*Article* **Old English Enigmatic Poems and Their Reception in Early Scholarship and Supernatural Fiction**

**Patrick Joseph Murphy**

Department of English, Miami University, Oxford, OH 45056, USA; murphyp3@miamioh.edu

**Abstract:** The scholarly reception history of the Old English riddles and adjacent "enigmatic poems" of the Exeter Book reveals a long process of creating intelligibility and order out of a complicated and obscure manuscript context. Understanding this history of reception allows us to see the influence of Old English poetry on modern creative medievalism, including the unexpected influence of medieval "enigmatic" poetry on the modern genre of supernatural fiction. Specifically, it is argued that the scholarly reception of folios 122v–123v of the Exeter Anthology was instrumental in inspiring one of the acknowledged classic ghost stories of the twentieth century, M.R. James's "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad".

**Keywords:** Old English literature; reception history; medievalism; Exeter Book; riddles; *The Husband's Message*; Montague Rhodes James (1862–1936); ghost stories; horror genre; supernatural fiction

Our eye drawn to so many of his other landmark publications, it would be easy to overlook the great significance of Jack Niles's contributions to the reception history of Old English literature.<sup>1</sup> This research has left a truly invaluable legacy, however, for to sharpen perceptions of a field's past is to release present possibilities. A long view is always useful, and it is all too easy to discount what has come before. In fact, as David Matthews has emphasized in his work on the history of medievalism, older medieval studies are always in peril of falling back into abject antiquarian oblivion, so that yesterday's serious scholarship is perceived today to be mere fantasy, as fanciful as fiction—except in a genre very few want to read.2 When Jack encounters even the most dated, outmoded scholarship, however, it inevitably inspires in him not derision, but rather respectful consideration and reevaluation, and often, even, reinvention. Cast-off ideas summon something new.

Indeed, one paradox of medievalism—"the inspiration of the Middle Ages in all forms of art and thought", in the words of Leslie J. Workman—is that the past must first be invented before it can influence.3 Such invention is always ongoing and accumulating its own history, as Bill Herbert's modern Exeter-style riddle suggests: "I do not have a body/ yet I grow constantly".4 Nearly any medieval text we might name has gathered much on its postmedieval path, beginning often with a narrow escape from the scrapheap. In the best of cases, the contents of a manuscript will be preserved, catalogued, edited, emended, titled, attributed, translated, annotated, and entombed beneath dozens of uneven layers of academic commentary. As a rule, only after many such scholarly interventions does inspiration of an avowedly "creative" kind arrive.

Yet many studies in medievalism neglect the significance of these contexts, even sometimes in cases where the painstaking work of medieval studies and the fantastical creativity of medievalism are obviously inseparable. The most obvious such case is the fantasy fiction of the Oxford professor J.R.R. Tolkien (1892–1973), but there are many others we might name. In comparison to Tolkien, the "antiquarian" ghost stories of the Cambridge provost M.R. James (1862–1936) have received far less attention from medievalists, though his tales have been very influential, especially in their use of artful reticence to arouse a response in the reader—that "pleasing terror" for which his tales are so celebrated.5 Tolkien's debt to medieval riddling is well known, especially in the "Riddles in the Dark"

**Citation:** Murphy, Patrick Joseph. 2022. Old English Enigmatic Poems and Their Reception in Early Scholarship and Supernatural Fiction. *Humanities* 11: 34. https://doi.org/ 10.3390/h11020034

Received: 23 December 2021 Accepted: 15 February 2022 Published: 28 February 2022

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**Copyright:** © 2022 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

chapter of *The Hobbit,* and the great popularity of that book ensures that many who read the *Exeter Riddles* today, whether in the original or in translation, do so with an understanding of the genre shaped in part by the sensibilities of Tolkien.6 Yet Tolkien's creative riddling is itself best understood as in dialogue with medieval sources, not as fixed objects, but as informed by particular and always-shifting scholarly contexts.<sup>7</sup> The same holds for M.R. James and his most famous and influential story, "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad", which here I will argue likely owes much overlooked inspiration to the "enigmatic poems" found in folios 122v–123v of the Exeter Book (Exeter, Cathedral Library, MS 3501), the sections containing what today we call *Riddle 30b*, *Riddle 60*, and *The Husband's Message.*<sup>8</sup> In James's day though, this stretch of the manuscript tended to be read quite differently than at present, and to best assess his ghostly excavation of Old English enigmatic poetry, we must pay close attention to that past as well.

#### **1. Early Scholarship: Obscurities Made Intelligible**

It might not seem worth pointing out that what we name the *Exeter Riddles*, by definition and design, are *enigmatic*. From their earliest scholarly reception, though, a very elastic sense of that word has tended to blend with other sources of obscurity and unintelligibility quite distinct from the strategies of obfuscation and misdirection which are characteristic of their apparent genre. In fact, in the early days of their recovery, it was not even clear that a unified and coherent collection of Old English riddles was what scholars had on their hands. The deeper riddle was how to make basic sense out of the baffling last sections of the manuscript. In a book published in 1826, John Josias Conybeare pointed to the only—and therefore exceptional—Latin text found in the Exeter Book as representative of the challenge: "The obscurity attaching itself to much of this part of the MS. will be rendered most conspicuous by the following specimen of corrupt Latinity, which appears absolutely unintelligible".<sup>9</sup> Sixteen years later, in his 1842 *editio princeps* of the Exeter Book, Benjamin Thorpe offers a tortuous apology that echoes the key words of Conybeare's statement: "Of the 'Riddles' I regret to say that, from the obscurity naturally to be looked for in such compositions, arising partly from inadequate knowledge of the tongue, and partly from the manifest inaccuracies of the text, my translations, or rather my attempts at translation, though the best I can offer, are frequently almost, and sometimes, I fear, quite, as unintelligible as the originals".<sup>10</sup> For the rest of the century and beyond, variations on this formula were to appear time and again, with many evasive sources of unintelligibility and obscurity expressed.11 This is not surprising. *The Exeter Riddles* have long offered a readymade metaphor for the challenge of their own study.

Rendering that multidimensional obscurity intelligible has been the work of more than two centuries, in order to arrive at our dominant contemporary image of the *Exeter Riddles* as a delimited collection of nearly a hundred enigmas complete with consensus solutions, identifiable links to multiple riddling traditions, generic and sectional differentiation from other poems in the manuscript, and even, possibly, a structural and thematic coherence mappable onto "encyclopedic principles of order".12 Today, this orderly vision of the *Exeter Riddles* is often encountered as a tidy package of numbered texts isolated from most of the other poems of the Exeter Anthology. Niles has recently offered much illumination by simply reminding readers to take seriously the connections these texts have with the rest of the manuscript in a network of "horizontal" relationships.13 Those links are not limited to poems that also produce what Niles calls "bewilderment effects"—such as *Wulf and Eadwacer* and *The Husband's Message*—though these are texts that especially blur the line between riddles proper and poems that are merely bewildering.<sup>14</sup> Even sectional divisions in the Exeter Book remain in doubt, as evidenced by the various competing systems for numbering the individual *Riddles*. <sup>15</sup> In fact, in the name of toppling artificially imposed barriers, some have recently endorsed the idea of removing numeration altogether and replacing the imposed title formula [*Riddle* + number] with something more individual for each poem. In my view, the practical wisdom of such a measure is questionable, but

propositions such as this serve as an important reminder that what we make of the Exeter anthology of poetry is not a given—and not unchangeable over time.16

In fact, the earliest postmedieval scholars to study these texts do not seem to be primarily interested in them either as poems or as riddles. It is rather for their use of runes that they are included as specimen examples in the second volume of George Hickes's treasury, or *Thesaurus,* of northern European medieval materials, published between 1703 and 1705.<sup>17</sup> Hickes's work, groundbreaking for early medieval studies, was accomplished under conditions of considerable personal distress and in collaboration with scholars such as the autodidactic marvel Humfrey Wanley (1672–1726), whose descriptive catalogue of medieval manuscripts (*Catalogus Historico-Criticus*) included in the *Thesaurus* was foundational to the particular field M.R. James was later to make his own.18 Hickes's *Thesaurus* has left a tremendous legacy to Old English studies, for were it not for his transcriptions, many treasures would have been lost to fire or other destructive forces. The Old English *Rune Poem*, for example, is preserved only in this treasury, where there is much evident interest in runes in the work's abundance of facsimiles and tables of variant characters drawn from a range of epigraphical contexts. Compiled in an "antiquarian" era predating the cordoning off of strict disciplinary bounds, Hickes's *Thesaurus* freely gathers together its medieval materials, so that sections devoted to language and literature share space with studies of numismatics and manuscript illumination. To a degree not found in much later scholarship, considerable emphasis in the *Thesaurus* is placed on reproducing textual layout and letter forms with precision as they appear in their original inscriptional contexts, whether on parchment, coins, or the surface of objects that "speak for themselves" such as the Alfred Jewel or the Sutton Brooch, both of whose first-person inscriptions are carefully reproduced as facsimile illustrations within the *Thesaurus*. 19

Likewise presented in facsimile are nearly all those *Exeter Riddles* that feature runic elements. These texts are not, however, to be found in the first volume of the *Thesaurus,* where Hickes provided what amounts to an anthology of Old English poetry in tandem with a grammar of the language.<sup>20</sup> Some poetry from the Exeter Book (in particular, the *Maxims*21) is included there alongside other poems, but no riddles appear until the beginning of the second volume, not as supplements to the study of Old English language and literature, but rather as specimen illustrations accompanying an expanded version of Runolfur Jónsson's 1651 *Icelandic Grammar*. The specimens selected—including portions of *Riddles* 19, 24, 36, 64, and 75–76, alongside the runic sections of *The Ascension* and *Juliana* (later to be identified as the "signatures" of Cynewulf)—are clearly chosen for their use of runes.22 The fact that these Old English riddles are represented in the incongruous context of an Icelandic grammar is not so surprising when we consider that scholars of this era generally assumed that runes were the "ur-script" of an ancestral Scandinavian language, one cloaked, from their perspective, in an "aura of quasi-pagan mystery", as Niles puts it.23 These riddles, then, may have seemed to Hickes an especially good illustration because they used runes in such a bewildering way.

It is, in fact, difficult to separate Hickes's interest in mysterious runic characters from his fascination with the voices he found speaking in the Exeter Book, as "not only the letters but also the voices are truly runic, that is mystical and occult".24 The "runic" quality of these texts, then, is defined not just by their use of runes, but also by the enigmatic first-person voices of speakers who declare themselves either to be (*Ic eom*) or to have seen (*Ic seah*) something wonderful. All five of Hickes's riddle specimens are headed by a large capitalized initial "Ic", pronouns that are rendered even more prominent by being extracted from their original context and stacked together in facsimile. In an accompanying commentary, Hickes summarizes each of these puzzles, but does not attempt to solve them. For example, he explains that the text known today as *Riddle 24* "also describes as a monster some thing or person, whose name is enigmatically set out in the runes".<sup>25</sup> Yet although he describes each of his runic examples as operating *ænigmaticè,* "enigmatically", Hickes nevertheless does not appear to regard these texts as individual riddles so much as

the components of a larger piece of religious poetry organized around a single enigmatic speaker: "But he who describes all these things, especially the sights of so many of them so mystically, is the *dramatis persona*, who also says many things about herself".26 Hickes goes on to stitch together a sequence of additional *Ic-*statements drawn from other *Exeter Riddles*, including the opening few lines of *Riddles* 6, 8, 11, 15, 17, and 27. Presented with the puzzle of how such incongruities might be merged to apply to a single speaker, Hickes declares the *dramatis persona* to be evidently *Ecclesia*, the best candidate to embody such an amazing convocation of voices.27

Scholars today make distinctions among these speakers, so that Hickes's *Ecclesia* doing battle for Christ is taken to be the Sun, while Hickes's *Ecclesia* suffering persecution becomes a badger (or perhaps a fox or porcupine) harried in her den. But guessing the identity of these "riddle creatures" only began more than a century after the publication of the *Thesaurus.* Before this guessing game could begin, scholars had to first demarcate this section of the Exeter Book as a stand-alone collection, comprising a number of individually distinct and solvable riddles with answers as likely to be mundane as mystical. Hickes's presentation does not encourage such recognition or supply complete texts for evaluation. The first sporadic solving efforts would need to be undertaken by those few who could access the Exeter manuscript in person. This John Josias Conybeare (1779–1824) was able to do in his relatively short tenure as the Rawlinsonian Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University, during which time he engaged with the Exeter Book in unprecedented depth. After his untimely death in 1824, Conybeare's brother, William Daniel (1787–1857), himself a pioneering scholar (in the also emerging field of geological sciences and the fossil record), took up the task of continuing and completing for publication these researches, which appeared as *Illustrations of Anglo-Saxon Poetry* in 1826. The *Illustrations* is a landmark publication for a number of reasons, including its groundbreaking technical insights into the nature of Old English meter.<sup>28</sup> Yet, simply in their presentation of texts and translations, the brothers Conybeare made a profound contribution to the field, making many Old English poems accessible to contemporary readers for the first time.

The scholarly debate around Old English riddle solutions also effectively begins with the *Illustrations.* Texts and translations for *Riddles* 3, 32, 46, and 66 are offered, along with proposed solutions of "sun", "waggon or cart", "Adam, Eve, two of their sons and one daughter", and "the omnipresent power of the Deity".<sup>29</sup> Two of these four answers still enjoy at least some favor today, but more notable here is the Conybeares' early recognition of the miscellaneous character of the *Exeter Riddles*: the riddle of the homely cart standing side by side the spiritual enigma of divine power. This mixing of the everyday with the mysterious has subsequently come to be seen as a central feature of Old English riddles, a standout characteristic of the genre. Indeed, the *Illustrations* is a work particularly interested in the matter of genre classification, beginning with an "Arranged Catalogue" of extant poetry divided into classes, including a catch-all category of obscure texts containing, among others, *Widsith* (here referred to as "the Song of the Traveller"), the *Rune Poem,* the dialogues of *Solomon and Saturn*, and the "Ænigmatical Poems" of the Exeter Book, referred to in discussion as both "ænigmata" and "riddles of the olden time".30 This may be the earliest instance of classifying these texts with the vernacular terms "riddles", and they are declared to be "so extremely obscure that they might suffice to damp the perseverance of a Saxon Œdipus".<sup>31</sup> Yet here, the thesis of an *Ecclesia* speaker is not wholly abandoned (Conybeare notes, "Others of the ænigmata appear to relate to the Christian Church, according to the opinion of Hickes"), so that the resolution of the *Exeter Riddles* into a singular generic category (let alone a unified, numbered collection) is not quite, at this point, fully affected.

