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Epic Formulas, Especially In Laʒamon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

John S. P. Tatlock
John S. P. Tatlock*
Affiliation:
Stanford University
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Extract

In Laʒjanion's poem commonly called Brut there is an extraordinary profusion of epic formulas, full of flavor and charm, contributing as much as anything to the marked individuality of the poem. The same or similar phrases are used again and again, as a rule in the same or similar circumstances, or to describe the same person or action. The degree of similarity which makes a phrase a formula is impossible to define, but in the first list in each case given below is meant to be essentially close. A phrase is considered a formula when it occurs three times or more in this poem; two occurrences may be accidental, but three are becoming habitual. Other occurrences could doubtless be found, and also other formulas, but we have meant to exclude mere stock-rimes, and in general phrases so inevitable that they would not have been felt as formulas by Laʒamon or his auditors, however often repeated. Some of our items might be combined, others subdivided, for they often merge with each other; the whole matter is fluid. The most frequent form is generally taken as standard. Hundreds of less frequent or important variants are disregarded. Each formula is nicknamed by a striking word in it.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 38 , Issue 3 , September 1923 , pp. 494 - 529
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1923

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References

1 There has been much looseness in the use of the term epic formula. Every alliterating phrase, even if repeated in one or more poems, is not a formula; certainly not a mere couple of words, found now together, now some distance apart; still less a mere type of phrase, of which the words vary. There is a clear difference between epic formula and a vague “epic language,” or common phrases which happen to be used in narrative poetry, of which we have admitted few here. Unity and frequency are essential. In the present article no attention is paid to phrases which lack these requisites in Laʒjamon's usage, even if found in other works. I also ignore, of course, the “incremental repetition” of the ballads and the like, which also is quite a different thing. We have not undertaken, here or later, to go into elaborate definition or classification of formulas and their usage, though it might be profitable to have this done. It is rather surprising that so concrete, interesting, and suggestive a matter of style has not been adequately treated, as it will not be here.

2 In the Nibelungenlied (and more or less elsewhere) we often find a longish phrase occurring twice almost word for word, but rarely oftener; the poet clearly felt three or more occurrences as a conscious excess. As to numerous recurrences of shorter formulas in that poem, see p. 523 below. On the other hand (see pp. 516, 520, 521 below), shorter phrases often stop with the third occurrence.

3 I am uncommonly indebted to the care and judgment of my assistant, Miss Phyllis M. Carbaugh, for much organizing and collecting; also to Professor A. G. Kennedy, for some first-fruits of his Bibliography of the English Language. References are to volume and page of Sir Frederic Madden's admirable edition (3 vols., London, 1847). The citations are from the Caligula MS, and no attempt has been made to exhaust the Otho. Two formulas on a page are marked “(2)”. The place of occurrence of the version given is italicized. Karl Regel's Die Alliteration im Lajamon (Germanistische Studien, Vienna, 1872, pp. 171-246) gives some of Laʒjamon's alliterating two-word formulas and some parallels in Anglo-Saxon and other early Germanic poetry, and shows what he well calls Laʒjamon's uncommon wealth of old popular phraseology. Mr. Joseph Hall in his definitive edition of King Horn collects some of Laʒamon's formulas which parallel some in that poem, and so do a few other editors of early texts.

