Anglo-Saxon Period

The Anglo-Saxon (or Old English) period is broadly defined as extending from the earliest written records (ca. 500) to 1100, when the social and linguistic effects of the Norman Conquest started to become apparent. This was the period when the Germanic peoples traditionally called the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes invaded and settled Britain. The literary materials that have survived are of a high moral tone, including the epic poem Beowulf (ca. 900), various heroic lays or narrative poems, saints’ lives, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , the laws of some of the Saxon kings, charms, and gnomic verses or “wisdom literature.” The sole exception lies in the miscellaneous riddles, some of which are certainly obscene.

Consequently what the Anglo-Saxon “language of the street” was like is not known. However, there are numerous instances of maxims that stress the importance of using language in a disciplined and responsible way, as in this quotation from The Wanderer: “A wise man must be patient, not over-passionate nor over-hasty in speech” (ll. 65-68). Such prescriptions stress the vital, indeed sacred link between words and deeds. The Gnomic Verses contain much proverbial material endorsing loyalty, such as “Faith shall be in an earl” (Gordon 1954, l. 314). Numerous warnings concern the punishment awaiting the man who breaks faith and is thus ostracized to the feared condition of exile, movingly depicted as the state of a solitary wanderer.

The epic, heroic, and moralizing qualities of the surviving Anglo-Saxon poetry limit the kind of swearing encountered there to asseverations. Oaths are reserved for the serious commitments of the warrior ethic. When Beowulf makes a public undertaking to the Danish King Hroðgar and his followers to rid them of the threat of the cannibalistic monster Grendel (ll. 636-38), his word is taken not merely as a statement of intent but as an article of faith. Perhaps most revealing is the point that when this extraordinary hero, slayer of monsters and a dragon, lies dying, Beowulf reflects modestly that he kept faith: “I did not pick treacherous quarrels, nor have I sworn unjustly any oaths” (ll. 2736-39). A revealing moral insight is also provided by the etymology of the word warlock , which is Anglo-Saxon wærloga ,meaning “oath breaker.” Black magic was thus seen as a form of false swearing. When the monster Grendel incapacitates the swords of the Danish warriors by evil spells, the term used is forsworen , “forsworn” (ll. 801-5).

Furthermore, the name of God is mentioned some thirty times in Beowulf , but always in a solemn fashion; it is never “taken in vain.” Religious swearing, which was to become so common from the Middle English period onward, is a rarity. The typical heroic response in a moment of exasperation is dignified, cool, and measured, similar to the convention in the old western films. When Beowulf’s sword breaks in his crucial confrontation with the dragon, he responds with philosophical dignity, not with an expletive typical of his modern equivalent (ll. 2680-87).

While one would expect Beowulf to be an ideal exemplar or role-model, the importance of the self-binding oath is an essential feature of the whole verbal culture. In the Germania (written ca. 55), the Roman historian Tacitus especially noted the prime importance accorded loyalty among the Germanic tribes, some of whom were to become the English. The poem The Battle of Maldon , based on an actual battle between the men of Essex and some marauding Vikings in 991, provides a striking ethical example. When the Vikings arrogantly ask for treasure, assuming that the people of Maldon will buy them off with danegeld , or protection money, rather than fight, the local leader Byrhtnoth gives them a savagely ironic answer: the Vikings can expect spears and swords for tribute (ll. 46-47). (The term answer is significant here, since this now mundane word derives from Anglo-Saxon andswarian , meaning literally “to swear against,” to make a formal legal reply to a charge.) Byrhtnoth was an ealdormann or nobleman, but the acute sense of verbal honor is by no means limited to his class. As the poem unfolds every man in his station from Byrhtnoth, who is “Æ?telredes eorl,” King Ethelred’s earl or viceroy, down the social hierarchy via Aescferth, the hostage from Northumbria, to the humble churl Dunnere, each man is given his dramatic moment to make good the English boast. It is some nobles, in fact, who treacherously flee when Byrhtnoth falls and the battle seems lost. They embody the ignominy Tacitus had noted a thousand years previously: “As for leaving a battle alive after your chief has fallen, that means lifelong infamy and shame” (chapter 14).

The Anglo-Saxon laws corroborate a similar underlying rigor and discipline in the matter of insults. (They also indicate that such language was indeed to be heard, even if it has not survived in the existing texts.) “If anyone in another’s house calls a man a perjurer, or shamefully accosts him with insulting words, he is to pay a shilling to him who owns the house, and six shillings to him to whom he spoke that word, and to pay twelve shillings to the king.” (Laws of Hlothhere and Eadric, kings of Kent [673–685?], no. 11). The Laws of Alfred (900) contain an interesting injunction: “Do not ever swear by the heathen gods.” (This constraint comes some 300 years after Christianity was first brought to England.)

The end of the Anglo-Saxon period shows, however, a sad degeneration of the old traditions of verbal honor. As the land was invaded by the marauding Vikings, so a general demoralization set in. Wulfstan, Archbishop of York at the time of the worst Viking depredations, denounced a wholesale breaking of faith in his jeremiad Sermo Lupi ad Anglos (1025): “Many are forsworn, and grievously perjured, for pledges are broken over and over again” (ll. 87-88).