Taking a 1920s Oxford Old English Exam

[00:00:00]In March of 1920, a girl at Somerville College in Oxford wrote to JRR Tolken, who was 28 and working as a tutor at the time, asking him what kind of questions she might expect on her upcoming old English exams. Tolken responded by sending her a practice exam of 51 questions, some that he had taken from previous exams, others that he had made up on the spot, in order to give her a good idea of for what she should be studying. Happily, we have this letter preserved in full, which gives us a really good idea of how we might have fared on a 1920s Oxford Old English exam. When I found out about this, I knew that I wanted to make a video on it so I intentionally did not read these questions. Instead, my wife was kind enough to print the exam out for me so that I could save it for this moment and so that we could look at these questions together for the first time. Scout's honor, I'm not going to take any of my notes or books out, just this list of questions. And in today's video, I'd like to walk through them with you and see how a modern student of old English might have done a 100 years ago. Stay tuned.

[00:01:11]It looks like our first question begins with a quotation. A gluttonous race of jutes and angles capable of no grand combinations, lumbering about in pot-bellied equinimity, not dreaming of heroic toil and silence and endurance such as led to the high places of this universe and the golden mountain tops where dwell the spirits of the dawn. So Tolken asks, "How far would your reading of old English poetry lead you to modify this estimate?" Well, it definitely seems to be coming from the perspective of someone who has read a lot of Greek and Latin poetry and then maybe read a little bit of old English pros or poetry, I'm not sure, and concluded that it doesn't really compare. Certainly, I think it's ignorant. I mean, statements like no grand combinations. The Beaolf poem is over 3,000 lines long. We have fragmentaryary poems like the battle of Malden and Judith that were probably also several thousand lines long. And these poems have very grand ambitions.

[00:02:06]And I think most of them are met. To focus in on Beaowolf, the point that the poet seems to be making is that human life is very fleeting and that age kind of comes upon you no matter what you do, no matter how strong you are in youth.

[00:02:20]And that is certainly, in my opinion, one of the most sublime points that any literature can make. His reference of not dreaming of heroic toil. I'm just not really sure how you could come away with that perception from reading old English heroic poetry. The next question says, "Write briefly on the contrast between old English literature and that of the 13th and 14th centuries in respect of both form and matter." The first thing that comes to mind is obviously Chaucer who wrote in the 14th century and the Canterbury tales at least are composed in decalabic rhyming couplets which is very different than old English meter. Of course, there is also Sir Gowen in the Green Knight from the 14th century which was composed in an illiterative verse like the old English verse. But the verse that we find in Gowen in the Green Knight is very loose. It doesn't really follow all the rules that old English verse had.

[00:03:06]Old English verse is very conservative.

[00:03:08]It has a lot of rules that the poets follow very well and Gen and the Green Knight doesn't fit many of those rules.

[00:03:14]Matter which I take to mean subject matter is also very different. If I'm going to speak in broad terms, old English literature is very conservative.

[00:03:21]It's very concerned with piety, with compunction, how you should act. It's concerned with heroic literature, the sort of Germanic warrior ethos.

[00:03:29]Meanwhile, in the 13th and 14th centuries, you generally get more of a focus on romance, on chivalry, on courtship, the kind of things that you think of when you think of the high middle ages. The next question is, what do you consider the leading characteristics of the old English poetic genius illustrate? Well, the old English poetic genius. When I think of what makes Old English poetry unique, I think of its formulaic nature, the fact that a lot of it is honestly filler. The poets would often repeat things and say things that didn't really matter to the story in order to fill the poetic meter.

[00:04:02]But that's not necessarily what I think is appealing or impressive about old English poetry. So if I were pressed to describe the old English poetic genius, perhaps I would say the ability of the poets to work with their restrictive conservative meter and to have all of these formula memorized and to sort of fit them in and use them at the right moments. If I were pressed to give an example, Tolken does say illustrate.

[00:04:25]Then I would probably refer to the end of the shield shaving episode in Beaywolf where the poet says that the boat has sailed off and then he tells us He's using a lot of formula here which if you don't know in old English poetry at least are filler sort of stock phrases that the poets will use to just take up space in the meter said John to solo just means to tell you the truth and the poet seems to be using it here because he wants s alliteration for the word celerene that is advisers in the hall. If the poet was speaking in pros, he probably would have been happy to say something like people don't know who received that ship. But because he has to abide by the laws of the meter, he needs h alliteration to introduce the word. So he fills space by using formuli like sajjanto which just means to tell you the truth. That introduces siteration which allows him to use the word celerene that is the hall advisers. He's talking about people who don't know. So that gives him the opportunity to say halif that is the hero under the heavens. And now he has hititeration. So he can say last on fang and finish the sentence. On one hand he got where he wanted to go.

