This is an extract from Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination by Peter Ackroyd. It tells a tale recounted by the Venerable Bede in his History of the English Church and People.
"A monk named Drylhelm, from the country of the Northumbrians, was escorted by an angel to a “very broad and deep valley of infinite length” where the condemned souls of the departed were tossed in fire “dreadful with burning flames.” It is unlikely that John Bunyan read this account, but his own image of the “Valley of the Shadow of Death” with “the flame and the smoke,” envisioned a thousand years later in The Pilgrim’s Progress , is part of a continuous tradition. Drylhelm was taken back to the living world, where he spoke only to a few devout contemporaries about his experience. When bathing in a freezing river, with the blocks of ice floating around him, he was engaged in conversation.
"A monk named Drylhelm, from the country of the Northumbrians, was escorted by an angel to a “very broad and deep valley of infinite length” where the condemned souls of the departed were tossed in fire “dreadful with burning flames.” It is unlikely that John Bunyan read this account, but his own image of the “Valley of the Shadow of Death” with “the flame and the smoke,” envisioned a thousand years later in The Pilgrim’s Progress , is part of a continuous tradition. Drylhelm was taken back to the living world, where he spoke only to a few devout contemporaries about his experience. When bathing in a freezing river, with the blocks of ice floating around him, he was engaged in conversation.
“It’s wonderful how you can manage to bear such bitter cold.”
“I have known it colder.”
When urged to alleviate his own watchful self-discipline, he similarly replied: “I have seen greater suffering.”
Ackroyd goes on to remark that it has often been suggested that understatement is a national characteristic.
I've put a piece on this 'national characteristic' on Albion Awakening.
@William - Such extreme understatment is also highly characteristic of the Norse sagas; and of course the Norse have a shared racial and liguistic root with the Anglo Saxons.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if you've read this Ackroyd book, Bruce. I'm reading it at the moment having picked up a library copy. So far I'm finding it a little dull given the subject. He assembles a lot of material but then just regurgitates it or so it seems to me. But I'm only about 80 pages in.
ReplyDelete@William - I've always regarded Ackroyd as a hack (i.e. a writer for money) - and so I never bothered to do anything other than sample-to-evaluate his writings.
ReplyDeleteI picked up this book because of the title and I'd heard of him as something of an authority on Blake. But it's very disappointing. He just churns out a plethora of random facts rather like a computer that's been programmed with all the relevant texts and then reproduces them. I may not bother to finish it.
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