This step was not taken until the *editio princeps* of the Exeter Book prepared by Benjamin Thorpe in 1842. In a field still dominated by the enthusiasm of untrained amateurs, Thorpe was a philologically trained professional scholar, and his numerous expertly produced editions have proven a rich legacy. Many of the editorial conventions he established still endure, and his standard of care and accuracy are relatively high for this era.32 For instance, although his representation of the runes of the *Exeter Riddles* were not able to match the high fidelity of facsimile possible in Hickes's *Thesaurus,* Thorpe nevertheless faithfully reproduced the basic runic characters as he found them, rather than transcribing them into Latin equivalents, as we find in so many successive studies and editions. His translations—the first in modern English for the lion's share of the Exeter Book, including most of the *Riddles*—were predictably flawed but still invaluable for offering access to many new readers. Thorpe's sense of decorum, however, leads him to leave several of the more sexually charged riddles untranslated, including the notorious onion, key, dough, and churn riddles, along with the puzzle of the cock and hen (which combines elements of cryptography with barnyard copulation). He does translate a few riddles with similar, if slightly less obvious implications, though for one of these, a rare interpretive endnote seems calculated to stamp out any such unseemly possibilities, as noted for *Riddle 21*: "By this, no doubt, a plough is intended".33

This same endnote may also offer an indication of the difficulties Thorpe faced in making ordered sense out of the contents of the Exeter Book. The endnote refers to the plough riddle as "Riddle XXI", but the reference is quite plainly to the passage he has numbered "Riddle XXII" in the body of the text.<sup>34</sup> The most obvious explanation for this mismatch is that Thorpe changed his mind at some point in his process, shifting his numbering to accommodate, as a riddle, the text known today as *Wulf and Eadwacer*, which he presents here as "Riddle I". This first "riddle" is also left untranslated, though in this instance, not for reasons of decorum, but simply because it is too difficult: "Of this I can make no sense", he notes in the commentary (one of Thorpe's virtues as an editor was to admit when he was stumped).35 The most sense Thorpe could make of this text's obscurity was to assign it the genre category of *riddle*, as that designation alone provided intelligibility of a kind. Moreover, simply adding it to the count also had the effect of rounding off the first group of riddles found in the Exeter Book to an even sixty. Thorpe indeed is more faithful to manuscript sequence than most subsequent editors, so that he begins the numbering anew with the next group (which also receives the numbering I-III) and yet again with a third group beginning I-III and so on. While this makes for a potential confusion of reference, it does have the effect of packaging the riddles as three neat sets of 60 (I-LX), 3 (I-III), and 30 (I-XXX). After all, medieval Latin enigmata are typically arranged in series with a round count. To create comparable order in the *Exeter Riddles*, Thorpe is obliged to identify as stand-alone riddles certain sections of text ambiguously presented in the Exeter Book (including what is now commonly interpreted as the opening of *The Husband's Message*, as I will discuss further below). One might even say Thorpe's editorial dilemma here is reminiscent of the plough's neighbor, *Riddle 22*, with its sixty star-like riders—a puzzle of counting in its own right. However one strains, though, it is difficult to split or lump the collection in such a way as to produce the ultimate magic number of one hundred. Yet Thorpe's split arrangement of the *Riddles* at least offers the honesty of reflecting their discontinuous distribution in the manuscript.

Thorpe's edition put scholars in a much better position to respond to the *Exeter Riddles* with plausible solutions. The plough answer of *Riddle 21* was Thorpe's only guess and indeed, at that point, only a handful of other answers had reached print.36 But now the gates opened to a fertile new field of speculation, and many scholars have since lent a hand. Yet it was a single solver, Franz Dietrich, who was responsible for an impressive share of the first harvest. In two articles published in 1859 and 1865, Dietrich drew on Latin parallels, medieval material culture, and his own exceptional wit to solve nearly all of the *Exeter Riddles*. Well over half of the answers he offered have stood the test of time.37 To anyone familiar with the collection this informal list will speak for itself: storm, bell, swan, nightingale, cuckoo, leather, horn, badger, anchor, sword, bow, jay, onion, mead, moon and sun, bagpipes, iceberg, rake, mail-coat, bellows, bull-calf, creation, cock and hen, soul and body, key, bookworm, bookcase, battling ram, web and loom, swallows, well, chalice, reed, shirt, borer, beaker, another onion, another riddle of creation, ice, spear, oyster, ore, water, fish and river, one-eyed seller of garlic, inkhorn, another key, and another inkhorn. Though not every answer Dietrich offered has found favor, by the end of the nineteenth century his legacy was clear. In 1912 A.J. Wyatt wondered at the way Dietrich "by an effort of sympathetic imagination" had been able "to see and think with the eyes and mind of an eighth-century Englishman".<sup>38</sup>

But Dietrich also made a contribution to perhaps the most distracting turn in the history of *Exeter Riddles* scholarship: the tortured chain of reasoning that led so many to assign them to Cynewulf as their wandering author. In 1840, two years prior to Thorpe's edition of the Exeter Book, John Mitchell Kemble (1807–1857) had established that the runes of *The Ascension* and *Juliana* (both poems that appear in the Exeter Book) were to be deciphered to reveal the "signature" of Cynewulf.39 These passages, as I mention above, had long been closely associated with the runic Exeter Riddles, appearing side-by-side with them in composite facsimile in Hickes's *Thesaurus.* In 1857, however, the German scholar Heinrich Leo took the association several unsupportable steps further by "solving" Thorpe's first "Riddle I" (*Wulf and Eadwacer*) as a highly contrived charade-like puzzle concealing another Cynewulfian signature.40 In the opening enigma of the collection, then, Cynewulf was apparently claiming authorship over all the *Exeter Riddles*. The idea caught on and was swiftly linked to Dietrich's 1859 proposal to solve the last riddle of the collection as "wandering singer" (*fahrende sänger*).41

Thus, Cynewulf the Wandering Singer of Riddles was born in the scholarly imagination and was soon to be encountered roaming through popular accounts such as Stopford A. Brooke's *The History of Early English Literature* (1892), where we are invited to:

... imagine a wandering singer coming through the untilled woodland to one of the villages, to sing his songs, and to pass on to another. [ ... ] Then, our wandering singer (whom I will now call Cynewulf, because all the illustrations of village life which I shall quote are from his riddles), listening, heard the rushing of the water past the wattled weirs built out from its sides for the fishing, and saw the bridge of wood that crossed it, and perhaps mills by its side that ground the corn of the settlement, and thinking of the millstone made it the subject of his fifth riddle.<sup>42</sup>

Brooke's Cynewulf is a forerunner of the Romantics and the *Exeter Riddles* are the exuberant nature poetry he wrote in his youth (composed at the age of about twenty-five, before some unknown downturn in fortune darkened his subject matter and genre preferences43). In reference to what he takes as the badger of *Riddle 15*, for instance, Brooke notes:

It is in these short poems—in this sympathetic treatment of the beasts of the wood, as afterwards of the birds; in this transference to them of human passions and of the interest awakened by their suffering and pleasure—that the English poetry of animals begins. [ ... ] His sympathy is even more than that of Shakspere in his outside description of the horse or the hare. The note is rather the note of Burns and Coleridge [ . . . ].<sup>44</sup>

Brooke goes further than most to extract from the *Exeter Riddles* not only a name but a local habitation ("he was well acquainted with a storm-lashed coast"45) and indeed a full personality and turbulent biography. Not all accounts were quite so fanciful, but the Cynewulfian theory of riddle authorship enjoyed widespread acceptance in the scholarly world, retaining adherents decades after its premises were dismantled.46

But by the turn of the twentieth century the focus had decisively shifted away from attempts to detect secret Cynewulfian messages, settling instead on many of the concerns that continue to absorb scholars today. Certain aspects of the *Riddles* have proved to be of perennial interest. For instance, early scholars' fascination with "runic voices" is matched by much recent discussion of the *Exeter Riddles*' affordance of first-person subjectivity to speaking objects, work that is informed by a wave of theoretical interest in all things nonhuman.47 Such approaches frequently link the voice-bearing *Riddles* to other enigmatic first-person inscriptions on early medieval artifacts in a way rather in keeping with the

textured, multidisciplinary approach we find in the *Thesaurus*. <sup>48</sup> Of course the contemporary "object-oriented" turn in the field has been applied to a wide range of early medieval materials, but the *Exeter Riddles* have provided both a key example and a guiding metaphor. Indeed, James Paz lays out the scope of his larger study of *Nonhuman Voices in Anglo-Saxon Literature and Material Culture* (2017) in just such riddling terms:

The argument that I draw from these areas of focus is that, although things are endowed with voices in Anglo-Saxon literature and material culture, they also have an agency apart from humans. This agency is linked to: one, their enigmatic resistance, their refusal to submit to human ways of knowing and categorising the world; and, two, their ability to gather, to draw together, other kinds of things, to create assemblages in which human and nonhuman forces combine. Anglo-Saxon things speak yet they can be stubbornly silent. They can communicate with humans but, like riddles, they also elude, defy, withdraw, from us.<sup>49</sup>

A century and a decade earlier, Mary Bentinck Smith (1864–1921)—at the time, Director of Studies and Lecturer in Modern Languages at Girton College—would also highlight riddling encounters with the nonhuman, which she links to paganism and a more sinister sense of English landscape:

"in [the Old English riddlers'] hands inanimate objects become endowed with life and personality; the powers of nature become objects of worship such as they were in olden times; they describe the scenery of their own country, the fen, the river, and the sea, the horror of the untrodden forest [ . . . ]"50

Smith's discussion here appeared in her contribution to the first volume of the multiauthored *Cambridge History of English Literature* (1907), where discussions of the *Exeter Riddles* are to be found in four separately authored chapters. Smith also remarks on the "peculiarly English tone and character of the riddles", and her colleague at Cambridge, M.R. James, would seem to agree, writing in his directly subsequent chapter: "That this form of wit-sharpening made a great appeal to the mind of our ancestors is amply evident from many passages in the Old English literature".51 Taken together, the contributions to this *Cambridge History* provide a useful snapshot of the consensus of academic opinion at the beginning of the twentieth century, just prior to the publication of the first separate scholarly editions of the *Exeter Riddles* by Frederick Tupper, Jr. in 1910 and A.J. Wyatt in 1912. Indeed, with Tupper's edition in particular—still of considerable scholarly value today—one might well say that the *Exeter Riddles* as we know them had arrived.

But arrivals always come from somewhere. Early scholarship, I would like to suggest, not only rendered these texts intelligible, but also enhanced their dark resonance. An expert would be alive to such associations, even when obsolete, contradictory, or incongruous. For instance, turn-of-the-century readers versed in the scholarly dark matter surrounding the *Exeter Riddles* would be aware that Hickes's occult runic voice—so suitable for illustrating the shadowy character of an *Icelandic Grammar*—is also that of a quintessentially English genre, rooted in national sensibilities and a familiar landscape. Both qualities coincide, along with other shadowy companions. As an heir to the "antiquarian" past, the scholar and storyteller M.R. James would be intimately familiar with the way the past grows as it gathers itself. We can turn now to his enigmatic ghosts.

#### **2. M.R. James and the Voice of the Whistle**

*Ghost Stories of an Antiquary* appeared in 1904, its publication motivated in part to benefit a friend, James McBryde (1874–1904), who was to provide illustrations. When the young artist died of appendicitis before completing this work, James's small volume of stories became a memorial, dedicated to McBryde and "to all those who at various

times have listened to them".52 As the book's title hints, nonacademic imaginative work of this kind was something of a departure for a scholar like James, who had by that time achieved an outstanding reputation in the scholarly world. His publisher Edward Arnold sought to trade on that reputation in advertisements: "Those who know the extensive and miscellaneous character of Dr. James's researches in various fields of learning will not be surprised to find him appearing as the author of a volume of 'Ghost Stories'".53 The "antiquarian" accomplishments of James are difficult to summarize succinctly—the subject matter of his major publications ranged from biblical apocrypha, to hagiography, to art history, to church architecture.54 His most profound legacy, however, was the contribution of the many descriptive catalogues of medieval manuscripts he produced over his lifetime. In many ways, in fact, James was a professional heir to Humfrey Wanley and the *Catalogus Historico-Criticus* of Hickes's *Thesaurus.*<sup>55</sup> In his early thirties, James had been declared by Lord Acton (1832–1902), "in knowledge of MSS [ ... ] already third or fourth in Europe".<sup>56</sup> By the time James began publishing ghost stories, his academic reputation was more than well established. In 1903, he had been elected Fellow of the newly-formed British Academy (numbering among only the second cohort of inductees to be so honored) and received a congratulatory letter of "genuine satisfaction and delight" from Israel Gollancz, his one-time colleague at Cambridge (who had, incidentally, published the first volume of an edition and translation of the Exeter Book in 1895).57 And so, although James was not a specialist in the field of Old English poetry, his professional work was certainly engaged with the study of early medieval books, Old English manuscripts, and related artifacts.58 He would not need to look far afield for sources of antiquarian inspiration.

As is the case for many of his tales, "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad" was first written for a Christmastime audience of intimate of friends and colleagues in James's residential rooms at King's College. These gatherings were festive, all-male affairs, where eerie ghost-story telling often gave way to raucous horseplay: "after which those played animal grab who did not mind having their clothes torn to pieces & their hands nailscored" (in one witness account of such a game of "animal grab", we read of a participant thrashing about on the floor, with "Monty James's long fingers grasping at his vitals").59 We can imagine something of this atmosphere on the occasion of the probable first reading of "Oh, Whistle" in December of 1903, which was attended by guests including, among several others, McBryde and A.C. Benson (Benson was one of a number of regular attendees who would take to writing his own ghost stories influenced by the Jamesian style). In a diary entry describing this reading, "Oh, Whistle" is characterized by Benson as "one of [James's] medieval ghost stories", notable for the excellence of its "local colour".<sup>60</sup>

The local color of this ghost story includes several medieval elements, including the darkly suggestive setting of a ruined Templar preceptory on the windswept Suffolk coast, where the tale's protagonist, the vacationing Professor Parkins, unearths in a medieval ruin a haunted whistle through which he ventures to blow a note—a sound carrying "a quality of infinite distance".61 This act whistles up the wind and brings to the professor's bedroom a terrifying visitor, which shoves its horrible face into Parkins's own in a terrifying semblance of a kiss. It was, after all, an unwise investigation from the beginning, for Parkins is no scholar of antiquities. His area of expertise is "ontography", a term which James clearly invented in order to spoof what he saw as preposterous and arrogant fields of modern academic study.<sup>62</sup> Curiously, and with no little irony, this same term has now been directly borrowed from James's tale by the very object-oriented theorists I discuss above who have been so influential on the recent study of the *Exeter Riddles* and those poems' representation of nonhuman being, agency, and voice.63

At any rate, with its richly atmospheric quality of fright, this story of Parkins's encounter with the alien spirit of a haunted whistle has often been regarded as James's finest, where he was able to "refine the essence of the ghost story" into "something altogether stranger and more frightening" than what had come before.64 It is a story we might well point to as a turning point in James's approach to the genre. The celebrated subtlety of the

Jamesian horror—rising with an undefined sense of unease and punctuated by "the very highest calibre of jolt"—is not quite as present in his earlier efforts, such as "The Ash-Tree" (first read in 1899, with witch-trials and spiders the size of kittens) and "Count Magnus" (first read in 1902, with its grisly gothic horrors and a sarcophagus sealed with "massive steel padlocks"). Before "Oh, Whistle", arguably, James's frights are rather more raw, bloody, and what James might call "blatant".<sup>65</sup> James came to recognize restraint as essential to the genre and his foundational example has become a model for those participating in the "antiquarian" ghostly tradition ever since: "Reticence may be an elderly doctrine to preach", he wrote in 1930, "yet from the artistic point of view I am sure it is a sound one. Reticence conduces to effect, blatancy ruins it, and there is much blatancy in a lot of recent stories".66 The story of the haunted whistle is certainly reticent in its implications, so much so that afficionados online continue to speculate on the backstory of a whistle unearthed in a ruin. How did it get there? Most would concede that James was right to leave us in the dark on this point. Yet despite all the ink shed—some of it mine—annotating and explicating this extensively anthologized tale, one particularly promising medieval source of inspiration has gone unnoticed.<sup>67</sup> Readers familiar with the Exeter Book—and in particular, the Old English enigmatic poem *The Husband's Message—*may now be ready to guess where this discussion is headed.

