also the scribes in copying and recopying our text must to a considerable extent have obliterated the earlier practice. Metre and syntax combine to make it probable that, in line 9 of our poem, the scribe has inserted the unnecessary article þāra before ymbsittendra: and in the rare cases where we have an O.E. poem preserved in two texts, a comparison proves that the scribe has occasionally interpolated an article. But this later tendency to level out the peculiarity only makes it the more remarkable that we should find such great differences between O.E. poems, all of them extant in copies transcribed about the year 1000.
How great is the difference between the usage of Beowulf and that of the great body of Old English poetry will be clear from the following statistics.
The proportion of phrases containing the weak adjective + noun with and without the definite article in the certain works of Cynewulf is as follows[[234]]:
| With article | Without article | |
| Juliana | 27 | 3 |
| Christ (II) | 28 | 3 |
| Elene | 66 | 9 |
In Guthlac (A) (c. 750) the proportions are:
| With article | Without article | |
| Guthlac (A) | 42 | 6 |
Contrast this with the proportion in our poem:
| With article | Without article | |
| Beowulf | 13 | 65 |
The nearest approach to the proportions of Beowulf is in the (certainly very archaic)
| With article | Without article | |
| Exodus | 10 | 14 |