Page:Gummere (1909) The Oldest English Epic.djvu/200

184 surely not a translation of the same sort as the Lament; it can hardly pass as a translation at all. Its refrain line is originative, is the core and suggestion of the poem. Indeed, this refrain looks as if it might serve, and had served, in other cases. Any number of exempla could be fitted to it and it could be shifted to another singer’s account. Many another poem, by such a refrain line, could draw lessons from a legendary past, of which the Englishman was once as fond as he was of maxim and moral. Moreover, the autobiographical part of Deor is too old in its allusions for a translation out of the Norse; and it is particularly this singer’s voice from the Germanic past which interests the student of songcraft in days before the epic. For this purpose, and in this sense, Deor surely seems to be an original English poem and a document, precious beyond words, of Germanic minstrelsy. Its value is not destroyed by the juxtaposition of Signy’s Lament.

Deor consoles himself by recounting the sufferings and trials of sundry characters in Germanic tradition. He begins with Wayland, smith divine, a favorite in epic and other old verse. Beowulf’s breastplate is “Wayland’s work”; in the Waldere, Mimming is best of swords and also “work of Wayland.” Gest and romance continue to speak of him into the fifteenth century; and King Alfred had called him greatest of goldsmiths. Localities were named after him. The famous Franks Casket, which Professor Napier assigns to Northumbria for place and the beginning of the eighth century for time, represents