[00:05:44]He told us what he wanted to say. But on the other hand, the way that he got there was by introducing all of these elements that gave us a much bigger sense of what's going on. The celerene don't know who received that ship. The Halith doesn't know who received that ship. And even just the phrase Halith, which is another stock phrase, calls to mind the sense that the warrior is under the heavens. That is the sky. It's a big place. The world is a big place. And in all of the world, we have no idea where that ship went. It vanished into the unknown. And the feeling that that gives us is much enhanced by the poet's diction.

[00:06:21]The fourth question reads, discuss the relationship of the biblical or religious passages in Beaywolf to the structure of the whole. There are lots of religious and biblical passages in Beaywolf for sure. I mean, just in the first 100 lines, the court poet at Herodat gives us an account of the biblical story of creation. Um, we're also told that Gindle is descended from Cain who killed Abel and therefore was cursed along with all of his descendants to be a sort of social outcast just like Grenle. I'm not quite sure what he means by the structure of the whole, but if he's just referring to the sort of purpose of these passages, clearly Beaowolf is a very evangelical poem. It was probably composed around the beginning of the 8th century where England had kind of just become nominally Christian, but a lot of people still didn't really totally believe yet.

[00:07:07]And the Beaolf poet is very clearly interested in demonstrating a few things. One of which being that all of these Germanic myths and legends still connected to the biblical narrative.

[00:07:16]that is Gindle is connected to Cain and so are as the Beaywolf poet tells us elves, giants, et. We also see characters like Beowolf and Hoggar and Wo making references to God as if it was just kind of a thing that the wise knew.

[00:07:31]The wise knew that God existed even if they had never heard of a Catholic priest before. These references happen frequently enough where we can guess that the Beaywolf poet didn't want you to forget that all the good characters and the wise characters were Christian and all of the supernatural monsters are all evil. They're descended from Cain.

[00:07:48]They're out to get us. They're out to destroy our nice things. We shouldn't associate with them. It's really fascinating how the Beaywolf poet seems to be pulling his audience away from the pagan past and into the Christian future. Number five, what was the respective share of Angles and Saxons in the extent remains of old English literature? Is there any reason assignable for a difference in the literary activities of the two peoples?

[00:08:11]And this question along with many others in this exam is taken from a 1919 exam.

[00:08:16]So we know that this was at one point actually asked to real students. Most of our surviving old English manuscripts come from the Saxons in Wessex from the late 9th century to the early 11th century. However, from linguistic characteristics preserved in these manuscripts, we can tell that a lot of the poetry and literature comes from Mercuria from an earlier century. The reason is political. During the reign of Athl, during the reign of Afa the Great, there was a lot of literature and learning going on in Mercia. But during the reign of Alfred the Great, and the subsequent Benedictine reforms in Wessex, that was the place to be. It also kind of had to do with the Vikings raging all over the country. So, there is a bit of a divide. A lot of our older literature, a lot of our poetry is Anglian in origin. But a lot of our younger literature, a lot of our religious texts are Saxon in origin, coming from the land of the West Saxons.

[00:09:08]That's the answer I would give for that question and hopefully that's what they were looking for. Number six, what was the mutual relationship in Old English between the heroic and the religious poetry? That's a good question. A lot of the religious poetry definitely seems to be trying to appropriate the sort of Christian religion into heroic culture.

[00:09:25]I think for example of the dream of the rude where Christ is described as Jung Halith the young hero and of course the heroic poetry we have bea wolf the battle of malden even the more pagananish ones like walder and deor are very clearly composed by Christian poets who want to emphasize god's role in these heroes lives I'm not sure how much more I would say than that it does really feel like the religious poets wanted their poetry to be very heroic and the heroic poets wanted their poetry to be very religious number seven write a note on the influence of Ireland and Irish learning in old English times.

