The Battle of Maldon by Mark Atherton;

Author:Mark Atherton;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781350167490
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK

Figure 20 Marshland in East Anglia. © Mark Atherton.

Ða he eft þonon faran wolde, þa het he beodan ofer ealle ða fyrd þæt hie foran ealle ut ætsamne; ða ætsætan ða Centiscan þær beæftan ofer his bebod; 7 .vii. ærendracan he him hæfde to onsend; þa befor se here hie þær, 7 hie þær gefuhtan;

[When he (Edward) wanted to move out from there, he sent out orders throughout all the defence force that they should all retire together. But the Kentishmen remained in their rearguard position in defiance of his order, though he had sent seven messengers to them. Then the Host came upon them there, and there they fought.]

This is the kind of glorious, even foolhardy, steadfastness that the poet of The Battle of Maldon will celebrate in the second half of his poem ninety years later. It is a warrior’s stoicism, sometimes called the ‘heroic way of life’, very evident here in the behaviour of the Kentish contingent.

The annal is not yet complete, for it moves to a conclusion and presents a list of six of the chief Kentishmen who fell in the battle, and there is a touch of the personal in the chronicler’s assuming a first-person heroic style. Quite explicitly he declares ‘though I have named only the most distinguished’, the superlative here hitting the right heroic note, not unlike the eulogy for the hero in the last two lines of Beowulf. And so the chronicler proceeds to name their names and their ranks in society, one by one, each name preceded by a pause in the roll call marked by the abbreviation ‘7’ for the conjunction ‘and’ in the syntax. It will be noted that even an abbot is numbered in the list of the fallen:

7 þær wearð Sigulf ealdormann ofslegen, 7 Sigelm ealdormann, 7 Eadwold cinges þegn, 7 Cenulf abbud, 7 Sigebriht Sigulfes sunu, 7 Eadwold Accan sunu, 7 manige eac to him, þeah ic þa geþungenestan nemde;

[And there Ealdorman Sigulf was slain, and Ealdorman Sigelm and Eadwold the king’s thegn, and Abbot Cenulf (Cenwulf) and Sigebriht Sigewulf’s son, and Eadwold Acca’s son, and many others with them, though I have named only the most distinguished.]

There are three men here with alliterating names. Like the list of Mercians in Maldon, they are all members of the same family or kindred group: Sigulf, a short form of the name Sigewulf, and his son Sigebriht, and Sigelm (Sigehelm). These are the leading men of Kent. ‘And on the Danish side’, so the author continues, there are also six names to name, with their rank and status, even in some cases their specifically Danish rank (the chronicler knows his enemy well):

7 on ðara Deniscra healfe wæs ofslegen Eohric cing, 7 Aþelwold æþeling, þe hie him to cinge gecuron, 7 Byrhsige Byrhtnoðes sunu æþelinges, 7 Ysopo hold, 7 Oscytel hold, 7 swiþe manig eac mid him þe we nu genemnan ne magon; 7 þær wæs on gehweþere hand mycel wæl geslegen, 7 þara Deniscra wearð ma ofslegen, þeah hi wælstowe geweald ahton.

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