The Story of Beowulf, Translated from Anglo-Saxon into Modern English Prose

I

GENERAL NOTE ON THE POEM

This is the greatest poem that has come down to us from our Teutonic ancestors.Our only knowledge of it is through the unique MS. in the British Museum.

It has already been translated at least eight times as follows:

1.Kemble, 1837.

2.Thorpe and Arnold (with the O.E.Poem accompanying it).

3.Lumsden, 1881 (in ballad form).

4.Garnett, 1883.

5.Earle, 1892.

6. William Morris and A. J. Wyatt, 1895. This is in poetic form, but abounds in archaisms and difficult inversions, and is sometimes not easy to read or indeed to understand.

7.Wentworth Huyshe, 1907.

8.A translation in 1912.Author unknown.

Many of the persons and events of Beowulf are also known to us through various Scandinavian and French works as follows:

II

THE PRELUDE

The Prelude would seem to be an attempt to link up the hero of the poem with the mythological progenitors of the Teutonic nations. Thomas Arnold says: ‘That Sceaf, Scyld, and Beaw were among the legendary ancestors of the West Saxon line of kings no one disputes. But this does not mean much, for the poem itself shows that the same three were also among the legendary ancestors of the Danish kings.’ Ethelward, who wrote early in the tenth century, gives the ancestry of Ethelwulf, the father of Alfred. Ethelward says: ‘The seventeenth ancestor from Cerdic was Beo, the eighteenth Scyld, the nineteenth Scef.’ Ethelward also says: ‘Scef himself, with one light vessel, arrived in the island of the ocean which is called Scani, dressed in armour, and he was a very young boy, and the inhabitants of that land knew nothing about him; however, he was received by them, and kept with care and affection as though he were of their own kin, and afterwards they chose him to be king, from whose stock the King Athulf [Ethelwulf] derives his line.’

It may be noted that neither Scyld nor Scef is mentioned in the A.S.Chronicle (A.D. 855). William of Malmesbury, in his Gesta Regum, says that Scef was so called from the sheaf of wheat that lay at his head, that he was asleep when he arrived, and that when he grew up he became a king in the town then called Slaswic, now Haithebi (Rolls Ed. , 1. 121).

Müllenhoff says: ‘If we look closely into the saga, the ship and the sheaf clearly point to navigation and agriculture, the arms and jewels to kingly rule—all four gifts, therefore, to the main elements and foundations of the oldest state of culture among the Germans [Teutons?]of the sea-board; and if the bearer of these symbols became the first king of the country, the meaning can only be this, that from his appearance the beginning of the oldest state of culture dates, and that generally before him no orderly way of leading a human life had existed.’

Scyld (meaning Shield) refers to the fact that the king was the protector of the people in war, and is therefore symbolical, like Scef.

The ship and the sheaf, the arms and the jewels and the shield—these are the symbols of that primitive civilization—the sheaf, the symbol of agriculture and food, the ship of commerce, the arms of warfare, the jewels of reward of bravery, and the shield of the protection of the people by the king.

Arnold mentions the fact that no writer not English mentions the saga of Scef and Scyld, and suggests that this is presumption for the English origin of the legend.I do not, however, think it is conclusive evidence.One is surprised that they are not mentioned in Icelandic literature.Yet somehow the impression on my mind is that these legends were probably brought by our Saxon and Danish ancestors from the Continent, and are taken for granted as well known to the hearers of the song.I think they probably formed part of the legendary genealogy of our common Germanic (Teutonic) ancestors, and happened to find their way into literature only among the English, or have survived only in the English.

III

‘BROSINGA MENE’

‘Brosinga Mene,’ p. 82, is the ‘Brisinga-mén’ mentioned in the Edda, an Icelandic poem. ‘This necklace is the Brisinga-mén—the costly necklace of Freja, which she won from the Dwarfs, and which was stolen from her by Loki, as is told in the Edda’ (Kemble).

Loki was a Scandinavian demi-god. He was beautiful and cunning. He was the principle of strife, the spirit of evil; cp. Job’s Satan. Freya was the Scandinavian Goddess of Love. She claimed half of the slain in battle. She was the dispenser of joy and happiness. The German frau is derived from Freya. Hama carried off this necklace when he fled from Eormanric. The origin of this legend, though worked up in the Edda, seems to have been German or Gothic, and ‘Brosinga’ has reference to the rock-plateau of Breisgau on the Rhine. It is probably a relic of the lost saga of Eormanric (see Appendix IV.) , the famous Ostrogothic king referred to in Chapter XVIIIEormanric is one of the few historical personages of the poem.

IV

EORMANRIC

Gibbon mentions Eormanric in his chapter XXV. of the Decline and Fall, and, in spite of chronological discrepancies, this Eormanric is probably identical with the one mentioned in Beowulf (Chapter XVIII.) , in Jornandes (Chapter XXIV.) , and in the Edda.

