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Updated: May 4, 2025
We do not know when the first scop sang of Beowulf's exploits; but he probably began before the ancestors of the English came to England. The characters, scenery, and action of Beowulf belong to the older Angle-land on the continent of Europe; but the poem is essentially English, even though the chief action is laid in what is now known as Denmark and the southern part of Sweden.
So when the wolf hunt was over, or the desperate fight was won, these mighty men would gather in the banquet hall, and lay their weapons aside where the open fire would flash upon them, and there listen to the songs of Scop and Gleeman, men who could put into adequate words the emotions and aspirations that all men feel but that only a few can ever express: Music and song where the heroes sat The glee-wood rang, a song uprose When Hrothgar's scop gave the hall good cheer.
Again, in Robin Hood and the Tanner of Nottingham is a most ludicrous account of the manner in which, after being threatened with a "knop upon his bare scop", Robin receives as sound a drubbing as ever he himself inflicted.
Our earliest poetry was made current and kept fresh in memory by the singers. The kings and nobles often attached to them a scop, or maker of verses. When the warriors, after some victorious battle, were feasting at their long tables, the banquet was not complete without the songs of the scop.
The scop sings thus of Beowulf's adventure on the North Sea: "Swoln were the surges, of storms 'twas the coldest, Dark grew the night, and northern the wind, Rattling and roaring, rough were the billows." In the Seafarer, the scop also sings: Some of the most striking Saxon epithets are applied to the sea.
The scop was an originator of poetry, the gleeman more often a mere repeater, although this distinction in the use of the terms was not observed in later times. The Songs of Scop and Gleeman. The subject matter of these songs was suggested by the most common experiences of the time. These were with war, the sea, and death.
In the halls of our Saxon ancestors the scop and the tale-bringer were ever the most welcome guests; and in the bark wigwams of the American Indians the man who told the legends of Hiawatha had an audience quite as attentive as that which gathered at the Greek festivals to hear the story of Ulysses's wanderings.
This rude, energetic verse the Saxon scôp had sung to his harp or glee-beam, dwelling on the emphatic syllables, passing swiftly over the others, which were of undetermined number and position in the line. It was now displaced by the smooth metrical verse with rhymed endings, which the French introduced and which our modern poets use, a verse fitted to be recited rather than sung.
The sunny hours of spring have their singer, the Field-Cricket of which I have written; while in the summer, during the stillness of the night, we hear the note of the Italian Cricket, the OEcanthus pellucens, Scop. One diurnal and one nocturnal, between them they share the kindly half of the year. When the Field-Cricket ceases to sing it is not long before the other begins its serenade.
As the feasters roused his enthusiasm with their applause, he would sometimes indulge in an outburst of eloquent extempore song. Not infrequently the imagination of some king or noble would be fired, and he would sing of his own great deeds. We read in Beowulf that in Hrothgar's famous hall "...ð=aer was hearpan sw=eg, swutol sang scopes." ...there was sound of harp Loud the singing of the scop.
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