The textual history
The texts of my father’s prose translation of Beowulf are, superficially at least, easily described. There is, first, a typescript, made on very thin paper and using what he called his ‘midget’ type on his Hammond typewriter; this I will call ‘B’. It extends as far as line 1773 in the translation (line 2112 in the Old English text), ‘warrior of old wars, in age’s fetters did lament his’: the last word stands at the end of the last line on the page, at its foot.
The 32 pages of B are in very poor condition, the right-hand edges being darkly discoloured and in some cases badly broken or torn away, with the text at that point lost. In appearance it bears an odd resemblance to the Beowulf manuscript itself, which was badly damaged in the ruinous fire at Ashburnham House in Westminster in 1731: the edges of the leaves were scorched and subsequently crumbled away. But whatever caused the damage to the text B of my father’s translation, he wrote in most of the lost words in the margins (though occasionally this is not so).
There is no trace of any other sheets of the typescript B, but a manuscript takes up with the words (following ‘did lament his’ where B ends) ‘youth and strength in arms’. I will refer to the typescript therefore as B(i) and the manuscript, which continues to the end of the poem, as B(ii).
The translation had been completed by the end of April 1926, as is seen from a letter in the archive of Oxford University Press from my father to Kenneth Sisam:
I have all Beowulf translated, but in much hardly to my liking. I will send you a specimen for your free criticism–though tastes differ, and indeed it is hard to make up one’s own mind . . . 1
(My father took up his appointment to the professorship of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford in the winter of 1925 and my family moved from Leeds in January 1926.)
Following B(i) and B(ii) is a further typescript (extant also in a carbon copy) which I made, and which can be dated to about 1940–2.2 This typescript I will call ‘C’. There are no other texts.
The typescript B(i) was fairly heavily emended, most substantially in the passage describing Grendel’s coming to Heorot and his fight with Beowulf (in the translation lines 574–632), which my father after preliminary emendation struck through and replaced with a rewritten passage in another type; but curiously, from this point onwards the emendations become very few and far between, to the end of the B(i)-typescript.
Turning to the manuscript B(ii), which takes up in the middle of the last sentence in B(i), this was written fluently and fairly quickly, legibly enough for the most part to one familiar with my father’s handwriting, but here and there presenting difficulty. There are a good many emendations, but the majority were made at the time of the writing of the manuscript. Some of these corrections were much altered in the making and difficult to interpret; while there are notes here and there in this text of an explanatory nature or suggesting alternative interpretations of the Old English text.
The typescript C contains the whole text of the translation. The great mass of the corrections to B(i) were incorporated in C, but a few were made to B(i) later. In the case of B(ii) the manuscript had virtually reached its latest form when my father gave it to me to make a copy.
When I typed C the text of B(i) had become in places difficult to make out, but I made a surprisingly accurate rendering of it (no doubt with requests for assistance here and there). In the latter part of the translation, the handwritten B(ii), on the other hand, I made a fair number of mistakes (it is strange to look back over three-quarters of a century at my earliest struggles with the famous handwriting).
Finally, at some date(s) unknown, my father went quickly, even cursorily (as with other works of his) through the C typescript and jotted down–in some cases scarcely legibly–many further changes of wording. If at that stage he compared my text with its antecedents he seems not to have done so very closely (at any rate he did not observe cases where I had plainly misread the B(ii) text).
Thus, while the series of texts, B(i), B(ii), C, is simply stated, the layers of textual correction constitute an extremely intricate history. To present it all would be out of place in this book; but following the translation I have provided a substantial list of notable textual features, and in order to give some idea of the process I print here a much emended passage as it appears in different stages. This is in the translation lines 263–79, in the Old English text lines 325–43.
(a) The text as originally typed in B(i).
Weary of the sea they set their tall shields [word lost]. . . ed and wondrous hard, against that mansion’s wall, then turned they to the benches. Corslets clanged, the war-harness of those warriors; their spears were piled together, weapons with ashen haft each grey-tipped with steel. Well furnished with weapons was [words lost: the iron-]clad company. There a proud knight then asked those men of battle concerning their lineage: ‘Whence bear ye your goldplated shields, your grey shirts of mail, your vizored helms and throng of warlike spears? I am Hrothgar’s herald and esquire. Never have I seen so many men of alien folk more proud of heart! Methinks that in pride, not in the ways of banished men, nay, with valiant purpose are you come seeking Hrothgar.’ To him then made answer, strong and bold, the proud prince of the Weder-Geats; these words he spake in turn, grim beneath his helm: ‘Companions of Hygelac’s table are we; Beowulf is my name.’