In Jornandes the story is as follows.

Characters

• 1. Ermanaric.
• 2.A Chief of the Roxolani tribe who was a traitor.
• 3. Sanielh (= Swanhild) wife of the chief.

• 4.	Sarus,		brothers of Sanielh.
  5.	Ammius,

Ermanaric puts Sanielh to death by causing her to be torn to pieces by wild horses, because of the treachery of her husband, the chief of the Roxolani.Her brothers, Ammius and Sarus, avenge her death by attacking Ermanaric, but they only succeed in wounding him and disabling him for the rest of his life.

In the Edda the story is as follows.

Characters

• 1. Gudrun, widow of Sigurd and Atli.
• 2. Swanhild, daughter of Gudrun by Sigurd.
• 3. Jonakur, Gudrun’s third husband.

• 4. Sörli,		sons of Gudrun and Jonakur.
  5. Hamthir,
  6. Erp,

• 7. Jormunrek (Eormanric).
• 8. Randver, son of Jormunrek.

Jormunrek hears of the beauty of Swanhild and sends his son Randver to seek her out for him in marriage. Gudrun consents; on the way Randver is incited by the traitor Bicci to betray Swanhild, and is then accused by him to the king. For this treachery Jormunrek hangs Randver and causes Swanhild to be trampled to death by wild horses.Then the three sons of Gudrun set out to avenge their sister.On the way his two brothers kill Erp, and are consequently unable to kill Jormunrek.They only succeed in maiming him.

Saxo Grammaticus, to whom we also owe the story of Hamlet, tells a similar story.

Characters

• 1. Jarmeric, a Danish King.
• 2. Swawilda (= Swanhild), wife of Jarmeric.
• 3. Hellespontine brothers, brothers of Swawilda.
• 4. Bicco, a servant of Jarmeric.

Bicco accuses Swawilda to Jarmeric of unfaithfulness.He causes her to be torn to pieces by wild horses.Then her brothers kill Jarmeric with the help of a witch, Gudrun, hewing off his hands and feet.

These three stories are evidently based on one common original.

V

MARRIAGE OF FREAWARU AND INGELD

Characters

• 1. Freawaru, daughter of Hrothgar the Dane.
• 2. Ingeld, son of Froda, King of the Heathobards.
• 3. Froda, King of the Heathobards.
• 4.A Heathobard warrior.
• 5.Son of the Danish warrior who had killed Froda.

The Heathobards were a people in Zealand. There had been an ancient feud between the Danes and the Heathobards in which Froda had been killed by a Danish warrior. Hrothgar hoped to appease the feud by the marriage of his daughter Freawaru to Ingeld. Unluckily, the son of the Danish warrior who had killed Froda accompanied Freawaru to Ingeld’s Court. Then an old Heathobard warrior notices this and stirs up strife. The marriage fails in its object, and war breaks out again between the Danes and the Heathobards. Beowulf predicts the course of events in his speech to Hygelac (Chapters XXVIII. and XXIX.) .

VI

FINN

The Finn episode (Chapters XVI. and XVII.) is one of those events in Beowulf that would be quite well known to the first hearers of the song, but to us is lacking in that clearness we might desire. Fortunately, Dr. Hickes discovered a fragment entitled, ‘The Fight at Finnsburgh,’ on the back of a MS. of the Homilies. From Beowulf and from this fragment we are able to piece together an intelligible story. It is probably as follows:

Characters

• 1. Finn, King of the North Frisians and Jutes.
• 2. Hoc, a Danish chieftain.
• 3. Hildeburh, daughter of Hoc.
• 4. Hnaef, son of Hoc.
• 5. Hengest, son of Hoc.
• 6.Two sons of Finn and Hildeburh.
• 7. Hunlafing, a Finnish warrior.
• 8. Guthlaf and Oslaf, two Danish warriors.

Finn abducts Hildeburh, the daughter of Hoc, the Dane. Hoc pursues the two fugitives and is killed in the mêlée. Twenty years pass by—Hnaef and Hengest, sons of Hoc, take up the ‘vendetta.’ In the fighting Hnaef and a son of Finn and Hildeburh are slain. A peace is patched up. Hengest, son of Hoc, is persuaded to remain as a guest of Finn for the winter, and it is agreed that no reference shall be made by either side to the feud between them.Then the bodies of Hnaef, Hildeburh’s brother, and of her son are burnt together on the funeral pyre, ‘and great is the mourning of Hildeburh for her son.’But Hengest is ever brooding vengeance.The strife breaks out anew in the spring.Hengest is killed, but two of his warriors, Guthlaf and Oslaf, break through the enemy, return to Finn’s country, and slay him and carry off Hildeburh.‘The Fight at Finnsburgh,’ which is Homeric in style, is the account of the first invasion of Finn by Hnaef and Hengest, and Wyatt fits it in before the Finn episode on p.75.Möller places it after the phrase, ‘whose edge was well known to the Jutes,’ on p.79.

