of the nation’s history right down to the time of the monarchy. The proportion of the material dealing with the time before the settlement is still much greater than that which deals with the history of later times (about fifty-one verses as against sixteen), a fact which enables us to recognise the compulsive power of the genre even in a period when much greater latitude was allowable. Nevertheless there is now something tangible in the second half, too: the worship of the high places, the rejection