The basic parallel of a speaking object declaring its beckoning message by the sea is only a beginning of what potentially links these texts, and the discussion below will point out many further particulars. To begin, however, note that *The Husband's Message* centers around an enigmatically inscribed object arriving on the coast from a faraway land (*eom nu her cumen*), reminding its recipient of an *eald gebeot,* "old pledge", and summoning her to a lover who eagerly awaits her coming *on wenum,* "in expectation". The title of James's story alone might remind us of this situation, though its exact wording is borrowed from another source: the refrain of a 1793 song by Robert Burns:

O Whistle, and I'll come to you, my lad; O whistle, and I'll come to you, my lad: Tho' father, and mither and a' should gae mad, O whistle, and I'll come to you, my lad.68

The larger contexts into which this line is imported has led many to suspect a subtext of gender anxiety or same-sex desire in James's tale, a story which, after all climaxes, with a bedsheeted specter pressing its face suggestively into that of Parkins.69 Such scenarios of terrifying intimacy were to become a hallmark of the Jamesian approach to horror writing, especially in the tales he wrote after "Oh, Whistle". Take, for example, "A School Story", composed in 1906 and published in his follow-up 1911 *More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary*, which concludes with a haunted victim hauled off to the bottom of a well, embraced there eternally by a persecuting specter who had announced his imminent arrival with cryptic words: "*Si tu non veneris ad me, ego veniam ad te*", "If you don't come to me, I'll come to you".70 In the case of Parkins, the professor's scare is—at least on the surface a punishment for his stuffy incuriosity and arrogance, though it can also be interpreted as a phobic manifestation of other sources of anxiety.

The more immediate cause of the haunting, however, is simply a failure to construe the meaning of the inscriptions found on the whistle, which are worth reproducing as they appeared in the first edition of *Ghost Stories of an Antiquary*:

M.R. James, *Ghost Stories of an Antiquary* (London: Edward Arnold, 1904), p. 199. Photo by the author, from a copy of the first edition, Eton College Archives, Lq.4.06.

The meaning of this puzzle has long been disputed by Jamesians, partly because the uniquely bracketed swastika-like fylfot crosses flanking the second inscription were substituted out for the plain ones in James's *Collected Ghost Stories* (1931), as well as in all subsequent editions until very recently. To sum up a rather complicated situation, it is now clear that the bracketed arms of the second inscription were intended (confirmed by witness of James's holograph manuscript of the story) to provide a key to the riddle of the first inscription, so that *bis* is linked with two of the three other enigmatic syllables. Thus, the first inscription can be construed, "Fur, flabis, flebis", "O Thief, you will blow, you will weep", in what amounts to a compact (and sinister) synopsis of the story that is to unfold.71

Like "Oh, Whistle", "the Old English poem *The Husband's Message* centers around a riddlic inscription with ambiguous characters to be rearranged and decoded. As Niles has noted, however, most modern editions of this Old English poem—especially those published subsequent to the early work of scholars like Hickes and Thorpe—have tended to efface and so suppress the ambiguity of the characters as they appear on the parchment of the Exeter Book by rendering them into plain Latin characters of S, R, EA, W, and D (or M). In the case of *The Husband's Message*, this de-"runification" has contributed additional confusion to the interpretive history of an already difficult text.<sup>72</sup> A parallel situation arose with the fylfots of James's whistle inscription, which lost their brackets probably for similar reasons of printing practicality. The fact that both texts have proven vulnerable to such effacement is an unintentional coincidence, but not an insignificant one. As a scholar exceptionally immersed in the study of manuscripts and their great variability of form, James was keenly attuned to the unruly qualities of medieval textuality. The creation of his own whistle inscription with rune-like fylfots unsurprisingly reflects a sensitivity to the potential importance of spatial layout and ambiguous "runified" characters, features that prove resistant to modern reproduction.

The rest of the whistle inscription is transparent enough for even Parkins to translate, yet still offers a riddle-like challenge:

"I ought to be able to make it out", he thought; "but I suppose I am a little rusty in my Latin. When I come to think of it, I don't believe I even know the word for a whistle. The long one does seem simple enough. It ought to mean, 'Who is this who is coming?' Well, the best way to find out is evidently to whistle for him".<sup>73</sup>

A curious detail here is Parkins's assumption that a medieval word for whistle might be relevant to construing the inscription. This suggests an awareness (whether we want to attribute that awareness primarily to Parkins or to James) of the penchant for medieval inscribed objects to name themselves, as does, for example, the Brussels Cross ("*Rod is min nama*", "Cross is my name") and a comb-case discovered in 1867 ("*kamb: koþan: kiari: þorfastr*", "Thorfast made a good comb").74 Often such inscriptions take on the voice of

the object itself, as in the case of the ninth-century Alfred Jewel ("ÆLFRED MEC HEHT GEWYRCAN", "Alfred ordered me made"75), or the Sutton Brooch (eleventh century) which, like James's whistle, offers a warning to thieves:

AED-EN ME AGE HYO DRIHTEN

DRIHTEN HINE A-ERIE ÐE ME HIRE ÆTFERIE

BUTON HYO ME SELLE HIRE AGENES -ILLES

(Aedwen owns me, may the Lord own her. May the Lord curse him who takes me from her, unless she gives me of her own free will".)76

It is this similarity of speaking objects that has led many scholars to link such inscriptions to the Old English riddling genre, which makes such effective use of prosopopoeia in first-person texts challenging solvers to "*saga hwæt ic hatte*", or "say what I am called".<sup>77</sup> Of course, the inscription on James's whistle does not speak in the first person, but only enigmatically inquires, "*quis est iste qui uenit*", "Who is this who is coming?" Yet, the disembodied voice of the object does manage to speak for itself in the title of the tale, detached and floating ominously on the epigraphical edges: "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You . . . "78

This untethered voice, with its enigmatic relation to the runified whistle inscription, is a striking echo of what we find in *The Husband's Message*. In the Old English poem, the voice bidding the beloved to come is evidently that of a wooden item (treocyn*,* line 2) speaking on behalf of its absent lord, but also presenting a more circumscribed message in the form of riddlic runes. Whatever we take the literal object to be (a runestick, the mast of a ship, or some other tree-made thing79), its postmedieval critical reception has revolved around the curiously disembodied and paradoxical quality of its speaking position (made even more obscure by burn damage to the Exeter manuscript), so that some readers have resorted to positing a split between the object and the separate voice of a human emissary delivering and providing a lengthy gloss for the inscribed object on-site.80 Most readers, though, have more simply attributed the entire monologue to the voice of the runic object, yet this only heightens the oddly disjointed relationship between the message of the runes and the disembodied voice of the poem's *treocyn* speaker. As Ralph W.V. Elliott explains it:

... the five runes [are] the actual message supposed to have been carved into the wood and sent to the wife. They may represent a secret cypher previously agreed upon by husband and wife; in any case, it is clear that we cannot be expected to regard the whole seventy lines of the poem as having been inscribed on a *runakefli*. If this assumption is correct the poem may properly be deemed an explanation of the terse runic message in greatly expanded form. This expansion allows the inclusion of the wood's own history as well as the more detailed exposition of the actual situation of husband and wife and the message sent by the former.81

If some explanation along these lines is accepted, the poem is an unusually complex example of the "phenomenon of 'voices within voices,'" notable as a curious feature of the Exeter Anthology.<sup>82</sup> Of course, it is possible that such voices would not have been quite so bewildering to a medieval audience.<sup>83</sup> Yet as "eavesdroppers" into this cryptically intimate communication—via a split voice at once carved into solid wood and yet mysteriously disembodied—many modern readers have found *The Husband's Message* to be exceptionally obscure, even by the standards of this manuscript.84 And this quality may be what inspired James to create his own parallel object, complete with its own alien and disembodied voice that beckons menacingly from beyond.

But why has the Old English object become, for James, a whistle?85 A ready answer is revealed when we look not only at the Exeter poems, but also at their scholarly reception. As I have noted, "Oh, Whistle" was probably written around December of 1903. The timing here may be significant, as the immediately preceding years saw the publication of an important and controversial article by F.A. Blackburn in 1900 (making a splash large enough to receive an endorsement from and a full paragraph of summary in the 1907 *Cambridge*

*History*).<sup>86</sup> Blackburn's article engaged anew with those questions of sectional division in the Exeter Book that had challenged scholars ever since Thorpe's edition. It might well have caught the attention of James, a scholar whose daily work involved cataloguing the individual items contained within medieval manuscripts.<sup>87</sup> Blackburn argued that the text of *The Husband's Message* was, in fact, best interpreted as part of the text that immediately preceded it: *Riddle 60* (or "Riddle 61", according to the numbering of the Thorpe edition used by Backburn). As Blackburn noted, *Riddle 60* shares much in common with *The Husband's Message*, describing as it does, in the first person, the experiences of an enigmatic object that, having been shaped by human skill, allows for the conveyance of a secret message.88 Blackburn thus contends that "when we read the whole as a single poem, we find a consecutiveness and unity so clear" that it would be quite natural to read them together as a single continuous composition. Indications otherwise in the Exeter Book were explained as scribal error. Together, the two sections should be taken to form a single text, to which Blackburn proposes we apply the title of "A Love-letter".89

Blackburn's theory has not been wholly successful in persuading later editors to re-title and redraw the boundaries of these poems, but neither has it been altogether discarded.90 Certainly, the texts share much in common. After all, like the speaker of *The Husband's Message*, the voice of *Riddle 60* has been often taken to be a runestick/staff, a solution favored, for instance, by Moritz Trautman in 1894, and by Henry Morley in 1888 (in accounting for its seaside origins, Morley described the object as specifically a "letter-beam cut from the stump of an old jetty").<sup>91</sup> More widely adopted in 1903, though, was Dietrich's proposal of *rohrflöte (hvistle),* or "reed-pipe (whistle)", an identification largely based on its perceived similarity to Symphosius's "*Arundo*", or "reed" enigma.<sup>92</sup> In fact, Frederick Morgan Padelford, in his book on *Old English Musical Terms* (1899), cited this very text to illustrate ancient English whistle nomenclature. If we were to imagine Parkins actually visiting a library to look up old words for whistles, Padelford's volume would be the most obvious place to start:

*Pipe* and *hwistle* were also the names of instruments of the flute order, for *tibicen* is glossed as *pipere oððe hwistlere,* and *auledus* as *reodpipere*. The reed-pipe is the subject of the sixty-first riddle.93

Like Parkins's whistle, the speaking object of this riddle dwells alone, secured in a covert spot by the sea. The full *Riddle 60* reads:

Ic wæs be sonde, sæwealle neah, æt merefaroþe minum gewunade frumstaþole fæst; fea ænig wæs monna cynnes þæt minne þær on anæde eard beheolde, ac mec uhtna gehwam yð sio brune lagufæðme beleolc. lyt ic wende þæt ic ær oþþe sið æfre sceolde ofer meodu[drincende] muðleas sprecan, wordum wrixlan. þæt is wundres dæl, on sefan searolic þa þe swylc ne conn, hu mec seaxe*s* ord 7 seo swiþre hond, eorles ingeþonc 7 ord somod, þingum geþydan, þæt ic wiþ þe sceolde for unc anum twa*m* ærendspræce abeodan bealdlice, swa hit beorna ma uncre wordcwidas widdor ne mænden.

[My home was on the beach near the sea-shore;/Beside the ocean's brim I dwelt, fast fixed/In my first abode. Few of mankind there were/That there beheld my home in the solitude, /But every morn the brown wave encircled me/With its watery embrace./Little weened I then that I should ever, earlier or later,/Though mouthless, speak among the mead-drinkers/And utter words. A great marvel it is,/Strange in the mind that knoweth it not,/How the point of the knife and the right hand,/The thought of a man, and his blade therewith,/Shaped me with skill, that boldly I might/So deliver a message to thee/In the presence of us two alone/that to other men our talk/May not make it more widely known.]94

The central conceit here is the riddling motif of "mouthless" speech, and many have found in this text a clear reference to writing, whether in the form of runes inscribed on a slip of wood, or as penmanship accomplished with a sharpened reed. The paradoxes of written and spoken language are a well-studied theme of Exeter riddling, where the whispering quality of all writing often overlaps with playful games of runic concealment.95 *Riddle 60* seems in tune with that theme, yet the clue of speaking among mead-drinkers is a point in favor of a musical instrument. An elegant way around this impasse, as Niles has established, comes when we "answer the riddles in their own tongue", so that the single Old English word *hreod* can encapsulate the protean identity of the reed—a cylindrical creature that can "speak" both as pen and as whistle.96

Early solvers, however, felt compelled to make the case for "reed whistle" by way of an alternative explanation to account for the sense of secret communication we find at the end of the riddle. In the lively imagination of Stopford Brooke (1892), the theme of silent speech becomes clandestine romance, an intense intimacy conveyed by the sound of the whistling. But Brooke's real interest lies in the way the theme merges with the English landscape in the riddle:

It tells of a desert place near the shore, traversed by a channel up which the tide flowed, and where the reeds grew which were made into the *Reed-Flute*, which is the answer to the riddle. I translate the whole. The picture, at the end, of the lover talking in music to his sweetheart, music that none understood but she, is full of human feeling, but the point on which I dwell is the scenery. It is that of a settlement where only a few scattered huts stood amid the desolate marsh.97

The secret notes of the reed-flute, of course, easily mingle with the beckoning message of *The Husband's Message*, once these texts are merged by Blackburn. In James's hands, at any rate, the scene turns to horror, and countless critics have emphasized the atmospheric brilliance of the tale, set in the seaside resort town of Burnstow, a lightly disguised version of Felixstowe on the Suffolk coast.98 James's word-painting in the tale is indeed lovely:

Bleak and solemn was the view on which he took a last look before starting homeward. A faint yellow light in the west showed the links, on which a few figures moving towards the club-house were still visible, the squat martello tower, the lights of Aldsey village, the pale ribbon of sands intersected at intervals by black wooden groynes, the dim and murmuring sea.

