1
No defence is usually offered for translating Beowulf. Yet the making, or at any rate the publishing, of a modern English rendering needs defence: especially the presentation of a translation into plain prose of what is in fact a poem, a work of skilled and close-wrought metre (to say no more). The process has its dangers. Too many people are willing to form, and even to print, opinions of this greatest of the surviving works of ancient English poetic art after reading only such a translation, or indeed after reading only a bare ‘argument’, such as appears in the present book. On the strength of a nodding acquaintance of this sort (it may be supposed), one famous critic informed his public that Beowulf was ‘only small beer’. Yet if beer at all, it is a drink dark and bitter: a solemn funeral-ale with the taste of death. But this is an age of potted criticism and pre-digested literary opinion; and in the making of these cheap substitutes for food translations unfortunately are too often used.
To use a prose translation for this purpose is, none the less, an abuse. Beowulf is not merely in verse, it is a great poem; and the plain fact that no attempt can be made to represent its metre, while little of its other specially poetic qualities can be caught in such a medium, should be enough to show that ‘Clark Hall’, revised or unrevised, is not offered as a means of judging the original, or as a substitute for reading the poem itself. The proper purpose of a prose translation is to provide an aid to study.
If you are not concerned with poetry, but with other matters, such as references to heroic names now nearly faded into oblivion, or the mention of ancient customs and beliefs, you may find in this competent translation all that you require for comparison with other sources. Or nearly all – for the use of ‘Anglo-Saxon’ evidence is never, of course, entirely safe without a knowledge of the language. No translation that aims at being readable in itself can, without elaborate annotation, proper to an edition of the original, indicate all the possibilities or hints afforded by the text. It is not possible, for instance, in translation always to represent a recurring word in the original by one given modern word. Yet the recurrence may be important.
Thus ‘stalwart’ in 198, ‘broad’ in 1621, ‘huge’ in 1663, ‘mighty’ in 2140 are renderings of the one word eacen; while the related eacencrœftig, applied to the dragon’s hoard, is in 2280 and 3051 rendered ‘mighty’. These equivalents fit the contexts and the modern English sentences in which they stand, and are generally recognized as correct. But an enquirer into ancient beliefs, with the loss of eacen will lose the hint that in poetry this word preserved a special connotation. Originally it means not ‘large’ but ‘enlarged’, and in all instances may imply not merely size and strength, but an addition of power, beyond the natural, whether it is applied to the superhuman thirtyfold strength possessed by Beowulf (in this Christian poem it is his special gift from God), or to the mysterious magical powers of the giant’s sword and the dragon’s hoard imposed by runes and curses. Even the eacne eardas (1621) where the monsters dwelt may have been regarded as possessing, while these lived, an added power beyond the natural peril. This is only a casual example of the kind of difficulty and interest revealed by the language of Old English verse (and of Beowulf in particular), to which no literary translation can be expected to provide a complete index. For many Old English poetical words there are (naturally) no precise modern equivalents of the same scope and tone: they come down to us bearing echoes of ancient days beyond the shadowy borders of Northern history. Yet the compactness of the original idiom, inevitably weakened even in prose by transference to our looser modern language, does not tolerate long explanatory phrases. For no study of the fragmentary Anglo-Saxon documents is translation a complete substitute.
But you may be engaged in the more laudable labour of trying actually to read the original poem. In that case the use of this translation need not be disdained. It need not become a ‘crib’. For a good translation is a good companion of honest labour, while a ‘crib’ is a (vain) substitute for the essential work with grammar and glossary, by which alone can be won genuine appreciation of a noble idiom and a lofty art.