4 Here are the sources of the parallels cited: Anglo-Saxon poems cited from the Wülcker-Grein Bibliothek. Amis and Am[iloun]. ed. Kölbing, Allengl. Bibl. II. Arth[our] and Merl[in], ed. Kölbing, Allengl. Bibl. IV. Bede, Eccl. Hist. (A. S. version). Best[iary], in Wright's Reliquiae Antiquae, I. Body and Soul (Worc[ester Fragment]), ed. Buchholz. Duty of Christ[ians], E. E. T. S., O. S., 49. Erthe upon Erthe, E. E. T. S., O. S., 141. Fehr, Die formelhaften Elemente in d. alten engl. Balladen, Basle diss., Berlin, 1900. Five Joys, in Wright's Reliquiae Antiquae, I. Fuhrmann, Die alliterierenden Sprachformeln in Morris‘ Early Engl. Allit. Poems, etc., Kiel diss., Hamburg, 1886. Gen[esis] and Ex[odus], E. E. T. S., O. S., 7. Gloria, in Wülcker-Grein Bibliothek, II.2. God Ureis[un of ure Lefdi], e. E. T. S., O. S., 29. Har[rowing] of Hell; E. E. T. S., E. S., 100. Hav[elok], ed. Holthausen. Horn, King Horn, ed. Joseph Hall. Horn Ch[ild], in Hall's ed. of King Horn. Hymn, in Wülcker-Grein Bibliothek, II. Isumbras, in Thornton Romances, Camden Soc. Max[imian], in Wright's Reliquiae Antiquae, I. Meyer, Altgermanische Poesie. Orfeo, in Ritson, Anc. Engl. Metr. Rom. II. Orm[ulum], ed. White and Holt. Owl and Night [ingale], ed. Wells. Pass[ion of our Lord], E. E. T. S., O. S., 49. Prov[erbs of] Alf[red], ed. Skeat. Richard [Coer de Lyon], in Weber, Metr. Rom., II. Rob[ert] of Gl[oucester], ed. Wright, Rolls Ser. St. Kath-[erine], E. E. T. S., O. S., 80. St. Marh [erete], E. E. T. S., O. S., 13. Sarmun, in Mätzner's Altengl. Sprachproben, I. Schmirgel, Typical Express. and Repet. in Sir Bevis, E. E. T. S., E. S., 65. Sin[ners] Bew[are], E. E. T. S., O. S., 49. S. E. Leg., Early South English Legendary, E. E. T. S., O. S., 87. (Here are saints’ legends not otherwise located). Sowdan of Bab[ylone], E. E. T. S., e. S., 38. Spec[ulum] Gy de Warewyke, E. E. T. S., E. S., 75. Squyr [of Low Degree], in Ritson, Anc. Engl. Metr. Rom. III. Thr[ush] and Night[ingale], in Wright's Reliquiae Antiquae, I. Tristr[am], ed. McNeill, Scott. Text Soc.; ed. Kölbing. Vox and W[olf], in Mätzner's Altengl. Sprachproben, I. Wm. of Pal[erne], E. E. T. S., E. S., 1. Woh[unge] of Ure Lav[erd], E. E. T. S., O. S., 34. Wom[an] of Sam[aria], in E. E. T. S., O. S., 49. Wulfs[tan's] Homilies, ed. Napier.

5 A few longer passages (like II. 180-3, 414-9) where formulas abound and the same ones recur will give an even better idea of the effect.

6 Madden of course prints the full line as two short lines.

7 Wis goes with Julius Caesar, Cnihten with Hengest, Ufel-war with Vortiger, Strong with Childrich, ÆdEelest and Deorling with Arthur. Sometimes there is an antiphony between Hengests's and Vortiger's formulas.

8 Bipohle, III. 260; Ufel-war, II. 213; War, I. 333, 335, II. 122; Strong, II. 431.

9 Of course variation may sometimes be due to a scribe, but the Caligula MS. is a very good one.

10 On this see an article on Laʒamon's Poetic Style and its Relations in the volume about to be published in honor of J. M. Manly.

11 I mean a unified effect produced by large, somewhat uniform masses, rather than by detail and finesse, as in the paintings of Puvis de Chavannes.

12 Sarrazin, Beowulf-Studien, 141-3, and Engl. Stud. XXIII. 259 ff.; A. Banning, Die epischen Formeln im Beowulf (Marburg dissert., 1886); ten Brink, Anzeiger f. deut. Altert. (1879), V. 59; R. Simons, Cynewulfs Wortschatz (Bonner Beiträge, III.), Wörter u. Wortverbindungen Cynewulfs (Bonn dissert., 1898); H. Ziegler, Poet. Sprachgebrauch in d. sogen. Cœdmonschen Dichtungen (Münster, 1883), 49-56; R. Kistenmacher, Wörtl. Wiederholungen im Beowulf (Greifswald dissert., 1898); J. Kail, Parallelstellen in d. ags. Poesie, Anglia, XII, 21-40; Sarrazin, Parallelstellen in d. ags. Dichtung, Anglia, XIV. 186-192; E. C. Buttenwieser, Studien über d. Verfasserschaft d. Andreas (Heidelberg dissert., 1899); A. S. Cook, Christ, p. lx. ff.; Concordance to Beowulf (Halle, 1911). There is not much for my purpose in R. M. Meyer's very inconvenient Altgermanische Poesie nach ihren formelhaften Elementen beschrieben (Berlin, 1889), pp. 260 ff., 285 ff., 371, 404-5, 414 ff., 429; or in Otto Arndt's Über die altgerm. epische Sprache (Tübingen diss., 1877).

