Qua peracta pœnitentia, populos suæ dioceseos mandat, mandando convocat, convocando suppliciter persuadet, ut triduano jejunio a se divinæ indignationis iracundiam removeant, removendo avertant, quatenus sacrificio spiritus contribulati placatus Dominus illi suam gratiam concederet, qua corpus beati martyris tangere et lavare auderet; qui licet tantis virtutibus floreret in mundo, vili tamen et sibi incongruo continebatur mausoleo. _Abbonis Floriacensis Passio Sancti Edmundi._[40] Though the extremes of this passage go beyond Abbo’s normal practise, they appear also in tenth-century ceremonious letters.[41] E. THE POETIC OF GERMANIC EPIC This is the period also of Germanic epic: the Anglo-Saxon _Beowulf_ (probably eighth century), _Waldere_, _Finnsburgh_, and _Maldon_, the _Hildebrand_ (early ninth century) of the continental Germans, the Scandinavian “Elder Edda.”[42] Though little connection is apparent between these verse narratives and the Latin poetic with which they are contemporary, there may have been some.[43] Anglo-Saxon epic is of the time of Bede. The Walter legends are known largely through the Latin hexameters of Ekkehard;[44] and other learned clerks found native epic worth while not only as history, but as literature. What has been preserved shows the primary epic appeal of legend not exotic and imported, but handed down in folklore still orally active. This is not at all to say that they are history as opposed to fiction. Their historical value, however great, is accidental. Their facts, already centuries old, have been shaped by tradition. Their Sigurd or Hildebrand is seen through a magnifying mist. Epic is never, in our modern sense, history. It is the glorification in song of a hero; and primary epic has its own authentic appeal from singing a hero that still belongs to the poet and to his hearers and still beckons their communal dreams. Thus Germanic epic, taking us farther back through legend into myth, gives a more immediate sense of oral tradition. There is even an eery likeness, as of the most ancient poetic repeating itself, between the minstrel in the _Beowulf_ and the minstrel in the _Odyssey_.