, jested at his home court that it was odd that such a small man should rule so many people; 48  Kate McGrath, Royal Rage and the Construction of Anglo-Norman Authority, c.1000–1250 (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 73. 49  Lester K.  Little, “Anger in Monastic Curses”, in Anger’s Past: The Social Uses of an Emotion in the Middle Ages, ed. Barbara Rosenwein (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), 12.

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this statement made its way back to Edgar, who sent for his fellow monarch. The implication here is that the King of Scots was a subregulus to the King of the English, and there should be little doubt that this is twelfth-­ century political commentary from William who, throughout his history, seeks to establish a provenance for such a state of affairs. In a scene reminiscent of Anglo-Norman trial by combat, upon arriving at the English court, Kenneth is taken out to the woods by Edgar, given a sword and invited to try himself in a contest of arms. Fearfully, the King of Scots drops to his knees to beg forgiveness. The anger here is not overt. The primary emotion described throughout the passage is fear (timor). Yet it is also implicit through his actions that Edgar is angry, though simultaneously magnanimous, willingly granting forgiveness to Kenneth once the pantomime has played out and his dominance has been reasserted. William attaches no judgement to Edgar’s anger towards Kenneth and, to some degree, even lauds it. This is a characteristic of the positive portrayals of Edgar’s legacy. John of Worcester calls Edgar a “fierce and angry lion toward his enemies”,50 again with fear being the emotive response of those faced with his anger. This is in keeping with Gerd Althoff’s observations that royal anger could be considered justifiable when outwardly directed.51 In his turn, Henry of Huntingdon tells of an instance where the king’s response to the people of Thanet spurning royal justice was to ravage the island; but, as Henry is sure to highlight, Edgar was not “raging wildly like an enemy, but rather as a king, punishing evil with evil”.52 Thus in Henry’s hands, an act that at first appears an intemperate response by a spurned king becomes an exercise of righteous anger, Edgar’s deprivations both acceptable and understandable. Henry takes a similar approach in recounting William the Conqueror († 1087) ravaging the treacherous people (gentis perfide) of Northumbria in 1069.53 Once again, it is important to be aware of the socially constructed nature of emotion, particularly in its retrospective literary uses. The impetus for Henry to so frame the ravaging of Thanet derived from Anglo-Norman perceptions of royal justice, his approach to doing so from Anglo-Norman conceptions of acceptable versus excessive emotional display.  JW 959: “et quoniam iram ferocis leonis contra inimicos habuit”.  Gerd Althoff, “Ira Regis: A Royal History of Anger”, in Anger’s Past, 62, 70–3. See also McGrath, Royal Rage, 109–36. 52  HA v.25: “Non ut hostis insaniens, sed ut rex malo mala puniens”. Cf. ASC D–F 969 where this event is recorded without commentary. 53  HA vi.31–2. 50 51

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In contrast, story 4 is intended as a demonstration of excessive emotion. It is an exemplum of unrighteous or transgressive anger, the type of anger the principal vices warn against. William, however, does not introduce the story as an exemplum of anger but rather of crudelitas (cruelty) and libido (lust).54 Nonetheless, of William’s four stories of Edgar’s excessive emotions, story 4 alone describes an affective display of anger. In this story, Edgar has heard tell of a particularly attractive nobleman’s daughter, whom he orders to have brought to him to satisfy his lust. The girl’s mother, wary of her daughter being subjected to concubinage (concubinatus), sends a virgin maidservant in her place under the cover of night. In the morning, the plot unravels, and the maidservant uses her circumstances to make an interesting (and audacious) plea for manumission: decere magnanimitatem eius ut regiae uoluptatis conscia dominorum crudelium ulterius non ingemisceret imperia. (She said, it was to be expected of his generosity that one who had shared the king’s pleasures should groan no longer under the commands of cruel masters.)55

Somewhat surprisingly, this tactic works, though one would rightly wonder what William’s role was in the story’s creation: story 4 has no external support. It may be that it developed in oral lore as an element of that “common stock of legend and scurrilous ballads”.56 If so, it seems that William reshaped the story, mitigating its detrimental effects on the king’s otherwise widely praised legacy. Alternatively, William fabricated the tale. Whatever its origin, the narrative is deliberately constructed to fit within William’s didactic patterns of kingship. Following the maidservant’s plea, Edgar descends into a rage. This rage is not, however, solely driven by afront at the temerity of the mother to trick the king, as one would expect. According to William, Edgar’s ire was also raised by the way the maidservant was treated: Tunc ille, felle commoto, et formidabile redens, cum in animo eius fluctuaret hinc de famula miseratio, hinc de domina indignatio, quasi in iocos effusus usum obsequiorum penamque remittit.

 G.Reg. ii.159.1.  Ibid. 56  Jayakumar, “Eadwig and Edgar”, 96. 54 55

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(At this, shaking with wrath, and with a terrible laugh, as if breaking into jest—his mind shifting between pity for the slave and anger with her mistress—he released her from her duties and any punishment.)57

There are numerous words and figurative references relating to anger in this passage, which combine with the physical manifestations of Edgar’s rage to give the impression of uncontrolled anger. Much of this is vested in the phrase felle commoto. Commoto has a sense of violent movement or agitation, felle translates literally as “with gall” or “with bitterness” but in a figurative sense can be understood as “with wrath/rage”. A similar use of fel/felle in Anglo-Latin literature can be observed in Vita S. Kenelmi (1066 × 1075). Here the antagonist is described as being overtaken by ira, indignatio, and fel, all nouns that express some variety of anger and together imply its expression as excessive and uncontrollable.58 Notably indignatio is also the term used to describe Edgar’s feelings towards the mother who had tricked him. However, even more than individual emotion words, the description of Edgar’s affective display in this moment places him beyond the bounds of controlled emotion; William conjures an image of the king wildly laughing as his emotions take over his mind, flitting from one emotive, reactionary response to the next and then back. All that has happened to this point falls under William’s assertion that story 4 is an exemplum of libido. It is Edgar’s actions in his anger that demonstrate crudelitas. To punish the family that had repudiated his advances towards their daughter, that had tricked him in a manner likely to diminish his status and authority, Edgar raised the maidservant to overlordship of the noble family. Thus, in seeking to protect a daughter from a lecherous king, albeit with an action that carried its own callous disregard, the family attracted the king’s anger and punishment. However, there is a redemptive arc for Edgar in his freeing of the maidservant, an element of the story undoubtedly William’s in origin. He goes on to assert the king remained faithful to her until he married Ælfthryth. Weiler argues that this monogamous turn should be read as the king’s penance for his sins in this episode, a willing atonement that transforms  G.Reg. ii.159.2. My translation.  Vita et miracula S. Kenelmi, in Three Eleventh-Century Anglo-Saxon Saints’ Lives, ed. Rosalind Love (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 70: “ira indignatione felle cepit tabescere”. On this passage, see also Matthew Firth, “The Character of the Treacherous Woman in the passiones of Early Medieval English Royal Martyrs”, Royal Studies Journal 7, no. 1 (2020), 18–20. 57 58

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Edgar from sinner into “virtuous paragon”.59 In this way, William offers commentary on, and models of kingship for, the kings of his own time. This does not, however, diminish the fact that Edgar is the architect of all the misfortunes in story 4. Any need he has to atone for his sins is driven by his actions alone. Even the apparent cruelty of the maidservant’s former masters, against which Edgar rages, finds its cause in his inappropriate sexuality. If the nature of anger is defined by its motivation, then the king is operating beyond the societal boundaries of acceptable emotion; his uncontrollable rage in story 4 originates above all in his uncontrolled lust.

Lust and the Principal Vices The first tale of lust that William reports is story 2, that of Edgar wooing the married Ælfthryth and arranging her husband’s death. As noted, Geffrei also recounts this tale, this being the most extensive self-contained narrative he reports from the pre-Conquest period, extending to some 320 lines of verse.60 Both versions of the story, though most particularly that of Geffrei, contain undertones of the Davidic story of Bathsheba and overtones of the medieval courtly romance genre. Indeed, Press argues that Geffrei’s account of story 2 constitutes “our earliest known imaginative realization of a courtly love story”.61 Geffrei’s use of the motifs of courtly love is as creative as it is pronounced. In contrast, the elements of courtly love in William’s account give the sense of either being incidental or intentionally minimised. This different approach to the material means the stories diverge in their emotive scripts. There are three actors in the drama: Edgar, his ealdorman Æthelwold († 962), and Ælfthryth. In Geffrei’s account, love is the dominant theme. Edgar loves (aim) Ælfthryth before ever meeting her.62 Æthelwold is also beloved (cher) to him, and Edgar trusts him completely (trebien te crei).63 It is the latter’s treachery in obtaining Ælfthryth’s hand through deception in the face of the king’s desire that is the real evil in Geffrei’s view. He is full of praise for both Edgar and Ælfthryth and damnation for the  Weiler, “William of Malmesbury”, 15–16.  Estoire, ll. 3598–920. 61  Press, “Precocious Courtesy”, 273. 62  Estoire, l. 3637; see also Short’s note on this trope on 403. 63  Estoire, ll 3633, 3709. On love as driving force Gaimar’s Edgar-Ælfthryth narrative, see also Jane Dick Zatta, “Gender, Love, and Sex As Political Theory?: Romance in Geffrei Gaimar’s Anglo-Norman Chronicle”, Mediaevalia 21, no. 2 (1997): 249–80. 59 60

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deceiver (lozengier), Æthelwold. Yet Æthelwold proves unable to keep the noble lovers apart forever. Lust does here rear its head. At Edgar and Ælfthryth’s first meeting Geffrei states that, while she greeted the king in innocence (simpleté) the king was “fired with passion” (enluminé).64 Geffrei expresses concern that this emotional state may drive Edgar to irrational action, but this does not eventuate. While Æthelwold, in the manner of Uriah, is sent away in the course of duty only to be killed on his travels,65 Edgar, the “gracious and noble-minded king”,66 unlike David, is absolved of any guilt in his rival’s death. There is no hint here that Edgar was driven to murder by his lust or anger. In truth, Edgar does not experience excessive or transgressive emotion in Geffrei’s version of story 2. It is a simple tale in some ways: Edgar and Ælfthryth are protagonists, and Æthelwold is the antagonist. The characters in William’s account are less readily categorised. William’s version of the tale has Edgar sending his ealdorman Æthelwold to report on Ælfthryth’s reputed beauty. Upon meeting her, Æthelwold is smitten by Ælfthryth—though William does not indicate this is love—and arranges to marry her, neglecting to tell the bride she had raised the king’s interest and neglecting to confirm Ælfthryth’s beauty to the king. Before long, Edgar hears tell of Æthelwold’s duplicity and arranges to come visit the couple, maintaining an innocent facade. Fearful, Æthelwold begs his wife to diminish her appearance in the face of the king’s visit. She, however, having learned that, were it not for Æthelwold, she may have been queen-consort, makes every effort to augment her appearance. Upon witnessing her beauty, Edgar burned (inarsit) for her. Hiding his hatred (odio) of Æthelwold, he takes the ealdorman into the forest where he kills him with a spear. According to William, it was only the acceptance and absolution of Edgar’s actions by Æthelwold’s son that “calmed [the king’s] swollen heart” (tumentis animum mansuefecit). This language of emotion that describes Edgar’s lust and hatred and swollen heart is almost wholly absent from Geffrei’s account of the tale. In turn, William’s only mention of love is an idiomatic description of Edgar’s pursuit of other women.67 Here Edgar is prompted by anger and by lust, excessive

 Estoire, ll 3813–14. Edgar is described again as having been so inflamed at line 3832.  Estoire, ll 3849–63; cf. 2 Samuel 11. 66  Estoire, l. 3741: “li reis francs et gentil”. 67  G.Reg. ii.157: “aliis amoribus intento”. 64 65

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emotions that lead him to excessive action, making Æthelwold’s own ill deed fade into the background. There is an element of historicity to the story. Both Æthelwold and Ælfthryth are historical figures, and their marriage is verifiable.68 Ælfthryth’s subsequent marriage to Edgar is, likewise, a matter of historical record.69 Ælfthryth however, just like her second husband, enjoys a fraught reputational afterlife, a fact of which William is conscious.70 Both legacies are at play in this story; the transgressions lie as much in Ælfthryth’s pride as Edgar’s rage and lust, though William reserves special ire for the queen:71 (but what would this woman not dare?). Despite this commentary, however, it is Edgar and his reactionary emotional state that loom large over William’s version of story 2. In his account, Geffrei establishes Edgar’s love for Ælfthryth prior to Æthelwold’s treachery, allowing for love to be the emotion that prompts both subsequent action and Edgar’s subsequent desire for her. William, however, presents Edgar as merely curious about the beauty of whom he has heard, and he is seemingly happy to pursue other loves (alii amores) while Æthelwold marries Ælfthryth. It is only when he realises Æthelwold’s deceit (prompting anger) and recognises Ælfthryth’s beauty (prompting envy) that desire follows. In short, Edgar’s lust can be viewed as a derivation of his emotional state as opposed to being an emotion in its own right. His desire for Ælfthryth stems (at least in part) from anger or envy. It is worth noting, however, that theorists problematise both lust and envy as emotions, and neither features on the generally accepted list of basic emotions (happiness, surprise, fear, sadness, anger, disgust/ contempt).72 On the former, suggestions include that lust is an “adaptive behaviour” that results from emotion73 or that it is more accurately understood as a desire, seeking only satisfaction.74 In turn, while envy is more often accepted to fit the definition of emotion, there is broad agreement 68  Mary Elizabeth Blanchard, “Beyond Corfe: Ælfthryth’s Roles as Queen, Villain, and Former Sister-in-law,” Haskins Society Journal 30 (2018): 4–8. 69  ASC D, F 965. 70   On Ælfthryth’s legacy, see Blanchard, “Beyond Corfe”, 1–19; Firth, “The Character”, 1–21. 71  “sed quid non presumit femina”. 72  Ekman, “Are There Basic Emotions?”, 550. 73  Peter Salovey et al., “Emotional Intelligence”, in Handbook of Emotions, 534. 74  Rodrigo Díaz and Kevin Reuter, “Feeling the Right Way: Normative Influences on People’s use of Emotion Concepts”, Mind & language 36, no. 3 (2021): 466.

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that it cannot be understood as a basic emotion. Niels van de Ven and Marcel Zeelenberg argue that whereas anger is a basic emotion, developed to cope with perceived obstructions to attaining goals, envy has somewhat more complex motivators linked to perceived threats to relative status.75 By this reckoning, it can be understood that Edgar’s envy is aroused first by the diminishing of his status implied by the betrayal of a trusted advisor but fully realised in his witnessing of Ælfthryth’s beauty and realisation that that which he desires has been claimed by another. Yet there is a fundamental challenge to applying modern theories of emotion to the past: in their formulation they rarely engage in direct comparative historical analysis. Cultures distinguished in time and place construct their own emotive scripts that identify individual emotions and establish their normative values. That William was working from an emotional schema that involved the cardinal sins has already been noted. In the medieval worldview, lust and envy sat alongside emotions whose status as emotions is rather more secure—such as anger/wrath—as vehicles for immorality. The foundational ideas underlying the conception of the eight principal vices were established in Latin Christian discourse in the early fifth century by John Cassian († c.430) in his Institutes and Conferences.76 This in turn was recapitulated by Gregory the Great in a more familiar form in his Moralia in Iob, in which seven vices including wrath, lust, and envy are governed by an eighth: pride.77 The writings of both men were widely disseminated throughout Latin Christendom, extending to England, ensuring the concept of the cardinal sins was embedded within English

75  Niels van de Ven and Marcel Zeelenberg, “Envy and Social Comparison”, in Social Comparison, Judgment, and Behavior, ed. Jerry Suls, Rebecca L. Collins and Ladd Wheeler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 228. Note the distinction between jealousy and envy on 227; following the marriage, Æthelwold is motivated by jealousy, and Edgar is motivated by envy. 76  Rhonda L.  McDaniel, “Pride Goes Before a Fall: Aldhelm’s Practical Application of Gregorian and Cassianic Conceptions of superbia and the Eight Principal Vices,” in The Seven Deadly Sins: From Communities to Individuals, ed. Richard Newhauser (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 95–6. See also Rosenwein, Emotional Communities, 47, 81–3. 77  Gregorius Magnus, Moralia in Iob 31.45.89–90, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 143B, ed. Marc Adriaen (Turnhout: Brepols, 1985), 1610–12. See also Carole Straw, “Gregory, Cassian, and the Cardinal Vices,” in In the Garden of Evil: The Vices and Culture in the Middle Ages, ed. Richard Newhauser (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2005), 35–58.

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intellectual culture.78 Helmut Gneuss and Michael Lapidge identify no fewer than seven extant pre-1100 codices that contain John of Cassian’s works in part or in full, and sixteen that contain Moralia in Iob.79 The most fully formed, or at least best-known, medieval Anglo-Latin adaptation of the principal vices is found in De virginitate, the treatise on virginity authored by the cleric and scholar Aldhelm († 705).80 De virginitate survives in twelve individual manuscripts, the production of almost all of them dating to the tenth and eleventh centuries.81 That the majority of the extant manuscripts of John and Gregory’s works likewise date to this period demonstrates that the concept of the cardinal sins was of abiding interest within English intellectual culture through Edgar’s reign and into the Anglo-Norman period.82 However, quite apart from the transmission of the principal vices through Church teaching and clerical treatises, a direct link can also be drawn between Aldhelm and William of Malmesbury’s intellectual environment some four centuries later. Aldhelm had been the abbot of Malmesbury for around three decades from the 670s and most likely wrote De virginitate during his tenure. William was most aware of Aldhelm’s legacy at Malmesbury and devoted the fifth chapter of his Gesta pontificum to a vita of the saint. William also shows knowledge of Aldhelm’s writings, making mention of De virginitate three times.83 There is little doubt that William was familiar with the language and concepts of the cardinal sins, and even labels the vices he believes Edgar’s supposed transgressions exhibit. Interestingly, however, William does not present story 2 as a tale of lust. In his reckoning, it serves as is an exemplum of crudelitas. Story 3 is his 78  McDaniel, “Pride”, 96–7. See also Stephen Lake, “Knowledge of the writings of John Cassian in early Anglo-Saxon England,” Anglo-Saxon England 32 (2003): 27–41. 79  Helmut Gneuss and Michael Lapidge, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014), 902, 912 (index entries). 80  Aldhelmus Malmesbiriensis, Prosa de virginitate 11–13, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 124A, ed. Scott Gwara (Turnhout: Brepols, 1985), 121–61. See also McDaniel, “Pride”, 98–109. 81  Gneuss and Lapidge, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, 890. 82  The cardinal sins also feature in the writings of Alcuin of York († 804), Ælfric of Eynsham († c.1010), Byrhtferth of Ramsey († c.1016) and Wulfstan II, among others. On this, see Christina Lee’s contribution to this volume, and Paul Szarmach, “The Vocabulary of Sin and the Eight Cardinal Sins”, in Old English Lexicology and Lexicography, ed. Maren Clegg Hyer, Haruko Momma and Samantha Zacher (Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 2020), 110–25. 83  G.Pont. 73.13, 196.2–4; 213.5.