Such "local colour" noted by Benson at the tale's first reading has subsequently been analyzed time and again in terms of its "agoraphobic sea horizons;" "the cumulative forces of the eerie that animate the East Anglian landscape;" the way it evokes "the windswept mystery of the barren unknown".<sup>99</sup> Such characterizations are in no way to be dismissed; James's fiction is certainly rooted in an English landscape he personally experienced and found deeply evocative, but it is also informed by his engagements with medieval studies, and here the sense of the enigmatic looms large. Even the "shape of a rather indistinct personage", the "bobbing black object" conjured on the shoreline by the whistle, behaves quite like an unresolved riddle creature, declaring its own incongruous form for the solver's contemplation: "a little flicker of something light-coloured moving to and fro with great

swiftness and irregularity. Rapidly growing larger, it, too, declared itself as a figure in pale, fluttering draperies, ill-defined".100

The sense of enigmatic intimacy we find in both *Riddle 60* and *The Husband's Message* finds its analogues, too, in the celebrated culmination of James's tale, as the whistlesummoned horror arrives in the loosely wrapped, sinuous form of a bedsheeted figure gliding across the bedroom to press in upon Parkins in his state of "horrid perplexity". The climax brings a "face *of crumpled linen*" that is "thrust close into his own".<sup>101</sup> It might be worth comparing this specter with yet another Exeter riddle, the one that, in fact, immediately precedes Blackburn's "A Love-letter". As Blackburn argues, *Riddle 30b* is also likely a creature of wood, yet its duplication here (*Riddle 30a* is found earlier in the Exeter Book) seems to rule out the possibility that it, too, might be properly joined to what follows. Blackburn, in fact, argues that its repetition in this part of the manuscript can be explained as another error, this time a mistaken attempt to join text that does not belong to "A Love-letter". If this is a scribal error, then it might also be a productive one in James's medievalist ghost story, for the opening of *Riddle 30b* is very reminiscent of the flexuous creature conjured by the whistle, particularly if we look to Blackburn's emended text:

ic eom li*c*bysig, lace mid winde

w[unden mid wuldre we]dre gesomnad

[I am agile of body, I sport with the wind. I am clothed with beauty, a comrade of the storm].<sup>102</sup>

Readers familiar with *Riddle 30b* will notice Blackburn has emended MS "*ligbysig"* ("flamebusy", likely reflecting the capacity of wood to burn) with "*licbysig*", "agile of body" (a reading in which Blackburn ultimately followed Thorpe, who translated the half-line as "I am a busybody").103 James's whistle ghost is also quite agile:

It would stop, raise arms, bow itself toward the sand, then run stooping across the beach to the water-edge and back again; and then, rising upright, once more continue its course forward at a speed that was startling and terrifying.104

Such uncanny movements match the bewildering effects of *Riddle 30b*: "þon ic mec onhæbbe/hi onhnigað to me/modgum miltsum" ("when I rise up, before me bow/The proud with reverence").105 Proud men also kiss the creature of *Riddle 30b*, a fate the arrogant Parkins nearly suffers before the amorphous, wind-sporting horror collapses into "a tumbled heap of bed-clothes".<sup>106</sup>

It is true that James's tale bears only a superficial resemblance to *The Husband's Message* as it is usually encountered today. But when considered from the scholarly perspectives of 1903, it is easier to see how James may have found dark inspiration in Blackburn's "A Love-letter"—with its composite features of an inscribed whistle concealed on the desolate shoreline, beckoning with an untethered voice for a lover to come calling, an enigmatic message associated with another amorphous and alien being of the wind. In James's virtuoso remaking, though, these elements acquire a peculiarly haunting quality, and recognition of this inspiration affords insight into the affective power of the story. The claim—long controversial among some Jamesians—that "Oh, Whistle" taps into anxieties of sexual desire and homosocial intimacy is strengthened and enriched considerably by recognition of the tale's connection to Blackburn's "A Love-letter". Additionally, appreciating James's medievalist sources also allows us to better understand how such themes are linked in particular to scholarly experience in the tale, where Parkins's antiquarian discovery is framed by questions of academic companionship, isolation, and alienation. James's transformation of Exeter Book folios 122v–123v becomes a haunting and anxious meditation on the many ways men in such circles call out to one another—alluring and reassuring, desirous and threatening. There is a touch of the elegiac in this story of the self-exiled Parkins, who refuses the company of Cambridge colleagues on his stay by the sea.107 The alien voice of the whistle, then, takes on a new resonance when considered in these contexts: the enigmatic quality of the title itself and its strange relation to the

"runified" object is a crucial aspect of the story that has surely been sensed by readers more often than explicitly identified as a source of the tale's impact. And if "voices within voices" are a hallmark of Old English enigmatic poetry, they also seem to have helped shape the Jamesian style of "reticent" horror at a crucial moment both in James's career and, therefore, in the development of the contemporary genre of supernatural fiction.

Of course, further connections are always a temptation. For instance, we might remark that *Riddle 30b*, *Riddle 60*, and *The Husband's Message* are followed immediately in the Exeter Book by the damaged poem *The Ruin.* Is this why a ruin is where the hidden whistle is found? Perhaps, perhaps not, and the wisdom of pursuing these links much further is doubtful. Sometimes it is hard to know when to stop scraping at the turf.<sup>108</sup> To be clear, I am not claiming that James stumbled across his reticent style of horror while rooting around in the Exeter Book, but engaging imaginatively with these enigmatic poems—as, crucially, they were received at this particular scholarly moment—may have allowed the self-styled antiquary to enhance his particularly effective and influential approach to horror. James brilliantly reinvented the spirit of the Old English enigmatic voice, and it was his own recognition of the riddle creature's potential—its reticent resonance within the ghostly genre—that has proved to be such a source of "pleasing terror" for numberless readers. This alone is a rich legacy.

The role that Exeter enigmatic poetry played in the formation of the modern fantasy genre—especially by way of Tolkien—is very well-documented, but its part in the history of horror fiction is also worth acknowledging, considering the way so many later writers have emulated both "Oh, Whistle" and James's approach to the genre in general. James's "ontographical" response to the voice of the Exeter Book now appears even to have helped inspire theoretical interests that circle around to animate present-day medievalist scholarship on the *Exeter Riddles* themselves.109 This seems appropriate enough. A singular feature of these unsolved texts is the way they invite us to complete them creatively with our own voices, as we offer up imaginative guesses in a distantly familiar tongue. Of course it is rarely possible to banish all forms of fantasy from scholarship. Medieval studies and creative medievalism have always been joined together, even if the links are easily lost. This may be a disappointingly unparadoxical point on which to end, but I appeal to the inimitable example of a mentor who has offered so much illumination by pursuing deceptively simple ideas with uncommon seriousness and skill. I cannot match his light, but I have at least tried to avoid needless obscurity.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.

#### **Notes**



(Thorpe 1842, p. x).


but many of his earlier stories do seem to involve more overt, lurid demonic horrors ("Canon Alberic's Scrap-book", 1893) or even diabolical surgery ("Lost Hearts", 1893), while many stories that follow take a more "enigmatic" approach, echoing many elements of "Oh, Whistle". For example, "The Treasure of Abbot Thomas" (1904) is organized quite explicitly around riddling effects (Murphy 2017, pp. 31–40), while the next tale James is known to have written, "A School Story" (1906) echoes even more precisely the riddle of the whistle (see below). In "The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral", (first published in The Contemporary Review in 1910) James seems to return to Old English prosopopoeia as a source of ghostly voicing. That tale concludes with a poem, which is reported to have been "drempt" and recorded on a scrap of paper found concealed within the carving. There can be little doubt James found inspiration in *The Dream of the Rood* (as well as the *Exeter Riddles* and object inscriptions, such as the Brussels reliquary) for the opening lines of this "dream": "When I grew in the Wood/I was water'd wth Blood/Now in the Church I stand ... ": (James 1911, p. 166). Though not in quite the same way, *Beowulf* also seems to have played a role in James's post-war classic, "A Warning to the Curious" (1925): see (Edwards 2013; Murphy 2017, pp. 165–84).


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### *Article Tearas Feollon***: Tears and Weeping in Old English Literature**

**Hugh Magennis**

School of Arts, English and Languages, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast BT7 1NN, UK; h.magennis@qub.ac.uk

**Abstract:** This contribution surveys the range of images of weeping in Old English literature, concentrating particularly on weeping due to suffering, grief and unhappiness, and on tears of compunction, but examining other types of weeping as well, including supplicatory and sympathetic weeping (these latter are found in prose but not in poetry). Taking account of contemporary theory, the study understands weeping to be a physical manifestation of distress, but also to function as a social gesture, as reflected in the circumstance that most weeping in Old English is public rather than private. It is noted that saints do not normally weep in the literature despite the suffering they typically endure, and also that in traditional Old English poetry weeping is seen as not appropriate for men, or at least for men in the prime of life. Some of the most interesting instances of weeping in Old English, however, are to be found in episodes that appear to contradict or problematize such expectations, as is illustrated by the examination of a number of relevant examples. The references to weeping cited in this study are in the majority of cases based on Latin models, and reflect the wider Christian literary tradition in the early Middle Ages, rather than being specific to Anglo-Saxon England; but, in both religious and secular works, Old English writers are shown to be thoughtful and imaginative in their treatment of weeping and to deploy images of it to forceful emotive effect.

**Keywords:** Anglo-Saxon culture; medieval Christian tradition; emotions; hagiography; Old English literature; Old English poetry; Old English prose; Latin literature

#### **1. Introduction**

Old English literature abounds in images of people weeping (adults, that is, not children). Occasionally their tears are of joy, but much more typically they are of distress due to suffering, grief or unhappiness, which are themes of abiding concern to writers of the period. The themes of suffering, grief and unhappiness are often expressed, particularly in the poetry, without explicit reference to tears and weeping: there is no weeping as such in *The Wanderer* or *The Seafarer* or most other "elegiac" poems, for example.<sup>1</sup> In many texts, however, the imagery of weeping lends intensity to the feelings portrayed, as the vocabulary of tears—*wepan*, *bewepan* and *tear* (as well as rarer terms, including *greotan* and *þotorian*, and poetic ones, such as *gretan* and *reotan*)—is deployed to emotive effect. In addition to such terms, I understand the noun *wop* and its derived adjectives *wopig* and *woplic* to be expressive of weeping: *wop* is often translated as the abstract "lamentation", which can indeed be appropriate, but the connotation of weeping was surely felt by Anglo-Saxon audiences.2

In some of the most powerful passages in Old English, tears signify raw personal emotion. Famously, for example, in *Beowulf* King Hrothgar weeps at the departure of Beowulf from Denmark knowing that he will never see him again: "hruron him tearas/blondenfeaxum" (Fulk et al. 2008, ll. 1872–73), "tears fell from him, the grey-haired one".3 Elsewhere, tears are prompted by the experience of misfortune endured or being in an unhappy situation, such as that of the speaker in *Wulf and Eadwacer*, who is "reotugu" (Krapp and Dobbie 1936, p. 179, l. 10), "tearful", about her separation from Wulf, or of the speaker of *The Wife's Lament*, who laments that she must sit the summerlong day and weep in her place of enclosure:

**Citation:** Magennis, Hugh. 2022. *Tearas Feollon*: Tears and Weeping in Old English Literature. *Humanities* 11: 54. https://doi.org/10.3390/ h11020054

Received: 5 January 2022 Accepted: 13 March 2022 Published: 12 April 2022

**Publisher's Note:** MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

**Copyright:** © 2022 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

Þær ic sittan mot sumorlangne dæg; þær ic wepan mæg mine wræcsiþas. (Krapp and Dobbie 1936, p. 211, ll. 37–38)

There I must sit the summerlong day; there I can weep for my journeys of exile.

In translated texts, Boethius/Mind, the speaker in the Old English *Boethius*, is among those who weep in the face of misfortune. In Meter 2, slightly expanding on the Latin original, he sings his sad lament "weighed down by weeping" (*wope gewæged*, Krapp 1932a, l. 3), and he is preoccupied by "this sobbing" (*ðes geocsa*, l. 5) (in the Latin, his verses water his face with true tears: *veris elegi fletibus ora rigant* [Stewart and Rand 1918, Meter 2, l. 4]).

Indeed, in what is overwhelmingly a literature of Christian teaching and understanding, the world itself is seen as a place of weeping, a *convallis lacrimarum*, "vale of tears" (Roman Psalter, Weber 1953, Psalms 83:7; Vulgate (Edgar and Kinney 2011–2013) *vallis lacrimarum*),<sup>4</sup> or as the verse *Paris Psalter* expresses the image, "ðisse sargan dene/þær hi teara teonan cnyssað" (Krapp 1932b, 83:5, ll. 4–5), "this sorry valley, where the troubles of tears oppress [people]". In this spirit, the author of Homily 5 of the *Blickling Homilies* declares that on earth one's body must live in weeping, sadness and pain (*on wope & on unrotnesse & on sare his lichoma sceal her wunian*, 59, l. 36–61, l. 1) (Morris 1874/1876/1880, pp. 54–64).

Only in heaven, as *Blickling* Homily 8 reminds its audience (Morris 1874/1876/1880, pp. 96–107), are sorrow and weeping absent—"ne [bið] sorg ne wop" (p. 103, l. 36)—and it is the purpose of life on earth to attain the salvation of eternal life in heaven, weepingly fearing God's judgement and repenting one's sins in order to do so. Homily 4 of the *Vercelli Homilies* preaches, "Men þa leofestan, ic eow bidde 7 eaðmodlice lære þæt ge wepen 7 forhtien on þysse medmiclan tide for eowrum synnum, for þan ne bioð eowre tearas 7 eowre hreowsunga for noht getealde on þære toweardan worulde" (ll. 1–4), "My dear people, I ask you and humbly teach that you weep and fear for your sins in this short time, because your tears and your sorrows will be reckoned as nothing in the world to come" (Scragg 1992, pp. 87–110).

In including references to weeping, Old English is hardly unique among medieval literary traditions (Gertsman 2011; Kottler 1996; Lutz 1999; Vingerhoets 2013). Indeed, a large proportion of mentions of weeping in Old English derives directly from Latin sources and reflects participation in the wider traditions of Latin Christendom, with the Bible in particular providing a foundational range of images of weeping (Hvidberg 1962; Lange 1996; McEntire 1990). In Old English prose in particular, references to weeping are in the large majority of cases translated or adapted from Latin sources; many Old English verse texts are also adapted from Latin sources, but these are freer in their treatment of weeping. Thus, though often interesting (as I would argue), most references to weeping in Old English are unexceptional, conforming as they do to inherited literary convention. Some examples, however, stand out as worthy of special note, as I highlight in the analysis below.

The treatment of weeping in Old English conforms to inherited literary convention, which is itself grounded in the cultural practice and expectation of what has been referred to as its "emotional community" (Jorgensen 2015, p. 8, following Rosenwein 2006). According to Darwin's celebrated characterization, weeping is a physical response to pain or distress: "Weeping seems to be the primary and natural expression [. . . ] of suffering of any kind, whether bodily pain short of extreme agony or mental distress" (Darwin 1998, pp. 157–58). But current researchers stress the social as well as "natural" aspect of weeping behavior in adults: weeping as performative and gestural. Vingerhoets emphasizes that, although weeping can take place in private as well as in public (Vingerhoets 2013, pp. 142–43), it is "a compelling social behavior", which "signals the need for assistance when an individual is feeling alone, or helpless to meet their own needs" (ibid., p. 73). Collective weeping, widely found in Old English, is obviously social in nature, expressing communal solidarity and bonding; but even in scenes in Old English where it is individuals who weep, they usually have an audience.

Weeping in private does occur in Old English (rarely, and only in prose translations of Latin texts), but normally weeping is in public.5 This is particularly true of hagiography, which provides the majority of instances of weeping in our corpus. Hagiography takes place in a public arena in which the saint interacts with others in word and deed, demonstrating his or her sanctity before witnesses. Similarly, in traditional Old English poetry emotions are played out in public, whether those are the joys of the hall or Hrothgar weeping at Beowulf's departure.

A further point about Darwin's characterization of weeping as the expression of suffering is that while it may be true enough for much weeping, including much of that in Old English, it manifestly does not account for all weeping, again including much in Old English. As outlined below, in addition to distressful weeping, we also find other types of weeping in our texts, such as supplicatory weeping, which is aimed at eliciting a specific response from an addressee, and sympathetic weeping, which occurs on behalf of others; and since weeping is a complex a behavior, the tears portrayed can signify more than one emotion at once: mixed or conflicting emotions can trigger weeping.

Vingerhoets also points out that Darwin excludes "positive" weeping from his characterization (ibid., pp. 80, 87–91), again as occasionally found in Old English; nor does the great man account for fervent religious weeping, a form of weeping particularly conspicuous in Anglo-Saxon texts in the expression of compunction, in which weeping is inspired by internal feeling rather than by an external stimulus; such weeping need not be private, but it does not seek to appeal to an audience.

Before focusing on tears of compunction, I turn in the next section of the essay to the most common tears portrayed in Old English writings, those of distress due to grief or suffering. Here it will be convenient to consider prose and poetry separately because of distinctive features of the poetry; it is also appropriate to consider poetry separately in a contribution in honor of Jack Niles.

