\paperw5085 \margr0\margl0 \plain \fs20 \f1 In the 6th and 7th centuries, the most highly prized arts among all the peoples in the British Isles were those of the bards, or poets
, and the goldsmiths. Although much of the fine decorative work in precious metals was lost when such items were melted down to create other artefacts, at least some of the sword pommels, pendants and brooches have survived. Unfortunately nothing of th
e oral poetry of the same period has survived, unless there are echoes of it in poems like \i Beowulf\i0 , a tale of fictional heroic deeds in a historical setting believed by most scholars to have been written in the 8th century. This is the only examp
le of vernacular heroic verse to have come down to us in manuscript form from the Anglo-Saxon or early Germanic worlds. The books that first came to the British Isles concerned the new Christian religion, and finely illustrated books were mainly for Chr
istian worship. However, one of the original contributions of the early Anglo-Saxons was the development of \i insular miniscule\i0 , a fluent and legible handwriting which could be written more quickly than the formal capital and majuscule letters of l
