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.
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