The White Horse King: The Life of Alfred the Great

THE WHITE HORSE KING is a popular biography by an impressive scholar. Benjamin R. Merkle's subtitled THE LIFE OF ALFRED THE GREAT is dedicated "For Bekah" followed by four untranslated lines of Anglo-Saxon, a language I do not know. I think I recognize lines ending in morning, moon, sun and shield-wall (the last phrase being one treated at length by Merkle as he describes 9th century tactics of armed combat). ***

Alfred/Aelfred lived 849 - 899 A.D. His name means, literally "Elf Advice." He is venerated by the Roman Catholic Church as a saint. English Reformers were pleased to discover his pioneering translations (four centuries before Wycliffe) into Anglo-Saxon of 50 Psalms and certain other Old Testament passages. He is the only British monarch to date styled "Great." ***

Several achievements made King Alfred great. First, when he was the last remaining sovereign on English soil who never surrendered to the Vikings. He survived by developing a strategy that eventually held those Danes at bay. Alfred's strategy was both defensive (fortifying 30 towns) and offensive (creating Britain's first standing army since the Roman legions were withdrawn nearly 500 years earlier). Second, Alfred created a small navy to patrol his coasts and invented a double-size longboat to outrow, outsail and outfight the Vikings. Third, he codified centuries old Germanic/Anglo-Saxon law. Fourth he created a national school system to make every freeman of his kingom of Wessex literate in Anglo-Saxon. He also made literacy a condition for serving in his government. Fifth, he learned Latin and composed his own translations from Latin (with help of the scholars he had imported from Britain and the continent). He thereby fathered an Anglo-Saxon literary flowering. -OOO-

If you know nothing of ninth century England, THE WHITE HORSE KING is a good place to start learning. -OOO-