Scops: A Living History :: English Literature Dictionary Essays

Scops A Living History A scop is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as an Old English poet or minstrel. However, scops were simply so much more than that to the medieval world. They were the only means of entertainment for the tribe of the time. There was no television or Internet to escape to, and books were not readily available. Most medieval people in the eighth through duodecimal centuries could not read or write,so the scops would tell amusing stories or tales of heroic deeds to the music of their harps. The stories would be chanted, giving great honor to those mentioned in the unwritten recitations, and the scops song also provided a memory of the culture for those who would come after. According to Kemp Malone, At an early date Germanic kings began to keep professional poets. (p.75) These scops would travel the kingdom, revealing their stories and singing their songs. They would have a harp or later a lute these were the tools of th eir trade. Creating worlds and places many Anglo- Saxons never saw because few people ever left field the place they were born, scops were important fixtures to the medieval world. The scops opened up the outside world to medieval people and engaged the imagination too. In Beowulf, scops are mentioned in inform Beowulfs deeds and amusing the men in the mead- halls. Like courtly fools, they would make their audience laugh. However, unlike the fools or court jesters, a scop was not at that place merely to entertain. They were a living history of the times and places of the past and present. Their ability to memorize many lines of poetry or stories has kept them alive throughout the ages so that we still have them today. The stories were sometimes embellished and altered to be more interesting to the listeners. For example, in Beowulf, there is the story of our hero fighting sea monsters as he swims across an ocean and spending seven days and night in the cold sea. The Wanderer is a tale that mostly likely would have been recited by a scop. The stories that the scops would tell often were elegies for the heroic dead.