Bourne Archive: FNQ: Hereward I
http://boar.org.uk/ariwxo3FNQsupI.htm Latest edit 22 Apr 2010.
Web page &
commentary © 2007 R.J.PENHEY With thanks to the trustees of the
Willoughby Memorial Library
The Bourne Archive
FNQ
This thread begins with the title page
I.
Incipit præfatio cujusdam
opusculi de gestis Herwardi incliti militis2.
Nonnullis apud nos scire desiderantibus opera magnifici Anglorum gentis
Herwardi et inclytorum
ejus et auribus percipere magnanimitates illius ac gesta3 : nuper nostræ parvitati
vestra insinuavit
fraternitas4, interrogans si aliquid in illo loco ubi degebat de tanto viro conscriptum
aliquis reliquerit. De quo enim quum nos quodam
in loco audisse modicum Anglice conscriptum professi fuimus, subito coegit vestra dilectio
illud ad præsens perquiri, et mox in Latinam linguam transferri, subjungens etiam et ea quæ
a nostris audire contigerit, cum quibus conversatus est, ut insignis
miles magnanimiter vivens. Quibus quidem vestris
desideriis satisfacere cupientes, multis in locis perquirendo manus convertimus, et penitus nihil invenimus, præter pauca et dispersa folia, partim stillicidio putrefactis at abolitis et partim abscisione
divisis5. Ad
quod igitur dum stilus tantumdem fuisset appositus, vix ex eo principium
a genitoribus ejus inceptum et pauca interim expressimus et nomen ; videlicet primitiva insignia præclarissimi exulis Herwardi, editum Anglico stilo a Lefrico Diacono ejusdem ad Brun presbyterum.
Hujus enim memorati presbyteri erat studium, omnes actus Gygantum et bellatorum ex fabulis antiquorum, aut ex fideli relatione,
ad edificationem audientium
congregare, et ob memoriam Angliæ literis commendare6. In quibus vero licet
non satis periti aut potius exarare deleta incognitarum literarum7, ad illum locum tamen
de illo usque collegimus ut in propriam et ad pristinam domum reversus fratrem occisum invenerit : vestræ prudentiæ rudi stilo relinquentes
crudam materiam vel alicujus exercitati
ingenii studio ; minus dialecticis
et rethoricis enigmatibus compositam et ornatam. Nihil enim de his amplius
exarare curavimus, semper
majora expectantes et necdum penitus
aliquid invenientes. Quos tandem vana spes diu delusit,
sicut ab initio a quibusdam dicentibus quod in illo et illo loco magnus liber est de gestis
ejusdem. Ad quem mittentes quæ
promissa fuerant nunc [non]8 comparuerunt. Propterea quidem tunc omnino
illud relinquentes, opus inceptum abscondimus. At tandem a quibusdam nostrorum vobis diu latere non potuit, illud principium saluti vobis non denegari ex insperato nobis subito vestra mandavit benignitas. Tunc ergo quod imperfectum nostrum viderant oculi vestri, curæ nobis
fuit iterum, licet non magni ingenii ope fretis, ad hoc in eo stilum convertere, et vobis iterum in morem ystoriæ libellulum
retexere, de his quæ a nostris et a quibusdam suorum audivimus, cum quo a principiis illius conversati sunt, et in multis consortes fuerunt. Ex quibus sæpe nonnullos
vidimus, viros videlicet statura proceri et magni et nimiæ fortitudinis. Et ipsi etiam duos spectabiles formæ viros ex illis, ut a vobis audivimus, vidistis, videlicet Siwate frater, Broter, de Sancto Edmundo et Lefrico Niger, milites ejusdem9, licet a suis membris propter invidiam dolo orbitati speciem artuum per inimicos amiserint. Siquidem de his et de aliis, quos ipsi in multis
probavimus et vidimus, si non aliter satis nobis daretur intelligi
quantæ virtutis dominus illorum fuerit, et majora esse quæ fecit quam ea
quæ de illo professi sunt. Propterea namque, ut existimamus, ad magnanimorum operum exempla et ad liberalitatem exercendam profectum erit Herwardum scire, quis fuerit, et magnanimitates illius audire et opera, maxime autem militiam exercere volentibus. Unde monemus, aures
advertite, et qui diligentius
gesta virorum fortium audire contenditis mentem apponite, ut diligenter tanti viri relatio audiatur :
qui nec in munitione, nec in præsidio,
sed in seipso confisus, solus cum suis, regnis et regibus bella intulit, et contra
principes et tyrannos dimicavit
quosque nonnullos devicit. De quibus etiam a genitoribus ejus inceptum cuncta
per capitula inserta sunt,
ut leviter possit retineri relectum quod distincte continetur expositum.
