Alfred
Bede and Ælfric were monks from boyhood, Cædmon was a farmhand. The life of
Alfredcasts an interesting light on literacy as well as on literature. The fourth son of
the king of Wessex, he came to the West-Saxon throne in 871 when the Danes had
overrun all the English kingdoms except his own. Though Danes had settled in east
and north England, an area known as the Danelaw, the Danes whom Alfred defeated
turned east and eventually settled in what became Normandy (‘the land of the
northmen’). Alfred wrote that when he came to the throne he could not think of a
single priest south of the Thames who could understand a letter in Latin or trans-
late one into English. Looking at the great learning there had been in the England of
Bede, and at the Latin books which were now unread, the king used the image of a
man who could see a trail but did not know how to follow it. Alfred was a great
hunter, and the trail here is that left by a pen.
Riddle 26 in the Exeter Book elaborates what a book is made of:
I am the scalp of myself, skinned by my foeman,
Robbed of my strength, he steeped and soaked me,
Dipped me in water, whipped me out again,
Set me in the sun. I soon lost there
The hairs I had had. The hard edge
Of a keen-ground knife cuts me now,
Fingers fold me, and a fowl’s pride
Drives its treasure trail across me,
Bounds again over the brown rim,
Sucks the wood-dye, steps again on me,
Makes his black marks.At the end the speaker asks the reader to guess his identity; the answer is a Gospel
Book, made of calf-skin, prepared, cut and folded. The pen is a quill (a ‘fowl’s
pride’); the ink, wood-dye. Writing is later described as driving a trail of ‘successful
drops’. And to read is to follow this trail to the quarry, wisdom. Reading is an art
which Alfred mastered at the age of 12; he began to learn Latin at 35. Having saved
his kingdom physically, Alfred set to saving its mind and soul. He decided to trans-
late sumæ bec, tha the niedbethearfosta sien eallum monnum to wiotonne(‘those
books which be most needful for all men to know’) into English; and to teach the
freeborn sons of the laity to read them so that the quarry, wisdom, should again be
pursued in Angelcynn, the kindred and country of the English.
Old English verse was an art older than its written form. Old English prose had
been used to record laws, but in The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 757 we find evidence
ofnarrative tradition in the story of Cynewulf and Cyneheard. In authorizing
versions of essential books from Latin into English prose, however, Alfred estab-
lished English as a literary language. The books he had translated were Bede’s
Ecclesiastical History, Orosius’s Histories, Gregory’s Pastoral Care and Dialogues,
Augustine’s Soliloquies and Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, later to be trans-
lated by both Chaucer and Elizabeth I. Alfred also translated the Psalms. It was in his
re ign that The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle(ASC) beg an:the only vernacular history,
apart from Irish annals, from so early a period in Europe. The early part draws on
Bede; the West-Saxon Chroniclethen records Alfred’s resistance to the Danes. The
Chroniclewas kept up in several monastic centres until the Conquest, and at
ORIENTATIONS 27Alfred(d.899) King of
Wessex from 871, who
defended his kingdom against
the Danes and translated
wisdom books into English.Alfred’s needful authors
Alfred’s wise authors were
Augustine (354–430), Orosius
(early 5th century), Boethius
(c.480–524), and Gregory
(c.540–604).