Page:Runic and heroic poems of the old Teutonic peoples.djvu/10

vi Powell's Icelandic Prose Reader and Corpus Poeticum Boreale; the Icelandic has never before been published in this country.

The second part of this work contains the extant fragments of Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry outside Beowulf and Widsith, which have been so admirably treated by Dr Chambers (Cambridge, 1912 and 1914). Finn has, indeed. been edited by Dr Chambers as an appendix to Beowulf; but my notes were already complete when Beowulf appeared, and as I differ from him on various points—so much the worse for me in all probability—I have ventured to include it. It has been a labour of love: for Finn, mutilated and corrupt, is yet the fine ﬂower of Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry. Full of rapid transitions and real poetic glow, the ﬁght in Finn's beleaguered hall, lighted by the ﬂash of swords and echoing with the din of combat, is one of the most vivid battle-pieces in any language—a theme too often worn threadbare by dull mechanical prentice-work in later Anglo-Saxon poetry, when unifying the scriptures became a devastating industry and the school of Cynewulf anticipated by some eight centuries the school of Boyd.

Waldhere has not been edited in English since the editio princeps of 1860, and Dr W. W. Lawrence's treatment of Deor is not very accessible in Volume. of the American journal Modern Philology.

The Old High German Hildebrand has never before been edited in English, and I must apologise to experts for my temerity. It is primarily intended for students of Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse; but it may, I hope, be useful to neophytes in German too.

It is now my pleasant duty to thank my many friends in Cambridge. I have received encouragement and help of the