The Sparrow in the Hall...

Having dozed through the daily service on Radio 4, which this morning came from Durham Cathedral, I woke up during the reading of this familiar passsage from Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of England. The date is the 7th century CE, the venue is King Edwin’s mead hall in his Northumbrian kingdom, and the speaker is an un-named courtier.

“The present life of man upon earth, O king, seems to me, in comparison with that time which is unknown to us, like to the swift flight of a sparrow through the house wherein you sit at supper in winter, with your ealdormen and thegns, while the fire blazes in the midst, and the hall is warmed, but the wintry storms of rain or snow are raging abroad. The sparrow, flying in at one door and immediately out at another, whilst he is within, is safe from the wintry tempest; but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, passing from winter into winter again. So this life of man appears for a little while, but of what is to follow or what went before we know nothing at all. If, therefore, this new doctrine tells us something more certain, it seems justly to deserve to be followed”.

The “new doctrine” mentioned in the final sentence is, of course, Christianity, as advanced by the missionary Paulinus. If Christianity could explain what would happen to us when we died, then the pagan king would consider converting to the faith (with the unspoken corrollary that if the King adopted Christianty, his subjects would follow his example). Though King Edwin was convinced by the Christian promise of an afterlife, my interest is in the first few lines, with the courtier describing the convivial scene inside the mead hall, and the brief incursion of a sparrow, with almost cinematic clarity. It’s a work of observation, not fabrication.

The Christian afterlife may offer a degree of consolation - especially when the “wintry storms” are raging outside - but I don’t buy it. How consoling is it, really, to believe propositions which simply aren’t true? I identify instead with the scene, as described so beautifully in this passage, and the metaphor to illustrate both the shortness of life and the inevitability of death. I’m not the king, or any of his courtiers, enjoying the warmth and company in the mead hall; I am, of course, the sparrow!…