Eþandun: An Epic Poem in Twelve Parts (Bk XII)

by William Carpenter (May 2022)

 

XII: Baptism by Water

 

Guthrum and his men are baptized at Aller, sponsored by Alfred and his men. The Saxons and Danes celebrate the chrisomloosing at Wedmore for twelve days and nights before returning to Chippenham. On the twelfth night, Alfred retires with Ealhswith.

 

“Hosanna,” roar the thrones and cherubim
and all the chorus of our Savior’s host[1]
in praise of his impending victory
over principes et potestates,[2]
and by his mercy, those tremendous hymns,
resounding through the crowded room of heaven,
rain down in the pert airs of birds,
the feathered ones, the angels’ messengers,
filling our ears, our hearts, our hungry souls
with wonder at the Father’s steadfast love.[3]

____Therefore, when Godrum and some thirty men
threaded their way among the clumps and sallows[4]
where marigolds and purple loosestrife bloomed
and irises that pastured butterflies
(but where no godhead lay in wait for Ilia,
the grieving vestal who brought forth the twins),[5]
and waded through the rushes’ waving blades
that symbolized new life, and neared the verge
of Parrett’s living course, escorted by
the thane of Somerton, confirmed as dux,
and thirty sturdy youths, no trumpets blared,
no timbrels rattled, and no reed-pipes hooed,[6]
but warblers, yellow wagtails, yellowhammers,
chiffchaffs, and blackcaps blew their blended tunes,
while mallards gabbled low among themselves
and other silent witnesses looked on,
two swans afloat downstream, a dark-legged heron
examining the river’s wrinkled skin,
some ravens tumbling high in the upper air,
and higher still, the hanging hawks and kites.[7]

____The Saxon king and Sherborne’s shire-bishop,
accompanied by Christian priests and soldiers,
plodded into the slow, soft-bottomed flow.[8]

____Unlike the seventh bishop, Ealhstan,
who with great Eanwulf of Somerset,
when Alfred’s father, Athelwulf, was king,
downriver from that spot, at Parrett mouth,
had hewed retreating sailors in the surf
and fed their carcasses to crabs and gulls,
his after-goer greeted Godfred’s seed
and stood with him in water to the waist;[9]
and when the candidates were in position,
and Christian witnesses, dear Ealhswith,
dear Ymme, Wulfthryth, and the local folk,
were all in place in bunches on the banks,
the bishop, voice diluted in the breeze,
began to question thankful “Athelstan,”
the name the king had given Harald’s father—
for Ecgbert’s younger son, King Alfred’s uncle,
so named (as Alfred’s grandson would be named),
had likewise been assigned the Anglian kingdom,
and, wielding his father’s Frankish rod,
had ransomed Wuffa’s people from the Mercians.[10]

____That cub killed Beornwulf, the Mercian king,
the seed of Offa’s rival, Beornred,
and kin to Beorhtwulf, who later ruled
when death arrested Wiglaf’s second reign—
killed Beornwulf, and thus repaid the death
of Athelbert, the Wuffing Offa martyred,
it’s said, on Lady Cynethryth’s command.[11]
King Ecgbert’s youngest later governed Kent
as underking to brother Athelwulf
and won immortal glory from the Danes
when once, off Sandwich, with Lord Ealhhere,
he took nine ships and massacred their crews.[12]

____His forehead horned with light, Lord Halga’s friend,
though shivering in Parrett’s mild chill,
pronounced the bold responsa he had learned,
as did his thirty would-be Christian men.[13]
The bishop blew three tepid puffs of breath,[14]
to drive off devils, on his mouth and eyes,
and crossed him, fed him salt, laid heavy hands
on his broad, grizzled crown, decreed the fiend
cast out, crossed him again, and cordially
declaimed the lesser creed.[15] Young Alfred stood
with newborn Athelstan and shuddered with him
as Aldhelm’s eighth successor exorcised,
again, all unclean spirits from the Dane,
crossed (thrice) and breathed on Parrett’s shining surface,
and sprinkled it with sanctifying chrism.

