Dragon Lords
Page 25
35 Emma Mason, ‘Legends of the Beauchamps’ ancestors: the use of baronial propaganda in medieval England’, Journal of Medieval History 10 (1984), pp. 25–40.
36 See Alison Wiggins, ‘The manuscripts and texts of the Middle English Guy of Warwick’, in Wiggins and Field (eds), Guy of Warwick: Icon and Ancestor, pp. 61–80. Two of the Middle English versions are edited by J. Zupitza in The Romance of Guy of Warwick, edited from the Auchinleck MS. in the Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh and from MS. 107 in Caius College, Cambridge (London, 1883–91; reprinted as one volume, 1966). Quotations are taken from this edition; as Zupitza prints the Auchinleck and Caius texts in parallel, the version referred to will be identified as A and C respectively. The fifteenth-century version in Cambridge University Library, MS. Ff.2.38 is edited by Zupitza as The Romance of Guy of Warwick: the second or 15th-century version (London, 1875–6; repr. 1966).
37 Rosalind Field, ‘From Gui to Guy: the fashioning of a popular romance’, in Wiggins and Field (eds), Guy of Warwick: Icon and Ancestor, pp. 44–60; Maldwyn Mills, ‘Techniques of translation in the Middle English versions of Guy of Warwick’, in Roger Ellis (ed.), The Medieval Translator II (London, 1991), pp. 209–29.
38 Richmond, The Legend of Guy of Warwick, pp. 65–76.
39 Mason, ‘Legends of the Beauchamps’ ancestors’, pp. 33–4; Richmond, The Legend of Guy of Warwick, pp. 68–70.
40 Crane, ‘The vogue of Guy of Warwick’, p. 191.
41 For an overview of the relationship between the Guy romances and historiography, see Judith Weiss, ‘Gui de Warewic at home and abroad: a hero for Europe’, in Wiggins and Field (eds), Guy of Warwick: Icon and Ancestor, pp. 1–11. On structural parallels between the two episodes see Carol Fewster, Traditionality and Genre in Middle English Romance (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 83–4.
42 Eugen Kölbing (ed.), The Romance of Sir Beues of Hamtoun (London, 1885, 1886, 1894), pp. 122–3; see Laura A. Hibbard, Mediæval Romance in England: A Study of the Sources and Analogues of the Non-Cyclic Metrical Romances (New York, 1960), pp. 127–39.
43 See for instance Rouse, The Idea of Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 62–3.
44 The Middle English versions give the Danes only one leader, but the Anglo-Norman poem mentions two, Anlaf and Gunlaf; for discussion see Ashdown, ‘The single combat’, p. 119. The giant Colbrand also has a Norse name, an anglicisation of Kolbrandr; for occurrences of the name in England see Jón Stefansson, ‘The oldest known list of Scandinavian names’, Saga-Book of the Viking Society IV (1905–6), pp. 296–311 (302); Fellows Jensen, Scandinavian Personal Names in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, pp. 177–8.
45 See Ashdown, ‘The single combat’, p. 123, n. 2.
46 For surveys of references to the battle, see Alistair Campbell (ed.), The Battle of Brunanburh (London, 1938), pp. 147–60; Livingston (ed.), The Battle of Brunanburh: A Casebook. On later traditions, see Patrizia Lendinara, ‘The Battle of Brunanburh in later histories and romances’, Anglia 117 (1999), pp. 201–35; Campbell, Skaldic Verse and Anglo-Saxon History, pp. 5–7; C. W. Whistler, ‘Brunanburh and Vinheith in Ingulf ’s Chronicle and Egil’s Saga’, Saga-Book of the Viking Society VI (1908–9), pp. 59–67.
47 See Treharne, ‘Romanticizing the past in the Middle English Athelston’. On the king and the nation in Guy, see Susan Crane, Insular Romance: Politics, Faith and Culture in Anglo-Norman and Middle English Literature (Berkeley, 1986), pp. 65–6.
48 See William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, vol. 2, pp. 116–20; Wood, ‘The making of King Aethelstan’s empire’, pp. 265–7.
