Page images
PDF
EPUB

S

w pepod peapse teaf dow

V.

[ocr errors]

true par fean fah se Dat godere gud by pue fcan heard hond Locen hring iren scir song, mseap pum þame cofele furðum in hýra gry re gear pum gangan epomon secton sæmeþe side scyldaf pondas regn heard pið þæs recedes peal. buzon þaro bence bynnan ming don gud searo gumena gapaf frodon sæman na feapo (amod at zædque as holt ufan greg is esse ipen ppeaz papnum Бериград рабор plone hæles ope mecgar afrep hale þum prægn. hpanion perizead ge pat te fcÿldaf spæge fýr can 751um helmas here sceafta heap ic com hpod gapes. ap Tom bike. Ne seahic elpoodige puf manize men modiglicpan. penic f.gefop plen co nalles for præ fiðum repophige

ne

A Page from the MS. of Beowulf in the British Museum

Cott. MS. Vitell. A 15

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, considering 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 conjectured 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 otherwise, 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 proclivities; 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 :—

Then we two together were in the sea

The space of five nights, till flood apart drove us,

The swelling billows, coldest of storms

Darkening night, and the north wind

Boisterous and fierce, rough were the waves;

The sea-fishes' spirit was then aroused.

Nor has he less love for

[blocks in formation]

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 perp.ded 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 o 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!
Warriors good had gotten.

Lo, within thee long ago

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;1 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.

« PreviousContinue »