I think in the time of orally transmitted epics such as Beowulf, I can’t imagine a scop in an eighth-century or a seventh-century environment, in a place where he might have traveled in his whole life maybe fifteen miles to the left or to the right, I can’t imagine that he was participating in a culture that had unified values of vocal usage. I think it’s much more likely that his voice was at the service of telling a certain story and that, of course, in his clan or in his group and amongst his masters and those who followed after him, there were some agreements locally linked to language and linked to the way these people spoke and the way they heard rhythm and the way they listened to the sounds of vowels and consonants in their language. I think that that was silently but, of course, very rigorously adhered to. No one had to write it down — well, they didn’t write anyway — but no one had to give it any kind of expression; it simply was taken for granted.

~ Benjamin Bagby

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