Probable character

and circumstances of author

He must otherwise either have translated his poem directly from some
Scandinavian original or have composed it in Anglo-Saxon. The former
supposition seems little in keeping with the character of literature in that
age; but if the poem were entirely of Anglo-Saxon origin, we should, con-
sidering that it cannot be much older than the middle of the eighth century,
have expected a more decidedly Christian tone, and a less heroic cast of
manners. If the poet neither translated nor invented, he can only have
adapted; and it is sufficiently probable that lays celebrating a semi-mythical
hero like Beowulf may have existed among Beowulf's people and become
known to our anonymous Anglo-Saxon bard. To weave these together
would be a simple operation, as they would not be rival versions of the
same exploits, but successive episodes of the hero's life. Nor would they
be numerous-three or four at most-one of which, the lay of Beowulf's
conflict with the fire-drake, stands out so distinctly from the rest that
one is almost inclined to regard it as entirely the work of the English
poet, prompted by the need of providing his epic with a catastrophe.

What manner of man was the Anglo-Saxon author? Most of the
critics who have touched upon the question have seemed disposed to
regard him as an ecclesiastic, whether priest or monk. He has been con-
jectured to have been a Saxon missionary to Scandinavia, and regarded
as a poet at the court of Offa, King of Mercia, administering instruction
in the guise of poetic fiction to that monarch's son. These opinions are
contrary to internal evidence. If the author was an ecclesiastic, he was
one who had retired into the cloister towards the end of a tempestuous
life, and still loved the saga better than the breviary. Had it been other-
wise, the references to Christianity must have been more numerous and
distinct, and the writer would either have made Beowulf a Christian,
converting him in his last moments as Boiardo converts Agricane, or, at
least, have depicted his paganism as a lamentable blot upon a character
otherwise perfect. But manifestly the poet is not one who would rather
"ride with Sir Priest than Sir Knight." He has no ecclesiastical pro-
clivities; he never alludes to bell, book, or candle. He has heard and
rejoiced in the clash of battle, and to him the victorious champion-if
bounty is associated with bravery-represents the perfection of humanity.
Nothing is more marked than his affection for the sea: he has clearly
made many voyages, which must have been in the company of sea-rovers.
He has the sense of its dreadful might and more dreadful capriciousness
which nothing but daily and nightly familiarity can give :-

BEOWULF

The spacious boat,

The ring-prowed ship, with battle-weeds laden:

for which he is never tired of inventing new epithets.

13

We know from the Nibelungen Lied that the hero Folker was a great The most fighter as well as a great fiddler, and it is not impossible that the writer probable theory of Beowulf may himself have been a warrior. It is nevertheless more likely that he was a minstrel, who passing, as we have already seen a minstrel pass, from court to court, and chanting the exploits of his royal and princely entertainers, imbibed the spirit of adventure and the command of poetical diction which qualified him to weave the Beowulf lays into an epic. It may even be possible to offer a plausible conjecture as to the period and occasion of his work. Strong reasons, derived from names of places and the character of the scenery, have been assigned for holding him to have belonged to Northumbria. Ten Brink, however, declares the dialect to be Wessex of the best period of the language. But this is no real objection, for scribes habitually altered the dialect of the work they copied into that of their own district. A Mercian poet could scarcely have been so familiar with the sea, and the hypothesis that the poem was composed for the instruction of King Offa's son can hardly be sustained; the didactic purpose must in that case have been more apparent, and Hrothgar's admonitions to the slayer of Grendel would not. apply to a young prince who had done nothing to distinguish himself. The introduction of the name of Offa, even as that of a legendary personage, does, nevertheless, appear significant, and taken in connection with the probably Northumbrian origin of the writer, may afford a clue to the history of the poem. Offa the Great, King of Mercia from 757 to 796, in 792 gave one of his daughters in marriage to Ethelred, King of Northumbria. If we may suppose our probably Northumbrian poet to have been a minstrel at Ethelred's court, the introduction of the name of Offa is explained, and a date obtained, not necessarily for the actual composition of the poem, but for the assumption of its ultimate form. There is nothing in the poem inconsistent with such a supposition, for the poet might well have found and left the allusion to the Merovingians in one of the lays which he fused into his own work.

