Poetry As the Irish had once they became Christian and literate, Anglo-Saxon scribes wrote their tales,

annals, and poetry, hitherto transmitted only orally. In their homeland they had had professional bards called scops, "shapers" of song and story. Many scops were attached to royal courts and served the roles both of entertainer and of historian, recorder of the heroic deeds of their patrons and keeper of the deeds of their patrons' ancestors. Scops also kept alive the mythology of their tribe. The primary poetic form of the scop was the lay, a partly lyrical but mostly narrative work composed as the scop looks on the scene of battle and recounts it. Lays were delivered in a rhythmic chant without rhyme or fixed metrical pattern, with alliteration supplying the organizing principle. Lays made use of nave and simple metaphors called kennings, which interrupted or varied the narrative flow only a little. This was a poetry intended to be heard while feasting. The heroic epic was a stringing together of many lays about a single hero. Although the AngloSaxons were the first Germanic people to commit their poetry to writing, beginning in the seventh century with a work known as Widsithis (The far journey), only one full-length heroic epic survives in Old English: Beowulf. Many more manuscripts were lost, and allusions in Beowulf to older Germanic heroes and battles of a deep and distant past give a sense of the scope of what was never written. The version of Beowulf that is extant was composed by a Christian poet, probably early in the eighth century. The Christian elements, however, are a thin overlay on an essentially pagan work. Beowulf was probably composed in Northumbria in the first half of the eighth century. Although the hero Beowulf possesses nearly superhuman physical abilities, most notably prowess at swimming and also gripping, it is clear that the author of the poem, or authors, used Beowulf as an embodiment of ideals of social and personal conductcourage, honor, and loyaltythat his audience could and should strive to emulate. Many elements in the poem have striking parallels in 13th-century Norse sagas: male and female monsters, a giantess whose arm is cut off by the hero, and a cave behind a waterfall that the hero reaches by diving, with a marvelous sword hanging on its wall. The lyric mood is reached in Old English poetry through what are called elegiac poems. In contrast to lyrical poetry of the later Middle Ages and beyond, lyric poetry among the AngloSaxons hardly touches on the passion of love or on mourning for personal loss. Instead the poet sings of the larger, more impersonal themes of the capriciousness of fate and the impermanence of existence, contrasting a happy past with a desolate present, possibly an expression of the great change that overtook the Anglo-Saxons when they embarked from their homeland to a foreign shore, never to return. In the Christian era poetic narrative versions of biblical stories were composed. Only two poets are known by name. Caedmon of the seventh century, mentioned by Bede, who also records a few lines of his poetry, is the earliest known English poet, although the body of his work has been lost. The name of Cynewulf (ninth century) is given as author of the poems "Elene," "Juliana," and "The Fates of the Apostles"; no more is known of him. The finest poem of the school of Cynewulf is "The Dream of the Rood," an early example of the dream vision, a genre later popular in Middle English literature. Other Old English poems include various riddles, charms (magic cures, pagan in origin), saints' lives, gnomic poetry, and other Christian and heroic verse.

Old English literature (or Anglo-Saxon literature) encompasses literature written in Old English (also called Anglo-Saxon), during the 600-year Anglo-Saxon period of England, from the mid-5th century to the Norman Conquest of 1066. These works include genres such as epic poetry, hagiography, sermons, Bible translations, legal works, chronicles, riddles, and others. In all there are about 400 surviving manuscripts from the period, a significant corpus of both popular interest and specialist research. Among the most important works of this period is the poem Beowulf, which has achieved national epic status in England. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle otherwise proves significant to study of the era, preserving a chronology of early English history, while the poem Cdmon's Hymn from the 7th century survives as the oldest extant work of literature in English.
A large number of manuscripts remain from the 600-year Anglo-Saxon period, with most written during the last 300 years (9th11th century), in both Latin and the vernacular. Old English literature is among the oldest vernacular languages to be written down. Old English literature began, in written form, as a practical necessity in the aftermath of the Danish invasions-church officials were concerned that because of the drop in Latin literacy no one could read their work.