____The bishop then took spittle from his tongue[16]
and touched it to the catechumen’s ears
and nostrils (as when Christ the Healer cured
a deaf-mute among the garrulous Greeks),
and exorcised the enemy again,[17]
and called on “Athelstan” to abrenounce
Satan and all his works and all his pomps,
anointing him with consecrated oil
on pectus (chest) and shoulders (scapulae).[18]

____The sailors and their Saxon sponsors shook,
and yet the light-clad Danes felt spots of heat
where oil held the sunlight and repelled
the gamesome gale’s frigerating touch.
The thirty heathen fiends affirmed the creed,
the Trinity, the Church, eternal life;
then Sherborne’s ruler, in the Father’s name,[19]
lowered Godrum into the gliding current
and, glancing at his guþwine, held him
under the moving wave, until the cyning,[20]
stationed at his side and made in his image,
almost invisibly inclined his head,
when Athelheah raised glistening Athelstan,
sputtering, into the cloudless, sunlit day.

____“And of the Son,” the bishop cried and pushed
the man a second time beneath the flood,
and his collected clerics did the same[21]
with the drenched drengs given into their hands
as Athelheah observed the Athulfing
again to glean his will in this affair.
The Saxon nodded, and his prelate plucked
their former foe into the wholesome light.

____A voice of waters joined the choiring birds,
and a low dark bound appeared downstream.
The locals recognized the tidal bore,
which made its way from Parrett mouth twice daily.
The bishop dunked, before he caught his breath,
the dripping dryhten under the green-gold tent[22]
a third time, in the Holy Spirit’s name,
and Gormr, unresisting, felt the pour
nip at his wounds and summon him to heaven.

____“Into thy hands I commend my spirit,”[23]
he said, convinced his son would join him there
as he descried the undulating sky
above the turbid, rippling element.
He saw, and felt, a swell of shadow pass
that seemed at once to lift and press him down
and felt the brine burn in his nose and eyes
pickling him, as for eternal life.
Lord Athelheah saw Alfred look away
and drop his one good eye, as if in thought,
before he turned his weathered, whiskered cheek
and thrust his arm through the stream’s slippery visage
to hale the heathen airwards by the hair.[24]
The Saxon Christians on the riverside
observed a shining crop of Christian sailors
arise, like new green reeds, from Parrett’s grave
and watched the priests, including Denewulf
as Winchester’s new bishop, cross their crowns[25]
with second unction, per the Roman rite,
and bind their living skulls with linen bands—

____for Saxon priest and king did not debase
the sacrament, as Father Jacob’s sons,
to purge their sister’s plundered maidenhood,
degraded the Lord’s oldest, holiest rite,
viz., circumcisio, ymbsnidennys,
to a stratagem of sanguinary vengeance;[26]
nor as Count Stilicho, the half-Vandal
general who upheld Honorius’ throne,
defending Italy from Alaric,
made Easter Day a festival of mayhem
when at Pollentia he attacked the camp
where Christian Goths revered their inferior Word
(spelled uuinne, aza, uraz, reda, daaz);[27]
nor as Count Ingo did when he ran through
King Oscytel, still streaming from the font,
after the Franks thrashed him at Montpensier.
“I’ll never trust a Dane,” the count explained,
“not baptized, nor staggering under his sins.”[28]
The Saxons in the water and on land
erupted in a heartfelt shout of joy
that overwhelmed the willow warblers’ lays.[29]

____The toasting hall at Wedmore had been swept,
and rushes carpeted the whitestone floor
when on the octave of their baptism day
King Athelstan and thirty newborn northmen
(who knew the place from former toasting sessions)
entered with sixty Saxon witnesses.[30]
Briskly brandishing his brief blade, the bishop[31]
had worked the liturgy in Alfred’s church
by which the fiends, transmuted into limbs
of God the Son, had shed their linen bands
and stepped, blinking, into the waiting time
where men prepare for his surprise return.
The Athulfing now feasted his new friends,
whom Ealhswith and Athred’s widow served,
joined by Ymme and the neighboring ladies.[32]
When all the guests had eaten, Alfred rose.