49 For discussion of the English boasting in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle see Page, ‘A Most Vile People’, pp. 27–8.
50 Rouse, The Idea of Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 60–3.
51 The equivalent passage in the Anglo-Norman is lines 9135–9142 (Ewert (ed.), Gui de Warewic, pp. 73–4).
52 Perhaps coincidentally, the earl who speaks up against Heraud at Æthelstan’s parliament in the Anglo-Norman poem is named Modred (Medyok in Auchinleck and Moderyse in Caius); in Cnut’s speech in Gaimar, Mordred is said to have granted the English king Cerdic his right to rule.
53 Ashdown, ‘The single combat’.
54 Gaimar mentions a ‘book of Oxford’, a history of Winchester, and ‘an English book at Washingborough’ (Estoire des Engleis, pp. 348–51); see Wilson, Lost Literature of Medieval England, p. 79.
chapter 5: ‘over the salt sea to england’: havelok and the danes
1 For these three versions see Gaimar, Estoire des Engleis, pp. 4–47; Glyn S. Burgess and Leslie C. Brook (eds), The Anglo-Norman Lay of Havelok (Cambridge, 2015); G. V. Smithers (ed.), Havelok (Oxford, 1987). Quotations from Havelok are from Smithers’ edition, by line number. On the manuscript context of Havelok, see Kimberly K. Bell and Julie Nelson Couch (eds), The Texts and Contexts of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108: The Shaping of English Vernacular Narrative (Boston, 2011).
2 For a survey of references to Havelok with extracts from the texts, see Burgess and Brook (eds), The Anglo-Norman Lay of Havelok, pp. 151–210.
3 This was first suggested by Gustav Storm, ‘Havelok the Dane and the Norse king Olaf Kuaran’, Englische Studien III (1880), pp. 533–5; see also Charles W. Dunn, ‘Havelok and Anlaf Cuaran’, in J. B. Bessinger and R. P. Creed (eds), Medieval and Linguistic Studies in Honour of Francis Peabody Magoun, Jr (London, 1965), pp. 244–9.
4 See Alexander Bugge, ‘Havelok and Olaf Tryggvason: a contribution towards the further understanding of the kings’ sagas’, Saga-Book of the Viking Society VI (1910), pp. 257–95.
5 Smithers (ed.), Havelok, p. lvii.
6 Edmund Reiss, ‘Havelok the Dane and Norse mythology’, Modern Language Quarterly 27 (1966), pp. 115–24.
7 See for instance the references to Havelok in the chronicles of Peter Langtoft [Burgess and Brook (eds), The Anglo-Norman Lay of Havelok, pp. 164–5], and Henry Knighton, Chronicon Henrici Knighton vel Cnitthon, Monachi Leycestrensis, ed. J. R. Lumby (London, 1889), vol. 1, pp. 18–27.
8 On the use of the Anglo-Saxon past in Middle English romance see Rouse, The Idea of Anglo-Saxon England; Rosalind Field, ‘Romance as history, history as romance’, in Maldwyn Mills, Jennifer Fellows and Carol M. Meale (eds), Romance in Medieval England (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 163–73.
9 Thorlac Turville-Petre, England the Nation: Language, Literature and National Identity, 1290–1340 (Oxford, 1996), pp. 142–55; see also Turville-Petre, ‘Havelok and the history of the nation’, in Carol M. Meale (ed.), Readings in Medieval English Romance (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 121–34; Turville-Petre, ‘Representations of the Danelaw in Middle English literature’, in Graham-Campbell et al. (eds), Vikings and the Danelaw, pp. 345–55.
10 Turville-Petre, England the Nation, p. 152. For discussion of this argument, see Rouse, The Idea of Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 102–5; Raluca L. Radulescu, ‘Genealogy in insular romance’, in Radulescu and Kennedy (eds), Broken Lines, pp. 7–25; Helen Cooper, ‘When romance comes true’, in Neil Cartlidge (ed.), Boundaries in Medieval Romance (Woodbridge, 2008), pp. 13–27.