Old English (or Anglo-Saxon) is not a very difficult language, though it is neglected by many of those concerned with the long period of our history during which it was spoken and written. But the idiom and diction of Old English verse is not easy. Its manner and conventions, and its metre, are unlike those of modern English verse. Also it is preserved fragmentarily and by chance, and has only in recent times been redeciphered and interpreted, without the aid of any tradition or gloss: for in England, unlike Iceland, the old Northern poetic tradition was at length completely broken and buried. As a result many words and phrases are met rarely or only once. There are many words only found in Beowulf. An example is eoten ‘giant’ 112, etc. This word, we may believe on other evidence, was well known, though actually it is only recorded in its Anglo-Saxon form in Beowulf, because this poem alone has survived of the oral and written matter dealing with such legends. But the word rendered ‘retinue’ in 924 is hose, and though philologists may with confidence define this as the dative of a feminine noun hōs (the Anglo-Saxon equivalent of Old High German and Gothic hansa), it is in fact found in this line of Beowulf alone; and how far it was not only ‘poetical’, but already archaic and rare in the time of the poet, we do not know. Yet we need to know, if a translation strictly true in verbal effect is to be devised. Such lexical niceties may not trouble many students, but none can help finding that the learning of new words that will seldom or never again be useful is one of the (accidental) difficulties presented by Old English verse. Another is presented by the poetical devices, especially the descriptive compounds, which, if they are seldom in fact ‘unnatural’, are generally foreign to our present literary and linguistic habits. Their precise meaning and full significance (for a contemporary) is not always easy to define, and their translation is a problem for the translator over which he often must hesitate. A simple example is sundwudu, literally ‘flood-timber’ or ‘swimming-timber’. This is ‘ship’ in 208 (the riddle’s bare solution, and often the best available, though quite an inadequate, rendering), and ‘wave-borne timbers’ in 1906 (an attempt to unfold, at the risk of dissipating it, the briefly flashed picture). Similar is swan-rad, rendered ‘swan’s-road’ in 200: the bare solution ‘sea’ would lose too much. On the other hand, a full elucidation would take far too long. Literally it means ‘swan-riding’: that is, the region which is to the swimming swan as the plain is to the running horse or wain. Old English rad is as a rule used for the act of riding or sailing, not as its modern descendant ‘road’, for a beaten track. More difficult are such cases as onband beadurune in 502, used of the sinister counsellor, Unferth, and rendered ‘gave vent to secret thoughts of strife’. Literally it means ‘unbound a battle-rune (or battle-runes)’. What exactly is implied is not clear. The expression has an antique air, as if it had descended from an older time to our poet: a suggestion lingers of the spells by which men of wizardry could stir up storms in a clear sky.
These compounds, especially when they are used not with but instead of such ordinary words as scip ‘ship’, or sæ ‘sea’ (already twelve hundred years ago the terms of daily life), give to Old English verse, while it is still unfamiliar, something of the air of a conundrum. So the early scholars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries thought: to them, even when they understood Ælfred or Ælfric well enough, ‘Saxon poetry’ often seemed a tissue of riddles and hard words woven deliberately by lovers of enigma. This view is not, of course, just: it is a beginner’s misapprehension. The riddle element is present, but Old English verse was not generally dark or difficult, and was not meant to be. Even among the actual verse-riddles extant in Anglo-Saxon, many are to be found of which the object is a cameo of recognizable description rather than a puzzle. The primary poetic object of the use of compounds was compression, the force of brevity, the packing of the pictorial and emotional colour tight within a slow sonorous metre made of short balanced word-groups. But familiarity with this manner does not come all at once. In the early stages – as some to whom this old verse now seems natural enough can doubtless well remember – one’s nose is ground close to the text: both story and poetry may be hard to see for the words. The grinding process is good for the noses of scholars, of any age or degree; but the aid of a translation may be a welcome relief. As a general guide, not only in those hard places which remain the cruces of the expert, this translation can be recommended.
The older version of Dr Clark Hall did good service; but it must be admitted that it was often a faulty guide in diction – not only as representing the original (which is difficult or impossible fully to achieve), but as offering an harmonious choice of modern English words. It did not often rival the once famous oddities of Earle’s Deeds of Beowulf,fn3 though the ‘ten timorous trothbreakers together’ in 2846 (reminiscent of the ‘two tired toads that tried to trot to Tutbury’), and the ‘song of non-success’ in 787 (for sigeleasne sang – ‘a song void of triumph’) are of a similar vintage. But it fell too often into unnecessary colloquialisms, such as ‘lots of feuds’ 2028 (now ‘many’), quite alien to the tone of the original in its own day. Too often notables, visitors and subalterns appeared instead of the more fitting, and indeed more literally accurate, counsellors, strangers, and young knights. The fire-dragon appeared as a reptile and a salamander (2689); the jewels of his hoard were called ‘bright artistic gems’.
