CHAPTER VIII. ALLITERATIVE ROMANCES AND POEMS.

Though English poets, in the fourteenth century, had a full command of rhyme, and of many forms, simple or complicated, of rhyming verse, there began a return to the old Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse, sometimes combined with rhyme. Chaucer, later, makes his parson say,

I am a Southren man,
I can nat geste—rum, ram, ruf—by lettre;
Ne, God wot, rym holde I but litel bettre.

The parson's Opinion is his own, not that of Chaucer, who certainly "liked rhyme," whether he liked alliterative rhythm or not.

Gawain and the Green Knight.

A famous and really amusing alliterative romance, with a rhymed close to each passage, is "Gawain and the Green Knight". This tale is found in a manuscript which also contains two devout poems, "Patience," and "Cleanness," with an elegy of remarkable merit, "The Pearl". All four poems are attributed by several critics to the same author, and some of the Scottish learned believe that author to have been a very prolific and accomplished Scot. A few words may be said on this question later, meanwhile "Gawain and the Green Knight" has the merit of being readable. Though Gawain is best known in modern times through Tennyson's "Idylls of the King," in the romance he was by no means the "false, fleeting, perjured" knight of the great Laureate. In the Welsh Triads and other early Welsh versions, he is one of the three "golden-mouthed heroes," one of the three most courteous.[Pg 73] He was the eldest son of King Llew, Loth or Lot, a contemporary of Arthur, from whom he received Lothian. In Geoffrey of Monmouth, Gawain appears as Walwainus. The figure of Lancelot comes later, as we saw, into romance, and Lancelot and Gawain then become foes. When Tristram (or Tristan) was introduced into the circle of Arthur, later, the authors of the Tristan (under Henry II and Henry III) had, for some reason, a bitter spite against King Lot and all his family; and calumniated Gawain on every occasion. This vein of detraction pervades Malory's "Morte Arthur," where Tennyson, looking for a false fleeting knight, found the Gawain of the "Idylls".

In "Gawain and the Green Knight," Arthur's friend displays great courage, courtesy, tact, and chastity under severe temptations, while, if he falls for a moment short of heroic virtue, he redeems his character by frank confession. The story is too good to be spoiled by a brief summary: grotesque as is the figure of the gigantic Green Knight, who suffers no inconvenience from the loss of his head, the trials of Gawain are most ingeniously invented, and he overcomes them like the Flower of Chivalry. He is rewarded by the magical "green lace" which may, it has been suggested, symbolize the Order of the Garter (about 1345), though the ribbon of the Garter is now dark blue.

Pearl.

In the manuscript volume containing "Gawain and the Green Knight," is the singular poem, "Pearl," which has been described as the "In Memoriam" of the fourteenth century. It is, indeed, an elegy by one who has lost a "Pearl," probably a Margaret, who dies before she is two years old. The poet bewails his loss, and speaks, in a vision, with his Pearl, concerning religion and the future life. The poem (edited, paraphrased, and annotated by Mr. Gollancz) was praised by Tennyson as "True pearl of our poetic prime".

"Pearl" is written in stanzas of twelve lines, with some resemblance to the form of the Italian sonnet (in fourteen lines), with which the author may have been familiar. The system of rhyming may be roughly illustrated thus,

[Pg 74]

Pearl that for princes' pleasure may
Be cleanly closed in gold so clear,
Out of the Orient dare I say,
Never I proved her precious peer;
So round, so rich, and in such array,
So small, so smooth the sides of her were,
Whenever I judged of jewels gay
Shapeliest still was the sight of her.
Alas, in an arbour I lost her here,
Through grass to ground she passed, I wot,
I dwine, forsaken of sweet love's cheer,
Of my privy Pearl without a spot.

The same rhymes persevere through the first eight lines, as in a sonnet, the rhyme of the second, fourth, sixth, and eighth lines continues in the ninth and eleventh; a new rhyme appears in the tenth and twelfth lines: and throughout there is much alliteration. In stanzas 1 to 5, "pearl withouten spot" comes always as a "refrain" at the close, and other refrains end each set of five or six stanzas, as in the old French ballade. The form is thus difficult and highly artificial, the making of the poem was, as Tennyson says, "the dull mechanic exercise" to deaden the pain of the singer.

The poet, fallen on the grassy grave of the lost child, lies entranced, but his spirit floats forth to a strange land of cliffs and woods, where the leaves shine as burnished silver, and birds of strange hues float and sing. He comes to a river crystal-clear, whose pearls glow like sapphire and emerald, but that river has no ford, and may not be crossed by living man. On the farther shore he sees a maiden clad in white and in pearls, fresh as a fleur-de-lis; she is the Blessed Damosel, the Lady Pearl. Her locks are golden, and her crown is of pearls and gold. She tells the dreamer that she is not lost: his Pearl is in a coffer; safely set in the garden of Paradise. She comforts him with the hope and comfort of Christ. Henceforward her discourse is religious: he strives to cross that River, and to reach the shining city of the Apocalypse; but he wakes on the grave of his child; and consoles himself with the promise of the Communion of the Saints. The machinery of the Dream, and the River, are borrowed (as all[Pg 75] poets then borrowed), from the famous French "Roman de la Rose" (1240) with its allegorical characters. This fashion of poetry, always beginning with a dream, in which the dreamer has visionary adventures with allegorical personages, became a kind of literary epidemic, terribly tedious and conventional, as time went on.

