An Introduction to “The Dream of the Rood”

Dr. Amy Fahey

The Ruthwell Cross. This Anglo-Saxon cross, inside Ruthwell Parish Church, dates from a time when Ruthwell lay within the Anglian kingdom of Northumbria. It was smashed up in the seventeenth century on the orders of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, was later restored from as many pieces as could be found, and was moved inside the church in 1887.
     The cross bears pictorial carvings on all sides, some Latin texts, and Runic inscriptions that are excerpts from “The Dream of the Rood,” one of the earliest surviving Old English poems (“rood” is an old word for “cross”).

Brosnað enta geweorc (“the works of giants crumble”)

When I begin to ponder the very existence of the exquisite Anglo-Saxon devotional poem known to us as “The Dream of the Rood,” I am struck simultaneously with sorrow and awe. Much like the Dreamer in the poem who, when he first gazes on the Cross, sees it “[b]edewed with blood and drenched with flowing gore” and then just as quickly “bedecked with treasure,” I am overcome with both sadness for the loss of untold numbers of our earliest English poems, and amazement at the survival of this one 115-line wonder, in which the speaker recounts a glorious dream-vision of the speaking Cross.

We owe this poem’s singular existence, so history speculates, to Cardinal Guala Biccieri, papal legate to England in the early thirteenth century, who likely brought the manuscript back from England and deposited it in Vercelli for the devotional benefit of English pilgrims stopping there while on their way to Rome. The manuscript was not discovered in the Vercelli Cathedral Library until the early nineteenth century; for hundreds of years, then, this poem, and others like it, lay buried.

More sobering still is the reality that there almost certainly were once thousands of devotional manuscripts like this one, in libraries that were pillaged, dispersed, and destroyed in the wake of Henry VIII’s catastrophic dissolution of the monasteries. The library at Canterbury, for instance, once boasted nearly 2,000 medieval manuscripts, many from the Anglo-Saxon period. Now, after decades of painstaking paleographic and archival work, scholars have been able to identify only thirty surviving manuscripts from this cradle of English Catholicism.¹ “Some things,” the speaker of Richard Wilbur’s poem “The Mind Reader” tells us, “are truly lost.”

If we didn’t have the Vercelli manuscript, all that would be known of “The Dream of the Rood” would be contained in two surviving devotional crosses. The first is a badly-damaged eleventh-century reliquary cross now in the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula in Brussels, which bears the inscription in Anglo-Saxon, “Rood is my name. Trembling once, I bore a powerful king, made wet with blood.” The second is the eighth-century free-standing stone Ruthwell Cross, itself a reconstructed ruin, which bears lines from the poem in runic inscription along its east and west sides. One side includes lines 56-58 of the poem, translated as: “Christ was on the Cross. / And yet I saw men coming from afar, / Hastening to the prince. I watched it all.” Both excerpts give us just a hint of the incredible devotional potential in considering the Crucifixion from the perspective of the closest “eyewitness,” the Cross on which Christ suffered and died. The poem becomes for us, then, a paradoxical dramatic meditation, in which we are transformed from passive observers to active participants in Christ’s salvific plan.

And so, in the midst of this lament for the silenced treasures of Old English poetry, I experience profound gratitude for the presence of this poem, in which we as readers can begin to approach Christ through the mediate agencies of Cross and Dreamer. As Richard Hamer tells us in his translation, “That this is the finest, most imaginatively conceived and most original of the OE [Old English] religious poems few will dispute.”² Michael Alexander, in comparing “The Dream of the Rood” to that great Latin meditation on the Cross, the Vexilla Regis prodeunt,³ considers it “a poem perhaps as great as the hymns of Venantius Fortunatus and more dramatic if less perfect.”⁴ And in the preface to his prose translation, S. A. J. Bradley calls the Dream-poet a “master of compunction,” who, “in the very process of depicting redemptive compunction being stirred in the Cross by Christ and in the dreamer by the Cross . . . bids through his art to move his audience to the same virtuous state.”⁵ Reading the poem for the first time, you should be similarly “punctured,” moved by a beautiful paradox from consciousness of your utter sinfulness and unworthiness to a state of hopeful joy through the Triumph of the Cross.

