File:How King Arthur used to Greet Foreigners

I was reading Thomas Malory's Tale of King Arthur (1470) and noticed an obvious similarity between Arthur's words and those of Byrhtnoth in The Anglo-Saxon poem "The Battle of Maldon" (composed c.10th-11th).

Malory's passage refers to 12 messengers from the emperor of Rome who ask King Arthur to pay tribute (trwage) while the Battle of Maldon, written about 500 years earlier, describes a similar exchange between the messenger of a foreign invader (VIkings) and a native (Anglo-Saxon) who is asked for tribute of gold and who says in reply that they shall receive only a tribute of spears. I wonder whether Malory copied the poem or whether the "tribute of spears/swords" is just a recurring meme in medieval storytelling?

http://survivethejive.blogspot.se/2013/09/tribute-of-spears.html

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