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June 22, 2021
King Canute
I have just returned from a week by the side of the sea. I have watched the tide come in and the tide go out. I have walked out on the ocean floor at low tide to the edge of the receding water. I have sat on the sand as the tide changed and watched the sea return until I was forced to seek higher ground.
In the opening chapter of Moby Dick, Melville has Ishmael assert, “Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.” So it was for me. I meditated as I walked and watched. But mostly as I watched. The sheer power of the sea, its vastness, the inexorability of its movements mesmerized me.
As always, it also gave me perspective. In comparison to the thousands of years and millions of rocks and shells required for the sea to make the sand on which I sat, my human life seemed but a dot. In comparison to the power required to pulverize rocks and shells into sand, my power as a human seemed less than puny.
And so I thought of the story of King Canute, a story my mother read to my brother and me from a collection she acquired called Fifty Famous Stories Retold. Originally published in 1896, the stories were designed to introduce children to western cultural legends. Out of the fifty stories told and retold, the one that tells of King Canute is the one that has remained with me. As the danger of egomania in the make-up of those who rule becomes starkly clear in our country and elsewhere and as the repulsiveness of sycophancy in those who follow becomes ever more obvious, the story takes on new resonance.
Canute was king of England before the Norman conquest. He died in 1035. Here is the tale as I heard it.
“A hundred years or more after the time of Alfred the Great there was a king of England named Canute. King Canute was a Dane; but the Danes were not so fierce and cruel then as they had been when they were at war with King Alfred.
The great men and officers who were around King Canute were always praising him.
‘You are the greatest man who ever lived,’ one would say. Then another would say, ‘O king! There can never be another man so mighty as you.’ And another would say, ‘Great Canute, there is nothing in the world that dares to disobey you.’
The king was a man of sense. and he grew tired of hearing such foolish speeches.
One day he was by the sea-shore, and his officers were with him. They were praising him, as they were in the habit of doing. He thought that now he would teach them a lesson and so he bad them set his chair on the beach close by the edge of the water.
‘Am I the greatest man in the world?’ he asked.
‘O king!’ they cried, ‘there is no one so mighty as you.’
‘Do all things obey me?’ he asked.
‘There is nothing that dares to disobey you, O king!’ they said. “The world bows before you, and gives you honor.’
‘Will the sea obey me?’ he asked; and he looked down at the little waves which were lapping the sand at his feet.
The foolish officers were puzzled, but they did not dare to say ’No.’
‘Command it, O king! And it will obey,’ said one.
‘Sea,’ cried Canute, ‘I command you to come no farther! Waves, stop your rolling, and do not dare to touch my feet.’
But the tide came in, just as it always did. The water rose higher and higher. It came up around the king’s chair, and wet not only his feet, but also his robe. His officers stood about him, alarmed and wondering whether he was not mad.
Then Canute took off his crown, and threw it down upon the sand.
‘I shall never wear it again,’ he said. ‘And do you, my men, learn a lesson from what you have seen.’”
Mr. Baldwin, who adapted the tale from a 12th century text, retells how Canute used this experience to give his sycophants a lesson about God. I prefer to view the tale as a lesson about the relative power of humans in relation to the power of the ocean and the gravitational force of the sun and moon. I prefer to see it as a message about the limitations of power, even for ego-maniacal dictators.
Of course the tale is apocryphal. Of course Canute is called brutal in the Wikipedia entry about him. It seems that 12th century, post-Norman invasion historians loved making up nice stories about kings from Anglo-Saxon times. After all, those kings were gone, defeated, no threat, fit subjects for hagiography, and a far safer subject to spin tales about than a current king.
And yet the point of the tale, whether apocryphal or not, remains perfectly valid. There are forces beyond the control of any earthly king. The tide will recede and return, death will come, history will be written.
And so each day, for a week, in the midst of games and food and conversation and books, I took time to sit by the sea and think about King Canute.
Note: I promise I will get back to the garden in the next issue of my newsletter. Though perhaps I may find myself compelled to tell you a story about collecting 19th century editions of fiction by 19rh century American women. Or to speculate on a new term I have just learned, like “species loneliness” or “patriarchy attack.” At any rate, please stay tuned.
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