These formulas were a common source for all early poetry, from which all poets drew the language used in their extemporaneous poetic creations. Francis Magoun, in his “Oral-Formulaic Character of Anglo-Saxon Narrative Poetry,” states: “An oral poem until written down has not and cannot have a fixed text, a concept difficult for lettered persons” (Magoun 84). With each telling of the oral poem there is some variation from the previous telling. Consider from the poem when Hrothgar was honoring Beowulf