ABSTRACT

The memorials of the days of Anglo-Saxon heathendom are unfortunately few. The only work which we can ascribe with any degree of certainty to so early a period of their history, or rather of the history of their forefathers before they came here, is the poem of Beowulf, of which an edition has been given by Mr Kemble; and this poem has been much interpolated by Christian transcribers before it was reduced to the state in which it has come down to us. The chief exploit of the hero, Beowulf the Geat, is the destruction of the two monsters Grendel and his mother; both, like most of the evil beings of old times, dwellers in the fens and waters; and both moreover, as some Christian bard has taken care to inform us, ‘of Cain’s kin,’ as were also the eotens, and the elves, and the orcs (eotenas, and ylfe, and orcneas). The haunt of the Grendels was a lake in the middle of a dark and dreary morass; it was overshadowed by the thick branches of an ancient wood, and by night the surface of its waters appeared covered with flame (v. 2714). [Quotes and translates lines 1357b-1366a, and then paraphases briefly the Breca-episode, the mere-description, and the dragon-fight, quoting and translating also ll. 2756-70.]

Popular superstitions are not easily removed; and with the introduction of Christianity, the Anglo-Saxons did not cease to believe in the existence and operations of the elves and the nicers, the orcs and the giants; nor did they cease to trust in the effects of charms and incantations, or to revere wells and fountains. The preacher of the faith of their redeemer saw nothing in that faith which was contrary to the belief they had sucked in even with their mother’s milk; for though it asserted the unity of God, it did not deny the existence of spirits. It was impossible, however, that so great a change should be made as the total subversion of the previously established religion of a country, without affecting in some measure event the superstitions of the peasant; and we find, accordingly, that the Christian

according to the proportion wherein Christianity or heathendom ruled in their minds. Hence we hear at one time of the elfin descendants of the first murderer, Cain, who were fated to wander over the waters and fens, the terror and scourge of mankind; at another, of the spirits unworthy of heaven, yet too good for hell, who were allowed or compelled to inhabit the air, and the water and the earth. [Goes on to complain of monastic censorship.]

The monks, however, were not content with giving a different account of the origin and nature of the elves, but they at once transformed them into devils, whose business it was to plague and tempt frail mortality. They moreover adopted the popular stories, and turned them into saints’ legends; and a more extensive knowledge of the Anglo-Saxon fairies may perhaps be gathered by a careful perusal of the legends of the Anglo-Saxon saints, than all the other books together can afford us. It only need be borne in mind, that in transformation the elves, when mischievously inclined, became devils; when beneficent, angels. The fens and wilds are in Beowulf constantly peopled by troops of elves and nicers and worms (dragons and serpents). So in the saints’ legends are they ever the haunts of hobgoblins (dæmones); and many and fierce were the struggles between them and the hermits, before the latter succeeded in establishing themselves in their deserted abodes. [Turns to the legends of St Guthlac and St Botolf.]