The revision has as far as possible emended these things. Though hampered naturally by the fact that it is a revision, not a translation afresh, it is now a better guide in these respects. But no translation, whatever its objects – a student’s companion (the main purpose of this book), or a verse-rendering that seeks to transplant what can be transplanted of the old poetry – should be used or followed slavishly, in detail or general principle, by those who have access to the original text. Perhaps the most important function of any translation used by a student is to provide not a model for imitation, but an exercise for correction. The publisher of a translation cannot often hedge, or show all the variations that have occurred to him; but the presentation of one solution should suggest other and (perhaps) better ones. The effort to translate, or to improve a translation, is valuable, not so much for the version it produces, as for the understanding of the original which it awakes. If writing in (one’s own) books is ever proper or useful, the emendation or refinement of a translation used in close comparison with a well-studied text is a good case for the use of a careful pencil. The making of notes of this sort is at any rate more profitable than the process more popular (especially with those reading for examinations): the inter-linear glosses in the text itself, which as a rule only disfigure the page without aiding the diffident memory.
A warning against colloquialism and false modernity has already been given by implication above. Personally you may not like an archaic vocabulary, and word-order, artificially maintained as an elevated and literary language. You may prefer the brand new, the lively and the snappy. But whatever may be the case with other poets of past ages (with Homer, for instance) the author of Beowulf did not share this preference. If you wish to translate, not re-write, Beowulf, your language must be literary and traditional: not because it is now a long while since the poem was made, or because it speaks of things that have since become ancient; but because the diction of Beowulf was poetical, archaic, artificial (if you will), in the day that the poem was made. Many words used by the ancient English poets had, even in the eighth century, already passed out of colloquial use for anything from a lifetime to hundreds of years.fn4 They were familiar to those who were taught to use and hear the language of verse, as familiar as thou or thy are to-day; but they were literary, elevated, recognized as old (and esteemed on that account). Some words had never, in the senses given to them by the poets, been used in ordinary language at all. This does not apply solely to poetic devices such as swanrad; it is true also of some simple and much used words, such as beorn 211, etc., and freca 1563. Both meant ‘warrior’, or in heroic poetry ‘man’. Or rather both were used for ‘warrior’ by poets, while beorn was still a form of the word ‘bear’,fn5 and freca a name of the wolf,fn6 and they were still used in verse when the original senses were forgotten. To use beorn and freca became a sign that your language was ‘poetical’, and these words survived, when much else of the ancient diction had perished, as the special property of the writers of alliterative verse in the Middle Ages. As bern and freik they survived indeed in Northern English (especially in Scotland) down to modern times; and yet never in their long history of use in this sense, over a thousand years, were they ever part of the colloquial speech.
This sort of thing – the building up of a poetic language out of words and forms archaic and dialectal or used in special senses – may be regretted or disliked. There is nonetheless a case for it: the development of a form of language familiar in meaning and yet freed from trivial associations, and filled with the memory of good and evil, is an achievement, and its possessors are richer than those who have no such tradition. It is an achievement possible to people of relatively small material wealth and power (such as the ancient English as compared with their descendants); but it is not necessarily to be despised on that account. But, whether you regret it or not, you will misrepresent the first and most salient characteristic of the style and flavour of the author, if in translating Beowulf, you deliberately eschew the traditional literary and poetic diction which we now possess in favour of the current and trivial. In any case a self-conscious, and often silly, laughter comes too easily to us to be tempted in this way. The things we are here dealing with are serious, moving, and full of ‘high sentence’ – if we have the patience and solidity to endure them for a while. We are being at once wisely aware of our own frivolity and just to the solemn temper of the original, if we avoid hitting and whacking and prefer ‘striking’ and ‘smiting’; talk and chat and prefer ‘speech’ and ‘discourse’; exquisite and artistic and prefer the ‘cunning craft’ and ‘skill’ of ancient smiths; visitors (suggesting umbrellas, afternoon tea, and all too familiar faces) and prefer ‘guests’ with a truer note of real hospitality, long and arduous travel, and strange voices bearing unfamiliar news; well-bred, brilliant, or polite noblemen (visions of snobbery columns in the press, and fat men on the Riviera) and prefer the ‘worthy brave and courteous men’ of long ago.