Dream or Vision? Cross or Rood?

Perhaps the thorniest issue confronting the reader of “The Dream of the Rood” is that of translation. Traduttore, traditore (literally, “translator, traitor”) goes the Italian proverb, and any translation of “Dream of the Rood” is destined to “betray” the force and beauty of the original through its imprecision of meaning. The Anglo-Saxon language of the poem is far removed from modern English, beyond occasional near-cognates like “treow” (tree), “cyning” (king), or “heofenum” (heaven); any literal translation fails to capture the rich connotations of certain Old English words, and especially the way in which Christianity was transforming and enriching the meaning of those words—“friend” in Anglo-Saxon poetry, for instance, originally implied a code of reciprocity and protection absent from our modern understanding. Then, too, Anglo-Saxon verse form, with its system of stress and alliteration rather than strict meter and rhyme, is nearly impossible to replicate in modern English; attempts to do so usually end up sounding hopelessly archaic and artificial.

Compare these five translations of the following lines: “Geseah ic þa Frean mancynnes/ efstan elne micle     þaet He me wolde on gestigan” (ll. 33-34):

1. Then I saw the Lord of mankind hasten
   with much fortitude, for he meant to climb
   upon me.⁶
2. Then I spotted the first free-born
   racing bracing with bravado
   to mount me up merrily.⁷
3. Then I saw, marching toward me,
           Mankind’s great King;
   He came to climb upon me.⁸
4. And then I saw the Lord
   Courageously approach to climb on high on me.⁹
5. Then I saw the Lord of all mankind
   Hasten with eager zeal that He might
   mount upon me.¹⁰

The first is a near-literal prose translation; the second and third admirably attempt to preserve the aural force of the alliterative half-line, yet sacrifice something arguably significant in the process (much of the literal sense in the first; a descriptive adverb in the second). The last two attempt to retain some of that alliterative force while rendering it in the dominant English dramatic poetic idiom since Shakespeare, blank verse (lines of unrhyming iambic pentameter).

Fortitude, courage, zeal, bravado—hastening, racing, marching, approaching—the various and frequently contradictory implications of the translator’s word speak to the difficulty of rendering the sense of the original in terms both faithful and poetic. “Bravado” carries the implication of boldness with a desire to impress or intimidate others—more characteristic of the false braggart Unferth in Beowulf than of Christ as he approaches the Cross. And “efstan” does not simply mean “approach” or methodically “march”—here the word “hasten,” even if it disappoints the demands of alliteration, probably best captures the eagerness of Christ to fulfill His Divine mission.



Short of learning Anglo-Saxon, there is no easy resolution to this difficulty. My suggestion is to slowly read and meditate on the poem in an edition with a facing-page translation. Even if you don’t know any Anglo-Saxon, you will benefit from glancing at the original and mulling over some of the deep ancestral words which still reverberate across more than a millennium. “Micle,” for instance, may be familiar to those who have Scottish grandmothers (as I did): to approach the Cross “elne micle” (or mickle) literally means something like “with much (great) strength, power or courage.” I have benefited greatly from Michael Alexander’s translation in the Penguin edition, which begins by mirroring the stress and alliteration of Anglo-Saxon verse but moves to a prose translation for the later quasi-homiletic portion in which the Cross and Dreamer lay out the spiritual implications of the Cross’s narrative. But I confess I have an attachment to the blank verse translation of Richard Hamer: it captures some of that dramatic force while retaining the rich meditative quality of Anglo-Saxon verse. It is this translation from which I’ll quote exclusively for the remainder of this reflection.

