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 skirling bag pipes and of the regimental bands of later times are in the direct line of succession from the chanting of tribol lays by bands as warriors rushed to the ﬁght; the 'chanties' of modern sailors stand in the place of the songs of sea-rowers as they revelled in the wars of the elements, or rested inactive on the lonely seas." Such was Beowolf romance, history and Epic of the pre-christian age.

The earliest popular poem of the Christian English people is attributed to an illiterate neat, herd Caedmon. King Alfred composed several books in the dialect current in his kingdom. He also promulgated his laws in the common language "so that his peeple might be able to read the word of God in their own language." Alfred's English version of the gospel represents the popular literature of the tenth century, besides a number of ballads and other poems. In the early transition English there are the Ormulum, Laymon's Brut, the Owl and Nightingale, and the Ancren Riwle, the last intended for women. Then the Arthurian legends were reduced to writing for the "amusement of the people." Wycliffe in bold defiance of the Church, "laboured hard to put the word of God into the common language of the people" and about 1382 A. D. "he was able to send forth the whole Bible in the English tongue as generally spoken."