13 Cf. the numerous phrases in Genesis which mean the same as “Us cy↓d bec” (Ziegler, op. cit. p. 55), and the variations of the “maædelode” form of introducing a speech in Cynewulf (Simons, op. cit., p. 97).

14 One of the two full-line formulas is one for introducing a speech, which we shall see is the commonest in other literatures: “Hro°ar maædelode, helm Scyldinga” (3 times), or “Beowulf maædelode, bearn Ecgþeowes” (9 times). On such formulas see Meyer, Altgerm. Poesie, 370 ff. The other long one is “On þæm dæge þysses lifes” (3 times). Shorter formulas are “hyrde ic þæt . . .” (about 3 times, besides variants), “feorh ealgian” (3 times), “weard to hand-bonan” (3 times, with some variants), “hine fyrwit bræc” (3 times), “dead hie fornam” (about 5 times, with variants), “gifede bid (weard) þæt” (3 times), “þæs. god cyning” (3 times), “eald sweord eotenisc” (3 times), “folces hyrde” (4 times), “swa hit gedefe wæs” (3 times), “be sæm tweonum” (4 times). This is all I find in the whole poem of 3184 lines, about one occurrence in 61 lines, against one in 10 in Laʒamon. Most of the formulas in Beowulf seem to occur but three times; if we deduct these we get only one occurrence in about 127 lines. The same deduction in Laʒamon's poem would make very little difference. It might have been as well to regard four or more occurrences as constituting a formula, for it looks as if the Anglo-Saxon poet hardly noticed three. (For Middle-English see pp. 520, 521 below.) I disregard in the Beowulf some phrases too commonplace or idiomatic to be called formulas. Banning's way of printing suggests far more repetition than there is. A. S. Cook's Concordance of Beowulf (Halle, 1911), which easily reveals the formulas, reveals as easily how few they are.

15 Though he does not profess to give all the formulas, nearly all the dozen or so which he gives occur but three times in a poem (pp. 46-55).

16 For the part of “Cynewulf's Wortschatz” from A through D I find only two or three occurring three times or more.

17 Meyer points out (Altgerm. Poesie, 118, 407) that while early German and Norse poets follow the epic custom of delivering a message in the exact words in which it was consigned, Beowulf and Guthlac deliberately avoid this.

18 On this, and references on it, see the article already mentioned on Laʒamon's Style and its Relations.

19 Ll. 25-6, 61-2, 73 f. (C-Text); first half passim; Skeat's edition, Oxford, 1907.

20 Ed. Richard Buchholz, Erlanger Beiträge, VI.

21 For pu were leas ond luti ond u[n]riht lufedest (B 2, D 28); On deope sæde, on durelease huse (B 40, E 8); þeo swetnesse is nu al agon, þet b[ittere] pe bid fornon; þet bittere ilæsteþ æffre, þet swete ne cumeþ þe [næffre] (B 44-5, D 40-1); Wowe domes ond gultes [feole] (E 19, G 11).

22 Cf. Schmirgel, in Beves of Hampton (E. E. T. S.), p. lii.

23 Rolls Series, 1887, pp. xxxii.-xxxviii. This version inserts many of Laʒamon's details and words, and even repeats one or two of the scribal errors in the Caligula MS. (p. xxxvii). K. Brossmann (Über die Quellen. . . des Robert v. Gloucester, Breslau dissertation, Striegau, 1887, p. 6) and Ellmer (1888, Anglia, X. 22-3) came to a different conclusion, but had not seen Wright's edition.

24 Anglia Anzeiger, VIII. 200, 205, 211-2.

25 The evidence for influence on the so-called Short Metrical Chronicle is not convincing; see Sternberg in Engl. Stud. XVIII. 407. There is little or no sign of influence on Robert Manning's chronicle; see Imelmann, Laʒamon (Berlin, 1906), pp. 104-8; or on the Brut of England (see Brie, Geschichte u. Quellen der Me. Prosachronik . . ., Marburg, 1905).

26 Ed. Kölbing, Altenglische Bibliothek, vol. II (Heilbronn, 1884). The formulas are listed fully in the introduction, pp. xlii. ff., with many parallels in other poems.

27 In E. E. T. S., E. S. 65, pp. xlv. ff., Dr. Carl Schmirgel lists “typical expressions,” and their parallels elsewhere.