But the opposite fault, once more common, should be equally avoided. Words should not be used merely because they are ‘old’ or obsolete. The words chosen, however remote they may be from colloquial speech or ephemeral suggestions, must be words that remain in literary use, especially in the use of verse, among educated people. (To such Beowulf was addressed, into whatever hands it may since have fallen.) They must need no gloss. The fact that a word was still used by Chaucer, or by Shakespeare, or even later, gives it no claim, if it has in our time perished from literary use. Still less is translation of Beowulf a fitting occasion for the exhumation of dead words from Saxon or Norse graves. Antiquarian sentiment and philological knowingness are wholly out of place. To render leode ‘freemen, people’ by leeds (favoured by William Morris) fails both to translate the Old English and to recall leeds to life. The words used by the Old English poets, however honoured by long use and weighted with the associations of old verse, were emphatically those which had survived, not those which might have survived, or in antiquarian sentiment ought to have survived.
Different, though related, is the etymological fallacy. A large number of words used in Beowulf have descended to our own day. But etymological descent is of all guides to a fit choice of words the most untrustworthy: wann is not ‘wan’ but ‘dark’; mod is not ‘mood’ but ‘spirit’ or ‘pride’; burg is not a ‘borough’ but a ‘strong place’; an ealdor is not an ‘alderman’ but a ‘prince’. The vocabulary of Old English verse may have philological interests but it had no philological objects.fn7
The difficulties of translators are not, however, ended with the choice of a general style of diction. They have still to find word for word: to deal with the so-called ‘synonyms’ of Old English verse and with the compounds. Translation of the individual simple words means, or should mean, more than just indicating the general scope of their sense: for instance, contenting oneself with ‘shield’ alone to render Old English bord, lind, rand and scyld. The variation, the sound of different words, is a feature of the style that should to some degree be represented, even if the differences of original meaning are neglected by the poet or no longer remembered – events which in early Old English poetry probably occurred far less often than is sometimes supposed. But in cases where Old English has built up a long list of synonyms, or partial equivalents, to denote things with which Northern heroic verse was specially concerned – such as the sea, and ships, and swords, and especially men (warriors and sailors), it will sometimes be found impossible to match its richness of variation even with the most indiscriminate collection of words. For man in Beowulf there appear at least ten virtual synonyms: beorn, ceorl, freca, guma, hæleð and hæle, leod, mann and manna, rinc, secg, and wer.fn8 This list can be extended to at least twenty-five items by the inclusion of words whose sense remained in varying degrees more specific, though in heroic verse they could as a rule replace the simple mann: words implying noble birth such as æðeling and eorl; meaning youths or young men, such as cniht, hyse, maga, mecg; or denoting the various companions, followers, and servants of lords and kings, such as gædeling, geneat, gesið, scealc, ðegn; or explicitly signifying ‘warrior’, such as cempa, oretta, wiga, wigend. With this list not even a hotch-potch series such as man, warrior, soldier, mortal, brave, noble, boy, lad, bachelor, knight, esquire, fighter, churl, hero, fellow, cove, wight, champion, guy, individual, bloke, will compete: not even in length, certainly not in fitness. In such a case (the most extreme) we have to be content with less variation – the total effect is probably not much changed: our ears, unaccustomed to this kind of thing, may be as much impressed by less. There is, however, no need to increase our poverty by avoiding words of chivalry. In the matter of armour and weapons we cannot avoid them, since our only terms for such things, now vanished, have come down through the Middle Ages, or have survived from them. There is no reason for avoiding knights, esquires, courts, and princes. The men of these legends were conceived as kings of chivalrous courts, and members of societies of noble knights, real Round Tables. If there be any danger of calling up inappropriate pictures of the Arthurian world, it is a less one than the danger of too many warriors and chiefs begetting the far more inept picture of Zulus or Red Indians. The imagination of the author of Beowulf moved upon the threshold of Christian chivalry, if indeed it had not already passed within.
