Note 491 — Chapter V · THE DANISH CONQUEST OF ENGLAND.[464] 975–1016.

The original Old-English text is printed in Thorpe’s Analecta Anglo-Saxonica, p. 131; there is a modern English translation in Conybeare’s Illustrations of Anglo-Saxon poetry, xc. The poem, of which unfortunately the beginning and ending are lost, is evidently local and contemporary. I therefore do not hesitate to accept the main facts of the battle and the names of the actors as trustworthy, much more trustworthy than if they were found in a Latin prose chronicle a century or two later. The speeches, no doubt, are, like most speeches in history, the invention of the poet.