[00:09:59]Well, I mean, where to begin? When we talk about the conversion of England, it was largely a Roman mission. If you've heard of St. Augustine of Canterbury, he was sent by Pope Gregory in order to convert the English people to the Christian faith. And while that is sort of true, we also see a huge effort from the Irish at the same time, sending missions to England in order to convert their neighbors. This is also where a lot of English learning comes from because the Irish monks had been preserving a lot of knowledge and they brought it to England with them. In North Umbrea, we get the island monastery of Lindesvarn which is a very Irish monastery. And in a big group project between the Irish and English scholars in North Umbrea, they create the Lindesvarn gospels which are decorated in a very Irish artistic style. You should check them out if you haven't already. They're beautiful.

[00:10:42]Number eight is another quotation. The fault of Kinnowolf is in harmony with the tendency of old English poets in general. a tendency to dwell too much on details and to neglect the perspective of the whole. Is this a fair criticism of Kowolf or old English poets as a whole? I would say no. I think this is a misreading of formulaic poetry. What he describes as the poets dwelling on details I think is actually just the fact that the poets will mention things in an artistic way to sort of draw a holistic picture of what's going on. A lot of times it's just for the sake of the meter. Other times it's intentional in the way that we talked about with the shield shaving episode. Tolkien himself was very frustrated with this criticism and he addresses it in the monsters and critics essay. Number nine, did the Anglo-Saxons succeed in creating a real pros literature? That's a difficult question. I would say probably not. They obviously had their own poetic literature, but when it comes to pros, the biggest names are actually just translations of Latin works. Even great homalists like Albert of ancient were really just stitching together a bunch of Latin homalies and then translating them into old English. It's good old English. These are great translations and they do a really good job of adding their own spin on things, but it's not necessarily new. Number 10 is what may we imagine the effect of the introduction of Christianity and the subsequent attitude of the church to have been upon the preservation of the legends and ideals of the Germanic past.

[00:12:05]It's definitely not positive and it's probably because of the church's sort of fear of the legendary material that a lot of it doesn't survive today. One example is that in Beayolf we're told that Halftain has four children her progar and then the scribes skips something and the passage doesn't really make any sense. Now we know from other traditions that the name of the fourth child was Urs and we can kind of patch together what the original line is based on that information. The question becomes why did the scribe leave that out? And it could have been a mistake, but a more probable answer is that he knew was connected with incest, which was a really hot button topic at the time. And if you're a member of the church trying to convince people that incest is wrong, and there's all these stories that they're telling each other where incest happens, that's not going to make you very happy. And the agenda becomes trying to leave that kind of thing out and forgetting about it. And we can't prove this, but it does seem like a lot of old English poetry and literature was lost because of that agenda. He mentions ideals as well and in Germanic legends we have a lot of kinslang. We have a lot of revenge killing and that kind of thing was very very frowned upon in the church obviously. So again this is reading between the lines but we're pretty confident that there were a lot of poems that had this kind of thing going on and that the reason those poems didn't survive and poems like Beaolf did survive is perhaps because in Beaywolf kins slang and revenge killing is very clearly wrong. Number 11. What were the merits and limitations of old English narrative pros? This is a difficult question, but I would say the merit is that it existed at all. This is early medieval England. I mean, Latin is the literary language. The fact that they had a large body of literature in their own vernacular is so unique, so interesting. In terms of its drawbacks, Old English clearly just hadn't been a literary language for very long. They had an elevated and educated way of speaking, but it was poetry. Pros is a new challenge. And so in a lot of translations from Latin, when you compare the Latin of say Augustine to the translation made in the court of King Alfred, it does kind of feel like the pros of King Alfred is much simpler.

[00:14:08]That doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing, but if they were intending it to match the sort of rhetorical wit of St. Augustine, then I don't really think that they hit that goal. Number 12, criticize the notion of the occurrence of a complete break at the Norman conquest, either with reference to the tradition of English pros or to that of poetry. I hosted the scholar Mark Falner on this channel a while back to talk about this specific issue. We have a lot of old and early middle English literature from after the Norman conquest, from all the way through the 12th century. There was never any moment where the Normans were like, "No one's allowed to write in English anymore."

[00:14:44]The problem is that no one reads that literature. No one knows about it. And so there's this perception that once the Normans arrived in 1066, old English just sort of ceased to exist. I won't go on for any longer about this. If you'd like to learn more, check out that interview I did with Mark Faulner.