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primary exemplum of libido or rather a representative example of the tales circulating of Edgar’s libido. It is a short and ugly story. Edgar hears tell of a beautiful nun, forcibly removes the woman from her abbey, and repeatedly rapes her.84 This violent indulgence of his lust comes to the attention of St Dunstan, who imposes a seven-year penance on the king, during which period Edgar is forbidden from wearing his crown. This tale has echoes in a note made by William at the close of story 4. In enumerating Edgar’s children, William identifies him as having had three concubines, the second of which, named Wulfthryth, he tells his readers, “was certainly not a nun at the time but as a girl of lay status had adopted the veil out of fear of the king, but later had it snatched away and was forced into a royal marriage”.85 It is possible that William obtained two versions of the same story from different sources, reporting them as separate events. Even so, as Yorke puts it, “it would appear that various rumours about Edgar’s sexual predilections for nuns … were circulating in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries”.86 In his vita of St Dunstan (1103 × 1110), Eadmer of Canterbury relays a story very similar to William, of a lay girl who feared the king’s advances and so donned a nun’s veil. This did little to deter Edgar, who Eadmer identifies as being married at this time. The king snatched the veil from the girl and raped her.87 Unlike William, Eadmer does not identify this girl as Wulfthryth nor does he indicate that it ended in a forced marriage; however, he does report that Dunstan imposed a seven-year penance on the king. Thus, what is two stories—Gesta regum—the rape of a nun leading to penance (story 3), and Wulfthryth’s use of a nun’s veil to try escape the king’s attentions (story 4, coda)—is only one story in Eadmer’s version of events. William follows Eadmer’s lead in Gesta pontificum. His account of the abduction of Wulfthryth adheres quite closely to that of Gesta regum, though in this version of events he is even more determined to absolve the king of guilt. He states that the very idea that Wulfthryth was a nun at the time the king sought her out is a foolishness.88 William is, seemingly, little  G.Reg. ii.158.  G.Reg. ii.159.2: “quam certum est non tunc sanctimonialem fuisse, sed timore regis puellam laicam se uelauisse, moxque eandem abrepto uelo lecto imperiali subactam”. 86  Yorke, “The Women”, 155. 87  Eadmer of Canterbury, Vita S. Dunstani, in Lives and Miracles of Saints Oda, Dunstan and Oswald, ed. Andrew J.  Turner and Bernard J.  Muir (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006), 135–6. 88  G.Pont. ii.87.10: “opinio uulgaris delirat”. 84 85

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phased by the fact, repeated now for a third time, that the woman at the heart of this story feared the king and sought to hide from him before being forced into sex or marriage. In William’s opinion, the transgression lies in the question of the girl’s status. St Dunstan takes exception to Edgar having dared to violate “a woman who had even in a shadowy way been a nun”, and it is this that leads to the king’s seven-year penance.89 William makes no mention of the rape of the unnamed nun who he held to be the origin of that penance in Gesta regum. William’s confusion may be understandable, with multiple tales of Edgar’s lust and sexual violence circulating around the turn of the twelfth century. Osbern of Canterbury’s vita of St Dunstan (1089 × 1093), to which William had access, tells another version of story 3, relating that the king abused an unnamed nun and, as a result, Dunstan imposed the seven-year penance.90 There are faint hints of these stories in other earlier vitae, and such may combine to suggest that some truth lies behind the stories of Edgar’s lust. But this can be overstated. Henry and John eschew reporting such rumour, as does Geffrei in this instance.91 The earliest vita of St Dunstan likewise fails to recount these events, as do the vitae of his fellow reformers St Æthelwold and St Oswald, written between 995 and 1005.92 The tradition of Edgar’s sexual pursuit of nuns seems to be a later innovation more correctly associated with the development of the cult of St Dunstan than with the transmission of the king’s own legacy. As Ryan Kemp points out, William was more interested in Dunstan as an exemplar of clerical authority than in any other ecclesiastical advisor that appears in his works. Kemp argues that William believed “the saint’s co-operation with king Edgar had brought about a golden age”, but also that Dunstan was “the exemplar of the admonishing bishop”.93 These two things are linked. In  G.Pont. ii.87.10: “el umbratice sanctimonialis fuisset”.  Osbern, Vita S. Dunstani, 111–2. On the relationships between the accounts of Edgar’s seductions of nuns, see Susan Ridyard, The Royal Saints of Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 37–44; Yorke, “The Women”, 154–6. 91  JW 964; HA ix.52. Geffrei does report that Dunstan rebuked Edgar for his sexual activities but attached this to his relationship with Ælfthryth, Estoire, ll. 3953–56. 92  B, Vita S. Dunstani, in The Early Lives of St Dunstan, ed. Michael Lapidge and Michael Winterbottom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2012), 76–9; Byrhtferth of Ramsey, Vita S. Oswaldi, in The Lives of St Oswald and St Ecgwine, ed. Michael Lapidge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2009), 84–5; Wulfstan of Winchester, The Life of St Æthelwold, ed. Michael Lapidge and Michael Winterbottom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2012), 24–31. 93  Ryan Kemp, “Advising the King: Kingship, Bishops and Saints in the Works of William of Malmesbury,” in Discovering William of Malmesbury, ed. Rodney M.  Thomson, Emily Dolmans, and Emily Winkler (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2017), 64. 89 90

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William’s hands, and in those of Osbern and Eadmer before him, Edgar’s sinfulness becomes virtuousness through his acceptance of Dunstan’s admonitions and the penance he imposes. To quote Weiler, Edgar “sinned, but his act of atonement not only washed away that sin, but turned him into a virtuous paragon”.94 William is again providing models for good kingship, with penance for wrongdoing being key, alongside a willingness to rely on the wisdom of clerical advisors. After all, Edgar’s is not the only reputation elevated by these acts of contrition: Dunstan’s own legacy was augmented by his authority to enforce a seven-­year penance on a reigning monarch. Two other factors are worth noting regarding Edgar’s trysts with nuns. First is the centrality of the penance and the prohibition on Edgar’s wearing his crown. It is possible that this represents an attempt by writers a century removed from the impulses of the Benedictine reforms to make sense of Edgar’s second coronation. Secondly, Wulfthryth and Edgar parted ways after the birth of their daughter Edith, the former willingly or unwillingly entering the abbey at Wilton to become its abbess (and in due course a saint).95 As such, in a rather literal sense, Edgar did have sex with a nun, even if that was before she entered into those vows. It may be then that the rumours of the king’s “sexual predilections for nuns” that found their way into the works of Osbern, Eadmer, and William represent little more than garbled or fancified accounts of Edgar and Wulfthryth’s relationship. Yet it remains that, of the emotional vices that do become attached to Edgar’s legacy in its transmission, lust seems to be the most widely reported, even if the treatment of his anger across Anglo-Norman histories is more nuanced.

Conclusion Quite why negative traditions of excessive emotion became attached to Edgar’s legacy in the 150 years following his reign is not always clear. St Dunstan often appears in these tales as an arbitrator, and so they are feasibly developments associated with his burgeoning cult. Maybe they should be understood to represent garbled cultural memory of the king’s personality or deeds. Some of the tales certainly may be William’s own inventions. Others perhaps may be true in a fundamental sense, relaying events of Edgar’s reign but refracted through an early twelfth-century literary  Weiler, “William of Malmesbury”, 16.  JW 964; Yorke, “The Women”, 144–5.

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historical lens. Nonetheless, whatever the origins of the tales of Edgar’s rage and lust, that Anglo-Norman literary historical lens is foundational to how negative traditions of excessive emotion attach to Edgar’s legacy. Though usually categorised as histories, the fundamentally literary nature of William, Geffrei, John, and Henry’s texts cannot be denied. Their depictions of emotion draw upon socially constructed models, whether adopted through oral transmission or textual redaction. This framework defines the boundaries between what constitutes acceptable or excessive emotion. Thus, anger could result in acceptable emotive display if restrained to good purpose, as depicted by John and Henry, or excessive emotive display if uncontrolled and/or directed to unrighteous pursuits. Foundational to this worldview are the principal vices, a schema of emotive norms readily understood by a medieval audience and easily purposed to pejorative ends. While Edgar’s may be, overwhelming, a positive legacy in medieval historiography, alongside this runs a transgressive thread. William and Geffrei, but also Osbern and Eadmer, purport to offer a glimpse of a man who, for all his qualities, was prone to outbursts of excessive emotion, susceptible to succumbing to the vices of rage and lust. Edgar’s emotional afterlives illuminate perceptions of untempered emotion in the intellectual culture of early twelfth-century England, demonstrating how emotive display could render reputations and legacies vulnerable and, equally, be turned to didactic intent.

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McDaniel, Rhonda L. ‘Pride Goes Before a Fall: Aldhelm’s Practical Application of Gregorian and Cassianic Conceptions of superbia and the Eight Principal Vices.” In The Seven Deadly Sins: From Communities to Individuals, edited by Richard Newhauser, 95–110 (Leiden: Brill, 2007). McGrath, Kate. Royal Rage and the Construction of Anglo-Norman Authority, c.1000–1250. Palgrave Studies in the History of Emotions. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Molyneaux, George. “Why Were Some Tenth-Century Kings Presented as Rulers of Britain?” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 21 (2011), 59–91. Niedorf, Leonard. “Archbishop Wulfstan’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People.” English Studies 97 (2016): 207–25. Plassmann, Alheydis. “Æthelred the Unready and Edward the Confessor in William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon: Two Sides of the Same Coin?” In Rewriting the Central Middle Ages, edited by Emily A. Winkler and C.P. Lewis, 243–68. Turnhout: Brepols, 2022. Press, A.R. “The Precocious Courtesy of Geoffrey Gaimar.” In Court and Poet, edited by Glyn S. Burgess, 267–76. Liverpool: Francis Cairns, 1981. Raine, Melissa. “Searching for Emotional Communities in Late Medieval England.” In Emotions and Social Change: Historical and Sociological Perspectives, edited by David Lemmings and Ann Brooks, 65–81. London: Routledge, 2014. Ridyard, Susan. The Royal Saints of Anglo-Saxon England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Rosenwein, Barbara H. Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006. Rosenwein, Barbara H. “Thinking Historically about Medieval Emotions,” History Compass 8, no. 8 (2010): 828–42. Salovey, Peter et al. “Emotional Intelligence.” In Handbook of Emotions, edited by Michael Lewis, Jeannette M. Haviland-Jones and Lisa Feldman Barrett, 3rd ed., 533–48. New York: The Guildford Press, 2008. Stafford, Pauline. After Alfred: Anglo-Saxon Chronicles and Chroniclers, 900–1150. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Stearns, Peter N. “History of Emotions: Issues of Change and Impact.” In Handbook of Emotions, edited by Michael Lewis, Jeannette M. Haviland-Jones and Lisa Feldman Barrett, 3rd ed., 17–31. New York: The Guildford Press, 2008. Straw, Carole. “Gregory, Cassian, and the Cardinal Vices.” In In the Garden of Evil: The Vices and Culture in the Middle Ages. Edited by Richard Newhauser, 35–58. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2005. Szarmach, Paul. “The Vocabulary of Sin and the Eight Cardinal Sins.” In Old English Lexicology and Lexicography. Edited by Maren Clegg Hyer, Haruko Momma and Samantha Zacher, 110–25. Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 2020.

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Thomson, R.M.  William of Malmesbury. Gesta regum Anglorum: General Introduction and Commentary. 2 vols, vol. 2. Oxford Medieval Texts. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. van de Ven, Niels and Marcel Zeelenberg. “Envy and Social Comparison.” In Social Comparison, Judgment, and Behavior, edited by Jerry Suls, Rebecca L. Collins and Ladd Wheeler, 226–50. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020). Weiler, Björn. “William of Malmesbury on Kingship.” History 90 (2005): 3–22. Williams, Ann. “An Outing on the Dee: King Edgar at Chester, A.D. 973.” Mediaeval Scandinavia 14 (2004), 229–43. Yorke, Barbara. “The Women in Edgar’s Life.” In Edgar, King of the English 959–975: New Interpretations, edited by Donald Scragg, 143–57. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2008. Zatta, Jane Dick. “Gender, Love, and Sex as Political Theory?: Romance in Geffrei Gaimar’s Anglo-Norman Chronicle.” Mediaevalia 21, no. 2 (1997): 249–80.

CHAPTER 10

‘Shrink Not Appalled from My Great Sorrow’: Translating Emotion in the Celtic Revival Kate Louise Mathis

The years of the Celtic Revival (c.1880–c.1920) shaped the work of an interconnected group of playwrights, poets, and artists on both sides of the Irish Sea,1 whose creativity responded to its background of political and linguistic activism yet tended to prioritize an emotive and often emotional 1  James Pethica, “The Irish literary revival,” in A companion to British literature, Vol. 4: Victorian and Twentieth-Century literature, 1837–2000, eds., Robert De Maria et  al. (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014); Philip O’Leary, “‘Children of the same mother’: Gaelic relations with the other Celtic revival movements, 1882–1916,” Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium 6 (1986); Joep Leerssen, Remembrance and imagination (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), and Seamus Deane, Strange Country: Modernity and Nationhood in Irish Writing since 1790 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 181–97. For the ‘Celtic’ Revival in Scotland, see Donald Meek, “‘Beachdan Ura a Inbhir Nis/New Opinions from Inverness’: Alexander MacBain (1855–1907) and the foundation of Celtic Studies in Scotland,” Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 131 (2002).

K. L. Mathis (*) Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann/University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 E. Sebo et al. (eds.), Emotional Alterity in the Medieval North Sea World, Palgrave Studies in the History of Emotions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33965-3_10

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sympathy for the ideals of a reimagined, deeply romanticized ‘Celtic’ past. Exemplified by W.  B. Yeats (1865–1939) and Augusta, Lady Gregory (1852–1932), Anglo-Irish Revivalist authors claimed direct inspiration from medieval Gaelic prose tales such as Táin Bó Cúailnge (‘The CattleRaid of Cooley’) but reacted against the formality perceived in the narrow range of such texts’ English-language translations on which, without competence in medieval Gaelic or Irish, most were dependent.2 Moreover, Revivalist authors’ depictions of characters such as Cú Chulainn, Fionn mac Cumhaill, Medb (‘Queen Maeve’), and Deirdre fashioned versions of their lives in Ireland’s ‘Heroic Age’ acceptable to a modern audience, bearing often-tenuous comparison to their alleged originals. In particular, disparity emerges clearly from Revivalist renditions of episodes in medieval texts that convey violence or violent death, bereavement, or other forms of heightened emotion, which may be edited, bowdlerized, or omitted, while their characters’ impassioned behaviour and its impact on others may be minimized or redirected, shaped to reflect the gaze of modern, not contemporary moral codes. The following discussion explores key episodes in a selection of Revival-era versions of Táin Bó Cúailnge and Longes mac n-Uislenn (‘The Exile of Uisliu’s Sons’), in which their characters’ emotional activity has been subject to significant revision, or in which, more rarely, its audience’s anticipation of the emotional range attached to particular activities has been managed with well-informed precision. The oldest-preserved description of Deirdre’s behaviour at the graveside of the Sons of Uisliu, for example, emphasizes the extremity of her reaction to their loss.3 Following the brothers’ deaths, which result from simultaneous beheading, Deirdre “dishevels her hair and begins to strike herself upon the ground”.4 She laments the brothers’ lives in verse, intermixing its recitation by drinking their blood “to excess” (go humarcach), and leaps 2  ‘Medieval Gaelic’ refers in this chapter to the literary language common to professionally trained poets and scholars in medieval Ireland and the medieval Scottish Gàidhealtachd (c. 1100–c. 1550); ‘Old Irish’ denotes the language prior to c. 1000 AD. Prose tales such as Táin Bó Cúailnge were composed in the Old Irish period but preserved initially by twelfth-­ century manuscripts. ‘Modern Irish’ (‘Irish’) refers to the descendant language, both spoken and written, latterly distinct to Ireland. Many scholars of medieval Gaelic were fluent speakers of Irish, but competence in the modern vernacular was largely independent of the capability to understand the older language or its literary corpus (see below). 3  Aoidhe Chloinne Uislenn (The violent death of Uisliu’s children), Royal Irish Academy B iv 1 (MS 2), dated 1671, transcribed in Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith, ed., Oidheadh Chloinne hUisneach/The violent death of the children of Uisneach (London: Irish Texts Society, 1993), 186–205. English translations, unless otherwise stated, are the present author’s. 4  do sgaoil Deirdre a folt 7 ro stríoc si féin go talamh.