____“To murdered Edmund’s heir,” the king exclaimed,
“who by our Savior’s unsearchable grace,
despite the flood of Christian blood his sword
has poured on this tormented, groaning land
where Christ himself, like Abraham at Ur,
observed the evolutions of the stars
and blessed the flocks of waterfowl that shared
their speckled patch of sodden moorland with him—
to this cursed man of war, in Christ reborn,
who shall mount Wuffa’s smutched rood and rule[33]
the gull-eating Angles in his name,
we raise the overflowing cup of life!
For who dares judge our Judge’s punishments?
This merman has forgone an excellent son,
whom we may call the first fruits of the war;[34]
he has lost Halga, always a brother to him;
and has lost friends than whom a man would rather
lose his God-given limbs, by his own sin—
at least he must affirm so to Frea.

____“So drink up, my friends, to Athelstan,
our son to whom we’ve given precious gems,
the gems Saint Bede identified in Scripture,
on which he will rebuild the Anglian kingship.[35]
No doubt your puppet, Oswald, will resign,
and Eadwald, we promise, won’t expel you.[36]
But it would be unseemly for our son
to marry our lamented brother’s relict,
his spiritual aunt, bereft again.[37]
Therefore she’ll wed Lord Theodric, a Saxon,
while her two boys, my royal brother-sons,
will be esteemed the heirs of Athelstan.[38]

____“For all their sakes, and for our father’s father’s,
her father shall not perish for his shame—
her bold brother bought his life with his life.[39]
Each folk shall dwell in its own territory
under the fruitful law our Frea framed.[40]
Godson, you shall wed a foreign frow,
the Frankish princess Mervyn urged on you,
young Ymme, and stand life-guard to her babe,
called Eric, after Zealand’s people’s king.[41]
Her spiritual sweor I shall be,”
by which he meant her ghostly father-in-law,
“and she, my spiritual snoru”—
his daughter-in-law, spiritually considered.
“King Athelstan,” said Alfred, “schooled by this lady,
shall age in knowledge of our Savior’s law
and judge all men beneath the Anglian dome.
This miracle the King of Glory wrought. We say,
‘Hodie est Deus in Israhel—
There is a God in Israel this day.’”[42]

____Now Godrum rose. “You can’t imagine, friends,”
he said, “the buoyant joy of being saved
from devils who have dogged you day and night.
I pray you never know the weight of sin
a man can labor under and still breathe,
still fight, still spout his nonsense every hour.
But there it is. He did it. I am freed
beyond all hope known in my old life,
freed from my faults, my sins, and my foul hatred,
as if those ills were not one and the same[43].
So to our host, our Alfred, Ingeld’s seed,
the sole survivor of your native kings,
we Christian Danes lift up our brimming horns![44]
For injuries received, he grants us lands
we’ve already purchased with our steel
based on the Roman road King Ecgbert carved
through the whole island fifty years ago.[45]

____“But we accept our own, with our new name,
and pledge to govern as a Christian king
where once we murdered monarch, monk, and man—
though even if our reign brings wealth and peace,[46]
and we deserve men’s praise, we’ll never earn
the fame our friends have carried to the grave.
They’re gone, those men. But no grief at their loss
can quell the joy that heaven’s Lord has poured
upon my head on this most holy day—[47]
such joy as would itself convince my heart
of our incarnate God’s unbounded power,
had he not driven off the devouring fiend
when I lay helpless, pressed by my own weapon,
even before you, bishop, spoke your spell.[48]

____“I pray my Lord will never leave my side,
although I understand the Holy Ghost,
the third part of the Holy Trinity,
which blesses us with knowledge of the wonders
the Lord has done in this astounding world,[49]
recedes and flows according to his will,
much as the moon looses and binds the tides—
for even he, the Lord, went down to hell,
where he endured the torments of the damned
and knew, with God’s capacity for woe,
eternity in two nights and a day—
thus paying our steep passage to this hall.[50]

____“When I and my companions, years ago,
voyaged to the Beormas’ land, beyond[51]
Halogaland, beyond the northmost cape,
beyond the barren shores where Finns and Terfinns
trap and fish, and guard their antlered herds,
and beyond the Cwen Sea, named for a nation
cruel matrons rule, we came to a place
of dismal woodlands, mist, and biting chill.[52]
Beaching our steeds, we heard and felt a sob
convulse the air which so oppressed our breasts
that each of us believed his heart would crack.
A giant took us home and offered us
rare feasting and the pleasure of his daughters,
then ferried us in darkness through the fog
across the vast black river to a town,
a walled town, that sprawled along the bank.[53]

