MAXIMS IN

THE BATTLE OF MALDON

Abst rac t

The article suggests that maxims are traditional forms of expression which reflect a sociallysanctioned world view. Maxims function like proverbs in two main ways: affectively, whenthey are intended to influence future conduct, and evaluatively, when they are intended tojudge past actions. They have authority as accepted answers to recurrent errors, problemsand conflicts. This authority extends beyond literature to the society which creates and usesmaxims in its speech. It follows that maxims can be manipulated by a poet in his work toaffect the actions and intentions of his society. In a detailed reading of the contexts andfunctions of the maxims in The Battle of Maldon, an argument is developed that maximsnot only contribute to the characterisation and narrative flow; but also show something ofthe poet’s concern to create an ideal (or reinforce a nascent ideal) of men dying with theirlord, by cloaking it in the forms of heroic maxims.

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There are five maxims in The Battle of Maldon:1 two are put into Byrhtno

ð’smouth, one is given to Dunnere and two to Byrhtwold. This is quite ahigh proportion of maxims for narrative verse. Scholars have made passingreference to the maxims, but despite several essays on the style of the poem,for example Laborde (1924), Irving (1961) and Hill (1970), the distinc-tive contribution of the maxims to the poem’s rhetorical development hasyet to be fully examined. My purpose here is briefly to outline the functionof the maxim as a traditional expression which reflects a socially definedworld view, and then to examine the use to which the maxims in TheBattle of Maldon are put.

Maxims are generalisations, traditional in form and expression.2 Researchin folklore has demonstrated that traditional sayings, proverbs and maxims,tend to be elicited by situations of conflict, and all five of the maxims inThe Battle of Maldon follow this pattern. The basic aim of coining orrepeating a saying is to invoke a sense of order in a context where chaosthreatens. Abrahams (1968, 148) observes, ‘Expressive folklore embodiesand reflects recurrent social conflicts’ and ‘[b]ecause the performer of aproverb projects the conflict and resolves it, the illusion is created that itcan be solved in real life’. And later (1968, 150),

Proverbs are traditional answers to recurrent ethical problems; they provide an argumentfor a course of action which conforms to community values. . . . The use of a proverbinvokes an aura of moral rightness . . . ; the comfort of past community procedure is madeavailable to the present and future. . . . The strategy of the proverb, in other words, is todirect by appearing to clarify; this is engineered by simplifying the problem and resortingto traditional solutions.

Of course, the whole of The Battle of Maldon is about a situation of conflict,the fight between the English forces and the vikings. But only the first

Neophilologus

82: 631–644, 1998. 1998 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

maxim relates directly to this particular conflict. The other maxims reflectthe poet’s interest not so much in the outcome of the battle, but in themotivation of the English warriors. The focus is on the internal conflictswhich they face: Byrhtnoð’s troubling decision to allow the vikings acrossthe causeway to fight, and subsequently the duty of the loyal retainers toavenge their lord rather than flee, even when the battle is most obviouslylost. By their very nature as generalisations which implicitly compare thespecified situation with a normal, observable or morally proper order ofaffairs, maxims have two basic functions: an evaluative one, usually whenthe maxim refers to a past action and assesses its wisdom or practicaloutcome; and an affective one, usually when the maxim refers to choicesfaced, where it is used to influence behaviour.3

As I have said, maxims are generalisations. They reflect the world viewof the society which forms them; they epitomise the experience of thatsociety and shape its expectations. Though all verbal expressions are coinedby individuals on specific occasions, in their avoidance of the purelypersonal, maxims are nevertheless common property. Their voice is thatof received opinion, and they appeal either to human norms or to divineomnipotence. They are, therefore, unchallengeable.4 This means that theycan be manipulated by a subtle poet, and in fact the poet of The Battle ofMaldon manipulates maxims quite unashamedly for his own purposes. I willnow explore the use of these maxims in the context of the poem.

IThe first maxim occurs at lines 54b–55a, at the centre of Byrhtnoð’s replyto the messenger of the vikings:

Feallan secolonhæ

þene æt hilde. (54b–55a)

(The heathen are destined to fall in battle.)