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into the grave atop their mingled bodies.5 Consumed by the strength of her grief, typical of closely proximate mourners, often women, confronted by violent death in medieval Gaelic literature, Deirdre dies.6 Similarly heightened emotion saturates the oldest account of her birth and appropriation by Conchobor, Ulster’s treacherous king. Foreshadowed by a shriek in utero that provokes terror among warriors feasting at his court,7 which his druid interprets as an omen of suffering, bloodshed, and death, the king is aroused by the ancillary revelation of Deirdre’s future beauty and rejects demands that she be killed to safeguard the kingdom.8 Refusing debate, he takes the child for himself: “in a court apart she was brought up, in order that no man of the Ulstermen might see her until the time that she should sleep with Conchobor”.9,10 Both episodes’ stark, disquieting tone, characteristic of Deirdre’s portrayal in its oldest-preserved forms, is more familiar to a modern audience from the tepid, often sanitized romanticism that typifies her depiction in the Celtic Revival (c. 1880-c. 1920), transformed, as Eleanor Hull observed tartly, from “wild woman […] into the Lydia Languish of a later age”.11 Augusta Gregory’s influential 1902 novelization, for example, which  do ling Deirdre isin úamhaidh ar muin chloinne hUisneach.  For the context of Deirdre’s behaviour in this scene and its connexion to the oldest version of the brothers’ death, see Kate L. Mathis, “Mourning the maic Uislenn: Blood, death, and grief in Longes mac n-Uislenn and Oidheadh Chloinne hUisneach,” Scottish Gaelic ̇ Studies 29 (2013), and Danielle Marie Cudmore, “… agus ag ól a fola: Ingesting blood and engendering lament in Medieval Irish Literature,” in Grief, Gender, and Identity in the Middle Ages: Knowing Sorrow, ed., Lee Templeton (Leiden: Brill, 2022). 7  Its aural impact causes physical harm, the first of several episodes in which unforeseen noise disrupts the tale’s characters’ status quo; see Cornelius Buttimer, “Longes mac n-Uislenn reconsidered,” Éigse 28 (1994–5): 2–8, and Giovanna Tallone, “A voice from beyond: The story of the Deirdre story,” ABEI Journal: The Brazilian Journal of Irish Studies 13 (2011): 35–44. 8  Sarah Sheehan, “Feasts for the eyes: Visuality and desire in the Ulster Cycle,” in Constructing gender in medieval Ireland, eds., Sarah Sheehan and Ann Dooley (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 102. 9  is i llis fo leith ro∙alt connach acced fer di Ultaib cosin n-úair no∙foad la Conchobor. 10  Vernam Hull, ed., Longes mac n-Uislenn/The exile of the sons of Uisliu (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1949), ll. 86–7. Conchobor’s refusal to preserve Ulster from the child’s prophesied effect is discussed by Elva Johnston, “Kingship made real? Power and the public world in Longes mac n-Uislenn,” in TOME: Studies in medieval history and law in honour of Thomas Charles-Edwards, eds., Fiona Edmonds and Paul Russell (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2011). 11  “The Story of Deirdre, in its bearing on the social development of the folk-tale,” Folklore 15, no. 1 (1904): 25. 5 6

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achieved significant authority among anglophone audiences otherwise excluded from engagement with medieval Gaelic sources, reduces the performative aspect of Deirdre’s grief to unobtrusive weeping. Her contact with the brothers’ blood, stripped of its former significance as “symbolic communication” between mourner and subject,12 is accidental and imparts madness.13 Tinged by concern for her readers’ moral sensitivity, Gregory’s version of Deirdre’s meeting with the king presents her fully grown when it occurs. Unaware of the malign destiny predicted for his kingdom, Conchobor proposes marriage to the girl and agrees to a year-­long engagement, in which Deirdre intends to learn “the duties of a wife [and] the ways of the king’s house”. His admiration for her beauty is determined by loneliness, not lust (he “was used to lie down at night and to rise up in the morning by himself, without a wife or anyone to speak to”), and the young woman’s consent to the match is explicit.14 Gregory’s discreet emendation of their relationship regularizes the “indeterminate conjugal union” depicted by her primary source.15 It also exemplifies the bias influential to her rendition of the narratives that underlay her depiction of Deirdre’s life, honed by regular correspondent W.  B. Yeats’s observation that Deirdre, “the kind of woman who should have children”, is otherwise a “normal, compassionate, wise house-wife lifted into immortality by beauty and tragedy”.16 12  Alexandra Bergholm, “The drinking of blood in the ritual context of mourning,” in Language and power in the Celtic world, eds., Anders Ahlqvist and Pamela O’Neill (Sydney: Celtic Studies Foundation, University of Sydney, 2011), 3. Multiple subjects may be involved, especially in older, non-secular sources; Mathis, “Mourning,” 11–14, and Alexandra Bergholm, “Ritual Lamentation in the Irish Penitentials,” Religions 12, no. 3 (2021): §4 [accessed April 28 2022]. 13  Augusta Gregory, “The fate of the sons of Usnach,” in Cuchulain of Muirthemne: The story of the men of the Red Branch of Ulster (London: John Murray, 1902; London: John Murray, 1911), 137. Citations refer to the 1911 edition. 14  Gregory, Cuchulain of Muirthemne, 104–6. 15  Buttimer, “Longes mac n-Uislenn reconsidered,” 27. For contemporary depictions of Deirdre’s youth, including by Gregory, see Sìm Innes and Kate L. Mathis, “Gaelic tradition and the Celtic Revival in children’s literature in Scottish Gaelic and English,” in The Land of Story-Books: Scottish Children’s Literature in the Long Nineteenth Century, eds., Sarah Dunnigan and Shu-Fang Lai (Glasgow: Scottish Literature International, 2019), 126–28. 16  John Kelly and Ronald Schuchard, eds., The Collected Letters of W. B. Yeats, 1901–1904 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 144–45. Vivian Mercier is confident that Yeats could not have remained convinced of Deirdre’s homely, housewifely qualities had he been better informed of her medieval depiction; “The morals of Deirdre,” Yeats Annual 5 (1987): 226–27.

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Gregory’s presentation of Deirdre’s life is characteristic of many Revivalist authors’ engagement with episodes informed, originally, by profound or uncontrolled emotion—anger; desire; bereavement; grief—also symbolic, in a literature that lacks introspection, of psychological critique.17 This chapter assesses the legacy of behaviour informed by emotion in Revival-era versions of Longes mac n-Uislenn and Táin Bó Cúailnge, exploring the depiction of medieval characters—chiefly Deirdre; Cú Chulainn, defender of Ulster; and Ulster’s antagonist Medb, queen of Connacht— whose emotional activity has received minor or significant revision.18 It will suggest a distinction between authors engaging directly with medieval descriptions of those characters’ behaviour, able to understand its original language (Old Irish or medieval Gaelic) but choosing the manner of its translation for their present audience (usually into English), and those whose access is solely through the medium of already translated or paraphrased text. The former, scholars of medieval Gaelic literature and language in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, alleged fidelity to medieval sources but tended to elide or omit material that resisted translation, whether for discretion or in response to imperfectly lucid vocabulary. The latter, for whom the ‘translation’ of heightened emotion depended initially on the detail of existing renditions,19 tended to mould their characters’ behaviour, like Gregory, in ways that supported pre-conceived decisions about the themes or perspective that their work should convey, which influenced particular episodes’ arrangement (and/or omission) and particular characters’ transformation in order to complement those themes. As Declan Kiberd observes, broadening ease of access to medieval Gaelic literature throughout the Revival, typically via the medium of English, 17  Doris Edel, “‘Bodily matters’ in early Irish narrative literature,” Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 55, no.1 (2007): 101–2, and Kicki Ingridsdotter, “Death from emotion in early Irish literature,” in Ulidia 3, eds., Gregory Toner and Séamus Mac Mathúna (Berlin: curach bhán Publications, 2013). 18  For reasons of space, conclusions are confined primarily to the evidence of written or scripted sources; for comparable transformation in oral performance, see Alan Bruford, Gaelic folktales and medieval romances (Dublin: Folklore of Ireland Society, 1969), and Georges Zimmermann, The Irish storyteller (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2011), esp. ch. 11. 19  Normally into English, but sometimes French, such as summaries included by Henri d’Arbois de Jubainville’s Le Cycle mythologique irlandais et la mythologie celtique (1895), which had begun to influence Yeats’s work, via Gregory, prior to the book’s English-language translation by Richard Best (1903). See Sinéad Garrigan Mattar, Primitivism, Science, and the Irish Revival (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 59–63, and Augusta Gregory, Seventy Years (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1974), 391.

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ensured that its characters’ lives “were no longer the sole preserve of scholars but could now be exploited for the purposes of art”.20 The largely creative writers whom this chapter explores, chiefly W.  B. Yeats, Eva Gore-Booth (1870–1926), and Móirín Cheavasa (1883–1972), engaged with the legacy of medieval characters’ behaviour in different ways and differed in their respective access to medieval Gaelic sources, yet all three produced work informed by their characters’ established reputation for enacting particular emotion. Yeats’s and Gore-Booth’s depiction of Deirdre, for example, renowned for her propensity to mourn, utilized that reputation skilfully in order to enhance and subvert her innovative portrayal by their work. Revivalist authors’ treatment of emotion in medieval Gaelic narrative is informed significantly by the context in which the plays, poems, and novels that reanimated its characters’ lives were conceived.21 The Revival itself, an “extraordinary era of literary achievement and political ferment”,22 coincided with the parallel emergence of Celtic Studies as an academic subject.23 Moreover, while the Revival crystallized much of the friction that divides popular and academic understanding of literature (‘mythology’) composed in medieval Celtic languages,24 contemporary relations between  Declan Kiberd, Synge and the Irish language (London: Macmillan, 1979), 176.  Distinct from broader reactions to the previous generation’s equation of Hellenism with Unionism, which problematized the creation of a pan-Gaelic national literature. See, for example, Arabella Currie, “Moderns of the past, moderns of the future: George Sigerson’s Celtic-Romans in Ireland, 1897–1922,” in Celts, Romans, Britons: Classical and Celtic influence in the construction of British Identities, eds., Francesca and Rhys Kaminski-Jones (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), and Brian McGing, “Greece, Rome, and the revolutionaries of 1916,” in Classics and Irish Politics, 1916–2016, eds., Isabelle Torrance and Donncha O’Rourke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020). 22  Declan Kiberd and P.  J. Matthews, “Introduction,” in Handbook of the Irish Revival: An anthology of Irish cultural and political writings 1891–1922, eds., Declan Kiberd and P. J. Matthews (Dublin: Abbey Theatre Press, 2015), 24. 23  John T.  Koch, “Celtic Studies,” in A Century of British Medieval Studies, ed. Alan Deyermond (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 235–63. 24  Addressed most recently by Mark Williams, Ireland’s Immortals (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), 292–301; cf. Patrick Sims-Williams, “The visionary Celt: The construction of an ethnic preconception,” Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 11 (1986). For the Scottish context, see Donald Meek, The quest for Celtic Christianity (Haddington: Handsel Press, 2000), Domhnall Uilleam Stiùbhart, ed., The life and legacy of Alexander Carmichael (Port of Ness: Islands Book Trust, 2008), and Kate L. Mathis and Eleanor Thomson, “‘Our poetry never lacks clearness if read in Gaelic’: Demystifying Gaelic and Anglo-Highland women’s writing in the Celtic Revival,” Scottish Literary Review 14, no.1 (2022). 20 21

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creative writers such as Gregory and prominent scholars were usually cordial, with the fundamental exception of their respective attitudes towards the Irish language.25 Particular unease surrounded the depiction, in English, of characters whose lives were defined by medieval Gaelic prose tales that the majority of Revivalist authors were unable to read, a conundrum defended by Yeats’s combative response to Douglas Hyde’s manifesto, “The necessity of de-Anglicising Ireland”, which heralded the formation of the Gaelic League in 1893. “When we remember the majesty of Cuchullin and the beauty of sorrowing Deirdre”, asserted Yeats, “we should not forget that it is that majesty and that beauty which are immortal, not the perishing tongue that first told of them”.26 In practice, therefore, and not without irony, much of the work produced by authors such as Yeats that portrayed medieval characters was dependent on existing translations, including Hyde’s, limiting the choice available for further adaptation.27 Conveniently, broader-ranging surveys that summarized multiple versions of texts preserved initially by twelfth-century compendia Lebor na hUidre (‘Book of the Dun Cow’) and Lebor Laignech (‘Book of Leinster’), such as Hyde’s book A Literary History of Ireland (1899), increased in prevalence as the century turned.28 Translations of individual tales published throughout the nineteenth century remained influential, while episodes that  Discussed fully by Philip O’Leary, The prose literature of the Gaelic Revival 1881–1921 (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), e.g., 281–354; cf. Alan Titley, “Synge and the Irish language,” in The Cambridge Companion to J.  M. Synge, ed., P. J. Mathews (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 95–7. 26  “The De-Anglicising of Ireland,” United Ireland, December 17, 1892. For Hyde’s speech, see Kiberd and Matthews, Handbook, 42–43. 27  A similar observation is made by Elizabeth Cullingford, “The death of Cuchulain’s only son,” in Yeats and afterwords, eds., Marjorie Howes and Joseph Valente (Notre Dame, Ill.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014), 55–56. Though competent in Irish, Gregory, like many fellow speakers, remained dependent on published translations of medieval texts; see O’Leary, Prose literature, 226–33, 238, and Kate L. Mathis, “An Irish poster girl? Writing Deirdre during the Revival,” in Romantic Ireland from Tone to Gonne: Fresh perspectives on Nineteenth-Century Ireland, eds., Willy Maley et  al. (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013), 265–69, 272–74. 28  A Literary History of Ireland: From the earliest times to the present day (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1899). Hyde’s analysis enriched the incidental detail provided by older discussions such as Eugene O’Curry, Lectures on the manuscript materials of ancient Irish history (Dublin: James Duffy, 1861), which reflected medieval scholars’ prioritization of categories of similar tales into, for example, aidheadha (‘tragedies’), tochmarca (‘courtships’), or tana (‘cow-­ spoils’, i.e. cattle-raids). 25

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described particular characters’ lives were republished in dedicated collections such as Eleanor Hull’s anthology The Cuchullin Saga in Irish literature (1898), which assembled passages devoted to Cú Chulainn from Táin Bó Cúailnge alongside originally disconnected scenes from other tales.29 Perhaps accidentally, the act of compilation by translators from Old Irish encouraged in anglophone readers, including twentieth-century scholars, the largely erroneous belief that medieval authors had also compiled individual characters’ biographies, inviting further, artificial harmonization of formerly independent narrative events.30 Accordingly, reliance on translations affected more than the range of medieval material accessible to dependent anglophone authors. The content of secondary adaptations, chiefly those that focused on particular relationships such as Deirdre’s connection to the sons of Uisliu (and, thereby, such relationships’ emotional breadth), was determined initially by translators’ decisions anent their presentation of medieval sources, only some of which were transparent. In general, however, scholars of Old Irish appeared to prioritize accurate renditions of their sources’ syntax and vocabulary, explaining problematic phrases or textual lacunae in parenthesis.31 Several translators acknowledged such responsibilities in print, including Hull, whose preface recognizes that “the moment is a critical one” for the reception and reputation of “the old literature of Ireland [that] is being rediscovered”, in which “a host of philologists are devoting their best endeavours to its elucidation”.32 Moreover, the paradox of those who engaged with that literature without linguistic competence was not discounted. Winifred Faraday (1872–1948), translator of the first (semi) complete edition of Táin Bó Cúailnge from Lebor na hUidre, addressed those readers’ needs 29  Eleanor Hull, ed., The Cuchullin Saga in Irish literature, being a collection of stories relating to the hero Cuchullin translated from the Irish by various scholars (London: David Nutt, 1898). 30  Discussed by Maria Tymoczko, Translation in a Postcolonial Context: Early Irish literature in English translation (Abingdon: Routledge, 1999), 72, 79–80. The act of compilation could be highly significant, but on different terms; see discussion by Abigail Burnyeat, “Córugud and compilatio in some manuscripts of Táin bó Cúailnge,” in Ulidia 2, eds., Ruairí Ó hUiginn and Brian Ó Catháin (Maynooth: An Sagart, 2009), and Dagmar Schlüter, History or fable? The Book of Leinster as a document of cultural memory in Twelfth-Century Ireland (Münster: Nodus Publikationen, 2010), 85–113. 31  For example, Hull, Cuchullin Saga, 91, 279. Where relevant, Hull also emends her contributors’ translations, some of which had been published originally in French or German. 32  Cuchullin Saga, xiii. She adds drolly, in the context, that the same scholars have used it hitherto as “a battlefield for linguistic contests”.

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directly, while alluding to the impact of dependence on less faithful renditions of medieval texts than her own: At the present time, an enthusiasm for Irish literature is not always accompanied by a knowledge of the Irish language. It therefore seems to be the translator’s duty, if any true estimate of this literature is to be formed [in English], to keep fairly close to the original, since nothing is to be gained by attributing beauties which it does not possess, while obscuring its true merits, which are not few.33

In light of Yeats’s recent introduction to Gregory’s book, which had opined that “few of the [medieval] stories really begin to exist as great works of imagination until somebody has taken the best bits out of many manuscripts”—appointing himself, with Gregory, as suitably qualified arbiter— anglophone Revivalist networks are a probable contributing factor to Faraday’s rationale, and her reservations.34

“So Red And So Pale”: Killing and Grieving Fer Diad It is also the case, however, that contemporary translations were quietly sensitive to Revivalist ideology. Scholars of Old Irish including Faraday refrained from engaging with aspects of the “old literature of Ireland” liable to embarrass its promotion as an exemplary “document of cultural nationalism”.35 Hull’s Cuchullin Saga avoided delicate material easily by its selective approach, but otherwise literal translations of medieval texts often concealed editorial decisions that excised potentially controversial aspects of their source, chiefly what Doris Edel terms “bodily matters”, including overtly sexual acts.36 Comparing what survived such intervention with 33  L. Winifred Faraday, The cattle-raid of Cualnge (Tain Bo Cuailnge): An Old Irish prose epic (London: David Nutt, 1904), xix (“Irish literature” includes medieval). Compare Hull’s observation that the version of Táin Bó Cúailnge translated by Standish Hayes O’Grady is “intended primarily for English readers, not Irish scholars”; Cuchullin Saga, 110. 34  Gregory, Cuchulain of Muirthemne, ix; for context, and Hyde’s contribution to Gregory’s research, see Mathis, “Irish poster girl,” 267–69. For Revival-era paratext, such as Yeats’s preface to Cuchulain of Muirthemne, see Caitlyn Schwartz, “Text, paratext, and translation: The Ulster Cycle in the Gaelic Revival,” in Ulidia 3, 317–19. 35  Tymoczko, Translation in a Postcolonial Context, 66; cf. 71–75, which critiques all contemporary translations of Táin Bó Cúailnge. 36  “‘Bodily matters’,” 69–70; cf. O’Leary, Prose literature, 239–43.