____“When we set foot on land, we heard again
that terrible, soul-disabling sob,
and silent mongrels mobbed us as sad heads,
the heads of heroes, staked, guarded the walls.[54]
A clinging stench enveloped us, and mire,
a stinking, unclean sludge, sucked at our shoes.[55]
We entered unopposed and found the street
swarming with ghosts, then forged on to a hall[56]
whose crudely chiseled stones exuded filth.
Beyond the vestibule, we found a feast
in progress where repulsive devils drank
and brandished bones and tossed a goatskin ball,[57]
and there we found the source of those huge sobs—
for mounted on the grimy, looming high seat,
a ravaged, wizened, one-eyed giant slumped,
his head and neck mottled with putrid wounds.[58]

____“Beside that battle-Tyr, to left and right
lay other sickly forms, both bearded lords
and smaller, smoother ladies, necks and backs
prodigiously dislocated or broken,
their once enchanting throats and bovine brows[59]
corrupted with black sores. We didn’t stop
to contemplate the view, but rushed to loot
the unattended hoard off to one side.
But when we touched the devils’ precious plunder—
huge swords, a purple cape, some lumpish rings,
a gilded aurochs horn crusted with gems—
a sentry shrieked, the devils thronged, and all
but thirty of my men were torn to shreds.[60]
The rest of us escaped, by heaven’s mercy,
though unremunerated for our trouble.[61]

____“For many years, I foolishly assumed
that miserable king of fiends deplored[62]
his fetters, sores, and loss of worldly might.
Later, I felt he wept for his lost son,
the manly incarnation of his purpose
murdered by a hateful thurse’s guile.[63]
But now I know he grieved for his own sins,
his crimes of fraud and lust and treachery,
towards friend and foe, in peacetime and in war.
For he had understood, our fleshly father—
the son of Frithuwald, for it was he—
though from what Alfred says, it might as well
have been Theodoric or Chlodovech,
or great Karl, suffering for his crimes
as Frankish poets boldly postulate—
for he had understood, our ancestor,
each sin of ours pierces the Father’s heart
and lays another stripe on his dear Son
and on each man and woman in his church.[64]

____“Wherefore the troll laments, with retching sorrow,
the squalor he distributed on earth.
We cannot save our fathers or our friends—
that work is for the Holy Ghost alone—
but we can love and praise the Most High God,
the *Hæstr As, *Hærian, *Hifnitrutin,
and bless him for the punishments he sends,
the hammer-blows with which he steels our souls,
over and over, in his living forge;[65]
the hissing pool in which he quenches pride;
and the harsh file he plies to whet our courage
to make each one of us a two-edged flame
to wield against his enemies on doomsday.
Then even evil angels will be healed,
not to mention our godlike ancestors,
for everything our Father made he loves
and shall redeem, all in his own good time.[66]
For he is everything. So say the Franks
as taught by John the Scot, the Irishman
who tutored royal Judith and her brother,
and so says Athelstan.”[67]

____________He raised his horn,
surveyed the festive crowd, and shared a glance
with his converted men, with Athelheah,
with Alfred, Ealhswith, and Lady Wulfthryth
and bellowed, jubilation in his eyes,
“Friends and enemies: hail our living Lord!”[68]
“Our living Lord!” they thundered with one tongue.

 

____Young Alfred led young Ealhswith to bed.
A room had been prepared, a marriage bower—
fresh rushes strewn, small blossoms from the moors
crowded in jars on windowsill and chest,
clean fleeces heaped on a plumped-up pallet—
for Alfred’s wedded woman had refused,
after his reprieve of “Athelstan,”
to lie beside her mutilated husband
until their enemy had gone his way.[69]

____“We hail the Lord of Hosts,” said royal Alfred,
“for not since Oswy clobbered pagan Penda,
by Winwed’s flooded banks, with his small band;[70]
not since King Alaric abandoned Rome,
limiting the intemperance of the Goths
to three days and nights of rioting;[71]
and not since Hector’s sons reconquered Troy[72]
has our almighty Lord, the Holy One
of Canterbury, Winchester, and Rome,
Constantinople and Jerusalem,
performed a more blessed miracle than this,
suppressing the envenomed heathen horde
and purging them, like Pharaoh’s raging host,
in the cold gush of his preserving flood.[73]

