Illustrates the sung epics. Yers generally given full voicing, unlike in the first printed edition of 1800, which was copied from the same destroyed prototype as the Catherine manuscript. Typical use of metaphor and simile. The misquote ('to effuse/pour out one's thought upon/over wood'; a product of an old and habitual misreading of the word , 'squirrel-like' as , 'thought-like', and a change in the meaning of the word ) has become proverbial in the meaning 'to speak ornately, at length, excessively'.