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ANGLO SAXON POETRY :

The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes who invaded Britain in the 5th and 6th centuries brought with them the
common Germanic metre; but of their earliest oral poetry, probably used for panegyric, magic, and
short narrative, little or none survives. For nearly a century after the conversion of King Aethelberht I of
Kent to Christianity about 600, there is no evidence that the English wrote poetry in their own
language. But St. Bede the Venerable, in his HistoriaecclesiasticagentisAnglorum (Ecclesiastical
History of the English People), wrote that in the late 7th century Caedmon, an illiterate Northumbrian
cowherd, was inspired in a dream to compose a short hymn in praise of the creation. Caedmon later
composed verses based on the Scripture, which was expounded for him by the monks at Streaneshalch
(now called Whitby), but only the Hymn of Creation survives. Caedmon legitimized the native verse
form by adapting it to Christian themes. Others, following his example, gave England a body of
vernacular poetry unparalleled in Europe before the end of the 1st millennium.

The experiential and philosophical poetics of the Anglo-Saxons informs a complex, sophisticated poetry.
It speaks of a male-centred, tribal society structured by the bond between the lord and his liegemen, of
the virtues of heroism, and the ineluctability of wyrd (fate). Deeply set in the social, communal space of
the tribe or kingdom, poetry is an essentially public, communal art, cultivated by skilled bards. The
theory of Eduard Sievers of alliterative verse gives the clearest comprehension of Old English poetry.
The system is based on accent, alliteration, the number of vowels, and patterns of syllabic stress. It is
based on five versions on base-verse scheme; any one of the five categories can be used in any verse.
The system was inherited from and exists in one form or another in all of the older Germanic
languages.

The other noticeable styles found in Anglo-Saxon poetry is a lyrical compound which attracts reader or
listener making a vivid picture; kenning .It has an intentional effort to be vague and mysterious,like
wound-dew for blood . Anglo-Saxon poetry is marked by the comparative rarity of similes. This is a
particular feature of Anglo-Saxon verse style, and is a consequence of both its structure and the
rapidity with which images are deployed, to be unable to effectively support the expanded simile. As an
example of this, the epic Beowulf contains at best five similes, and these are of the short variety. This
can be contrasted sharply with the strong and extensive dependence that Anglo-Saxon poetry has upon
metaphor, particularly that afforded by the use of kennings. Also repetition with variation is a common
feature alglo saxons poetry.Whereas, Litotes is a type of oral irony. This is expressed in form of the
overstatement such as in Beowulf when the hero is in the clasp of Grendels mother, and the poet
writes repeatedly that what deep trouble Beowulf is in. It was used similarly used in the case of the
understatement. Litotes aims to intensify the feeling in the poetry.
More or less, Old English verses are parted in half by a pause; the pause is called a "caesura." Each
half-line consists of two stressed syllables. The first stressed syllable of the second half-line alliterates
with one or both of the stressed syllables of the first half-line. The second stressed syllable of the
second half-line does not alliterate with either of the stressed syllables of the first half.