____“Now wheat and barley ripen in the fields;
apples swell on the trees; pigs, calves, and lambs
grow day by day in meadows, woods, and folds;
and brooding mothers nurture swimming babes,
while fathers calculate how to provide.[74]
And now we pray Frea will heal our scars
as he healed his, although he wore them always,
apparent hurts to vulnerable flesh,
such as you see in me here, here, and here,
and hidden damage to our qualities
which only the Holy Ghost can renovate.[75]
You seem well, lady, but I pray he’ll cure
the stubborn wounds you suffered as a prisoner.”[76]

____Kneeling down, he met her lowered eyes.
A tear fell from her chin. It stung his hand.[77]
“My husband has a kingdom to restore,”[78]
she said, constricted, salt glazing her cheeks,
“so I won’t overload him with old sorrows.
Like those who slew our Cyning, whom he pardoned,[79]
we know not what we do. Such is our fate.

____“Suffice to say, no day or night has passed
since my dear husband thrust me from his hall
that one of our Lord’s ministers, Saint Pega,
Saint Eadburh, or Werburh, or our Mother,
has not sustained my lacerated heart.[80]
I didn’t slit our poor children’s throats
or nail Gorm’s helmless head to the floor,
nor have I stuck our loving people’s king
for damning me to hell among the Danes.[81]
With faith, Frea says, we can handle serpents.”[82]

____“The half-converted fiend will burn in pain,”
the Saxon interjected bitterly,
“who knows how many years, for all his crimes
and misconceived beliefs I warned him of.
The Father overflows our orthodoxy,
but heresy betrays a sullen soul.[83]
But now I pray,” he said, scrawling a cross,
“his glorious might will keep me in the joy
he poured on me when he redeemed the Dane.[84]
The Holy Spirit, blowing where it pleases,
has summoned peoples via grievous errors,
the Vandals, Goths, Burgundians from Bornholm,
the Lombards whom our Father Sceaf ruled,
the Lombards whom our father Sceaf ruled,
they first received our loving Lord deformed,
horribly deformed by the Arian teaching
that Christ our risen Savior is not God.[85]
Not so the Angles, Saxons, or the Jutes,
or the Franks who federated with King Clovis,
all baptised into the plain Roman creed.[86]
The Lord himself expounded novelties,
or so the archisynagogi held,
the aldermen and chief priests of the age.
Maybe he will save everyone, in time.”

____“In gratitude for Heofoncyning’s mercy,”
said Edward’s mother, Alfred’s wedded half,
“I promised him, as soon as I was free,
to enter a community and live
and die under holy Benedict’s rule—
perhaps in holy Ealhburh’s house at Wilton,
or one in my own land, if any stand.[87]
You need not stare, my dear.[88] I do not choose,
now, without your leave, by my own will,
to spurn the nuptial vow that comprehends
obedience to heaven and my husband.
I’ll stay or go, my friend, as you command.”[89]
She stopped. So many things she couldn’t tell him,
how she’d subverted Godrum’s strength and courage,
keeping him up all night before the battle
and then again before their single fight—
a stratagem for which she’d win no fame.[90]

____The Athulfing let fall the freo’s folma,[91]
his stricken features purple, then flood-pale.
A surge of hatred shook his weakened frame.
He thought of how the Prophet purged his horde,
punishing those who turned their backs on God.[92]
But he would not accuse her of the crimes
King Lothar heaped on his rejected lady,
misdeeds only a devil could conceive,
or those Procopius lavished on the empress,
the bear-keeper’s daughter, Theodora.[93] 

____“Kneel with me, lady,” Alfred said,
“the adversary has me by the throat.
We pray you, Brego, break, burst his grip.
Please kneel with me, my Mercian mediator.”[94]
She slid down and found his grasping hand.
“Almighty Lord of Hosts,” the Saxon said,
“you kept our mother Sarah uncorrupted,
although her husband loaned her out to Pharaoh.[95]
You spared her from Lucretia’s sin, who slew
herself, sinless, the nation-hater’s prey.[96] 

____“Now spare me from the Levite’s bloody labor,[97]
carving his concubine in twelve red chunks—
we owe it to our dead, including Finn—
and teach me how a king, without your Spirit,
is just another servant of the devil’s,
at war with every man and with your law.
Send us your saints and soldiers, Sigedryhten,
to help us hold and cultivate this homeland
and shield us from devils day and night.”[98] 