#### **2. Tears of Distress**

#### *2.1. Prose*

Among the tears of distress most frequently mentioned in Old English prose texts are those of grief at the death or departure of a loved one. Such tears, which are often collective, are a familiar topos in saints' lives and, as reflected in the close Old English translation of *Apollonius of Tyre*, romance. In *Apollonius*, the protagonist's people weep at his sudden disappearance: "Ðar wearð ða micel morcnung and ormæte wop" (Goolden 1958, p. 8, ll. 24–25), "Then there was much grief there and excessive weeping".<sup>6</sup> Among representative instances of collective tears of grief in Old English prose saints' lives are those portrayed in the translation of the legend of Saint Andrew's conversion of the cannibalistic Mermedonians, where the inhabitants of the city, newly converted, are distressed by the premature departure of Andrew. According to the *Acts of Matthew and Andrew in the City of the Cannibals* (closely following its Latin source: see Allen and Calder 1976, pp. 14–34), as Andrew prepares to depart, "him fylgede mycel manigo þæs folces wepende and hrymende", "a great crowd of the people followed him weeping and calling out" (Cassidy and Ringler 1971, p. 218, l. 313). Other instances of communal weeping in grief include, in the *Life of Saint Machutus*, the kinsmen of Machutus lamenting (*þotorigende*, ll. 9, 22, "weeping") his departure from them (Yerkes 1984), and, in the *Old English Martyrology*, brethren weeping at the time of Saint Eostorwine's death (Rauer 2013, p. 62).

Grief on the part of *individuals* is also portrayed in Old English prose writings. In Æfric's *Lives of Saints*, Saint Eugenia's mother weeps (*weop*) after the saint's death (Skeat 1881–1900, I, pp. 24–51, l. 415). In the *Life of Saint Guthlac* (Gonser 1909), following the Latin original (Colgrave 1956, chp. 50), Guthlac's attendant Beccel weeps as his master's death approaches: "he þa swyþe weop and geomrian ongan, and mid mycelre uneðnysse his eagospind mid tearum gelomlice leohte" (chp. 20, ll. 33–34), "he wept very much and began to lament, and with great anguish he caused his cheeks to shine with tears"; later, King Æthelbald visits Guthlac's grave, "wepende mid tearum" (chp. 21, l. 9), "weeping with tears" (Colgrave 1956, chp. 52, reads "lacrimans").

Tears of grief are profusely shed by Paphnutius in the *Life of Saint Euphrosyne* (Skeat 1881–1900, II, pp. 334–55) at the disappearance of his daughter, who has disguised herself as a man and secretly joined a monastery, and by the protagonist in the *Life of Saint Eustace* (Skeat 1881–1900, II, 190–219)<sup>7</sup> when he loses his wife and sons, the sons being presumed dead and the wife believed to have endured a fate worse than death. In both of these cases, however, there is an element of selfishness in the distress of the weeper. Robin Norris has explored the "sinful sorrow" of Eustace, who sees himself as suffering more than even Job (Norris 2011, p. 97). Such excessive sorrow is the sin of *tristitia* much warned about by Anglo-Saxon homilists, as Norris explains. Ælfric, for example, defines *tristitia* as:

ðissere worulde unrotnyss

þæt is þonne se man geunrotsoð ealles to swyðe

for his æhta lyre þe he lufode to swyðe.

and cid þonne wið god. and his synna geeacnað. (Skeat 1881–1900, I, pp. 336–63, ll. 289–92)

the sorrow of this world, that is when a person sorrows all too much for the loss of his possessions and complains then against God, and increases his sins.

Eustace eventually accepts his lot, though not before contemplating suicide (l. 181) and voicing much self-centered lamentation. He begs God not to spurn his tears of distress (*mine teares ne for-seoh*, ll. 196–97), and travels on his way weeping (*wepende*, l. 213).

In the same volume as the Norris study, Stephen Stallcup draws attention to the motivation of materialism in Paphnutius's unhappiness at the loss of Euphrosyne (Stallcup 2011). He grieves for his daughter in terms that highlight the themes of ownership and commodity. One might add that Paphnutius's grief is self-pitying, thereby like that of Eustace straying into the area of *tristitia*. He even weepingly (*wepende*) rebukes his dead daughter for making him suffer (ll. 305–08).

Such excessive tears are worldly, and reflect, as Stallcup puts it, a "poor spiritual state" (p. 22). The same could be said about Boethius/Mind weeping, as mentioned above, whose grief was not about death or departure but rather the perceived worldly misfortunes that had come upon him. Wisdom reproaches him sternly: "Ac hwi tiolast þu þonne to wepanne butan andweorc?" (Prose 6, Section 6), "But why then do you give yourself up to weeping without reason"? This reworks Lady Philosophy's demand in the Latin original that Boethius cease his weeping, since fortune has not really turned against him: "Quare sicca iam lacrimas" [II, prose IV, l. 30], "Hence dry your tears now" (For the prose version of the Old English *Boethius*, see Godden and Irvine 2009).

Tears of distress arising from causes other than death and departure include those of the damned souls in hell, as highlighted, for example, in *Vercelli* Homily 9 (E), who "wepað heora synna swiðe biterlicum tearum" (Scragg 1992, ll. 135–36), "weep for their sins with very bitter tears". The devils vanquished by the saint in the prose *Guthlac* are seen "to weep exceedingly and mourn" (*wepan swyþe and geomerian*, Gonser 1909, chp. 5, l. 274) that their powers have been shattered by Guthlac.

Assorted "good" distressed weepers are the mother who accidentally leaves her child at Saint Clement's sepulchre, which was soon to be flooded by sea water (Rauer 2013, p. 218; also Ælfric's life of Cuthbert in Clemoes 1997, pp. 497–506, ll. 134–35); the travelers terrified by a storm at sea in the *Life of Saint Giles* (Treharne 1997, pp. 131–47 (text), 148–62 (translation)), (ll. 69–71); and the Christian people of Ephesus persecuted by the emperor Decius in the *Legend of the Seven Sleepers*. Such instances are usually inherited from Latin sources; but it is notable that in the case of the *Seven Sleepers* the reference to weeping is added in the Old English version, intensifying the emphasis on distress: "ðonne weopon and geomredon þa þe on God belyfdon" (Magennis 1994, l. 36; Skeat 1881–1900, I, l. 40), "then those who believed in God wept and lamented"—the Latin has "luctus adprehendebat omnes fideles et miseria" (ll. 14–15), "grief and misery seized all the faithful".8

#### *2.2. Saints*

There is one category of individuals in Old English prose, however, who normally do not weep in distress no matter how sorely afflicted: God's saints. The saints celebrated in Old English hagiography, as more widely in medieval tradition, are typically aweinspiring figures of perfection, who have risen above ordinary human limitations to reflect the radiance of heaven in their life on earth. They are serene and composed in the face of their own suffering, super-human in their fortitude and unwavering in their piety: admirable, though not easy to identify with. Ælfric, the most prolific vernacular Anglo-Saxon hagiographer, is particularly assiduous in accommodating his saints within this template, smoothing out perceived departures from it in his sources, and erasing inherited signs of frailty or weakness in the saints (see Whatley 1997; Whatley 2002; DeGregorio 2001).

If saints weep, it is mostly in sympathy for the distress of others, as when Saint Giles is moved by entreaties on behalf of an ill man—"dyde his gebede mid gelomlicen tearan agotennesse" (Treharne 1997, ll. 223–24), "he said his prayers with frequent pouring forth of tears"—or Saint Martin in the *Blickling Homilies*, who in weeps as he raises an unbaptized man from the dead: "weop he & eode into him. & him wæs þæt swiþe myccle weorce þæt he swa ungefulwad forðferan sceolde" (Morris 1874/1876/1880, p. 216, ll. 21–22), "he wept and went in to him, and that was painful to him that he should pass over unbaptized"; in Ælfric's version of the life of Saint Martin in *Lives of Saints* it is said that Martin was "very sad" (*micclum dreorig*, Skeat 1881–1900, II, l. 213) about this untimely death, but weeping is not mentioned.

Rather than weep in distress, Saint Laurence famously jokes with his persecutor on his hot grill, asking him to turn him over since he is done on one side (see Clemoes 1997, pp. 418–28, ll. 217–19); upon having her breast cut off, Saint Agatha sternly rebukes her oppressor, telling him, "ic habbe mine breost on minre sawle . ansunde", "I have my breast in my soul, uninjured" (Skeat 1881–1900, I, pp. 194–209, l. 126); Saint Cuthbert serenely stands in the cold sea all night in self-mortification (see Godden 1979, pp. 247–48, l. 126). These saints, like a host of others, are superhuman in their heroism.

There are some exceptions to the rule that saints do not weep in distress. In the *Life of Saint Mary of Egypt* the repentant Mary weeps much at the time of her conversion from a life of debauchery and during her first years in the desert (Magennis 2002; Skeat 1881–1900, I, pp. 2–53).<sup>9</sup> But she is not yet a saint at that stage: unusually, Mary is a saint who develops into sanctity. By the time she meets the monk Zosimus, the narrator of her story, she has achieved a state of transcendent holiness, having moved beyond tears to become a sublime figure of otherworldly serenity. Zosimus weeps much in her presence as he strives to advance spiritually: Mary is the saint, humble but resplendent, while Zosimus is the seeker after enlightenment.

Saint Andrew weeps in distress in the Old English *Acts of Matthew and Andrew*. Andrew weeps as he is being tortured by the townspeople; his co-apostle Matthias has also wept earlier in the story, blinded, imprisoned and condemned to death: "he wæs simle to Drihtne biddende mid myclum wope" (Cassidy and Ringler 1971, ll. 13–14), "he was continually praying to God with much weeping". Andrew is dragged through the streets, his blood flowing over the ground like water (ll. 209–10), and he weeps (*weop*, l. 213) in his agony. In an un-saintlike outburst, he even complains to God about his extreme suffering, resigned to his own human weakness:

And he cigde mid mycle wope to Drihtne and cwæþ: "Min Drihten Hælend(e) Crist, me genihtsumiað þas tintrega, for þon ic eom geteorod. Min Drihten Hælend(e) Crist, ane tid on rode þu þrowodest, and þu cwæde: "Fæder, for hwon forlæte þu me"? Nu iii dagas syndon syððan ic wæs getogen þurh þisse ceastre lanum. Þu wast, Drihten, þa menniscan tyddernysse". (ll. 240–44)

And he called out to the Lord with much weeping and said, "My Lord Savior Christ, these torments are enough for me, for I am exhausted. My Lord Savior Christ, once you suffered on the cross, and you said, "Father, why have you forsaken me"? Now for three days I have been dragged through the lanes of this town. You know human weakness, Lord".

The Andrew text (along with the poem *Andreas* to be discussed below) is a translation of one of a distinctive, and early, type of hagiographical narrative, the apocryphal acts of the apostles, in which the protagonist is a developing figure rather than the usual paragon of perfection. Some of these acts were closely translated into Old English, though it is notable that Ælfric in particular had qualms about how saints were portrayed in them. Michael Lapidge characterizes the Andrew story as "non-hagiographical" (Lapidge [1991] 2013, p. 260), and Ivan Herbison explores the genre of apocryphal acts in more detail, noting, for example, the influence of Greek romance on it (Herbison 2000, pp. 190–91). From the perspective of idealizing medieval hagiography, Andrew is a highly untypical saint.

Another apostle who weeps in distress is the great Saint Paul in the apocryphal *Passion of Saints Peter and Paul*, a narrative about the contest between the apostles and the magician Simon. As the *Blickling Homilies* version of this has it, as Simon flies in the air in a demonstration of his powers: "Þa ahof Paulus up his heafod. Þa wæron his eagan gefyllede mid tearum, & he geseah Simon fleogende" (Morris 1874/1876/1880, pp. 189, ll. 36–190, 1), "Then Paul raised up his head. Then his eyes became filled with tears, and he saw Simon flying". Here the Old English corresponds to the Latin source, which reads, "Cumque eleuasset caput Paulus lacrimis plenus oculos [variant reading: oculis lacrimis plenis] et uidisset Simonem uolantem" (Lipsius and Bonnet 1891, p. 165, ll. 19–20), "And when Paul raised his head, his eyes full of tears, he saw Simon flying". In this instance, Paul shows that he is not yet the perfected saint. Scott DeGregorio writes that the episode of Simon flying "is of interest for its humanized depiction of the apostles". He continues, "Their feelings and emotions are laid bare, exposing them as human, fallible creatures. They appear weak and uncertain of themselves" (DeGregorio 2001, p. 87). DeGregorio's article demonstrates that Peter and Paul display such signs of weakness throughout the narrative.

Other weeping protagonists in hagiography are also confined to untypical saints' lives, such as that of Mary of Egypt, mentioned above, and we have seen that Eustace weeps in his time of loss and misfortune, complaining to God in the same manner as Andrew. But the part of the Eustace legend in which the weeping occurs is really a romance narrative with a happy outcome, Eustace and his family reunited in the end. After this happy outcome, the story morphs into a conventional *passio*, in which Eustace and his family go to their deaths serenely glorifying God: no sign of weeping here.

In the *Legend of the Seven Sleepers*, in which we have noted the communal weeping of the persecuted community in Ephesus, the seven saints themselves weep profusely. These saints are essentially passive figures in what is a tale of wonder rather than a regular saint's life; they function as unknowing instruments in a larger divine plan to confirm to the faithful the doctrine of the resurrection of the body. They are unlikely heroes in their all-too-human fearfulness and anxiety to avoid being captured. Faced with the prospect of arrest, "hi þonne ða seofon geomredon and weopon" (Magennis 1994, l. 111; Skeat 1881–1900, II, l. 125), "the seven then lamented and wept". Later they hide from the emperor in a cave outside the city, where "ða wurdon heora eagan afyllede mid tearum" (Magennis 1994, l. 222; Skeat 1881–1900, l. 244), "then were their eyes filled with tears;" "hi on wope wæron and hi on uneaðnysse spræcon" (Magennis 1994, l. 225; Skeat 1881–1900, II, ll. 246–47) "they were in tears and spoke anxiously"; and "Ealle him wæron gehefgode ða eagan of ðam menigfealdum biterlicum tearum þe hi ðær aleton" (Magennis 1994, ll. 227–228; Skeat 1881–1900, II, ll. 249–50), "Their eyes were all made heavy by the copious bitter tears that they let fall there".

Malchus, one of the seven who sneaks into Ephesus upon waking from the miraculous sleep not realizing that 365 years have passed since they fell asleep, is bewildered at the changes that he sees in the city and terrified at the hostile reception he receives. Rather than a powerful saint, he is a fearful youth, all alone, who wilts under the threats that oppress him. As he is led through the city and abused by the inhabitants, "him eall þa eagan floterodon and bitere teares aleton" (Magennis 1994, ll. 599–600; Skeat 1881–1900, II, l. 655), "his eyes all fluttered and let bitter tears fall"; and, being cross-examined by the city official, "he ofdræd sloh adun þærrihte and hine sylfne astræhte ætforan eallum þam folce, and cwæð to heom eallum mid wependre stefne" (Magennis 1994, ll. 660–61; Skeat 1881–1900, II, ll. 718–20), "he threw himself down at once, terrified, and prostrated himself before all the people, and he addressed them all with a weeping voice".

What is particularly notable about the treatment of tears in the *Seven Sleepers* is that, uniquely among vernacular Anglo-Saxon hagiographers, the Old English writer adds to the Latin source in reporting them. Some of the weeping is there in the source, but overall the reference to distress is more generalized in the Latin. We have already noted (pp. 4–5, above) that the mention of the distress of the Christian community in Ephesus is intensified in the Old English by the specific mention of weeping (not present in the original). Similarly, reference to weeping is added in the account of the misery of the seven sleepers themselves at the time of persecution in Ephesus (Magennis 1994, l. 111; Skeat 1881–1900, l. 125): the corresponding Latin reads "gemebant" (l. 44), "they groaned". The mentions of the seven weeping in the cave (Magennis 1994, l. 222; Skeat 1881–1900; Magennis 1994, l. 244, 227–28; Skeat 1881–1900, II, ll. 249–50) are taken directly from the Latin (ll. 111, 113), but the Old English adds a further reference to weeping in the cave when it declares, as mentioned above, that "hi on wope wæron and hi on uneaðnysse spræcon" (Magennis 1994, l. 225; Skeat 1881–1900, II, ll. 246–47), "they were in tears and spoke anxiously"; the Latin reads, less specifically, "sedentibus ipsis in luctu et loquentibus ipsis ad invicem" (ll. 112–13), "sitting in grief and talking to each other".