Almost all this poetry is composed without rhyme, in a characteristic line, or verse, of four stressed
syllables alternating with an indeterminate number of unstressed ones. This line strikes strangely on
ears habituated to the usual modern pattern, in which the rhythmic unit or foot, theoretically consists of
a constant cumber of unaccented syllables that always precede or follow any stressed syllable.
Another unfamiliar and equally striking feature in the formal character of Old English poetry
is structural alliteration, or the use of syllables beginning with similar sounds in two or three of the
stresses in each line.
Old English had many inflections, large consonant clusters, borrowings from Latin and
Scandinavian. The earliest written English words are from the 7th century. Much of Old English
poetry was probably intended to be chanted, with harp accompaniment, by the Anglo-Saxon scop, of
bard . This poetry is often bold and strong, but also mournful and elegiac in spirit, this poetry
emphasizes the sorrow and ultimate futility of life and the helplessness of humans before the power of
fate. Anglo-Saxon poetry typically depicts the problems which arise as the theology of the Church
(Christianity) and the theology of the Pagan world are played off of, and against, each other. Like many
of the epics during this time, the poetry of the Anglos was meant to be a moral lesson to those
listening. A sort of fable, the poems taught lessons on life and righteousness.
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The themes in Anglo-Saxon poetry start with heroics such as Beowulf and gradually move towards to
the religious themes of Gospels. The following themes and subjects are commonly found in
Anglo-Saxon literary works: Battle, war, warriors; seas; storms; ravens; eagles; wolves; death,
dying; fate, destiny; nobles, rulers; weapons and armor. The Anglo-Saxons were ever ready to
fight and go top the war. It was their in their blood to look for battles. The warriors were
entertained by the poets when they came back from a war being triumph. The poets told them
the stories of heroes, gallantry, valor, etc. as we can find much discussed poem Beowulf has
many fighting depictions against the monster and the dragon. There is heroic poem which is
actually a retelling of Beowulf namely The Fight at Finnsburh. Waldere is another heroic poem
dealing with the life of Walter of Aquitaine. Widsith is also a heroic one pertaining to Eormanric
and the Goths from 4th century. MoreoverAnglo-Saxon Chronicle has heroic poems. They were so
influenced by this heroic poetry that they thought of turning Gospel into heroic poetic manner.

The Anglo-Saxon poetry remained under growth for centuries. It started as pagan and then evolved to
Christian religious poetry and from oral to manuscript. Therefore it gathered numerous genres in it.The
elegiac poems describe wisdom and the ups and downs of life. The Exeter Book has a numerous poems
which fall under the category of elegies. The noticeable elegiac poems are The Ruin, The Wanderer,
The Seafarer, Wulf and Eadwacer, The Wife's Lament, and The Husband's Message. Some of the
great poems include The Battle of Brunanburh, The Battle of Maldon, Deor, Widsith, Beowulf,
Cdmon's Hymn, The Wanderer, The Seafarer, Waldere, The Fight at Finnsburh, Dream of
the Rood and Anglo Saxon Chronicle.

Epic poems were the artistic hallmark of a heroic society taking pride in communal sagas of survival,
recited by its minstrels during the festive gathering of warriors in the mead-hall. They sing of an
ordered society, ruled by a developed sense of ornament, tradition, moralizing, assimilation. The only
complete Germanic epic that has come down to us is Beowulf (1st half of 8th c.) a long heroic epos full
of compelling portraits and feelings of grief, loss, compassion, gratitude, exile, sadness. The surviving
3138 alliterative metres (500 AD) are informed by Scandinavian history and legend, telling a story of
monster-slaying in Scandinavia. Beowulf narrates the battles of Beowulf, a prince of the Geats (a tribe
in what is now southern Sweden), against the monstrous Grendel, Grendels mother, and a fire-
breathing dragon. The poem can be seen in the 10th century manuscript Cotton Vitellius A. XV in the
British Museum. It is believed to be pre-Christian composition transcribed by a monastic scribe so as to
give it a Christian frame of reference, postdating the composition by 3-4 hundred years which is a
theory no longer tenable, though.