The messenger’s speech has insistently stressed by means of alliterationthe two not very different alternatives facing Byrhtnoð. Firstly, he canbuy peace: here the messenger uses beagas-gebeorge (31), golde-grið (35),feoh-freode (39), sceattum-to scype (40). Secondly, he can prevent battlewith payment: garræs-gafole (32), spillan-spedaþ (34). The speech is amasterpiece of insinuation, which is more than capped by Byrhtnoð’ssarcasm as he picks up and echoes the messenger’s phrases and ideas.Byrhtnoð throws back the alliterating phrases with slight changes whichreverse the meaning and expectation of the vikings: to gafole-garas (46),sceattum-to scype (56), grim guðplega-gofol (61). In a similar fashion,Byrhtnoð responds to the messenger’s reference to the decision of thenoblest present Gyf þu þæt gerædest þe her ricost eart (36), by playingon the idea of ræd as he refers to his own loyalty and subordination to

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Æþelræd, in Æþelredes eard, ealdres mines (53).5 Further, in response tothe messenger’s attempt to split the defence by appealing the ordinarymen, eow (31), he takes up the audible reply and emphasises their wishesagainst those of the vikings, hi willað (46) as against we willað (35, 40).As has been noted by Earl R. Anderson (1970) and others, he also repliesto the viking offer of tribute as an alternative to the threat of hard battle,swa hearde hilde (33), by rejecting the shame attached to giving in so easily,Ne sceole ge swa softe sinc gegangan (59).

I have emphasised in some detail the parallels between the two speeches,and the skill the poet has used to give Byrhtnoð an edge over the persua-sive and insinuating messenger, because Byrhtnoð’s maxim can be seento form a riposte to another of the messenger’s suggestions. Richard Hillman(1985, 387) has argued that the words,

Gyf þu þæt gerædest þe her ricost eart,þæt þu þine leoda lysan wille,syllan sæmannum . . . . (36–38a)

(If you who are noblest here decide this, that you wish to save your people, [that you wish]to give to the sailors . . .)

carry a Christian reference which can be paralleled from The Dream ofthe Rood 41. Hillman continues,

The parallel confirms that, for Christians, being ‘saved’ in this world can hardly be thepoint. . . . What the Vikings have offered Byrhtnoth and his men is a spurious worldlybenefit at a spiritual cost aptly expressed in terms of tribute: to pay off the heathens wouldmean rendering unto Caesar the things which are God’s. It is appropriate, therefore, thatByrhtnoth’s defiant reply contains the first explicit reference to the Christian dimension:‘Feallan sceolon/hæþene æt hilde’ (54–55). If set against the actual outcome of the battle,the lines seem ironic. But the very starkness of the statement highlights its anagogical sig-nificance, the reference to a higher truth. There is a level on which the boast cannot bemade too boldly, since its fulfilment is ordained. The poet has begun to engage his audienceon that level (388).

Persuasive though Hillman’s article is, I do not think that this passagegives sufficient attention to the context or the forms of rhetoric which arebeing used. The messenger may rather be inviting Byrhtnoð to think ofhimself as a Christ-figure, saving his people from death through somesuffering on his own part, the suffering of bearing the brunt of the tributepayment. But Byrhtnoð’s maxim once again turns the messenger’s sug-gestions on their head, not by engaging an anagogical level of understanding,but by promising Christian battle and heathen death; rather than a Christ-figure who suffers to save, Byrhtnoð will be a Christ-figure who will bevictorious over his enemies. Maxims invariably imply more than theyovertly state and the maxim here is undoubtedly intended to imply a con-fidence on Byrhtnoð’s part of English victory. But even in the light of the

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outcome of the battle, there is no irony against Byrhtnoð: the ‘heathen’did fall, as the maxim predicts, and the vikings did not gain treasure easily.

James E. Cross (1965, 108–109) is of course right when he points outthat hæþene æt hilde in the maxim is a member of the formulaic system‘x æt hilde’, but the inference he draws, that ‘hæþen here is another termfor the enemy and, in view of this, and of the other words for theScandinavians, hæþen need have no further connotation in the poet’scomment at Byrhtnoth’s death’ is unwarranted. Cross was reacting to thenotion that the vikings, particularly at Byrhtnoð’s death, are portrayed asdemons.6 But not all the formulaic associations of the epithet hæþen inthe maxim are covered by the ‘x æt hilde’ system. It draws on an alliter-ating pair, the verb feallan and the noun or adjective fæge in particular –as in

wæs seo tid cumenþæt þær fæge men feallan sceoldon (104b–105)

