But, besides this feudal spirit shown in the Franks, there had already existed among the Germanic tribes before their settlement in France or Britain an orally transmitted literature. Its form was epic, and its themes the superhuman exploits of heroes among scenes of slaughter and carousal, in contest with huge monsters, and under the dispensation of rude pagan deities, Woden, Thor, and the rest of the Teutonic pantheon. Between the fourth and sixth centuries this heroic poetry of Germany grows into appreciable form, and both the Franks of the Continent and the Anglo-Saxons of England bring with them their several portions. In Germany itself it is much later that the _Nibelungen Lied_ is edited into a connected shape; but to England there came in the sixth century the epic legend of _Beowulf_, of which the source is to be found in events of southern Sweden and the Western Baltic dimly recorded. This poem was edited in Christian times, and with some Christian additions, during the literary flourishing of northern England in the early part of the eighth century. Another poem carried from the mainland by the Englecyn was the _Song of Widsith_ (the _Far-Traveller_), a wandering gleeman who has much to say of the deeds and generosity of the Gothic and other German chiefs among whom he roamed “as his fate willed,” and to whom he “unlocked his word-hoard.” In point of matter this Germanic contribution to Dark Age literature is perhaps of little account. But its vigour of action and strenuous temper did no little towards determining the virility of the French _chansons de geste_, which formed so large a portion of English reading in the pre-Chaucerian period. In point of form it is necessary to note that the Anglo-Saxon method of versification, based on accent, alliteration and assonance, is naturally inherited from the German tradition. With very slight modification the method of Anglo-Saxon poetry is also that of Langland in his _Piers Plowman_ of the Chaucerian age. Though this was subsequently abandoned by English poets in favour of the French system of rhyme and numbered syllables, the use—all the more artistic for being disguised—of alliteration and accent has survived as one of the chief formal beauties of all our poetry. Whereas the Teutonic poetry, when it came in contact with Christianity in England or France, soon lost its characteristic themes, its mythology, and much of its savagery, the older matter and spirit still flourished among the pagan Norsemen, and were re-imported into northern England with the invasions of the Danes.