The World of Homer
[6] Diog. Laert. _Solon_, i. 57.
[7] See Monro, _Odyssey_, vol. ii. pp. 393. 397.
[8] _Herodotus_, v. 67.
[9] _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 27
[10] _Quarterly Review_, July 1908, p. 76.
[11] _Ibid._ p. 53.
[12] _Quarterly Review_, July 1908, p. 54.
[13] _Quarterly Review_, July 1908, p. 55.
[14] _Ibid_. p. 60.
[15] _Hipparch_, p. 228 B.
[16] Thucydides, vi. 57-59; Monro, _Odyssey_, vol. ii. p. 393.
[17] _Quarterly Review_, p. 58.
[18] _Ibid_. p. 58.
[19] _Quarterly Review_, p. 60.
APPENDIX D
THE LOST EPICS AND THE HOMERIC EPICS (_WIEDERHOLUNGEN_)
In Chapter XVIII., on Homer and the "Cyclic" Poems, I fear that I
have not succeeded in understanding Mr. Murray's view of the subject.
The fault of misapprehension is not perhaps entirely without excuse.
Generally speaking, I give the erroneous impression that Mr. Murray
thinks the _Iliad later_ than what are usually called the "Cyclic"
poems on the themes connected with Troy. He certainly says that
passages in the Iliad "seem to be derived from the Cypria, the Little
Iliad, and the Sack of Ilion, the so-called Aethiopis...."[1]
He also says: "In its actual working up, however, our _Iliad_ has
reached a further stage of development than the ordinary run of poetic
chronicles, if I may use the term." Moreover, "we happen to know that
there was an old chronicle poem which both contained a catalogue of the
ships[2] and also narrated at length the assembling of the fleet at
Aulis--the so-called _Cypria_ or Cyprian verses. Our Catalogue has in
all probability been taken from there."[3] Here we are told that our
Iliad derives some passages and the Catalogue from an old chronicle
poem, the Cypria, and from several other named epics, "the Little
Iliad, and the Sack of Ilion, the so-called Aethiopis," while, "in
actual working up, our Iliad has reached a further stage of development
than the ordinary run of poetic chronicles...." It was natural that, on
hearing how the Iliad borrowed from an old chronicle poem, the Cypria,
I should think that the _Cypria_ was regarded as an old chronicle poem
_complete in itself_ before it was borrowed from by the _Iliad_. The
chronicle poem of events so mythical and remote could not resemble a
monastic chronicle in receiving additions from contemporary history.
This remark also applies to the other poems with names, _Sack of
Ilion,_ and so on, and with contents which must be definitely known,
if it be known that the _Iliad_ borrowed from them, or seems to have
borrowed from them. One could not but be convinced, then, that these
old _books_ which lent, were supposed to be earlier finished than the
book, the _Iliad,_ which borrowed from them. But Mr. Murray also said,
and here the prospect wavers: "The truth is that these various books or
masses of tradition were growing up side by side for centuries. All the
great books were growing up together, and passages could be repeated
from any one to any other."[4]
Now a _book_ is one thing--a book with a name, such as _Cypria_, is
not equivalent to "a mass of tradition," which is another thing. To
take an example, we have _The Wallace_ of Blind Harry (_circ_. 1460),
a book about as long as the _Odyssey_. Harry's materials were "a mass
of tradition," including, it is believed, popular ballads, concerning
events then remote by a century and a half. We cannot call the mass of
tradition "a _book_ which was growing up"; nor can we call the mass
of tradition about the Graeco-Trojan affairs before the tenth year of
the siege, _a book_. There is no _book_ till the _Cypria_ is made, and
the _Cypria_ cannot be borrowed from before it is made. A poet who
relies on the _mass of tradition_ is not borrowing from a _book,_ any
more than Harry was borrowing from a book (his use of an alleged book
by Wallace's chaplain, John Blair, is another question). Manifestly
incidents from a mass of tradition about Thebes, about the Greek and
Trojan affairs before the war, and so on, may be introduced into an
epic about the actual siege of Troy. That is all very natural and
probable. But if a poem, with a definite name and a definite scope, the
_Iliad_, borrow passages from another poem with a definite scope and
name, the _Cypria_ or others, then the poem that lends is the earlier,
and the poem that borrows is the later. It was the use by Mr. Murray
of these definite names of poems, _Cypria, Little Iliad, Aethiopis_,
and so on, with his assertion that another book, the _Iliad_, borrows
passages from them, which led me to suppose that the lending poems
were, in his opinion, _complete_ (in one form or another) when the
_Iliad_ borrowed from them. Here I misinterpreted him.
Had Mr. Murray written: "Other passages," in the _Iliad_, "seem to be
derived from the masses of tradition about matters previous to and
later than the opening and end of the _Iliad_--masses of tradition
which in time became the topics of the _Cypria_, the _Little Iliad_,
the _Aethiopis_," then I should have understood and agreed with him.
The true view of the case, Mr. Murray's own view, seems to be this:
there might be actual Greek books (probably not definitely _named_ till
a later age), and these books might, like the _Chanson de Roland_,
be _remaniés_; might be modernised, and might receive additions;
and another book, that which we call the _Iliad_, might exist, and,
like the _Chanson de Roland_ (in the _Roncevaux_ poem) might receive
additions, the facts, in some cases, being taken from the other books,
which were undergoing similar vicissitudes.
This is not my own view of what occurred, but it is a thinkable state
of things, and I regret that I did not understand Mr. Murray's position.