The focus on the weeping of the unhappy Malchus during his travails in Ephesus is also increased. The reference to him weeping as he is dragged through the city—"him eall þa eagan floterodon and bitere teares aleton" (Magennis 1994, ll. 599–600; Skeat 1881–1900, II, l. 655)—is inherited from the Latin, which reads "oculi eius lacrimabantur" (l. 285), "his eyes wept", but the Old English presents a sharper image. In addition, the account of Malchus weeping under the harsh questioning of the city official—"and cwæð to heom eallum mid wependre stefne" (Magennis 1994, ll. 660–61; Skeat 1881–1900, II, ll. 718–20)—is the contribution of the Old English writer; there is nothing corresponding to this in the Latin, which simply has "et dixit eis" (l. 309), "and said to them".

The expansion of weeping references in the Old English version of the Seven Sleepers legend is consonant with the translator's general approach of humanizing the story and presenting Malchus and company as ordinary people in an extraordinary situation; but this approach is completely at odds with the model of idealizing hagiography typical of medieval saints' lives, certainly those of the kind favored by Ælfric. Interestingly, Ælfric has a (much abbreviated) version of the story of the Seven Sleepers in his second series of *Catholic Homilies* (Godden 1979, pp. 247–48), in which he removes all elements of human interest and does not even mention the hapless Malchus. Ælfric highlights the glory of the miracle of the saints' resurrection but has no interest in their experience or feelings (see further Magennis 1996).

Ælfric also has a version of the contest between Saints Peter and Paul and the magician Simon in his first series of *Catholic Homilies*. Here, unlike in the *Blickling* version, there is no mention of Paul weeping as Simon flies in the air. Paul addresses Peter with words of encouragement and bends his knees in prayer, but shows no sign of despondency Clemoes 1997, pp. 388–99, ll. 236–38). As shown by Malcolm Godden, Ælfric used the same source as the Blickling translation for his version of the Peter and Paul legend, though supplemented by other material, but he treats that source with considerable freedom (Godden 1996, p. 210; Godden, 2000, pp. 269–71). In his detailed analysis comparing the Blickling and Ælfric versions, DeGregorio explains the purpose of Ælfric's revisions of the Latin source as to accommodate the saints within his required model of sanctity:

Consistently he tones down the humanizing—and from his point of view potentially unsettling—details manifest in the inherited story; his apostles thus emerge as powerful iconic presences who easily triumph over evil, serenely endure persecution, and whose faith in God never once wavers (DeGregorio 2001, p. 89).

In the episode of Simon flying, Ælfric, unlike the *Blickling* homilist, is at pains to present Paul (and also Peter) as a flawless saint. The non-appearance of weeping on the part of Paul is very much in line with Ælfric's overall handling of the legend.

It is no surprise that Ælfric steers clear completely of the other anomalous lives discussed here, that is, those of Mary of Egypt, Andrew and the Mermedonians, and Eustace (even though the lives of Mary of Egypt and Eustace, along with the Acts of Peter and Paul and the Seven Sleepers, were in the Cotton Corpus Legendary, the major source for his saints' lives [Jackson and Lapidge 1996]). Like the vast majority of saints celebrated in medieval hagiography, Ælfric's saints do not weep in distress.

#### *2.3. Poetry*

Many of the same kinds of images of weeping found in Old English prose also occur in poetry. However, Old English poetry has few depictions of men weeping, since the poetry inherited from the "heroic" value-system of Germanic secular tradition an understanding that weeping is not appropriate for men, at least men in the prime of life (see Pàroli 1990; O'Brien O'Keeffe 1991). This understanding is also reflected in the eddic verse of Old Norse, which has no images of men weeping. As I show below, there are (rare) examples of tears of compunction shed by men in religious poetry; but as a general rule it is women who weep in the poetry, not men, or at least not individual men. Communities, including men, may be portrayed as weeping collectively in grief or fear, but rarely do we encounter a weeping male individual. Even the speaker in the Exeter Book "inkhorn" riddle 93 (Krapp and Dobbie 1936, pp. 241–42), portrayed as a wounded warrior when severed from its animal's head, does not weep from its injury:

No ic þa stunde bemearn, ne for wunde weop, ne wrecan meahte on wigan feore wonnsceaft mine. (ll. 20–22)

Not at all did I mourn the time, weep from the wound, nor could I avenge my misfortune on the fighter's life.

Women weep. The female speakers in *Wulf and Eadwacer* and *The Wife's Lament* do so, of course (see above, pp. 1–2). So too does Sarah's Egyptian maidservant Hagar in *Genesis A* in an addition to the biblical text:10 as she flees to the wilderness, having been cast out by Abraham and Sarah, Hagar exclaims elegiacally,

Nu sceal tearighleor on westenne witodes bidan, hwonne of heortan hunger oððe wulf sawle and sorge somed abregde. (Krapp 1931, pp. 1–87, ll. 2276–79)

Now with tear-stained cheek I must await my fate in the wilderness, until hunger or wolf seize soul and sorrow together from my heart.

*The Fortunes of Men* has an image of a woman weeping as her child dies in a fire: reoteð meowle,

seo hyre bearn gesihð brondas þeccan. (Krapp and Dobbie 1936, p. 155, ll. 46–47)

the woman weeps, who sees flames covering her child.

Also, the warrior queen Elene weeps in her urgent desire to find the nails from Christ's cross in Cynewulf's poem on her:

A min hige sorgað, reonig reoteð, ond geresteð no ærþan me gefylle fæder ælmihtig, wereda wealdend, willan minne. (*Elene*, Krapp 1932a, pp. 66–102, ll. 1081–84) My mind will always sorrow, mournful it will wail and get no rest at all until the almighty father, ruler of hosts, fulfil my desire.

The vivid word *reoteð* provides an intensity not paralleled in the Latin original.11

Collective weeping is also familiar in the poetry. There are several instances in *Beowulf*, as well as portrayals of lamentation in which weeping is not specifically referred to. The inhabitants of Heorot weep as a result of Grendel's first attack: "þa wæs æfter wiste wop up ahofen,/micel morgensweg" (Fulk et al., ll. 128–129), "then after the feasting weeping arose, great clamour in the morning" (or might *wop* be translated as "lamentation" here?). Elsewhere, Hrothgar tells Beowulf that, in the face of the vengeance enacted by Grendel's fearsome mother, many a thegn weeps in his spirit (Fulk et al. 2008, *on sefan greoteþ*, l. 1342), and, after the death of Beowulf, his followers mourn his body "with gushing tears" (*wollenteare*, l. 3032) and the smoke from his pyre is "wope bewunden" (l. 3146), "mingled with weeping/lamentation", as it rises up in the sky. In a striking personification in the course of Hrothgar's description of the sinister approaches to Grendel's mere, *Beowulf* also has an image of the skies weeping (*roderas reotað*, l. 1376).

In *Andreas* (Krapp 1932a, pp. 3–51), in a parallel to a scene in the prose *Acts of Matthew and Andrew* alluded to above (p. 3), the Lord tells the saint as he prepares to leave the city prematurely that the weeping and mourning minds of the people of Mermedonia have come before him (*Hira wop becom/murnende mod*, ll. 1666–67); the Lord instructs Andreas to stay on and complete his mission. The *Andreas* poet also relates that, when Andreas eventually does leave Mermedonia, the people weep again at his departure: "Stodon him ða on ofre æfter reotan" (l. 1712), "They stood on the shore then weeping after him". This second mention of weeping in *Andreas* is an emotive addition on the part of the Old English poet with no equivalent in the prose version or Latin analogues (see North and Bintley 2016, pp. 4–6); as suggested by Francis Leneghan, it draws upon a traditional motif of Old English narrative poetry, that of the departure of the hero (Leneghan 2019).

Other collective weepers in Old English poetry are Christ's followers overcome by grief in *Christ II* (*The Ascension*) as their Lord ascends to heaven;12 the sinful people awaiting God's judgement on the Last Day in *Christ II*, <sup>13</sup> *Christ III* (*The Judgement*) <sup>14</sup> and *Judgement Day II*; <sup>15</sup> and the souls in hell enduring their torment. In *Judgement Day II*, the eyes of the damned weep in the eternal fires—"Hwilum þær eagan ungemetum wepað/for þæs ofnes bryne" (ll. 194–95), "There at times eyes weep exceedingly from the burning of that oven". Hell, according to *Christ and Satan* (recalling Matthew 8:12 etc.), is a place

þær is wom and wop wide gehered,

and gristbitungc and gnornungc mecga (Krapp 1931, pp. 135–58, ll. 332–33)

Where noise and weeping are widely heard, and the gnashing of teeth and the lamentation of men.

In *Guthlac B*, thought by some to be authored by Cynewulf (see Bjork 2013, p. 11), the devils will not have long to wait before raising up weeping (Krapp and Dobbie 1936, p. 75, *wop ahofun*, l. 905) after they have been defeated by the saint. In *Christ and Satan* (Krapp 1931), the devils lament their life in hell, without mention of tears, however, while in *Genesis B*, far from weeping, Satan, shackled in hell after his downfall, expresses fierce defiance of God. He casts himself not as a cowed figure of weakness but as an active heroic leader who will exact vengeance on his enemy (Krapp 1931). There is also reference to collective weeping in the *Paris Psalter*, following the Book of Psalms.16

But some individual males *do* weep in the poetry. Most notable among these is Hrothgar in *Beowulf*, who weeps at the departure of Beowulf from Denmark:

Gecyste þa cyning æþelum god, þeoden Scyldinga ðegn bet[e]stan ond be healse genam; hruron him tearas blondenfeaxum. Him wæs bega wen ealdum infrodum, oþres swiðor,

þæt h[i] seoðða(n no) geseon moston, modige on meþle. (Fulk et al. 2008, ll. 1870–876)

Then the king, noble by lineage, the prince of the Scyldings, kissed the best thegn and took hold of him around the neck; tears fell from the grey-haired one. To him, old and wise, there was the expectation of two things, one the stronger likelihood, that they would not at all be permitted to see each other afterwards, noble-spirited ones speaking together.

Some critics have taken a straightforwardly sympathetic view of Hrothgar's behavior here, and the tears are indeed deeply affecting (see Irving 1987, pp. 263–64; Chickering 1977, p. 37; Wright 1967). By contrast, Mary Dockray-Miller argues that the king's weeping is reflective of his weakness and "fading masculinity" (Dockray-Miller [1998] 2006, p. 445).17 Drawing upon the theory of the one-sex model of gender difference (see Laqueur 1992) as discerned by Carol Clover in her analysis of Old Norse literature (Clover [1993] 2006), Dockray-Miller compares the reactions of Beowulf and Hrothgar as they part. Beowulf, at the pinnacle of his manhood, does not reciprocate Hrothgar's outpouring of emotion—"he þone breostwylm forberan ne mehte" (Fulk et al. 2008, l. 1877), "he could not restrain the welling emotion"—but instead remains silent after Hrothgar's display, his mind being on other things (Dockray-Miller [1998] 2006, p. 458). In Clover's terms, Hrothgar's tears reflect "the disabled masculinity" of the old (Clover [1993] 2006, p. 414, n. 68). His weeping defines him as no longer an active warrior and is seen by Dockray-Miller in a negative light: Hrothgar is unmanly.

I would argue, however, that the image of Hrothgar weeping is one intended to elicit sadness rather than criticism. His weeping is a poignant reflection of the reality that he is now an old man who no longer has the vigor of youth. As such, it is not unexpected for him to weep, and he makes no attempt to conceal his tears: in the heroic world, weeping is allowable in the elderly. In weeping, Hrothgar acknowledges his own fading masculinity but also his awareness of the sadness of things, an awareness lacking in the young hero. Later in the poem, Beowulf speaks of Hrothgar lamenting his lost youth: "gioguðe cwiðan" (l. 2112).

As brought out by Kirsten Mills, the emotions of Hrothgar are complex in this scene: the interplay of his feelings "indicates an appreciation on the part of the poet and audience for the intricacies of emotional states" (Mills 2016, p. 175). Mills views Hrothgar's tears in a positive light, arguing indeed that they indicate his authority: "He is in control, publicly performing the emotions he wishes to display, while hiding the emotions he prefers not to reveal" (an allusion to the "dyrne langað", "secret longing", of Hrothgar mentioned a few lines later (l. 1879)). It seems to me that Beowulf is the one in control in the farewell scene, but Hrothgar's tears, while not positive, are not to be disparaged. They should be understood as acceptable behavior in an old man, bearing out the fact that he is an old man.

There is much other lamentation in *Beowulf*, including that of the "last survivor" (ll. 2244–70) and the old man whose son has died on the gallows (ll. 2444–62), but in none of these is weeping specifically mentioned. The only other possible individual male weeper in *Beowulf* (if we take *wop* to denote weeping in the relevant verse) is the unheroic Grendel hardly a role model for a warrior seeking renown—who is heard by the Danes to raise up *wop* (l. 785) in his fight with Beowulf.

Another inglorious warrior is the gold-adorned enemy of the inanimate speaker in Exeter Riddle 71 ("sword"?) (Krapp and Dobbie 1936, p. 232), who weeps under the speaker's attack:

Wepeð hwilum for minum gripe se þe gold wigeð. (ll. 5–6)

At times he weeps because of my attack, he who wears gold.

This enemy lacks the self-control shown by the wounded speaker in the inkhorn riddle.

A weeping male in religious poetry is the attendant of Saint Guthlac in *Guthlac B*. As in the Old English prose *Life of Saint Guthlac* (see above, 3–4), though with more elaboration, he weeps at the news that Guthlac is soon to die:

Þa wæs wop and heaf,

geongum geocer sefa, geomrende hyge

[. . . ], He þæs onbæru

habban ne meahte, ac he hate let

torn þoliende tearas geotan,

weallan wægdropan. (Krapp and Dobbie 1936, p. 79, ll. 1047–48, 1054–57)

Then there was weeping/lamentation and mourning, a sad mood for the young man, a grieving mind ... He could not keep his feelings in check but, enduring his grief, he let his hot tears pour forth, welling drops.

The *Guthlac B* poet also contributes an emotive description of the attendant's weeping on his journey to inform Guthlac's sister of his death:

Him þæs wopes hring torne gemonade. Teagor yðum weol, hate hleordropan, ond on hreþre wæg micle modceare. (Krapp and Dobbie 1936, p. 87, ll. 1339–42)

An outpouring of weeping distressingly reminded him of [Guthlac's death]. His tears welled in waves, hot drops on his cheeks, and in his breast, he bore great grief of spirit.<sup>18</sup>

This added detail (it is not in the Latin) enhances the sense of the attendant's love for his master. We have seen similar displays of grief in prose saints' lives, but it is significant, in a poetic context, that the weeper in *Guthlac B* is a servant rather than someone from the elite class that Old English poetry normally focuses on. In *Guthlac B* the attendant does not even merit a name (he is Beccel in the prose version and its source). Earlier he had been portrayed as lacking in courage—"ða afyrht wearð/ar elnes beloren" (ll. 1326–27), "then he became frightened, the messenger, dispossessed of courage"—and as "unhyðig" (l. 1138), "unhappy", rather than displaying heroic resolution.

