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Updated: May 4, 2025
If Harold was pleased by such poetic courtesies, he was yet more surprised by the high honour in which Duke, baron, and prelate evidently held the Poet: for it was among the worst signs of that sordid spirit, honouring only wealth, which had crept over the original character of the Anglo- Saxon, that the bard or scop, with them, had sunk into great disrepute, and it was even forbidden to ecclesiastics to admit such landless vagrants to their company.
And when, in far times and strange lands, scald and scop shall praise the brave man for some valiant deed wrought in some holy cause, they shall say, 'He was brave as those who fought by the side of Harold, and swept from the sward of England the hosts of the haughty Norman."
In addition to the scop, who was more or less permanently attached to the royal court or hall of a noble, there was a craft of gleemen who roved from hall to hall. In the song of Widsið we catch a glimpse of the life of a gleeman: "Sw=a scriðende gesceapum hweorfað gl=eomen gumena geond grunda fela." Thus roving, with shapéd songs there wander The gleemen of the people through many lands.
Does the poem teach any moral lesson? Explain the Christian elements in this pagan epic. Name some other of our earliest poems, and describe the one you like best. How does the sea figure in our first poetry? How is nature regarded? What poem reveals the life of the scop or poet? How do you account for the serious character of Anglo-Saxon poetry?
If Harold was pleased by such poetic courtesies, he was yet more surprised by the high honour in which Duke, baron, and prelate evidently held the Poet: for it was among the worst signs of that sordid spirit, honouring only wealth, which had crept over the original character of the Anglo-Saxon, that the bard or scop, with them, had sunk into great disrepute, and it was even forbidden to ecclesiastics to admit such landless vagrants to their company.
"In mortal court his deeds are not unsung, Such as a noble man mill show to men, Till all doth flit away, both life and light." A greater scop, looking at life through Saxon eyes, sings: "We are such stuff As dreams are made on; and our little life Is rounded with a sleep." We must imagine the scop recalling vivid experiences to our early ancestors with this song of the sea:
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