28 Ed. Kölbing, Heilbronn, 1882, pp. lxxix. ff.

29 Ed. Zupitza, Engl. Stud. XIII. 331 ff.

30 Clerk, Mekyl he cowde off goddys werk (ll. 49, 100, 112, 414); erchebysschop, Oure gostly fadyr vndyr god (393, 435, 465); In romaunce as we rede (383, 569, 623, 779). Others occur only twice: 705, 717 (cf. 271); 570, 780; 585, 783; 97, 300; 612, 642.

31 Payenes him wolde slo, And summe him wolde flo (91-2, cf. 1387-8, and Slaě-draě and Slaě-flaě in Laʒamon); þe see bygon to flowen, And Horn faste to rowen (121-2, cf. 1523-4). If the poem were a long one, I suspect we should find many formulas in Laʒamon's manner. As to later Middle English poems, there are only two or three in Horn Child and Maiden Rimnild. Sir Orfeo, whose editor (Dr. Zielke, Breslau, 1880) was one of the first to collect such stock expressions, contains none worth mentioning in this connection. The Gawain poet is sophisticated, and seems to avoid verbal repetition; see Menner, Purity, pp. xiv. ff. So on the whole do the other better romances, like Havelok. See also J. Fuhrmann, Alliterierenden Sprachformeln in Morris' Early Engl. Allit. Poems, etc. (Kiel dissert., 1886); H. Willert, Allit. formeln d. engl. Sprache (Halle, 1911); Engl. Stud. XLVII. 185-96; Paul and Braune's Beiträge, IX. 422 ff.; Harv. Stud. and Notes, I. 38-58. As to the popular ballads, they are mostly too brief to admit much repetition of formulas within each ballad, “incremental repetition” being a different thing. But in the Gest of Robin Hood, the longest of them, there is a good deal of repetition of rather colorless and inorganic formulas. The ballads, like the romances, of course have a great stock of formulas passed from one to another. None of Laʒamon's characteristic formulas seem to occur in them, but some of his commonplace ones do. See in the list above; also Fehr's excellent dissertation, Formelhaften Elemente in d. alten engl. Balladen (Basel, 1900); also A. Wirth, Untersuchungen über formelhafte u. typische Elemente in d. engl.-schott. Volksballade (Halle diss., 1897), and his Typische Züge in d. schott.-engl. Volksballade (Bernburg, 1903).

32 The great frequency of phrases which cease to occur in a poem after the second or third time, and the fact that none whatever occur a large number of times in a poem, show that the poet did not wish to repeat himself noticeably, as Laʒamon did. What the earlier poet did boldly the later did only furtively, and so utterly disclaimed this element of the epic manner.

33 Chaucer uses familiar stock expressions and even repeats favorite phrases and lines of his own; but in nothing like Laʒamon's epic manner. Milton is too sophisticated and sincere to use the formula. Tennyson in the Idylls of the King uses it occasionally, probably borrowing the usage from Homer. So, I will add, does Goethe in Hermann und Dorothea (“Da versetzte der . . .,” “Also sprach er. . . .”).

34 Many other cases in Sievers' edition, pp. 391 ff. (Halle, 1878). See also Meyer, Altgerm. Poesie, 405-6. Küntzel (Künstlerische Elemente in der Dichtersprache des Heliand, Rostock, 1887) by limiting his subject does not give a fair idea of the popular element in the style of the poem. He refers to Bechstein in Jahrb. d. Vereins f. niederdeutsche Sprachforschung, X 133-148, who combats Vilmar's view that it is a popular poem. On its cultivation of varied expression see Roediger in Anzeiger f. deutsches Alterthum, V. 268 ff. (in Haupt's Zeitschrift, vol. XXIII).

35 Ed. by Vetter (II. 42, 48, 54, 89). There seems to be little or no trace of it in Otfrid's Evangelienbuch; ungermanic in style, it shows a literary consciousness in avoiding the formula.

36 See the painstaking Kiel dissertation by Georg Radke, Die epische Formel im Nibelungenliede (Fraustadt, 1890); also Richard von Muth, Einleitung in d. Nibelungenlied (Paderborn, 1907). Many of Radke's phrases can hardly pass as epic formulas. On the occurrence of formulas in other popular epic poems of the 12th and 13th centuries, see Radke, p. 3.

37 I quote from Hildebrand's Die Lieder der älteren Edda, (Paderborn, 1876). Cf. on all this Meyer's Altgerm. Poesie, 407 ff., and the Proverbs of Alfred (discussed above) and other English gnomic poetry.

