(2) _English._--The poems of this order in old English are _Beowulf_, _Finnesburh_, _Waldere_, and _Byrhtnoth_, or the _Lay of Maldon_. Besides these there are poems on historical themes preserved in the Chronicle, of which _Brunanburh_ is the most important, and two dramatic lyrics, _Widsith_ and _Deor_, in which there are many allusions to the mythical and heroic cycles. (3) _Scandinavian and Icelandic._--The largest number of heroic poems in alliterative verse is found in the old Northern language, and in manuscripts written in Iceland. The poems themselves may have come from other places in which the old language of Norway was spoken, some of them perhaps from Norway itself, many of them probably from those islands round Britain to which a multitude of Norwegian settlers were attracted,--Shetland, the Orkneys, the Western Islands of Scotland.[18] [Footnote 18: Cf. G. Vigfusson, Prolegomena to _Sturlunga_ (Oxford, 1878); (_Corpus Poeticum Boreale_ (_ibid._ 1883); _Grimm Centenary Papers_ 1886); Sophus Bugge, _Helgedigtene_ (1896; trans. Schofield, 1899).] The principal collection is that of the manuscript in the King's Library at Copenhagen (2365, 4'o) generally referred to as _Codex Regius_ (R); it is this book, discovered in the seventeenth century, that has received the inaccurate but convenient names of _Elder Edda_, or _Poetic Edda_, or _Edda of Sæmund the Wise_, by a series of miscalculations fully described in the preface to the _Corpus Poeticum Boreale_. Properly, the name _Edda_ belongs only to the prose treatise by Snorri Sturluson. The chief contents of _Codex Regius_ are a series of independent poems on the Volsung story, beginning with the tragedies of _Helgi and Swava_ and _Helgi and Sigrun_ (originally unconnected with the Volsung legend), and going on in the order of events. The series is broken by a gap in which the poems dealing with some of the most important parts of the story have been lost. The matter of their contents is known from the prose paraphrase called _Volsunga Saga_. Before the Volsung series comes a number of poems chiefly mythological: the _Sibyl's Prophecy_, (Volospá); _the Wooing of Frey_, or the _Errand of Skirnir_; the _Flyting of Thor and Woden_ (Harbarzlióð); _Thor's Fishing for the Midgarth Serpent_ (Hymiskviða); the _Railing of Loki_ (Lokasenna); the _Winning of Thor's Hammer_ (Þrymskviða); the _Lay of Weland_. There are also some didactic poems, chief among them being the gnomic miscellany under the title _Hávamál_; while besides this there are others, like _Vafþrúðnismál_, treating of mythical subjects in a more or less didactic and mechanical way. There are a number of prose passages introducing or linking the poems. The confusion in some parts of the book is great.