[621] The absence of the West-Saxon pedigree may be due to the document from which the Historia Brittonum and the Vespasian MS derive these pedigrees having been drawn up in the North: Wessex may have been outside the purview of its compiler; though against this is the fact that it contains the Kentish pedigree. But another quite possible explanation is, that Cerdic, with his odd name, was not of the right royal race, but an adventurer, and that it was only later that a pedigree was made up for his descendants, on the analogy of those possessed by the more blue-blooded monarchs of Mercia and Northumbria.
[622] See M.L.N. 1897, XII, 110-11.
[623] It is prefixed to the Parker MS of the Chronicle, and is found also in the Cambridge MS of the Anglo-Saxon Bede (Univ. Lib. Kk. 3. 18) printed in Miller's edition; in MS Cott. Tib. A. III, 178 (printed in Thorpe's Chronicle): and in MS Add. 34652, printed by Napier in M.L.N. 1897, XII, 106 etc. There are uncollated copies in MS C.C.C.C. 383, fol. 107, and according to Liebermann (Herrig's Archiv, CIV, 23) in the Textus Roffensis, fol. 7 b. There is also a fragment, which does not however include the portion under consideration, in MS Add. 23211 (Brit. Mus.) printed in Sweet's Oldest English Texts, p. 179. The statement, sometimes made, that there is a copy in MS C.C.C.C. 41, rests on an error of Whelock, who was really referring to the Parker MS of the Chronicle (C.C.C.C. 173).
[626] Brandl in Herrig's Archiv, CXXXVII, 12-13.
[627] Origin, p. 272.
[628] So Ethelwerd (Lib. I) sees in Woden a rex multitudinis Barbarorum, in error deified. It is the usual point of view, and persists down to Carlyle (Heroes).
[629] Origin, p. 293.
[630] Beowulf, p. 5. For a further examination of this "Beowa-myth" see [Appendix A], above.