(The time had come when doomed men must fall there)

and 119, 125–126 and compare Bwf 1755, 2975, P135. 15, Brb 12; but thereis also an association between the verb and death in general (eg. wæl feolon eorðan, 126, 303). The interesting thing is the substitution for the neutralterms fæge or wæl (and, to include the members of the formulaic systemadduced by Cross, hysas, hæleð, hergum, herge) which can apply to eitherside, of the judgemental term, hæþen, which applies only to the vikings.The maxim implies not only the Christianity of Byrhtnoð and that of hisside in the battle, but also all the religious sanctions that go with such adivision between the Christian and the heathen. The maxim not only castsByrhtnoð in a heroic and Christian light, but overshadows the vikingswith opprobrium.

The maxim is rhetorically distinct. The speeches of both messenger andByrhtnoð are heavily personalised, with frequent use of a variety of firstand second person pronouns, and direct reference to named third persons.Byrhtnoð’s sententious generalisation stands at the rhetorical centre of hisspeech as well as in the middle of it in terms of length, and it is givenemphasis by its use of a markedly different mode of discourse. In inten-tion, it stands as a general truth of history and experience against theparticularities of the dispute being resolved in the here-and-now of thepoem’s present. By using it, Byrhtnoð brings another rhetorical ‘voice’into his response to the messenger: not only that of the men around him(hwæt þis folc segeð), not only his own affirmation of loyalty and the willto resist, but also the simple and undeniable force of received wisdom whichinsists that the battle threatened by the vikings will be costly to them.

If this expression was proverbial, it was most likely formulated in theyears of West Saxon supremacy following Ælfred, otherwise it would have

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been more pious hope than practical experience. Whether or not this isthe case, the maxim contributes to the characterisation of Byrhtnoð in twoways. It shows him as a man of Christian confidence: his belief was thatthe heathen fell and were defeated in battle. And it shows him to be livingin the past: the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle sees Maldon as the start of a humil-iating series of defeats and a policy of appeasement, but there had beensuccessful raids by this force around the eastern coast even before thebattle.

IIByrhtnoð’s second maxim, spoken apparently to the vikings, but perhapssotto voce, shifts from Christian confidence to Christian faith:

Nu eow is gerymed, gað ricene to us,guman to guþe; God ana wathwa þære wælstowe wealdan mote. (93–95)

(Now the way is opened up for you, come quickly to us, men to battle. God alone knowswho will control the battlefield.)

George Clark (1979, 258), arguing that the lines immediately precedingthese do not censure Byrhtnoð, insists that:

The poem leaves no room for doubt on the cause of the English defeat, and that cause wasnot Byrhtnoth’s chivalry, folly, or pride. According to the poem many of Byrhtnoth’s menfled and their flight decided the outcome of the battle.7

This is true up to a point, but it is also true that Byrhtnoð’s maxim raisesdoubt as to the outcome which his earlier maxim did not. Moreover, theassociations of the maxim formula, and the context of the poem wherethe maxim occurs, have an air of grim foreboding which the rest of the poemsimply expands into reality. T. D. Hill (1970, 296 fn. 9) observes thatByrhtnoð’s maxim ‘illustrates at the same time his profound religiosity,his courage and his indifference to the practical consequences of his actions’.The way the maxim is embedded in its context suggests anything but indif-ference on the part of Byrhtnoð.

There are four examples of the God ana wat formula, two of Meotud anawat, and one of Drihten ana wat in Old English poetry. As I have shownelsewhere (Cavill 1995b), they are all associated with death; and Byrhtnoð’sreference to the wælstow in the maxim emphasises this association. In thenext lines, the grimness is reinforced in various ways, not least in theinsistent alliteration on w (Britton 1965, 86).

Wodon þa wælwulfas, for wætere ne murnon,wicinga werod, west ofer Pantan,ofer scir wæter, scyldas wegon,lidmen to lande linde bæron. (96–99)

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(Then the wolves of slaughter advanced west over the Pante, the band of vikings cared nothingfor the water; the sailors carried their shields, bore their linden shields, over the shiningwater to land.)