____The pious lady added, Alfred’s consort,[99]
“Grant us a double portion of your Ghost
that we may soon forgive old enemies,
Mercian and Saxon, foreign prince and pledge,
one flesh disjoined by misery and sin.
Grant us your blessing, Frea, that we may
love each other as you, despite our crime
in torturing and killing you, love us.”[100] 

____Unlike their bleeding Beorn on his tree,
they knew their God had not forsaken them.[101]
They knew he bore the marks of martyrdom,
the tally of the ransom he had paid,
and knew they, too, would always own their sorrows,
the difference being, their scars were their own,
while his are yours and mine and everyone’s.
They felt repenting tears burn in their eyes
(in Alfred’s case, one clear, the other dull),
the salty flood that would engulf their sins,
and, blinking at each other through the swells[102]
that rolled across their vision, they beheld
a miracle too wonderful to utter: 

____each saw the other in eternity
transfigured, changed, as we will be that day
when every nation stands before the throne
from under which the living river springs
that pours from heaven, parting in four heads,
the Pishon, by whose banks the best gold grows;
the Gihon, which surrounds Ethiopian land;
the Tigris, which butts up against Assyria;
and the fourth famous flumen, the Euphrates—[103]
they saw each other as we’ll see each other,
surrounded by his bloodied company
fresh from the last battle with the dragon,[104]
for in their gleaming, salt-stained faces burned,
like candlelight glowing through shaven horn
or the hushed heaven-dweller, vapor veiled,
the glory of our risen Guþcyning.[105]

 