We must now offer a brief analysis of the epic, whose action is simplicity itself. It is a romance of knight-errantry, one of a type dear to

1 This and the preceding extracts are from Professor J. M. Garnett's translation, which of the metrical versions is probably the closest to the original. Of the prose versions Mr. T. Arnold's is the most elegant and Professor Earle's the best annotated.

Analysis of the poem

man from the days of Hercules to the days of Amadis, and still, though giants are pacific and dragons extinct, affording the inspiration of many a novel of modern life. Beowulf's first adventure offers a strong resemblance to the Argonauts' delivery of King Phineus from the Harpies. As Phineus is amerced of his food by these obscene invaders, so is Hrothgar, King of the Danes, deprived of his palace by the demon Grendel, who, if any dare to abide there at night, enters it and rends the inmates to pieces. This fiend is powerfully described, and the more so inasmuch as the description leaves much to the imagination. He seems to be a personification of the horror felt by lonely wayfarers in the miry wilderness which he is supposed to make his home. The Christian editor makes him and his fellows descendants of Cain, but the original conception seems to have been that of something unhuman in everything except shape and carnal tissue. The monster must be fought with naked hands, and the strength of Beowulf himself avails no further than to wrench one arm from its socket. This, however, suffices; Grendel flies to his cave and expires. A fresh action, which has every appearance of the addition of a new episode to the original poem or the incorporation of a separate lay into it, now arises from the interposition of a still more frightful fiend in the person of Grendel's mother, a demon of the sea as he is of the morass.1 She dwells in a sea-cave accessible only by diving, in close relation, however, to the unhallowed mere which had evidently taken the strongest hold on the poet's imagination. Beowulf, pursuing her to avenge the death of one of Hrothgar's nobles whom she has torn to pieces, is gripped by her and borne to this submarine cavern, where he would have perished but for the excellence of his coat of mail which defies her thrusts, and his own skill and luck in possessing himself of a sword from her own armoury, by which alone she can be despatched. He returns in triumph with the head of Grendel, which four ordinary men can hardly bear, and receives thanks and, at the same time, admonition from Hrothgar in a speech dissuading from arrogance and prompting to liberality, which the poet may well have designed to be perpended by his own patrons. The moral tone throughout is very high: and nothing is more remarkable than the vein of pity blended with abhorrence in the description of the ogres, which indicates a finer spirit of humanity than Homer was able to attain when he drew the Cyclop. The whole story of the hero's overthrow of the demon and his dam must belong to a very ancient stratum of popular legend, for Professor York Powell has shown that it exists in Japanese.

Confirming precept by example, Hrothgar had not omitted to recom

The figure of the devil's dam or grandmother, so frequent in Grimm's Tales, is Celtic as well as Teutonic. In Philip Skelton's description of St. Patrick's Purgatory on Lough Derg, written about the middle of the eighteenth century, he says: "They here show a bas relief of Keeronagh, the devil's mother, a figure somewhat resembling that of a wolf, with a monstrous long tail and a forked tongue." Her legend follows, showing that the carving is not a mere freak of fancy. The idea of the feminine character of the evil principle, indeed, is at least as ancient as the Assyrian mythology.

BEOWULF

15 pense Beowulf with splendid gifts, which Beowulf, on his return to the court of his own sovereign Hygelac, distributes between the king and his nobles, receiving rich bounty from Hygelac in return. An interval of fifty years is now supposed to occur, at the end of which we find Beowulf, advanced in years, but with strength and valour unabated, ruling the kingdom of Hygelac, who, as already mentioned, had perished in an expedition. against the Frisians. His reappearance, nevertheless, is in his old character as knight-errant, which he is obliged to resume in consequence of the devastation wrought in his realm by a fiery dragon. The dragon on his part has a good case. The treasure over which he watched has been robbed of a golden cup by one of Beowulf's nobles, and he must have revenge. This hoard, it seems, was not originally entrusted to his keeping, but discovered by him. It was buried long ago by an ancient king, the last of his line, who, in the spirit of Goethe's King of Thule, grudged his treasure to posterity, so bitterly did he feel that "all, all were gone, the old familiar faces." His touching lament breathes a tenderer strain than any other passage in the poem, and may well be incorporated from some other

source:

Hold thee here, O Earth, nor the heroes could not.
Hold the wealth of earls! Lo, within thee long ago
Warriors good had gotten. Ghastly was the life-bane
And the battle death that bore every bairn away.