As Robinson (1976, 33) notes, Byrhtnoð’s wæl is repeated in thecompound wælwulfas, which suggests ‘an inevitable association betweenthe wælwulfas and the beasts of battle, among which wolves are so oftennumbered’. There is a grisly savagery against human beings which isexpressed by wælwulf in both its occurrences;8 it seems to me preciselythe ‘beast of carrion’ image which the Maldon poet is intending to convey,and to contrast that with Byrhtnoð’s piety. As M. S. Griffith (1993, 191)puts it, ‘the hostile warriors . . . have been substituted for the third of theusual triad of beasts in the scene, and th[is] compound should hence beregarded as [a] transferred epithet’. And Alan Fletcher (1984) has com-mented on the associations of victory for the vikings of the scir wæter whichthe vikings cross, in contrast with the cald wæter9 over which Byrhtnoðshouts. This passage, starting from Byrhtnoð’s decision to allow the vikingsacross the causeway, focusing then on his maxim with its tradition asso-ciations with death, and moving finally to the reckless savagery of thevikings as they cross the stream, evokes a sense of foreboding which antic-ipates the defeat of the English.

The two maxims given to Byrhtnoð, whatever other functions they havein the context, focus attention on his Christianity. If he has lost some ofhis Christian confidence in victory in the second maxim, he neverthelessevaluates his action in the light of his Christian faith, and expresses a con-viction that the outcome is implicitly in God’s hands, whoever wins. Thisis a significant development in terms of the poem’s overall theme, becausejust as the maxim anticipates physical defeat, it also invokes a differentcriterion of judgement as to what is important in the battle. It is here,interestingly enough, when Byrhtnoð has cast the outcome of the battleinto doubt and been criticised for it, that the poet begins to engage theaudience at the anagogical level, as Hillman puts it.

IIIAfter the death of Byrhtnoð and the flight of the sons of Odda, represen-tative speakers announce their intentions and denounce the cowards. Thereis a heavy emphasis on the personal pronouns as each one of these impor-tant men calls for attention and declares his desire to avenge Byrhtnoð.Dunnere, the simple churl, does the same as the nobleman, shaking his spearto call for attention, but his speech is very brief:

Ne mæg na wandian se þe wrecan þenceðfrean no folce, ne for feore murnan. (258–259)

(The man in the army who intends to avenge his lord can never flinch or care about hislife.)

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The generalisation has immediate effect:

IPa hi forð eodon, feores hi ne rohton;ongunnon þa hiredmen heardlice feohtan,grame garberend, and God bædonþæt hi moston gewrecan hyra winedrihtenand on hyra feondum fylgewyrcan. (260–264)

(Then they advanced, they cared not for their lives; the retainers, hostile spearmen, foughtfiercely and prayed God that they might avenge their beloved lord and bring death to theirenemies.)

Up to this point, there has been a fragmentary response to the catastrophewhich faces the English: all the retainers saw that Byrhtnoð was dead,and those who were brave resolved either to avenge him or die in the process(202–208). Young Ælfwine, Byrhtnoð’s kinsman, takes the role of blood-avenger in terms of personal feud; Offa generalises that as an exhortationto the thegns, urging them to encourage one another to fight with swordsand spears, and curses Godric; Leofsunu responds to Offa’s words specif-ically with a beot that he will die rather than return lordless, a promise whichhe thereupon fulfils. It is Dunnere’s words which make the whole situa-tion and the appropriate response clear to all. The overriding priority for theEnglish must be to avenge their lord, and no personal considerations mustbe allowed to stand in the way. The self-evident truth of the maxim isclear even to the Northumbrian hostage, who might be the one havingmost reservations about loyalty to Byrhtnoð:

He ne wandode na æt þam wigplegan (268)

(he did not flinch at all in the battle.)

Here we see the poet using the maxim primarily in an affective manner,as an indicator of motivation and a stimulus to action. This is made the moreevident by the way the words off the maxim are woven into the fabric ofthe narrative as it is fulfilled. But it also functions as an evaluation of theactions of the sons of Odda:

Hi bugon þa fram beaduwe þe þær beon noldon:þær wurdon Oddan bearn ærest on fleame,Godric fram guþe, and þone godan forletþe him mænigne oft mear gesealde;he gehleop þone eoh þe ahte his hlaford,on þam gerædum þe hit riht ne wæs,and his broðru mid him begen ærndon,Godwine and Godwig, guþe ne gymdon,ac wendon fram þam wige and þone wudu sohton,flugon on þæt fæsten and hyra feore burgon . . . (185–194)

(Then those who had no wish to be there fled from the battle. The sons of Odda were thefirst to flee the battle; Godric left the good man who had often given him many a horse; he

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mounted the horse that his lord owned and [got into] the trappings, as was not right, andhis brothers Godwine and Godwig both ran with him. They did not care for battle, butturned away from the conflict and sought the wood, fled to safety and saved their lives.)