(b) The text of B(i) as emended
Weary of the sea they set their tall shields and bucklers wondrous hard against the wall of the house, and sat then on the bench. Corslets rang, war-harness of men. Their spears were piled together, seamen’s gear, ash-wood steel-tipped with grey. Well furnished with weapons was the iron-mailed company. There then a knight in proud array asked those men of battle concerning their lineage: ‘Whence bear ye your goldplated shields, your grey shirts of mail, your vizored helms and throng of warlike spears? I am Hrothgar’s herald and esquire. Never have I seen so many men of alien folk more proud of heart! I deem that with proud purpose, not in the ways of banished men, nay, in greatness of heart you are come seeking Hrothgar.’ To him then, strong and bold, the proud prince of the Weder-Geats replied, these words he spake in answer, stern beneath his helm: ‘We are companions of Hygelac’s board; Beowulf is my name.’
The text of C as typed was identical with (b) except that the words ‘with grey’ were omitted, obviously a mere oversight (Old English æscholt ufan grǽg), and I typed ‘with greatness’ in error for ‘in greatness’.
(c) The text of C as emended (the further changes are underlined)
Weary of the sea they set their tall shields, bucklers wondrous hard, against the wall of the house, and sat then on the bench. Corslets rang, war-harness of men. Their spears stood piled together, seamen’s gear, ash-hafted, grey-tipped with steel. Well furnished with weapons was the iron-mailed company. There then a knight in proud array asked those men of battle concerning their lineage: ‘Whence bear ye your plated shields, your grey shirts of mail, your masked helms and throng of warlike shafts? I am Hrothgar’s herald and servant. Never have I seen so many men of outland folk more proud of bearing! I deem that in pride, not in the ways of banished men, nay, with greatness of heart you have come seeking Hrothgar!’ To him then, strong and bold, the proud prince of the Windloving folk replied, words he spake in answer, stern beneath his helm: ‘We are companions of Hygelac’s table; Beowulf is my name.’
It will be seen that among these revisions ‘grey-tipped with steel’, ‘in pride’ for ‘with proud purpose’, and ‘table’ for ‘board’ return the text to B(i) before emendation. The only differences in this text from the passage as printed in this book occur in line 275: ‘in greatness’ restores the correct reading (see above), and ‘ye have come’ is my correction of my father’s obvious slip ‘you have come’ (cf. 315–20).
There seem to be two superficially simple explanations of the relationship between the two very different texts B(i) and B(ii) that are conjoined so neatly, with the first words of a sentence on the last page of the typescript and the rest of it on the first page of the manuscript. Thus it could be supposed that the typescript B(i) was immediately continued in the manuscript B(ii) for some external cause or other (e.g. the typewriter had to be repaired); or else that the manuscript was the primary text and that it was in the course of being overtaken by the typescript when the typewriter was for whatever reason withdrawn. On this supposition the putative manuscript up to the point where it now begins was lost or destroyed.
The latter seems much the less probable of the two; but I doubt that the first explanation is correct either. The manner of composition of the two texts is very different. The typescript B(i), before heavy subsequent correction, was a finished text (even if regarded at the time of its making as provisional), whereas the manuscript B(ii) gives a strong impression of being a work still in progress, with corrections made in the act of writing, and marginal notes which may leave one in doubt whether the reading is intended as a replacement or a possibility to be considered.
On the whole I am inclined to think that the relationship cannot be unravelled on the basis of the material that has survived, but in any case it is clear that it was the unhappy state of B(i) and the abundant corrections of both texts that explains why–many years after he had said that his prose translation of Beowulf was completed–my father invited me to make a new typescript text of the whole.
Abandoning his fragmentary work on a fully alliterative translation of Beowulf, imitating the regularities of the old poetry, my father, as it seems to me, determined to make a translation as close as he could to the exact meaning in detail of the Old English poem, far closer than could ever be attained by translation into ‘alliterative verse’, but nonetheless with some suggestion of the rhythm of the original.
