INTRODUCTION TO THE TRANSLATION

  ¹ I am grateful to Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull for this reference.

  ² At that time I did various ‘amanuensis’ tasks to assist my father: recently I came upon a forgotten map of The Silmarillion, very carefully drawn and coloured, signed with my initials and the date 1940, though I have no recollection now of its making. Other indications suggest 1942: see the Notes on the Text of the translation, pp. 126–7, note on lines 2260–2.)

COMMENTARY ACCOMPANYING THE TRANSLATION OF BEOWULF

  ³ [The word scop meant ‘poet, minstrel’; the meaning of þyle was very various and can be uncertain in particular cases. Elsewhere in these lectures my father wrote:

To learn by heart from other and older members of his craft was part of the occupation of the scop or minstrel, and the þyle, ‘recorder’ of genealogies, and stories in prose. But also it was his duty to make lays or tales or mnemonic lists concerning matters that came under his own contemporary observation, or came to him personally, as news from afar.]

  ⁴ [‘Cædmon’s Hymn is famous as the only authentic piece that survives of the once renowned sacred poetry of the Whitby cowherd, Cædmon, who lived in the seventh century. The nine lines of the hymn were recorded by the Venerable Bede, and are found in an eighth century copy of his Latin Ecclesiastical History; they are thus among the very earliest recorded fragments of English.’

‘Cædmon lived to make a great mass of verse on Scriptural themes of the Old and New Testament and also to have many imitators. Bede says that none of them could compare with him. But we can no longer judge for ourselves for practically all have perished. Of Cædmon’s work that so greatly moved men of the earlier age (the seventh and eighth centuries) the only certainly genuine survivor is this first hymn.

One great book of scriptural verse has come down to us: MS Junius 11, often called the Cædmonian Manuscript. It used to lie on the show shelves of the Bodleian Library, and anyone who would take the trouble to walk up the winding stairs could go and look at it–where it is now I don’t know. It was written–I mean penned by the scribes–about A.D.1000; but though it contains matter that is very old (though dressed up in later spelling) it does not represent Cædmon’s work.’

J.R.R.T., passages from lectures on Old English verse.]

  ⁵ [‘Saxo Grammaticus (the lettered), the earlier books of whose Historia Danica are a store-house of Scandinavian tradition and poetry, clothed in a difficult and bombastic, but always amusing Latin’ (R.W. Chambers). Saxo was a Dane; he flourished in the latter part of the twelfth century, but of his life scarcely anything is known. Concerning Haldanus he wrote that the most remarkable thing about him was that ‘though he had made use of every opportunity that the times afforded for the display of his ferocity, his life was ended by old age and not by the sword.’]

  ⁶ The religious connexions were with the culture gods, in Norse terms Njöðr and Frey (Yngvi-Frey). Hence we find the names Fróda and Ingeld as Heathobeard names. But also after the Danish seizure of this site we find the name Fréawaru given to Hrothgar’s daughter; and the Danes claim the title ‘Friends of Ing’.

  ⁷ [In all the texts of the translation this is rendered ‘creature’, 83. Against his reference here to gǽst my father later pencilled a note suggesting that there may be a confusion with gæst, gest ‘stranger’. This, and the meaning of féond on helle, were discussed by him in Appendix (a), Grendel’s titles, to The Monsters and the Critics–where he said of the word gǽst that ‘in any case it cannot be translated either by the modern ghost or spirit. Creature is probably the nearest we can now get.’]

  ⁸ [Wulfstan: eminent scholar and ecclesiast, Archbishop of York, died 1023.]

  ⁹ [The reference is to the Old English poem Elene, one of several poems known to be the work of a poet named Cynewulf, from his having interwoven into passages of his verse the names of the Runic letters that spell out his name.]

  ¹⁰ [To make this clearer to the eye, in addition to the brackets enclosing lines 134–5 (the translation of *168–9), which my father entered on the typescripts, I have inserted brackets to enclose also lines 143–50 (the translation of *180–8.)]

  ¹¹ [On Cynewulf see the footnote on p. 175. The subject of this poem is the discovery of the true Cross by St. Helena, the mother of the Emperor Constantine.]

¹² [Heardred was the son of Hygelac. The Hrædling dynasty: the descendants of Hrethel (Hrædla), father of Hygelac. On the forms Hrǽdla, Hrǽdling see the note to 358–9, pp. 238–9.]

¹³ [In the complete translation, 2186, léod Scylfinga is translated ‘a lord of Scylfing race’.]

