With this occurrence the original poem ends:  it is the oldest epic poem in any modern language.  At a later day, new cantos were added, which, following the fortunes of the hero, record at length that he was killed by a dragon.  A digest and running commentary of the poem may be found in Turner’s Anglo-Saxons; and no one can read it without discerning the history shining clearly out of the mists of fable.  The primitive manners, modes of life, forms of expression, are all historically delineated.  In it the intimate relations between the king and his people are portrayed.  The Saxon cyning is compounded of cyn, people, and ing, a son or descendant; and this etymology gives the true conditions of their rule:  they were popular leaders—­elected in the witenagemot on the death of their predecessors.[8] We observe, too, the spirit of adventure—­a rude knight-errantry—­which characterized these northern sea-kings

that with such profit and for deceitful glory labor on the wide sea explore its bays amid the contests of the ocean in the deep waters there they for riches till they sleep with their elders.

We may also notice the childish wonder of a rude, primitive, but brave people, who magnified a neighboring monarch of great skill and strength, or perhaps a malarious fen, into a giant, and who were pleased with a poem which caters to that heroic mythus which no civilization can root out of the human breast, and which gives at once charm and popularity to every epic.

CAEDMON.—­Next in order, we find the paraphrase of Scripture by Caedmon, a monk of Whitby, who died about the year 680.  The period in which he lived is especially marked by the spread of Christianity in Britain, and by a religious zeal mingled with the popular superstitions.  The belief was universal that holy men had the power to work miracles.  The Bible in its entire canon was known to few even among the ecclesiastics:  treasure-house as it was to the more studious clerics, it was almost a sealed book to the common people.  It would naturally be expected, then, that among the earliest literary efforts would be found translations and paraphrases of the most interesting portions of the Scripture narrative.  It was in accordance with the spirit of the age that these productions should be attended with something of the marvellous, to give greater effect to the doctrine, and be couched in poetic language, the especial delight of people in the earlier ages of their history.  Thus the writings of Caedmon are explained:  he was a poor serving-brother in the monastery of Whitby, who was, or feigned to be, unable to improvise Scripture stories and legends of the saints as his brethren did, and had recourse to a vision before he exhibited his fluency.

In a dream, in a stall of oxen of which he was the appointed night-guard, an angelic stranger asked him to sing.  “I cannot sing,” said Caedmon.  “Sing the creation,” said the mysterious visitant.  Feeling himself thus miraculously aided, Caedmon paraphrased in his dream the Bible story of the creation, and not only remembered the verses when he awoke, but found himself possessed of the gift of song for all his days.