The translation of the compounds sets a different problem, already glanced at above. A satisfactory solution will seldom be arrived at by translation of the elements separately and sticking them together again: for instance, by rendering the ‘kenning’ or descriptive compound gleo-beam 2263, denoting the harp, as ‘glee-beam’, or (avoiding the etymological fallacy) as ‘mirth-wood’. Of brimclifu 222 an accurate and acceptable translation may be ‘seacliffs’, but this is a rare good fortune. A literal rendering of 81–5 sele hlifade heah ond horngeap; heaðowylma bad laðan liges; ne wœs hit lenge ða gen ðœt se ecghete aðumsweoran œfter wœlniðe wœcnan scolde would be like this: ‘hall towered high and horn-spacious; war-surges awaited of hostile flame; it was not at hand yet that the blade-hate of son-father-in-law after slaughter-malice should awake’. But this is certainly not modern English, even if it is intelligible.
It is plain that the translator dealing with these compounded words must hesitate between simply naming the thing denoted (so ‘harp’ 1065, for gomen-wudu ‘play-wood’), and resolving the combination into a phrase. The former method retains the compactness of the original but loses its colour; the latter retains the colour, but even if it does not falsify or exaggerate it, it loosens and weakens the texture. Choice between the evils will vary with occasions. One may differ in detail from the present translation, but hardly (if one respects modern as well as ancient English) in general principle: a preference for resolution.
The compounds found in Old English verse are not, however, all of the same kind, and resolution is not in all cases equally desirable. Some are quite prosaic: made for the expression of ideas without poetic intention. Such words are found both in verse and prose, and their translation depends simply on their meaning as a whole. It is not necessary to ‘resolve’ mundbora,fn9 since the simple words ‘protector’ or ‘patron’ get as near as we can to the meaning of this word.
A larger, intermediate, class is formed by those words in which composition is used as a natural and living device of the contemporary English language. The distinction between verse and prose or colloquial use here lies mainly in the fact that these compounds are more frequent in verse, and coined with greater freedom. In themselves – even those which are only used, or at least are only recorded, in verse – they would sound as natural in contemporary ears as would tobacco-stall or tea-drinker in ours. Of this class are heals-beag ‘neck-ring’, bat-weard ‘boat-guard’, and hord-wela ‘hoard (ed) wealth’ – three examples which (probably by mere chance) only occur in Beowulf. No ‘Anglo-Saxon’ who heard or read them would have been conscious that they were combinations never before used, even if he had in fact never met them before. Our language has not lost, though it has much limited, the compounding habit. Neither ‘neck-ring’ nor ‘boat-guard’ are recorded in the Oxford Dictionary,fn10 but they are inoffensive, although ‘hoard-wealth’ is now unnatural. This class of compound is in general the one for which compound equivalents in modern English can with discretion most often be found or made.
But it shades off, as the intention becomes more fanciful or pictorial, and the object less to denote and more to describe or recall the vision of things, into the ‘poetic class’: the principal means by which colour was given to Old English verse. In this class, sometimes called by the Icelandic name ‘kenning’ (description), the compound offers a partial and often imaginative or fanciful description of a thing, and the poets may use it instead of the normal ‘name’. In these cases, even where the ‘kenning’ is far from fresh and has become the common property of verse-makers, the substitution of the mere name in translation is obviously as a rule unjust. For the kenning flashes a picture before us, often the more clear and bright for its brevity, instead of unrolling it in a simile.
I have called this the poetic class, because there is a poetic intention in their making. But compounds of this kind are not confined to verse: not even those which are poetic and fanciful. We find ‘kennings’ in ordinary language, though they have then as a rule become trite in the process of becoming familiar. They may be no longer analysed, even when their form has not actually become obscured by wear. We need not be led astray in our valuation of the living compounds of poetry by such current ‘kennings’ as the prose lichama = body, or hlafweard = master. It is true that lichama the ‘raiment of flesh’, discardable, distinct from the sawol or ‘soul’ to which it was intricately fitted, became an ordinary word for ‘body’, and in its later form licuma revealed the evaporation of feeling for its analysis and full meaning. It is true that hlafweard ‘bread-keeper’ is seldom found in this clear form, and usually appeared as hlaford (whence our wholly obscured lord), having become among the English the ordinary word for ‘lord’ or ‘master’, often with no reference to the bounty of the patriarch. But this emptying of significance is not true even of the most hackneyed of the ‘kennings’ of the poets. It is not true of swanrad 200, beadoleoma 1523, woruldcandel 1965, goldwine 1171, banhus 2508, and the host of similar devices in Old English verse.fn11 If not fresh, in the sense of being struck out then and there where we first meet them, they are fresh and alive in preserving a significance and feeling as full, or nearly as full, as when they were first devised. Though lic-hama had faded into licuma, though there is now ‘nothing new under the sun’, we need not think that ban-hus meant merely ‘body’, or such a stock phrase as hœleð under heofenum 52 merely ‘men’.