The Exploits of
Hereward the Saxon1.
I.
Here begins the
preface of a certain work concerning the exploits of Hereward the renowned
knight2.
Some of us desiring
to know of the deeds of the noble Hereward, of the race of the English,
and his renowned men, and to hear with our ears his generous actions and doings3,
the brethren of your house4 have assisted our ignorance by enquiring
if any man had left anything in writing about so great a man in the place where
he used to dwell. For when we declared that we had heard in a certain place
that a short account had been written about him in English, forthwith your kind
attention had that writing immediately sought for, and before long translated
into Latin, adding also those things which we had happened to hear from our own
people, with whom he was intimate, living nobly as a famous soldier. Desiring
therefore to satisfy these desires of yours, we applied ourselves to enquiring
in many places, and yet in truth found nothing, except a few scattered leaves,
partly rotten by damp, and decayed, and partly damaged by tearing.5
And when the pen had been taken in hand we have with difficulty extracted from
it his descent from his parents and a few things and his character ; that is to
say the early achievements of the very famous outlaw Hereward edited in English
by Leofric
the Deacon, his priest at Bourne. For the intention of this well
known priest was to collect all the acts of giants and ancient warriors from
stories, or from trustworthy narration, for the edification of his hearers, and
for their remembrance to commit them to the English language6.
And although not sufficiently skilled in this, or rather incompetent to
decipher what is obliterated of the unfamiliar language7,
yet we have gathered concerning him that on his return to that place and to his
own ancestral home he found his brother slain. And we leave this raw material,
written in rude style, to your care, and to the zeal of some man’s trained
ability, to be composed and explained in simpler and plainer language. For we
have been able to decipher nothing further of this, ever hoping for greater results
but as yet finding nothing thoroughly. For they, whom for a long time a vain
hope deluded, derived from some who said that in such and such a place there is
a great book of his exploits from the beginning, found nothing of what they had
been led to expect, although they sent to the place.*
Wherefore abandoning altogether the search, we have put away the work which had
been begun. But from some of our men it would not long be hidden from you ; and unexpectedly you have kindly directed that that
commencement at least should not be denied to you. It was then an object of
care to us, though not relying on the help of great ability, that your eyes
might see our incomplete work, to take up the pen once more, and again to unfold
to you a little book after the manner of a history, concerning these things
which we have heard from our own men, and from some of his, with whom they
associated from the beginning of his career, and were in many things his
comrades. Of whom we have often seen some, men (that is to say) tall in stature
and huge, and of exceeding courage ; and you
yourselves have seen also two men of them conspicuous for their form, as we
have heard from you, namely, Siwate, Broter [sic] of S. Edmund, and Leofric Niger,
his knights9, although they lost the beauty of their
limbs by enemies, being bereft of some members by trickery, through envy. And
indeed of these and others, whom we in many things have proved and seen, if no
otherwise, it were sufficiently given you to understand of what valour their
lord was, and how much greater were the things that he did than what they
reported of him. For besides, as we think, it will conduce to the example of
noble deeds, and to the practice of liberality, to know Hereward, who he was,
and to hear of his achievements and deeds, and especially to those who wish to
undertake a soldier’s life. Wherefore we advise you, give attention, and ye who
the more diligently strive to hear the deeds of brave men, apply your minds to
hear diligently the account of so great a man : for
he, trusting neither in fortification, nor in garrison, but in himself, alone
with his men waged war against kingdoms and kings, and fought against princes
and tyrants, some of whom he conquered. Concerning which things, beginning with
his parents, everything has been inserted by chapters, that what is here
distinctly set down may be easily remembered.
