Using the poems as a direct source for social history will be a matter of sieving and sifting for elements we feel are the implicit assumptions of the poet and audience. As with any source, when in doubt we can ask the questions cui bono; if a feature has no obvious ideological value by its mere appearance in the text and no obvious value as an archaizing or distancing effect, we might assume that it is something that was simply taken for granted in the eighth century. […] For the poems to succeed as ideological tools at all, much in them must have been acceptable to everyone.