ABSTRACT
Published 1880; among ‘Translations’. Knowles requested it, 6 Jan. 1877, for the first number of the Nineteenth Century (see III 23; Lincoln; P. Metcalf, TLS, 23 June 1972; also her James Knowles, 1980, p. 277). T. said: ‘I have more or less availed myself of my son’s [H.T.’s] prose translation of this poem in the Contemporary Review (Nov. 1876).’ T. takes over much from H.T., e.g. ll. 23, 30, ‘the bark’s bosom’ (49), ‘on the fallow flood’ (61), 99, 110; but it is clear that T. also studied the original. Like H.T., he used the text and translation in E. Guest’s History of English Rhythms (1838); the copy at Lincoln has annotations by H.T. In Harold, written and published 1876, T. twice refers to ‘that old song of Brunanburg / Where England conquered’ (V i), and the verse (IV iii) breaks into such a style: ‘Marked how the war-axe swang, / Heard how the war-horn sang, / Marked how the spear-head sprang, / Heard how the shield-wall rang, / Iron on iron clang, / Anvil on hammer bang —.’ The tenth-century Old English poem is one of a group of panegyrics on royalty, using an earlier style both in metre and diction. T.’s is in general a close translation. His metre is unrhymed dactylics and trochaics: ‘In rendering this Old English war-song into modern language and alliterative rhythm I have made free use of the dactylic beat. I suppose that the original was chanted to a slow, swinging recitative’ (Harold, Eversley). T. wrote a few lines of a translation of Beowulf 258–63, including ‘The army’s leader / His wordhoard unlocked …’ H.Nbk 4 (c. 1830–1). T.’s headnote: ‘Constantinus, King of the Scots, after having sworn allegiance to Athelstan, allied himself with the Danes of Ireland under Anlaf, and invading England, was defeated by Athelstan and his brother Edmund with great slaughter at Brunanburh in the year 937.’ T. had a copy of Joseph Bosworth’s Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (J. Hixson and P. Scott, TRB ii, 1976, 197). On T.’s poem as a translation, see M. Alexander, TRB iv (1985).
