Alfred and Written English

In the ninth century the Vikings overran much of England (Chapter 3), and Wessex survived. Its king, Alfred, is credited with something unusual for the age: a programme to put learning and history into English, not only Latin. That programme is why so much Old English is West Saxon.

Alfred and the Vikings

According to Wikipedia's Alfred the Great article, Alfred ruled Wessex from 871 to about 886, and then styled himself King of the Anglo-Saxons until his death in 899. He succeeded his brother Æthelred after years of Viking attacks. After a near-collapse in 878, when Chippenham fell and Alfred fled to Athelney, he rallied forces and won the Battle of Edington. The Danish leader Guthrum converted to Christianity, and the treaty that followed divided Mercia, with the Danelaw as the Viking-ruled east. The article says Alfred took London in 886 and built a network of fortified burhs.

The Danelaw is the subject of Chapter 7. For this chapter, the point is that the dialect areas of Northumbria and eastern Mercia (Chapter 3) were under Viking rule, and what remained of English kingship centred on Wessex.

Alfred's learning programme

The article says Alfred recruited clerical scholars from Mercia, Wales and abroad, and sought to require literacy among those holding offices of authority. He had Latin works translated into the vernacular, which he deemed "most necessary for all men to know".

The article says scholars now doubt that Alfred wrote these personally. They are called "Alfredian", produced under his patronage with help from the court. It names the learned Mercian clerics at court, including Plegmund (archbishop of Canterbury from 890) and Wærferth, and also Asser, who came from the monastery of Saint David in south-west Wales and wrote the Life of King Alfred, and John the Saxon from Francia. This matches the Chapter 3 note that many of Alfred's translations were made by Mercian scholars. The article does not discuss the dialect of the translations, so I say no more about it.

The preface to the Pastoral Care

Gregory's Pastoral Care is a treatise on clergy responsibilities written by Pope Gregory I around 590. According to Wikipedia's Pastoral Care article, Alfred translated it into Old English in the late ninth century, as part of a project to improve education, and the translation is kept at the Bodleian Library. The article calls it the oldest surviving book written in English; I take that as the article's claim. It says Alfred wanted every bishop in his kingdom to have a copy to help less-educated clergy.

The Alfred article adds that the preface says learning had declined so badly that few men south of the Humber could understand their services in English, and notes that Alfred likely exaggerated for effect. He described his method as translating "sometimes word for word, sometimes sense for sense", and circulated the translation to all his bishops. Copies were still being made in the eleventh century.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

According to Wikipedia's Anglo-Saxon Chronicle article, the Chronicle is a set of annals in Old English recording English history year by year, beginning with 60 BC. The lost original was compiled in the late ninth century, probably in Wessex during Alfred's reign, and its shared core, the "Common Stock", dates to about 893. The article says it was probably produced in Alfred's scholarly circle and promotes his dynasty. The Wikipedia article on Alfred says it was probably meant to promote the unification of England.

• Manuscripts: nine survive in whole or in part, none of them the original, labelled A to I. The oldest, A (the Winchester or Parker Chronicle), was begun at Old Minster, Winchester toward the end of Alfred's reign.
• Copying: copies were sent to monasteries, where scribes added material and sometimes updated them independently, so the manuscripts often describe the same events differently.
• Languages: most are in Old English; manuscript A switches to Latin for entries from 1070 to 1075.
• The Peterborough Chronicle (E): a new copy was made after a fire in 1116. One scribe wrote the entries up to 1131, and a later scribe wrote 1132 to 1154 in Middle English. The article calls the text from 1131 key evidence for the shift from standard Old English to early Middle English.

The Old English entries read in Old English Reading 1, Chapters 4 and 5 are from the Peterborough Chronicle (E) as printed on Wikisource. Chapter 9 of this course returns to the move to Middle English.

Why West Saxon became the model

Putting the pieces together, as Chapter 3 outlined: the Viking conquests removed the rivals, Alfred's Wessex absorbed the rest of Mercia and Kent, and the translations and the Chronicle were written under his patronage in the West Saxon of his court. The Old English article says Early West Saxon became the language of government and the basis for literature and religious translations. That is my summary of two articles, not a claim either one makes in this form.

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