| Abstract: | The object of this study is to examine the possibility that, although the Anglo-Saxon royal genealogies are in their extant from products of ecclesiastical scholarship, the keeping of royal genealogies in early England was not an innovation brought about by Christian literacy, but was rather a native, originally pre-Christian institution which the church adopted. The discussion is divided into two parts. The first argues that the genealogical lists derive at least in part from the sort of historical record which the Anglo-Saxons, in common with other early Germanic peoples, maintained in the form of orally transmitted narrative traditions. The second tries to show that these traditions were cultivated by a court poet known to the Anglo-Saxons as the scop. The conclusion is that the extant royal genealogies are ultimately dependent on orally transmitted royal dynastic histories the keeping of which was an established part of native, originally pre-Christian traditional culture in England. |