11 Burgess and Brook (eds), The Anglo-Norman Lay of Havelok, p. 155.
12 Smithers (ed.), Havelok, p. 109.
13 See Edward Gillett, A History of Grimsby (London, 1970), pp. 6–9; Goddard Leach, Angevin Britain and Scandinavia, pp. 40–2.
14 Gillett, A History of Grimsby, p. 8.
15 K. J. Allison, A History of the County of York East Riding: Volume 1, the City of Kingston Upon Hull (London, 1969), pp. 371–86.
16 Kenneth Cameron and John Insley, A Dictionary of Lincolnshire Place-Names (Nottingham, 1998), p. 54.
17 Hákonar saga góða, ch. 3, in Snorri, Heimskringla, vol. 1, p. 153. Hauksfljót has not been identified.
18 See Turville-Petre, ‘Representations of the Danelaw’, pp. 352–3. It may be significant that of the six uses of the word ‘Denshe’ in the poem, three occur within the context of Godrich’s resistance to Havelok’s army (lines 2575, 2689 and 2693).
20 Fellows Jensen, Scandinavian Personal Names in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, pp. 319–30.
21 William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, vol. 1, pp. 300–1. William is the first source for this story, but it was repeated by later writers; for discussion see Simon Keynes, The Diplomas of King Æthelred ‘the Unready’ 978–1016: A Study in their Use as Historical Evidence (Cambridge, 1980), p. 214; Keynes, ‘The massacre of St Brice’s Day (13 November 1002)’, in N. Lund (ed.), Beretning fra seksogtyvende tværfaglige vikingesymposium (Aarhus, 2007), pp. 32–67; Williams, Æthelred the Unready, pp. 53–4.
22 William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, vol. 1, 339.
23 The story appears with varying details in Ralph of Diceto, The Historical Works, ed. William Stubbs (London, 1876), p. 174, and Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, ed. H. R. Luard (London, 1872), vol. 1, pp. 514–15; see Wilson, Lost Literature of Medieval England, p. 55.
24 Smithers suggested that the poet of Havelok found the name Gunnhild, along with other names used in the poem, in the twelfth-century Life and Miracles of William of Norwich [Smithers (ed.), Havelok, pp. lxix–lxx]. Even if this is the case, the associations of Gunnhild with Svein and Cnut may have made it seem a particularly appropriate choice.
25 See Rouse, The Idea of Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 103–5; Larissa Tracy, Torture and Brutality in Medieval Literature: Negotiations of National Identity (Cambridge, 2012), pp. 140–55; W. R. J. Barron, ‘The penalties for treason in medieval life and literature’, Journal of Medieval History 7 (1981), pp. 187–202.
26 Gaimar, Estoire des Engleis, pp. 12–15.
27 For a discussion of Goldburh’s role as counsellor in this episode, see Alexandra H. Olsen, ‘The valkyrie reflex in Havelok the Dane’, in Loren C. Gruber (ed.), Essays on Old, Middle, Modern English and Old Icelandic (Lewiston, NY, 2000), pp. 317–35.
28 For another interpretation of this dream, see Diane Speed, ‘The construction of the nation in medieval English romance’, in Meale (ed.), Readings in Medieval English Romance, pp. 135–57.
29 Gelling and Cole, The Landscape of Place-Names, pp. 178–80.
30 For comparable examples in Norse, Irish and Welsh literature see Ellis, The Road to Hel, pp. 105–11.
31 Intriguingly, there are records of at least two significant earthworks (now destroyed) in Grimsby in the form of mounds, named Toote Hill and Cun Hu Hill; Barrie Cox suggests that the first name derives from OE tōt-hyll, ‘a look-out hill’ and the latter from Old Norse konungr and haugr [Cox, ‘Yarboroughs in Lindsey’, Journal of the English Place-Name Society, 28 (1995–6), pp. 50–60]. Possibly this feature of the local landscape is connected in some way to Havelok’s dream.
