than the others and are full of tender conjugal feeling. These poems were composed in an interesting manner. The scop (sceapan from the Anglo-Saxon word meaning to "make," as poet is from the Greek meaning "maker") was the inventor of songs, who wandered from place to place singing as he went. The gleeman was the singer or glee-maker, often a member of the tribe or clan. The harp, the "wood of delight," was the "joy of heroes" in the great hall. Through the land the scop wandered, singing his songs of battle and creating the rude culture out of which developed the literature as we have it in a few fragments in the ancient manuscript. After the Christianization of the country, he added Bible stories and legends of the saints to his repertoire. He marks the slow progress of a primitive people out of barbarism into civilization. The method of composition was largely an improvisation by voice and harp before the great fire for the entertainment of the host's household. In this way the ancient hero-songs were handed down from generation to generation without the aid of writing, until the early ballads about a particular hero accumulated into larger units which were preserved by tradition. The greater households possessed their own gleemen who sang of their tribal heroes, the host often taking the harp in hand, like Hrothgar before the hero Beowulf, to do honor to the occasion. Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse lent itself to this form of composition; and it must have been especially adaptable to an expression of the emotions of a proud barbarian aristocracy as the singer exulted over warlike deeds and gave utterance to sentiments of generosity and friendship.

Thus, in minstrel song and story, Beowulf, the chief Anglo-Saxon poem, was preserved. A primitive epic, to

be complete, should possess several characteristics of a distinct kind. It should have a hero embodying many of the ideal qualities of the race; it should possess supernatural machinery, that is to say, the religious deities should either take part in the action or its hero should exhibit certain divine attributes; it should be true folk poetry representing the state of society in which that folk finds itself. Though Beowulf cannot be said to possess religious machinery, the hero being rather a great legendary hero than in any way related to the gods, it is in other respects a perfect example of the primitive epic. The poem offers us a most vivid picture of the manner in which the Anglo-Saxons lived after they had settled upon the land and had organized a fairly stable community life. Though the materials of which the poem is composed descended from Scandinavia with the early migrations, it was not actually put together and given unity until about 1,000 A. D. Most important is the detailed revelation of the manner in which the Anglo-Saxon community conducted its life. Beowulf's expedition to relieve King Hrothgar of the mighty monster who had been preying upon his thegns; his reception by his host, the generous ring-giver, the bulwark of the people; the drinking upon the mead-benches in the hall; the honor done to the lady who passed the mead-cup; the courtesy and good-fellowship accorded the hero; his quarrel with the envious Unferth and the boasting that ensued; are painted in clearly and vigorously. Beowulf's reply to the address of welcome, his sleep beside the warriors in the mead-hall, his two fights with the sea monster Grendel and Grendel's mother, the rejoicing and the races that followed, the songs of the gleemen, and the loading of the

hero with costly gifts on his departure for his own home, bring the life of these rude warriors intimately before us. Even without its poetic qualities, Beowulf would remain a precious human document. The embodiment in the legendary hero of the noblest virtues of his race and the general fear of the mysterious fen-marcher, the doomed one who had lost hope of salvation, as the Christian revision has it, reveal the deeper moral and religious spirit of the race.

As in nearly all early sagas, it is difficult to disentangle the historical, the legendary, and the mythological material. In the year 597, according to the Historia Francorum of Gregory of Tours, a certain Hygelac was defeated in battle, but his kinsman Beowulf performed prodigies of valor in the retreat. According to legend, Beowulf was a man-hero with the grip of thirty in his right hand and the power to remain for days at the bottom of the sea. It is, however, possible that this superman has been confused with certain natural powers, the objects of worship by the heathen communities. Scholars once believed that the duel with Grendel and Grendel's mother, the swimming match with Breca, and the fight with the dragon represent a prolonged struggle against the powers of winter and the sea; the beneficent god Beowa was said to have been confused with the hero. The most recent and authoritative opinion, however, rejects the folk-lore origin of the poem, holding it to be a purely legendary tale of heroic deeds.

The poem is composed of four episodes: Beowulf's arrival in the land of Hrothgar and his fight in the hall Heorot with the monster Grendel; his fight with Grendel's dam, who had come to avenge her offspring's death and

who led the hero under the waters of a wild, dark fell where he slew her in fierce combat; Beowulf's return home and his fifty years' reign; his fight in his old age with the Dragon in defense of his treasure hoard, and his death in the combat.

The poem generally has the sharp and bracing keenness, the virility and the strength, and rough and bold grandeur of the untaught youth of the western world. Over it all broods the thought of Wyrd, the mighty fate against whom the efforts of men are powerless. Its atmosphere is gray and misty; and through its lines stalk huge, dim forms against a background of a vague and shadowy Nature. The gloom of the sea gives a tone to the whole picture; fens and morasses, the dreadful pool of the lost one, forest paths and murky moors, tarns of haunted water, make up the gloomy details. No blossoms or green leaves appear to relieve the gray tones, no Christ or Virgin softens even the Christian interpolations, but stern and harsh outlines, mightiest of mead-halls and horrible combats with misshapen monsters cumber the foreground. Life is chiefly eating and drinking, and physical joy in strife completes the daily existence of the actors in this stirring poem. A few random lines will illustrate the somber character of the poem.

In dark night came
Striding the shadow-goer,

Quickly and first of all he seized

A sleeping warrior, rent him unaware.

It is not easy

To elude death (try it who will)

But everyone—

Shall come to the fated spot.

Over all darkening night

Came striding the dim shadow shapes
Black under the clouds.

The literary qualities of the poem have something in common with other primitive epics. For example, in nearly all epic poetry, and especially in Homer, such stock epithets as whale road for the sea and swan-necked ships find a distinct parallel. Compare the well-greaved Greeks, Hector of the dancing plume, Agamemnon king of men, Helen fair among women; and even Longfellow's continually repeated Gitchy Manitou the Mighty in the Indian epic Hiawatha. Compare also the elaborated Homeric simile with like effects in Beowulf and the swiftness and directness of narration in the Greek and the Anglo-Saxon epics. Unlike the Homeric poems, however, this epic is loose in structure and therefore often extremely confusing to the reader; and it is immeasurably inferior to the Greek poems in poetic qualities, in universal human interest, and in artistic design. It belongs to a ruder age and to a less gifted people. A peculiarity of its own is the curious Anglo-Saxon understatement employed for ironic effect, as, "Not at all happy were the kinsmen-thanes."

Before the poem reached its present form it underwent revision at the hands of a Christian monk. The result is a curious conflict between the heathen idea of Wyrd or Fate and the Christian conception of resignation to the will of God. Christianity as it was adapted to the life of the heathen conquerors was in fact strangely distorted by contact with the heathen character, and many were the compromises before it was thoroughly assimilated. Beowulf is then a transition poem between two epochs in history.