VII

HYGELAC

Hygelac, son of Hrethel, was king of the Geats, and uncle of Beowulf, his sister’s son. He was the reigning king of Beowulf’s fellow countrymen the Geats during the greater part of the action of the poem. Beowulf is often called ‘Hygelac’s kinsman,’ and when he went forth to his battle with Grendel’s mother (Chapter XXII.) , he bade Hrothgar in case of his death send the treasures he had given to him to Hygelac. Hygelac married Hygd, who is presented to us as a good Queen, the daughter of Hæreth. She was ‘very young,’ ‘of noble character,’ and ‘wise.’ She is compared, to her advantage, with Thrytho, who was a shrewish woman. No one dared to look upon her except her husband. However, her second husband, Offa, seems to have ‘tamed the shrew’ (see p. 120). Hygelac has been identified with Chocilaicus, who was killed in the famous raid on the Chatuarii referred to in the Historia Francorum and the Gesta Regum, who are identified with the Hetware of this poem (see p. 143 and Appendix I.)

The famous raid of Hygelac upon the Hetware in which he met his death is referred to five times in the poem, as follows: Chapters XVIII. , p. 83; XXXI. , p. 134; XXXIII. , p. 142; XXXV. , p. 151; XL, p.172.

On the death of Hygelac his son Heardred succeeded to the throne (Chapter XXXI. , p. 134); and, after a brief interval, he was killed in battle by Onela (see Appendix IX.) . Then Beowulf succeeded to the throne of the Geats (Chapter XXXI, p.134).Hygelac died between a.d.512 and 520.Beowulf died about 568.He reigned fifty years.

VIII

HÆTHCYN AND HEREBALD

It would seem doubtful as to whether this was deliberate or accidental.The poet says ‘Hæthcyn missed the mark’ with his javelin and killed his brother Herebald; but subsequently he speaks as though it had been deliberate murder.

IX

WARS BETWEEN THE SWEDES AND THE GEATS

Characters

1. Swedes

• 1. Ongentheow, King of the Swedes.

• 2. Onthere,		his two sons.
  3. Onela,

• 4. Eadgils,		two sons of Ohthere.
  5. Eanmund,

2. Geats, &c.

• 6. Hæthcyn, King of Geats.
• 7. Hygelac, King of Geats.
• 8. Heardred, King of Geats.
• 9. Beowulf, King of Geats.

• 10. Eofor,		two Geat warriors.
  11. Wulf,

Ongentheow was a King of the Swedes. The Swedes are also called Scylfings in the poem. The origin of the word ‘Scylfing’ is doubtful. Ongentheow went to war with Hæthcyn, King of the Geats and brother of Hygelac; and Ongentheow, who was well advanced in years, struck down his foe (Chapter XL, p.173) at the battle of Ravenswood.This was the first time that the Swedes invaded the Geats.The Geats retreated into the Ravenswood at nightfall, but with the dawn they heard the horn of Hygelac ‘as the good prince came marching on the track.’Ongentheow now was alarmed, for Hygelac’s prowess in battle was far-famed.He withdrew into some fortification, and was attacked by the Geats.Two brothers, Eofor and Wulf, assailed the veteran warrior.He defended himself with great vigour and killed Wulf; but Eofor came to the help of his brother and dealt Ongentheow his death-blow over the guard of his shield.

Ongentheow’s two sons were Onela and Ohthere.Ohthere had two sons, Eanmund and Eadgils.

These two sons of Ohthere were banished from Sweden for rebellion, and took refuge at the Court of the Geat King Heardred. This greatly enraged their uncle Onela, that they should resort to the Court of their hereditary foes (see above). Onela invaded the land of the Geats (Chapters XXXIII. and XXXIV. , pp. 144 sq.) and slew Heardred. Then it was that Beowulf became King of the Geats. Thus two Geatish kings had been slain by the Swedes, viz. Hæthcyn and Heardred. In revenge, later on, Beowulf supported Eadgils in his counter-attack on his own fatherland when Eadgils killed his uncle Onela. This story is confirmed by the Scandinavian accounts in which Athils (= Eadgils) slew Ali (= Onela) on the ice of Lake Wener; cp. the phrase ‘cold journeyings’ (Chapter XXXIV, p.145).

This is Wyatt’s version of the story.

