¹ See Note 17.

² The interpretation of the names is that of Kemp Malone in his Widsith (London: Methuen, 1936).

³ Ealhhild, Eormanric, Guthhere, Alboin, Wudga, Hama.

⁴ Alewih, Offa, Hrothgar, Hrothulf, Caesar; and see the later discussion of Alexander and Hwala.

⁵ See his review of Caroline A. Brady's Legends of Ermanaric in MLN, lix (1944), 185.

⁶ Even Cynewulf mentions this as a memory of his past; Elene 1258.

⁷ In retirement, Cynewulf asks that his only reward for composing be prayers for his soul: Fates of the Apostles 88.

⁸ Beowulf 2140-44; and cf. the many epithets like “sincgifa,” “sinces brytta.”

⁹ Ll. 35 ff., in the text of G. Vigfusson and F. Y. Powell, Corpus Poeticum Boreale (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1883), i, 257.

¹⁰ Quoted from E. R. Eddison, Egil's Saga (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1930), p. 199. Other references may be found collected by L. F. Anderson in The Anglo-Saxon Scop (Toronto: University of Toronto Studies, Philological Series 1, 1903), p. 41 ff.

¹¹ C. W. Kennedy, The Earliest English Poetry (New York: Oxford University Press, 1943), p. 82.

¹² Guthni Jónsson, Íslendinga þœttir (Reykjavik: S. Kristjánssonar, 1935); “íslendings þáttr sögufróÐa,” p. 148; “Stúfs þáttr,” p. 267.

¹³ L. F. Anderson, The Anglo-Saxon Scop, pp. 17-24.

¹⁴ Fr. Klaeber, Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg (3rd ed., New York: Heath, 1936), pp. liii and 433 ff.

¹⁵ Cf. Grimnis-Mál (144 lines of complex verse); Vafþrupnis-Mál (223 lines); þorgrimsþula. The Norse writings at all comparable to Widsith lack all references to poetry, although some of them are in verse. Likewise, although they display great mythological learning, they lack all reference to instruction and are even set in amusing fictions.

¹⁶ G. Jónsson, Íslendinga þættir, p. 148. Perhaps it is fair to instance here the Irish bards of about the same period as Beowulf, who had to complete a course of training lasting as long as twelve years, at the end of which they could repeat, word for word, three hundred and fifty stories and a great many poems; Eleanor Hull, A Textbook of Irish Literature (London: Nutt, 1906), i, 187, 190.

¹⁷ G. Jónsson, Íslendinga þœttir, p. 270. When the king inquires whether he is a skald, he replies that he is, that he has more ability than most skalds, and that a relative was famous as a poet.

¹⁸ H. M. Chadwick and N. K. Chadwick, The Growth of Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932), i, 598, where the authors classify the poem as entertainment becoming instruction; K. Malone, Widsith, p. 50: “[The poet] was a cleric at home in vernacular poetry sacred and profane… . His interest in the Germanic heroic age was that of an antiquary and a historian, not that of a professional scop. He thought highly of the scop's calling because he looked upon poetry as the vehicle of history.” Substantially the same view is expressed by Andreas Heusler in Die altgermanische Dichtung (Potsdam: Akademische Verlags-gesellschaft Athenaion, m.b.h., 1931), p. 89.

¹⁹ R. W. Chambers, Widsith: A Study in Old English Heroic Legend (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1912), p. 5: “… The Traveller's tale is a phantasy of some man, keenly interested in old stories, who depicts an ideal wandering singer, and makes him move hither and thither among the tribes and heroes whose stories he loves”; Gudmund Schütte, in A Continuation of Widsith in German Romances and Danish Ballads (Copenhagen: Levin and Munkgaard, 1936), p. 5, represents the speaker as a legendary and traditional figure, of no doubt the same general status as the Lambert Ferri and Jehan Bretel in the later jeux-partis.