[00:14:58]Number 13, write an estimate of the Germanic hero. One point that Jackson Crawford likes to make is that in this sort of Germanic worldview, there is this understanding that your day of death has already been determined, whether or not by the fates or by God or some sort of supernatural figure depending on your religion. If your day of death has already been determined, then the only thing that has not been determined is how you die. And so the question becomes, if I'm already going to die today and I have control only over the way in which I die, then I want to die in the most spectacular way possible. So if someone challenges me to a fight and I remember that today might be the day that I die, I have two options. I can either take the fight and die honorably or I could say no and then maybe trip on a broom and die breaking my neck 5 minutes later. If on the other hand, I'm not going to die today, then I can either turn away and be a coward or take the fight and win because I'm not going to die today. That I think seems to be the common denominator in Germanic heroes. They don't care about the impending threat of death because their death day is already determined. And if it's today, it should be spectacular.

[00:16:01]Number 14. With regard to the social state of Anglo-Saxon England, how far can the expression monkish interpolation be applied with justice to any passages in Old English poetry? This used to be a really popular idea, but lately we have actually demonstrated quite well that monks almost never actually interpolated into old English poetry. That is, we really don't have any evidence to suggest that monks were just sort of composing their own little bits and adding them into [clears throat] old English poems. I'm not sure if Tolken himself believed that monks were composing passages and inserting them into the middle of poems that they were copying, but certainly with modern scholarship, the work of RD Folk and Leonard Najdorf, if we can demonstrate that this probably almost never happened. Number 15. What is the attitude of the extent fragments of old English poetry to nature? How far does this fragmentaryary nature of the remains condition the estimate? If I understand this question correctly, it's asking what can we glean from the fragments of poems that we have in Old English? And the short answer is there was probably a lot more than what we currently have. Famous fragmentaryary poems are Waldra, the Battle of Malden, the Finsburg fragment. And we can only imagine what these poems might have looked like in their entirety. Number 16. Compare the Germanic king and his companions with the round table of King Arthur. Well, um, definitely there seems to be a sort of K figure in Beaolf with Unferth. I'm not really sure what to say. If I got this exam question, I would try to expound upon the K and unferth connection, but beyond that, I might get this question wrong. I'm just not totally sure what he's getting at here. Number 17. Translation has been the drill ground of English pros.

[00:17:38]Discuss this with reference to old English pros. Well, almost all of our old English pros is in some way or form a translation of Latin. If Tolken is asking how good were the Old English at translating Latin, the answer is pretty good. they don't really seem to make very many mistakes as far as I can tell.

[00:17:54]I'm also of the opinion that the style of pros used in these translations, even though I called it simple, is really good. It's easy to read. It's fun. It's again very unique to the Old English.

[00:18:05]So, I hope I'm understanding the question correctly, but that's sort of what my answer would be. Number 18. What is the relation of the Latin literature of England in old English times to the vernacular? Well, certainly in the time of bead, Latin literature was much more common. Almost nothing was written in the vernacular. When King Alfred takes the throne in Wessex, he tries to initiate an academic reform and that leads to a lot of translations into old English so that people have access to those works. And then from that point onward, the vernacular kind of takes over in literature. So we see a lot less Latin, a lot more old English based on what survives today. By the end of the 10th century, we have a huge vernacular tradition going and it's really common to write things in old English. Number 19. In Germanic legend, generally women occupy a striking position. Old English literature on the whole forms an exception. How would you account for this? I think he's referring to the fact that in old English literature it's a bit more conservative. It's a bit more biblical and women take up less of the spotlight than they do in other Germanic traditions. On the other hand, we do see stories like Judith, an old English poem which is centered around a woman and a woman who has a lot of power, who does things on her own, who kills a king and cuts his head off and takes it back to her city. But it is still a less feminine body of literature than other cultures and time periods. If I were asked to account for this, I would probably just chalk it up to the conservative church in early medieval England. There were opportunities for women. There were powerful women of the time. We have a lot of really interesting female figures, but there are less than in other contemporary cultures for sure. Number 20. Can we speak of a Germanic civilization? Is it still the chief element in old English literature? Well, if by a Germanic civilization he's referring to the sort of general legendarium of the Germanic myths, probably not. By the time we get old English literature, the people writing it are very much concerned with the people of God, the city of God, much less so with their sort of Germanic identity. It still comes up occasionally. Bead does reference like patriotism and the English nation, but bead himself cared way more about their salvation than their sort of racial identity. Reading number 21 now, which he typos as 23. It seems to be a kind of reiteration of earlier questions, so I'm going to skip that one. 22. He says, "How far are Cadman, Kinnowolf, Alfred, Alfred real literary figures? Criticize any of the past or present ascriptions of extant works to any of these names."

[00:20:26]Okay, I think the easiest one to talk about is Alfred, King Alfred the Great.