X

SIGMUND

Sigmund (page 65) is the father and uncle of Fitela. He is stated in Beowulf to have killed a serpent who kept guard over a hoard of treasure. In the Icelandic saga known as the Völsunga Saga, Sigmund is represented as the father of Sigurd, and ‘it is Sigurd who rifles the treasure of the Niblungs and kills the serpent (Fafnir), its guardian’ (Arnold, p. 69), and he carries it away on the back of his horse Grani. Sigmund is represented as the son of a Völsung; that is, as Beowulf has it, ‘the heir of Waels.’ Waels was afterwards forgotten, however, and Waelsing was regarded as a proper name instead of a patronymic denoting descent from Waels. In a similar way, as Arnold points out, Sigmund is pushed into the background to make room for his son Sigurd (Siegfried). ‘And so in the German Nibelungen Lay it is Sigurd (Siegfried) who wins the hoard, but does so by defeating and killing its former possessors Schilbung and Nibelung’ (Arnold, p. 70). Attempts have been made to claim a German origin for this saga, but in face of the evidence of Beowulf and the Völsunga Saga and the Edda there is, I think with Arnold, little doubt but that its origin was Scandinavian. Possibly and probably we owe the later elaboration of the saga in the Nibelungen Lay to German influence. For discussion of the whole question see Arnold’s Notes on Beowulf, pp.67–75, Edit.1898, cap.v.

XI

TRIBES MENTIONED IN THE POEM

1. Brondings. Breca was a Bronding. After his famous swimming-match with Beowulf (Chapter VIII.) , he is said to have sought out his ‘pleasant fatherland the land of the Brondings.’Arnold suggests that they were located in Mecklenburg or Pomerania.

2. Danes, also called Bright-Danes, Ring-Danes, Spear-Danes, because of their warlike character; and North Danes, South Danes, &c., because of their wide distribution.They are said to have inhabited the Scede lands and Scedenig and ‘between the seas’; that is, they were spread over the Danish Islands, the southern province of Sweden, and the seas between them.

3. Jutes (Eotenas), probably people ruled over by Finn, King of Friesland, and identical with the Frisians.

4. Franks and Frisians. The Franks were ancestors of the modern French. After the conversion of Clovis (A.D. 496), they gradually encroached on the Frisians.

5. Frisians include the Frisians, the Franks, the Hetware, and the Hugs. Friesland was the country between the River Ems and the Zuyder Zee.

6. Geats. They dwelt in the south of Sweden between the Danes and the Swedes. Bugge sought to identify them with the Jutes, and held that Gautland was Juteland. He based this theory on certain phrases: e.g. Chapter XXXIII. , where the Swedes (the sons of Ohthere) are said to have visited the Geats ‘across the sea,’ and again in Chapter XXXVthe Swedes and the Geats are said to have fought ‘over wide water’; but, as Arnold points out, these phrases can be interpreted in such a way as not to be incompatible with the theory that they dwelt on the same side of the Cattegat, i.e.on the northern side, and in the extreme south of Sweden.

The question as to whether they are identical with the Goths of Roman history is still an open one.Arnold says, ‘There is a great weight of evidence tending to identify the Geats with the Goths,’ and he quotes evidence from Gibbon (chapter X.)Pytheas of Marseilles, in the fourth century, says that, passing through the Baltic Sea, he met with tribes of Goths, Teutons, and Ests.

Tacitus, in chapter XLIII. of Germania, speaks of the Goths as dwelling near the Swedes.Jornandes traces the Goths to Scanzia, an island in the Northern Sea.It is probable, then, that the Goths had a northern and indeed a Scandinavian origin.If so, Beowulf the Geat was probably a Goth.

7. Healfdenes. The tribe to which Hnaef belonged.

8. Heathoremes. The people on whose shores Beowulf was cast up after his swimming-match with Breca.

9. Ingwine. Friends of Ing—another name for the Danes.

10. Scyldingas. Another name for the Danes, as descended from Scyld.

11. Scylfingas. Name for the Swedes.

12. Waegmundings. The tribe to which both Beowulf and Wiglaf belonged.

13. Wylfings. Probably a Gothic tribe.

XII

PAGE 135

The text here is much mutilated, and can only be restored by ingenious conjecture. Grein and Bugge and others have reconstructed it. On the whole Bugge’s text, which I have followed, seems to me the most reasonable. It is unfortunate that the text should be so imperfect just at this critical point in the linking up of the two great divisions of the story. In the ancient days some remote predecessors of the Geats seem to have heaped up in the neighbourhood a pile of wonderful vessels jewel-bedecked, and treasures of all kinds, of inconceivable value. Then the last of the race carries the treasure to a barrow or cavern in the cliffs near the site, in after-generations, of Beowulf’s palace, and delivers a pathetic farewell address (pp. 136 et seq.) . The dragon finds the cavern and the treasure and appropriates it for three hundred years. Then one of Beowulf’s retainers finds the treasure and takes a golden goblet while the dragon is sleeping, and offers it to his lord as a peace-offering. This brought about Beowulf’s feud with the dragon in which he met his death.