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content that did not confirms the type of material deemed most problematic: “bodily matters” are typically expunged, while physical violence remains, including extremities of behaviour that arise in its wake (such as lamentation; see below). For example, Faraday’s version of Cú Chulainn’s combat with his foster-brother Fer Diad at the conclusion of Táin Bó Cúailnge retains the worst effects of his cruellest weapon, the gae bolga (an expanding, barb-headed spear), upon Fer Diad’s body, but disguises whereabouts it strikes him first: his anus (timthiracht a chuirp).37 Faraday’s translation obscures the precise location of Fer Diad’s wound with a phrase applied elsewhere in the text to his allegedly protective horned skin, which “weapons and swords could not pierce”:38 Cuchulainn seized [the gae bolga] between his toes and wielded it on Fer Diad, into his body’s armour. It advances like one spear so that it became twenty-four points. Then Fer Diad turned his shield below. Cuchulainn thrust at him with the spear over the shield, so that it broke the shaft of his ribs and went through Fer Diad’s heart.39

A similar compromise is reached by Faraday’s near contemporary Mary Hutton (1862–1953), who rendered parts of Táin Bó Cúailnge from both its oldest versions into blank verse, and by Douglas Hyde (“firm deep iron

37  eDIL s.v. timthirecht, timpirecht . This is the spear’s typical point of entry and Faraday’s preferred solution for eliding the site of its victims’ wounds (e.g., 80–81, the death of Lóch, who was also horn-skinned). For discussion of the medieval episode’s complex imagery, which varies in its arrangement between Lebor na hUidre and Lebor Laignech, see Sarah Sheehan, “Fer Diad de-flowered: Homoerotics and masculinity in Comrac Fir Diad,” in Ulidia 2, 60–62. 38  The cattle-raid of Cualnge, 105, from TBC i, l. 2578, dáig cnes congnaidhi imbi, nochonisgébdis airm ná ilfáebair; Cécile O’Rahilly, ed., Táin Bó Cúailnge. Recension I (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1976), 78. 39  The cattle-raid of Cualnge, 112 (emphasis added), glossing TBC i, ll. 3093–94, Gaibthi Cú cona ladair & imambeir do Fir Diad a timthiracht a chuirp. Tochomlai amail óenga co m-ba cethéora randa fichet. Tairindi Fer Diad sís in scíath ar sodin. Atnúara Cu Chulaind cusann gaí ósin scíath curro bris a cléith n-asnai conlá triana chride Fir Diad, rendered fully by Cécile O’Rahilly: “Cú Chulainn caught [the gae bolga] between his toes and cast it at Fer Diad into his anus. It was as a single barb it entered but it became twenty-four. Thereupon Fer Diad lowered his shield. Cú Chulainn struck him with the spear above the shield, and it broke his ribs and pierced Fer Diad’s heart”; Táin Bó Cúailnge. Recension I, 207.

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waistpiece”).40 Moreover, the pathos of Fer Diad’s death at the hand of a formerly beloved comrade is juxtaposed originally with an episode that ridicules the background to his sacrifice.41 On the morning their combat begins, having secured his consent to face Cú Chulainn with a lavish feast and the pledge of her intimate friendship (and her daughter Findabair’s), Medb observes Fer Diad’s approach to the royal pavilion on a parting circuit of the Connacht encampment as she rises from her bed to urinate on the tent’s floor.42 Matching its subtle discretion elsewhere, Faraday’s translation of the episode retains the surrounding text faithfully but conceals Medb’s act by unremarked ellipsis: “The servants turned [Fer Diad’s] horses and chariot thrice towards the men of Ireland… [sic]”.43 While Faraday’s readers’ opportunity to appreciate the medieval author’s complex framing of Fer Diad’s death is compromised by her omission of the physical element of Medb’s derisive farewell, they receive fuller indication of its aftermath, in which Cú Chulainn grieves profoundly for Fer Diad’s loss but also regrets the situation that resulted in their fight.44 During the Revival, the men’s encounter was understood chiefly as an integral part of Táin Bó Cúailnge, with minimal recognition of its independent circulation in the early modern manuscript tradition.45 Faraday’s ostensible 40  Hutton, The Tain (Dublin: Maunsel & Co., 1907), 349, and Hyde, Literary History of Ireland, 333 (borrowing O’Curry’s phrase; see note 44, below). For Hutton, a fluent speaker of Irish who was proposed (unsuccessfully) as the first woman member of the Royal Irish Academy, see Diarmuid Breathnach and Máire Ní Mhurchú, “HUTTON, Mary Ann (1862–1953),” aimn.ie [accessed April 28, 2022]. 41  Discussed by Doris Edel, Inside the Táin: Exploring Cú Chulainn, Fergus, Ailill, and Medb (Berlin, curach bhán Publications, 2015), 103–7. 42  Is and dorala Medb ic sriblad a fúail for urlár in pupaill, TBC i, 2866; O’Rahilly, Táin Bó Cúailnge. Recension I, 202. The fullest extent of Medb’s enticement of Fer Diad is confined to the version of the Táin in Lebor na h-Uidre, the nominal basis of Faraday’s translation, which spares her the need to engage with a subsequent episode, confined to Lebor Laignech, in which Medb’s sudden menstruation creates three new lochs; Edel, Inside the Táin, 292–8. 43  Faraday, The cattle-raid of Cualnge, 107, from TBC i, ll. 2867–75; Edel, Inside the Táin, 264–65. 44  The cattle-raid of Cualnge, 112–13, from TBC i, ll. 3110–51. 45  As one of five episodes preceding Cú Chulainn’s death; see Stuart Rutten, “Displacement and replacement: Comrac Fir Diad within and without Táin Bó Cúailnge,” in Ulidia 2, 319–22.

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source, Lebor na hUidre, includes the oldest-preserved account of their combat and Cú Chulainn’s lament, though the duration of both in this version is shorter and lacks much of the detail preserved elsewhere, including by the more widely disseminated text of Lebor Laignech,46 which Hull’s Cuchullin Saga had reprinted from an influential translation by Eugene O’Curry (1873).47 Unlike their shared alteration to the manner of Fer Diad’s fatal wounding, Faraday and O’Curry preserve the majority of postmortem content from Lebor na hUidre (known as ‘Recension I’ of the Táin) and Lebor Laignech (‘Recension II’) respectively, while Hutton’s rendition of the scene combines elements of both, as does Gregory’s (see below). The medieval versions of Cú Chulainn’s lament—and, specifically, the marked difference in its presentation between Recensions I and II— have been read as contemporary authors’ engagement with the “heroic misogyny” interpreted as characteristic of the older, shorter Táin in Lebor na hUidre (I) or, conversely, as embodying its rejection by the slightly later Lebor Laignech (II). Reflecting late-­ medieval societal and dynastic turbulence,48 both recensions display “a consciousness of vulnerability in the splendid world of male heroic action” centred by their narrative that may have contributed to women characters’ exclusion from prominent textual space, chiefly that of lamentation—an “elaborate example” of which occurs at Fer Diad’s death.49 Cú Chulainn’s lament, therefore, may conclude what Sarah Sheehan observes as a combat reliant on “hierarchies of gender and, crucially, gendered conceptions of the body”,50 in which, finally, the “ritual role of the mourning woman [is] taken up by Cú Chulainn himself”, denying Fer Diad “a traditional[ly] feminine discursive 46  Discussed by Amy Mulligan, “Poetry, sinew, and the Irish performance of lament: Keening a hero’s body back together,” Philological Quarterly 97, no. 4 (2018): 389–90. 47  Cuchullin Saga, 186–98, from Eugene O’Curry, On the manners and customs of the ancient Irish (London: Williams and Norgate, 1873), 413–63, edited posthumously by William O’Sullivan. O’Curry also included a genteel version of Medb’s enticement of Fer Diad before the battle, i.e. offering “the hand of her beautiful daughter in marriage” (400), and the similar phrase “iron apron of wrought iron” (451) to indicate the site of Fer Diad’s mortal wound. 48  Specifically in the ninth to eleventh centuries, between the Ulaid, long established in northern and north-western Ireland, and their “upstart neighbours” the Uí Néill. See Joan Radner, “Fury destroys the world: Historical strategy in Ireland’s Ulster epic,” Mankind Quarterly 23, no. 1 (1982): 45, and passim. 49  Ann Dooley, “The invention of women in the Táin,” in Ulidia, eds., James Mallory and Gerald Stockman (Belfast: December Publications, 1994), 123, 126–27. 50  Sarah Sheehan, “Fer Diad de-flowered,” 55.

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role and loving gaze” at his death.51 While, however, the performance of mourning was certainly gendered,52 Cú Chulainn’s seeming appropriation of Fer Diad’s lament has also been read as an informed act of coded behaviour, notably in Lebor Laignech, whose author, “valorizing female-coded poetic practices”, may have intended to criticize the “spectacular violence” that underpins the Táin, cautioning its audience that contemporary society itself was inherently unstable.53 The extent to which Revival-era audiences perceived the contemporary nuances of medieval Gaelic literature is unclear, but, coinciding with “attempts to gather status for a redefined and independent national identity”, its interpretation by nineteenth- and early twentieth-century authors approached Táin Bó Cúailnge, in particular, in a context that “invoke[d] comparisons and analogies with Classical epic” instinctively.54 As such, its often complex narratives were typically “uprooted from the cultural context that [had given] them meaning”,55 including by those who could engage directly with their oldest-preserved forms in Old Irish, which could result in simpler explanation of scenes with (formerly) multiple significance. This is notable especially with regard to extremities of behaviour that belonged, in their original, to a comparably ‘epic’ battlefield context, whether directly, like the extent of Fer Diad’s injuries, or that arose in consequence of battle, such as lament for its victims. Faraday, for example, situates Cú Chulainn’s grief for Fer Diad less as an act of potentially sophisticated social critique than as an authorial tactic—the first of several—that delays his return to the battle: “its motive”, she claims, “is to remove [him] from 51  Ann Dooley, Playing the Hero: Reading the Irish Saga Táin Bó Cúailnge (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), 167. For the gendered domains of mourning and the gendered gaze, see Angela Partridge, “Wild men and wailing women,” Éigse 18 (1980–81); ̇ Cudmore, “… agus ag ól a fola,” 169–70; Sheehan, “Feasts for the eyes”; and Marjorie Housley, “‘The noble way you blushed’: Queering mourning verse in the Ulster Cycle,” in Grief, Gender, and Identity. 52  Mathis, “Mourning,” 2–3, and, for later lament, Kate L.  Mathis, “‘Tha mulad air m’inntinn’ and early modern Gaelic dialogue verse,” Aiste 5 (2019): 63–92. 53  Mulligan, “Poetry,” 394–95, and passim. 54  Abigail Burnyeat, “‘Wrenching the club from the hand of Hercules’: Classical models for medieval Irish compilation,” in Classical Literature and Learning in Medieval Irish Narrative, ed., Ralph O’Connor (Cambridge: D.  S. Brewer, 2014), 196, and Michael Clarke, “Achilles, Byrhtnoth, Cú Chulainn: From Homer to the medieval north,” in Epic interactions, eds., Michael Clarke et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 244–46. 55  Michael Clarke, “Demonology, allegory, and translation: The Furies and the Morrígan,” in Classical Literature and Learning, 101.

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the field, in order to give the rest of Ulster a chance” at gaining renown.56 Its greater length in Lebor Laignech (II) is summarized somewhat abruptly as “a sign of decadence” on its author’s part, but also as the factor that signifies its parent text’s slightly later date and consequently altered literary style. In comparison to Lebor na hUidre (I), Cú Chulainn’s extended performance of grief in ‘Recension II’ is characterized coolly by Faraday as “one of the marks of [its] romance, which recognises tragedy only when it is voluble, and prodigal of lamentation”.57 In other words, neither version of Cú Chulainn’s grief for Fer Diad is identified even secondarily as a sincere evocation of loss for his formerly beloved comrade, and Faraday’s readers receive little impression of its actual or potential affective significance;58 its ‘romance’ in Lebor Laignech is introduced, instead, as another form of narrative strategy. It is interesting, therefore, that the scene’s Revival-era presentation elsewhere implies that emphasizing its clear emotional resonance may have justified retaining content from the surrounding text, otherwise liable for discreet emendation, that strengthens the terrible contrast between the warriors’ former and present condition, in order that the comparison might enhance the “tenderness [and] pathos” of Fer Diad’s death.59 Several such contrasts are original to both recensions of Táin Bó Cúailnge, but may be surprising to encounter in Revival-era renditions whose authors are otherwise reluctant to engage with its—or other source texts’—starker detail, including “bodily matters”. Both Hutton and Gregory, for e­ xample, spare their readers a wholly faithful description of Cú Chulainn’s and Fer Diad’s injuries sustained throughout their combat, including, as observed, the site of Fer Diad’s fatal wound, yet both ‘translations’ retain one of the bloodiest episodes that, in Lebor Laignech, also forms part of Cú Chulainn’s prolonged lament. While grieving Fer Diad, he requests that his spear be 56  The cattle-raid of Cualnge, xviii. She overlooks that Cú Chulainn’s hitherto single-­ handed defence of Ulster was necessitated by the effect of the cess (curse) laid on his countrymen in Noínden Ulad (‘The debility of the Ulstermen’), a remscél (‘foretale’) to Táin Bó Cúailnge, which condemns them to suffer the pangs of childbirth for several days periodically. The waning of the cess coincides with Fer Diad’s death, the last of the single combats that Lebor na hUidre describes; see Edel, Inside the Táin, 47, 121. 57  The cattle-raid of Cualnge, xvii. 58  Discussed by Mulligan, “Poetry,” and Housley, “The noble way you blushed,” 149–56. See also Thomas O’Donnell, Fosterage in medieval Ireland: An emotional history (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020), 83–97, which argues against an exclusively sexualized reading of their comradeship. 59  Hull, Cuchullin Saga, 186. On this basis, rather than Faraday’s, Hull observes Fer Diad’s death scene as a superlative example of “Irish romantic literature”.

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retrieved from the body, where it remains lodged: “cut open Fer Diad now”, said Cú Chulainn, “and remove the gae bolga, for I cannot be without my weapon”.60,61 His charioteer, Laeg, complies, and the actual effect of its retrieval on Fer Diad’s corpse is anticipated by the author’s description of how badly his body was damaged by its passage, which had “filled every joint and limb of him with its barbs”.62,63 Though Cú Chulainn’s injuries are otherwise severe, he remains alive; the gruesome contrast between them is emphasized repeatedly by the adjacent section of Cú Chulainn’s lament, which provides the opportunity to complain, finally, that his participation in their fight was also unwilling, but dictated by his champion’s role. “Valour is an angry combat”, he declares, a betrayal of their former bond as pupils of the same teacher and companions since youth, whom only necessity could force into conflict: “Sad what befalls us, the fosterlings of Scáthach. I am wounded and covered with red gore while you lie fully dead”.64,65 While, like Faraday, neither Hutton nor Gregory fully appreciate Cú Chulainn’s potentially coded critique of “a political situation that has forced him to kill someone he loves”, both are sensitive to the emotional charge of Fer Diad’s “quite literal” destruction,66 and both renditions of the scene are unusually close to their source and, in consequence, unusually vivid: [Laeg] opened the body and took out the spear. Cuchullin saw his weapon, red with blood, Lying beside Faerdeeah; and he said: ‘Oh my Faerdeeah, sorrowful the fate! I, with my merciless weapon still unwashed; Thou, pale in death upon a couch of gore. Sad—what has come of our meeting here – I, wounded, sinking, covered with rough gore; Thou, altogether dead! Oh, dear to me The friend to whom I have served a draught of blood.67  coscair Fer nDiad fadesta & ben in ngae mbolga ass, dáig ní fétaim-se beith i n-écmais m’airm.  Cécile O’Rahilly, ed., Táin Bó Cúailnge from the Book of Leinster (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1970), ll. 3486–87 [i.e. TBC ii]. 62  gorbo lán cach n-alt & cach n-áge de dá forrindíb. 63  TBC ii, l. 3358. 64  is trúag aní nar tá de, ‘nar ndaltánaib Scáthaiche, missi créchtach ba chrú garb, & tussu ulimarb. 65  TBC ii, ll. 3543–50. 66  Housley, “The noble way you blushed,” 149, 155. 67  Hutton, The Tain, 352; characters’ names are anglicized and rendered phonetically, as her preface defends (vii–viii). 60 61

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So Laeg took the Gae Bulg out of him, and when Cuchulain saw his reddened spear lying beside Ferdiad, he said: ‘O Ferdiad, it is a sorrowful story to me, that I should see you so red and so pale, I with my spear reddened, and you in a bed of blood […]. It is a sorrowful thing that has happened to us, the pupils of Scathach—I myself hard with blood; you yourself entirely dead.68

The scenes’ uncommon bloodiness suggests that, while easily omitted, the imagery of the weapon’s retrieval provided an effective complement to the surrounding extremity of Cú Chulainn’s grief, and was retained on this basis.

