A Wirral Location for the Battle of Brunanburh

There has been significant local publicity in the North-West relating to the search for the site of the Battle of Brunanburh.1 The purpose of this article is not to review recent metal detector findings, but to explore why the Wirral would have made strategic sense as the location for the conflict.2 To contextualise the discussion, brief consideration is given to the historical events surrounding the battle, the development of narratives about the conflict (including the claim that it took place near the River Humber), and the place-name evidence. It should be noted that many different locations have been put forward for the battle site, and no doubt arguments for alternative locations will continue. However, consideration of geographical factors as well as linguistic and historical evidence make a strong case that this conflict took place in the Wirral and in the vicinity of present-day Bromborough.

Cheshire’s Celtic Place-Names

Cheshire, settled by Anglo-Saxons in the later seventh century, has many placenames of British origin, as well as Irish place-names given by tenth-century migrants from Ireland. Twenty-seven real or supposed instances are discussed here: Arclid, Antrobus, Arrow, Bollin, Brynn, Cilgwri, Crewe, Dane, Dee, Eccleston, Goyt, Ince, Landican, Liscard, Lostock, Lyme, Mellor, Mottram, Noctorum, Peover, Rhedynfre, Tarvin, Tintwistle, Tybrunawt/Tybrunawg, Weaver, Werneth, Wheelock. Ten of them are provided with derivations at variance with The Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names and other handbooks. Also discussed are three Welsh forms (Cilgwri, Rhedynfre, Tybrunawt/Tybrunawg) sometimes related to Cheshire. Although the second is certainly Farndon in the county’s south-west, the first and third have no Cheshire link. Cilgwri may be identified as a place near Corwen, Denbighshire. Tybrunawt/Tybrunawg or ‘Brunian House, House on (the River) Browney’, a book-name for the location of the Battle of Brunanburh in 937, should be identified with the Roman fortress of Lanchester above the River Brune or Browney, Co. Durham. Hence Brunanburh means ‘fortress of the Browney’. Other historical information is provided by Arclid, apparently the Arecluta where the British-Latin writer Gildas was born in 493. Analysis of toponyms thus provides new data on Cheshire’s past, while refuting earlier theories.

‘From scarped cliff and quarried stone a thousand types gone’

Tennyson’s knowledge of Anglo-Saxon is reassessed in order to disprove the common opinion that he had only rudimentary knowledge of the language, and relied mainly on his son’s prose translation of The Battle of Brunanburh in order to make a poetic version of that text. Detailed examination of manuscript evidence proves that Tennyson applied himself to serious and sustained study of Anglo-Saxon, and this chapter identifies for the first time texts, including dictionaries, that he used to teach himself Anglo-Saxon. It is argued that Tennyson’s poetry exhibits traits of both phases of nineteenth-century Anglo-Saxonism that Fossil Poetry identifies. The chapter closes by reading the Anglo-Saxonist etymological layer of several poems by Tennyson, including In Memoriam.

The Constant Roots of English Song

This chapter documents a wide variety of nineteenth-century Anglo-Saxon poems, real, mediated, and imaginary, that both contributed and conformed to a pattern of understanding that insisted on English literary culture as essential and unchanging. The chapter begins with more examples of ‘Saxon’ poems from Scott’s Ivanhoe, examples which more conventionally typify the early nineteenth-century construction of Anglo-Saxon than Ulrica’s Hymn. The editorial and translational choices made by John and William Conybeare in Illustrations of Anglo-Saxon Poetry receive close scrutiny, and the invention of the ‘Anglo-Saxon ballad’ is charted across the course of the chapter. Milton is argued to have been a de facto Anglo-Saxonist poet to the Victorians, and close readings of Anglo-Saxon poems by Wordsworth and Longfellow are pursued, with an allusion to The Battle of Brunanburh being advanced for Wordsworth’s sonnet on the ‘Saxon Conquest’.

“Gr/edigne Gudhafoc and d/et Gr/ege Deor”: Revisiting Brunanburi’s Beasts-of Battle Topos (57-65ª) in Translation

Gr/edigne Gudhafoc and d/et Gr/ege Deor: Una revisión del tema de las Bestias de la Guerra (57-65h) en las traducciones de la Batalla de Brunanburi.La entrada correspondiente al año 937 de la Crónica Anglosajona narra los hechos que tuvieron lugar en dicha fecha mediante una interpolación poética que constituye una de las piezas más importantes de la poesía heroica del inglés antiguo: La Batalla de Brunanburh. Los versos contenidos en esta entrada son importantes pues su condición y disposición poética nos permite clasifi carlos como poesía heroica del inglés antiguo tanto en la forma (unidades métricas) como en el contenido (imaginería, dicción). Este poema, como tantos otros dentro de la literatura del inglés antiguo (Bueno 2003), usa los hechos históricos como mecanismo narrativo para construir la historia interna del poema experimentando cono los temas (estilo, dicción, imaginería) de la poesía heroica: estilo aliterativo, vocabulario formulaico, el tema de las “bestias de la guerra”, frases sacadas del corpus heroico anglosajón, etc, etc. Parece evidente que estos temas se tendrán que tener en cuenta cuidadosamente cuando se traduzca el texto a otras lenguas. En un trabajo anterior revisé tres grupos diferentes de traducciones y de traductores que consideraron el poema a) de modo aislado, b) en el contexto de la Crónica Anglosajona, y c) como excusa para la creación poética. En este artículo quiero centrarme únicamente en textos de la categoría a) y dentro de ellos analizaré exclusivamente el llamado tema de las “bestias de la guerra” (57-65a), un asunto de gran interés desde el punto de vista de los estudios en traducción poética. Este artículo tiene como objetivo revisar el poema y ver cómo se ha analizado este tema en algunas traducciones importantes, tanto al inglés (Treharne 2004, Hamer 1970, Rodrigues 1996, Crossley-Holland 1982 as revised and edited by Barber 2008) como al español (Lerate & Lerate 2000, Bravo 1998, Bueno 2007). Como complemento se discutirá de modo breve una poco conocida versión del texto en asturiano (Santori 1999).Abstract:The annal for the year 937 of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle narrates the events which took place with a poem that constitutes one of the main pieces of Anglo-Saxon heroic epic poetry: The Battle of Brunanburh. The verses contained in this annal are important because those lines fall into the rhythmical units of OE verse and have diction and imagery associated with heroic poetry. This poem, as many others in OE literature (Bueno 2003), uses history as a narrative device to build the inner story of the text experimenting with the topics (style, diction, imagery) of heroic poetry: alliterative style, formulaic vocabulary, the beasts-of-battle topos, phrases taken from the stock of the heroic corpus, etc. It seems most evident that a careful consideration of these topics has to be made when translating the text into other languages. In a previous work I revised three different groups of translations –and translators– that considered the poem a) in isolation, b) in the context of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, or c) as an excuse for poetic inspiration. In this article I want to concentrate only in texts from category a), and within them, I will exclusively revise the so-called beasts-of-battle topos (57-56a), a very interesting topic from the point of view of poetic translation studies. My aim will be then to revisit how this topos (57-65a) has been dealt with in several important English (Treharne 2004, Hamer 1970, Rodrigues 1996, Crossley-Holland 1982 as revised and edited by Barber 2008) and Spanish (Lerate & Lerate 2000, Bravo 1998, Bueno 2007) translations. As a complement, a version in Asturian (Santori 1999) will be briefl y discussed.