[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

This has the look to me of a set essay rather than a subject for discussion, but this work of Tolkien's deserves more than any other to be discussed with reference to Anglo-Saxon heroic verse in general, and the Maldon fragment in particular. Perhaps my response will prompt those with more knowledge of the subject to contribute their opinions.

The Battle of Maldon, to which The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth is a sequel, is a late flowering of the English alliterative epic style, in which the battle of August 991 is described from the formation of the English troops to a point just before their final destruction. Most space is given to the speeches of various East-Saxon combatants, housecarles of Beorhtnoth who elect to fight on to the last man rather than retreat; but an important passage that occurs at lines 85-90, shows Beorhtnoth agreeing to a cunning request from the Vikings that they be allowed to cross a vital bridge, which they could only have taken with great difficulty. Beorhtnoth accedes to this request "for his ofermod" (for his excessive pride), and according to Tolkien crosses the line that divides heroism and chivalry. In so doing he condemns those whom he commands to death, and his people to Viking depredations.

It is probably wise to point out at this stage that the word 'chivalry' is not one that the Anglo-Saxons would have recognised. It is a medieval French word that derives from chevalier: a knight or horseman. Tolkien's definition is between the behaviour that one might encounter in the Morte D'Arthur, in which fights to the death are treated as sporting contests, and simple heroism, which causes a man to go to extreme lengths in the pursuance of a particular goal. Beorhtnoth has a duty to his people and to his king to defend them from the invading army, but his insistence on seeing the contest as essentially a sporting one (prompted, no doubt, by excessive self-confidence) causes him to fail in his duty. Heroism, as evinced in his refusal to hand over treasure to the Vikings without a fight, overreaches itself and defeats its own object. By contrast, Beorhtnoth's household, by refusing to abandon their leader and retreat, are shown in much the same light as Tennyson's Light Brigade: men condemned by another's incompetence to die, and yet prepared to do their duty nonetheless. The speech of the old retainer, Beorhtwald, is regarded by many, Tolkien included, as the finest extant expression of the Northern heroic spirit:

Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre,
mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen lytlað.
Her lið ure ealdor eall forheawen,
god on greote. A mæg gnornian
se ðe nu fram þis wigplegan wendan þenceð.
Ic eom frod feores fram ic ne wille,
ac ic me be healfe minum hlaforde,
be swa leofan men, licgan þence

(Thought must be the harder, heart be the keener,
mind must be the greater, while our strength lessens.
Here lies our prince all hewn,
good one on grit. He may always mourn
who from this war-play thinks now to turn.
My life is old: I will not away;
but I myself beside my lord,
by so loved a man, think to lie.)

Beorhtwald's speech is an expression of heroism; of the intent to keep one's word or do one's duty in the face of insurmountable odds. By contrast, his lord's magnanimity toward the enemy is in direct conflict with his responsibilities to those under his command and protection. Beorhtwald is motivated by loyalty, Beorhtnoth by pride and the pursuit of honour. The poet leaves the reader in no doubt as to which is the more noble motive.

A similar lesson is taught by The Wanderer. At lines 66-73, the poet lays down his criteria for a good warrior:

Wita sceal geþyldig,
ne sceal no to hatheort ne to hrædwyrde,
ne to wac wiga ne to wanhydig,
ne to forht ne to fægen, ne to feohgifre
ne næfre gielpes to georn, ær he geare cunne.

Beorn sceal gebidan, þonne he beot spriceð,
oþþæt collenferð cunne gearwe
hwider hreþra gehygd hweorfan wille.
Ongietan sceal gleaw hæle hu gæstlic bið

(The wise man is patient,
not too hot-hearted, nor too quick tongued,
nor a warrior too weak, nor too foolhardy,
neither frightened nor fain, nor yet too wealth-greedy,
nor ever of boasts too eager, before he knows enough.
A warrior should wait when he speaks a vow,
until, bold in mind, he clearly knows
whither mind's thought after will turn.)

