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The Chronicle was continued after Alfred's death, and is the best monument of early English prose that is left to us. Here and there stirring songs are included in the narrative, like "The Battle of Brunanburh" and "The Battle of Maldon." The last, entered 991, seventy-five years before the Norman Conquest, is the swan song of Anglo-Saxon poetry.
Literature reflects the inner struggles of the period: the war-song of Brunanburh, the mystic light which hangs upon the verses of Caedmon, the melancholy of Cynewulf's lyrics. Yet what a contrast is the England delineated by Bede with Visigothic Spain, with Lombard Italy, or Frankish Gaul, as delineated by Gregory of Tours!
Perhaps it was that Song of the Battle of Brunanburh which Tennyson has so skilfully rendered into modern English words while preserving the Old English metre. And here, though the Anglo-Saxon words were certainly uncouth, we caught the chief stresses without difficulty, usually four beats to the line.
It is already spoken of in the tenth century Anglo-Saxon ballad of the Battle of Brunanburh! Athelstan king, Lord among earls, Bracelet bestower and Baron of barons; He with his brother Edmund Atheling Gaining a lifelong Glory in battle. Slew with the sword-edge, There by Brunanburh, Brake the shield wall, Hew'd the lindenwood, Hack'd the battleshield, Sons of Edward with hammered brands.
Scot and Cumbrian fought beside the northmen against the West-Saxon King; but his victory at Brunanburh crushed the confederacy and won peace till his death. His brother Eadmund was but eighteen at his accession in 940, and the North again rose in revolt.
The mastery of Northumberland was long an object of contest between Anglo-Saxons and Scandinavians, and this was the chief point at issue in the famous battle at Brunanburh, 937.
It was the hostility of the states around it to the West-Saxon rule which had roused so often revolt in the Danelaw; but from the time of Brunanburh we hear nothing more of the hostility of Bernicia, while Cumbria was conquered by Eadmund and turned adroitly to account in winning over the Scots to his cause.
Behold, Achilles turns, unbending from his deep disdain; Rustum, Timoleon, Hannibal, and those of later days who fell at Brunanburh, Senlac, and Trafalgar, turn to welcome the dead whom we have sent thither as the avant-garde of our faith, that in this cause is our destiny in this the mandate of our fate.
Shortly after this, at the Battle of Brunanburh, Athelstan vanquished Anlaf Sitricsson and Constantine, king of the Scots. The site of this battle would seem to have been in Northumbria, as it was into the Humber that Anlaf and Constantine sailed with their large fleet; but the precise spot has never been determined.
One of the great events in Ripon history is the visit of Alfred's grandson =King Athelstan=. Yorkshire had lately been a separate Danish kingdom, but it passed under the direct rule of Wessex in 926, and it was either in that year that Athelstan came, or in 937, when he defeated the Scots and other northern rebels at Brunanburh.
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