At the same time, if one found in a _chanson_ of the thirteenth century
matter borrowed from the conclusion of _Roncevaux_ (the _remaniement_
of the _Chanson de Roland_), one could not say that it was borrowed
from _Roland_, a substantive earlier poem, in a metre not that of
_Roncevaux_.
There is a sense in which all early Greek epics might be said to borrow
passages from each other. The statement would, however, I think, be
misleading. The fact would be more correctly expressed by saying
that the epics probably (like our own traditional ballads certainly)
employ a common set of formulae to express habitual and often repeated
actions and events--dawn, night-fall, feasts, preparations of food,
arming, arraying a host, greeting a guest, falling in battle, and other
constantly recurring circumstances.
"They hadna sailed a league, a league,
A league but barely three."
"They hadna walked in the bonny greenwood,
Na an hour but barely are."
The formula for the death of lovers--
"The one was buried in Mary kirk,
The other in Mary quire," etc.,
is of constant recurrence.
The murderer always
"takes out a little penknife
That hung low by his gare,"
or--
"Lifts up a gilt dagger
Hung low down by his knee."
The mother or lady, awaiting her son or lover, always
"Looks over tower and town,"
or--
"Looks over Castle Doune."
After a death it is always
"Bells were rung and mass was sung."
"'A grave, a grave,' Lord Bernard cryd,
'To put these lovers in.'"
"'A bed, a bed,' Clark Saunders cried,
'A bed for you and me.'"
Motherwell, who wrote without Homer in his mind, seems to state the
case of the ballads very clearly. "There is not an action, not an
occurrence of any sort, but what has its appropriate phraseology; and
to enumerate all these would, in effect, be to give the principal
portion of all our ancient ballads. For in all cases where there is an
identity of interest, of circumstance, of action, each ballad varies
not from the established mode of clothing these in language.... They
were the general outlines of every class of human incidents...."
Motherwell adds that "something of the same sort, though in a less
marked degree, may be discovered in the construction of the longer
metrical romances."[5] When we look at Book viii. of the _Iliad_, we
see that, in Mr. Leaf's words, "it has undoubtedly great spirit and
movement," though "nearly one-third" of the lines "are found again in
the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_--sometimes with a slight difference."
For reasons connected with the study of ballad poetry I have made
some imitations of the traditional ballads, and find that, though the
stories I tell are new, yet they abound in ballad formulae: indeed,
a ballad, if it is to resemble the traditional sort, cannot be made
on other principles. Ancient Greek epic poetry, intended, like the
ballads, to be recited, not to be read, preserved the old popular and
traditional convention. Critics quarrel as to the parts of the epic
in which the lines are "original" and the parts in which they are
"borrowed." Of many of them we may say that they are neither borrowed
nor original, but are parcels of the common epic stock.
I lately met with a curious example of the critical method of treating
Homer applied in certain criticisms of Scottish ballads. One ballad,
"Auld Maitland," was distributed, by the critic, between Hogg and
Scott. In certain stanzas he found _Wiederholungen_ of lines in the
English ballad of "Chevy Chase," and of others in Herd's version of
"Otterburne" (1776). The verses in "Auld Maitland" which presented
_these Wiederholungen_ were speculatively assigned to the Ettrick
Shepherd; because, in a confessed interpolation by him of two lines,
where only half a stanza was received from the recitation of "Auld
Maitland," the words "Remember Percy" occur. In "Chevy Chase" we have
"But trust me, Percy." Hogg was following "Chevy Chase." But in "Auld
Maitland" we read, "King Edward rode, King Edward ran"; while in
"Jamie Telfer" we have "The Scotts they rode, the Scotts they ran."
Now _that_ line occurs in Scott's, and did not occur in Hogg's version
of "Jamie Telfer." Moreover, Scott himself, the critic believes, wrote
the part of "Jamie Telfer" where the Scotts ride and run. "If Hogg is
responsible for the insertion of this line" ("King Edward rode, King
Edward ran"), "he must have borrowed it from "Edom of Gordon," where we
have "Sum they rode, and sum they ran."
_He must have borrowed it_! How like is all this to the higher
criticism of Homeric _Wiederholungen_! In fact, ballad poetry and
Homeric poetry have stocks of formulae open to every maker. Not to use
them would be not to play the game.
Thus the criticism went on, and Scott's hand was detected exactly
as Hogg's had been, by the occurrence, in "Auld Maitland," of
ballad-formulae which also appear in ballads edited by Scott.
Enfin, "Auld Maitland" was declared to be, in the critic's opinion, in
origin a composition of Hogg's, which he tried to palm off on Scott as
traditional. Scott detected Hogg, entered into the plot, wrote stanzas
and lines into the ballad, and palmed it off on the public.[6]
The critic happened not to know (or did not mention) the history of
how the ballad was first heard by Laidlaw in the mouth of a servant
girl; and how Laidlaw got a version in manuscript from Hogg, who heard
a recitation by his uncle, Will o' Phawhope. The critic had never seen
the extant original MS. sent by Hogg to Laidlaw, and given by Laidlaw
to Scott. He had never, of course, collated that manuscript with the
copy published by Scott. When we make the collation, we find that Scott
neither rejected nor added a single stanza; that he made a necessary
and successful emendation in one line; and that the few small verbal
differences between Hogg's MS. and Scott's printed ballad may be
accounted for by the fact that the copy printed from was that received
from a recitation by Hogg's mother.