He who in those days said and who heard flœschama ‘flesh-raiment’, ban-hus ‘bone-house’, hreðer-loca ‘heart-prison’, thought of the soul shut in the body, as the frail body itself is trammelled in armour, or as a bird in a narrow cage, or steam pent in a cauldron. There it seethed and struggled in the wylmas, the boiling surges beloved of the old poets, until its passion was released and it fled away on ellor-sið, a journey to other places ‘which none can report with truth, not lords in their halls nor mighty men beneath the sky’ (50–52). The poet who spoke these words saw in his thought the brave men of old walking under the vault of heaven upon the island earthfn12 beleaguered by the Shoreless Seasfn13 and the outer darkness, enduring with stern courage the brief days of life,fn14 until the hour of fatefn15 when all things should perish, leoht and lif samod. But he did not say all this fully or explicitly. And therein lies the unrecapturable magic of ancient English verse for those who have ears to hear: profound feeling, and poignant vision, filled with the beauty and mortality of the world, are aroused by brief phrases, light touches, short words resounding like harp-strings sharply plucked.
II
These prefatory remarks have so far been addressed primarily to students of Old English; but many things have been touched on that they will know already, and will find better elsewhere (especially in the original poem itself). For other readers have not been forgotten: those who may be obliged or content to take this translation as a substitute for the original. Such readers may find the remarks of interest: an aid in estimating what they miss, and in what ways Old English poetry differs from any modern rendering.
The remarks have been limited to verbal detail, and nothing has been said about the matter of the poem. For we are here dealing with translation. Criticism of the content could not be treated, even with inadequate brevity, in a preface twice as long.fn16 There remains, however, one subject of major importance in considering any translation of a poem: the metre. A brief account of this is, therefore, here given. To students of Old English fuller and more accurate accounts are available. But they may find this sketch of use, although its object is to convey a notion of the metre (and the relation of this to style and diction) even to those who have little knowledge of the original language. The account is based on modern English, a novel but defensible procedure; for it brings out the ancestral kinship of the two languages, as well as the differences between them, and illustrates the old unfamiliar forms by words of whose tones and accents the student has living knowledge.
The Old English line was composed of two opposed word-groups or ‘halves’. Each half was an example, or variation, of one of six basic patterns.
The patterns were made of strong and weak elements, which may be called ‘lifts’ and ‘dips’. The standard lift was a long stressed syllable (usually with a relatively high tone). The standard dip was an unstressed syllable, long or short, with a low tone.
The following are examples in modern English of normal forms of the six patterns:
A, B, C have equal feet, each containing a lift and dip. D and E have unequal feet: one consists of a single lift, the other has a subordinate stress (marked ‘ ) inserted.
These are the normal patterns of four elements into which Old English words naturally fell, and into which modern English words still fall. They can be found in any passage of prose, ancient or modern. Verse of this kind differs from prose, not in re-arranging words to fit a special rhythm, repeated or varied in successive lines, but in choosing the simpler and more compact word-patterns and clearing away extraneous matter, so that these patterns stand opposed to one another.
The selected patterns were all of approximately equal metrical weight:fn17 the effect of loudness (combined with length and voice-pitch), as judged by the ear in conjunction with emotional and logical significance.fn18 The line was thus essentially a balance of. two equivalent blocks. These blocks might be, and usually were, of different pattern and rhythm. There was in consequence no common tune or rhythm shared by lines in virtue of being ‘in the same metre’. The ear should not listen for any such thing, but should attend to the shape and balance of the halves. Thus the róaring séa rólling lándward is not metrical because it contains an ‘iambic’ or a ‘trochaic’ rhythm, but because it is a balance B + A.
