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"Much of the information in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles comes from Bede."
Swanton produces what appears to be the most thoroughly-researched book I have ever read. His bibliography is 25 pages long, and you see each and every one of those citations made in the course of the book, most of them multiple times. The extent to which the man has read and processed the sources in his field is truly impressive, and reading his notes and bibliography is a great way to come up with a list of primary sources for the period. Unfortunately for the dilettante such as myself, many of these sources are not readily available in English translations--which reminds me: Swanton even refers frequently to books which aren't even out yet, but which he knows about through his own connections.
Thankfully he keeps these notes at the bottoms of the pages where they belong, so you don't have to skip around constantly between notes and text. This was particularly necessary since his edition of the Chronicle contains the extant texts from multiple manuscripts, usually showing two or three of them side-by-side as you go. So for instance the left-hand page will show manuscripts A (the "Winchester" manuscript) and D ("Worcester") covering approximately the same span or chronicle years, while the right-hand page shows corresponding entries for manuscripts E ("Petersborough"), D again, and some of B and C (both "Abingdon"). And these are by no means the only manuscripts he brings in. Tracking through multiple texts simultaneously is both enlightening and somewhat laborious, but this was probably the best way to present the information. In later years all but manuscript E peter out, so at that point you can get more comfortable with a single narrative, as it were.
They aren't really narratives, of course, rather yearly entries made by monkish scribes. Many entries, particularly early on, are quite cryptic. Since the chronicles start at what they then called 60 AD, of course most of the entries were filled in well after the fact--actual contemporary chronicling did not start on a regular basis until King Alfred's days in the 800's, I think, with many earlier entries filled in with data from earlier histories by Bede (see entry 21), Gildas, and Nennius. Still, it is even fascinating to read what later scribes thought occurred in days ancient to their own, and then to see how this progresses up through their own contemporary entries, going through the reigns of the Anglo-Saxons, right up through the Conquest and the first few Norman kings (the last entry, as the last centers of Anglo-Saxon learning were absorbed and replaced by the new Norman culture, dating from 1154). Although most of the entries (except for some of the made-up ones, particularly) are written in a dry, matter-of-fact fashion, they make for fascinating reading since except for the early entries there is for the most part a pretty good chance that what you are reading are words (translated of course) written by people who living at the time in which the events, far distant to us know, actually occurred. And of course the various manuscripts of the Chronicle (early copies of the Chronicle were distributed to various monasteries, which then continued them more or less independently) are often our only source for the time--and even if they aren't the only source, for the Anglo-Saxon years they are almost always the most reliable. You won't find any King Arthur here... of course, he was a legendary hero of the British (Welsh), and the Angles and Saxons were pretty much in perpetual war with them, so these Anglo-Saxon chroniclers might not be overly inclined to include that type of story. Although actually the accounts, except for those pertaining to a chronicle's own locality (the Petersborough manuscript is particularly biased toward Petersborough happenings), read in about as unbiased a way as possible--they never refer to the Welsh as "those damn Welsh" or anything like that, for instance, and they include the names of the Welsh leaders and locations when they are known.
Swanton's translation is clear, and where he ran into vagaries he is careful to make note of it and list the reasonable alternatives. His language is not particularly graceful or poetic but he does what seems to be an admirable job of giving the most direct translation possible from the original Old English. I particularly like that he preserves earlier OE words that did not survive the transition into modern English, but which carried important distinctions of means from any modern equivalent--he keeps the word "thegn," for instance, to describe the old Anglo-Saxon nobles, up until the term went out of use under later Norman influence. So you do get a decent sense of the language, style and thought of the original writers. Once in a while a particularly impressive phrase comes along, my favorite being "They greatly oppressed the wretched men of the land with castle-work; then when the castles were made, they filled them with devils and evil men" (Petersborough Manuscript, annal 1137).
The rear of the book (published by Routledge) contains copious amounts of useful maps, family trees and indices. It would, however, have been nice if the printer had included page numbers on the genealogical tables, since Swanton refers to them by page number.
For those interested in the earliest histories of the British Isles, and without a knowledge of Old English, this work is pretty much essential. Even for those who aren't particularly interested in history for history's sake will find much to keep them interested here, as the marches of the years and centuries are filled with accounts and stories of kings, battles, saints, miracles, pirates, Vikings, plagues, and other cool old stuff. |
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