32 See also 2395–8 and 2453–60.
33 Fordiscussionofthispointsee R. M. Liuzza, ‘Representationandreadership in the Middle English Havelok’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology 93 (1994), pp. 504–19; Julie Nelson Couch, ‘The vulnerable hero: Havelok and the revision of romance’, Chaucer Review 42 (2008), pp. 330–52.
34 See further Eleanor Parker, ‘Havelok and the Danes in England: history, legend, and romance’, Review of English Studies 67 (2016), pp. 428–47.
35 Burgess and Brook (eds), The Anglo-Norman Lay of Havelok, pp. 151–210.
36 See especially Ananya J. Kabir, ‘Forging an oral style? Havelok and the fiction of orality’, Studies in Philology 98 (2001), pp. 18–48.
37 For instance, some contemporary narratives of Cnut’s reign involve detailed and emotive stories of the Danish king’s treatment of his rival’s young children [Robert of Gloucester, The Metrical Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester, ed. William Aldis Wright (London, 1887), vol. 1, pp. 466–9].
38 On the relationship between Havelok and the hagiographical context of its only surviving manuscript, see Bell and Nelson Couch (eds), Texts and Contexts.
39 Robert Mannyng, Chronicle, pp. 499–500. A later revision of Mannyng’s Chronicle in the Lambeth MS. omits the quoted passage and substitutes an interpolation summarising the story of Havelok, following the version of the story represented by Gaimar and the Lai; see W. W. Skeat (ed.), The Lay of Havelok the Dane, revised by K. Sisam (Oxford, 1915; repr. 1967), pp. xvii–xix.
40 Nancy Mason Bradbury, ‘The traditional origins of Havelok the Dane’, Studies in Philology 90 (1993), pp. 115–42.
41 Ibid., pp. 124–5.
42 Holles’ comments are printed in Frederick Madden (ed.), The Ancient English Romance of Havelok the Dane (London, 1828), pp. xxxix–xl.
43 For Camden’s remarks see Burgess and Brook (eds), The Anglo-Norman Lay of Havelok, pp. 207–8.
44 Skeat (ed.), The Ancient English Romance of Havelok the Dane, p. xl.
45 Katherine M. Briggs (ed.), A Dictionary of British Folk-Tales in the English Language (London, 1971), Part B, vol. 2, p. 223.
46 G. N. Garmonsway and Jacqueline Simpson, Beowulf and Its Analogues (London, 1980), pp. 118–23. A related story also appears in the twelfth century in William of Malmesbury’s Gesta Regum, vol. 1, pp. 176–7.
47 Madden (ed.), The Ancient English Romance of Havelok the Dane, p. xxxix.
48 Ibid., p. xl.
49 Ibid., pp. xli–xlii.
50 Skeat (ed.), The Lay of Havelok the Dane, p. liv.
51 Jennifer Westwood, Albion: A Guide to Legendary Britain (London, 1987), pp. 84–7.
52 Robert Mannyng, Chronicle, pp. 440–1.
53 T. Möbius (ed.), Kormaks saga (Halle, 1886), p. 54.
54 See Wilson, Lost Literature of Medieval England, pp. 44–5.
55 Madden (ed.), The Ancient English Romance of Havelok the Dane, p. xl.
epilogue: the danes in english folklore
1 See Daniel Woolf, ‘Of Danes and giants: popular beliefs about the past in early modern England’, Dalhousie Review 71 (1991), pp. 166–209, and The Social Circulation of the Past: English Historical Culture, 1500– 1730 (Oxford, 2003), pp. 345–9; Adam Fox, Oral and Literate Culture in England, 1500–1700 (Oxford, 2000), pp. 243–8; Jennifer Westwood and Jacqueline Simpson, The Lore of the Land: A Guide to England’s Legends, from Spring-Heeled Jack to the Witches of Warboys (London, 2005), pp. 530–1.
2 Woolf, ‘Of Danes and giants’, p. 193.
3 Westwood and Simpson, Lore of the Land, p. 530.
4 For an overview see O’Donoghue, English Poetry and Old Norse Myth, pp. 28–64.
5 Ibid., pp. 38–41.
6 Julia Barrow, ‘Danish ferocity and abandoned monasteries: the twelfth-century view’, in Brett and Woodman (eds), The Long Twelfth-Century View of the Anglo-Saxon Past, pp. 77–93.