In this passage, the brothers subvert the received wisdom of the Anglo-Saxon heroic code. They had no thought of avenging their lord, and Godriceven steals Byrhtnoð’s horse, an inversion of the gift-giving which he hadpreviously been party to. But in the terms of the maxim, they wendon(echoing wandian, and anticipating Byrthwold’s later maxim) and hyra feoreburgon.

IVFor all their self-preserving flight, the final maxim of the poem, fromByrhtwold, suggests that the lot of the cowards will not be a happy one:

A mæg gnornianse ðe nu fram þis wigplegan wendan þenceð. (315b–316)

(The man who now intends to turn away from this battle-play will always have reason toregret it.)

If the poem had any public audience within living memory of the battle,this maxim would presumably ensure that the regret was real as the poemrepeatedly names names.

Donald Scragg (1981, 84) has an interesting note on line 316:

There is no other certain example of fram followed by the instrumental in Old English. Atline 193 it governs the dative. Perhaps, in view of the high number of unstressed syllablespreceding the first lift wig, we should regard þis as a scribal introduction caused by mis-reading of wig (insular w is not unlike þ, and g might be mistaken for s).

Mitchell (1985, § 1188) maintains that fram always governs the instrumentalor dative, and since in most cases they are indistinguishable, the point isnot, perhaps, very significant. But the number of unstressed syllables beforethe first stress is undoubtedly unusual. Rather than supposing scribal error,I would like to suggest that the deictics nu and þis are the additions ofthe poet to an already existing maxim.

Without the deictics, the maxim is bland as far as heroic maxims go:

*A mæg gnornianse þe fram þam wigplegan wendan þencð

(*The man who intends to turn away from the battle-play will always have reason toregret it.)

If you run away, you may miss a great victory; if you are constantly thinkingabout running away, you are not concentrating on the job in hand. For

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this reason at the very beginning of the poem Byrhtnoð urges his men toconcentrate:

Het þa hyssa hwæne hors forlætan,feor afysan and forð gangan,hicgan to handum and to hige godum. (2–4)

(He then instructed each of the warriors to leave the horses, drive them away, and step forward,and to concentrate on their arms and courage.)

But the presence of the deictics nu and þis apply the maxim to the partic-ular situation. There is an interaction between the heroic wisdom saying,stressing the ‘true’ moral order of things, where warriors are loyal to thedeath, and obloquy follows shameful deeds; and a situation where in realityalready more men have fled than was at all proper. The maxim invokesan ideal, the deictics locate the maxim in a specific context where thebattle is being lost, where many would think it acceptable to come toterms, where already Byrhtwold has acknowledged that the strength ofthe East Saxon force is diminishing. With the lines preceding,

Her lið ure ealdor eall forheawen,god on greote. (314–315a)

(Our good lord lies dead here, in the dirt)

it is made into an expression of the ‘ideal of men dying with their lord’.And with the maxim, Byrhtwold gives an assurance that he intends tofulfil the demands of this view of the heroic code, thinking not of turningaway, but of dying beside Byrhtnoð:

Ic eom frod feores: fram ic ne wille,ac ic me be healfe minum hlaforde,be swa leofan men, licgan þence. (317–319)

(I am old; I will not leave, but I intend to lie dead beside my lord, beside the man so beloved.)

He not only encourages others with the maxim, he also persuades himself.Byrhtwold begins his speech with possibly the most famous of heroic

maxims:

Hige sceal þe heardra heorte þe cenre,mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen lytlað. (312–313)

(Resolve must be so much the firmer, heart so much the bolder, courage so much the greater,in proportion as our strength diminishes.)

Like Byrhtnoð he makes a formal speech with his shield raised and shakinghis spear (compare lines 42–43); like Byrhtnoð he encourages the men,

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like Byrhtnoð he is old (line 169), and like Byrhtnoð he uses maxims togive the greatest possible impact to his speech:

Byrhtwold maþelode, bord hafenodese wæs eald geneat, æsc acwehte;he ful baldlice beornas lærde . . . (309–311)

(Byrhtwold, an old retainer, spoke, raised his shield and shook his spear; he instructed thewarriors with great boldness . . .)