²⁰ Stopford A. Brooke, English Literature from the Beginnings to the Norman Conquest (New York: Macmillan, 1898), p. 48: “If we may trust the verses, he had shared the battles the Gothic chiefs had fought with the Huns”; H. M. Chadwick, in The Cambridge History of English Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1907), i, 36: “The hypothesis that the kernel of the poem is really the work of an unknown fourth century minstrel, who did visit the court of Eormenric, seems to involve fewer difficulties than any other.”

²¹ Caroline A. Brady, “The Eormanric of the Widsith,” University of California Publications in English, iii (No. 6), 236. “One purpose of the poet was to glorify Gothic heroism in [the wars with the Huns].”

²² It is now generally believed that the poets of Brunanburh and Maldon had not been in the battles, but had acquired first-hand information. See C. W. Kennedy, The Earliest English Poetry, p. 335.

²³ Professor Malone, one of the few to accord it any standing, thinks (Widsith, p. 5) that it may have been included by the original author, then cancelled by him, then restored by an overconscientious scribe.

²⁴ Paul Meyer, Alexandre le Grand dans la Littérature Française du Moyen Age (Paris: Vieweg, 1886), pp. 372 ff. Western versions with this motif are, to be sure, of a later time; but Meyer believed (p. 363) that the lavish generosity imputed to Alexander in the later romances was developed from hints found in Cicero and other early writers. Certainly in Arrian's Anabasis of Alexander (ix, 1) the conqueror is represented as either dispersing the treasure of a country within its bounds as part of his fiscal policy, or as giving it to his soldiers. This favorable view of the hero Dr. Werner Hoffmann (Das literarische Porträt Alexanders des Grossen [Leipzig: Quelle und Meyer, 1907]) regarded as persistent from the earliest times, along with a hostile biography.

²⁵ Ll. 82 ff. Cf. R. W. Chambers, Widsith, p. 151.

²⁶ The texts may be compared in F. W. K. Zangemeister and T. W. Braune's “Bruchstücke der altsächsischen Bibeldichtung aus der Bibliotheca Palatina,” Neue Heidelberger Jahrbuecher, iv, 243 ff.

²⁷ Cf. Beowulf, 90 ff., the singer's account of the Creation. For Caedmon and Cynewulf the application of heroic versification to religious material was apparently easy; both use the conventions of the one in elaborating the other. Confirmation of a sort is to be found in the Provençal romance Flamenca (about 1234), where two minstrels tell not only about lovers of classical and later times but about The Fall of Satan, Samson, David and Goliath, the Maccabees, Alexander, Caesar, Clovis, and Charlemagne.

²⁸ Most accessible, judiciously abridged, in J. R. Hulbert's edition of Bright's Anglo-Saxon Reader (New York: Holt, 1935), pp. 187 ff.

²⁹ Probably Old English performers differed little in this respect from the Celtic and Icelandic reciters, who, before they might become certified in their profession, had to be familiar with a great many tales; see Note 16; also H. M. Chadwick and N. K. Chadwick, The Growth of Literature, i, 581 ff.

³⁰ Cf. Beowulf 1957.

³¹ Perhaps Cynewulf should be excluded, as belonging among the church-poets; see C. W. Kennedy, The Earliest English Poetry, p. 199. For Cynewulf's account of his own writing, and of his humble attitude toward inspiration, see Elene 1236 ff.

³² Cf. also Christ 664 ff.; Andreas 1483 ff.

³³ Edmond Faral warns against thinking the later jongleurs descended from the scops (Les Jongleurs en France au Moyen Age [Paris: Champion, 1910], p. 9); yet in celebrating their masters' virtues (cf. Faral, pp. 115-118), they were under the same obligations as those felt by the fictitious Widsith.

³⁴ L. F. Anderson, The Anglo-Saxon Scop, p. 43: “This personal appeal of the singer, direct or indirect, open or covert, is one of the peculiarities that distinguishes the poetry of this early period from that of the later period of writers and readers.”