Here is a free version of Beowulf 210–228 in this metre. The passage should be read slowly, but naturally: that is with the stresses and tones required solely by the sense. The lifts and dips utilized in this metre are those occurring in any given sequence of words in natural (if formal) speech, irrespective of whether the passage is regarded as verse or prose. The lines must not be strained to fit any familiar modern verse-rhythm. The reduced stresses (when their fall in force and tone approximates to value 2) are marked (`).
Beowulf and his Companions set sail
There were many variations on the basic patterns, some of which appear above. The principal were these.
1. The dips. The standard form was monosyllabic. There was, however, no metrical limit to the number of syllables in a dip, as long as they were genuinely weak (altogether inferior to the neighbouring stresses). This imposes a practical limit, as more than three really weak syllables are seldom found consecutively. Polysyllabic dips are frequent at the beginning of B and C.
A, C, D end always in a monosyllabic dip in Old English, because words of the form 
× × (like hándily, ínstantly) did not exist in the language. (See here)
2. The lifts. A subordinate or reduced stress could act as a lift in A, B, C. So váliant-tìmbered 216, séafàrers 221, séa-pàssage 228.
3. Breaking. A lift could be ‘broken’ into two syllables 
×, a short stressed followed by a weak syllable. That is věssel, měllow, are metrical equivalents of boat, ripe. Examples are seen above: A 216, 222; B 226; C 214, 224.
Examples of Da would be bright păradises, hěaven’s archangels; of Db săllow pastyfaced; of E féatherwingëd shafts. Both lifts could be broken: as seven sălamanders (Da) or féatherwingëd ârrows (E).
4. Lightening. The clash of long-stressed syllables, in a compound or in a sentence, could be relieved by substituting a single short stressed syllable for the second lift: for example, gold-dĭggers instead of goldminers. This is frequent in the clashing pattern C; sea-păssage 228 is an example.
This can also occur in the subordinate stresses of Da and E. Examples would be wide grassměadows and ill-wrĭtten verse.
5. Overweighting and Extension (marked +). These are a means of including certain common but slightly excessive patterns in the metre; also of adding weight to the line where required, and of packing much significant word-material into a small space.
Overweighting is most frequently seen in pattern A. It consists in replacing the dip by a long (subordinate) stress. This may affect either or both of the dips. Examples are seen in 212, 217, 222. An example with double overweight would be wéllmàde wárgeàr. The overweight or ‘heavy dip’ may be broken: thus wellfăshioned wargear or wellmade wartrăppings.
Lightly stressed words (such as familiar and more or less colourless finite verbs and adverbs) often appear as ‘heavy dips’. They are frequent in the first dips of B and C: as B càme wálk|ing hóme; C sàw stránge | vísions. But these are not felt to be overweighted. The second dip of B, C and the dip of D, E may not be overweighted.
Overweighting of D and E takes the form of substituting a separate word for the subordinate stress. The half-line then contains three separate words, and the effect is heavier than the norm, unless one of these words is of a naturally weak class. An example of Db + is seen in 227, of E + in 223, 226.fn19 An example of Da + would be bríght bládes dráwing.
Extension is seen in the addition of a dip to the monosyllabic foot of Da, and occasionally of Db: thus árdent árchàngels; bóld and brázenfàced. A similar extension of E (as híghcrèsted hélmets) is avoided.
The + patterns produced by overweighting and extension are excessive. They are usually confined to the first half of the line, and are regularly provided with double alliteration (see below). If the overweight in one foot is relieved by lightening in the other foot, then the total pattern is not excessive. Thus wéllfòrged wěapons 215 is an example of a frequent variety of A, with ‘lightening’ of the second lift after the long (subordinate) stress-forged. In wènt then over wáve-tòps 217 the overweight in wave-tops is compensated by the use of a lightly stressed unemphatic word as first lift. This special variety of A, with light beginning and heavy ending, is very frequently employed in lines marking (as here) a transition, or a new point in a narrative.