“Howl, If You Will”: A New Death Tale for Deirdre Gregory’s treatment of Cú Chulainn’s lamentation for Fer Diad contrasts significantly with her depiction of Deirdre’s mourning at the graveside of the Sons of Uisliu, which, like Hutton’s, avoids observing that her source includes Deirdre’s deliberate consumption of the brothers’ blood.69 While, in Táin Bó Cúailnge, Cú Chulainn’s lament involves no intentional contact with Fer Diad’s blood, averting an equivalent dilemma, Gregory’s fastidious presentation of Deirdre’s behaviour is more interesting when compared to her acceptance of a similar motif that is rendered exactly by her version of Cú Chulainn’s encounter with Derbforgaill, who appears to him in the form of a bird. Unwitting, he shoots her from the sky with a stone that lodges in her body. Effecting a cure, Cú Chulainn, in Gregory’s rendition: “put his mouth to the wound and sucked out the stone and the blood along with it”. He rejects, thereafter, the possibility of their ­marriage, despite Derbforgaill’s protest: “You cannot be my wife”, he declares, “for I have drunk your blood”.70 Though its context differs, the reproduction of  Gregory, Cuchulain of Muirthemne, 243–44.  The Táin, 67; following the brothers’ deaths, Hutton observes simply that “the men of Ulster cried three cries of woe and grief and mourning and loud lamentation”, restricting Deirdre’s involvement in grieving their loss to the verbal lament that she delivers in Longes mac n-Uislenn; see Mathis, “Mourning,” 3–4. 70  Cuchulain of Muirtheme, 41. The episode is taken from an independent tenth-century tale, part of which was incorporated into Tochmarc Emire (‘The wooing of Emer’); see Kicki Ingridsdotter, Aided Derbforgaill/The violent death of Derbforgaill (Uppsala: Uppsala University, 2009), [accessed May 1 2022], 31–5, and Cudmore, “… agus ag ól a fola,” 174–5. Gregory’s source is unclear but was probably the description of Derbforgaill’s arrival in Ulster that forms part of Tochmarc Emire, edited by Hull from Kuno Meyer’s translation (1888); Cuchullin Saga, 82. 68 69

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Cú Chulainn’s act by Gregory suggests an alternative reason than mere censorship for her elision of Deirdre’s interaction with the blood of her former companions, namely that such conduct was incompatible with the impression that Gregory (and Yeats) had formed of Deirdre and intended her work to convey. This impression, consistent with multiple contemporary authors’ perception of Deirdre as the “highest type of Celtic womanhood” and “an antique subject of the highest dignity”,71 ill-­ fated but exemplary as wife and mother, was conditioned by the language and arrangement of existing translations on which Gregory depended.72 Her version blended elements of O’Curry’s 1862 translation of Longes mac n-Uislenn,73 the oldest-preserved, circa eighth-century account of Deirdre’s and the Sons of Uisliu’s lives, with episodes from Whitley Stokes’s translation (1887) of a later medieval Gaelic version of their exile in Scotland (c. 1490), the latter of which described (in part) Deirdre’s behaviour at the brothers’ grave.74 During the Revival, similar blending of older and more recent versions was commonplace, usually without discussion of narrative inconsistencies that such blending could introduce or the extent of Deirdre’s significant transformation between the twelfth and nineteenth centuries (chiefly, her emergence as romantic lead, whose love for Noísiu, not the brothers’ collective fear of dishonour, triggers their departure from 71  Alice MacDonell, “Deirdre: The highest type of Celtic womanhood,” The Celtic Review 8, no. 32 (May 1913); The Celtic Review 9, no. 33 (August 1913); Fiona Macleod [William Sharp], “The Gael and his heritage,” in The Winged Destiny (London: Chapman & Hall, 1904), 240; Mary Sturgeon, Studies of contemporary poets (London: George G. Harrap & Company, 1916), 148; Sophie Bryant, The genius of the Gael (London: T.  Fisher Unwin, 1913), 190. 72  See Innes and Mathis, “Gaelic tradition and the Celtic Revival,” 139–43; Mathis, “Irish poster girl,” 266–67, 270–71; and Kate L. Mathis, “Parallel wives: Deirdriu and Lúaine in Longes mac n-Uislenn and Tochmarc Lúaine ocus Aided Athairne,” in Ulidia 3, 19–20. 73  “The ‘Trí Thruaige na Scélaigheachta’ of Erinn I: The exile of the Children of Uisneach,” The Atlantis 3 (1862). O’Curry’s version derived from the Yellow Book of Lecan, a late-­ fourteenth-­century manuscript largely identical to its earliest extant copy in Lebor Laignech, composed c. 900; see V.  Hull, Longes mac n-Uislenn, 29–32 and, for O’Curry, Ciaran McDonough, “Death and renewal: Translating Old Irish texts in Nineteenth-Century Ireland,” Studi Irlandesi: A Journal of Irish Studies 4, no. 4 (2014). 74  “The death of the Sons of Uisneach,” in Irische Texte series 2, part 2, eds., Whitley Stokes and Ernst Windisch (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1887), 109–84. Hull’s Cuchullin Saga reproduced Stokes’s translation (22–53), retaining Deirdre’s deliberate contact with the brothers’ blood, which is also retained by Hyde (Literary history of Ireland, 302–18). In fact, a missing folio from Stokes’s purported source resulted in his discreet substitution of its (absent) death scene with a nineteenth-century version; see Mathis, “Mourning,” 5–11.

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Ulster).75 Like many contemporaries, both Gregory and Yeats frame their renditions as tragedies, reflecting O’Curry’s influential designation of the exiles’ lives as one of Ireland’s Tri Thruaighe na Scéalaigheachta (“Three sorrows of storytelling”).76 The element of Deirdre’s grief, however, is especially significant to Yeats, whose play, like the dramatized rendition of her life by his formative literary influence Samuel Ferguson (1810–1886), focused on its final hour alone.77 As Virginia Rohan has observed, Yeats hoped to create “a new death tale for Deirdre” that rescued her character from “the sentimentality of the literary tellings that made hers merely a sorrowful story”,78 also a reaction to her recent portrayal by ‘Æ’ (George Russell, 1867–1935), which Yeats described to Gregory as so “thin and faint” it resembled “wall decoration”.79 Æ’s characterization of his frail, passive Deirdre succeeds in depicting the apathy of prolonged despair, yet, as such, observes a curious paradox: urged to make lament for the murdered Noísiu as a possible means of comfort, she cannot muster the strength, observing simply: “my spirit is sinking 75  Deriving from Seathrún Céitinn’s (c. 1569–c. 1644) greatly influential Foras Feasa ar Éírinn (The learned history of Ireland), which included a significantly revised description of Deirdre’s role in the Sons of Uisliu’s lives. See Mathis, “Mourning,” 6–7, 14–15, and Kate L. Mathis, The evolution of Deirdriu in the Ulster Cycle (University of Edinburgh: PhD dissertation, 2011), 157–60 76  See Gerard Murphy, Fianaiocht agus romansaiocht: The Ossianic lore and romantic tales of medieval Ireland (Dublin: O Lochlainn, 1955), 32–33. O’Curry’s label recognizes a pattern emerging in eighteenth-century scribal tradition that became prevalent in the nineteenth. Several Revival-era versions were composed in verse, including by Hyde (1895) and John Todhunter (1896). 77  Samuel Ferguson, Deirdre; a one-act drama of old Irish story (Dublin: P.  Roe, 1880), celebrated by Yeats, “The poetry of Sir Samuel Ferguson – II,” The Dublin University Review (November 1886), reprinted in The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats Volume IX: Early Art, eds., John P.  Frayne and Madeleine Marchaterre (New York: Scribner, 2004), 14–17; see also Sandra Walker, ‘All that most ancient race’: A study of Ultonian legend in Anglo-Irish literature (D. Phil., University of Toronto, 1976), 126–65 (cf. Cullingford, “Death,” esp. 53–55, and Kiberd and Matthews, Handbook, 65). 78  Deirdre: Manuscript materials by W.B. Yeats (Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 2004), lviii (emphasis added). 79  Kelly and Schuchard, Collected Letters of W. B. Yeats, 1901–1904, 167. Though its publication was delayed, Russell’s play (1907) was completed and performed in 1901, prior to Gregory’s publication of Cuchulain of Muirthemne; as Mercier observes, as the first widely publicized Revival-era retelling it had significant resonance on others (“Morals of Deirdre,” 227). It is likely to have prompted Standish Hayes O’Grady’s complaint in 1902 that “the Red Branch ought not to be staged”; see Raymonde Popot, “The hero’s light,” in Aspects of the Irish theatre, eds., Patrick Rafroidi et al. (Paris: Éditions universitaires, 1972), 178.

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away from the world”.80 While notable for the depth and longevity of bitterness that it claims to have resulted from Conchobor’s treatment of the Sons of Uisliu (see below), the closing act of Æ’s play depends too heavily on the likelihood of audience familiarity with existing versions of Deirdre’s eloquent, impassioned lamentation, with which his script does not otherwise engage. Yeats, however, turned the likelihood that Deirdre would mourn unreservedly for the Sons of Uisliu’s deaths to tactical advantage, and, on this basis, his play’s concluding scene is its most successful. Yeats’s play is set in a house in Ulster that Conchobor has had prepared, allegedly, to welcome the exiles home, but it is dusty, neglected, and contains the barest of provisions for their refreshment. Conchobor, too, is absent, and a trio of female musicians brings word to Deirdre that, in contrast, his house at Emain Macha contains a lavishly decorated bridal chamber in which the king intends to lie with her that night, restored to the role of wife and queen that, in her absence, he has not ceased to crave.81 When Conchobor arrives on-stage, he is surrounded by a troop of well-armed warriors, whom the Sons of Uisliu cannot overcome. Taken captive, Noísiu’s brothers are killed, but Conchobor proposes to Deirdre that Noísiu’s life may be spared if she agrees to return to his court. It is here that Yeats’s script manipulates the expectation that Conchobor’s bargain is insincere and, most importantly, that Deirdre ‘of the Sorrows’ has and would lament the brothers’ deaths, thereby securing the opportunity to end her life rather than accept the king’s desire. As Deirdre argues calmly with Conchobor, facing forward, Noísiu is dragged behind a curtain at the back of the stage and does not reappear. The audience is alerted to his death by the entrance of ‘The Executioner’, brandishing a sword [on which there is blood]: the chorus of musicians [give a wail].82 Turning to face them, Deirdre utters a single protest at Noísiu’s death, crying out: “do not touch me. Let me go to him!”, but then: [a pause]—after which, rather than losing control or weeping prettily (like Gregory’s protagonist), Deirdre exudes a brittle serenity and startling lack of emotion for the rest 80  Æ [George Russell], Deirdre: A drama in three acts by A.E., being number four of the Tower Press Booklets, Second Series (Dublin: Maunsel & Co.: 1907), 51. 81  Deirdre, by W.  B. Yeats, being volume five of Plays for an Irish Theatre (London: A. H. Bullen & Dublin: Maunsel & Co., Ltd., 1907), 18. Albeit in retrospect, narrated by the chorus (2), Yeats’s play shares Gregory’s claim that a grown-up Deirdre had consented to marriage (as note 66, above). 82  Deirdre, 40. For the chorus, see Ronald Schuchard, “The chanting of Yeats’s Deirdre,” The Princeton University Library Chronicle 68 (2007).

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of the scene. Yeats’s directions imply a gradual decline in the tone of her remaining speech and, instead of beginning her lament on-stage, she claims to accept Conchobor’s request and his proposal to return to court. He is bemused by her agreement, enquiring: But why are you so calm? I thought that you would curse me and cry out, And fall upon the ground and tear your hair?83

The audience, however, begins to suspect: before his arrival, Deirdre had bestowed her bracelet on a member of the chorus in exchange for a knife, which has not been mentioned since. She requests the king’s permission to minister to Noísiu’s corpse, after which she will follow Conchobor to Emain: It is enough that you were master here […] For I’ll go with you and do all your will When I have done whatever’s customary. We lay the dead out, folding up the hands, Closing the eyes, stretching out the feet, And push a pillow underneath the head, Till all’s in order; and all this I’ll do For Naisi, son of Usna.84

By appearing to suppress her grief and pretending to submit to his will, Yeats’s Deirdre hopes to gain from Conchobor the chance to leave the stage, taking the knife, on the pretence of performing the act of lamentation that her speech describes. Conchobor is doubtful (“there are plenty that can do these things”), observing to Deirdre: “you are deceiving me. You long to look upon his face again”. His consent is achieved by another of Yeats’s strategic appeals to his audience’s prior knowledge, namely that

83  Deirdre, 41. Yeats may have been familiar with poet Dora Sigerson’s briefer suggestion that Deirdre feigned acquiescence to Conchobor’s commands in order to end her life (“And Deirdre smiled once in his face as she mounted the steed by his side”), though her method otherwise resembles the conclusion of Longes mac n-Uislenn; Ballads and poems (London: J. Bowden, 1899), 40. 84  Deirdre, 41–42.

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Deirdre had once compared the beauty of Noísiu and Conchobor to the king’s disadvantage:85 […] if you are wise, you’ll grant me this: That I go look upon him that was once So strong and comely and held his head so high That women envied me. For I will see him All blood-bedabbled and his beauty gone. It’s better, when you’re beside me in your strength, That the mind’s eye should call up the soiled body, And not the shape I loved.86

Deirdre exits the stage, and the play, with the king’s partial blessing (“Go to your farewells, queen”) and a speech that conveys similarly coded significance to the chorus—and the audience—on the one hand, and to Conchobor on the other: Now strike the wire, and sing to it a while. Knowing that all is happy, and that you know Within what bride-bed I shall lie this night, And by what man, and lie close up to him, For the bed’s narrow […]

She [goes behind the curtain] and, like Noísiu, is not seen again. The chorus of musicians, who have received her meaning perfectly, begin their lament. The lines of the play that remain provide no description of Deirdre’s or Noísiu’s bodies and no indication of their arrangement at the back of the stage. When Conchobor becomes suspicious at the length of Deirdre’s absence, he draws the curtain aside, and Yeats’s direction reads simply: [The musicians begin to keen with low voices], continuing both their and the play’s characteristic refrain of muted, not extravagant (but potentially enduring) lamentation. The curtain falls upon the tableau of the undisturbed, unburied bodies, for which Conchobor refuses to account to his court: “howl, if 85  For example, O’Curry, “Tri Thruaighe na Scéalaigheachta,” 403. The absence of introduction to the play’s characters reflects Yeats’s presumption elsewhere that his audience will be—or should be—familiar with Gregory’s novelization: “who Deirdre the harper’s daughter was […] I shall not explain. The reader will find all that he need know about [her] in Lady Gregory’s ‘Cuchulain of Muirthemne’, the most important book that has come out of Ireland in my time”; “Baile and Aillinn,” The Monthly Review vol. 8, no. 22 (July 1902), 156. 86  Deirdre, 43.

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you will”, concludes the script, “but I, being king, did right in choosing her most fitting to be queen”.87 Yeats’s conclusion to his play, like Gregory’s account, eschews the terrible closing image of Longes mac n-Uislenn, centred starkly on the fragments of Deirdre’s shattered skull, but also prioritizes the suggestion of a lasting legacy for the exiles’ lives ensured by spoken recollection, not material remains.88 While the musicians’ lament refers briefly to the “high grey cairn” that they envision as a monument appropriate to the exiles’ memory, the image is hypothetical. Yeats’s script places greatest emphasis on Deirdre’s “self-conscious[ness] about her fame and posterity”,89 perceived as others’ recitation of her love for Noísiu and the sadness of the brothers’ loss. Preservation of their lives’ renown through the medium of song is sought as carefully as Deirdre’s arrangement of the means to end her life: the bracelet she exchanges for the blade will, in future, symbolize proof that its performers’ knowledge was acquired first-hand: Women, if I die, If Naisi die this night, how will you praise? What words seek out? for that will stand to you; For being but dead we shall have many friends. All through your wanderings, the doors of kings Shall be thrown wider open, the poor man’s hearth Heaped with new turf, because you are wearing this To show that you have Deirdre’s story right.90

As well as love, the chorus should sing of betrayal, publicizing Conchobor’s deception of the exiles and his lack of remorse for their deaths—yet, at the play’s conclusion, they appear reluctant. When Deirdre departs the stage, the chorus observes quietly: “though we were bidden to sing, cry nothing loud”. Yeats’s Conchobor is unrepentant, but it is left to the audience to  Deirdre, 47.   For the latter, see Joanna Huckins MacGugan, “Landscape and lamentation: Constructing commemorated space in three Middle Irish texts,” Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 112C (2012), and Sarah Künzler, “Sites of memory in the Irish landscape? Approaching ogham stones through memory studies,” Memory Studies 13, no. 6 (2020). 89  Kathryn Stelmach, “Dead Deirdre? Myth and Mortality in the Irish Literary Revival,” in CSANA Yearbook 6: Myth in Celtic literatures, ed., Joseph Nagy (Four Courts Press: Dublin, 2007), 145; cf. Ann Dooley, “The heroic word: The reading of early Irish sagas,” in The Celtic Consciousness ed., Robert O’Driscoll (Edinburgh: Canongate, 1982), 155–59. 90  Deirdre, 33–34. 87 88

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wonder if the distant voices shouting for his death will fade away, or yet exact their revenge.91

“Weary of War and the World’s Tears”: A Pacifist’s Táin The repercussions of Conchobor’s behaviour had been a source of interest for medieval authors, one of whom composed “a necessary sequel” to Longes mac n-Uislenn in which the king experienced, in reverse, each crime he had committed against the exiles.92 The tale itself is situated ultimately as a critique of rulers who disregard their kingdom’s needs in favour of their own;93 at its conclusion, Conchobor’s court is burned to the ground and 3000 warriors opposed to his betrayal of the brothers’ guarantor, Fergus mac Róich, depart Ulster for neighbouring Connacht. Along with Fergus, these men will take up arms against their former comrades during Táin Bó Cúailnge,94 linking the Sons of Uisliu’s deaths implicitly to Medb’s campaign.95 Another independent link was made to Noísiu’s role in the war’s inception by a twelfth-century poem that compared the heroes of Ulster to Classical equivalents: Alexandair Naíse nertmar— rena néim Troí ocus Táin (Powerful Noísiu (is) Alexandros— their splendid beauty caused Troy and the Táin).96

 Deirdre, 45, 47.  Tochmarc Lúaine (‘The wooing of Luaine’); see Mathis, “Parallel wives.” 93  Joanne Findon, “Nes, Deirdriu, Luaine: fated women in Conchobar’s life,” in Gablánach in Scélaigheact: Celtic Studies in honour of Ann Dooley, eds., Sarah Sheehan et al. (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2013). 94  For Longes mac n-Uislenn as a remscél to Táin Bó Cúailnge, see Tomás Ó Cathasaigh, “The Ulster exiles and thematic symmetry in Recension I of Táin Bó Cúailnge,” Studia Celtica Fennica 14 (2017). 95  For its cause elsewhere, see Edel, Inside the Táin, 268–72. 96  Francis J. Byrne, “Clann Ollaman Uaisle Emna,” Studia Hibernica 4 (1964): 62, discussed by Sheehan, “Feasts for the eyes,” 95, and Michael Clarke, “An Irish Achilles and a Greek Cú Chulainn,” in Ulidia 2, 247. Alexandros = Paris. 91 92

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During the Revival, as Classical parallels flourished, Yeats declared that, if Noísiu were Paris, “Deirdre was the Irish Helen”.97 If he understood the broader implications of connecting the events of Longes mac n-Uislenn to the cause of the Táin, his play does not explore it directly. His acquaintance Eva Gore-Booth, however, in whom he claimed to have roused enthusiasm for “Irish things”,98 composed two plays, Unseen Kings (1904) and The Triumph of Maeve (1905), which comprise a skilled retelling of Táin Bó Cúailnge that, while innovative and strongly personal, is contrastingly wellinformed by their characters’ medieval depiction. A poet, political activist, and noted pacifist, Gore-Booth, younger sister of Constance Markievicz (1868–1927), spent much of the Revival in England but maintained connections to its Dublin-based networks, while her plays’ formative influences lie in published texts.99 Though printed separately, Unseen Kings and The Triumph of Maeve appear to have been composed at the same time and are linked together by the presence of Deirdre, whose death—arising from grief—imbues the narration of Unseen Kings and anticipates her on-stage role in a dream that centres its protagonist Medb’s depiction in The Triumph of Maeve. Though familiar with Gregory’s Cuchulain of Muirthemne,100 Gore-Booth’s work refers directly to contemporary

97  The Variorum Edition of the Plays of W.  B. Yeats, ed., Russell K.  Alspach (London: Macmillan, 1979), 389. 98  The Collected letters of W. B. Yeats: Volume I, eds., John Kelly and Eric Domville (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 463; Sonja Tiernan, Eva Gore-Booth: An image of such politics (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012), 20–21. While Yeats’s actual influence on her early work is unclear, Æ, who included five of Gore-Booth’s poems in his collection New Songs (Dublin: O’Donoghue & Co., 1904), was a significant contemporary and possible inspiration, also recommending her plays’ performance alongside his own. See Esther Roper, Poems of Eva Gore-Booth (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1929), 9, 16–18. 99  Reared on her parents’ estate at Lissadell in Co. Sligo, Gore-Booth had also been acquainted since childhood with its tenants’ stories, including Medb’s alleged burial site beneath the Neolithic cairn at Knocknarea (Roper, Poems of Eva Gore-Booth, 5). After 1897, she lived in Manchester, then in London with her partner Esther Roper (Tiernan, Eva Gore-­ Booth, 28 ff.). Unlike her sister, who learned the language in adulthood, Gore-Booth does not appear to have spoken Irish; see Prison letters of Constance Markievicz, ed., Esther Roper (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1934), 258, 264, 268–89. 100  Cathy Leeny, Irish women playwrights 1900–1939: Gender and violence on stage (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2010), 75; Lauren Arrington, “Liberté, égalité, sororité: The poetics of suffrage in Gore-Booth and Markievicz,” in Irish Women’s Writing: 1878–1922, eds., Anna Pilz and Whitney Standee (Manchester University Press, 2016), 214.