[00:20:29]Like I said, he instituted an academic reform and a lot of translations were made during that time. Many of these translations claim to have been made by the king himself and nowadays we're pretty confident that most of them weren't but a lot of them were probably made in his presence at the court. So when we take for example a work like the translation of Augustine's saliloquiz which are historically ascribed to King Alfred it's probably easier and more accurate to say that they were translated in the court of King Alfred either by his advisers or maybe even in his presence with him giving input. Do I think that King Alfred himself was sitting in the scriptorum translating the Latin into Old English? Definitely not. That probably isn't true for any of these works. But we can be relatively confident that many of these translations were done in his presence or at least by people who worked for him or knew him. Number 23. Are there any old English lyrics? Well, if by lyrics you mean love poetry, short answer, no.

[00:21:22]We don't really get that until the Middle English period. Number 24. What signs of lateness do you discern in the Battle of Malden? How do you account nonetheless for its vigorous preservation of the spirit of the best of old English poetry? Well, one sign of lateness that's really easy to detect that Tolken himself writes about is alliteration. That is the battle of Malden poet ceases to alliterate between C and CH as well as G and Y.

[00:21:46]Historically, CH and C were both C and G and Y were both in archaic old English poetry. And so poets had been alliterating these sounds for a long time, probably because they just kind of thought that it was allowed even after they stopped pronouncing it that way.

[00:22:03]The Malden poet as a sort of revolutionary says, "These sounds don't alliterate, so I'm going to stop alliterating them." And there's a couple other features, end rhyme being another, that we see in the Battle of Molden that peg it as a late poem. As for the ideals of old English poetry, I'm not really sure why they would have gone. If the poet was educated on older old English poetry, which he probably was because he knows the rules very well, then he would be very familiar with the sort of heroic ideals of loyalty and bravery, etc. Number 25. The story of Judith is drawn from scripture, but Judith may fairly be taken as representing the Germanic heroine in old English literature.

[00:22:38]Discuss. Well, we just kind of mentioned Judith, right? She is like a lot of other Germanic legendary woman, unafraid to take revenge on her own. It's generally accepted that the reason Judith got such grand treatment in early medieval England was because she was a biblical example of the sort of heroic ideals in legendary women that that Germanic audience was looking for. If you're a young monk and you ask permission to tell the story of Goodun slaughtering the entire house of the Burgundians, that's probably going to be a no. On the other hand, if you ask permission to tell the story of Judith slaughtering Holofarness, well then that's a biblical story. For sure you can tell that one. Number 26. Is there anything to be said for the old English aliterative pros as a medium? This is what Alfred ch uses to compose his lives of saints. And there's a lot of argument even today as to whether or not it's poetry or pros. To me, it doesn't really matter so much. It's clearly Albert's attempt at telling hogiography in an elevated tone. It's easier than poetry and more elegant than pros. Number 27.

[00:23:35]What is meant by a kenning and whence is the term derived? Illustrate as far as you can its uses and abuses in old English poetry. A lot of Nor scholars will make fun of the old English kenning because in old English a kenning is just kind of a poetic compound whereas in old Norse it can be like an entire riddle.

[00:23:52]For example, the England atal describes beer asis wag windlo which means the windless wave of the horns of the boar that is kind of like in a barrel. There is no wind and you use a horn to drink beer. In old English it's more like referring to the ocean as the swan rod. I'm not really sure what Tolken means by abuse.

[00:24:16]Certainly I've never read a kenning in old English that I thought was bad. He could perhaps be referring to the fact that a lot of times they are very metaphorical. For example, in Beaywolf, the Danes are referred to as the north Danes, the south Danes, the East Danes, and the West Danes. And it's obvious that this doesn't mean that there are factions of Danes that the poet is referring to. He just wants something that alliterates with those letters. In that sense, the canning only exists for the sake of the meter, and it really cannot be read literally. Number 28. Do you agree that compared with the battle of Malden which celebrated a complete defeat, Brunanborg which celebrated a great victory is merely competent Laurate work that any well-educated gentleman of the time could have turned out on conventional models. Can you account for it? Well, this is difficult because I've actually never heard this take before. Certainly, when I think about it, the battle of Molden is definitely a better poem than the Battle of Brunenborg. But the question seems to be whether or not any educated person at the time could have produced a poem that is as good as the battle of Brunenbore.