In *The Dream of the Rood* (Krapp 1932a, pp. 61–65), the speaking cross relates that it and the two other crosses on Calvary stood weeping (*greotende*, l. 70) after the death of Jesus. The cross portrays itself as a wretched figure in the first part of the poem, abject and passive, while Christ is presented as an active warrior, a young hero, strong and resolute (*strang ond stiðmod*, l. 40). Christ the heroic figure does not weep, but the cross and his companions, lesser beings, express their grief through tears. Of course, if any event in world history was deserving of the tears in Anglo-Saxon England it was the death of Christ. Indeed, the cross exclaims that all creation wept at the time of his death (*weop eal gesceaft*, l. 55).

The two other male figures who weep in distress in Old English hagiographical poetry are more problematic: Matheus and Andreas in *Andreas* (Krapp 1932a, pp. 3–51). Not only are Matheus and Andreas saints (and we have seen in a previous section that saints normally do not weep in distress); they are also presented in *Andreas* in the language of Germanic heroism—they are mighty warriors, and as such should not weep. But they do: a double incongruity.

Influenced by secular traditional poetry, and particularly by *Beowulf* (see Riedinger 1993; Powell 2002; Orchard 2016; North and Bintley 2016, pp. 62–81), *Andreas* begins by describing the twelve apostles in Germanic terms as heroic figures: they are valiant in war (Krapp 1932a, *fyrdhwate*, l. 8), strong warriors (*rofe rincas*, l. 9). Then the poet focuses in on Matheus:

Eadig ond onmod, he mid elne forð wyrðode wordum wuldres aldor. (ll. 54–55)

Blessed and resolute, with courage he continued to show honor in his words towards the Lord of glory.

In the very next sentence after this expression of praise for the saint's *ellen*, "courage", however, Matheus is presented as weeping with miserable tears (*wepende weregum tearum*, l. 59) due to his torments at the hands of the Mermedonians. He vows to God that he is willing to endure death (ll. 72–75), but the tears are incongruous in their poetic context.

The tears of Matheus might be viewed as excusable, in that he is not the protagonist of the legend but a passive figure in need of rescue by the powerful Andreas, but the idea of a passive saint is in itself an incongruity: Matheus is still an apostle, and he is portrayed as heroic. In addition, the powerful Andreas himself succumbs to weeping in his time of torment in Mermedonia. The narrative is replete with references to Andreas's prowess, for example, as he prepares to set out on his mission: he is "bold in thought" (*þriste on geþance*, 237), "a brave-spirited warrior" (*cempa collenferhð*, l. 538), "hard in battle" (*wiges heard*, l. 839) and so on. But in his time of trial Andreas weeps as he recounts the extent of his suffering: "weop werigferð" (l. 1400), "he wept weary in his spirit", taking heart eventually when God promises to protect him and tells him not to weep: "Ne wep þone wræcsið" (l. 1431), "Do not weep for your wretched experience".

The *Andreas* poet clearly wishes to adhere to the details of the story as they were inherited from the Latin source (North and Bintley 2016, pp. 4–6), and so faithfully transmits the references to Andreas and Matheus weeping during their torment. The saints express emotion in a human way: they are flawed individuals from the genre of apocryphal acts of the apostles, as discussed above (p. 8), rather than figures of perfection. God has to rebuke the "sinful" Andreas (*synnig*, l. 921) for showing reluctance about undertaking his mission to Mermedonia (ll. 926–32) and again when he ends his ministry there prematurely (ll. 1669–74). As suggested by Herbison, the *Andreas* poet gets himself into something of a generic bind in converting intractable source material into "regular" hagiography (Herbison 2000). The incongruity of *Andreas* is that, while including inherited humanizing details typical of the apocryphal acts, the poet also follows the idealizing approach of hagiography as adapted to the mode of traditional Old English poetry, in which heroes are beyond human frailty and negativity. This incongruity is apparent in the inclusion of apostolic tears as well as in the wider range of features noted by Herbison.

#### **3. Tears of Compunction**

The emotion of compunction is the cause of some of the most copious tears in Old English writings. Compunction is a special kind of distress: it is that "pricking" or "stinging" (Greek *katanyxis*, Latin *compunctio*, Old English *inbryrdness* [on the Old English vocabulary of compunction, see Izdebska 2020, pp. 85–86; Thornbury 2007; McEntire 1990, pp. 81–88]) of the heart that "may strengthen [one's] relationship with God and effect [one's] own salvation" (McCormack 2015, p. 145). Developed originally in the Eastern church (see Mellas 2020, pp. 1–24; Hunt 2004; Chryssavgis 2004; Hausherr and Hufstader 1982), the idea of compunction became a central feature of Christian spirituality in the early medieval West, where its principles were most influentially propounded by Gregory the Great (see Williams and Steenbrugge 2020; McEntire 1986, 1990). Gregory discusses compunction in his *Dialogues* (de Vogüé 1978–1980, II, pp. 398–402), which were widely known in Anglo-Saxon England and indeed translated into Old English (Hecht; see Lapidge 2006, p. 304). Among thinkers who took up Gregory's understanding of compunction was Alcuin of York in a passage in his *De virtutibus et vitiis* (*PL* 101, 613–38D), a work also widely known in Anglo-Saxon England and also translated into Old English (Warner 1917, pp. 99–100; see Szarmach 1990; Lapidge 2006, p. 251; Clayton 2013).19

Gregory recognizes two kinds of compunction, as transmitted in the Old English version of the *Dialogues*:

soðlice ealdorlice syndon tu cyn þære inbryrdnesse, þæt is, þonne seo sawl þyrsteð 7 lysteþ Zodes rices, ærest heo byþ inbryrded mid eZe 7 æfter þon mid lufan. Ærest heo swænceð hi sylfe mid tearum, þonne heo Zemynað þa Zyltas hire yfelra dæda 7 ondrædeþ, þæt heo scyle for þam þrowian þa ecan cwicsusla; 7 þonne heo byð mid lanZre nearonesse þære ZnornunZe forht 7 Zeswænced 7

fornæmed, þonne æt nehstan byþ acænned of bælde forZifnesse sorhleasnes, 7 þæt mod byþ inæled in þære lufan heofonlicra Zefeana, 7 seo sawl, þe ær weop, þæt heo ne sceolde beon Zelæded to þam ecan wite, heo onZinneð æfter þan weopan biterlice, forþon þe hire þynceð lanZ seo ylding 7 seo uferung, hwænne heo cume to Zode. (Hecht 1900, pp. 244–45, ii. 34)

In truth there are principally two kinds of compunction, that is, when the soul thirsts for and desires the kingdom of God, first it is stimulated with fear and after that with love. First it oppresses itself with tears when it remembers the sins of its evil deeds and fears that it must suffer eternal hell-torment for them; and when it is afraid and oppressed and worn out with the long-lasting distress of lamentation, then finally the security of having been boldly forgiven will be born, and the mind will be inspired in the love of heavenly joy, and the soul, which previously wept that it should not be led to eternal torment, will begin after that to weep bitterly because the wait and the delay seem long to it until it may come to God.<sup>20</sup>

Compunction is an emotion particularly associated with monastic spirituality as affirmed by the Rule of St. Benedict (White 2008, chp 4, p. 18),<sup>21</sup> but in Anglo-Saxon England (as elsewhere) it is also widely urged upon the faithful more generally. McEntire stresses the importance of sermons in transmitting the doctrine to laypeople (McEntire 1990, pp. 92–108).

Ælfric adopts Gregory's distinction when he writes in Homily 9 of the first series of his *Catholic Homilies*,

On twa wisan byð se mann onbryrd ærest he him ondræt hellewite 7 bewæpð his synna syððan he nimð eft lufe to gode; þonne onginð he to murcnienne 7 þincð him to lang hwænne he beo genumen of þyses lifes earfoðnyssum. 7 gebroht to ecere reste.<sup>22</sup> (Clemoes 1997, ll. 89–92)

In two ways is a person stimulated to compunction: first he fears the torment of hell and weeps for his sins; afterwards he again feels love for God; then he begins to grieve and it seems to him too long until he be taken from the afflictions of this life and brought to eternal rest.

Most references to tears of compunction in Old English prose texts are to the former kind, those of penitence and remorse for past sins. Thus, to give a few instances from a range of literature, *Blickling* Homily 5 speaks of overcoming the threat of hell with "fasts and prayers and the shedding of tears" (*mid fæstenum & mid gebædum & mid teara gytum*, 61, ll. 19–20) (Morris 1874/1876/1880, pp. 54–65). In Homily 3 of his second series of *Catholic Homilies*, Ælfric directs that each member of the faithful should "weep for their sins and atone for them with true repentance according to the direction of wise teachers" (*he sceal his synna bewepan. and mid soðre behreowsunge gebetan æfter wisra lareowa tæcunge*, ll. 226–27) (Godden 1979, pp. 19–28). I have already referred to the beginning of *Vercelli* Homily 4, which urges people to weep and fear for their sins (p. 2, above).

Among narrative texts, tears of compunction are shed, for example, in the *Old English Martyrology*, where the penitent sinner Saint Pelagia weeps profusely: "weop heo sona swa ðæt hyre fleowon þa tearas of ðam eagum swa swa flod" (Rauer 2013, p. 202), "she wept at once so that her tears streamed from her eyes like rivers"; Saint Mary Magdelene does likewise (Rauer 2013, p. 133). Particularly copious are the tears of compunction of another penitent sinner, Saint Mary of Egypt, whose moment of conversion comes at the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. According to the account of her conversion that Mary gives in the Old English *Life*,

Þa onhran soðlice min mod and þa eagan minre heortan hælo andgit, mid me sylfre þendende þæt me þone ingang belucen þa unfeormeganda minra misdæda. Ða ongan ic biterlice wepan and swiðe gedrefed mine breost cnyssan and of

inweardre heortan heofende forðbringan þa geomorlican siccetunga. (Magennis 2002, ll. 484–89; Skeat 1881–1900, II, ll. 424–29)

Then knowledge of salvation truly touched my mind and the eyes of my heart, when I reflected that the inexpiable circumstances of my misdeeds had closed the entrance against me. Then I began to weep bitterly and to beat my breast in great tribulation and, from deep in my heart, to bring forth sorrowful sighs.

Mary recounts how she ran weeping on her journey to the River Jordan (*wepende be þam siðfæte arn*, Magennis 2002, l. 570; Skeat 1881–1900, II, ll. 494–95) and how she wept continually as she began her solitary life of repentance in the desert, strengthened by her devotion to the Virgin Mary (Magennis 2002, ll. 629–30, 735–38; Skeat 1881–1900, II, ll. 541–42, 546–49).

The *Life of Saint Mary of Egypt* also has what may be seen as tears of compunction of the second kind, tears of desire for heaven. These occur in the response of the monk Zosimus to his encounter with Mary. To Zosimus, as to the reader of her *Life*, Mary is a superior being, a manifestation of heavenly perfection in the world, and he continuously weeps in her presence. Some of Zosimus's tears arise from self-pity and misplaced grief, but he also weeps in awe and desire for the transcendence that Mary represents. She walks on water, can recite the *Credo* and *Pater noster* even though she has never been taught them, and somehow she knows Zosimus's name and details about his monastery; at the time of her death she leaves a written message for Zosimus, despite having told him that she had never learned to read or write. In the face of such supernatural powers, Zosimus is overcome with weeping: he weeps as she begins the salutary story of her life—"Se ealda mid tearum ofergoten ongan biterlice wepan" (Magennis 2002, l. 359; Skeat 1881–1900, II, l. 322), "The old man suffused with tears began to weep bitterly"—and as she continues it—"soðlice þa eorðan mid tearum ofergeotende" (Magennis 2002, l. 408; Skeat 1881–1900, II, l. 363), "truly soaking the ground with his tears".

Tears of desire for heaven are also shed by Ælfric's Saint Agatha in his *Lives of Saints*, fervent in her wish for martyrdom—"Ðis heo cwæð mid wope" (l. 22), "she spoke this with weeping" (Skeat 1881–1900, I, pp. 194–209, l. 22)—while in Ælfric's life of Saint Cuthbert in the second series of his *Catholic Homilies* the hermit Herebert prays "with eyes fluttering with tears" (*mid floteriendum tearum*) that he may travel to heaven at the same time as Cuthbert (Godden 1979, pp. 81–92, ll. 314–15). Elsewhere, Ælfric preaches that we should long for heaven "mid modes geomerunge 7 mid manegum tearum", "with lamentation of the mind and with many tears" (Pope 1967/1968, II, pp. 567–83, l. 146). In the *Old English Martyrology* it is reported that Saint Lupus was accustomed to praying in tears (*on wependum gebedum*, Rauer 2013, p. 146), and in the anonymous *Life of the Seven Sleepers* there may be an element of compunction in the tears that the emperor Theodosius sheds over the risen saints, figures of heavenly transfiguration: "he þa beclypte hi ealle, and for þære micelan blysse synderlice he weop ofer ælcne" (Magennis 1994, ll. 756–57; Skeat 1881–1900, ll. 823–24), "then he embraced them all, and because of his joy he wept over each of them separately". As he weeps over them, it seems to Theodosius that he is standing before God himself in his majesty: "and nu me þincð eac swilce ic stande gesewenlice æt his wuldorfullan mægenþrymme foran and his agene stefne gehyre" (Magennis 2002, ll. 761–62; Skeat 1881–1900, ll. 827–30), "and now it seems to me also as though I stand visibly before his glorious majesty and hear his own voice".

The theme of compunction has also been discerned in Old English poetry, specifically *The Wanderer* (see Palmer 2004), and one might also suggest that this theme provides the motivating emotion in *The Dream of the Rood*; in neither of these poems, however, is compunction mentioned specifically.23 Frances McCormack interprets the "bloody tears" (*blodigum tearum*, l. 1174) of *Christ III* (Krapp and Dobbie 1936, pp. 27–49) shed by personified trees at the time of Christ's crucifixion, as tears of compunction (McCormack 2015),<sup>24</sup> though these might also be taken to be tears of sympathy and grief: a few lines later it is stated that the trees "became sorrowful" (*unrot gewearð*, l. 1182) as they perceived the suffering of the Lord. Clearer-cut examples of tears of compunction come in the homiletic

piece *Judgement Day II* (Dobbie 1942, pp. 58–67) and the epilogue to Cynewulf's *Juliana* (Krapp and Dobbie 1936, pp. 113–133). In *Judgement Day II* the penitent speaker calls upon his eyes to send forth tears:

Ic bidde eow benum nu ða þæt ge ne wandian wiht for tearum, ac dreorige hleor dreccað mid wope and sealtum dropum sona ofergeotaþ, and geopeniað man ecum drihtne. (ll. 33–37)

I ask you now then with supplications that you do not at all turn aside from tears but that you drench my sorrowing cheeks with weeping and at once flood them with salty drops and that you reveal my guilt to the eternal Lord.

*Judgement Day II* mentions tears of compunction again as it preaches the necessity for repentance while there is still time:

Nu þu scealt greotan, tearas geotan, þa hwile tima sy and tid wopes; nu is halwende þæt man her wepe and dædbote do drihtne to willan. (Dobbie 1942, ll. 82–85)

Now you must weep, pour forth tears, while there is time and tide for weeping; now it is salutary that one weep here and make repentance according to the Lord's will.

The reference to compunction at the end of *Juliana* comes in a strikingly personal passage, in which the speaker declares,

Sar eal gemon, synna wunde, þe ic siþ oþþe ær geworhte in worulde. Þæt ic wopig sceal tearum mænan. (ll. 709–12)

I remember all the pains, the wounds of sin, that I did in the world, recently or in the past. Weeping I must sorrow for that with tears.

