I have already mentioned Widsith as a source of some of the names of heroes associated with Eormenric. This poem presents itself as a list of the heroes and kings a scop has encountered in his travels, but it actually seems to be a catalogue (or several traditional catalogues) of references to stories which were the mainstays of heroic poetry in the Old English period. If any piece of Old English literature can give us an indication of just how much has been lost and forgotten, Widsith's lists of kings, tribes and warriors can:

Attila ruled the Huns, Eormanric the Goths,
Becca the Banings, the Burgundians by Gifica.
Casere ruled the Creeks and Caelic the Finns,
Hagena the Holm-Riggs and Heoden the Gloms.
Witta ruled the Swaefe, Wada the Halsings,
Meaca the Myrgings, Mearchealf the Hundings.
Theodric ruled the Franks, Thyle the Rondings,
Breoca the Brondings, Billing the Werns.
(Widsith, ll. 18-25)

Some of the stories associated with these characters are known to us, if only in fragmentary form. Eormenric is, as I have discussed in Part One, the historical Fourth Century Gothic king Ermanaric, and many others mentioned in Widsith and elsewhere in the Old English corpus are memories of the heroes, kings and war-leaders of the Goths and other tribes of the Migration Age. In this passage alone we can also recognise Attila the Hun, and "Gifica" is probably Gibica, the father of the historical Burgundian king, Gundahar.

Obviously the exploits of these and other Migration Age heroes were celebrated by continental Germanic poets and these tales found their way north to the tribes of northern Germany and Denmark, and were carried to England with the Anglo-Saxons.

Others are much more obscure and may date from a much earlier continental traditon. For example, in the passage above the Widsith-poet mentions Becca, king of the Bannings. The Origio Gentis Langobardorum, which details the semi-legendary early history of the Lombards, mentions an ancient tribe or clan called the 'Bainaib'. And in the Second Century Claudius Ptolemy mentioned a Germanic people he called the 'Bainochaimai', who seem to have lived in central Germania at that time. The name 'Becca' is possibly derived from the Celtic '*bekkos' meaning "small", indicating a memory of a time when the Germanics were still heavily influenced by and intertwined with the influential Celtic cultures of central and southern Europe.

Similarly, the "Gloms" (or 'Glommum' in the original Old English) could be the First Century Lemovii described in Tacitus' Germania:

Beyond the Lugii dwell the Gothones, under the rule of a King; and thence held in subjection somewhat stricter than the other German nations, yet not so strict as to extinguish all their liberty. Immediately adjoining are the Rugii and Lemovii upon the coast of the ocean, and of these several nations the characteristics are a round shield, a short sword and kingly government.
(Germania, 44)

Beyond this we know nothing of the Lemovii, though their king 'Henden' seems to have been vaguely remembered as 'Heoden' or 'Hethinn' in the Old Norse tradition and may be the 'Hithinus' of Saxo Grammaticus Gesta Danorum.

So, beyond the strata of Fourth to Sixth Century Migration Age heroes and kings, there seems to be a much older stratum of very ancient memory - dating back to the First Century and perhaps beyond. In Widsith there are many tribes and peoples whose names seem to be cognates with some of the more obscure tribes mentioned in Tacitus and other early Roman writers: the 'Aenenas' (possibly the Nuithones), the 'Engle' (the Anglii), the 'Fresan' (the Frisii), the 'Gefflegan' (the Aviones), the 'Glomman' (the Lemovii), the 'Haetwere' (the Hatvarii), the 'Ilwan' (the Helvecones), the 'Sweordweras' (the Suarines) and the 'Waerne' (the Varini)

Unfortunately, the details of these very ancient stories and traditons are now almost completely lost to us, though with the later strata, Migration Age, strate it is slightly easier to reconstruct some aspects of the lost heroic tales.

(Continued ... )