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scholarship on medieval Ireland and its literary tradition;101 idiosyncratic spellings of her characters’ names, such as ‘Feithleen’ (Fedelm, prophetess of Táin Bó Cúailnge), also confirm the influence of Standish James O’Grady’s largely creative History of Ireland (1880–1881). If the medieval authors of Táin Bó Cúailnge had used Cú Chulainn’s lament for Fer Diad to critique the futility of violence, Gore-Booth’s plays rewrote its bloodsoaked plot as a pacifist fable that reframed the catalyst for Medb’s invasion of Ulster as Deirdre’s death, which Medb seeks to avenge. The theme is unique to Gore-Booth’s work,102 and her innovative use of Deirdre’s voice enhances both plays’ startling, similarly original assertion that Medb is “weary of war and the world’s tears”103 and that a lifetime of conflict and bloodshed has rendered her uncertain of its worth.104 Gore-Booth’s Deirdre makes her first (indirect) appearance in Unseen Kings in a poem sung to Cú Chulainn by his nurse Eineen, who tries to prevent him paying heed to the spectral voices of the ‘Children of Cailitin’ that are calling him out to a phantom battle:105 For such a cause did not Deirdre die, And many faithful lovers of old days, Who had found treason under the blue sky, They died of grief, and the songs give them praise…     For such a cause…106  For example, Unseen Kings, 86–87. A posthumous publication, The Buried Life of Deirdre (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1930), completed c. 1908, draws on Hyde’s discussion of reincarnation as a formerly widespread belief among Ireland’s populace; see Literary history of Ireland, 94–104, and Nikhil Gupta, “‘No man can face the past’: Eva Gore-Booth and reincarnation as feminist historical understanding,” Women’s Studies 44 (2015). 102  See Tiernan, Eva Gore-Booth, 85, whose excellent grounding of the play overlooks its sources beyond, unhelpfully, “Celtic myth”. 103  The Three Resurrections and The Triumph of Maeve (London-New York-Bombay: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1905), 124–25. 104  Discussed by Maria Elena Doyle, “A Spindle for the battle,” Theatre Journal 51 (1999), 43–46, and Cory Hutchinson-Reuss, Mystical compositions of the self: Women, modernism, and empire (PhD dissertation: University of Iowa, 2010), 31, 88, 97–116. 105  The play derives from a series of episodes that describe Cú Chulainn’s death in its medieval account, via the translations of Gregory, Cuchulain of Muirthemne, 220–21, 321–33; Hull, Cuchullin Saga, and O’Grady, from whom Gore-Booth borrows ‘Eineen, called the Sorrowful’. Her medieval epithet Inguba (O’Grady’s ‘In-uva’) is not translated elsewhere. Cailitin’s children are the ‘unseen kings’, whose enchantments aim to convince Cú Chulainn that battle is underway outside his fortress. 106  Unseen kings, 46–47, ellipses original. 101

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The song’s refrain connects deaths “for such a cause” of the distant past, immediate present, and imminent future, via the fates of Deirdre, Fionavar (“the passionate child of Maeve”), and Niamh, Eineen’s confidante, whose enchantment by one of Cailitin’s daughters will also doom Cú Chulainn.107 To the transient glamour of ‘the cause’, heedless pursuit of martial fame, is added the likelihood that poets will celebrate its victims. Eineen’s song, through which Gore-Booth condemns its allure, assumes—like Yeats’s Deirdre—her audience’s prior knowledge of all three women, but chiefly of Deirdre’s death, after or due to lamentation sparked by violence. The song’s chronology, also consistent with the timeline of Táin Bó Cúailnge (which Cú Chulainn survives), supports the suggestion that Gore-Booth conceived of Unseen Kings and The Triumph of Maeve as parallel instalments of a larger whole, consistent with Medb’s brief, off-stage appearance during Unseen Kings as head of the phantom host that awaits Cú Chulainn.108 When the ‘unseen kings’ address him in chorus, he is urged to mount his defence against the same commanders that lead the host of Connacht in The Triumph of Maeve—which, in its turn, presents Medb’s perspective, linking Deirdre’s fate and its tragedy at moments critical to her increasing disillusionment with violence.109 In Act I, which refers to the presence of Ulster’s exiles at her court (as above), a pensive Medb urges Fergus to remember “the cause” of his exile and to sing for her “the song that thou didst make in the forgotten days of thy great sorrow, and Deirdre’s wrong”.110 Its verses, sung by Fergus, personify Deirdre as the “wise woman”, sighing over “the desolate land” wasted by war and “the deeds and dreams of men who are not wise”. In response, Medb sighs that she is “weary of war”, wishing to be “at rest with Deirdre of the prophecies”. The play’s imagery, overall, is complex and falls outwith the scope of this discussion, but the close of Act I turns on Medb’s gradual enchantment by 107  See Emma Donoghue, “‘How could I fear and hold thee by the hand?’ The poetry of Eva Gore-Booth,” in Sex, nation, and dissent in Irish writing, ed., Eimear Walsh (Cork: Cork University Press, 1997), 27–29, and Leeney, Irish women playwrights, 71–82. Both discussions provide delicate, nuanced assessment of Niamh’s depiction by Unseen Kings, but overlook most of the character’s background in existing accounts, deviation from which renders Gore-Booth’s version most striking. 108  Unseen kings, 39. 109  For Gore-Booth’s lifelong objection to unjustified violence, see Tiernan, Image of such politics, esp. 139–78. 110  The Triumph of Maeve, 121.

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a dissembling poet, Nera, which parallels Cú Chulainn’s temporary beguiling by the ‘unseen kings’. Convinced, initially, of the paradox that she may obtain solace for her restlessness only by making war, Medb gathers her army and sets out to assault the Sidhe.111 The chance to soothe her fatigue becomes entangled with the hope of gaining peace for Deirdre, whom Medb assumes is similarly restless while her death remains unavenged. At the start of Act II, dressed for battle, Medb falls asleep at the gates of the Sidhe and, in a dream, encounters “a very glorious spirit”, at first unnamed, who chides her for being armed: “why dost thou come here with a sword?” Learning that she intends to make war, ‘Spirit’ exclaims: Here shall no deed of violence be done. No crown be won or heart pierced with the sword, Here all the battles of the world must cease.

“Spirit most wise!” exclaims Medb, “who art thou”? The reply—“I am she who was called Deirdre”—is met with surprising dismay, to which the Spirit’s voice (still unidentified) responds: Shrink not thou appalled From my great sorrow. Beauty knows no shame For the wild dreams and hollow deeds of fate. Nay, what was I but a glass the gods held up To the souls of men grown fierce with love and hate— For the drunkard’s deed blam’st thou the golden cup That held the wine…?112

The exchange sheds significant light on the appeal that Deirdre’s character held for Gore-Booth as an otherwise unlikely advocate for non-­violence (tellingly, her first speech uttered as ‘Deirdre’ begins: “I dream no dream of war”).113 As the “Helen of the Gael”, whose foreordained beauty had inspired inevitable, tragic bloodshed, including her own, Eineen’s song in Unseen Kings also reminds Gore-Booth’s audience that, due to violence, 111  Explained by Gore-Booth as a fairy mound (The Triumph of Maeve, 118), the síd/sidhe is an otherworldly location in medieval Gaelic literature, taking multiple forms in contemporary tales. For its varied significance during the Revival, see Williams, Ireland’s Immortals, e.g., 30–31, 322–32 (in Æ’s work). 112  Triumph of Maeve, 164–67. 113  Triumph of Maeve, 168.

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Deirdre “died of grief” alongside all who loved her. It is this characteristic— her propensity to mourn—whose occurrence confirms Gore-Booth’s confident familiarity with Deirdre’s oldest portrayal, as well as her contemporary portrayal in the Revival. As in Unseen Kings, the Deirdre of The Triumph of Maeve is used by Gore-Booth to accentuate, and reject, the enduring appeal of martial renown. In 1917, in a gravely non-fictional context—an anti-war lecture, “Rhythms of Art”, published by the League of Peace and Freedom— she summarized a pivotal scene from Unseen Kings to illustrate the necessity of recognizing (and shunning) its dangerous allure: [Cú Chulainn] fell under the influence of Niamh, and was for a while proof against the false ideals and glamour of the war spirit, [but] in the end mistook a deceitful and treacherous stranger for the true Niamh. Falling under a spell of illusion, he dreamed (as so many, alas, have dreamed) that the spiritual beauty was calling him to battle, and followed a false god, to find his doom amid hatred and bloodshed and agony.114

While the metaphor acquires markedly greater resonance against the background of Gore-Booth’s advocacy for anti-conscription and Conscientious Objection during World War I,115 Niamh’s, Eineen’s, and, crucially, Deirdre’s voices urged the same, essential rejection of unjustified violence, insincere propaganda, and collective belligerence a decade before.116 Moreover, bringing Deirdre’s character centre-stage in The Triumph of Maeve permits her to speak for herself, in contrast to her legacy’s subtler, underlying presence throughout Unseen Kings. With the refusal to accept responsibility for the damage that her beauty inspired (“what was I but a glass the gods held up”), Gore-Booth rewrites the eloquent, grieving

114  Reprinted in The political writings of Eva Gore-Booth, ed., Sonja Tiernan (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015), 167. 115  Tiernan, Eva Gore-Booth, 148–51, 157–63; Political writings, 133–39. 116  Similarly, in the weeks that followed the surrender of the Easter Rising the previous year, Gore-Booth republished scenes from The Triumph of Maeve as The death of Fionavar (London: Erskine Macdonald, 1916), illustrated by Constance Markievicz from her prison cell in Mountjoy Gaol. Maureen O’Connor’s otherwise excellent discussion of Fionavar’s context overlooks its abridgement—which results in Deirdre’s erasure—and the extent to which Gore-Booth’s exploration of non-violence depended (in 1905) on her informed manipulation of its ultimate medieval sources; “Eva Gore-Booth’s Queer Art of War,” in Women writing war: Ireland 1880–1922, eds., Tina O’Toole et  al. (Dublin: UCD Press, 2016).

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Deirdre of Longes mac n-Uislenn but also, more firmly than Yeats, her fainter, less vivid contemporaries.

“No Place of Rest”: Outlasting Lamentation The legacy of Deirdre’s grief unites her depiction by Yeats and Gore-­Booth, who differ from Gregory in choosing to emphasize her life’s posthumous resonance rather than its earthly duration. Side-by-side, however, and possibly reflective of their close collaboration, Yeats’s and Gregory’s work presents its audience with complementary, contrasting opportunities to engage with the characters and emotions that both had ‘translated’, neither of which are “merely sorrowful”. Moreover, Yeats’s involvement with Gregory’s book, which referred to the lives of Deirdre’s children (see below), ensured that omitting their existence from his “death tale” did not supersede his confidence in Deirdre’s innate maternity, portrayed by Gregory’s work, not his own. A slightly later play, The Fire-Bringers (1920), composed by Moírín Cheavasa, also well informed by Deirdre’s medieval depiction, departs more extensively from its underlying narrative with greater focus than fellow Revivalists’ on aspects of her life that are absent from or undeveloped by existing accounts (including Cheavasa’s contemporaries’). For Cheavasa, who observed candidly that her borrowed characters tended to develop unexpected lives of their own,117 the inclusion of Deirdre’s motherhood permitted her cameo role in an otherwise original play to establish a similar legacy for posthumous reputation, but also to deepen the effect of her grief while alive. Born Olive Agnes Fox, Cheavasa moved to Dublin in 1904. Prior to her marriage to Irish-language activist Claude Chavasse (Cluad de Ceabhasa, 1886–1971) in April 1917,118 she adopted the Gaelicized name Moírín Nic Shionnaigh (‘Fox’), publishing subsequently as Moireen Fox Cheavasa or, most commonly, Moírín Cheavasa. Unlike Yeats and Gore-Booth, she became a fluent speaker of Irish.119 While Cheavasa became more politically engaged in later life, her  The fall of the year (Dublin: The Gayfield Press, 1940), vii.  While at Oxford, Chavasse was influenced by its Professor of Celtic, John Rhys (1840–1915), but his awareness of the Irish language and debates surrounding Home Rule began in childhood; see Diarmuid Breathnach and Máire Ní Mhurchú, “Chavasse, Claude Albert (1886–1971),” aimn.ie [accessed July 20 2022]. 119  Hilary Pyle, ed., Cesca’s diary 1913–1916 (Dublin: The Woodfield Press, 2005), 242; Daniel Corkery, “Foreword,” in Moírín Chavasse, Terence MacSwiney (Dublin: Clonmore & Reynolds Ltd., 1961), 12–13. 117 118

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Revival-era work is imbued with aspects of the mysticism and psychical research in which, along with poet Ella Young (1867–1956) and Maud Gonne (1866–1953), she engaged at the time,120 and lacks the clear awareness of current events or personal activism expressed by Gore-Booth. Once again, Cheavasa’s play anticipates some prior knowledge of its borrowed characters’ established lives: Deirdre and Noísiu arrive on-stage in The Fire-Bringers during a storm-lashed journey home from their Scottish exile. They enter at a point of crisis for its central characters, a newlywed couple, Créide and Flann, threatened with banishment by the latter’s parents who refuse to accept that Créide, a former slave whom their son has redeemed from captivity, has brought no dowry. Other than a brief exclamation of distress uttered by Daol, Flann’s mother, that Deirdre and Noísiu intend to return to Conchobor’s court (“have you not heard of his oath by the earth and sun to slay you?”), Cheavasa assumes audience familiarity with the cause of their departure from Ulster. Deirdre’s role in the play lacks the profundity and politicized, pacifist gloss that it acquires for Gore-Booth, but Cheavasa’s use of her character’s voice embodies, briefly, similar emphasis on the need to distinguish realities, often harsh, from the greater richness of what may come later. Cheavasa’s Deirdre chastises Daol for seeking to reject her only child, in momentary anger that his payment of Créide’s ransom will worsen the poverty of several years’ poor harvests.121 She reminds her that hardships of every kind may taint one’s daily life, but that neither “riches, or fame, or joy” in mortal existence will redeem the loss of a son who would otherwise have mourned his mother’s death, ensuring that her memory might transcend its earthly duration. Cheavasa sharpens the effect of Deirdre’s reproach of Daol by the revelation that her own children have been left behind in exile: Give thanks to the gods, old mother, That they have given you a son, that when you die His hand will close your eyes and at your grave He will linger weeping. No son will close my eyes, No daughter weep at my grave. O Gaiar and Aebhgreine Your little clinging hands I have lost forever!122

120  Anna MacBride Whyte and A. Norman Jeffares, eds., Always your friend: The Gonne-­ Yeats letters 1893–1938 (London: Pimlico, 1993), 312. 121  The Fire-Bringers: A play in one act (Dublin: The Talbot Press, 1920), 66–68. 122  The Fire-Bringers, 72.

