that was burnt in the unfortunate fire among the Cottonian
manuscripts (1731). It is entered under the year 937 in all but one MS.,
where it occurs under 938. The poem gives a brief, but graphic,
description of the fight between King Athelstan and his brother Edmund
on the one side, and Constantine and his Scots aided by Anlaf and his
Danes, or Northmen, on the other, in which fight the Saxons were
completely victorious. The poem will be found in all editions of the
"Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" from Wheloc to Earle (1865), and has been
repeatedly reprinted, its brevity causing it to be often included as a
specimen of Old English, but it is omitted in Sweet's Reader. A
Bibliography will be found in Wuelker's _Grundriss_ (p. 339 ff.). To the
English translations there mentioned,--which include a poetical one by
Lord Tennyson, after a prose translation by his son in the Contemporary
Review for November, 1876,--may be added the prose translation by
Kennedy in ten Brink (p. 91) and the rhythmical one by Professor Morley
in his "English Writers" (II. 316-17). ten Brink thinks that the poem
was not written by an eye-witness, and says (p. 92): "The poem lacks the
epic perception and direct power of the folk-song as well as invention.
The patriotic enthusiasm, however, upon which it is borne, the lyrical
strain which pervades it, yield their true effect.
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