Significantly , Beowulf resounds with genuine human celebration. Its proliferating stories tell of earthly
joys and sorrows, and the heroism of mans struggles, of his transcendence of time through creation
and art. It also contains allegories of salvation. If Christians are saved through Christ, the heathen
Geats are doomed by Beowulfs death. The poems pervasive mysticism is evident in its careful
numerological patterns, in its cycles of creation and destruction. The solemn, yet lively, conversational
tonality of the poem owes to the oral style devices which beckon to the primary public function of the
epic. The prosody is informed by sound patterns whose calculated effect was meant to be achieved
when the poem was intoned and chanted to harp accompaniment. Its heavy use of autonomasia, a
complex, compound metaphor used for describing a thing, the so-called kenning (land-dwellers, bone-
frame, houses mouth, heath-rover, i.e. stag) is specific to the Anglo-Saxon poetic sensibility. The
account also contains some of the best elegiac verse in the language, and, by setting marvellous tales
against a historical background in which victory is always temporary and strife is always renewed, the
poet gives the whole an elegiac cast. Beowulf also is one of the best religious poems, not only because
of its explicitly Christian passages but also because Beowulfs monstrous foes are depicted as Gods
enemies and Beowulf himself as Gods champion.
Other heroic narratives are fragmentary. Of The Battle of Finnsburh and Waldere only enough
remains to indicate that, when whole, they must have been fast-paced and stirring. Of several
poems dealing with English history and preserved in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the most
notable is The Battle of Brunanburh , Maxims and Widsith .
The few surviving pieces of lyrical poetry are gathered in a collection of manuscripts called the Exeter
Book, which is kept, as the name indicates, in the chapter of Exeter Cathedral. The emotional charge
and tonality of the poems qualifies them as elegies, a poetic subgenre informed by expressions of
nostalgia and regret for the better days of bygone times, lamentations for lost life, friends, fortune,
privileges, things and people held dear, in other words for the inexorability of the passage of time,
change, and death. Old English poets produced a number of more or less lyrical poems of shorter
length, which do not contain specific Christian doctrine and which evoke the Anglo-Saxon sense of the
harshness of circumstance and the sadness of the human lot. The Wanderer and The Seafarer are
among the most beautiful of this group of Old English poems.These poems are remarkable due to their
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elegiac stress on loss, estrangement, exile and the transience of early pleasure, but also to their claim
to another form of heroism, mans resilience and resistance in times of adversity.

Other verse forms cultivated by the Anglo-Saxons are riddles. The short poetic riddles are dense little
poems which illustrate a tremendous fascination with the operation of metaphors. A legendary parable
remains that of the metaphor used by Edwin of Northumbria at the 627 Council, describing mans
transitory lot on earth by comparing it to the disorientation of a sparrow in a hall, whose origins and
destination remain unknown.

Sacred legend and story were reduced to verse in poems resembling Beowulf in form. At first such
verse was rendered in the somewhat simple, stark style of the poems of Caedmon, a humble man of
the late 7th century who was described by the historian and theologian Saint Bede the Venerable as
having received the gift of song from God. Caedmons Hymn to God the Creator was composed at the
monastery of Whitby during the late 7th century. Later the same type of subject matter was treated in
the more ornate language of the Anglo-Saxon poet Cynewulf and his school. The best of their
productions is probably the passionate Dream of the Rood.
Most Old English poetry is preserved in four manuscripts of the late 10th and early 11th centuries. The
Beowulf manuscript (British Library) contains Beowulf, Judith, and three prose tracts; the Exeter Book
(Exeter Cathedral) is a miscellaneous gathering of lyrics, riddles, didactic poems, and religious
narratives; the Junius Manuscript (Bodleian Library, Oxford)also called the Caedmon Manuscript, even
though its contents are no longer attributed to Caedmoncontains biblical paraphrases; and the
Vercelli Book (found in the cathedral library in Vercelli, Italy) contains saints lives, several short
religious poems, and prose homilies. In addition to the poems in these books are historical poems in the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; poetic renderings of Psalms 51150; the 31 Metres included in King Alfred the
Greats translation of Boethiuss De consolationephilosophiae (Consolation of Philosophy); magical,
didactic, elegiac, and heroic poems; and others, miscellaneously interspersed with prose, jotted in
margins, and even worked in stone or metal.
A great deal of Latin prose and poetry was written during the Anglo-Saxon period. Of historic as well as
literary interest, it provides an excellent record of the founding and early development of the church in
England and reflects the introduction and early influence there of Latin-European culture.The term
Anglo-Saxon covers the early, foundational period in the formation of the English people, language
and culture, initiated by the Anglo-Saxon conquest the invasion and occupation, in the fifth and sixth
centuries AD, of the former Roman colony of Britannia by the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, Germanic
peoples generically referred to as the Anglo-Saxons. The alternative term of Old English has come to
be used in literary and cultural studies only in the 19th century, in order to eliminate any possible
suggestion of discontinuity between Anglo-Saxon and modern English language and culture, thus
including the Anglo-Saxon period as a first and foundational stage in development of English culture
and letters.
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Anglo-Saxon Prose
The Old English language, also called Anglo-Saxon, was the earliest form of English. It is
difficult to give exact dates for the rise and development of any language, because changes in
languages do not occur suddenly. However, Old English was in use from about 600 AD to
about 1100.

