tables, the banquet was not complete without the songs of the _scop_.
While the warriors ate the flesh of boar and deer, and warmed their
blood with horns of foaming ale, the _scop_, standing where the blaze
from a pile of logs disclosed to him the grizzly features of the men,
sang his most stirring songs, often accompanying them with the music
of a rude harp. As the feasters roused his enthusiasm with their
applause, he would sometimes indulge in an outburst of eloquent
extempore song. Not infrequently the imagination of some king or noble
would be fired, and he would sing of his own great deeds.

We read in _Beowulf_ that in Hrothgar's famous hall--

"...ð=aer was hearpan sw=eg,
swutol sang scopes."

...there was sound of harp
Loud the singing of the scop.

In addition to the _scop_, who was more or less permanently attached
to the royal court or hall of a noble, there was a craft of gleemen
who roved from hall to hall. In the song of _Widsið_ we catch a
glimpse of the life of a gleeman:--

"Sw=a scriðende gesceapum hweorfað
gl=eomen gumena geond grunda fela."

Thus roving, with shapéd songs there wander
The gleemen of the people through many lands.

The _scop_ was an originator of poetry, the gleeman more often a mere