[00:25:16]And I would say probably not. Even if you hear old English poetry all the time, there are a lot of rules that don't strike me as very self-explanatory. And I think it's the kind of thing that you would have had to have explained to you. You would have had to work on it for several years in order to get good at it. And the battle of Brunenborg, it's not the best poem we have, but it is a good poem. So I think my final answer would be no. And I hope that doesn't mean that I get this question wrong. Number 29. Is there any evidence for the existence in old English times of a body of heroic poetry now lost? Um, yes, loads. We've talked about this a lot already, so I'll just kind of mention one more thing. Um, we have a letter from Alcoin of York writing to Bishop Hebald complaining about monks talking about Inyel in the monastery. Now, Inyel is a hero. We have a mention of him in Beaolf. We have a mention of him in Weeds, but we don't have an actual poem dedicated to him.

[00:26:04]Clearly though, if Alone was upset about Inyel being discussed at the monastery, that probably means he had his own epic poem which people were reciting at the time that we now have lost. That's true for a lot of characters in the old English mythology. We have evidence that there was a poem about them, but there's no trace of it. There's no fragment of it, just the idea that it may have existed. Number 30. Estimate the place in Old English literature of the works due directly or indirectly to King Alfred. Well, it's sort of the beginning of the pros tradition. I mean, we've talked about this a bit already, so I won't go on for too long, but this forms generally the most important and influential Old English texts that we have in pros. Number 31. What problems are raised with regard to the genesis of such a poetic form as that represented by Beaywolf or to the background of old English poetry generally by such passages as Beayolf? Oh, okay. So, there are line numbers here. Um, I think I'm allowed to check my Beaywolf copy if that's okay with you. All right. After reading them, these passages are the ones that talk about the sort of generation of poetry. This is a controversial subject because we really don't know anything, but we really want to know a lot. I have a conversation with Benjamin Bagby on this channel where I talk about a lot of these themes. So, if you're interested in how we can know anything about the generation and performance of old English poetry, I would just suggest checking that out. There's a second part to number 31. What is the significance of the following lines in relation to the early history of old English poetry?

[00:27:33]Weeds 135 to the end. Assuming I was allowed to have checked, I did. And this is the part at the end of Weedith where he talks about how poets sort of roam around and tell their stories and asks for hospitality in return. If that's an accurate picture of sort of pre-Christian Germanic poetry, that's a really interesting fact. The question is, is it accurate? We don't know. We have no way of telling. Perhaps what Tolken was getting at is that a lot of poets were wanderers and their poetry kind of carries this loneliness that you often feel in reflection of that fact.

[00:28:06]Number 32. When did the revival of interest in Anglo-Saxon occur and to what was it due? Did the circumstances of this revival have any influence in determining the nature of the surviving monuments? It sure did. The early interest in Anglo-Saxon comes about in the Protestant Reformation when early Anglicans are looking to sort of establish a tradition of English Christianity. Where do they go to do that? Well, to be and to Albert of Ancham who wrote in old English. In order to read Albert's works, they had to learn old English, which they did with mixed results. And the consequence of their interest is that a lot of the texts that we have that survive today are religious in nature. There may have been a lot of Germanic legendary heroic material preserved in manuscripts that the antiquaries of the 1500s and 1600s just didn't care about and so they didn't preserve. I can't really blame them either because we kind of do the same thing now just the other way around. A lot of old English scholars have almost never read Alvich or any of his homalies or any of his religious works because what they care about is the poetry and the Germanic legendary material. People will read and write about what they care about and I don't think that's ever going to change.

[00:29:10]Number 33. Write a note on the type of literature represented by the old English riddles or sketch briefly the literary ancestry of the old English riddles. It's interesting that Tolken asks about this because the best example of the kind of riddles we get in Old English is actually in The Hobbit when Bilbo and Gllum ask them to each other.

[00:29:28]Perhaps the big difference is that in Old English riddles a lot of the time it's not really something that you're trying to guess but something that you're meditating on and the answer is obvious. It's just kind of funny that it is the answer. If you have the time, I would recommend looking up some of these old English riddles. Some of them are going to be very familiar, others are going to make no sense. Number 33. Are there any reasons for or against the supposition that in Beayolf we have a preminent example of the old English heroic poetry? Probably more against.

