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The garments that honour the cross in The Dream of the Rood

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

James Smith
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Extract

In lines 14b–15a of The Dream of the Rood the cross is said to be honoured by a garment, or garments (wædum geweorðode) and in a 21b–2a it is said to change (wendan) because of or along with or with respect to these garments. What they might be is a question which has racked many brains. The usual opinion at the present day is that they are some kind of cloth trappings. Cook, for instance, was reminded of a streamer which, he said, formed part of the labarum (but in so saying he was misled either by memory or by mistranslation, for the only cloth which the labarum comprised might, from its size and shape, more properly be called an apron). Ebert proposed silk cords or tassels. Others prefer the veil or pall with which the cross is shrouded on Good Friday, to be dramatically revealed on Easter Sunday. The weakness of all such explanations is that their proponents feel bound not to leave the spot without discovering an explanation: they scrupulously refrain, that is, from looking either backwards or forwards, with the result that, as the reference fails to explain itself, they are compelled to look outside the poem. They fail to take into account repeated references within the poem itself to coverings that, however unexpected and however diverse their materials, all agree in performing, to a greater or lesser degree, the principal office of a garment, that of enveloping the cross: in line 5b it is described as leohte bewunden, ‘suffused, or wrapped round, with light’ and in 16a, and again in 23b and 77, gold is said to ‘clothe’ it (gyrwan), the verb signifying, as it may, more than a sporadic embellishment. Nor is it to be overlooked that the first reference to the cross's wæde is in the immediate context of its glory: it is wuldres treow (14b) that is so clothed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 4 , December 1975 , pp. 29 - 35
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1975

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References

page 29 note 2 cf. the discussion in the most recent edition, The Dream of the Rood, ed. Michael, Swanton (Manchester, 1970), pp. 106–7.Google Scholar

page 29 note 3 The Dream of the Rood, ed. Cook, A. S. (Oxford, 1905), p. 17Google Scholar, where Eusebius's description of the labarum as including a purple streamer is quoted.

page 29 note 4 Ebert, A., ‘Über das angelsächsische Gedicht: Der Traum vom beiligen Kreuz’, Berichte über die Verbandlungen der königlicb sächsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, philologisch-historische Klasse 36 (1884), 85.Google Scholar

page 29 note 5 So Swanton's edition, pp. 106–7.

page 30 note 1 Cf. John, C. Pope's percipient comment (Seven Old English Poems (Indianapolis, 1966), p. 65)Google Scholar: ‘Cook suggested that the wædum [of 15a] were some kind of streamers such as those with which processional crosses were decorated, and this seems possible. Yet when wædum is repeated at 22, it seems primarily to refer to the contrasted costumes, gold and jewels on the one hand, blood on the other. In that context streamers are either superfluous or positively distracting.’

page 30 note 2 Patch, H. R., ‘Liturgical Influence in The Dream of the Rood’, PMLA 34 (1919), 233–57, esp. 235.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 31 note 1 Cf. the_note in Swanton's edition, p. 111.

page 32 note 1 I offer ‘descry’ as the best available translation of ongytan, since, unlike ‘perceive’ and such words, it continues to denote a seeing and not merely a thinking even when contrasted with the verb ‘to see’ – a seeing which is not achieved without effort and which, however great the effort, is never fully achieved, since the eye remains conscious of falling short of a perfect knowledge of what it sees. Very much the same would seem to be the implication of ongytan in 18b, though secured by different, even by opposite means: by stressing not the shortcomings of an organ but the elusiveness of an object of sight. Yet suggestions of organic strain, of obstacles overcome, are contained within the auxiliary meable; and, however slight, should not be neglected.

page 33 note 1 Cf. the note in Swanton's edition, p. 109.

page 33 note 2 Lines 1081–9 (The Exeter Book, ed. Krapp, G. P. and van K. Dobbie, E., The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records 3 (New York, 1936), 33Google Scholar). Related (though different) imagery is used in Blickling Homily 1; there the cross is the throne of Christ the king and his blood a red jewel which he has given to make us participants in the kingdom of heaven: ‘Drihten on middangearde bliðe wunode oppæt he becom to pæm heahsetle pære rode on pæm upstige call ure lif he getremede. He sealde his pone readan gim, pæt wæs his pæt halige blod, mid pon he us gedyde dælnimende pæs heofonlican rices; ond pæt geweorpep on domes dæge pæt he cymep to demenne cwicum ond deadum’ (The Blickling Homilies, ed. Morris, R., Early Eng. Text Soc. o.s. 58, 63 and 73 (London, 1874–1880, repr. 1967), 9–11Google Scholar).

page 33 note 3 Migne, Patrologia Latina 24, col. 610.