II.

Folk Epics

Epic verse may be classified either as folk or as literary epic. Folk, or popular, epics are believed to have developed from the orally-transmitted folk poetry of tribal bards or other authors, and were eventually written down by anonymous poets. Well-known examples of the folk epic are the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf, the German Nibelungenlied (Song of the Nibelungs), and the Indian epics, the Mahabharata (Great Story) and the Ramayana (Story of Rama). The story material appearing in folk epics is usually based on legends or events that occurred a long time before the epic itself appeared. The characters and episodes that appear in many folk epics had, in several cases, been treated in folk songs before the epic was composed. Examples of this consolidation of material are the French folk epics known as chansons de geste, or songs of heroic deeds, composed from the end of the 10th to the middle or end of the 11th century, the most famous of which is the Chanson de Roland (The Song of Roland, c. 1100).

In some cultures the popular epic material has never actually been gathered together into an epic. The Celts produced extended cycles of epic poems, notably the Fenian, or Ossianic, Cycle (see Ossian and Ossianic Ballads) and the Arthurian Cycle (see Arthurian Legend) but developed no single great poem using this or similar material. Spain has a national heroic figure, El Cid, but, with the exception of the Poema del Cid (c. 1140) the ballads and poems about him never achieved epic proportions.