In 1911 G. K. Chesterton published his masterpiece in poetry, ‘The Ballad of the White Horse’ about the King of Wessex Alfred the Great and his struggle against the Viking invaders who had vanquished all the Anglo-Saxon kings except for him. Besides being a powerful piece of epic poetry, the book illustrates Chesterton’s deep understanding of the spirit of the so called Dark Ages.
It is a poem about resolute (even seemingly mad) defiance in a desperate situation. Of particular interest is how it analyzes the key differences between the pagan mind and the Christian mind. The heathen’s scorn of Christianity reminds the reader of the criticisms keenly offered by current day neo-pagans.
In general, the poem speaks for itself and does so in such powerful terms that I feel it prudent to give the poem full room, and keep my exposition concise.
Hunger without hope
One of my favorite parts in the poem is Book III, which describes Alfred infiltrating the Viking camp in the disguise of a traveling harper. While there, Alfred listens to the songs of the pagan chieftains, who all offer different approaches a pagan may take when facing the eternal problems of life.
The first answer given is that of pleasure and sensuality. The pagan has the alternative of embracing all the sweet temptations of the world with a childish ardor. Take whatever you can grasp – drink, eat, glut yourself. Raid, rob, and rape to your hearts content, be glorious. The first of the chieftains, Harold, begins.
“For Rome was given to rule the world,
And gat of it little joy –
But we, but we shall enjoy the world,
The whole huge world a toy.”
Reminiscent of many modern pagans, he then goes on to despise the Anglo-Saxons for going soft since becoming Christians a couple of centuries earlier.
“Doubtless your sires were sword swingers
When they waded fresh from foam,
Before they were turned to women
By the god of the nails from Rome.
“But since you bent to the shaven men,
Who neither lust nor smite,
Thunder of Thor, we hunt you,
A hare on the mountain height.”
The scene then shifts to the second chieftain, a great minstrel called Elf. His answer or reaction to the problems underlying life is one of deep sorrow. It is based on an acceptance that even the pagan gods are ultimately powerless before the very same insecurities that face mankind.
“As he sang of Balder beautiful,
Whom the heavens could not save,
Till the world was like a sea of tears
And every soul a wave.
“Soundless as an arrow of snow
The arrow of anguish fell.
The thing on the blind side of the heart,
On the wrong side of the door,
The green plant groweth, menacing
Almighty lovers in the spring;
There is always a forgotten thing,
And love is not secure.”
Next comes the turn of weary and wrathful Ogier. His answer is plain nihilism. He embraces all the meaninglessness, chaos and destruction as something natural and inevitable; and consoles himself by the ecstasy offered by sheer ragnarökian wrathfulness.
“I know there are gods behind the gods,
Gods that are best unsung.
And a man grows ugly for women
And a man grows dull with ale,
Well if he find in his soul at last
Fury, that does not fail.
The wrath of the gods behind the gods
Who would rend all gods and men.
“And you that sit by the fire are young,
And true loves wait for you.
But the King and I grow old, grow old,
And hate alone is true.”
Last comes the pagan King himself, Guthrum, who is well read and knows much about ancient knowledge. As a consequence of his wisdom Guthrum has become disillusioned by the whole pagan mythos, and it no longer offers him any meaning.
He has come to admit the underlying despair, and has escaped into a form of existentialism, a focus on the present moment – particularly the thrill of battle, and the ensuing forgetfulness of meaningless reality.
Still, there is a real hunger in him for meaning, for hope. But he cannot find it, or justify it for himself. Not yet.
“It is good to sit where the good tales go,
To sit as our fathers sat;
But the hour shall come after his youth,
When a man shall know not tales but truth,
And his heart fail thereat.
When he shall read what is written so plain in clouds and clods,
When he shall hunger without hope
Even for evil gods.”
“And the heart of the locked battle
Is the happiest place for men;
When shrieking souls as shafts go by,
And many have died and all may die;
Though this word be a mystery,
Death is most distant then.
“Wherefore I am a great king,
And waste the world in vain,
Because man hath no other power,
Save that in dealing death for dower,
He may forget it for an hour
To remember it again.”
Finally, Alfred in a harper’s guise gives his defiant answer to this long onslaught of despair from the Viking chieftains, explaining to them the Christian worldview.
“When God put man in a garden
He girt him with a sword,
And sent him forth a free knight
That might betray his lord;
He brake Him and betrayed Him,
And fast and far he fell,
Till you and I may stretch our necks
And burn our beards in hell.
“But though I lie on the floor of the world,
With the seven sins for rods,
I would rather fall with Adam than
Rise with all your gods.
“What have the strong gods given?
Where have the glad gods led?
When Guthrum sits on a hero’s throne
And asks if he is dead?”
Alfred continues by offering his reply to the spiteful sneering of the pagans at Christian weakness and effeminacy. Why indeed have the Anglo-Saxons begun to follow Christ instead of the ‘strong and glad gods’ of their pagan forefathers?
