He has his affinities with the Demodokos of a Homeric king. Rich in dignities and guerdons, sitting at the foot of the leader, consorting on equal terms with the warriors, he differs wholly from the _scenicus infamis_, who was the plaything and the scorn of Rome. Precisely when the shifting of social conditions brought him into being it is hard to say. Tacitus does not mention him, which is no proof, but a presumption, that amongst the tribes on the frontier he had not yet made his appearance in the first century of the Empire. By the fifth century he was thoroughly established, and the earliest records point to his existence at least as early as the fourth. These are not to be found in Latin sources, but in those early English poems which, although probably written in their extant forms after the invasion of these islands, seem to date back in substance to the age when the Angles still dwelt in a continental home around the base of the Jutish peninsula. The English remained to a comparatively late stage of their history remote from Roman influence, and it is in their literature that both the original development of the Teutonic _scôp_ and his subsequent contamination by the Roman _mimus_ can most easily be studied. The earliest of all English poems is almost certainly _Widsith_, the ‘far-traveller.’ This has been edited and interpolated in Christian England, but the kernel of it is heathen and continental[108]. It is an autobiographic sketch of the life of Widsith, who was himself an actual or ideal _scôp_, or rather _gleómon_, for the precise term _scôp_ is not used in the poem. Widsith was of the Myrgings, a small folk who dwelt hard by the Angles. In his youth he went with Ealhhild, the ‘weaver of peace,’ on a mission to Eormanric the Ostrogoth. Eormanric is the Hermanric of legend, and his death in 375 A. D. gives an approximate date to the events narrated. Then Widsith became a wanderer upon the face of the earth, one who could ‘sing and say a story’ in the ‘mead-hall.’ He describes the nations and rulers he has known. Eormanric gave him a collar of beaten gold, and Guthhere the Burgundian a ring. He has been with Caesar, lord of jocund cities, and has seen Franks and Lombards, Finns and Huns, Picts and Scots, Hebrews, Indians, Egyptians, Medes and Persians. At the last he has returned to the land of the Myrgings, and with his fellow Scilling has sung loud to the harp the praises of his lord Eadgils and of Ealhhild the daughter of Eadwine. Eadgils has given him land, the inheritance of his fathers. The poem concludes with an eulogy of the life of gleemen. They wander through realm upon realm, voice their needs, and have but to give thanks. In every land they find a lord to whom songs are dear, and whose bounty is open to the exalters of his name. Of less undeniable antiquity than _Widsith_ are the lines known as the _Complaint of Deor_. These touch the seamy side of the singer’s life. Deor has