nds of Havelock the Dane, of King Horn, of
Beves of Hamdoun, and of Guy of Warwick, all four of which were later
turned into popular prose romances. Intense patriotic feeling also
gave birth to the Battle of Maldon, or Bryhtnoth's Death, an ancient
poem, fortunately printed before it was destroyed by fire. This epic
relates how the Viking Anlaf came to England with 93 ships, and, after
harrying the coast, was defeated and slain in battle.

The earliest Christian poet in England, Caedmon, instead of singing of
love or fighting, paraphrased the Scriptures, and depicted the
creation in such eloquent lines that he is said to have inspired some
of the passages in Milton's Paradise Lost. Chief among the religious
poems ascribed to Caedmon, are Genesis, Exodus, and Daniel, but,
although in general he strictly conforms with the Bible narrative, he
prefixed to Genesis an account of the fall of the angels, and thus
supplied Milton with the most picturesque feature of his theme.

Next come the epic poems of Cynewulf, Crist, Juliana, Elene, and
Andreas, also written in alliterative verse. In Elene the poet gives
us the legend of finding of the cross[20] by the empress Helena,
dividing his poem into fourteen cantos or fitts.

It is in Gildas and Nennius' Historia Britonum that we find the first
mention of the legendary colonization of Britain and Ireland by
refugees from Troy, and of the exploits of Arthur and the prophesies
of Merlin. This work, therefore, contains some of the "germs of fables
which expanded into Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of Britain, which
was written in Latin some time before 1147," although this historian
claims to derive his information from an ancient British book of which
no trace can be found.

There is, besides, a very curious yet important legend cycle, in
regard to a letter sent from Heaven to teach the proper observation of
Sunday. The text of this letter can be found in old English in
Wulfstan's homilies. Besides sacred legends, others exist of a worldly
nature, such as the supposed letter from Alexander to Aristotle, the
Wonders of the East, and the Story of Apollonius of Tyre. The first
two, of course, formed part of the great Alexander cycle, while the
latter supplied the theme for Pericles of Tyre.

With the Norman Conquest, French became the literary language of
England, and modern romance was born. Romance cycles on "the matter of
France" or Legends of Charlemagne, and on "the matter of B