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Historic reference to these children is made briefly by two twelfth-­century Gaelic texts appended to O’Curry’s translation of Longes mac n-Uislenn,123 but would have been more familiar to Cheavasa’s audience from Gregory’s inclusion of their lives, via O’Curry, in Cuchulain of Muirthemne. Despite Yeats’s advice that the children’s presence would provide “a better and fuller feeling of [Deirdre’s] married life in Scotland”,124 Gregory’s version maintains the medieval sources’ separation of the children’s lives from their parents’. The timing of Cheavasa’s Deirdre’s arrival on-stage curtails straightforward expansion of her ‘married life’, but voicing the fact of her motherhood looks backwards from the present scene while also darkening the prospect of Deirdre’s and Noísiu’s future lives, as childless parents whose death-beds will not be calmed by their absent children’s tears, or their memories treasured thereafter. The certainty of this mutual oblivion, made sinister by its juxtaposition with Daol’s foreboding of the couple’s imminent demise, is offered by Cheavasa’s script as a tangible warning of the fate that Daol may yet avoid by embracing the wife whom her son has chosen. The element of choice, however, is absent from Cheavasa’s depiction of Deirdre’s life, which emphasizes its foreordained conclusion. Unusually, her Deirdre voices awareness of an indistinct higher power that has dictated her children’s loss and compelled hers and Noísiu’s return to Ulster, but which also, initially, provoked their love. When asked by Créide, whose husband now doubts the value of their affection if his parents will starve for it, whether she regrets the marriage that has wrought such devastation, Deirdre replies: Love such as our love is no gift of men— It is a Fire given by the Gods, a Fire that will kindle, Grow to its height, and wane, unless there be cast upon it All that is loveliest, all that the Gods love best.125

The Fire-Bringers’ title is revealed as a reference to these nameless gods who have imposed the burden of a love that will endure for as long its turbulent path is pursued, but will ultimately sacrifice the lives that it once enriched. Deirdre’s legacy, for Cheavasa, will arise not from her children’s  “Tri Thruaighe na Scéalaigheachta,” 418–20.  Mathis, “Irish poster girl,” 270. 125  The Fire-Bringers, 68–69, 72. 123 124

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grief but from the afterimage of the fire-bringers’ glorious blaze. Her role in Cheavasa’s play—able to save the minor lives, and loves, of others, though she cannot and will not save her own—imbues her character with its own, god-like quality. As deus ex machina, her appearance ensures that Flann repents of his doubts and Daol embraces Créide as her new daughter, but, when the couple depart, the reunited family hears the dreadful wailing of “the kindred of Deirdre and Naoise among the Sidhe”, mourning for their off-stage deaths as the curtain falls.126 Despite its suitability for The Fire-Bringers’ conclusion, the suddenness of Deirdre’s (indeterminate) death alongside Noísiu deprived Cheavasa, unlike Yeats and Gore-Booth, of the chance to explore the longer-term resonance of her personal grief, which Cheavasa pursued in a separate poem published the following year. Composed in the first-person, Deirdre’s ventriloquized voice addresses Noísiu directly, refocusing the introspective, deadened longing of her collective elegies in Longes mac n-Uislenn, addressed to all three brothers, on a single absent subject: Now thou art hidden, I have no place of rest. Where should I sleep when the earth lies on thy heart? The darkness had no peril when thy arms were around me, But where shall I hide from the night now that I am alone? The stones that will cover my body are all I desire.127

Cheavasa’s poem, a faithful ‘translation’ of its parent text—Deirdre’s oldest-preserved lament—uses as its point of departure her statement that, for the weight of her grief, she cannot sleep, and that joy of any kind will not return.128 Unlike, however, the voice of The Fire-Bringers’ Deirdre, god-like, exultant, and secure in the mutual, defiant love that she and Noísiu have embraced together, the Deirdre who survives his death has not, for Cheavasa, retained that conviction. Death’s embrace is awaited  The Fire-Bringers, 75.  “Deirdre,” Poetry: A magazine of verse XVII, no. IV (1921), 188. In its composition, Cheavasa may have responded to Fiona Macleod’s poem “Deirdre is dead”, whose voiceless, silent Deirdre cannot react to a lurking Conchobor’s soliloquized insistence on visiting her grave to reiterate his enduring desire; The Hour of Beauty (Portland, Ma.: Thomas B. Mosher, 1907), 61–2, cf. Macleod’s one-act play The House of Usna (1900). 128  V. Hull, Longes mac n-Uislenn, ll. 252–54 (“Ní cotlu trá,/Ocus ní corcu m’iṅgne./Fáilte, ní-táet imm airi”). 126 127

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without the belief that the couple will also reunite, and the salvation of the gods’ swiftly consuming fire is replaced in the poem by the stones that will close her, alone, in the lingering dark.

“A Romantic and Sentimental Ending”: Afterlives of ‘Translated’ Emotion Cheavasa’s evolving use of Deirdre’s voice renders it distinct from Yeats’s partly original and Gore-Booth’s unique but consistent depiction of her character (to which Gore-Booth’s poetry, unlike her later play, does not return).129 Confidence in her equally well-informed familiarity with Deirdre’s depiction by Longes mac n-Uislenn permits Cheavasa to rewrite its conclusion and look beyond, exploring other aspects of Deirdre’s life and other voices that may have disturbed its peace.130 Hers is the fullest, strongly emotive, Revival-era evocation of a Deirdre otherwise removed from her established context, and the character remained of long-standing interest, even, perhaps, acquiring a resonance that extended beyond her creative work: Cheavasa’s daughter, born the same year as The Fire-­Bringers’ completion in 1920, was named, like Deirdre’s, Aebhgréine.131 Increasingly detached from traceable medieval sources, both anglophone and Irish-speaking authors continued to recreate the voices of characters whose complex legacies continued to evolve as the Revival’s zenith 129  Constance Markievicz’s short poem “Our girls,” however, addressing her female comrades’ part in the Easter Rising, borrows her sister’s association of Deirdre’s voice with Medb’s; Countess Markievicz: Prison poetry and sketches, ed., Constance Cassidy (Lissadell, Co. Sligo: Castletown Press, 2017), 32. Gore-Booth does employ a similar technique to Cheavasa’s in a series of poems that unite Medb with Unseen Kings’ Niamh, suggesting that the unresolved surrender of her kingdom at the close of The Triumph of Maeve was compensated by Niamh’s love (the women are unconnected in their respective medieval depictions or Gore-Booth’s plays). See, for example, “A hermit’s lament for Maeve” and “To Maeve”, appended to Unseen Kings, and “The Romance of Maeve” in The Agate Lamp (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1912), 94–6. 130  Her significant poem The one unfaithfulness of Naoise (Dublin: The Talbot Press, 1930) is the only Revival-era rendition of the couple’s lives to explore an estrangement alleged to have spoiled the bliss of their Scottish exile, based on the later-medieval manuscript translated by Whitley Stokes (as note 68, above). Cheavasa creates eloquent, passionate Nuala, beloved briefly by Noísiu during their Scottish exile, from the previously unnamed, unremarkable “daughter of the earl of Dun Tréoin”; Stokes, Irische Texte, 115–17; Mathis, “Mourning,” 13. 131  Chavasse, Terence MacSwiney, 9; “Moirin Cheavasa,” in Dictionary of Irish Literature. ed., Robert Hogan (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1996), 240–41.

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waned. References to ultimately medieval prose tales such as Táin Bó Cúailnge also became increasingly disconnected from earlier, largely literal translations or summaries such as Faraday’s or Hyde’s. Newly prevalent semi-scholarly introductions to medieval Gaelic literature, like Rachel Dix’s survey of ‘The Red Branch’ (i.e., the Ulster Cycle), make little distinction between versions of its constituent tales edited directly from their oldestpreserved forms (e.g., Lebor Laignech) and those that depended, at secondor third-hand, on multiple layers of recent, typically creative ‘translation’. Dix (Úna Bean Uí Dhíocsa, 1880–1958), who observes: “The two most famous stories from this cycle are the Táin Bó [Cúailnge] and the story of Deirdre”, recommends initially, not O’Curry or even Gregory, but the “dramatic [plays] by Mr Yeats and by Æ”, and Aubrey de Vere’s heavily romanticized verse collection The Foray of Queen Maeve (1882).132 Similar to Yeats and the majority of their contemporaries—as this chapter has explored—de Vere eschews most “bodily matters” and prioritizes those episodes of ‘The Red Branch’ most easily glamorized in English, anticipating his readers’ response in terms of its central narratives’ affective resonance (characterized as a “strange mixture of ardent affections with causeless hatreds”).133 His rendition of Fer Diad’s death alleges poetically that Cú Chulainn’s spear enters his heart, while his Deirdre, having sung the brothers’ lament at their graveside with artistically bloodstained hands, “fell into that loved embrace/In happy death to him she loved restored”.134 If Dix, however, appears to sympathize with de Vere’s interpretation, her closing paragraph draws finer distinction between the basic quality of his largely original English poems and a “beautiful” v­ersion of Táin Bó Cúailnge composed in Modern Irish, which “every Irishman who can read Irish” is encouraged to acquire.135 Herself a fluent learner, Dix’s appeal to fellow speakers acknowledges what remained, decades later, as significant a  “The hero of the Red Branch,” The Irish Monthly 44, no. 515 (May 1916), 323.  The Foray of Queen Maeve and other legends of Ireland’s Heroic Age (London: Kegan Paul, 1882), xiii. De Vere, whose preface treats his characters’ exploits as largely historical (v–vii), conceived his poem as “written […] in the character of an old Irish bard [but] not a translation” of his source (apparently an unpublished summary of Recension I by antiquarian scholar Brian O’Looney, now Royal Irish Academy MS 3 A 15). 134  Foray of Queen Maeve, 179–80, 67–8. 135  “Hero of the Red Branch,” 327 (“there is everything [in Táin Bó Cúailnge] which a good drama demands: the clash of character, of circumstances, of duties, as well as the finer touches of humanity”); Peadar Ó Laoghaire, Táin Bó Cúailnge ‘na Dhrama (Baile Átha Cliath: Muintir na Leabhar Gaedhilge, 1915). 132 133

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source of tension as Hyde’s “De-Anglicising of Ireland” speech had in 1892: that the nearest approximation of medieval Gaelic literature belonged, not to English-language summaries, but the living equivalent of its composers’ language (and, by implication, to those who spoke it).136 In matters of emotion, however, translators of medieval characters’ lives into Modern Irish exercised markedly similar discretion vis-à-vis delicate or uncomfortably vivid behaviour, albeit with more explicit indication than Faraday’s (or Gregory’s) audiences had received, that certain episodes were liable to emendation for “moral reasons” (“there is a great deal of bad conduct in the camps behind the battlefields”).137 If some such ‘improvement’ aimed to create material appropriate for Irish-speaking children, other interventions reflected Yeats’s concern that rendering medieval stories for modern readers must yet be capable of “call[ing] up the past”, in order to preserve (in fact, to recreate) a suitably representative “medieval atmosphere” (atmosféir na meán-aoise).138 It is notable, however, that anglophone authors might acknowledge the challenges that this presented more perceptively than “Gaelic intellectuals” keener for their work to convey “a genuine experience of [medieval] literature [that] could provide an essential link in the re-fashioning of the cultural continuity of the [modern] Gaelic nation” with its ancestors’ heroes.139 As poet Thomas Rolleston (1857–1920) observed, neither audiences’ nor authors’ preferred style or emphasis could or should be expected to correspond: modern taste demands a romantic and sentimental ending, [as] the tale of Deirdre [has been given] by almost every modern writer who has handled it. But the [medieval] story-teller felt differently. The [oldest] tale of the end of Deirdre is horribly cruel, [not] in the least sentimental”.140

136  Philip O’Leary, Prose literature, e.g., 347–53, 484–89, and Philip O’Leary, Gaelic prose in the Irish Free State, 1922–1939 (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), 346–48. 137  “Is iomdha droich-iomchura bhionn i sna longphortaibh uile ar chúlaibh machaire an áir”; Seán Ua Ceallaigh, Rudhraigeacht [The Red Branch] (Baile Átha Cliath: M. H. Macanghoill, 1935), vi, translated O’Leary, Gaelic prose, 350. 138  Cuchulain of Muirthemne, ix; O’Leary, Gaelic prose, 349–50. As O’Leary observes (351–53), linguistic as well as aesthetic considerations could inform this. 139  O’Leary, Gaelic prose, 350–51. 140  Myths and legends of the Celtic race (London: George G.  Harrap & Company, 1911), 303.

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In complement, Rolleston’s Deirdre and the Sons of Usna (1911) blends an atypically candid retention of Deirdre’s refusal to accept the custody of Eogan mac Durthacht, the brothers’ murderer, with the touching suggestion that intertwining trees grew from Deirdre’s and Noísiu’s adjacent graves.141 The absence of her spoken lament may reflect its dedicated recreation by Rolleston’s independent poem (1897), which culminates with Deirdre “kneeling among her dead” (Fig.  10.1) as a battle-weary Conchobor observes her grief in silence.142 Rolleston’s astute characterization of modern (i.e., Revival-era) preference has particular relevance to an unpopular portrayal of Deirdre and the Sons of Uisliu conceived by its author as a “necessary balance to the dreamy romance of Celtic and Yeatsian revival”, if not a “parodic mockery of the values of the [medieval] epics as passed on by Lady Gregory [and] Yeats”.143 The final act of J.  M. Synge’s (1871–1909) last play, Deirdre of the Sorrows (1910), whose revision was curtailed by Synge’s death, alludes clearly to several elements of Yeats’s script and its characters’ presentation, specifically the central role of his legacy-conscious Deirdre and the chorus instructed to preserve the memory of hers and Noísiu’s lives in song (as above). When Conchobor’s assault on their fortress begins, Synge’s unattended Deirdre declares: “I’m well pleased there’s no one in this place to make a story”, while Fergus, contemplating the brothers’ and Deirdre’s bodies in their graves, regrets that “Deirdre is dead and there is none to keen her”.144 Disdain for the importance accorded by Gregory, Yeats (and, to a lesser extent, Æ) to the modelled 141  Myths and legends, 201. Rolleston’s prose text is based on his publisher’s fellow author, Eleanor Hull’s, partly original rendition in her later collection Cuchulain, Hound of Ulster (London: George G. Harrap & Company, 1909); see Innes and Mathis, “Gaelic tradition and the Celtic Revival,” 126–31. The conjoined trees motif, gradually commonplace, emerges during the eighteenth century; see Theophilus O’Flanagan, “Derdri,” Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Dublin 1 (1808), 133. 142  Deirdre (Edinburgh: Patrick Geddes & Colleagues, 1897), 15–16. Its preface, which acknowledges Rolleston’s influence by Hyde’s (1895) and Todhunter’s (1896) recent poems (as note 70), also remarks on Deirdre’s similarity “in circumstances, [if] not in character” (3), to Helen of Troy, and her inadvertent culpability for the events of Táin Bó Cúailnge. For the poem’s ambitious operatic score and its prize-winning performance at the inaugural Dublin Feis Ceoil, see Jeremy Dibble, Michele Esposito (Dublin: Field Day Publications, 2010), 66–71. 143  Douglas Gifford, “From Celtic Revival to Scottish Renaissance?,” in Gael and Lowlander in Scottish Literature: Cross-currents in Scottish Writing in the Nineteenth Century, eds., Christopher MacLachlan and Ronald Renton (Glasgow: ASLS, 2015), 225; cf. Declan Kiberd, “Deirdre of the Sorrows,” in The Cambridge Companion to J. M. Synge, 65–67. 144  J. M. Synge, Deirdre of the sorrows (Churchtown: Cuala Press, 1910), 67, 78.

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Fig. 10.1  Althea Gyles, “Aided Cloinne Uisnig” (1897). Deirdre: “There is but one thing now may comfort my heart, and that thing thy sword, O Naisi”. (Note: Gyles’s illustration accompanied Rolleston’s poem on its initial publication by Patrick Geddes (Deirdre, 5) and was reprinted alongside Yeats’s essay on Gyles’s work the following year (“A Symbolic Artist and the Coming of Symbolic Art,” Number Six of the Dome: A Quarterly published at The Unicorn Press [December 1898], 231). Image courtesy of The Victorian Web [accessed August 22, 2022])

beauty of Deirdre’s grief and the expectation of unremitting sorrow that underlies it pervades Synge’s depiction of his characters, most acutely the “self-dramatising narcissism” of his Deirdre’s well-informed anticipation of the status that Noísiu’s death will confirm.145 When they meet onstage, the brothers in still-­radiant health, she exclaims: “I am Deirdre of Sorrows”;146 newly bereaved, she is reminded to “take pride” in the role 145  Kiberd, “Deirdre of the Sorrows,” 69. Unlike most of his contemporaries’ versions, Synge’s play is explicit that Deirdre is aware of the danger her existence poses to Ulster’s safety (Deirdre of the Sorrows, 9, 24). 146  Synge, Deirdre of the Sorrows, 23. As Kiberd observes (69), the phrase also mocks the play’s title; variations recur four times.

