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The scop is now replaced by the literary monk; and that monk, though he lives among common people and speaks with the English tongue, has behind him all the culture and literary resources of the Latin language. The effect is seen instantly in our early prose and poetry.
John Bale, a contemporary writer, says that "those who purchased the monasteries reserved the books, some to scour their candlesticks, some to rub their boots, some they sold to the grocers and soap sellers, and some they sent over sea to the bookbinders, not in small numbers, but at times whole ships full, to the wonder of foreign nations." The Anglo-Saxon Scop and Gleeman.
What were the chief subjects of the songs of the scop? How do they reveal the life of the time? Is there any common quality running through them? What qualities of this verse appear in modern poetry? Beowulf. Gummere's The Oldest English Epic; Morris and Wyatt's The Tale of Beowulf; Hall's Beowulf, Translated into Modern Metres;
The Anglo-Saxon poem Deor is supposed to be spoken by a scop or court poet who has been ousted from the favour of his lord, a Heodening, by Heorrenda, another singer: "Once I was the Heodenings' scop, dear to my lord: Deor was my name. Many a year I had a good service and a gracious lord, until the song-skilled Hoerrenda received the rights which the protector of men once granted me."
Hrothgar, the king of the Danes, built a hall, named Heorot, where his followers could drink mead, listen to the scop, enjoy the music of the harp, and find solace in social intercourse during the dreary winter evenings.
The whole secret of Beowulf's mighty life is summed up in the last line, "Ever yearning for his people's praise." So every tribe had its scop, or poet, more important than any warrior, who put the deeds of its heroes into the expressive words that constitute literature; and every banquet hall had its gleeman, who sang the scop's poetry in order that the deed and the man might be remembered.
Whether the last was added by some monk who saw the allegorical possibilities of the first part, or whether some sea-loving Christian scop wrote both, is uncertain.
DEOR'S LAMENT. In "Deor" we have another picture of the Saxon scop, or minstrel, not in glad wandering, but in manly sorrow. It seems that the scop's living depended entirely upon his power to please his chief, and that at any time he might be supplanted by a better poet.
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."
While the warriors ate the flesh of boar and deer, and warmed their blood with horns of foaming ale, the scop, standing where the blaze from a pile of logs disclosed to him the grizzly features of the men, sang his most stirring songs, often accompanying them with the music of a rude harp.
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