It is a wonderful Palace of English Literature in which we shall see many marvels: the first English hero, Beowulf, and the monster Grendel; all the fortunes and misfortunes of the little, radiant-browed Welsh boy called Taliesin, the battle of the friends Cuchulain and Ferdiad, who were betrayed by the false Irish Queen Maeve; how song came to our first great English poet, Cædmon, in the cow-stall at the Monastery of Whitby (670); of the courage of a shepherd lad who had became a saint, and of even the seals who loved St. Cuthbert (seventh century); of the young Prince Alfred who won a book as a prize (849-900); of Havelok, the son of the King of Denmark, who lived with Fisherman Grim at Grimsby; of a man who was under enchantment as a wolf part of the week and whom Marie de France called a Werewolf; of all the marvels that Geoffrey of Monmouth (1147) saw from his window; and especially of the wonders which King Arthur's magician, Merlin, worked; and of the red and white dragons that came out of a drained pond; and of a famous kitchen-boy who became a great knight, and about whom Sir Thomas Malory tells one exciting adventure in the _Morte d'Arthur_ (1469). What boys and girls will enter the gate with me? Shall we go into the Great Palace to-day? And on what golden door shall we rap first that we may be admitted? J. M. SOUTH HADLEY, MASS., _January, 1915_. EARLY ENGLISH HERO TALES EARLY ENGLISH HERO TALES I THE FIRST ENGLISH HERO [Illustration] The first golden door we open in the Great Palace shows us a hero, and that is as it should be, for the English have always been brave. Yet probably the poem about this first English hero is not the first poem. The first is a poem by the name of the "Far Traveller." "Many men and rulers have I known," says this traveler; "through many strange lands I have fared throughout the spacious earth." This poem may not be of great value, but it is a wonderful experience to open this door and see back, back, back, thousands of years to the very cradle in which English literature was born. This first Englishman was a wanderer, as all Englishmen, despite their love of home, have been, or else they would not hold so many great dominions as they do to-day. Then, too, there was "Deor's Lament," with its sad refrain, _Thas ofer eode, thisses swa maeg_ (That was overcome, so may this be) and its grave thought that "The All-wise Lord of the world worketh many changes." One more poem, or, better, fragment, is spoken of in _Beowulf_. "The Fight at Finnesburg" is full of the savagery and fierceness of warfare; it is even more wild and barbarous than "Beowulf."