[1] þreat (OE)
[2] Eph. 6:12
[3] rum, regnaþ, ærendsecgas, earan, heortan, sawla, Fæder (OE)
[4] þirtig menn, weg (OE)
[5] glædenan, buterflegan (OE); Aeneid bk. i
[6] lif, þegn, beman, pipan (OE)
[7] hragra, hræfnas, hafecas (OE)
[8] scirbisceop, wigan (OE)
[9] Ealhstan 7th bp. of Sherborne cons. 824; Eanwulf ald. of Som.; 848; fæder, muþ, lidan, brim, æftergenga, sæd (OE)
[10] witnesmenn (OE); Halga’s wid.; K. Athelred’s wid.; þancful, sunu, fædra (OE); c. 825; K. Wuffa of E. Angles
[11] K. Beornwulf d. 825; K. Beornred d. 757; K. Offa. acc. 757; K. Wiglaf d. 840; K. Beorhtwulf acc. 840; deaþ (OE); K. Athelbert d. 794; w. of K. Offa
[12] Athelstan s. of Ecgbert; undercyning (OE); ald. of Kent; 851
[13] heafod gehyrned, freond (OE); Ex. 34:29; þirtig, cristen menn (OE)
[14] biscop (OE)
[15] læssane credan (OE)
[16] tunge (OE)
[17] Mark 7:35; feondulf (OE)
[18] ele (OE)
[19] *eilif lif (OE); nama (OE)
[20] war-friend (OE); king (OE)|
[21] flod, preostheap (OE)
[22] lord (OE)
[23] *komændo mina ont i þinar hontur (OE); Luke 23:46
[24] wange, hæþen, hær (OE)
[25] biscop (OE)
[26] Fæder, bearn (OE); Gen. 34:13-31
[27] Apr. 6, 402; Waurd (G); meadow, god, aurochs, wagon, day (G)
[28] 892
[29] leoþ (OE)
[30] winsele, þirtig, sixtig (OE)
[31] biscop (OE)
[32] Wulfthryth; widwe, cwene (OE)
[33] K. Wuffa of E. Angles
[34] mereman, mære magu, frumwæstm (OE)
[35] drincaþ, freondas, sunu (OE); Bede d. 735
[36] K. Oswald ca. 870; Eadwald, K. Edmund’s br.
[37] Wulfthryth da. of Wulfhere
[38] broþorsuna, Æthelstanes irfan (OE)
[39] Wulfhere; Wulfheard his s.; blot (OE)
[40] þeodland (OE); Lord (OE)
[41] Godsunu, frowe, lifweard, lytling, Selunds leodcyning (OE); K. Eric I d. 854
[42] Nergend, wundor, Wuldorcyning (OE); 1 Sam. 17:46
[43] *hopa, *sakar, *sutir, *fion (OE)
[44] *Kristn (OE)
[45] K. Ecgbert d. 839
[46] *nafn, *kristn kunukr, *man, *friþr (OE)
[47] *hofoþ (OE)
[48] *biskub (OE)
[49] *þriþiukr, *Hailak Þrenik, *untar, *Trutin (OE)
[50] *hal (OE)
[51] *altþoftar (OE); Saxo bk. viii
[52] *Kuin Sia, *kunur, *uiþir (OE)
[53] *iatun, *totur, *þoku; *burk (OE)
[54] *huntar, *halir (OE)
[55] *sar (OE)
[56] *hal (OE)
[57] *diaflar, *ballr (OE)
[58] *undir (OE)
[59] *hiltr Tiur, *froiur, *halsar (OE)
[60] *diaflar, *ualraubar, *suiarþ, *kapa, *ringænæ, *ur, *gimstæinar, *fiatur (OE)
[61] *hifns miskun (OE)
[62] *kunukr (OE)
[63] *Baltr, *Luki (OE)
[64] *faþur, *Oþen (OE); K. Clovis d. 511; K. Theodoric d. 526; Emp. Charles d. 814; *Sunr, *karl, *kuna, *kirkia (OE)
[65] *Hailak Ont (OE); Lord of Hosts, Lord of Heaven (OE)
[66] *tumstakr, *iklar, *Faþur (OE)
[67] John Scotus Erigena d. 877
[68] *uinir, *uuinir (OE)
[69] geong, bedd, bur, riscas, blostman, moras, cyst, fliesu, rihtwif, rihtwer (OE)
[70] Dryhten weoroda (OE); Nov. 15, 655
[71] 410
[72] a.m. 2858
[73] Ex. 14:27-28
[74] bere, ripaþ, felda, æppla, lamb, leas, modru, cild, fæderas (OE)
[75] the Lord (OE); flæsc, Halga Gæst (OE)
[76] frowe, sindolg, hæftling (OE)
[77] cinn (OE)
[78] bonda, rice (OE)
[79] King (OE)
[80] Pega sis. of St. Guthlac; Eadburh d. of K. Penda; Werburh d. of K. Wulfhere; Modor (OE)
[81] Jud. 4:21 leodcyning (OE)
[82] næddran (OE); Mark 16:18
[83] Fæder (OE)
[84] mægenþrymm (OE)
[85] Wendlas, Gotan, Burgendes, Langbeardas (OE)
[86] Angle, Seaxan, Iotas, Francan (OE)
[87] modor, hæmedwif (OE); K. Ecgbert’s sis.
[88] leof (OE)
[89] freond (OE)
[90] cræft, ellen, searu (OE)
[91] lady, palms (OE)
[92] Ex. 32:27-28
[93] K. Lothar II d. 869; Teutberga d. 875; Emp. Theodora d. 548
[94] ides, wiðerbroca (OE); King (OE); midligend (OE)
[95] Ælmihtig Dryhten, duguþas, modor, bonda (OE); Gen. 12:15, 20:2
[96] leodhata (OE)
[97] Jud. 19:29
[98] secgas, eard (OE); Victory-Lord (OE)
[99] ides, efning (OE)
[100] syn, bletsung (OE)
[101] hero (OE); Matt. 27:46
[102] sealt flod, yþa (OE)
[103] dæg, þeod (OE); 1 Cor. 15:52; Rev. 7:9; Rev. 22:1; Fison, Gion, Tigris, Eufrates (OE); Gen 2:10-14; river (L)
[104] fyrdgetrum, draca (OE); Rev. 12:7
[105] candelleoht, heofontungol (OE); warrior king (OE)

 

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William G. Carpenter taught literature at various universities and currently practices law in Minneapolis. His translation of The Dream of the Rood was published in the Sewanee Theological Review. Eþandun: Epic Poem (Beaver’s Pond Press, 2021), hardbound with illustrations by Miko Simmons, is available at www.williamgcarpenter.com and from Amazon. The e-book is available on Amazon and from other e-book outlets.

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