The perfect warrior shows moderation in all virtues. Neither is he a coward, nor does he charge into every situation without thinking. He vows only what he knows that he can achieve, and certainly he is never foolhardy. Ofermod is always deprecatory. As Tolkien points out in his essay on the subject, it is used twice in Anglo-Saxon literature: once of Beorhtnoth and once of Lucifer, and a man motivated by it could only be taking a foolhardy action.

Beowulf teaches much the same lesson. Throughout the poem, we see various acts from the eponymous hero that may be considered chivalrous: he insists upon fighting Grendel with his bare hands; he travels to meet Grendel's mother in her own home, even though it is deep underwater; and as an aging king he travels to face a dragon alone, leaving his loyal retainers behind. On the first two occasions, what Beowulf stakes is simply his own life, so despite being contrary to Hygelac's advice to him on departure, they redound to his credit; but as we see from the conclusion of the epic, when he fights the dragon he stakes the wellbeing of his entire kingdom. Beowulf's funeral pyre is that of his people's fortunes, and again the echo can be heard of the cry of 'ofermod' when Wiglaf says: "Oft sceall eorl monig anes willan wreaec adreogan" ("Often by one man's will many must woe endure"), lending force to Hrothgar's exhortation at lines 1758-68, which advises Beowulf to shun pride in favour of eternal rewards. The clear implication is that a leader has more to consider than his own honour. He has a responsibility to those under his command neither to waste their lives nor his needlessly. Beowulf and Beorhtnoth both leave their people without defence against hostile foes, but each is culpable in different ways. Beorhtnoth sacrifices the lives of those most loyal to him for the sake of pride, whereas for the same reason, Beowulf sacrifices the security of his country. In refusing to allow his retainers to aid him, Beowulf denies them the opportunity to discharge their own responsibilities; and eventually the dragon is killed only because his orders are not universally obeyed. In both cases, acts of bravery are carried too far; in both cases this is disastrous.

We can see the same form of contrast throughout Tolkien's writings, but I will confine myself here to two examples: Húrin and Huor's rearguard action at the Nirnaeth Arnoediad and Eärnur of Gondor's acceptance of single combat with the Witch-king.

In the former case, the men of Dor-lómin, led by Húrin and Huor, fight a doomed action to cover Turgon's withdrawal. This is a necessity if any Elven host is to leave the field intact, and the men of Dor-lómin, by their sacrifice, allow a small hope to be retrieved from the crushing defeat.

But the men of Dor-lómin held the rearguard, as Húrin and Huor desired; for they did not wish in their hearts to leave the Northlands, and if they could not win back to their homes, there they would stand to the end.

The Silmarillion p.194

This last stand is heroic because it is necessary. Someone must cover the retreat of Turgon's army, and by so doing the men of Dor-lómin guarantee the future salvation of the Noldor and Edain. The praise that Tolkien has the Elves heap upon Húrin, including naming him Thalion, the Steadfast, are an indication of how Tolkien himself saw this action. The behaviour of Huor and Húrin is directly analogous to that of Beorhtwald: men prepared to die in the service of a cause because to live in defeat is unthinkable.

By contrast, when King Eärnur accepts a challenge from the Witch-king of Angmar to single combat, his action is entirely unnecessary. When the first challenge arrives on his accession to the throne, he is dissuaded from accepting by the counsel of the steward Mardil, whom Tolkien describes as 'the good Steward'. Mardil quite rightly sees the Morgul Lord as one not to be trusted, and the proposed duel as a trap, but we have already been told that Eärnur's courage outstrips his wisdom. When the Witch-king repeats his challenge, adding fresh insults, the king can be restrained no longer and rides out to face his treacherous enemy, exactly as Beorhtnoth allows his enemies the advantage for the sake of his own honour. His inevitable disappearance raises the spectre of the Kin-Strife and places his country, to which his first loyalty ought to be given, in a state of uncertainty. The incident, from the description of Eärnur's character until his disappearance from the narrative makes it plain that his is a selfish and foolish decision; and if Tolkien wrote an account of the last stand against the treacherous enemy, I have no doubt that it would have borne a striking resemblance to the Maldon fragment. One should never, says Tolkien, allow the desire for honour to stand in the way of one's responsibilities and obligations; and in this he echoes the exhortations to wisdom that the ancient poets directed at their warlike and aristocratic audiences.

