Date: Probably late sixth or early seventh century.

Alliterative translation: Gummere, _Oldest English Epic_ (1910), p. 191.

"Widsith--'Farway'--the ideal wandering minstrel, tells of all the tribes
among whom he has sojourned, of all the chieftains he has known. The
first English students of the poem regarded it as autobiographical, as
the actual record of his wanderings written by a _scop_; and were
inclined to dismiss as interpolations passages mentioning princes whom it
was chronologically impossible for a man who had met Ermanric to have
known. This view was reduced to an absurdity by Haigh.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

"The more we study the growth of German heroic tradition, the more clear
does it become that _Widsith_ and _Deor_ reflect that tradition. They are
not the actual outpourings of actual poets at the court of Ermanric or
the Heodenings. What the poems sung in the court of Ermanric were like we
shall never know: but we can safely say that they were unlike
_Widsith_.... The Traveller's tale is a fantasy of some man, keenly
interested in the old stories, who depicts an ideal wandering singer, and
makes him move hither and thither among the tribes and the heroes whose
stories he loves. In the names of its chiefs, in the names of its tribes,
and above all in its spirit, _Widsith_ reflects the heroic age of the
migrations, an age which had hardly begun in the days of
Ermanric."--Chambers, p. 4.

Lines 75, 82-84 are almost certainly interpolated. With these rejected
"the poem leaves upon us," says Chambers, "a very definite impression. It
is a catalogue of the tribes and heroes of Germany, and many of these
heroes, though they may have been half legendary already to the writer of
the poem, are historic characters who can be dated with accuracy."]

Note.--In the footnotes, no attempt is made to discuss peoples or persons
mentioned in this poem unless they are definitely known and are of
importance for an understanding of the meaning of the lines.

Widsith now spoke, his word-hoard unlocked,
He who traveled the widest among tribes of men,
Farthest among folk: on the floor he received
The rarest of gifts. From the race of the Myrgings
5 His ancestors sprang. With Ealhhild the gracious,
The fair framer of peace, for the first time
He sought the home of the Hraeda king,
From the Angles in th