He laments that he has felt shame too late for his sinful deeds (*Wæs an tid to læt/þæt ic yfeldæda ær gescomede*, ll. 712–13). In this epilogue, as he contemplates his own death, the speaker imaginatively applies the image of tears of compunction as part of an emotional recognition of his own unworthiness and his need for intercession from Saint Juliana and from anyone who recites his poem (*þe þis gied wræce*, l. 719).

The *Juliana* image is also notable as an original contribution by Cynewulf rather than being translated or adapted from a Latin source, as is the case with most of the instances referred to in this section. Even *Judgement Day II* very much takes its lead in the portrayal of tears from images in its source, Bede's poem *De die iudicii* (Fraipont 1955, pp. 439–44; Allen and Calder 1976, pp. 208–12).25

Tears in Old English are almost invariably the result of external factors and are usually shed in some kind of social context. The tears of compunction, on the other hand, spring from personal introspection, and lack a social dimension. They may be shed in the presence of others (Mary of Egypt asking the Virgin Mary for aid, for example, or Theodosius weeping before the Seven Sleepers), but they are not aimed at anyone other than the self in the recognition of its relationship to God. Nor are tears of compunction gendered, even in Old English poetry: "Cynewulf" sheds tears of compunction in *Juliana*, thereby rejecting the values of the secular heroic world with its disapproval of male weeping, while the preaching in *Judgement Day II* may be seen as directed at both men and women.

#### **4. Other Tears**

Tears of *supplication* are a fairly familiar theme in religious prose (but not in extant verse26). Such tears can accompany fervent entreaty of the Almighty, as in *Blickling* Homily 7 (Morris 1874/1876/1880, pp. 82–97), in which the holy souls in hell beg Christ "mid wependre halsunga" (ibid., 87, l. 8), "with weeping supplication", for release as he harrows hell. According to *Vercelli* Homily 15, the Virgin Mary will weepingly ask her son to have mercy on the host of sinners at the Last Judgement: "þonne ariseð heo mid wependre stefne 7 gefealleð to Cristes cneowum 7 to his fotum" (Scragg 1992, ll. 143–144), "then she will arise with weeping voice and fall to Christ's knees and to his feet". The *Old English Martyrology* reports that Saint Gregory interceded with his tears and with his prayers (*mid his tearum ond mid his gebedan*, Rauer 2013, p. 64) for the soul of the pagan emperor Trajan (see O'Loughlin and Conrad-O'Briain 1993).27

Examples of tears in supplication to saints are those of the *wyln*, "female servant", in Ælfric's *Life of Saint Swithun* (Skeat 1881–1900, II, pp. 440–71), who, condemned to be flogged, begs Swithun to help her: "mid wope clypode to ðam halgan swyðune þæt he gehulpe hire earmre" (ll. 169–170), "she called out with weeping to the holy Swithun that he help her in her wretchedness". In the prose *Life of Saint Guthlac* (the episode is not included in the *Guthlac* poems), relatives of the nobleman Hwætred ask the saint, "wepende" (Gonser 1909, chp. 12, l. 37), "weeping", to exorcize the evil spirit that possesses him; interestingly, there is no mention of weeping at the corresponding point in the Latin original (compare chp. 41 of Felix's *Vita*, Colgrave 1956).

The tears of supplication mentioned so far are "genuine" tears addressed sincerely to an authority figure. There is one example in Old English of feigned or manipulative tears (though it could be argued that to some extent all tears of supplication have an element of manipulation).28 This comes in the Old English translation of chapters from the *Vitae Patrum*, where a monk is deceived by the fake weeping of a woman who wishes to seduce him: she approaches him "with a weeping voice" (*woplicre stefne*, l. 29) and "crying, lamenting" (*woperiende*, l. 32) (Assmann 1889, pp. 109–207, l 32).<sup>29</sup> The monk has a narrow escape.

Tears of *sympathy* or *compassion* also occur occasionally in Old English hagiographical prose: tears of sympathy or compassion are one kind of weeping regarded as unproblematically appropriate for holy men and women. We noticed in an earlier section a couple of instances of saints weeping in sympathy, including one involving Saint Martin (p. 5, above). Martin also weeps in Ælfric's *Life of Saint Martin* in *Lives of Saints* when he has pity on his fellow monks who are distressed that he is soon to die: "þa wearð se halga wer mid þysum wordum astyrod. and clypode mid wope" (Skeat 1881–1900, l. 1341–1342), "then the holy man became moved at these words and called out with weeping"; the episode is also in the *Blickling* version of the life of Martin (Morris 1874/1876/1880, p. 225, ll. 24–26). The transvestite Saint Euphrosyne weeps for her distraught father when he visits her in her monastery and does not recognize her in her monkly garb: "þa wearð heo eall mid tearum geond-goten" (*Life of Saint Euphrosyne*, Skeat 1881–1900, l. 234), "then she was all suffused with tears". In one of the Old English lives of Saint Margaret it is the saint who is the object of pity, when women weep at the torment she must endure: "And ealle þa fæmnan þe þe þær stoden weopen bitterlice for þæm blode" (p. 118), "And all the women who stood there wept bitterly because of the blood" (Clayton and Magennis 1994, pp. 112–39, ll. 4–5).

Images of weeping in supplication and weeping in sympathy in Old English prose have invariably been transmitted from Latin sources. There is one occurrence of sympathetic weeping in the poetry, and it is an occurrence that is the contribution of the Old English poet rather than being inherited. In the free adaptation of Genesis in *Genesis A*, the narrator pauses in the account of the killing of Abel to comment that it is not in vain that we weep at this baleful story:

We þæt spell magon, wælgrimme wyrd, wope cwiðan, nales holunga. (Krapp 1931, ll. 995–997)

Not at all without cause can we lament that story with tears, that slaughter-grim fate.

The evoking of communal tears in response to the story of Cain and Abel, which brought violence to humanity, heightens the emotion of the narration. Such a touch, involving narrator and audience, is not paralleled elsewhere in the poem, however, or indeed elsewhere in Old English poetry.

Other kinds of weeping appear sporadically in the corpus. In the prose *Life of Saint Guthlac*, Beccel is deceived by the devil into wanting to kill the saint: regretting his sin, he confesses to Guthlac: "and þa sona mid tearum him his synne andette" (Gonser 1909, chp. 7, l. 32), "and then at once with tears he confessed his sin to him". Beccel's tears may be seen as denoting *shame*. Tears of shame are shed too in Ælfric's account of the emperor Theodosius's response to the rebuke of Saint Ambrose after an infamous massacre in Thessalonica: "He sæt þa on hys bure biterlice wepende" (l. 80), "He sat in his room weeping bitterly"; "he beot hys breost, biterlice wepende" (l. 131), "he beat his breast, weeping bitterly" (Homily 26 in Pope 1967/1968, II, pp. 762–69).30

Tears of *reverence* or *awe* are portrayed in the *Life of Saint Euphrosyne*, where a one-eyed man weeps as he kisses the saint's body and is healed by touching it (Skeat 1881–1900, l. 321). In the *Old English Martyrology*, Saint Eadberht weeps to learn of the uncorrupted state of Saint Cuthbert's body (Rauer 2013, p. 98). The tears of Zosimus before Saint Mary of Egypt, mentioned above, express awe and reverence for her, an aspect of the compunction he experiences.

The other "positive" tears in Old English are those of *joy* or *relief*. Joy is expressed through weeping at the reuniting of families in the romance tales of Eustace and Apollonius of Tyre. Eustace weeps with great joy (*for micelre blisse weop*, *Life of Saint Eustace*, Skeat 1881–1900, l. 364) on being reunited with his wife, and the whole family weeps (l. 382), giving thanks to God, when the sons are also found. In *Apollonius of Tyre* Arcestrate weeps on being reunited with Apollonius (Goolden 1958, p. 38, l. 7), and all the local people join in: "And hig weopon ða ealle and eac blissodon" (p. 38, l. 12), "And they all wept and also rejoiced".31 There is much weeping for joy in the *Life of Saint Nicholas* (Treharne 1997, pp. 83–100 (text), 101–117 (translation)): for example, a poor man weeps each time when Nicholas leaves gifts of gold for him on three nights (ll. 93, 102, 114–15).<sup>32</sup> Similarly, in the *Life of Saint Giles* sailors weep when the saint calms a storm (Treharne 1997, l. 78); Giles himself weeps when the Lord shows him a place to live (l. 174) and again when he finds a water spring (l. 240). In the Old English translation of chapters from the *Vitae Patrum* a monk weeps for joy having been spared from sexual sin (Assmann 1889, l. 121).<sup>33</sup> In *Saint Mary of Egypt* Zosimus expresses joy (*wynsumigende*, Magennis 2002, l. 902; Skeat 1881–1900, l. 756) to find out Mary's name after she has passed away, and he goes on to weep glorifying God at her miraculous journey (Magennis 2002, ll. 908–09; Skeat 1881–1900, ll. 761–62); this weeping may be seen as combining joy with reverence at such wonders, as well at sorrow at Mary's passing.

In the romance-like (see further Anlezark 2006) biblical story of Joseph and his brothers transmitted in the Old English *Heptateuch*, Joseph sheds tears of joy at being united with his brothers: "And he weop and clypode hludre stemne" (Genesis 45:2, Marsden 2008, p. 79), "And he wept and called out with a loud voice"; and again, "And he clypte hira ælcne and cyste hig and weop" (45:15, Marsden 2008, p. 80), "and he embraced each of them and kissed them and wept". As Jonathan Wilcox points out, however, the mention of Joseph's tears is reduced in the Old English: verses 2 ("And he lifted up his voice with weeping") and 15 of Genesis ("And Joseph kissed all his brethren and wept upon every one of them") are translated, but not verse 14 ("And falling upon the neck of his brother Benjamin he embraced him and wept, and Benjamin in like manner wept also on his neck"). Wilcox sees in this omission a "downplaying" of weeping in a male authority figure, and wonders, "Is the biblical account too ready to show its lead protagonist in tears for the comfort of an Anglo-Saxon audience?" (Wilcox 2012, p. 29).

Joseph has also wept upon first seeing Benjamin, concealing this weeping from his brothers: "And he wearþ swa swiþe astirod, þæt him feollon tearas for his broþor þingon and he eode into his beddclyfan and weop" (43:30, Marsden 2008, p. 77), "And he was so severely afflicted that tears fell from him on account of his brother's experiences and he went into his bedchamber and wept" (Wilcox 2012, p. 23), closely paraphrasing the Vulgate original. Here Joseph's emotions are more conflicted—he experiences joy, yes, but he has also deceived his brothers (who have tried to murder him) and continues to deceive them, and his feelings towards them are distinctly mixed.<sup>34</sup>

Also mixed are the feelings of the protagonist in the *Life of Saint Eustace* when tracked down by former acquaintances in his place of seclusion. As noted above, Eustace weeps when eventually reunited with his family, but he also weeps earlier in the narrative in this scene in which he is visited by old companions who do not recognize him at first. Eustace is joyful at seeing them, but they also remind him of the successful life he once had but lost, and he is also anxious to keep his identity from them. As he serves them a meal, he "gemunde hu hi him ær þenod[on]. and ne mihte forberan þæt he ne weope. ac eode ut and þwoh his eagan" (Skeat 1881–1900, ll. 262–64), "remembered how they had served him and could not forbear to weep but went out and washed his eyes".35 In this affecting scene, reminiscent of Joseph meeting Benjamin, Eustace is overcome by emotion but manages to conceal that emotion from his guests.

These scenes in the *Hexateuch* and the *Life of Saint Eustace* of individuals retreating to a private room to weep are instances of a trope that occurs elsewhere in hagiography/romance texts, including one translated into Old English: we noticed, above, the private weeping of Theodosius (I) when rebuked about a massacre he had been responsible for. Withdrawal from public view indicates a turbulence of the mind that the affected person, who is someone in authority, wishes to conceal from others. An analogous scene occurs in the *Legend of the Seven Sleepers* when Theodosius (II) is grieved and confused about a heresy that has sprung up in his time, though this scene does not specifically mention weeping among its signs of distress (Magennis 1992, ll. 359–60; Skeat 1881–1900, ll. 391–96).<sup>36</sup> Privacy to express emotion is not otherwise sought by people in Old English writings.

There is one instance of tears of joy in Old English poetry: in *Elene*. Elene weeps for joy at the recovery of the nails from Christ's cross:

Þa wæs wopes hring, hat heafodwylm ofer hleor goten, (nalles for torne tearas feollon ofer wira gespon), wuldres gefylled cwena willa. (Krapp 1932a, ll. 1131–35)

Then there was the sound of weeping, a hot surge from her head poured over her cheeks (not at all for grief did tears fall upon her filigree clasp), the desire of the queen was fulfilled with glory.

Unlike the prose instances of tears of joy, this striking image is an emotive addition on the part of Cynewulf to the inherited text.

#### **5. Concluding Remarks**

*Tearas feollon* widely in Old English prose and poetry, and most of them presented as appropriate and worthy; but some as inappropriate, including tears of *tristitia* and tears of distress shed by active males. Tears in Old English express individual or communal sorrow and pain (as well as other emotions), but, whether individual or communal, they do so almost invariably in a social setting, functioning gesturally in the presence of others. Only the practice of tears of compunction and the motif of tears shed in a private room lack this social dimension; in the latter case privacy is sought by a figure in authority who conceals his weeping, while in the former the person weeping looks inward, the presence of others being irrelevant.

The references to weeping cited in this study are mostly representative of the wider literary tradition in the early Middle Ages, with Old English texts, especially prose texts, passing on to vernacular audiences images inherited from Latin writings; in doing so, they

focus particularly on tears of compunction and tears of distress, familiar themes in early medieval Christendom. Yet close dependence on Latin originals can lead to incongruities, such as those that arise in the transmission of apocryphal acts and other untypical saints' lives, in which protagonists are shown not as perfected figures of sanctity in accordance with hagiographical convention but as flawed human beings who learn from experience. They shed unsaintly tears of distress. Some Old English translators seem unconcerned about such incongruity, and indeed the *Legend of the Seven Sleepers* (uniquely in Old English prose) actively embraces the humanity of its saints; but such portrayals are not acceptable to a purist like Ælfric.

Old English Christian poetry is freer in its treatment of sources, and has a number of images of weeping original to the vernacular works, not least in the poetry of Cynewulf (even more so if *Guthlac B* is accepted as Cynewulfian). Old English poetry also inherited from Germanic secular tradition an understanding that weeping is inappropriate in active men, an understanding that can be seen reflected in *Beowulf* but also in religious narrative, in which weeping is largely confined to women and groups. The idea of weeping as inappropriate for a hero leads to incongruity in *Andreas*, however, in which both Matheus and Andreas shed tears of distress in their times of torment. The Old English poet is faithful to the source in transmitting the weeping of the two saints, but thereby contradicts not only the idea of active men not weeping but also the principle that saints don't weep: a compound discrepancy. The compunctive weeping of "Cynewulf" signals his repudiation of the values of the heroic world.

The understanding that active men should not weep may be seen as operative in the culture more widely than traditional poetry, as Wilcox's argument that the *Hexateuch* translator deliberately reduces the male weeping in the Joseph story suggests. The idea that grown men should not weep also gives resonance to the weeping of the Seven Sleepers (heightened in the Old English), who come across as little more than children in their unheroic response to persecution.

We have also noted other kinds of tears in the Old English corpus, including those of supplication, sympathy and joy. Tears of these kinds are confined to specifically Christian literature, and, as with other weeping in Old English—with the exception of the motif of an authority figure withdrawing to an inner room—they are public. There are no tears of supplication in secular poetry, as sympathy is in short supply there, while joy (as noted by Pàroli 1990, pp. 243–44; Magennis 1992) is associated with laughter, not tears.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.

#### **Abbreviations**



#### **Notes**


#### **References**


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