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Gaimar's Early “Danish” Kings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Alexander Bell
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Extract

One of the most obscure and perplexing passages in the Estoire des Engleis is that in which its author, Gaimar, recounts confusedly some exploits of an otherwise unknown “Danish” king in East Anglia, whom he treats as a contemporary of Cynric and Ceawlin, of Wessex. The story, if such it can be called, shares with the Haveloc story, which precedes it, and with two other allusions, which follow it, a common political idea: that the Danes were settled in England, and held sway in that country, before the arrival of the Saxons. The passage also shares with the Haveloc episode in the Estoire the appearance of interpolation, for without it we have a reasonably smooth narrative based on the entries in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles (ASC).

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 65 , Issue 4 , June 1950 , pp. 601 - 640
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1950

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References

Tant ke Wasling fu oscis.
Chenriz l'oscist, sis enemis.
(ll. 915-916)
Osbreth li reis i fu oscis.
Buern fu vengé, sis enemis.
(ll. 2723-24)

2 M. Gross, Geffrei Gaimar, Die Komposition seiner Reimchronik (Strassburg diss., 1902), p. 7.

3 Le Lai d'Haveloc (Manchester, 1925), pp. 68-78; from this I quote also for the relevant part of Gaimar.

4 “Sigar and Buern: a footnote to Gaimar's Haveloc”, PQ, xiii (1934), 304.

5 As the enclosed h only occurs at this one place in MS. R and is quite unjustified, I omit it in future references to the name.

6 D appears to have only one instance, at 1.3891, where we find bliat for blialt.

7 Three of the MSS give this form and the fourth (H) has a variant, Alselm, which does affect my argument.

8 In his account of Cerdic's ancestry Gaimar uses a name (1. 829) which appears as Elessinc in R, but as Alesinc in D, showing an equation of ss and s which tends to support that of *Wassing with Wasing in our passage.

9 Possibly he had summarized Geoffrey of Monmouth section by section and attempted at first a similar procedure with ASC.

10 I take the reading of RS to be due to a scribal error in R and so do not attach any significance to it.

11 The difficulty seems to have been felt early and I attribute the reading od els in this line in DH to an attempt to harmonize the two successive allusions to dous reis.

12 Bell, p. 62.

13 Hilding Kjellmann, La Vie Seint Edmund le Rei (Göteborg, 1935).

14 Lord Francis Hervey, Corolla Sancti Edmundi (London, 1907), p. 150. 15 Ibid., p. 44.

16 Cf. A. H. Smith, Place Names of the North Riding of Yorkshire (E.P.N.S., V), sub nom., where a passage from Robert Mannyng of Brunne, showing a similar chronological dislocation, is quoted.

17 Cultivation of Saga in Anglo-Saxon England (Edinburgh, 1939), p. 121.

18 Cyril Brett, “Hunuil-Unwine-Unwen”, MLR., xv (1920), 77.

19 K. Sisam (W. W. Skeat), The Lay of Havelok the Dane (Oxford, 1923); F. Holthausen, Havelok (Heidelberg, 1928).

20 K. Kupferschmidt, “Die Haveloksage bei Gaimar und ihr Verhältnis zum Lai d'Havelok”, Roman. Studien, iv (1880), 411-430; E. K. Putnam, “The Lambeth Version of Havelok”, PMLA, xv (1900), 1-16.

21 Op. cit. This could not have been known to Sisam and probably had not come to the notice of Holthausen.

22 Harald E. Heyman, Studies in the Havelok-tale (Uppsala diss., 1903), p. 31.

23 Putnam, p. 5.

24 “The Single Combat in Certain Cycles of English and Scandinavian Tradition and Romance”, MLR, xvii (1922), 113-130. 25 A. Bell, “The Single Combat in the ‘Lai d'Haveloc’”, MLR, xviii (1923), 22-28.

26 Haveloc props up the dead bodies on posts to simulate fresh troops.

27 Galfrid von Monmouth und die frühmittelenglischen Chronisten (Berlin diss., 1918).

28 A. Bell, “The Epilogue to Gaimar's ‘Estoire des Engleis’”, MLR, xxv (1930), 52-59; P. A. Becker, Der gepaarte Achtsilber in der französischen Dichtung (Leipzig, 1934), pp. 40-41.

29 Englische Gründungssagen von Geoffrey of Monmouth bis zur Renaissance, Anglistische Forschungen, 58 (Heidelberg, 1922), p. 265.

30 P. A. Becker, p. 43.

31 The Interpolation, it is true, shares this localization with the Estoire, but this can no longer be used as an argument against Gaimar's responsibility for that localization. Rather, indeed, do the following parallels in phraseology—Gaimar, 11. 49-50: “Des Humbre tres-qu'en Rotelant / Ert le païs en sun cumant”; Interpolation,1. 30: “That held fro Humber to Rotland”; and G., II. 73-74: “Des Colecestre tresqu'en Hoilant / Durot sun regne en un tenant”; i, 1. 34: “Al the lond fro Colchestre right in-til Holand”— tend to support the thesis I have been led to advance, viz. that the Interpolation is dependent on the Estoire.

32 P. A. Becker, “Von den Erzählern vor und nach Chrestien von Troyes”, ZRP, LV (1935), LVI (1936).

33 Of course, if Gaimar's authorship of the Description of Britain, appended to MSS. D and L of the Estoire and extant in two other MSS, were established, it would follow that Gaimar had used Henry of Huntingdon at some stage in his compilation, since the Description is a translation of early sections of the Historia Anglorum, but not that he had done so throughout the Estoire.

34 In two places I have departed from the MS base of the edition and adopted readings from other MSS in the interests of clarity.

35 The name recalls the Continental Wenilinga, quoted by Eilert Ekwall, sub voce Wendling (Sf.), in his English Place-Names in Ing “Skrifter utgivna av Kungl. Humanistika Vetenskapssamfundet”, vol. vi (Lund, 1923).

36 Heyman,p. 114.

37 Heyman, p. 69 n. 1.

38 Studien zur Sagengeschichte Englands, I Teil (Cöthen, 1906).

39 K. Sisam (W. W. Skeat), Lay of Havelok the Dane (Oxford, 1923), p. 15.

40 Der gepaarte Acktsilber …, p. 44.

41 Of course, if the suggestion, which has been made, that in the well-known Yorkshire expressions “Hamlet to pay” and “to play Hamlet”, variants of which latter are “to play Avlot” and “to play Avleck”, we have a memory of the terror inspired by the historical Anlaf Cuaran, could be substantiated, than we should have evidence of such a tradition.

42 Gaston Paris, La Littérature française au moyen âge, 6th ed. (Paris, n.d.), 92.

43 F. P. Magoun, Jr., “Annales Domiliani Latini: An Edition”, Mediœval Studies, rx (1947), 235-295.

44 His immediate source still remains unknown, for I have met nothing to suggest that he used Annales Domitiani Lalini.

45 It is tempting to surmise that at some time Gaimar had come across the names of Ce-retic and Abloyc, sons of Cunedda, and that a vague recollection of them influenced his chronological decision.

46 “Yvain and his Lion”, MP, xxxviii (1941), 267–287.