¹⁴ [The sons of Ongentheow King of the Swedes were Ohthere and Onela (see the note to 48–9). Eanmund and Eadgils were the sons of Ohthere. When Onela became king his nephews fled the country and took refuge with the king of the Geats, who was now Heardred, the son of Hygelac slain in Frisia (2003–4). Both Heardred and Eanmund were slain in Onela’s subsequent attack, the slayer of Eanmund being Wihstan, Wiglaf’s father (2194–5); Beowulf then became king of the Geats. Afterwards, with the aid of Beowulf, Eadgils Ohthere’s son went north and slew Onela, his uncle, becoming himself king of the Swedes (2012–16). See the note to 303–4, at end.]

¹⁵ [Gautar is the Old Norse form of O.E. Geatas.]

¹⁶ [My father made a reference here, but by line-numbers only, to passages in the Old English poem known as The Wanderer. These counsels are cited in translation in the note to 329 ff.]

¹⁷ In his farewell speech Hrothgar says (*1855–63): ‘Thou hast achieved this, that between the peoples, Geats and Danes, mutual peace shall be, and the strife and cruel enmity shall cease, that they before waged; that while I rule this wide realm, treasures shall be exchanged, and many men shall with good will greet one another over the sea where the gannet bathes, many a ring-prowed ship over the deep shall bring gifts and tokens of friendship.’ This would naturally be interpreted that right down to Beowulf’s arrival there had been tension and even war between the two realms.

[With this passage compare that in the complete translation, 1554–62.]

¹⁸ A legitimate deduction from his military success in the Swedish war, turning defeat into crushing victory; and from his great (historical) raid into the Frankish realm, which in itself reflects (a) ascendancy over the Swedes and absence of fear on his northern borders, (b) friendship with the Danish king, and (c) power and greed.

¹⁹ [In my father’s own edition of Exodus, published by Joan Turville-Petre in 1981, p.57, he noted: ‘Lyft-edoras is probably “borders of the sky”, i.e. the horizon; eodor means both “fence (protection)” and “fenced enclosure, a court”. The phrase should therefore mean “broke through the fences of the sky”.’]

²⁰ [In the light of these considerations my father changed the translation from its original form in the typescript C ‘when five I bound, and made desolate the race of monsters, and when I slew amid the waves’ to ‘where five I bound making desolate’, and he also underlined the ‘and’ in ‘and when I slew’.]

²¹ Consider the remarkable passage 1767–74, *2105–13, when Beowulf reports that Hrothgar himself, at the feast celebrating the death of Grendel, performed and apparently gave specimens of most ‘genres’ of entertainment: (i) harp-playing, (ii) recitation of lays, historical and tragic, (iii) telling wonder-stories [syllíc spell *2109] correctly (that is, according to received form), (iv) making an elegiac lament on the passing of youth to old age.

²² See my ‘reconstruction’ or specimen Sellíc Spell which I hope to read later. I think that Beowulf had one (or two) companions, also eager to try the feat. Beowulf took the last turn. And [that] will explain his passivity while Grendel kills and devours ‘Handshoe’ (1745–9, *2076–80), evidently the slǽpendne rinc of *741 (‘a sleeping man’, 604).

²³ Part of the point, I think, of the ic ána passage, in which Beowulf asks Hrothgar to leave only Geats in the hall, is that some at least of the bravest of the Danish warriors would have wished to remain also, for saving of Danish honour, after such a challenge by aliens.

²⁴ [After these words my father cited the Old English text, line *2502, [ic . . . Dæghrefne wearð] tó handbonan, in his translation 2103 ‘my hands were Dæghrefn’s death’. But subsequently he struck out the words tó handbonan and wrote in the margin: ‘handbona means “actual slayer” and can be used of killing with weapons. So in *2506 it is necessary to say (after using handbona) ne wæs ecg bona “no sword-edge was his slayer”,’ 2107.]

²⁵ The white bear (ursus maritimus) might seem a connecting link; but the ‘polar bear’ seems not to have been known, even in Scandinavia, until the settlements in Iceland (end of the ninth century) and Greenland (end of the tenth century). It was then called hvítabjörn. Traditionally, the first hvítabjörn was brought to Norway by Ingimund the Old c. A.D. 900. In any case one is reminded rather of tales from the northern isles about demonic sea-creatures, sometimes of seal-form, that may molest the dwellings of men near the sea, begetting offspring on women, or carrying them off. Some such ravages may well be referred to in the Wedera níð [*423, ‘the afflictions of the windloving Geats’ 341–2] that Beowulf avenged [see note to p. 230, 338–43]. [Against the latter part of this note my father wrote that references were required but that he could not at that time recover them.]

