English elves

T he word elf came into Modern English as the Old English word ælf (pl. ælfe, with regional and chronological variants such as ylfe and ælfen), and so came to Britain originally with the Anglo-Saxons. Words for the nymphs of the Greek and Roman mythos were translated by Anglo-Saxon scholars with ælf and variants on it.

The elf makes many appearances in ballads of English and Scottish origin, as well as folk tales, many involving trips to Elphame or Elfland (the Álfheim of Norse mythology), a mystical realm which is sometimes an eerie and unpleasant place. The elf is occasionally portrayed in a positive light, such as the Queen of Elphame in the ballad Thomas the Rhymer, but many examples exist of elves of sinister character, frequently bent on rape and murder, as in the Tale of Childe Rowland, or the ballad Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight, in which the Elf-Knight bears away Isabel to murder her. Most instances of elves in ballads are male; the only commonly encountered female elf is the Queen of Elfland, who appears in Thomas the Rhymer and The Queen of Elfland's Nourice, in which a woman is abducted to be a wet-nurse to the queen's baby, but promised that she may return home once the child is weaned. In none of these cases is the elf a spritely character with pixie-like qualities.

English folktales of the early modern period typically portray elves as small, elusive people with mischievous personalities. They are not evil but might annoy humans or interfere in their affairs. They are sometimes said to be invisible. In this tradition, elves became more or less synonymous with the fairies that originated from native British mythology, for example, the Welsh Ellyll (plural Ellyllon) and Y Dynon Bach Têg.

Legends about Robin Hood

Robin Hood memorial statue in Nottingham.

Robin Hood is a figure in archetypal English folk tales, whose story originates from medieval times. In popular culture he is painted as a man known for robbing the rich to provide for the poor and fighting against injustice and tyranny. His band consists of "seven score" group of fellow outlawed yeomen – called his "Merry Men". He has been the subject of numerous movies, television series, books, comics and plays.

In popular culture Robin Hood and his band's tales are usually associated with the area Sherwood Forest and Nottinghamshire, though most historians point towards him being a Yorkshireman. Historically his birthplace is said to be Loxley in South Yorkshire, while his grave is claimed to be at Kirklees Priory in West Yorkshire.

In the oldest legends the outlaw's enemy is the sheriff due simply to his profession, but in later versions the sheriff is despotic and gravely abuses his position, appropriating land, levying excessive taxation, and persecuting the poor. In some tales the antagonist is Prince John, based on the historical John of England, who is seen as the unjust usurper of his pious brother Richard the Lionheart. In the oldest versions surviving, Robin Hood is a yeoman, but in some later versions he is described as a nobleman and Lord of the Manor of Loxley (or Locksley), usually designated Robin of Loxley, who was unjustly deprived of his lands.

In other stories, he has served in the crusades, returning to England to find his lands pillaged by the dastardly sheriff. In some tales he is the champion of the people, fighting against corrupt officials and the oppressive order that protects them, while in others he is an arrogant and headstrong rebel, who delights in bloodshed, cruelly slaughtering and beheading his victims.

Despite the fact that most historians and experts link Hood to real life places that still exist today, a subsection argue that his tales (although not the very earliest) have some similarities to other outlaws such as Hereward the Wake, Eustace the Monk and Fulk FitzWarin. The latter of whom was a Norman noble who was disinherited and became an outlaw and an enemy of John of England.

Geoffrey Chauser

Geoffrey Chauser (1340-1400) was the most outstanding figure of the time and very often he is described as the father of the literary language.

Chaucer was born in London and had the most varied experience as student, courtier, official, and member of Parliament.

His early works were more or less imitative of other authors — Latin, French or Italian . He never wrote in any other language than English. The culmination of Chaucer's work as a poet is his great unfinished collection of stories The Canterbury Tales.

The Canterbury Tales.

The Prologue of this poem, the masterpiece of English poetry, describes how the poet found himself at the Tabard Inn, in Southwark, bound on a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Thomas Becket at Canterbury. There he met twenty-nine other pilgrims, who, at the suggestion of the host, agreed to liven up the journey by story-telling. Chaucer lived to write only twenty-four stories out of the intendea sixty, but in the Prologue he managed to give a most vivid picture of contemporary England: he presented in the pilgrims a gallery of life-like portraits taken from all walks of life. In social position they range from knight and prioress to drunken cook and humble plowman — a doctor, a lawyer, a monk, a sailor, a carpenter, an Oxford scholar and many others. These people are shown as they appear on the road, with their distinctive dress and features, and with a bit of their personal history. Even in their choice of tales they unconsciously reveal themselves, the stories being in harmony with the character of the .narrators (e.g. the knight relates a story of chivalry).

Chaucer wrote in a dialect which in the main coincided with that used in documents produced in London shortly before his time and for a long time after.In the history of English literature, Chaucer is considered the introducer of continental accentual-syllabic metre as an alternative to the alliterative Anglo-Saxon metre. He was one of the first English poets to use the five-stress line, the iambic pentameter, in his work. Although he did not really create the literary language, as a poet of outstanding talent he made better use of it than his contemporaries and set up a pattern to be followed in the 15th c. His poems were copied so many times that over sixty manuscripts of THE CANTERBURY TALES have survived to this day. His books were among the first to be printed, a hundred years after their composition.

Chaucer's literary language, based on the mixed (largely East Midland) London dialect is known as classical ME; in the 15th and 16th c. it became the basis of the national literary English language.

THE PROLOGUE.

WHEN that Aprilis, with his showers swoot*, *sweet

The drought of March hath pierced to the root,

And bathed every vein in such licour,

Of which virtue engender'd is the flower;

When Zephyrus eke with his swoote breath