[00:29:55]Beowolf seems to be a very idiosyncratic poem. It's way less concerned with sort of bad luck and human tragedy and drama that we see in other Germanic traditions and way more concerned with the providence of God and sort of monsters and supernatural creatures that are evil and the sort of struggle of man against the progression of time. In that sense, Beaywolf is not very reflective of the sort of Germanic ideal. It is, however, the longest poem we have in Old English and the best poem we have in Old English. So by a sort of ironic twist of fate, it becomes the sort of iconic old English poem. Even though, as I said, it's an idiosyncratic poem. It should not be taken as the archetypical old English poem. Number 34. Sketch any of the following legends in the form probably current on English soil, showing how far the English evidence has to be supplemented from external sources. And then he gives a couple of options. The easiest of which is probably the first one, Walter Vquitine.

[00:30:53]I mean, we have a huge body of legendary material about Walter in other languages, but we have one fragmentaryary poem in Old English called Walder that shows us that they had a poem about him and that it had all the same characters and probably the same plot points, but only a few lines of it survive. Generally, the story goes that Walter, the heir to the throne in Aquitane, is taken to the Hunish Court at a young age in exchange for a peace treaty between the Huns and Aquitane.

[00:31:20]There he meets his best friend Hogan from the Burgundians and his lover Hildigund. When Walter comes of age, he and Hildigund escape. They take a lot of treasure with them and they make their way toward Aquitane. Hogan also escapes, goes back to Burgundy. But when the king Gunther learns that Walter and a bunch of treasure is going through his territory, he gets Hogan to come with him and try to steal the treasure. A lot of chaos ensues. Generally, the story goes that Walter and Hogan fight even though they're friends. Gunther gets involved, everyone gets injured, and then Walter and Hogan make up. Walter is allowed to go with Hildigunda and the treasure to Aquitane, and Gunther and Hogan return with their tails between their legs back to Burgundy. Tolken asks, "How much do we have to draw from other sources, basically all of it, we can tell from the Old English fragment that that's probably how the Old English version of the story went as well, but we really can't be certain because again, we only have a few lines." Number 35 seems to deal with the fragmentaryary nature of Old English literature. Again, I think we've talked about that enough, so I'll skip that question. Number 36.

[00:32:16]Write a note on the story of Wayland Smith in English literature with a special reference to the illusions in old English. Well, Wayland is referenced most explicitly in Deor where we get a sort of broadstrokes picture of his life. But Wayland does seem to have been a very important figure in the sort of old English mythology. He gets referenced in the Walder Fragment. He gets referenced in Beaywolf. He even gets referenced in the translation of the consolation of philosophy done in King Alfred's Court. If you want to learn more about Wayland, I have a video about the Deor poem in which I talk about his story pretty extensively, so I would recommend checking that out.

[00:32:51]Number 37, discuss the theories for and against the assumption that the Beowolf, as we have it now, is the work of a single poet. For a long time, people have argued that Beayolf could be a sort of patchwork poem composed by many different people over a long period of time. Nowadays, no one really believes this anymore, but I never really understood the arguments in the first place. I mean, if you look at the evidence, there is no change in style.

[00:33:13]There is no change in meter. Certainly, the story is very choppy at times, but I don't really think it's choppy in a sense that reflects multiple authors.

[00:33:20]Really, just more that that's what the poet wanted to do. He focused on the things that he wanted to focus on, and in my opinion, he did a good job of presenting a cohesive poetic message.

[00:33:29]Number 38. What references are there in Beaywolf to historical events or personages? There are very many. The most famous one is that Heliloc, Beaywolf's uncle, is said in Beaywolf to have died in a raid in Frieia. We have a totally separate account from the Franks that there was a raid in Frieia right around that time led by someone named Kolkus which is pretty similar to what we would expect the protogerermanic form of Heliloc to be. So we're almost certain that that raid actually happened and it was actually Heliloc that was in charge. Number 39 give a brief account of the chief non literary remains of old English. This is another one where I'm not sure exactly what he means, but Tolken himself was fascinated by a lot of place names in England. For example, in Oxford, there's a place called Hinxy, which in old English was probably Henestice E, which means Henjest's. Now, Henjist could either mean a stallion or the figure Henjist. And here it's probably the former, but it's still cool that that's what it's called, especially since the modern name of Hinxy is totally obscure to us. Number 40, give a brief outline of the life of Beaywolf.

[00:34:34]This one I don't think I'm going to do.

[00:34:35]If you're watching this video and you haven't read Beaywolf, just go read Beaywolf. It'll take you a couple hours.