Hamer’s translation is also the one I was assigned when I first studied Anglo-Saxon with Michael Alexander and other sages over thirty years ago at the University of St. Andrews (in that endeavor I was joined by another American graduate student much wiser than I, Robert Wyer, known to many readers of this publication). My experience of reading “The Dream of the Rood” now—its aesthetic and imaginative force, its spiritual affectivity—is inextricably linked to that initial encounter in the ‘auld, grey toon,’ feeling the beauty and power of its lines as I stood on the edge of the huge dry-stone pier, the gun-metal grey clouds lowering overhead, the great grey North sea stretching endlessly before me, longing for Someone far beyond that vastness. One cannot readily supplant the memory of one’s First Love.

Note: Just after completing this essay, I read an astounding new translation of “The Dream of the Rood” by Tessa Carman and Jane Clark Scharl published here: https://thelampmagazine.com/blog/the-dream-of-the-rood-a-new-translation. The translation is prefaced by a profound Christian reflection on the act of translation: “We believe that in the relationship between different languages, along with shadows, we find light.” This lyrical translation transmutes the metaphorical texture of the original, illumining it with bright new gems, imitating the transformation of the Rood. I invite you to read it, just as the translators’ opening words do: “Come—I sing of a splendid dream.”

Crist waes on rode

In the space remaining, I hope simply to direct your gaze toward a handful of moments in “The Dream of the Rood” which artfully impel the reader toward compunction and hopeful longing. The poem is divided into three major sections: the first and last are “frames” delivered by the Dreamer, while the lengthy middle is spoken by the Cross. In the opening section (lines 1-27), the speakers introduces his nocturnal vision, presented in the first-person voice also found in many of the Anglo-Saxon riddles, and provides us with a series of contrasts: “all this marvelous creation” gazes “on the glorious tree of victory,” while the speaker “with sins was stained, wounded with guilt”; the tree is a tree of victory, “the Ruler’s tree,” and yet beyond its gold and gem-encrusted surface the Dreamer sees “the ancient strife of wretched men.” In the middle section (ll. 28-121), the Cross recounts his perspective on the Crucifixion, explains the significance of the Cross, and ends with a commission to the Dreamer to “reveal this vision to mankind” so that they may “journey to the heavens from this earth.” In the final section (ll. 122-156), the Dreamer expresses the joy, eagerness, and longing for the new heavenly fellowship he now experiences: “May God be friend to me/ He who once suffered on the gallow’s tree.”



“The Dream of the Rood” thus places us in a dramatic situation in which, rather than contemplate Christ’s sufferings (as most crucifixion narratives like the Stations of the Cross invite us to do), we are invited to meditate on the experience of the Cross itself. The cross paradoxically best serves the Divine plan by abasing itself, by standing fast while Christ suffers for the sins of mankind, by resisting the temptation to “save” his Lord and thus interfere with the divine plan. “Ne dorse I” (“I dared not”) is repeated four times by the Cross, as we witness the inner conflict of a loyal servant—the quintessential Anglo-Saxon thane—being asked to stand fast as a “gallows tree”: “I durst not against God’s word / Bend down or break” (ll. 35-36).

One of the most striking features of this vision is the way in which the consent of the Cross to participation in God’s salvific plan is figured as analogous to the fiat of the Blessed Mother. “I opened up the right way of life for men,” the Cross declares, so “heaven’s King exalted me above / All other trees, just as Almighty God / Raised up His mother Mary for all men / Above all other women in the world.” (ll. 88-94). The Veneration of the Cross is here imaginatively linked to devotion to Our Lady; both remind us of the ways in which we, unlike those holy “friends of God” have strayed from that “right way of life” and crave their intercession.

The Cross thus journeys from his beginnings as an earthly tree “cut down at the copse’s end/ Moved from my roots” to an object of scorn (“they reviled us both together”) to a sign of victory and redemption: “there need none/ Be fearful if he bears upon his breast/ The best of tokens.” How is this transformation affected? The pivotal moment arguably comes when the Cross momentarily moves from addressing itself in first to third person. When Christ hangs in agony, the Cross declares not “Christ was on me,” but “Christ was on the Cross”: a simple declarative statement, full of the dramatic understatement so characteristic of Anglo-Saxon poetry. But this subtle shift invites us to ponder all the implications of that frozen moment when the reason for Christ’s Incarnation is finally and fully realized.

