Widsith: a Study in Old English Heroic Legend

by Raymond Wilson Chambers

This Elibron Classics book is a facsimile reprint of a 1912 edition by the University Press, Cambridge.

278 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1912

About the author

Raymond Wilson Chambers was a British literary scholar, author, and academic; throughout his career he was associated with University College London (UCL).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond...

Reviews

[Curtis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a great introduction to not only the language and text of Widsith, but also to its story, and the stories that led to its development. While a lot of additional scholarship has been done in the last century, Chambers' presentation still does a great job of providing a readable, consolidated view of those who studied the poem before him, with plenty of notes, references and other details available for those who want to dive in deeper.

My favorite part of the book is the chapters on "Stories Known to Widsith," in which Chambers elucidates the myths, legends and historical accounts that the writer(s)/compiler(s)/copyist(s) (and contemporary hearers/readers) of Widsith likely would have been familiar with. Given the amount of name dropping that goes on in Widsith's "catalogs," Chambers' work is much appreciated, both for helping to understand the flow of the poem itself and for providing context as to why the names mentioned were important.

This book is likely to please anyone interested in either the Anglo-Saxon/Old English language or the ancient stories told by the people who spoke it. If you happen to be interest in both, as I am, then double the pleasure.

[Volsung]

It will be said that the scholarship in this book is dated in some respects, for example the assumption of an underlying "Ur-story": where we would prefer now to see variation as the norm, here common, unified originals underlying the existing variants are hypothesized. But in other respects, scholarship like Chambers' has yet to be superceded (though with advances in oral and folklore theory, archaeology, history and the like, it perhaps OUGHT to have been, as Chambers himself would have been the first to say). Two basic assumptions of Chambers' are (to my knowledge) all but undisputed in scholarship today: one, that the Anglo-Saxons must have had many tales (written or oral) of heroic figures and legends; two, that most of these same Old English tales are lost to us. In great depth and detail Chambers follows the hints of old Gothic, Burgundian, Frankish, Langobardic and North Sea tales, devoting sections on individual heroes and stories to their wider medieval European contexts (mostly of Germanic-speaking peoples), as well as to their Old English contexts. Their is also detailed commentary on "Widsith" the poem, its language and meter, provenance, etc. As in his stunning study of "Beowulf," Chambers' writing is as logical as it is clear. This is philological scholarship of the kind rarely conducted these days.

[Othy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely WONDERFUL scholarship. I wish I could find modern scholars who make editions like this. Chambers is very interested in the history of the poem, and gives as full an account as he can (from my knowledge, at least). Unfortunately his rather poor opinion of poems like Beowulf creep in, though (for Chambers) it doesn't seem that his thoughts of literary value have a direct effect on how much he enjoys and gets out of the works.