Anglo-Saxon (or Old English) literature refers to literature written in Anglo-Saxon (Old
English) during the 600-year Anglo-Saxon period of Britain, from the mid-5th century AD to
the Norman Conquest of 1066. These works include genres such as epic poetry, hagiography,
sermons, Bible translations, legal works, chronicles, riddles, and others. In all there are about
400 surviving manuscripts from the period, a significant corpus of both popular interest and
specialist research.

In descending order of quantity, Old English literature consists of: sermons and saints' lives, biblical
translations; translated Latin works of the early Church Fathers; Anglo-Saxon chronicles and narrative
history works; laws, wills and other legal works; practical works ongrammar, medicine, geography; and
poetry.[4] In all there are over 400 surviving manuscripts from the period, of which about 189 are
considered "major".Old English literature is among the oldest vernacular languages to be
written down, second only to Gothic. Old English began, in written form, as a practical
necessity after the Danish invasions.

Anglo-Saxon literature was divided according to various criteria. One of the generally
accepted classification divides it into Old English Pagan Poetry ,Old English Christian
Poetry , Old English Prose .The amount of surviving Old English prose is much greater than
the amount of poetry. Of the surviving prose, sermons and Latin translations of religious
works is the majority. Old English prose first appeared in the 9th century, and continued to be
recorded through the 12th century.
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A large number of manuscripts remain from the Anglo-Saxon period, with most written during its last 300
years (9th to 11th centuries), in both Latin and thevernacular. There were considerable losses of manuscripts
as a result of theDissolution of the Monasteries in the 16th century.[4] Scholarly study of the language began
in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I when Matthew Parker and others obtained whatever manuscripts they
could.[4] Old English manuscripts have been highly prized by collectors since the 16th century, both for
their historic value and for their aesthetic beauty of uniformly spaced letters and decorative elements.[4]
There are four major poetic manuscripts:

The Junius manuscript, also known as the man hunt, is an illustrated collection of poems on biblical
narratives.
The Exeter Book, is an anthology, located in the Exeter Cathedral since it was donated there in the 11th
century.
The Vercelli Book, contains both poetry and prose; it is not known how it came to be in Vercelli.

The Beowulf Manuscript (British Library Cotton Vitellius A. xv), sometimes called the Nowell Codex,
contains prose and poetry, typically dealing with monstrous themes, including Beowulf.[9]

Seven major scriptoria produced a good deal of Old English manuscripts:Winchester, Exeter, Worcester,
Abingdon, Durham, and two Canterbury houses, Christ Church and St. Augustine's Abbey; regional dialects
include: Northumbrian, Mercian, Kentish, West Saxon (the last being the main dialect).[4] Some Old
English survives on parchment, stone structures, and other ornate objects.

The first known Anglo-Saxon prose writer was Aldhelm, the founder of Malmesbury Abbey
and later bishop of Sherborne. His works were written in Latin and consisted in Letters and
Riddles. His style was heavily decorated with complex metaphors .King Alfred the Great
tried to save his country from barbarism and ignorance by encouraging his people to study at
his schools and monasteries. Alfred learned Latin and translated into Old English many Latin
writings. The translations of The Pastoral Care (a manual for priests on how to conduct their
duties), The History of the World by Orosius, The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius,
The Soliloquies of Saint Augustine, The Ecclesiastical History of the English People by
Bede have been traditionally associated with King Alfred, but the style and language used in
each is so different that it is more likely that they were written by different people, and even
in different time periods.

During Alfreds reign, the capital of Winchester became a great cultural centre. Alfred also
collected in a Law Book all the laws existing in England at that time. He is the initiator of
the keeping of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the first historical record ever composed in
English.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was started in the time of King Alfred, around 891 AD. These
prose Annals started with Caesars invasion, up to the reign of Alfred. Much of the
information in these documents may be unreliable. However for some periods and places, the
chronicle is the only substantial surviving source of information. After the original chronicle
was compiled, copies were kept at various monasteries and were updated independently.