[00:34:40]It's not a very long poem. Number 41. To what type of poem does the Finsburg fragment belong? What relation has this type to the type represented by Beaywolf? The Finsburg fragment is heroic poetry, and Beayolf is also kind of heroic poetry, less so. It's more religious, but I would say that they're in the same category. Number 42. When did Kinnow Wolf live? And what are his unquestioned writings? What is the evidence for these descriptions? In what manuscripts are his poems preserved? Off the top of my head, when did Kenna Wolf live? I think the early 9th century, but that's a guess. I don't really know. I would probably get that question wrong.

[00:35:14]The poems that we know he wrote are the Fates of the Apostles, Elaine Giuliana, and the poem that we call Christ one.

[00:35:20]And these are preserved in the Velli book and the Extor book. And the reason we know that he wrote them is that he signed them, which is really nice for an old English poem. I mean, that almost never happens. Number 43. What do you know of the life of Alfrich? Well, he was a priest and he was a student of Athawald, the reformer. And from Athawald, he received most of his education. He lived in the second half of the 10th century, probably about a decade into the 11th century. Off the top of my head, that's all of the biographical information I would be able to provide about him. We don't know when he was born. We don't know exactly when he died, although we do have a will from around the beginning of the 11th century. I hope that's enough to get that question right. Number 44. Describe briefly three or four of the texts which are of special importance for our linguistic knowledge of old English. By linguistic knowledge I assume that means knowledge of the old English dialects.

[00:36:10]So I would say probably the glosses to the linusforeign gospel which give us a really good sense of late north umbrean.

[00:36:15]The vespasians psalter gives us a really good idea of early mercian. The homalies of Alfrich are a good late west saxon.

[00:36:22]And then we have a lot of kentish charters which are our best attestation of the kentish dialect. Number 45 wants me to write explanatory notes on the following. And then it gives a quote from Alfred's translation of the pastoral care. I'm not totally sure what I would say. Perhaps he wants a grammatical analysis or perhaps he's just asking about the significance of the passage. Certainly, this is important for us to understand the sort of way that King Alfred felt when he instituted his academic reforms. He really felt that there had been a huge falling off in the sort of standard of English literature and learning in his time period and he wanted to recover a former ideal. In these passages, he's talking about how bad the current state of English learning is. Number 46. What members of the Danish royal family are mentioned in Beaywolf? Are any of them also mentioned in Scandinavian records?

[00:37:10]Oh, they're all mentioned in Scandinavian records. Halftain, Heragar, Hgar. We get Hrothgar's sons and nephews, especially Hrolulf, who's the main character of the Hol saga Kraki.

[00:37:21]And it's only asking about the Danish royal family, but we also get a lot of Swedish royal figures, like for example, the affforementioned Heliloc. Number 47.

[00:37:28]Where was the home of the various peoples that play a part in Beaywolf?

[00:37:32]Well, obviously there's Denmark where the Danes live. And here we're really referring to the central islands of Denmark. Beaywolf's tribe, the Yats, are from a place in Sweden called Ster Yutland, which preserves their name in the title. Number 48. give some account of the various types of pros literature current about 10,00 and of the different styles employed in them. So there's homalies written by figures like Alfred and Wolston. There's hogiography that is like saints lives. There are other educational texts. Alfred translates a grammar of Latin into old English.

[00:38:03]There's the famous eniridion of bverth.

[00:38:06]There are also a lot of letters that we have which are cool. And then of course biblical translations. The Wessex gospels come from around this time period. Number 49. Is anything known of the interest of the English of the old English period in the natural sciences of their day? Yes, the Eniedon of Berkf that I just mentioned has a lot about natural science. Bead writes a lot about natural science. They were clearly interested in it and there's a lot of texts about it. Number 50. What relations are discoverable between either the social state or the political events of old English history and literature? I'm going to do what the lazy student would do in this position and say that I've been taking this test for a long time and I don't really know an easy answer to this question and I think that I don't need it to pass so I'm just going to skip it. He writes a 51st question in the bottom margin. Give an account of one important manuscript of old English poetry indicate its value for our knowledge of the subject.

[00:38:57]Certainly the most iconic manuscript of old English poetry is the extor book which has tons of old English poetry. I think by itself it makes up over a sixth of the entire Old English poetic corpus.

[00:39:08]And consequentially, if we didn't have it, we would have about a sixth less of knowledge on Old English poetry. I'm going to call that good enough for that last question and for Tolkien's practice exam. I hope you found this interesting.

[00:39:19]I hope you think I passed. Do let me know how you did if you paused to try and answer these questions yourself. If you enjoyed this video, I have a lot of content on Old English and on Tolken.

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