All my men, mine own, who made leaving of this life!

They have seen their joy in hall! None is left the sword to bear

Or the cup to carry, chased with flashes of gold,

Costly cup for drinking. All the chiefs have gone elsewhere.

Now the hardened helm, high adorned with gold,

Of its platings shall be plundered. Sleeping are the polishers,
Those once bound to brighten battle-masks for war.

So alike the battle sark that abode on field

O'er the brattling of the boards, biting of the swords,

Crumbles, now the chiefs are dead. And the coat of ringéd mail

May far and wide no longer fare with princes to the field

At the side of heroes. Silent is the joy of harp,

Gone the glee-wood's mirth; never more the goodly hawk

Hovers through the hall; the swift horse no more

Beats with hoof the Burh-stead. Thus, unhappy did he weep

In the day and night, till the Surge of Death

On his heart laid hold.

The dragon is brilliantly described; he is a winged, fire-breathing serpent, provided with at least two feet, and an adamantine covering for his head, but his body is soft and penetrable. His great defence consists in the clouds of poisonous fire he breathes forth, which so intimidate Beowulf's

1 This passage raises an interesting question. The Encyclopædia Britannica says that hawking was introduced into England from the Continent about 860, but this mention of domesticated hawks would seem to prove it earlier. If the Scandinavians were not acquainted with it by the eighth century, this portion of Beowulf at any rate must be the original work of an Anglo-Saxon poet. We know not what evidence on the point may be attainable; it is certain that the finest falcons come from Iceland. The Celtic romances are too late or too interpolated to contribute much to the elucidation of the subject.

Manners of the age of Beowulf

Episodes in
Beowulf

nobles that all fly but one, who succours his lord, and turns the battle in his favour. But the poison has done its work; and Beowulf, seeing himself nigh to death, commands his faithful follower to bring forth the dragon's hoard for him to feast his eyes on, and in dying directs his corpse to be burned on a headland, and a barrow heaped up over the remains

Which may for my folk for remembering of me,

Lift its head high on the Hrones-ness;
That sea-sailing men, soon in days to be,

Call it Beowulfs Barrow,' who, their barks afoam,

From afar are driving o'er the ocean mists.

This is accordingly done, the treasure is interred with the hero, and the poem which had begun with a sea-funeral, when the body of King Scyld is sent adrift to sea with all his wealth, ends like the Iliad with a solemn cremation.

Beowulf is not only a fine poem, but a most interesting relic of the ideas and manners of the remote past. It shows that the Northern peoples of its age were by no means barbarous, but that even material civilisation was fairly advanced among them; while, except for the general licence of warring and plundering, their morality was high and pure. Whether a single work or compacted of separate lays, it seems to imply a considerable poetical literature now lost. The authors were men of real poetical genius, who laboured under the disadvantages of paucity of impressions and ideas, diction unrefined by study and practice, and a cramping system of versification. Beowulf has not been without influence on later English poetry, Arnold's description of the funeral of Balder, and Morris's of the combats of Jason and his companions with the "ugly, nameless, dull-scaled things," may be distinctly traced back to it; and the comparison shows that the steady expansion of the human mind by the exercise of thought and the accumulation of knowledge has been hardly less favourable to poetry than to science.

Beowulf does not stand quite alone among the Anglo-Saxon poems of the period; enough, indeed, is left to have rendered probable, even had Beowulf been lost, the existence of a considerable romantic and metrical literature which had disappeared in the unheroic atmosphere of later monkish ideals and amid the catastrophe of the Norman Conquest. Among several episodes introduced or alluded to in Beowulf in such a way as to suggest that they formed the themes of independent poems, is one "The Fight at Finnsburg"-on the same subject as another poem apparently of the same period, about fifty lines of which have been preserved. The two pieces help to complete each other. The personages are Jutes and Frisians, those of another fragment are Germans. A vellum binding in the Royal Library at Copenhagen has preserved two passages from an Anglo-Saxon version of Walthere, an originally Teutonic romance of the Nibelungen cycle. The German original is lost, but survives in a Latin translation made in the tenth century: the