Beowulf - Delphi Poets Series Read online

  a cross-rime prevails. It must be remembered that all vowels rime with one another: so, —

  “ice-flecked, outbound, atheling’s barge.”

  By observing these rules in translation, one may count on a rhythmic movement which fairly represents the old verse. The translation, to be sure, must alternate stressed and unstressed syllables with more “regularity” than can be found in the original, which followed rules of detail now impossible to observe. The preponderance of falling rhythm cannot always be maintained, nor can the translator always keep his rimed verse-stresses on the words to which they belong in the old metrical system. But these are not vital objections. Nothing meets the reader in this old rhythm with which he is not familiar in modern poetry; he recognizes initial rime as an ornamental factor in verse, though he is not wont to find it the controlling factor.

  This same statement holds true of the style of the old epic. Modern poetry has occasional variant repetition; but repetition is not the controlling factor, the inevitable cross-pattern, as it is in old poetic diction. Modern poetry makes ample use of metaphor; but the practical necessity of “kennings” in alternate statement or epithet is no longer known. Considering now these old factors of poetic style for themselves, one finds that variant repetition is woven into the very stuff of epic; it is closely allied, as in Hebrew poetry, with the rhythmic principle. But our epic verse is continuous, and has no stanzaic balance, no limit, such as exists in Hebrew; so that in oldest English poetry the unrestrained process of variant repetition piles epithet on epithet and phrase on phrase. In Beowulf there have been counted a hundred different appellations for the hero, and fifty-six for King Hrothgar. Occasionally there is a “couplet” which resembles the Hebrew:

  “To him the stateliest spake in answer;

  The warriors’ leader his word-hoard unlocked.”

  On this variant repetition great force is bestowed by the use of metaphor, particularly by “kennings.” A kenning is where one speaks of the sea as “the whale’s road” or “the gannet’s bath,” — as if the phrase were a “token” of the thing. So in the couplet just quoted, “spake in answer” is literal; its variant, “unlocked the word-hoard,” is metaphorical; and “word-hoard” is kenning for “thoughts” or “intention.” When the reader grows accustomed to this cross-pattern of repetition, — and he has no quarrel with it in its somewhat different guise in the Psalms, — he will appreciate its importance as a factor in the old poetry, and he will not be unduly baffled by its persistence. One can easily get rid of it, or suppress it to the vanishing point, by a prose translation; but that is not only to renounce real knowledge of the poetical ways of the epic, but to get an utterly false idea of it.

  Other features of the style of the epic call for little or no comment. Litotes, or emphasis by understatement, — as when the best of warriors is called “not the worst,” — is a prime favorite with the poet of Beowulf; it can be found on almost every page. The simile occurs a few times, to be sure, but it is an exotic; and any long simile may be set down as copied from learned sources.

  V

  No greater mistake exists than to suppose that the rhythm and style of these early English poems cannot be rendered adequately in modern English speech. It is not a question of classical hexameters, but of English verse old and new. As a practical problem solvitur ambulando; one can point to the fact that all the accredited German translations of Beowulf and Finnsburg, with one exception, have been made in the verse of the original; and this exception is a failure just so far as it fails to give account of verse and style. As a matter of theory nothing is more absurd than to contend that the old system of verse was an art suddenly and utterly lost in the abyss of the Norman Conquest. To be sure, its exact prosody could not survive changes in linguistic structure; compromises with foreign forms of verse took it into new ways, and sent it, say as “tumbling verse,” down to our own time, justified by such a line as Browning’s

  “Seethed in fat and suppled in flame”. . .

  yet in its own person it passed the stage of the conquest, kept its vigor, suffered few notable changes, and appears as a popular and effective verse, some six centuries from the date of the original Beowulf, in the Piers Plowman poems. Englishmen of that day had ears to hear “rum-ram-ruf” in no mocking spirit, as well as to greet the harmonious flow of Chaucer’s pentameter. That very pentameter, too, reveals from time to time in the actual four-stress tendency, and, — though not so often, — in its initial rimes, a hint of the old rhythmic structure:

  “Ther shyveren shaftës upon sheeldës thikkë” . . .

