Most of the Old English poetry I read was West Saxon. It’s round and rich—drumming like apples poured from a tub onto an elm table—and stirring: heroic, alliterative, elegiac. But I’m not sure how representative it is of Hild’s era. Apart from being the wrong dialect, it’s written rather than being oral, which means it came to us through the double filter of form and Latinised/Christian scribes.

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