Aelfric (955 1020 AD), Abbot of Eynsham, wrote his works in the second half of the 10th
century. He was the greatest and most prolific writer of Anglo-Saxon sermons, which were
copied and adapted for use well into the 13th century. He also wrote a number of saints lives,
an Old English translation of the Rule of Saint Benedict, pastoral letters, translations of the
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first six books of the Bible, glosses and translations of other parts of the Bible, a
Colloquium for teaching Latin conversation, and a vocabulary (the first Latin-English
dictionary).

Martyrology (information about saints and martyrs according to their anniversaries and
feasts in the church calendar) was written around the 9 th century AD by an anonymous
Mercian author, and has survived in six fragments.

The oldest collection of church sermons is the one known as the Blickling homilies, found
in the Vercelli Book and written around the 10th century AD.There were also many Old
English translations of different parts of the Bible. Aelfric translated the first six books of the
Bible (the Hexateuch). There are some translations of the Gospels; the most popular is the
Gospel of Nicodemus, while others include the Authentic Gospel of Matthew, Vindicta
salvatoris, Vision of Saint Paul and the Apocalypse of Thomas.

A single example of a classical romance has survived; it is a fragment of a Latin translation


of Apollonius of Tyana by Philostratus (220 AD), from the 11th century.

The legal texts written in Old English also come in great numbers. They include records of
donations by nobles, wills, documents of emancipation, lists of books and relics, court cases,
guild rules. All of these texts provide valuable insights into the social history of Anglo-Saxon
times, but are also of literary value. By the 12th century they had been arranged into two large
collections which included the laws of the kings, beginning with those of Aethelbert of Kent,
and texts dealing with specific cases and places in the country. There is also a large volume
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of legal documents related to religious houses.

NORMAN CONQUEST:The story of The Conquest, as it is known in England, began


with the death of the old king of England, Edward the Confessor. King Edward had no
sons to inherit his throne, a four-way conflict developed over who would become the
next King of England. The English Witanagemot, the traditional council of nobles,
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chose Harold Godwinson as the new king. The other claimants included; King
Harold's half-brother, Tostig Godwinson, Harald Hardrada, the King of Norway, and
William, Duke of Normandy, a region in northwest France.

Both Tostig and Harald Hardrada invaded England to unseat King Harold, but both
attacks failed. The third invasion, by William of Normandy, proved successful. William
landed his invasion force of nearly 7,000 Normans and assorted European
mercenaries on Sept. 28, 1066 at Pevensey. Following this landing, he built a base
near Hastings.

Harold marched toward Hastings after defeating and killing Harald Hardrada and
Tostig at Stamford Bridge, a victory which left his army tired and weakened. On Oct.
14, 1066, the Anglo-Saxon army of England battled the invading Normans. The battle
ended with Haroald dead and William of Normandy as the sole living claimant to the
throne. William then marched his forces northward toward London, defeating the
English at Southwark. Journeying toward the capital city, The English fought
defensively while the Normans infantry and cavalry repeatedly charged their shield-
wall. As the combat slogged on for the better part of the day, the battle's outcome
was in question. Finally, as evening approached, the English line gave way and the
Normans rushed their enemy with a vengeance. King Harold fell as did the majority of
the Saxon aristocracy. William's victory was complete. On Christmas day 1066, William
was crowned King of England in Westminster Abbey.This ended the first phase of the
Norman Conquest of England.

William still had to consolidate his power, and over the next several years, he and his
Norman followers defeated several Anglo-Saxon rebellions, including an invasion by
Harold Godwinson's surviving sons. The Anglo-Saxon rebel, Hereford the Wake, was
defeated at the Battle of Ely Isle in 1070, and a final campaign in 1072 finally brought
northern England under William's control.

The Norman Conquest is significant for several reasons. William was the new King of
England, but he was also still the Duke of Normandy in France, which put him and his
successors in the awkward position of ruling one counrty, while still serving as a
vassal (underling) of another country's ruler, in this case, the King of France. This
dilemma set up England and France for hundreds of years worth of warfare as the
ruling families of each kingdom battled for control of both countries.