What Byrhtwold advises through the maxim is that all the physical andmental faculties of the warriors must be concentrated to offset numericallosses. A Christian audience might have sensed an echo of Mark XII. 30in the iteration of the four faculties, ‘Diliges Dominum Deum tuum extoto corde tuo, et ex tota anima tua, et ex tota mente tua, et ex tota vitutetua’ (Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart and with thywhole soul and with thy whole mind and with thy whole strength). Similarly,the Christian audience would have no real difficulty in identifying the battleagainst heathens as at least part of the Christian warrior’s duty.

Once again, the maxim locates that duty in a specific context whereByrhtnoð has been killed and so have many others. Without the deicticpronoun ure, the maxim could apply in a general sense to the individualor the army. But with the context and referent specified, and developedfurther in ure ealdor and the applied maxim which follows, the whole speechtendentiously develops the ‘ideal of men dying with their lord’, devel-oping further, and summarising, the statements of the other English warriorsearlier.

Roberta Frank (1991) has shown that the ‘ideal of men dying with theirlord’ is not as restricted in its attestation as Rosemary Woolf (1976)proposed. What is not in doubt, I think, is that the poem creates a situa-tion where such a notion comes into play – for whatever reason, butprincipally for the glorification of the defeated English, and possibly topromote a policy of stern resistance against the vikings as suggested byBusse and Holtei (1981). By manipulating these maxims and locating themin a situation where the lord was dead and the battle was being lost, the poetwas adding significantly to their meaning for his own purposes. The par-ticular application of the maxims that the poet makes by means of thedeictics may not in fact be traditional, however proverbial the form ofexpression. In this sense one can agree with Frank (1991, 105) that:

the Maldon ‘ideal’ is never sensible, worldly, or rational, never reflects ‘general opinion’like the proverbs [‘He that fights and runs away/May live to fight another day’ etc.] headingthis essay. It attests to the existence of paradoxes and wonders, to moments of conscious-ness in which man seems illuminated by a divine or demonic force.

But one can scarcely avoid the conclusion that in his use of maxims, thepoet intended his peering ‘just around the concern, to an eleventh century

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Europe in which the profession of warrior was a way of achieving reli-gious perfection and a martyr’s crown’ (106) to seem the ‘general opinion’,the heroic custom, the traditional Germanic ideal.

VThese five maxims play an important part in the style and rhetoric of TheBattle of Maldon. The poet gives implicit support to the notion that maximsare proverbial and traditional by giving them to two kinds of characters:the old and experienced warriors who function as spokesmen for theEnglish company as a whole, and the noble retainers, namely Byrhtnoðand Byrhtwold;10 and the simple ceorl, Dunnere, who is not necessarily old,11

but like the Shakespearean fool, speaks the truth in wise saws. As well asreflecting the characters of the speakers, the maxims add to the character-isation: Byrhtnoð is motivated by heroic and Christian considerations, andis consciously taking a risk in allowing the vikings across the causeway;Byrhtwold is motivated by what he sees as the heroic obligation to diewith his lord.

The maxims express the ideal and the proper order against the tendencyof the prevailing situation. Byrhtnoð’s first maxim warns the messengerof the vikings that they will not escape without loss in the encounter withthe Christian English, and it is meant as a dissuasive to the vikings, aswell as showing Byrhtnoð’s mastery of words as well as weapons. Hissecond maxim evaluates his decision to let the vikings across, and acknowl-edges that the end result may not be desirable in a temporal sense, but isnevertheless in the hands of God. A close reading of Byrhtnoð’s maximin its context reveals no self-reproach on Byrhtnoð’s part, but a sense ofthe inevitability of loss and death. This maxim is essentially evaluative ratherthan affective: it does not ‘amount . . . to a prayer’ as Richard Hillman(1985, 389) suggests: this fact has implications for our understanding ofthe poet’s censure of Byrhtnoð in lines 89–90.