  In short, if the two systems — old four-stressed initial-rimed and new pentameter — could appeal to the same hearers, and if Chaucer is now the delight for lovers of verse that he was in his own day, there should be no difficulty for modern ears to allow the dual presence. William Morris employed something akin to the old rhythm in parts of his charming Love is Enough:

  “For as lone as thou liest in a land that we see not,

  When the world loseth thee, what is left for its losing?”

  Yet, apart from its haphazard and unregulated initial rimes, this rhythm is far too swift in its pace for the old verse. Professor J. L. Hall used it for his translation of Beowulf very effectively; but though he curbed it here and there, it is still too rapid, and the initial rimes are not fully carried out. The translation of Beowulf by Morris and Wyatt cannot be called an improvement on Professor Hall’s translation, for their vocabulary is archaic or invented to an intolerable degree, and the rimes are not followed on any fixed principle. However, the present writer’s business lies not at all with the criticism of verse-translations of Beowulf; his affair consists in presenting to modern readers a rendering, faithful as he can make it, of the entire body of oldest traditional narrative poetry in English, as handed down by the minstrel, or as worked over into longer epic form.

  PRELUDE OF THE FOUNDER OF THE DANISH HOUSE

  Lo, praise of the prowess of people-kings

  of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped,

  we have heard, and what honor the athelings won!

  Oft Scyld the Scefing1 from squadroned foes,

  5 from many a tribe, the mead-bench tore,

  awing the earls.2 Since erst he lay

  friendless, a foundling, fate repaid him:

  for he waxed under welkin, in wealth he throve,

  till before him the folk, both far and near,

  10 who house by the whale-path,3 heard his mandate,

  gave him gifts: a good king he!

  To him an heir was afterward born,

  a son in his halls, whom heaven4 sent

  to favor the folk, feeling their woe

  15 that erst they had lacked an earl for leader

  so long a while; the Lord endowed him,

  the Wielder of Wonder, with world’s renown.

  Famed was this Beowulf:5 far flew the boast of him,

  son of Scyld, in the Scandian lands.

  20 So6 becomes it a youth7 to quit him well

  with his father’s friends, by fee and gift,

  that to aid him, agéd, in after days,

  come warriors willing, should war draw nigh,

  liegemen loyal: by lauded deeds

  25 shall an earl have honor in every clan.

  Forth he fared at the fated moment,

  sturdy Scyld to the shelter of God.8

  Then they bore him over to ocean’s billow,

  loving clansmen, as late he charged them,

  30 while wielded words the winsome Scyld,

  the leader belovéd who long had ruled. . . .

  In the roadstead rocked a ring-dight vessel,

  ice-flecked, outbound, atheling’s barge:

  there laid they down their darling lord

  35 on the breast of the boat, the breaker-of-rings,9

  by the mast the mighty one. Many a treasure

  fetched from far was freighted with him.

  No ship have I kno
wn so nobly dight

  with weapons of war and weeds of battle,10

  40 with breastplate and blade: on his bosom lay

  a heapéd hoard that hence should go

  far o’er the flood with him floating away.

  No less11 these loaded the lordly gifts,

  thanes’ huge treasure, than those had done

  45 who in former time forth had sent him

  sole on the seas, a suckling child.

  High o’er his head they hoist the standard,

  a gold-wove banner; let billows take him,

  gave him to ocean. Grave were their spirits,

  50 mournful their mood. No man is able

  to say in sooth, no son of the halls,

  no hero ‘neath heaven, — who harbored that freight!12

  Footnotes

  1 English historians knew the story or myth of this Scyld (“Shield”), who as a helpless child drifts ashore in an oarless boat. The boat is filled with weapons, but a “sheaf” of grain serves as pillow for the little sleeper; and hence the people call him Shield the Sheaf-Child. They make him their king. He ruled, so William of Malmesbury says, “where Heithebi stands, once called Slaswic.” The term “Sheaf-Child” came to be misunderstood as “Child of Sheaf,” and Scyld was furnished with a father, Scef or Sceaf.