²⁶ [ablaut: a term used of the alternation in the vowels of related word forms, as e.g. drink, drank, drunk.]

²⁷ [The original text of my father’s translation (356–9) of *443–5 was ‘Methinks he will . . . devour without fear the Geatish folk, as oft he hath the proud hosts of your men.’ This depends on the interpretation of the text as mægenhréð manna. In a note to the present commentary on this matter he remarked that mægenhréð ‘might-triumph of men’ occurs nowhere else; and ‘even if this is supposed to mean “triumphal force [i.e. troop] of men” it is a singularly unhappy way of referring to men who have actually been killed and eaten.’ The later text was pencilled in on the typescript C. (See the Notes on the Text, p. 113, 356–9.)

²⁸ Like football ‘stars’ acquired to strengthen a team, but with this distinction: the champion got the money or other payment, not the chieftain or people whom he had left. Unless of course, like Ecgtheow, he had got into trouble (a feud), in which case his adherence could be obtained by settling his debts (see 379–80, *470).

²⁹ Actually, as the time-scheme is presented, Beowulf was only ‘fed’ by Hrothgar for three days: the day of his arrival, followed by the match with Grendel; the day of the feast of victory, followed by the coming of Grendel’s dam; the day of the assault on Grendel’s lair, followed by the final feast. Beowulf left early next day.

³⁰ [This is not actually stated: it is said only that ‘She had borne away that corse in her fiend’s clutches beneath the mountain stream’.]

³¹ [Added later:] There is a tinge of irony here: ‘You have come feorran? [*430; ‘from so far away’ 348] ‘Not too far for your father when he needed help. Not too far, then, to come and pay the debt.’

³² [For the successive alterations made to the translation in this passage see the Notes on the Text, p. 114, 395–7.]

³³ For example, it could apply to proverbs or platitudes of received wisdom. Such pronouncements as that in 465–6, the subject of the last note, were a gidd.

³⁴ [Klaeber took the view that the emendation geséon [ne] meahton ‘has a false ring; one would expect, at least, something like leng geséon ne meahton’ (‘could see (the sun) no longer’).]

³⁵ At any rate in the first part. The second part perhaps less so: in any case it is too much interrupted by the weight of history outside the immediate event.

³⁶ [Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, translated by J.R.R. Tolkien, stanzas 27–28.]

³⁷ [Beowulf *2162, ‘Use all the gifts with honour’ 1816.]

³⁸ [God alone knows.]

³⁹ ‘loyal’ here means ‘dutiful, doing what is required (at the required time) as a ‘loyal’ servant would. So in the Towneley play of Noah (15th century): ‘This forty dayes has rayn beyn; it will therefor abate full lele.’

⁴⁰ Béowulfes síð may well have been the actual name by which the earlier lay (or lays) dealing with Beowulf’s coming to Heorot was known.

⁴¹ The unkingly crimes of avarice and ungenerous hand, and of treachery and murder of men of his own court, are charged against him in 1436 ff., *1711 ff.

⁴² It would of course be understood that he would present much of this wealth to his own lord Hygelac on his return. It is in fact recorded that he gave Hygelac all the first four gifts (1807 ff., *2152 ff., where we learn that the corslet had been Heorogár’s, and was in fact specially sent to Hygelac), and also four of the horses; and gave Wealtheow’s necklace to Queen Hygd.

⁴³ If, as seems most probable, under the words eam his nefan (*881) ‘mother’s brother to nephew’ [translation 716–17, ‘of such matters, brother to his sister’s son’], which is correct if incomplete, lies the same story as in the Völsunga Saga, in which Sinfiötli was the son of Sigmundr and his sister.

⁴⁴ stedig ‘fixed moveless’ is only recorded in the derived sense ‘sterile’, but it must have existed in the original sense, as the ancestor of our ‘steady’, because there is a verb derived from it, stedigian, ‘bring to a stand, stop’.

⁴⁵ [The translation 803–4, cited above, which goes back to the first typescript, ‘At the tip was each one of the stout nails most like unto steel’, shows the emendation of steda to stíðra.]

⁴⁶ [The story of Glámr can be readily found in R.W. Chambers, Beowulf, An Introduction, where extracts from the Grettis Saga, with translations, are given.]

