Long before the Arthurian legends were written down, Britain was a land of voices. Stories lived in the air in the chants of bards, the songs of warriors around firelight, and the lullabies passed quietly from mother to child. Oral tradition was the lifeblood of memory. It carried not only history but identity, a way of making sense of a fractured world.

The Saxons, too, brought their stories: grim and resonant songs of battle, exile, and loyalty. Works like The Wanderer and The Seafarer, though later preserved in writing, echo that tradition of spoken poetry, meant to be heard as much as remembered. These tales were not polished courtly romances but stark, haunting visions of life lived on the edge of survival.

Placed alongside the shifting folklore of post Roman Britain, they give us a glimpse of the crucible where myth was forged. Stories of local warlords, heroes, and fallen kings blended with older Celtic traditions and with the new voices of Saxon settlers. Over time, these fragments reshaped themselves into the foundation of what became Arthurian legend half history, half song.

What I find most moving is that even in the silence of centuries, echoes remain. Folk songs, recorded much later, still carry the cadence of those older rhythms. They remind us that legend is not fixed on the page it breathes, shifting in the telling, bound to the voices that keep it alive.