Use and Enjoyment in Old English Literature

THE TRANSLATIONS traditionally attributed to Alfred the Great return again and again to the question of how to make good use of material things. Indeed, it is partly for this reason that the case for Alfred's authorship appeared so persuasive for so long: the translations often seem to reflect the cares and concerns of an individual responsible for significant amounts of wealth and resources, such as a king. The translator of the Old English Boethius goes as far as to interrupt the dialogue between Wisdom and Mod in order to introduce the now famous defence of the king's resources, in which we might be tempted to hear King Alfred's apology for his own wealth:

Here we see perhaps the most emphatic renunciation of excessive, opulent wealth in all the works associated with Alfred: material resources, the rich treasuries of early medieval kingship, are reduced to tola and andweorc. These ‘tools’, then, are apparently nothing more than the means by which the king carries out his duties: ‘butan þisum tolum nan cyning his cræft ne mæg cyðan’ (B17.13–14) (‘without these tools no king can make his skill known’). The material resources which support the king's earthly power appear only to serve and support the exercise of the king's cræft. The translator initially defines these resources in the somewhat abstract terms of the three orders of society: gebedmen, fyrdmen and weorcmen (B17.13) (‘clergy’, ‘soldiers’, ‘labourers’). However, as the apology goes on, more concrete tools are revealed as those things which will support these three groups: ‘Þæt is þonne heora biwist: land to bugianne and gifta and wæpnu and mete and ealo and claþas, and gehwæt þæs ðe þa þre geferscipas behofiað’ (B17.16–18) (‘that is then their subsistence: land to inhabit and gifts and weapons and food and ale and clothes, and whatever the three companies require’).