  2 An “earl” was the freeman, the warrior in a chosen band; though not yet indicating specific rank, the word carried a general idea of nobility.

  3 Kenning for “sea.” Tribes across the water, say in southern Sweden, or westward of the Danish lands in Zealand, became tributary to Scyld.

  4 Literally, “God.”

  5 Not, of course, Beowulf the Geat, hero of the epic. Genealogies of Anglo-Saxon kings name this son of Scyld as Beaw, Beo, Bedwig, Beadwig, Beowinus, etc., all shorter forms or corruptions of a common original name. The name Beowulf may mean “Wolf-of-the-Croft” (Gering), but its etymology is uncertain.

  6 Sc. “as Scyld did.” Beowulf’s coming fame is mentioned, so to speak, as part of Scyld’s assets, and the whole passage is praise of the “pious founder” of the Danish line.

  7 The Exeter Maxims, vv. 14 f., say

  Let the atheling young by his honest comrades

  be emboldened to battle and breaking of rings, —

  i.e. liberal gifts to his clansmen.

  8 To heaven, the other world. Various metaphors are used for death; e.g. “he chose the other light.” See also v. 2469.

  9 Kenning for king or chieftain of a comitatus: he breaks off gold from the spiral rings — often worn on the arm — and so rewards his followers. In Ælfric’s famous Colloquy, early in the eleventh century, the huntsman says he sometimes gets gift of a horse or an arm-ring from his king.

  10 Professor Garnett’s rendering.

  11 The poet’s favorite figure of litotes or understatement. He means that the treasure which they sent out with the dead king far exceeded what came with him in the boat that brought him, a helpless child, to their shores.

  12 While the reader should guard against putting into these effective lines sentiment and suggestion which they do not really contain, he should compare this close with the close of Tennyson’s Morte d’Arthur. The classical passage for ship-burial among the old Germans is the description of Balder’s funeral in the prose Edda. On the “greatest of all ships” was laid the corpse of the god; and a balefire was made there; and rings, and costly trappings, and Balder’s own horse, were consumed along with the body.

  I

  Now Beowulf bode in the burg of the Scyldings,

  leader belovéd, and long he ruled

  55 in fame with all folk, since his father had gone

  away from the world, till awoke an heir,

  haughty Healfdene, who held through life,

  sage and sturdy, the Scyldings glad.1

  Then, one after one, there woke to him,

  60 to the chieftain of clansmen, children four:

  Heorogar, then Hrothgar, then Halga brave;

  and I heard that —— was — — ‘s queen,2

  the Heathoscylfing’s helpmate dear.

  To Hrothgar3 was given such glory of war,

  65 such honor of combat, that all his kin

  obeyed him gladly till great grew his band

  of youthful comrades. It came in his mind

  to bid his henchmen a hall uprear,

  a master mead-house, mightier far

  70 than ever was seen by the sons of earth,

  and within it, then, to old and young

  he would all allot that the Lord had sent him,

  save only the land4 and the lives of his men.

  Wide, I heard, was the work commanded,

  75 for many a tribe this mid-earth round,

  to fashion the folkstead. It fell, as he ordered,

  in rapid achievement that ready it stood there,

  of halls the noblest: Heorot5 he named it

  whose message had might in many a land.

  80 Not reckless of promise, the rings he dealt,

  treasure at banquet: there towered the hall,

  high, gabled wide, the hot surge waiting

  of furious flame.6 Nor far was that day

  when father and son-in-law stood in feud

  85 for warfare and hatred that woke again.7

  With envy and anger an evil spirit

  endured the dole in his dark abode,

  that he heard each day the din of revel

  high in the hall: there harps rang out,

  90 clear song of the singer. He sang who knew8

  tales of the early time of man,

  how the Almighty, made the earth,

  fairest fields enfolded by water,

  set, triumphant, sun and moon

  95 for a light to lighten the land-dwellers,

  and braided bright the breast of earth

  with limbs and leaves, made life for all

  of mortal beings that breathe and move.