Of Old English verse he wrote: ‘In essence it is made by taking the half-dozen commonest and most compact phrase-patterns of the ordinary language that have two main elements or stresses. Two of these [phrase-patterns], usually different, are balanced against one another to make a full line.’ I have found nowhere among his papers any reference to the rhythmical aspect of his prose translation of Beowulf, nor indeed to any other aspect, but it seems to me that he designedly wrote quite largely in rhythms founded on ‘common and compact prose-patterns of ordinary language’, with no trace of alliteration, and without the prescription of specific patterns.
upon the morrow they lay upon the shore in the flotsam of the waves, wounded with sword-thrusts, by blades done to death, so that never thereafter might they about the steep straits molest the passage of seafaring men. (459–63)
In care and sorrow he sees in his son’s dwelling the hall of feasting, the resting places swept by the wind robbed of laughter–the riders sleep, mighty men gone down into the dark; there is no sound of harp, no mirth in those courts, such as once there were. Then he goes back unto his couch, alone for the one beloved he sings a lay of sorrow: all too wide and void did seem to him those fields and dwelling places. (2064–70)
It is interesting to compare his translation into alliterative verse of the description in Beowulf, lines 210–24, of the voyage of Beowulf and his companions to Denmark (given in the section ‘On Metre’ in his Prefatory Remarks to the translation by J.R. Clark Hall, revised by C.L. Wrenn, 1940), with the prose translation in this book, lines 171–82.
Time passed away. On the tide floated
under bank their boat. In her bows mounted
brave men blithely. Breakers turning
spurned the shingle. Splendid armour
they bore aboard, in her bosom piling
well-forged weapons, then away thrust her
to voyage gladly valiant-timbered.
She went then over wave-tops, wind pursued her,
fleet, foam-throated, like a flying bird;
and her curving prow on its course waded,
till in due season on the day after
those seafarers saw before them
shore-cliffs shimmering and sheer mountains,
wide capes by the waves; to water’s end
the ship had journeyed.
Time passed on. Afloat upon the waves was the boat beneath the cliffs. Eagerly the warriors mounted the prow, and the streaming seas swirled upon the sand. Men-at arms bore to the bosom of the ship their bright harness, their cunning gear of war; they then, men on a glad voyage, thrust her forth with her well-joined timbers. Over the waves of the deep she went sped by the wind, sailing with foam at throat most like unto a bird, until in due hour upon the second day her curving beak had made such way that those sailors saw the land, the cliffs beside the ocean gleaming, and sheer headlands and capes thrust far to sea. Then for that sailing ship the journey was at an end.
This rhythm, so to call it, can be perceived throughout. It is a quality of the prose, by no means inviting analysis, but sufficiently pervasive to give a marked and characteristic tone to the whole work. And this rhythmic character will be found to account for such features of the diction as the ending -ed being in some cases written -éd, to provide an extra syllable, as ‘renowned’ 753, 833, but ‘renownéd’ 649, 704, or ‘prized’ 1712, but ‘prizéd’ 1721, and similarly often elsewhere; or the use of ‘unto’ for ‘to’ in such cases as ‘a thousand knights will I bring to thee, mighty men unto thy aid’ 1534–5. Verbal endings -s and archaic -eth can be seen varying for rhythmical reasons, very notably in the passage 1452–76; inversion of word-order can often be similarly explained, and choice of word scarcely noticeable (as ‘helmet’ for the more usual ‘helm’ 839). Many of the corrections to the typescript ‘C’ were of this nature.
From what I have said earlier it can be seen that the text of the translation given in this book has been based throughout on the latest readings of the author, represented by the typescript C as corrected by him; and as I have already mentioned many features are amplified in the section Notes on the text following the translation (pp. 107 ff.), which in turn is linked to discussions in the commentary.
My guiding principle has been to introduce no readings that are not actually present in one of the texts B(i), B(ii), and C, except in one or two obvious cases that are recorded in the Notes on the text of the translation.
In the matter of proper names my father was inconsistent and sometimes found it difficult to decide between several possibilities–a notable example is Weder-Geatas, on which see the note to lines 182–3 in the Notes on the text. On the spelling of Old English names see the end of the introductory note to the commentary, p. 135.
I should mention here that I have not altered any archaic usages, letting for instance the once common form corse stand, for modern corpse.