7 See Woolf, The Social Circulation of the Past, p. 345.
8 Westwood and Simpson, Lore of the Land, pp. 255, 528, 530–1.
9 Cameron and Insley, A Dictionary of Lincolnshire Place-Names, p. 127.
10 Ingulph’s Chronicle of the Abbey of Croyland, trans. Riley, p. 42.
11 E. Gutch and Mabel Peacock, Examples of Printed Folk-Lore Concerning Lincolnshire, County Folk-Lore 5 (London, 1908), p. 315.
12 Ibid., p. 436.
13 Jacqueline Simpson, Folklore of Sussex (Stroud, 2013), p. 45.
14 The Eulogium historiarum sive temporis, on which see Burgess and Brook (eds), The Anglo-Norman Lay of Havelok, pp. 198–202.
15 On various legends attached to the stones, see L. V. Grinsell, The Rollright Stones and their Folklore (St Peter Port, 1977).
16 William Camden, Britain, or A chorographicall description of the most flourishing kingdomes, England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the ilands adioyning, out of the depth of antiquitie, trans. Philemon Holland (London, 1610), p. 374.
17 Jennifer Westwood, ‘The Rollright Stones, Part 1: The Danes’, 3rd Stone 38 (2000), pp. 6–10.
18 Westwood and Simpson, Lore of the Land, pp. 535–6.
19 See H. St George Gray, ‘Notes on “Danes’ skins”’, Saga-Book of the Viking Society V (1907–8), pp. 218–29
; M. J. Swanton, ‘“Dane-skins”: excoriation in early England’, Folklore 87/1 (1976), pp. 21–8; Westwood and Simpson, Lore of the Land, p. 258.
20 Swanton, ‘Dane-skins’, p. 26.
21 Ibid.
22 Gray, ‘Notes on “Danes’ skins”’, p. 229.
23 Warwick Rodwell, ‘The Battle of Assandun and its memorial church’, in Cooper (ed.), The Battle of Maldon: Fiction and Fact, pp. 127–58.
24 Patricia Croxton-Smith, ‘The site of the Battle of Assandun, 1016’, Saffron Walden Historical Journal 3 (2002).
25 Westwood and Simpson, Lore of the Land, pp. 250–1.
26 Hella Eckardt et al., ‘The Bartlow Hills in context’, Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society XCVIII (2009), pp. 47–64.
27 Camden, Britain, trans. Holland, p. 452.
28 See Donald Watts, Dictionary of Plant Lore (Boston, 2007), p. 101; Westwood and Simpson, Lore of the Land, p. 251.
29 Watts, Dictionary of Plant Lore, p. 123.
30 Westwood and Simpson, Lore of the Land, p. 251.
31 Ibid., p. 531.
32 Woolf, ‘Of Danes and giants’, p. 177.
33 Girardus Cornubiensis, De Gestis Regum Westsaxonum, quoted in Edwards (ed.), Liber Monasterii de Hyda, pp. 118–23; see Richmond, The Legend of Guy of Warwick, pp. 68–70.
34 Richmond, The Legend of Guy of Warwick, p. 98.
35 Westwood and Simpson, Lore of the Land, pp. 794–5.
36 Woolf, ‘Of Danes and giants’, p. 173.
37 Ronald Hutton, The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain (Oxford, 1996), pp. 207–13.
38 There may be a link to the idea found in some medieval Anglo-Norman chronicles that an army of English men and women rebelled against Harthacnut and drove the Danes out of England; this group was called the hounhere, which seems to mean something like ‘shame-army’ [Burgess and Brook (eds), The Anglo-Norman Lay of Havelok, pp. 165–6; Spence, Reimagining History in Anglo-Norman Prose Chronicles, pp. 89–91].
39 Woolf, ‘Of Danes and giants’, p. 194.