It is no coincidence that Tolkien and the authors of the other works I have mentioned above shared a common religious belief in the sinfulness of pride. Morgoth, Sauron and the Witch-king are all excessively proud characters, and in each of them this leads them from wisdom into evil and eventual destruction. In giving himself up to the sins of the Enemy, Eärnur literally places himself at their mercy, as the Maldon poet might have said, for his ofermod. By contrast, in sacrificing themselves in the furtherance of a noble cause, Huor and Húrin become deservedly heroic figures in the legends of the Elder Days. Although pride undoubtedly plays a part in the latter action, it is sufficiently restrained to stop at heroic self-sacrifice without bringing this about needlessly.

The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth differs markedly from both its Anglo-Saxon forbears and from Tolkien's other writings in that it does not stop at criticising the folly of chivalrous pride in a leader. It goes on to question war itself and therefore the whole basis of the very epic poetry that inspired it. It is no coincidence that the poetry in the piece is spoken by the callow Torhthelm, whose grandiose verses are deflated by the old soldier Tídwald. When Tídwald does use the rhetoric of epic poetry, it is with satirical intent:

No rest for you yet! Were you reckoning on bed?
The best you'll get is the bottom of the cart
With his body for a bolster.

TORHTHELM

You're a brute, Tída.

TÍDWALD
It's only plain language. If a poet sang you:
'I bowed my head on his breast beloved,
and weary of weeping woeful slept I;
thus joined we journeyed, gentle master
and faithful servant, over fen and boulder
to his last resting and love's ending',
you'd not call it cruel. I have cares of my own
in my heart, Totta, and my head's weary.

As such, although it purports to have pretensions towards being in the Anglo-Saxon alliterative tradition, Beorhtnoth is a self-consciously later work. At the end of the piece, Tolkien incudes both rhyme and the Latin dirige, representing the rhyming verse and religious psalmody that were already displacing the Anglo-Saxon epic when The Battle of Maldon was written. The use of Tídwald's world-weary outlook to counteract Torhthelm's high-flown and courtly verse, while echoing the theme of implicit criticism described above, directly and repeatedly satirises the very poetry it imitates. Torhthelm, who has never seen a battle, sees war as a grand pursuit, filled with noble lords and brave heroes. Tídwald, who, like the dead on the field, has seen it at first hand, speaks in a simpler and more heartfelt style, redolent of the knowledge of his subject:

Aye, that's battle for you,
and no worse today than in wars you sing of,
when Fróda fell, and Finn was slain.
The world wept then as it weeps today:
you can hear the tears through the harp's twanging.
Come, bend your back! We must bear away
the cold leavings.

Although the Anglo-Saxon epics are capable of the world-weariness of Tídwald, they do not criticise the act of war itself as an evil better done without. In this sense, The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth is very much a twentieth-century work. It should never be forgotten that Tolkien's ventures into these ancient styles were those of a modern man and not an Anglo-Saxon. He understood the spirit of the age, but not so instinctively as those living at the time would have understood it. By instinct he understood his own age, which has been too deeply scarred by misplaced heroism and chivalry and by the twisting of meaning and motive to write in the style of Beowulf or the Maldon fragment. Although as late as Tennyson the same effect could be achieved, by Tolkien's day war itself was a disaster, and such defeats as Maldon only lesser tragedies within it. By portraying the conflict between the soldier and the poet, both of which roles he had played himself at one time or another, Tolkien at once attempts to resolve a conflict in himself between his love of epic poetry and what he knew of the reality of warfare, and to pay homage to a world in which he saw so much that was admirable. His motives are those of the modern poet and the historical philologist, and markedly so; but Beorhtnoth still stands as an excellent insight into what lies beyond the poetry: the Anglo-Saxon world that remained Tolkien's main professional interest throughout his career.