38 The Eyrbyggjasaga, for instance, constantly introduces fresh stages of the narrative with “Nú er at segja frá þeim Vermundi,” and the like (ch. 22, 25, 30, 37, 44, etc.). In the sagas one marked trait is “set phrases used even in describing the restless play of emotion on the changeful fortunes of a fight or a storm” (York Powell, in the Encycl. Britt.).

39 In the Tain bo Cuailnge occurs the formula “I swear by the god by whom the Ulstermen swear” (tr. by Joseph Dunn, pp. 75, 77, etc.).

40 Stengel's edition is used (Leipzig, 1900). Cf. also 11. 36, 135; 164, 670; 350, 2221; 822, 825, 2873, 3725; 999, 1800. I disregard cases of rhetorical repetition or “incremental repetition” close together (as 1051, 1059, 1070; 1764, 1786). On these see Dietrich, in Romanische Forschungen, I. 1-48. There is more or less on the subject in Dreyling, Ausg. u. Abhandl. LXXXII; in Drees' good dissertation Gebrauch der Epitheta Ornantia im afr. Rolandsliede (Münster, 1883); also in Ziller, Epische Stil d. afr. Rolands-Liedes (Magdeburg, 1883); and A. Kunze, Das Formelhafte in Girart de Viane vergl. mit d. Form. im Rolandsliede (Halle, 1885). No one seems to have fully collected the formulas in the Roland or the Cid.

41 Some epic formulas appear also in the Alexis; see Vising in Recueil de Mémoires philologiques présenté à M. Gaston Paris (Stockholm, 1889), p. 185. He refers also to Dietrich, Über die Wiederholungen in d. afr. Chansons de Geste (Erlangen, 1881). The conspicuous, rhetorical and descriptive use of formulas in the Roland does not favor the idea that Laʒamon may have caught the usage from the early French epics.

42 Cantar de mio Cid, ed. Menéndez Pidal (Madrid, 1908-11), vol. II; cf. vol. I. 83, 92-9; W. W. Comfort, Notes on the “Poema del Cid,” Mod. Philol. I. 309-315; J. D. M. Ford, Main Current of Spanish Literature, p. 30. Dr. C. G. Allen pointed out some of these formulas to me.

43 Vv. 71, 202, 266, 294, 379, etc.; 41, 78, 175, etc.

44 376, 394, 413, 432, 537, etc.; 10, 227 (cf. 37). Other formulas are “Dios vos curie de mal”; (1396, 1407, 1410); “la barba velida,” etc. (274, 930, 2192, cf. 268, 1226, 1238; “sodes el myo diestro braço” (753, 810); “fardida lança” (489, 443-4, 79); “apriessa cantan los gallos y quieran quebrar albores” (235; cf. 456, 209, 316); “ayuso la sangre destellado” (762, 781, 1724); “grado al Criador y a padre espirital” (1633, 1651, 2192, 2456, etc.); “delos sos oios lorando” (1, 18, 265, 277, 370, etc.). Besides these there are many repeated epithets and short phrases.

45 Virgil (like Milton) is too sophisticated to find them natural, and too sincere to affect them. He uses fixed epithets like “pius Aeneas,” “pater Aeneas,” and fixed locutions like “Turn genitor . . . ait” (Aeneid, III. 102, V. 348, etc.), “Dixerat, et. . .” (III. 607, VIII. 387, etc.), “mirabile dictu” (VII. 64, VIII, 252, etc.). But these are hardly long, unified, and frequent enough to do more than suggest the usage. Virgil, like the Anglo-Saxons, must have been careful to avoid formulas, for they would have been a godsend in classical prosody.

46 All these and a vast number more may be found in C. E. Schmidt's Parallel-Homer (Göttingen, 1885); though perhaps many of his parallel passages are hardly distinct enough to be called epic formulas, an immense number are. He gives figures in his introduction. See also Van Leeuwen's and the Ameis-Hentze editions; Karl Sittl, Wiederholungen in der Odyssee (Munich, 1882); Hoffmann, Quaest. Homer. I. 259-64; G. Finsler, Homer: der Dichter u. seine Welt (Leipzig, 1913), p. 319; H. Usener, Altgriech. Versbau (Bonn, 1887), p. 45; Class. Review XVI. 149; Peppmüller, Commentar d. Z4ten Buches d. Ilias (Berlin, 1876), xvii. ff.

47 I shall not follow the example of the editor of an old French allegory, who compares his author to Homer, not altogether to Homer's advantage. Of course Laʒamon's poem is not epic in structure, but it contains long episodes of that nature, and throughout is epic in manner and spirit.