Also, The Conquest created an ongoing link between the island of Great Britain (which
includes England, Scotland, and Wales) with the European Continent through the
connection of England and French Normandy in form of the development of English
culture, language, history, and economics.

William's possession of the English throne had far-reaching consequences. One of the
repercussions was the introduction of a new nobility. The old English nobility was
virtually annihilated and replaced with Norman followers. Mcrum et al. (1986: 73)
argue that William also purged the English church: gradually Norman bishops and
abbots occupied the cathedrals and monasteries, and for many generations after the
conquest, the great estates and important positions were held by French-speaking
Normans. The most significant consequence, however, was the dominion that the
French language acquired in England. The Norman Conquest brought not only a new
way of life but also a new way of speaking. The Norman incomers' mother tongue was
French and it remained so until the second half of the 12th century. French became
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the language of the ruling class and their servants. It was adopted across the entire
range of written registers: literature, legal proceedings, commerce, government
businesses and private correspondence (Ingham, 2010: 1). The members of the new
commanding class continued to use their own language once they settled in England.
First, only those of Norman origin would speak French, but soon through intermarriage
and relation with the supreme class, many English people found it to their benefit to
master the new language. Therefore French became the 'language of power and
prestige' (Hughes, 2000: 13).

These events marked the beginning of Middle English, and had an incredible effect in
the way English is spoken nowadays. The changes of this period affected English in
both its grammar and its vocabulary. Those in the grammar reduced English from a
highly inflected language to an extremely analytic one. Those in the vocabulary
involved the loss of a large part of the Old English word-stock and the addition of
thousands of words from French and Latin. Before the Norman conquest, Latin had
been a minor influence on English, but at this stage, some 30000 words entered the
English language, that is, about one third of the total vocabulary. But vocabulary was
not the only thing that changed in the English language. While Old English had been
an extremely inflected language, it now had lost most of its inflections.

The influence of the Normans can be illustrated by looking at two words, beef and
cow. Beef, commonly eaten by the aristocracy, derives from the Anglo-Norman, while
the Anglo-Saxon commoners, who tended the cattle, retained the Germanic cow. Many
legal terms, such as indict, jury, and verdict have Anglo-Norman roots because the
Normans ran the courts. This split, where words commonly used by the aristocracy
have Romantic roots and words frequently used by the Anglo-Saxon commoners have
Germanic roots, can be seen in many instances.

In vocabulary, about 10000 words entered the English language at this stage, and
more than a third of todays PdE (Present-day English) words are related to those
Anglo-Norman ME (Middle English) words.

English pronunciation also changed. The fricative sounds [f], [s], [] (as in thin), and
[] (shin), French influence helped to distinguish their voiced counterparts [v], [z], [ ]
(the), and [] (mirage), and also contributed the diphthong [oi] (boy).

Grammar was also influenced by this phenomenon especially in the word order. While
Old English (and PdE in most of the occasions) had an Adj + N order, some
expressions like secretary general, changed into the French word order, that is, N +
Adj.

English has also added some words and idioms that are purely French, and that are
used nowadays.

Since French-speaking Normans took control over the church and the court of
London. A largest number of words borrowed by the government, spiritual and
ecclesiastical (religious) services. As example state, royal (roial), exile (exil), rebel,
noble, peer, prince, princess, justice, army (armee), navy (navie), enemy (enemi),
battle, soldier, spy (verb), combat (verb) and more. French words also borrowed in
English art, culture, and fashion as music, poet (poete), prose, romance, pen, paper,
grammar, noun, gender, pain, blue, diamond, dance (verb), melody, image, beauty,
remedy, poison, joy, poor, nice, etc. Many of the above words are different from
modern French in use or pronunciation or spelling.
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Thus, the linguistic situation in Britain after the Conquest was complex. French was
the native language of a minority of a few thousand speakers, but a minority with
influence out of all proportion to their numbers because they controlled the political,
ecclesiastical, economic, and cultural life of the nation.

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