HANDBOOK

OF

ENGLISH LITERATURE.

THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.

OUR English forefathers who came to England in the fifth and sixth centuries brought with them no literature. They were not destitute of the art of writing, for they had their runes, but the use of these signs appears to have been greatly restricted, and perhaps seldom extended beyond a proverb or magic formula carved upon a sword-blade or on an ornament.

The early English tribes also possessed songs and legends, but they were unwritten, and were preserved in the memories of gleemen or minstrels, who roamed far and wide, and were welcomed everywhere. One of the very oldest songs we possess describes the wanderings through many lands of a gleeman named Wid-sith,' i.e. Far-traveller.' There is little beauty in the poem, for it is in great part a string of names of countries and peoples, and in its present written form it does not truly represent the primitive language which the gleeman used.

While the long and fierce struggle for the possession

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