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that would also preserve her life: “come [away] till I find you a sunny place where you’ll be a great wonder they’ll call Queen of the Sorrows”.147 Yet, at last, with the court she might have ruled as Conchobor’s reclaimed queen destroyed, Synge’s Deirdre “put[s] away sorrow”, choosing a superficial legacy that rejects the brutal clarity of pre-Revival death scenes as much as the—admittedly dark—sentiment of his contemporaries’ beautifully conceived, self-­consciously posthumous afterlives of perpetual grief: I see the flames of Emain starting upward in the dark night, and because of me […] there will be a story told of a ruined city and a raving king and a woman who’ll be young forever. […] It is not a small thing to be rid of grey hairs, and the loosening of the teeth.148

If the play’s “intricate web of emotion” depends primarily on Synge’s manipulation of Deirdre’s increasingly resentful behaviour,149 its rawest scene is her brief performance of caoineadh (“keening”) beside Noísiu’s grave,150 which exudes the jarring poignancy of having been composed when Synge, “dying in his thirties”, anticipated its delivery by his fiancée Molly Allgood in the role of Deirdre.151  Synge, Deirdre of the Sorrows, 71–2.  Synge, Deirdre of the Sorrows, 76–7. The scene also rejected the quiet anguish of another key source for Synge’s play, the eighteenth-century early modern Irish Oidhe Choinne Uisnigh (Dublin: M. H. Gill & Son, Ltd., 1898), of which Synge had made a literal translation in 1901; Kiberd, “Deirdre of the Sorrows,” 65–66, cf. Nicholas Grene, Synge: A critical study of the plays (Macmillan: Basingstoke, 1975), 162. 149  Anne Fogarty, “Ghostly Intertexts: James Joyce and the Legacy of Synge,” in Synge and Edwardian Ireland, eds., Brian Cliff and Nicholas Grene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 236; Gifford, “Celtic Revival,” 225. 150  Deirdre of the Sorrows, 70 (“she crouches down and begins swaying herself backwards and forwards, keening softly”), indicating Irish-speaking Synge’s first-hand knowledge of the performance of lament among living Gaeltacht communities; see Angela Bourke, “Keening as Theatre: J. M. Synge and the Irish Lament Tradition,” in Interpreting Synge. Essays from the Synge Summer School, 1991–2000, ed., Nicholas Grene (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 2000), and Hélène Lecossois, Performance, modernity, and the plays of J.  M. Synge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 112–15. 151  Kiberd, “Deirdre of the Sorrows,” 72. A similar, similarly affecting use of Deirdre’s borrowed voice infuses one of Francis Ledwidge’s (1887–1917) last poems, “The Lanawn Shee”, which addresses his former sweetheart Ellie Vaughey (d. 1915); Last songs (London: Herbert Jenkins Limited, 1918), 77–78, and Alice Curtayne, Francis Ledwidge: A life of the poet (London: Martin Brian & O’Keefe Ltd., 1972), 178–79. 147 148

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While Synge’s competence in Irish152 may have rendered his play, like Gore-Booth’s and Cheavasa’s, unusually well-informed by its characters’ pre-Revival depiction (which its “horribly cruel” atmosphere still reflects), its lukewarm reception supports Rolleston’s hypothesis that even darkly construed sentiment was higher-valued by contemporary audiences than the “anti-pastoral” representation of “characters in all their [realistic] humanity”.153 Yet if Synge’s Deirdre fared poorly among the post-­ Revolutionary generation after 1916,154 as did much Revival-era work inspired by pre-modern subjects composed in English,155 the influence of contemporary anglophone literature bearing only tenuous connection or resemblance to the actual depiction of medieval characters by their oldestpreserved Gaelic sources remains both significant and critically underappreciated. Recognizing the multi-faceted position of ‘translated’ emotion—by scholars of Old Irish such as Faraday or Hull as much as Gregory, Yeats, Gore-Booth, or Cheavasa—begins to address, and hopefully mitigate, a key aspect of the prevailing tendency to regard medieval Gaelic literature per se as innately sentimental or romantic, the basis of which belongs equally to the Revival itself.156 Acknowledgements  I am grateful to the editors and to Sinéad Mooney, Kathryn Laing, and an anonymous reader for their comments on an earlier version of this chapter, and to Sìm Innes and Ralph O’Connor for reading drafts. Warm thanks to Sadbh Kellett for recommending the poems of Francis Ledwidge; to Mark Williams, whose reading of Deirdre appeared too late to be considered fully in this chapter;157 and to Elizabeth Boyle, Abigail Burnyeat, Michael Clarke, Joanne Findon, Robbie MacLeòid, Amy Mulligan, Geraldine Parsons, and Roan Runge for their comments on versions presented at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Sabhal Mòr  Titley, “Synge and the Irish language,” esp. 92–94.  Kiberd, “Deirdre of the Sorrows,” 66. 154  Including its Irish-language translation, Déirdre an Bhróin (1932), discussed by O’Leary, Gaelic prose, 368, 472. 155  For exceptions, see O’Leary, Prose literature, 325–26. 156  See, for example, Æ’s observation that the “hero tales” of medieval Ireland awaken emotions “not simple but complex”—based, in fact, on Gregory’s partly or wholly reshaped renditions in Cuchulain of Muirtheme, whose (predictable) homogeneity is unrecognized (“they are so alike in imaginative character that they seem all to have poured from one mind”). Æ, “The character of heroic literature,” in Imaginations and reveries (Dublin: Maunsel & Company, Ltd., 1915), 1. 157  The Celtic myths that shape the way we think (London: Thames & Hudson, 2022), 221–41. 152 153

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Ostaig. Special thanks to Joseph Nagy and all its sponsors for facilitating my attendance at the 42nd University of California Celtic Studies Conference in March 2020, and to Natasha Sumner, Ailbhe Nic Giolla Chomhail, and Demetria Markus.

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Index1

A Abbo of Fleury, 187 Acedia, 12, 73, 153, 162n60, 248 Ælfric of Eynsham, 12, 154, 154n14, 156, 158, 162, 222n82 Æthelstan, king, 204, 210, 211 Alcuin, 24 De virtutibus et vitiis, 24 Alcuin of York, 157, 222n82 Ad Pueros Sancti Martini, 157 Aldhelm of Malmesbury, 12, 13, 185, 186, 194, 197, 222 De virginitate, 222 Ambrose, 197 De uirginibus, 197 Amys and Amylion, 82 Anger, 2, 4, 7, 10–12, 19, 21, 23, 24, 26, 28, 32, 34, 35, 49, 50, 75, 76, 96, 113–119, 114n66, 115n70, 117n77, 119n86, 153,

166, 202, 204, 205, 208–210, 213–221, 225, 226, 235, 242n48, 260 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 201 Apathy, see Acedia Ariosto, Orlando furioso, 73 Atlakviða, 29 Augusta, Lady Gregory, 232, 233 Augustine, 156, 188, 189, 191, 195, 196 Confessions, 196 Avarice, see Greed B Bede the Venerable, 12, 24, 175–181, 178n28, 186, 188, 189, 191 Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, 181–186 Vita Sancti Cuthberti, 12, 175, 178

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 E. Sebo et al. (eds.), Emotional Alterity in the Medieval North Sea World, Palgrave Studies in the History of Emotions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33965-3

279

280 

INDEX

Boethius, 133, 133n21, 134, 138 De consolatione philosophiae, 133 Boniface of Crediton, archbishop of Mainz, 158–160 Brandkrossa þáttr, 9, 17–19, 20n9, 25n28, 28, 29, 29n45, 44–49, 53, 58, 60, 64, 65 Brut, prose, 204 C Cassian, John, 153, 154, 160, 162, 162n60, 221, 222 Institutes and Conferences, 221 Cheavasa, Moírín, 236, 259–263, 262n127, 263n129, 263n130, 269 Moírín Nic Shionnaigh, 259 Olive Agnes Fox, 259 Children, 62, 81–84, 104, 105, 111, 113, 114, 126, 127n4, 140, 141, 155, 163, 180, 223, 233, 233n10, 234, 234n15, 255n105, 256, 259–261, 265 Christ, 84, 87, 99, 112, 137, 138, 155, 157, 174, 177, 187, 188, 194, 195 Collectanea Pseudo-Bedae, 112, 135 Community, 10–13, 44, 50, 52, 73, 74, 89, 96, 110, 163, 164, 175, 186, 187, 194, 268n150 D de Vere, Aubrey, 264, 264n133 Death, 3, 11, 13, 18, 19, 21, 23, 29, 32, 34, 49, 50, 52–55, 58–60, 62, 71, 73, 86, 87, 101, 102n22, 104, 108, 111, 126, 127, 132, 133, 135–138, 144, 145, 147, 153, 154, 159, 163, 164, 166, 182, 186, 188, 203, 204, 206–208, 218, 219, 232, 233,

233n6, 241–244, 244n56, 244n59, 246–257, 255n105, 260–262, 264, 266–268 See also Grief Dhuoda, William, 12, 155, 158 Liber Manualis, 12, 155 Die Nibelungenklage, 10, 85–90 Disgust, 220 Dix, Rachel (Úna Bean Uí Dhíocsa), 264 Doomsday, see Last Judgement Droplaugarsona saga, 9, 10, 17–19, 20n9, 25n28, 28, 29, 29n45, 44–49, 53, 55, 58–60, 64, 65 E Eadmer of Canterbury, 223, 225, 226 Eadwig, king, 204, 207 Edgar, king, 13, 189, 190, 201–226 Edward the Elder, king, 210 Egill Skallagrímsson, see Egils saga Egils saga, 9, 17–19, 20n9, 22, 25n28, 27n39, 28, 29, 29n45, 34, 44–49, 53, 64, 65 Empathy, 4, 10, 51, 61–65 Envy, 75, 119, 153, 202, 208, 209, 220, 221, 221n75 Eucherius of Lyons, 193 Formulae spiritalis intelligentiae, 193 F Faraday, Winifred, 238–245, 240n37, 241n42, 264, 265, 269 Fate, 11, 20, 85, 126, 133, 134, 136, 138–145, 146n55, 147, 163, 256, 261 Fear, 3, 6, 11, 23, 28n44, 29, 63n63, 71, 75, 84, 96, 107–113, 115, 119, 131–133, 143, 147, 156, 158, 159, 162, 194, 197, 214, 215, 220, 223, 247, 256n107

 INDEX 

281

Ferguson, Samuel, 248 Feud, 46, 64, 85, 86, 99 Flagelin, 77 Der Bussard, 77 Fljótsdæla saga, 9, 10, 17–19, 20n9, 25n28, 28, 28n44, 29, 29n45, 44–49, 52, 53, 64, 65 Fornaldarsaga, see Ragnars saga loðbrókar; Völsunga saga Fóstbrœðra saga, 9, 18, 19, 20n9, 25n28, 28, 28n44, 29, 29n45, 44–49, 53, 64, 65 Friendship, 3, 56n41, 81, 84, 109, 241 Fury, see Anger

Gregory the Great, pope, 24, 147, 153, 162, 179, 182, 214, 221, 222 Moralia in Iob, 214, 221, 222 Grief, 9–14, 17, 19–21, 28–34, 28n44, 49–51, 59–61, 85–88, 90, 99–102, 105, 107, 131, 135, 138, 139, 143, 144, 146, 155, 160, 164, 193, 197, 233–235, 233n6, 243, 244, 246, 246n69, 248–250, 254, 255, 258, 259, 262, 266–268 Guðrúnarkviða, 20, 34 Gunnars saga Þiðrandabana, 9, 18, 19, 20n9, 25n28, 28, 29, 29n45, 44–49, 52, 53, 64, 65

G Galen, see Humoral theory Geffrei Gaimar, 203, 204, 206, 207, 210, 211, 214, 218–220, 224, 224n91, 226 Estoire des Engleis, 204 Geoffrey of Monmouth, 2n1, 3 Historia regum Britanniae, 2 Giants, 51, 58, 84, 125, 127, 128, 133, 137 Gísla saga, 9, 18, 19, 20n9, 25n28, 28, 29, 29n45, 44–50, 53, 64, 65 Gore-Booth, Eva, 236, 254–260, 254n98, 254n99, 254n100, 255n101, 255n105, 256n107, 256n109, 258n116, 262, 263, 263n129, 269 Goscelin of Saint-Bertin, 13, 187–198 Historia maior de aduentu Sancti Augustini, 188 Liber Confortatorius, 192–198 Vita Sanctae Wulfhilde, 189 Grágás, 24 Gratian, 97, 108 Decretals, 97 Greed, 75

H Haet is riocht? (Frisian), 108 Happiness, 12, 61, 64, 98, 99, 138, 139, 147, 220 Hartmann von Aue, 72 Erec, 73 Hatred, 26, 28, 28n44, 71, 219, 258, 264 Heart, 3, 6, 10, 11, 23, 26–29, 27n38, 28n44, 29n45, 34, 35, 70, 78, 83, 85–88, 140, 146, 147, 158, 160, 172, 174, 175, 188, 193, 195, 219, 224, 240, 240n39, 257, 264 Henry of Huntingdon, 203, 207, 210, 214, 215, 224, 226 Hippocrates, see Humoral theory Homicide, see Murder Hrafnkels saga, 9, 10, 18, 19, 20n9, 25n28, 28, 29, 29n45, 44–49, 45n8, 53, 54, 64, 65 Hull, Eleanor, 233, 238, 239, 239n33, 242, 244n59, 247n74, 255n105, 266n141, 269 Humiliation, 63, 173, 180, 187, 193, 195n85, 197, 198

282 

INDEX

Humility, 12, 13, 54, 171–198 Humoral theory, 10, 18, 18n4, 22, 23, 23n20, 36 Humours, four, see Humoral theory Hutton, Mary, 240, 241n40, 242, 244–246, 246n69 Hyde, Douglas, 237, 237n28, 239n34, 240, 248n76, 255n101, 264, 265, 266n142 I Íslendingasögur, see Brandkrossa þáttr; Droplaugarsona saga; Egils saga; Fljótsdæla saga; Fóstbrœðra saga; Gísla saga; Gunnars saga Þiðrandabana; Hrafnkels saga; Laxdœla saga; Njáls saga; Sturlunga saga; Vápnfirðinga saga; Víga-Glúms saga J John of Worcester, 201, 203, 215 chronicon ex chronicis, 202 Joy, 3, 11, 28, 28n44, 31, 76, 78, 84, 96, 98–99, 119, 126, 160, 161, 166, 208, 260, 262 Jurisprudentia Frisica, 102, 102n23, 109, 110, 116n75 K Konungasaga, see Saga Óláfs konungs L Last Judgement, 131, 133, 135n30, 137, 138, 145 Laughter, 29, 32, 138, 139 Law, 3, 11, 24, 95, 96, 98, 99, 101–104, 103n26, 106–108,

109n48, 110–113, 116, 117, 119, 119n86, 207 Laxdœla saga, 9, 18, 19, 20n9, 25n28, 28, 29, 29n45, 34, 44–50, 53, 64, 65 Laȝamon, Brut, 2, 2n4 Lebor Laignech (‘Book of Leinster’), 237, 241n42, 242–244, 247n73, 264 Lebor na hUidre (‘Book of the Dun Cow’), 237, 238, 240n37, 242, 244, 244n56 Longes mac n-Uislenn, 232, 233n6, 233n10, 235, 246n69, 247, 250n83, 252–254, 259, 261–263 Love, 3, 13, 24, 28, 28n44, 59, 60, 62, 62n60, 64, 70, 71, 73, 76–78, 80–84, 90, 109, 113, 146, 166, 174, 184, 192, 195, 196, 210, 218–220, 245, 247, 252, 257, 261, 262, 263n129 Lust, 2, 13, 201–226, 234 M Malory, Thomas, 2, 3 Le Morte Darthur, 2 Maríu saga, 24 Marriage, 3, 4, 54–56, 78, 80, 81, 90, 101, 116, 185, 186, 220, 221n75, 223, 224, 234, 242n47, 246, 259, 261 Mary, Virgin, 24, 191 Melancholy, 31, 34 Misery, see Sorrow; Unhappiness Moderation, 72, 73, 75, 85 Mothers, 19, 49, 51, 54, 58, 59, 61, 104, 105, 111, 114, 115, 117, 140, 141, 144, 163, 191, 192, 216, 217, 247, 260 Murder, 24, 50, 55, 85, 100, 182, 204, 208, 219

 INDEX 

N Njáls saga, 9, 18–20, 20n9, 22, 25n28, 28, 29, 29n45, 31, 33, 34, 44–49, 53, 64, 65 O O’Curry, Eugene, 242, 242n47 P Pride, 13, 73, 76, 179, 182, 185, 188, 194, 197, 209, 220, 221, 267 Processus iudicii (Frisian), 109 R Rage, heroic, 70 See also Anger Ragnars saga loðbrókar, 19, 32, 45, 47, 48, 51, 60, 64 Rape, 2, 78, 163, 164, 223, 224 Rolleston, Thomas, 265–267, 266n142, 269 Russell, George (“Æ”), 248, 248n79 S Sadness, 7, 11, 12, 32, 33, 70, 80, 85–87, 96, 99–107, 119, 133, 151–167, 220, 252 Saga Óláfs konungs, 20, 34, 47 Seafarer, The (Old English poem), 12, 161, 164, 165, 167 Shame, 83, 119, 163, 173, 197 Shock, 19, 52, 106, 107 Sin, 12, 13, 24, 73, 105n31, 114, 147, 152–157, 154n14, 162, 166, 197, 205, 206, 208–210, 214, 217, 218, 221, 222 Snorri Sturluson, 28, 33 Skáldskaparmál, 28, 33

283

Solomon and Saturn II, 12, 125–147 Sorrow, 10, 12, 20, 30, 51, 52, 61, 76, 80, 83–85, 87, 88, 90, 99, 100, 104, 107, 114, 125–147, 153–155, 158, 159, 231–270 See also Grief; Sadness Statutes of Magnus (Frisian), 98 Statutes of Wymbritseradeel (Frisian), 110 Stephen of Ripon, 176 Life of Saint Wilfrid, 180 Sturlunga saga, 9, 18, 19, 20n9, 24, 25n28, 28, 29, 29n45, 32, 44–49, 53, 64, 65 Synge, J. M., 266–269, 268n148, 268n150 Synodal Law of Frisia West of the Lauwers, 117 T Táin Bó Cúailnge, 13, 232, 232n2, 235, 238, 240, 241, 243, 244, 246, 253–256, 264, 266n142 Tears, 18–36, 43, 49, 51, 63n63, 72, 77–79, 84, 97, 102, 103, 106, 107, 113, 135, 138, 139, 143, 144, 146, 196, 197, 234, 249, 253–259, 261 See also Grief; Weeping Thomasin von Zerklaere, 74–76 Der Welsche Gast, 74–76, 85 Tristitia, see Sadness; Sorrow Twenty-four Landlaws (Frisian), 104 U Unhappiness, 12, 51, 52, 56, 57, 61, 63, 99, 100, 114, 125–147, 155, 159

284 

INDEX

V Vápnfirðinga saga, 9, 18, 19, 20n9, 25n28, 28, 29, 29n45, 44–49, 53, 55, 64, 65 Vasa mortis, 11, 12, 125–147 Vita Sancti Cuthberti (anonymous), 12, 175, 178 Víga-Glúms saga, 9, 18, 19, 20n9, 25n28, 28, 29, 29n45, 44–49, 53, 64, 65 Völsunga saga, 19, 29, 45, 47, 48, 51, 60, 64 W Wace, 2–4 Roman de Brut, 2 Wanderer, The (Old English poem), 12, 53, 160, 161, 164, 165, 167

Weeping, 20, 49, 51, 102, 107, 138, 143, 146, 197, 234, 249, 260 See also Grief; Tears William of Malmesbury, 13, 201–203, 208–212 Gesta pontificum Anglorum, 212 Gesta regum Anglorum, 204 Wrath, see Anger Wulfstan (II), archbishop of York, 203, 222n82 Wulfstan Cantor, 186 Vita Sancti Æthelwoldi, 186 Würzburg, Konrad von, 80–84 Engelhard, 10, 80–84, 90 Y Yeats, W. B., 232, 234, 234n16, 235n19, 236, 237, 239, 239n34, 247–252, 249n81, 250n83, 251n85, 254, 259, 261–267, 269