minstrel composition are everywhere lost long before recorded literature
begins, but the processes themselves in their less formal stages continue
among uneducated people (whose mental life always remains more or less
primitive) even down to the present time.

Out of the popular ballads, or, chiefly, of the minstrel poetry which is
partly based on them, regularly develops epic poetry. Perhaps a minstrel
finds a number of ballads which deal with the exploits of a single hero or
with a single event. He combines them as best he can into a unified story
and recites this on important and stately occasions. As his work passes
into general circulation other minstrels add other ballads, until at last,
very likely after many generations, a complete epic is formed, outwardly
continuous and whole, but generally more or less clearly separable on
analysis into its original parts. Or, on the other hand, the combination
may be mostly performed all at once at a comparatively late period by a
single great poet, who with conscious art weaves together a great mass of
separate materials into the nearly finished epic.

Not much Anglo-Saxon poetry of the pagan period has come down to us. By far
the most important remaining example is the epic 'Beowulf,' of about three
thousand lines. This poem seems to have originated on the Continent, but
when and where are not now to be known. It may have been carried to England
in the form of ballads by the Anglo-Saxons; or it may be Scandinavian
material, later brought in by Danish or Norwegian pirates. At any rate it
seems to have taken on its present form in England during the seventh and
eighth centuries. It relates, with the usual terse and unadorned power of
really primitive poetry, how the hero Beowulf, coming over the sea to the
relief of King Hrothgar, delivers him from a monster, Grendel, and then
from the vengeance of Grendel's only less formidable mother. Returned home
in triumph, Beowulf much later receives the due reward of his valor by