Dunnere’s maxim, as I have shown, is principally affective, and in thelines immediately following, the poet echoes the key words of the maximin showing how the retainers respond, and indeed how the cowards fail torespond. There is ample evidence that the duty of avenging one’s lord wasincumbent on members of all social strata, as the parallel of the swanwho avenged the ealdorman Cumbra on Sigebryht in the ‘Cynewulf andCyneheard’ episode in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 755, shows (Earle andPlummer, 1892). While Byrhtwold’s maxims are similarly affective,intending to influence the behaviour of the hearers, there is less evidencefor an established ideal of men dying with their lord than there is for themavenging him without regard for personal safety. The deictics in thesemaxims apply them to a situation which demands nothing less than thedeath of the loyal retainers, and the poet intends that outcome to be seenas a traditional obligation and an ideal. In this way, among others, he

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could transform the costly defeat of the English at Maldon into a victoryof the heroic and Christian spirit which would encourage, if not morallycompel, resistance against the marauding Scandinavian forces.

The University of Nottingham PAUL CAVILL

Department of English StudiesUniversity ParkNottingham NG7 2RDUK

Notes

1. All quotations from the poem are from Scragg (1981), with contractions silentlyexpanded.

2. See Hansen (1982, 55) where she writes in relation to the maxims of Beowulf, of a‘traditional Old English gnome-hoard’ and identifies ‘formal and thematic characteristicswhich . . . conventionally signal the gnomic mode’ and ‘a conventional gnomic vocabularyand syntax’.

3. The terms ‘affective’ and ‘evaluative’ in this context are borrowed from CarolynAnn Parker (1973) and the exposition of her work in Fontaine (1982, 50–52).

4. Shippey (1977, 40) remarks, ‘understanding a society’s proverbs takes one a long waytowards understanding the society, while in the context of heroic verse gnomic passagesare normally seen as reinforcing social bonds between poets and listeners, past and present,dead heroes and living celebrators’. In the course of his article he also gives examples ofmaxims which were so far unchallengeable that the poet (of Genesis B) ‘showed himselfunable to criticise them at all, still less to resist them!’ (37). The poet of The Battle ofMaldon is much more self-conscious, but draws on and exploits these social functions ofmaxims.

5. The Canterbury versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (E and F) emphasise this notionof ræd in their annals: ‘on þam geare man gerædde þ[æt] man geald ærest gafol Deniscanmannum . . . þæne ræd gerædde Siric arceb[iscop]’ (in that year, it was advised that tributeshould be given for the first time to the Danes . . . that advice was given by Sigeric thearchbishop), Earle and Plummer (1892, sub anno 991); and it is noticeable as a feature ofthe Laud chronicler’s writing, when he sums up the desperate plight of the Enlgish in theannal for 1010, ‘–Donne bead man ealle witan to cynge, [ond] man þonne rædan scolde human þisne eard werian sceolde. Ac þeah man hwæt þonne rædde. þ[æt] ne stod furðonænne manoð . . .’ (Then all the witan was called to the king, in order to devise a plan fordefending the land. But whatever plan was devised, it did not last so long as a month).

6. Compare Blake (1965), an article contemporary with Cross’s, which picks up a sug-gestion from Irving that the vikings are ‘the devils of this world’ (1961, 463) and magnifiesit out of proportion: the færsceaðan (sudden attackers, 142) ‘can be compared to the helscaðan(180), the devils of hell who afflict a man’s soul. Consequently the færsceaðan would seemto be devils who afflict men’s bodies by sudden attacks in this world’ (334).

7. See also Clark (1968, 57): ‘it is not until after the flight of the cowards that the Englishspeak or act as if they were fighting without hope, and the narrator is conspicuously non-committal before the battle begins’.

8. See Cross (1965, 107–108) for further discussion. Cross underrates the depreciatoryquality of wælwulf in Andreas 149 and here: it is not ‘general militarization’ nor demonisa-tion of the Mermedonians or vikings, but rather their animal and sub-human appetite that isfocused upon in the word.

642 Paul Cavill

9. For further comment on the associations of the formula ofer cald wæter, see Riedinger(1985).

10. Robinson 1976, 39) reviews the evidence and the literature on the question ofByrhtwold’s age, and concludes,

What makes it especially likely that Byrhtwold was intended to be an old warrior . . . isthe apparent fact that it is a standard convention of Germanic heroic literature for an agingwarrior to assume responsibility for reminding his younger comrades of the sacred duty ofloyalty and revenge which the ancient code prescribes for them.

11. Gordon (1937, 57 note to line 256) discusses the possibility that unorne might meanold, but concludes that it does not.

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