The “Dream of the Rood” concludes with Christ entering in glory, after the Harrowing of Hell, into “His own land.” No longer an exile (like so many protagonists of Anglo-Saxon poetry of lament are), Christ has returned to His home in Heaven. The Cross reveals to us that this home is also the Dreamer’s true home, as it is likewise ours. I, like the Dreamer, and like you, wait here on earth for the time when “the cross of God” will “fetch me from /This transitory life and carry me / To where there is great bliss and joy in heaven, /Where the Lord’s host is seated at the feast.” (ll. 138-41)

Until such time, God willing, we would all do well to imitate the Anglo-Saxons in their veneration of the Cross of Christ.¹¹ In the beautiful Anglo-Saxon poem which appears just after “The Dream of the Rood” in the Vercelli manuscript, we are presented with just such a model. This is Cynewulf’s life of St. Helena, and here is the moment when, after discovering the True Cross, she is presented with the nails which pierced Christ’s body:

Then there was the sound of weeping, and a passionate flood poured forth upon the cheek, but not because of grief did tears fall upon the filigree clasp; the queen’s purpose was replete with glory. She knelt, radiant with faith, and, blissfully exultant, worshipped the gift which had been brought her as a solace for sorrows. She thanked God, the Lord of victories, because she knew at first hand the truth which had often been proclaimed long previously, from the beginning of the world, as a comfort to the people.¹²

Endnotes



¹ See https://teachingthecodex.com/2020/04/15/the-lost-library-of-canterbury-cathedral-digital-resources-to-reunite-manuscripts-and-fragments/

² Richard Hamer, A Choice of Anglo Saxon Verse (London: Faber & Faber, 1990), p. 159.

³ “The Royal Banners Forward Go.” This hymn, sung at Vespers during Holy Week, was composed in honor of the relic of the True Cross sent by the Byzantine Emperor Justin II to the Frankish Queen Radegund. See https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15396a.htm.

⁴ Michael Alexander, Old English Literature (New York: Schocken Books, 1983), p. 180.

⁵ S. A. J. Bradley, Anglo Saxon Poetry (London: J. M. Dent, 1982), p. 159.

⁶ Ibid, Anglo Saxon Poetry (London: J. M. Dent, 1982), p. 161.

⁷ Aaron K. Hostetter, Old English Poetry Project (https://oldenglishpoetry.camden.rutgers.edu/dream-of-the-rood/)

⁸ Michael Alexander, The First Poems in English (New York: Penguin, 2008), p. 38.

⁹ Ciaran Carson, The Word Exchange: Anglo-Saxon Poems in Translation, ed. Delanty and Matto (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011), p. 369.

¹⁰ Richard Hamer, A Choice of Anglo Saxon Verse, p. 162.

¹¹ Here is just an inkling of that devotion: “An inventory of the treasures of Ely made in 1075 or 1076 notes that the abbey possessed nineteen large crosses and eight smaller ones, including two processional crosses given by Archbishop Wulfstan and Bishop Athelstan. Worcester possessed fifteen crosses at the time of the Norman Conquest. Earlier in the century Brihtwold, bishop of Ramsbury (ob. 1045), gave his former monastery of Glastonbury twenty-six crosses together with other ornaments. Crosses were a favourite gift to monasteries. Edgar gave crosses to Ely and Glastonbury, Eadred presented a gold cross to the Old Minster at Winchester and Cnut gave a jewelled one to the New Minster.” See Barbara C. Raw, Anglo-Saxon Crucifixion Iconography and the Art of the Monastic Revival (Cambridge, 1990), p. 40.

¹² Bradley, Anglo Saxon Poetry, pp. 192-93.