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  • Children's Literature in Old English*
  • Hugh T. Keenan (bio)

The Old English riddles, lyrics, and tales are not primarily literature for children. In tone, subjects, and techniques, the Old English examples of these genres seem designed instead for an adult audience.1 Possibly children shared in their enjoyment with adults, but the world reflected by them is not a child's world. The complexity, allusiveness, and serious moral tone of major poems such as Beowulf, The Seafarer, Brunnanbrugh, Maldon, Exodus, and Elene exclude them from consideration too. In all probability, the children's literature that remains to us is to be found in a few didactic works, pagan and Christian. These prepared the child for his adult roles in that serious and heroic Anglo-Saxon society, so similar in its attitudes and goals to the nineteenth century.

Such Old English works as the collections of gnomes, the alphabetic Rune Poem, and Ælfric's Colloquy suggest why their number is so few and how the necessary and vital distinction between literature for children and children's literature arose. It is not inconceivable that Christianity provided the sympathy which underlies that distinction and which leads to the later development of a literature more on the level of children.

This is not to imply that the Anglo-Saxons did not care deeply for their children. Various references in the poetry indicate parental concern for their well being.2 From Beowulf, it is evident that they were sent to board at foreign courts to learn necessary skills and graces if they were nobles.3 Besides feats of arms, they learned pithy words of wisdom. Thus the youthful Beowulf has ready words to answer Hrothgar's numbing grief at the death of Æschere, his friend:

'Ne sorga, snotor guma! Selre bio æghwæm,þæt he his freond wrece, þonne he fela murne.4

Do not grieve, wise warrior! It is better for each onethat he avenge his friend than that he mourn greatly.

Characters and narrators resort to such gnomic expressions throughout Old English verse. Perhaps they were instructed in such formal sentiments as children.

Besides being embedded in other works of Old English literature, such gnomes are found in two separate collections, the Exeter Gnomes and the Cotton Gnomes. Such repositories may have been designed for the instruction of youngsters who were taught for example:5 [End Page 16]

As the sea is serene when the wind wakes it not,so peoples are peaceful when they have settled adispute; they sit in happy circumstances and thenhold with comrades. Bold men are mighty by theirnature. A king is eager for power. Hateful is hewho lays claim to land, loved is he who gives more

The shield shall be for the warrior, the shaftfor the spoiler, the Eucharist for holy men, sinsfor the heathen.

No man acquires too much. Well shall one keep afriend in all ways; often a man passes by the villageafar off where he knows he has no certain friend.

Weary shall he be who rows against the wind; full oftenone blames the timid with reproaches, so that he losescourage, draws his oar on board. Guile shall go withevil, skill with things fitting; thus is the die stolen.6

As these lines speak of diplomacy, generosity, and the fitness of things, they answer the practical aim of fitting the child into that amalgamation of the heroic and the Christian that was Anglo-Saxon society.

In such an elementary education, gnomic words of wisdom were supplemented by a poem on the letters of the ancient Germanic runic alphabet. The matter of the poem is somewhat more elaborate than modern ABC's such as "A is for Apple." Each of the 29 letters receives a descriptive stanza, incorporating the name of the rune.7 For example, the rune þ which is our th sound has the name thorn; its verse reads:

þ (thorn) is very sharp; for each of the thanes, the grasp is evil, cruel without measure for each of men who may rest among them.

The similarly-shaped rune or wynn means "joy" and represents a w sound:

He possesses (joy) who...

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