Old English Poems and Riddles translated by Chris McCully

The First Poems in English translated by Michael Alexander
Penguin Classics, £10.99 Buy the book here

The world conjured up by these early English writings is strange and magical. The oldest poem in both collections is Caedmon's Hymn, dating from before 680: "Now we must praise him heaven-span's high Prince;/the Measurer's might, mind, and conception" (McCully).

This is a fervently Christian mindscape, but one underscored by an ancient respect for the forces of the natural world, as in The Seafarer: "No man blessed/ with a happy land-life is like to guess/how I, aching-hearted, on ice-cold seas/have wasted whole winters; the wanderer's beat, cut off from kind .../ hung with hoar-frost" (Alexander).

Everything here is intense. Even the shortest poems are laden with the significance of an heroic quest or appear to be grappling with some powerful, mythic force beyond man's comprehension. Partly, this is the result of the distinctive half line, set out in Chris McCully's translations in a way that makes it seem possible to read the poems both horizontally and vertically. McCully's passion for the poems is clear, in spite of his obsession with metrics. Alexander's translations date from 1966, but in new introductions he gives full explanation of the manuscripts, history and context.

Alexander tells us that "More manuscript poetry survives in English from before the Norman Conquest than in any other vernacular language in Europe". The miracle of books and writing is celebrated in many of the riddles from the Exeter Book. One begins (in Alexander's translation) "I saw four fine creatures / travelling in company; their tracks were dark, / their trail very black". The answer (as McCully puts it) is "four fingers holding a quill".


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