⁴⁷ Flood traditions are spread all over the world. Old Norse does not preserve any–the very beautiful reference to the earth rising newly green out of the sea, and the waterfalls pouring off it, while the eagle that fishes on the mountain sides flies over it, is not quite in point: in the Völuspá, at any rate as we have it, that scene seems to refer to the future after the destruction at the end of the world.

⁴⁸ It is particularly to be observed that the word gígant is only used in Old English verse of ‘Scriptural’ giants in Beowulf *113, 91 (Cain’s offspring), *1690, 1419 (the Flood), and in the Old English poem Genesis A, 1268–except of the sword in Grendel’s lair, which is gíganta weorc (*1562, 1308–9).

⁴⁹ [In The Monsters and the Critics, p.20 in the collected essays, 1983.]

⁵⁰ [This subject is continued into a discussion of what the Beowulf-poet, even if he could not read Latin, might learn from Old English scriptural poetry, concerning Tubal-Cain the great ancestral metalsmith, or God’s punishment of the giants by the Flood (citing the early incomplete poem known as Genesis A, 1083 ff. and 1265 ff.)]

⁵¹ [It is hard to believe that such a suggestion was ever made, and perhaps it never was.]

⁵² [In a footnote at this point my father wrote: ‘See my lecture Appendix (b).’ This is the substantial writing headed (b) ‘Lof’ and ‘Dom’; ‘Hell’ and ‘Heofon’ following the text of The Monsters and the Critics, in which he cited, without translation, both the passage from The Seafarer and Hrothgar’s words referred to here (but with the words eft sona bið misprinted as oft sona bið); of the latter he said that this was ‘a part of his discourse that may certainly be ascribed to the original author of Beowulf, whatever revision or expansion the speech may otherwise have suffered.’ I give here the passage from The Seafarer in translation: ‘I do not believe that earthly riches will last for ever. Always one of three things hangs in the balance until man’s final hour: sickness or old age or violence of the sword will wrest his life from the doomed and departing.’]

⁵³ [See the brief editorial note on Cynewulf’s ‘signatures’ on p. 175.]

⁵⁴ Not infrequently the only certain deduction is that all the authors were ‘Anglo-Saxons’ writing within a common literary tradition: a thing we knew already.

⁵⁵ [These lines are discussed at length on pp. 181 ff.]

⁵⁶ [‘However, here is my opinion’ my father wrote at this point, and there follows his detailed discussion of the probabilities in different passages; this I have excluded, since it is lengthy, and difficult to follow amid the abundant twofold line-references.]

⁵⁷ [On this see the note to 301.]

⁵⁸ [I omit here my father’s further and detailed speculations on the chronology, taking it up again with what he considered a ‘reasonable’ chronology. On the inclusion of Beowulf he remarked: ‘Whether “historical” or not does not matter; Beowulf has been fitted into the dynastic chronology by the poet presumably not without some thought, or by traditions older than the poet.’ In the following he changed the dates a good deal, and I give the final ones.]

⁵⁹ Or the first continued; since the matter is alluded to already in 65–9, *81–5. The others are Sigemund; Heremod; Finn and Hengest; Offa.

⁶⁰ [It is difficult to know how to interpret this observation, in the light of the discussion in the note to 135–50 (*170–88).

⁶¹ And of the warrior lord of hosts, descendants of Ódin, with his tombs and dead and Valhöll of the mighty slain, over the priest-king and the temple and the farmer and master of flocks.

⁶² Although in Beowulf and in Widsith as opponents of the Danes they bear the prefix Heaðo-. This probably means ‘war’. But this is an ‘epic addition’, relating to the Danish conflict, and also enabling them to alliterate with the H~ of the Scyldings’ names.

⁶³ So it is said of Fróði by Snorri Sturluson in the Skáldskaparmál 43 that in the time of the Fróðafriðr no man did harm to another, and there were no thieves, so that a gold ring lay for three years beside the highway on Jalangsheath.

⁶⁴ [With the following passage in the text cf. pp. 179–80.]

⁶⁵ During which time recourse was had to heathen sacrifice. I believe on various grounds that that passage *175–188 (139–50), in particular *180 ff. (143 ff.), has been touched up and expanded [see the note to 135–50]; but ultimately the discrepancy between the patriarchal, god-fearing Hrothgar and this account is due to the material. Heorot was a site associated specially with heathen religion: blót [Old Norse: worship, sacrificial feast]. The actual legends or lays descending from pagan times, which our poet used, probably made a considerable point of the blót to gain relief at this juncture in the story. Hleiðr (Hleiðrargarðr) is (I think) to be connected with Gothic hleiþra a tent or tabernacle. In which case it is practically identical in sense with hærgtrafum *175 (140). [See pp. 179–80.]

