Welcome to the History of English Podcast, a podcast about the history of the English

language.

This is episode 37, Sea Faires, Poets, and Traveling Minstrels.

In this episode, we're going to hitch a ride with the first Old English Poets and Minstrels,

and we're going to take the History of English on the road.

This is an episode about journeys, traveling minstrels, and the importance of Anglo-Saxon

poetry.

But before I begin, let me remind you that the website for the podcast is historyofenglishpodcast.com.

And after receiving several requests from listeners, I recently added a donate button to the

site.

And several of you have been kind enough to make a donation to the podcast through the site,

so let me take this opportunity to thank those of you who've done that.

Those donations help to offset some of the expenses and costs of putting this podcast

together, and the cost of maintaining the podcast, so thanks again to all of you who've

been kind enough to support it.

Now let's turn to this episode, and let's explore the culture of the Anglo-Saxons, and

how that culture impacted the work of the Anglo-Saxon poets and minstrels.

A good place to begin is with the Sea, because the early Anglo-Saxons were ultimately

a maritime people, and that aspect of their culture is reflected in the names of some

of the earliest poems composed in the English language, poems like The Sea Faire and The

Wanderer.

In fact, Sea travel is one of the most common recurring themes in Old English literature.

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