Old English poetry is of two types, the heroic Germanic pre-Christian and the Christian. It has survived for the most part in the four major manuscripts. The Anglo-Saxons left behind no poetic rules or explicit system; everything we know about the poetry of the period is based on modern analysis. The first widely accepted theory was constructed by Eduard Sievers (1885). He distinguished five distinct alliterative patterns. The theory of John C. Pope (1942),[1] which uses musical notation to track the verse patterns, has been accepted in some quarters, and is hotly debated.[citation needed] The most popular and well-known understanding of Old English poetry continues to be Sievers' alliterative verse. The system is based upon accent, alliteration, the quantity of vowels, and patterns of syllabic accentuation. It consists of five permutations on a base verse scheme; any one of the five types can be used in any verse. The system was inherited from and exists in one form or another in all of the older Germanic languages. Two poetic figures commonly found in Old English poetry are the kenning, an often formulaic phrase that describes one thing in terms of another (e.g. in Beowulf, the sea is called the whale's road) and litotes, a dramatic understatement employed by the author for ironic effect. Roughly, Old English verse lines are divided in half by a pause; this pause is termed a "caesura". Each half-line has two stressed syllables. The first stressed syllable of the second half-line should alliterate with one or both of the stressed syllables of the first half-line (thus the stressed syllables of the first half-line could also alliterate with each other). The second stressed syllable of the second half-line does not alliterate with either of those of the first half. Old English poetry was an oral craft, and our understanding of it in written form is incomplete; for example, we know that the poet (referred to as the scop) could be accompanied by a harp, and there may be other accompaniment traditions of which we are not aware.

Poetry represents the smallest amount of the surviving Old English text, but Anglo-Saxon culture had a rich tradition of oral storytelling, of which little has survived in written form.

Heroic poems

First page of Beowulf, contained in the damaged Nowell Codex. The Old English poetry which has received the most attention deals with the Germanic heroic past. The longest (3,182 lines), and most important, is Beowulf, which appears in the damaged Nowell Codex. The poem tells the story of the legendary Geatish hero Beowulf who is the title character. The story is set in Scandinavia, in Sweden and Denmark, and the tale likewise probably is of Scandinavian origin. The story is biographical and sets the tone for much of the rest of Old English poetry. It has achieved national epic status, on the same level as the Iliad, and is of interest to historians, anthropologists, literary critics, and students the world over. Beyond Beowulf, other heroic poems exist. Two heroic poems have survived in fragments: The Fight at Finnsburh, a retelling of one of the battle scenes in Beowulf (although this relation to Beowulf is much debated), and Waldere, a version of the events of the life of Walter of Aquitaine. Two other poems mention heroic figures: Widsith is believed to be very old in parts, dating back to events in the 4th century concerning Eormanric and the Goths, and contains a catalogue of names and places associated with valiant deeds. Deor is a lyric, in the style of Consolation of Philosophy, applying examples of famous heroes, including Weland and Eormanric, to the narrator's own case.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle contains various heroic poems inserted throughout. The earliest from 937 is called The Battle of Brunanburh, which celebrates the victory of King Athelstan over the Scots and Norse. There are five shorter poems: capture of the Five Boroughs (942); coronation of King Edgar (973); death of King Edgar (975); death of Prince Alfred (1036); and death of King Edward the Confessor (1065).

Literature
Main article: Anglo-Saxon literature Old English literary works include genres such as epic poetry, hagiography, sermons, Bible translations, legal works, chronicles, riddles, and others. In all there are about 400 surviving manuscripts from the period, a significant corpus of both popular interest and specialist research. The most famous works from this period include the poem Beowulf, which has achieved national epic status in Britain. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a collection of important early English history. Cdmon's Hymn from the 7th century is the earliest attested literary text in English.