Commentary
* ↑ [Sweeting’s footnote] The Latin here seems quite
corrupt. In many places, as will be observed, the grammar is inaccurate: this
is probably the fault of the scribe.
[RJP’s notes] Sweeting’s note above,
probably arises from his being used to Classical Latin. If his work started
with Chapter I, he may well have wondered at what he had just found. By the end
of Chapter XXXVI, he will have become less horrified at the liberties taken by
Medieval Latin.
The story was originally written in Old English, by
Leofric the Deacon, early in the twelfth century. Having reached a decayed
state, this document was translated into Latin, collated and augmented by Hugh
Candidus a little before 1170. The copy shown in the frontispiece was
made by or under the instruction of Robert of Swaffham in around 1260 and that
was transcribed by S. H. Miller, in around the 1880s. Miller’s transcription
was translated into modern English by W. D. Sweeting in about 1894. Miller’s
and Sweeting’s work was set for printing in 1895, under the supervision of
Sweeting and I have transcribed this printed version in 2007. During this long
process, errors will have appeared. My brother, whose acquaintance with Latin
is much closer than mine, is kindly working through a further proof-reading and
I have quietly corrected errors of mine which he has found, so far as his work
has yet progressed. His other queries are noted as seems appropriate in each
case and their source acknowledged by the inclusion of his initials, FWP.
Sweeting has done a good job in striking a balance between
following the Latin and providing a comfortably idiomatic English translation. There
are many examples in all 36 chapters of what a Latin classicist, such as
Sweeting no doubt was, would have regarded as errors of grammar or vocabulary.
But these are, for the most part, recognizable as quite normal usage for
mediaeval Latin, in which the story is written. Sweeting evidently quickly
understood this as his work progressed, for in only a few places does his translation show signs of its having caused him
serious trouble. (FWP)
While Sweeting is not at fault in this, it is important to
be aware when dealing with a text like this one, in considering the writer’s
grammar but particularly, with some aspect of the narrative, that there is a
constant danger of saying in effect, ‘I don’t understand this, therefore it is
nonsense.’ In general, we are likely to obtain better enlightenment if, rather
than dismissing those things which we do not understand, we set them aside for
consideration in the light of what we learn later, from the text or from study
generally.
1. ↑ This is the general title adopted by Sweeting, in both the
Latin text and its English translation. So far as can be detected without
actually seeing it, in the original document, there is no general title and the
chapter headings are in reality, not titles in the modern sense but brief
summaries of their contents. Nowhere in the text is the concept of Saxon
ethnicity introduced, except in describing a man against whom Hereward fought (Chapter
XXXII).
2. ↑ Insofar as this Hereward text has an authentic title, this is it. Sweeting translates it as ‘Hereward the renowned knight’ and as ‘The Exploits of Hereward the Saxon’ but the text never refers to him as a Saxon. He was ‘anglorum gentis’
. It is reasonable to interpret this as his belonging to the race of the English. Writing in a post-Conquest, Norman ambience, Hugh could well have had this in mind. The ‘them and us’ dichotomy of that time would have been between the Norman and the English but the phrase is consistent with an interpretation specifically as ‘of the Anglian people’. The latter view might be more likely if Hugh was being guided by Leofric’s writing. It would also fit with the reasonable deduction from other evidence, that Hereward’s father was earl of the Anglian, former-kingdom of3. ↑ Already, we have the key to
understanding the whole text. The aspect of the text which seems to give people
most trouble is that it is a relation of one daring deed after another. Here,
we are told what the writer’s brief is. This is a book written so that we can
hear of Hereward’s deeds, generous acts and exploits (opera ...Herwardi ... magnanimitates illius ac gesta). It does not claim to be anything such as a
general history of his times. The fact that it subsequently sticks to its brief
is not one about which we can reasonably complain.
