The Beasts of battle is a poetic trope in

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th c ...

and

Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlemen ...

literature. The trope has the

wolf The wolf (''Canis lupus''; : wolves), also known as the gray wolf or grey wolf, is a large canine native to Eurasia and North America. More than thirty subspecies of ''Canis lupus'' have been recognized, and gray wolves, as popularly un ...

, the raven, and the

eagle Eagle is the common name for many large birds of prey of the family Accipitridae. Eagles belong to several groups of genera, some of which are closely related. Most of the 68 species of eagle are from Eurasia and Africa. Outside this area, j ...

follow warriors into battle to feast on the bodies of the slain. It occurs in eight Old English poems and in the Old Norse

Poetic Edda The ''Poetic Edda'' is the modern name for an untitled collection of Old Norse anonymous narrative poems, which is distinct from the ''Prose Edda'' written by Snorri Sturluson. Several versions exist, all primarily of text from the Icelandic med ...

History of the term

The term originates with

Francis Peabody Magoun Francis Peabody Magoun, Jr. Military Cross, MC (6 January 1895 – 5 June 1979) was one of the seminal figures in the study of medieval and English literature in the 20th century, a scholar of subjects as varied as soccer and ancient Germani ...

, who first used it in 1955, although the combination of the three animals was first considered a theme by

Maurice Bowra Sir Cecil Maurice Bowra, (; 8 April 1898 – 4 July 1971) was an English classical scholar, literary critic and academic, known for his wit. He was Warden of Wadham College, Oxford, from 1938 to 1970, and served as Vice-Chancellor of the Univers ...

, in 1952.

History, content

The beasts of battle presumably date from an earlier, Germanic tradition; the animals are well known for eating carrion. A mythological connection may be presumed as well, though it is clear that at the time that the Old English manuscripts were produced, in a Christianized England, there was no connection between for instance the raven and Huginn and Muninn or the wolf and

Geri and Freki In Norse mythology, Geri and Freki are two wolves which are said to accompany the god Odin. They are attested in the ''Poetic Edda'', a collection of epic poetry compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources, in the ''Prose Edda' ...

. This mythological and/or religious connection survived for much longer in Scandinavia. Their literary pedigree is unknown. John D. Niles points out that they possibly originate in the wolf and the raven as animals sacred to

Wōden Odin (; from non, Óðinn, ) is a widely revered god in Germanic paganism. Norse mythology, the source of most surviving information about him, associates him with wisdom, healing, death, royalty, the gallows, knowledge, war, battle, victory ...

; their role as eaters of the fallen victims certainly, he says, accords with the fondness of Old English poets for

litotes In rhetoric, litotes (, or ), also known classically as ''antenantiosis'' or ''moderatour'', is a figure of speech and form of verbal irony in which understatement is used to emphasize a point by stating a negative to further affirm a positive, o ...

, or deliberate understatement, giving "ironic expression to the horror of warfare as seen from the side of the losers."Niles 133. While the beasts have no connection to pagan mythology and theology in the Old English poems they inhabit, such a connection returns, oddly enough, in Christian hagiography: in

Ælfric of Eynsham Ælfric of Eynsham ( ang, Ælfrīc; la, Alfricus, Elphricus; ) was an English abbot and a student of Æthelwold of Winchester, and a consummate, prolific writer in Old English of hagiography, homilies, biblical commentaries, and other genres ...

's ''Passio Saneti Edmundi Regis'' (11th century) a wolf guards the head of Saint Edmund the Martyr, and in

John Lydgate John Lydgate of Bury (c. 1370 – c. 1451) was an English monk and poet, born in Lidgate, near Haverhill, Suffolk, England. Lydgate's poetic output is prodigious, amounting, at a conservative count, to about 145,000 lines. He explored and estab ...

's ''The Life of Saint Alban and Saint Amphibal'' (15th century), "the wolf and also the eagle, upon the explicit command of Christ, protect the bodies of the martyrs from all the other carrion beasts."Honegger 290-91.

Occurrences in Old English poetry

*''

Battle of Brunanburh The Battle of Brunanburh was fought in 937 between Æthelstan, King of England, and an alliance of Olaf Guthfrithson, King of Dublin, Constantine II, King of Scotland, and Owain, King of Strathclyde. The battle is often cited as the poin ...

'' (61-65) *''

The Battle of Maldon "The Battle of Maldon" is the name given to an Old English poem of uncertain date celebrating the real Battle of Maldon of 991, at which an Anglo-Saxon army failed to repulse a Viking raid. Only 325 lines of the poem are extant; both the beginni ...

'' (106-107) *'' Beowulf'' (3024-27) *''

Elene ''Elene'' is a poem in Old English, that is sometimes known as ''Saint Helena Finds the True Cross''. It was translated from a Latin text and is the longest of Cynewulf's four signed poems. It is the last of six poems appearing in the Vercelli man ...

'' (52-53; 110-113) *'' Exodus'' (162-167) *'' The Fight at Finnsburgh'' (5-7) *'' Genesis A'' (1983–1985) *'' Judith'' (204-212; 292-296) *'' The Wanderer'' (80-83)

References

Notes Bibliography * * * * Old English poetry Old Norse poetry Tropes Wolves in folklore, religion and mythology Legendary crows Birds in culture {{poetry-stub