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.