The Kingmaking of Kenric

The Gazette asked Lady Aildreda de Tamwurthe to provide background about the poem performed by the King’s and Queen’s Bards as part of the Coronation ceremony.  Her explanation and poem follow.  Our thanks to Lady Aildreda and Lord Lucien for their help.

When the Queen’s Bard, Lucien de Pontivy, was inspired to write an Old English account of our new King’s history, he naturally turned to Beowulf as his source. A dead King lies on a funeral pyre. A familiar-looking challenger arrives to fight a veteran of many battles. A victorious warrior is surrounded by his thanes. A regal Queen charges that warrior with the care of her people. The story of Kenric aet Essex and Avelina Keyes – but every one of those things happens in the story of Beowulf as well.

Working with a close translation of the original, he found sections of the poetry that told the necessary parts of the story, and preserving intact some of the famous lines of the very beginning. Once the framework was in place, he changed words and phrases to make it Kenric’s story instead of Beowulf’s, and wrote new words to connect the sections into a full narrative. It was a tricky, detailed business; the rules of Anglo-Saxon poetry are strict, the lines are very compressed, and the word-stock of Old English is small, with uneven emphasis. (There are a lot of words for battle!) Moreover, Old English is an inflected language, like Latin, where each word actually changes with its part of speech – it is not enough to find the right word, but also the poet must use the right tense or case or number.

When all was assembled and polished, with the aid of several reference works and one in-house student of Old English, Lucien split the finished poem into dramatic sections, assigning Grim the Skald the part of Kenric, since he is the King’s Bard, and taking on himself the roles of the challenger, Sir Thomas Ravenhill, and also the part of Avelina, since he is Queen’s Bard. Both bards accompanied themselves on lyres as they acted out the challenge, the combat, the death of Sir Thomas, and the charge of Avelina. The fight was fierce, and “Sir Thomas” fell slain, only to rise with the help of his opponent, who knelt to receive the charge of the Queen. All concluded with a ringing “paet waes god cyning” – that was a good king!

CYNE-WEORC : Kingmaking
by Myra Hope Eskridge, drawn from Beowulf

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