Excerpt from The New Illustrated History of England, Vol. 3 of 4

The fall of their lord his hearth-companions Spake of him as a. Mighty king, Mildest of men, and most tender-hearted, Most kind to his folk and desirous of praise.

This, then, was the kind of epic in which our forefathers before the Conquest delighted - a story of courage and bravery, having for moral Wiglaf's words to the coward thanes: Death is better than a life of reproach. These songs they sang at their banquets to the accompaniment of the harp; and the story of the beginnings of early English Christian literature tells how on one such occasion, as the harp passed from hand to hand, one who sat at the table, Caedmon by name, 8. Whitby man, rose and left the hall. As a pious Christian convert he turned away with disdain from the stories of heathen heroes. He rose and took him self to the stables to watch the cattle for the night while there a figure came to him in a vision and bade him Sing. I cannot sing, he said; therefore I came away from the banquet. But, said the figure, then must sing to me. What Shall I sing Sing to me, said he, of the Creation. Whereupon he sang at once, in praise of God the Creator, verses and words he had never before heard. This story is typical of the depth and earnestness of the English character. Indeed, praise of God the Creator may be described as the subject of the great body of anglo-saxon poetry that has come down to us, for it is almost altogether of a religious character. The two chief sources of the poetry of the pre-conquest period preserved to us are: the Vercelli Book, a manuscript belonging to the library of Vercelli, in Piedmont, discovered there in 1822; the Exeter Book presented to the library of his cathedral by Leofric, the first Bishop of Exeter, under whom the see was transferred to that city from Crediton, of which he was the tenth bishop, in the year 1046.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.