So, I admit that I quite threw together my documentation for the "Seven Virtues" poem. Basically, "This is Old English verse. See my reference. These are the allusions. They are from primary sources. It's on-theme. The End."
Well, it occurred to me that I should be able to answer a question like, "Is it in good Anglo-Saxon style to be writing this how-to advice column in poetry? Can you give evidence for similar didactic works?"
Now, what's our first rule? Read, then write. I didn't do my reading before my writing. I shouldn't have expected to find anything even remotely like the poem I wrote. All I was really hoping to do was "due diligence" - actually going to the Anglo-Saxon poetic corpus, making sure this wasn't like anything else there, and then acknowledging that in my documentation. Just to show, more than anything else, that yes, the thought had crossed my mind.
Meet the Precepts. They are exactly a list of virtuous behaviors the wise man will teach his son. This could be the prototype for "Seven Virtues," except that it doesn't use allusions to history or mythology to make its cases.
Holy cow. This kind of backwards-justification stuff isn't supposed to work. It's crazy that I found something so close to what I ended up writing.
Hurray for due diligence!
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