Of this the part corresponding to lines 790820 exists also in the original Old Saxon.
The suspicion of some earlier scholars that the Praefatio and the Versus might be a modern forgery is refuted by the occurrence of the word vitteas, which is the Old Saxon fittea, corresponding to the Old English fitt, which means a "canto" of a poem.
Of its origin and early history we have no record except the bare statement of Bede that its settlers were of the Old Saxon race.
The form Seaxneat is identical with Saxnot, one of three gods mentioned in a short continental document probably of Old Saxon origin.
Sievers's conclusions were brilliantly confirmed in 1894 by the discovery in the Vatican library of a MS. containing 62 lines of the Heliand and three fragments of an old Saxon poem on the story of Genesis.