The story is presented as a series of episodes and the
linking narrative, which would give an impression of the time between them, is
treated very briefly or not at all. If we are to date events referred to in the
text, we need to bring in information from outside sources.
4. ↑ This seems to be Hugh Candidus addressing
the abbot of
5. ↑ In making a translation from, say Latin
to English, since each word may have several possible meanings, the translator
has to take a view of the intended meaning of the passage as a whole as well as
of the words within it. While Sweeting’s translation is valid, it is possible
to take another view, which might offer the chance of a different insight. Using
meanings given by Langenscheidt,
‘.. folia, partim stillicidio putrefactis at abolitis et partim abscisione divisis’ is reasonably translated by Sweeting’s ‘.. leaves, partly
rotten by damp, and decayed, and partly damaged by tearing’ but it might be
translated as ‘.. folios, partly softened by dripping
water and moreover, removed; and partly divided, by breaking off.’ The first
example’s use of ‘rotten’ seems influenced by the way in which putrefacio has
been developed in English, into the modern word, ‘putrefy’. The Latin verb
means ‘to make rotten’ but it also means ‘to soften’. The word translated here
as ‘removed’ is viewed in translation as referring to the leaves (the folios) but
Hugh may have been thinking more, of the writing on them. If so, it sounds as
though the ink had run, making parts of the text illegible.
The document will have been of parchment so in the second
view, we have a picture of a skin which has had water dripping onto it so that
part has been lost by the consequent weakening of its structure or by the
running of the ink. But there has been other damage, perhaps because the edges
of the skin have become brittle by exposure to heat. This would be consistent
with the possible presence of the document at the time of the
While this is not proof, it is consistent with the view
that Leofric the Deacon wrote his account of Hereward’s character at some time
up to about 1110, that it was in the abbey’s library at the time of the fire,
in 1116 and that its damaged remains were there in around in the 1160s, when
Hugh Candidus used them as the basis of his account.
6. ↑ This is an example of the use of English
as a written language in the early twelfth century. Two writers associated with
Bourne, Orm in the twelfth
century and Robert Mannyng
in the early fourteenth, each wrote in the English of his time. Here we have
Leofric Deacon doing so, rather earlier than either. Leofric himself, played a
part of the story (Chapters XIX, XXIII and XXXV). He was therefore in a position
to know something of the truth of the matter. He may still have written it with
a bias but at least, his social and political assumptions should be detectable.
Those in turn, should tell us something of his time.
7. ↑ This passage might reasonably be translated as ‘But although we
are not adequately skilled in English, or to put it more precisely, not
adequately skilled to restore the obliterated passages in writings of whose
contents we know nothing, we gathered up to that point this much at least, that
… etc.’ (FWP) The use of the first person plural
here and repeatedly throughout this chapter, would imply that Hugh was not
working alone. Whether the team was of one or several men, the work produced
makes it clear that at least, somebody in it was competent in his understanding
of English but where the text was missing, they were
all faced with a very severe test of their skill. By Hugh’s
time, Latin and Norman French would be the languages of a literate man.
8. ↑ The aim has been to transcribe the text
as printed in FNQ. Here and there, using the advice of FWP, I have inserted in [brackets] a word form which seems to make better sense of the text.
In this case, we have what appears to be a printer’s error. In general, an
example of a Medieval Latin deviation from Classical Latin will not be noted.
9. ↑ The previous phrase mentions two men
but Sweeting names three. It is possible in mediaeval Latin, for the genitive
of personal names to end in –e, so given
that the nominative is ‘Siwart’, Siwarte seems to mean ‘of Siward’. Thus
we would have ‘namely Broter of St Edmund’s, brother
of Siward, and Leofric the Black, knights of his’. The punctuation of the Latin,
as edited for printing is consistent with this. (FWP) Broter appears again, in the form of Boter,
in Chapter XXIII. See note 7.