How the time passed away, slipped into nightfall as if it had never been!

Yesterday I posted the poem The Wanderer from The Exeter Anthology.  A haunting, nostalgic, grieving poem.  Ancient but so relevant to so many today, living atomized lives separated always from the story of their own lives.  

How the time passed away, 

slipped into nightfall as if it had never been!

or, in a different translation:

How the time has gone! 

It darkened beneath the helm of night, as if it never even were.

Almost gut wrenching.

Monastery Graveyard in the Snow by Caspar David Friedrich (Germany, 1774–1840)

I have read passages from The Book of Exeter in the past but I don't recall reading this poem.  Perhaps it is the particular translation.

Three things struck me.

First was how much this reminds me of Lord of the Rings.  It is nearly twenty years since I last read it, to my kids, but The Wanderer evokes so many elements of the story.  A quick google and it does turn out that Tolkien was explicit in his use of The Wanderer as both inspiration and model.  

Second was the echoes of Beowulf.  The band of wandering warriors.

Thus spoke the Wanderer, mindful of troubles,

of cruel slaughters and the fall of dear kinsmen:

The gold-giving lord and mead with fellow warriors in the halls of old.

He who has come to know

how cruel a companion is sorrow 

to one who has few dear protectors, will understand this:

the path of exile claims him, not patterned gold,

a frost-bound spirit, not the solace of earth.

He remembers hall-holders and treasure-taking,

how in his youth his gold-giving lord 

accustomed him to the feast—that joy all fades.

The third thing was the Old English word wyrd for fate.  Immediately Macbeth's "weird sisters" came to mind.  I was fifteen when I first read Macbeth closely and have done so a number of times over the years.  There is something about that particular tragedy that grips me.  But I don't ever recall reading anything that connected me to Old English wyrd.  

The play opens with the three weird sisters:

Scene 1

Thunder and Lightning. Enter three Witches.

FIRST WITCH 

When shall we three meet again?

In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

SECOND WITCH 

When the hurly-burly’s done,

When the battle’s lost and won.

THIRD WITCH 

That will be ere the set of sun.

FIRST WITCH 

Where the place?

SECOND WITCH  Upon the heath.

THIRD WITCH 

There to meet with Macbeth.

FIRST WITCH  I come, Graymalkin.

SECOND WITCH  Paddock calls.

THIRD WITCH  Anon.

ALL 

Fair is foul, and foul is fair;

Hover through the fog and filthy air.

They exit.

Wikipedia has a discussion of the weird sisters and their connection to Old English wyrd.

The name "weird sisters" is found in most modern editions of Macbeth. However, the First Folio's text reads:

The weyward Sisters, hand in hand,

Posters of the Sea and Land...

In later scenes in the First Folio, the witches are described as "weyward", but never "weird". The modern appellation "weird sisters" derives from Holinshed's original Chronicles. The word weird (descended from Old English wyrd 'fate') was a borrowing from Middle Scots and had different meanings besides the modern common meaning 'eerie'. (This and related modern senses derives from the word's usage in Macbeth.)

One of Shakespeare's principal sources is the Holinshed (1587) account of King Duncan. Holinshed described the future King Macbeth of Scotland and his companion Banquo encountering "three women in strange and wild apparell, resembling creatures of elder world" who hail the men with glowing prophecies and then vanish "immediately out of their sight". Holinshed reported that "the common opinion was that these women were either the Weird Sisters, that is [...] the goddesses of destiny, or else some nymphs or fairies endued with knowledge of prophecy by their necromantical science."

A thousand year old poem reaching across forty generations, still speaking to us about things we share.  Wisdom still being transmitted for those who pay attention.  Sometimes directly, often in round-about ways.