The Cambridge Old English Reader

The poem known as Maxims II is found in a mid-eleventh-century manuscript (London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius B. i, fol. 115r–v), where it is sandwiched between a metrical calendar, recording liturgical feasts and saints’ days of the church year, and a copy of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The OE maxims present an intimate view of the world in literal terms. Indeed, on the face of it, they may seem to state the obvious (‘a king must rule his kingdom’), but that is the point. Their effect derives from their economy of expression, pared down to the simple unqualified statement of fact, which allows no escape into metaphorical interpretation, and so they demand a direct confrontation with meaning. There are numerous references in Maxims II to the Germanic ‘heroic’ culture out of which the Anglo-Saxons came: a king sharing out treasures, young men being exhorted to battle, the dragon guarding its hoard. The sense of order which the maxims cumulatively promote reflects and reinforces the divinely ordained laws of the natural world and the laws (by implication no less divinely inspired) of social hierarchy.

The essential simplicity of gnomic utterance in OE literature does not lead to ease of translation into ModE. Two main verbal formulae are used to present the maxims. The first one uses byð (or bið), ‘is’ (from bēon), known as the ‘gnomic’ present tense and in general expressing universal, unchanging truths, but used also to indicate future action (‘will be’). Mostly, byð is used for the more abstract or unchanging truths (‘winter is coldest’). The other formula uses sceal (present tense of sculan), which is more problematical. The essential meaning of OE sculan is ‘must’, but is it ‘must be’ in the sense of moral duty and obligation, or ‘must needs be’ in the sense of something customary or simply unavoidable? Perhaps, in a social context, there can be no essential difference, and the Anglo-Saxon poet and his audience were no doubt well aware of the ambiguities. Although translation of OE sceal as the future auxiliary ‘shall’ is usually to be avoided, in the case of maxims it may be a good choice, for even today the verb retains some of its sense of both obligation and necessity.