“I will even answer the mighty earl
That asked of Wessex men
Why they be meek and monkish folk,
And bow to the White Lord’s broken yoke;
What sign have we save blood and smoke?
Here is my answer then:
“That on you is fallen the shadow,
And not upon the Name;
That though we scatter and though we fly,
And you hang over us like the sky,
You are more tired of victory,
Than we are tired of shame.”
Sky grows darker yet
As is suggested by his defiant answer to the pagans, Alfred’s strength comes from a sense of humiliation rightly borne. He is the oft defeated king, king of a people who have already lost most of their realms, and a king who has lost all his previous battles – almost lost his kingdom.
His is also a life of personal failing. When he had just gained the throne as a young man, the chroniclers tell us how he ruled wickedly and selfishly, following his own lusts and impulses. In fact, the repentant Alfred understands the coming of the Vikings as a divine punishment for his own misrule. Hence, this war is also a personal opportunity to make amends.
In the beginning of the poem the constant stream of defeats has brought Alfred close to despair. In that dark moment he is helped, corrected and encouraged by a divine vision of Virgin Mary. She tells him of pagan kings more glorious, and of civilizations more knowledgeable than the humble, backward Christians who are harried by mighty heathens from every direction.
“The men of the East may spell the stars,
And times and triumphs mark,
But the men signed of the cross of Christ
Go gaily in the dark.
“The men of the East may search the scrolls,
For sure fates and fame,
But the men that drink the blood of God
Go singing to their shame.
“The wise men know that wicked things
Are written on the sky,
They trim sad Lamps, they touch sad strings,
Hearing the heavy purple wings,
Where the forgotten seraph kings
Still plot how God shall die.
“But you and all the kind of Christ
are ignorant and brave,
And you have wars you hardly win
And souls you hardly save.
“I tell you naught for your comfort,
Yea, naught for your desire,
Save that the sky grows darker yet
And the sea rises higher.
“Night shall be thrice night over you,
And heaven an iron cope.
Do you have joy without a cause,
Yea, faith without a hope?”
Through the words of Mary, Chesterton teaches us that the foundation of Christian optimism is not to be found in success, or glory, or any earthly victory. A Christian is one who can feel joy without a cause, and sticks to his faith even in a hopeless situation.
Christians worship a defeated, humiliated, tortured, abandoned, crucified God. But in that very shame and defeat was hidden the happiest, most wonderful piece of Good News the world has ever heard. This paradoxical defiance in defeat and joyfulness in shame is woven into the very fabric of the Faith. How the pagan mind must have been mystified by it!
By the end of the poem we have seen the Christians achieve a hard won victory. Through his own defeat the pagan king Guthrum finds the very hope, joy, and meaning he has been thirsting for. He converts to Christianity with Alfred himself as his godfather.
It is true that in later years England did come under Viking rule, but as a result of conversions of great men like Guthrum, it no longer signified pagan rule. Consequently, heathenism stopped being a threat to English Christianity, even though Danish political interests still threatened those of the English.
What had been existential wars where the future of the Faith was at stake, instead became internecine political conflicts between brothers in Christ.
Man made like a half-wit
At the very end of the poem Chesterton warns us that we might yet fail where Alfred succeeded. The King of Wessex receives a vision of some indeterminate century in the future, when the pagans shall return. But this time they shall not carry swords, but will come armed with books.
“They shall come mild as monkish clerks,
With many a scroll and pen;
And backward shall ye turn and gaze,
Desiring one of Alfred’s days,
When pagans still were men.
“Yea, this shall be the sign of them,
The sign of the dying fire;
And Man made like a half-wit,
That knows not his sire.
“By this sign you shall know them,
That they ruin and make dark;
By terror and cruel tales
Of curse in bone and kin,
By weird and weakness winning,
Accursed from the beginning,
By detail of the sinning,
And denial of the sin.”
Indeed, the heathens have returned and conquered, but they have not done so in the form of manly Vikings from the Norselands, but as the effete infidels of the Universities. As Alfred foresees, they have preached loss of identity, rootlessness, normalization of perversity, a rebellion against our fathers and their traditional morality, and the denial of the reality of sin. All around they spread the darkest despair, and offer as solutions the very same deceptive salves the Vikings sang of.
As we hope and pray for a new Alfred to lead us in these dark times, we must remember the words of Mary and the peculiarly Christian defiance of the King. Late in his reign Alfred saw the Vikings return, and had to begin a new war against them. But this did not dishearten him, or cause him to feel that what he had achieved earlier was somehow meaningless.
Rather, he understood that chaos and destruction constitute an ever present force in the world. If you want to keep a fence white, you need to keep on painting it white every time the paint begins to wear off. Entropy is constant, and the forces of order must keep on opposing it until Christ returns.
In the end, ours is not a battle we can ever decisively win. Tolkien talks of the ‘long defeat’. The ever cheerful Chesterton might rephrase the idea into a joyful struggle, filled with defiant faith even when hope fails. Or he might talk of the long journey of the men who drink the blood of God, and march on gaily in the dark.