  So lived the clansmen in cheer and revel

  100 a winsome life, till one began

  to fashion evils, that fiend of hell.

  Grendel this monster grim was called,

  march-riever9 mighty, in moorland living,10

  in fen and fastness; fief of the giants

  105 the hapless wight a while had kept

  since the Creator his exile doomed.

  On kin of Cain was the killing avenged

  by sovran God for slaughtered Abel.

  Ill fared his feud,11 and far was he driven,

  110 for the slaughter’s sake, from sight of men.

  Of Cain awoke all that woful breed,

  Etins12 and elves and evil-spirits,

  as well as the giants that warred with God

  weary while: but their wage was paid them!

  Footnotes

  1 If glæde is adverb, read:

  Haughty Healfdene: hardy and wise,

  though old, he graciously governed the Scyldings.

  The name “Halfdane” means that his mother was foreign born.

  2 “I heard,” the epic formula, often has a merely conjunctive force, as here, when it may be rendered, as Klaeber notes, “and further.” — The name of the daughter is lost; no suggestion so far has enough weight to gain preference. The “Battle-Scylfings” are the race known in Scandinavian annals as Ynglings, a Swedish people. Kluge, using the Saga of Hrolf Kraki, reads: “Sigeneow was Sæwela’s queen.”

  3 Heorogar’s reign, noted below, vv. 465, 2158, is here passed over by the poet, who wishes to come at once to the story.

  4 Literally, “folk’s share.” Gering translates “all that God had given him along with his land and his people.”

  5 That is, “The Hart,” or “The Stag,” so called from decorations in the gables that resembled the antlers of a deer. This hall has been carefully described in a pamphlet by Heyne. The building was rectangular, with opposite doors — mainly west and east — and a hearth in the middle of the single room
. A row of pillars down each side, at some distance from the walls, made a space which was raised a little above the main floor, and was furnished with two rows of seats. On one side, usually south, was the high-seat, midway between the doors. Opposite this, on the other raised space, was another seat of honor. At the banquet soon to be described, Hrothgar sat in the south or chief high-seat, and Beowulf opposite to him. The scene for a flyting (see below, v. 499) was thus very effectively set. Planks on trestles — the “board” of later English literature — formed the tables just in front of the long rows of seats, and were taken away after banquets, when the retainers were ready to stretch themselves out for sleep on the benches. Some additional comment will be found in the excellent notes in Mr. Clark Hall’s translation of Beowulf.

  6 Fire was the usual end of these halls. See v. 781, below. One thinks of the splendid scene at the end of the Nibelungen, of the Nialssaga, of Saxo’s story of Amlethus, and many a less famous instance.

  7 It is to be supposed that all hearers of this poem knew how Hrothgar’s hall was burnt, — perhaps in the unsuccessful attack made on him by his son-in-law Ingeld. See vv. 2020 fl., and the note, where Beowulf tells of an old feud which this marriage is to set aside, and hints that the trouble will not be cured even by such a remedy. He too thinks that “warfare and hatred will wake again.” — See also Widsith, vv. 45 ff.

  8 A skilled minstrel. The Danes are heathens, as one is told presently; but this lay of beginnings is taken from Genesis.

  9 A disturber of the border, one who sallies from his haunt in the fen and roams over the country near by. This probably pagan nuisance is now furnished with biblical credentials as a fiend or devil in good standing, so that all Christian Englishmen might read about him. “Grendel” may mean one who grinds and crushes.

  10 See notes below on the notion of a water-hell. “Hell and the lower world,” says Bugge, “were connected to some extent in the popular mind with deep or boundless morasses.” Home of the Eddic Poems, tr. Schofield, p. lxxiv.

  11 Cain’s.

  12 The eoten, Norse jotun, or giant, survives in the English ballad-title, Hind Etin. The “giants” of v. 113 come from Genesis, vi, 4. See also the apocryphal book of Enoch, noted by Kittredge, Paul und Braune’s Beiträge, xiii, 210, who accounts for this tradition that Cain was the ancestor of evil monsters.