It is to be expected from the fact that the English traditions are far older than the Norse that they should have preserved far better the individual names, but should have lost the geography from which they were now removed; while Norse far later has confused names and relations but has preserved the geography: English does not mention Seeland or Leire; Norse has forgotten Heorogar and Heorot.

⁶⁶ [On Saxo see the note to line 44. In his grotesque account the story of Ingeld (Ingellus) is radically changed. His father Frotho was treacherously slain, but ‘the soul of Ingellus was perverted from honour’; and Saxo describes this debauched monster of gluttony and sloth in a slow torrent of denunciation. Ingellus married the daughter of Swerting his father’s murderer, and treated his sons as dear friends. But learning of this state of affairs the ancient and somewhat gruesome warrior Starkad came to the hall of Ingellus and delivered so devastating a condemnation of his conduct that there was roused in Ingellus a spirit of revenge, and he sprang up and slew the sons of Swerting as they sat at the banquet.

My father’s remarks were evidently made in response to Klaeber’s observation: ‘Compared with the Beowulf, Saxo’s version marks a dramatic advance . . . in that Ingellus himself executes the vengeance, whereas in the English poem the slaying of one of the queen’s attendants by an unnamed warrior ushers in the catastrophe.’]

⁶⁷ [The reference is to The Monsters and the Critics, p. 11, where my father quoted Professor R.W. Chambers in his edition of Widsith, p. 79: ‘in this conflict between plighted troth and the duty of revenge we have a situation which the old heroic poets loved, and would not have sold for a wilderness of dragons’. The reference to Shylock is to The Merchant of Venice, III.i.112: ‘I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys.’]

⁶⁸ It has been noted above (p. 326) that þæt rǽd talað (*2027) does not prove the match to have been devised and planned by Hrothgar, but only that he saw the political advantage of it.

⁶⁹ For the use (frequent) of láf (*2036) as ‘sword’ (the pre-eminent heirloom) cf. *795 ealde láfe ‘his ancient blade’ 648, and *1488 (1243); for the use of hringmǽl as ‘sword’ cf. *1521 hringmǽl ‘the weapon ring-adorned’ 1272, and similarly *1564, 1311.

⁷⁰ [Handshoe plays an important part in my father’s Sellic Spell (pp. 363–9).

⁷¹ [In the story told by Snorri Sturluson in Gylfaginning §44 Thór and his companions, seeking shelter for the night, came in the darkness upon a great hall, with an entrance at the end as wide as the hall. Inside they found a side chamber where they passed the night. But in the morning Thór saw that the side chamber was the thumb of the giant Skrýmir’s glove.]

⁷² The verses are justly taken as a sample–in style and diction and metre. The miracle is not in their excellence, but in a good piece of standard accomplishment coming from the dull shy cowherd. See further p. 143, footnote.

⁷³ It is in essential structure rhetorical, recitative, allied to speech–though dignified, sonorous, and measured.

⁷⁴ A distinct discussion of the word is found in the note to lines 512 ff., p. 260.

⁷⁵ gyd is frequently joined with geomor ‘sad’ : as *151 gyddum geómore (‘sadly in songs’ 121), *1118 geómrode giddum of Hildeburh’s lamentation (914), and so would be equally applicable to the ‘elegy’ or lament with which the King concludes (*2111 ff.). Note that the lament of the old man for his son is called a gyd (* 2446, 2059 ‘a dirge’).

⁷⁶ [Old age comes upon him, his countenance grows pale, grey-haired he grieves, knowing his friends of past days, sons of princes, given to the earth.]

⁷⁷             Dagas sind gewitene
          ealle onmédlan   eorþan ríces;
          nearon nú cyningas   ne cáseras
          ne goldgiefan   swylce iú wǽron   The Seafarer 80–3

[The days are gone, all the pomp and pride of earth’s kingdom; there are now no kings or emperors or givers of gold as once there were.]

SELLIC SPELL

⁷⁸ This is a convenient place to notice a very curious addition that my father made later and hastily to the manuscript A at this point, but then struck out:

And one ring she added. ‘This may be of service at need, my friend Beewolf,’ said she. ‘If ever hope seems to have departed, turn it on your finger and your call for help will be answered; for the ring was made by the fair folk of old.’