The poet has given to his lay the charm of sorrow not without hope, and a dainty grace of artifice that is not insincere; "of his tears are pearls made".

As to the author of "Pearl," there is much difference of opinion. Nothing in the two edifying poems in the same manuscript, "Cleanness" and "Patience," makes it improbable that he wrote them. "Gawain and the Green Knight" is a very different composition, yet of lofty character; the author of "Pearl" may have written it, just as the author of "The Lotus Eaters" wrote "The Northern Farmer," and "The Charge of the Light Brigade".

Huchown.

With a number of other poems, "Pearl" has been claimed for a Scot, Huchown, Sir Hugh of Eglintoun, an Ayrshire laird, known as a fighting man, a diplomatist, and a judge, in the reign of David II of Scotland; he "flourished" between 1342 and 1377. Or perhaps Huchown was a priest, nobody knows.

The process of argument is this; some forty-three years after Sir Hugh died, in 1420, a Scottish writer of history in rhyme, Wyntoun, produced his "Orygynale Cronykil" (his spelling is original enough). He says that "Huchown of the Awle Ryale," wrote learnedly, on the Brut and Arthur themes, in his "Geste Hystorialle," that is a rhymed romance named "Morte Arthur". Wyntoun also says that Huchown made the "Gret Gest off Arthure" (apparently the "Morte Arthur"), the "Awntyre off Gawaine" (perhaps "Gawain and the Green Knight," or perhaps the "Awntyrs of Arthur"), and the "Pystyll of Swete Susane" (a poem still extant, on Susannah and the Elders, the story in the Apocrypha).

Some claim for Huchown not only these pieces, but "Pearl," "Cleanness," and "Patience," and long poems on Alexander the[Pg 76] Great, and the Tale of Troy, and much more. Huchown, on this theory, must have been a professional poet, yet he has been identified, we saw, with Sir Hugh of Eglintoun, a soldier, diplomatist, and man of affairs.

It is certainly improbable that a man so busy as Sir Hugh of Eglintoun wrote such a huge mass of poetry unless he were as energetic as Sir Walter Scott.

The great alliterative "Morte Arthur" wanders from the true way, pointed out in the ancient Welsh verses on "The Graves of Heroes," and by Layamon. "The Grave of Arthur" is no mystery to honest Huchown; of the King it cannot be said "in Avalon he groweth old," he does not dwell with "the fairest of all Elves": he is buried at Glastonbury, a fable invented late, in the honour of that beautiful and desolate home of old religion.

Huchown shows that he was intimately familiar with minuti? of English law, which Sir Hugh of Eglintoun was more likely to know than an obscure parish priest. Many other curious arguments in favour of Sir Hugh of Eglintoun as author of the "Morte Arthur" have been set forth (by the learned ingenuity of Mr. George Neilson, who also claims for him "Pearl"), but we still marvel how a busy man like Sir Hugh, living in a rough age, found time for all his labours.

The "Pistyl of Susan" adds little, save in one passage, to the laurels of Huchown. It is a tale of Susannah and the Elders, told in stanzas, both alliterative and rhyming, of eight lines, followed by one short line of two syllables, then come three, rhyming lines of three feet, and a fourth rhyming to the first in this set: thus,

And told
How their wickedness comes
Of the wrongous dooms
That they have given to gomes (men)
These Judges of old.

The garden of Susan is described in a manner both copious, florid, and inconsistent with botanical science, but there is a touching scene between the falsely-accused Susan and her husband.

Huchown is also credited with the "Awntyrs (Adventures) of[Pg 77] Arthur"; which contains a curious appearance of the ghost of Guinevere's mother to Sir Gawain and "Dame Gayenour," Guinevere. This is certainly "the gryseleste gaste,"—the grisliest of ghosts, but she has all of Huchown's delight in theology and edification, prophecy, heraldry, and hunting. The metre is not unlike but is not identical with that of "Susan".

By Scottish critics the "Morte Arthur" and "Susan," at least, are claimed for the Ayrshire bard, Sir Hugh, and, if they are right, Scotland was civilized enough, and fortunate enough, to have a considerable poet before Barbour, author of "The Brus" (1376), a rhymed history of King Robert Bruce, the great hero of his country. But the literature of Scotland is more conveniently to be treated in a separate chapter.