Syllables that did not fall inside a pattern were avoided – one of the reasons for the frequent asyndeton, and the love of short parallel sentences that mark the style. In good verse, such as Beowulf, the avoidance was strict in the second half-line, where such a sequence as the rólling ócean (dip + A, or B + dip) is practically never found. At the beginning of the line a prefixed dip, or ‘anacrusis’, is occasionally used, chiefly in pattern A. An example occurs in 217 where she] is prefixed – the original has a similar anacrusis at the same point (see below).
Old English verse is called ‘alliterative’. This is a misnomer in two ways. Alliteration, though important, is not fundamental. Verse built on the plan described above, if written ‘blank’, would retain a similar metrical character. The so-called ‘alliteration’ depends not on letters but on sounds. ‘Alliteration’ or head-rhyme is, in comparison with end-rhyme, too brief, and too variable in its incidence, to allow mere letter-agreements or ‘eye-alliterations’.
Alliteration in this metre is the agreement of the stressed elements in beginning with the same consonant,fn20 or in beginning with no consonant.5 All words beginning with a stressed vowel of any quality ‘alliterate’, as old with eager. The alliteration of dips is not observed or of metrical importance. The alliteration of subordinate stresses (in A +, D, E) was avoided.
Arrangement
This was governed by the following rules:
1. One full lift in each half-line must alliterate. The key-alliteration or ‘head-stave’ was borne by the first lift in the second half. Thus tide 210 shows the head-stave to be t. With this the strongest lift in the first half must agree: thus time.
2. In the second half the first lift only can alliterate; the second lift must not alliterate.
3. In the first half both the lifts may alliterate. The stronger lift must bear the alliteration, the weaker can agree or not; but double alliteration was necessary in certain cases (see below).
A consequence of these rules is that the second half of the line must be so arranged that the stronger lift comes first. As a result the lines tend to end with the naturally inferior words (such as finite verbs), and so to fall away in force and significance together. There is normally an immediate rise of intensity at the beginning of the line, except in the case of light beginnings such as 217 (see above).
In all patterns the first lift is as a rule (for phonetic and syntactic reasons) the stronger. This is always the case in C, Da and b, and E. These patterns must bear the stave on the first lift or both (not only on the second lift).
Dominance of the first lift distinguishes Da and Db from C and B respectively. Thus sàw stránge vísions is not Da but C with heavy first dip; gàzed stónyfàced is not Db but B with heavy first dip. Where, nonetheless, double alliteration occurs, as in rùshed rédhànded or stàred stóny-fàced, we have intermediate patterns of CDa and BDb respectively.
In pattern A dominance of the first lift was usual, but not compulsory. Not infrequently occur varieties with the second lift stronger. In these cases the second lift must alliterate, and the first need not. Thus in 217 pàssed could be substituted for wènt.
Function
The main metrical function of alliteration is to link the two separate and balanced patterns together into a complete line. For this reason it is placed as near the beginning of the second half as possible, and is never repeated on the last lift (rule 2 above). Delay would obscure this main linking function; repetition by separating off the last word-group and making it self-sufficient would have a similar effect.fn21
A subsidiary function is the quickening and relief of heavy, overweighted or extended, patterns. These (described above) all required double alliteration. Examples are seen above in 212, 222, 226, 227. Double alliteration is also frequent when both lifts approach equality as in under bánk their bóat 211. It is thus usually found when two strong words are co-ordinated (and joined with and, or): as boats and barges; ferrets or foxes.
Crossed alliteration is occasionally found in the forms ab|ab and ab|ba. But this is either accidental, or a gratuitous ornament, and not strictly metrical. The alliteration must still be regular according to the above rules, and the head-stave be borne by the first lift of the second half. An example of s, f|s, f occurs above in 221, and of s, p|s, p in 228.
Rhyme is employed in this verse only gratuitously, and for special effects. It may appear in the normal form or as ‘consonantal rhyme’, e.g. und|and. Both are found together in the original poem 212–13 wundon | | sund wið sande where the special effect (breakers are beating on the shore) may be regarded as deliberate.
For further illustration the original of lines 210–228 is here given with metrical indications.
The absence of B from this extract, and the predominance of A, are notable in comparison with the modern version. Owing (among other things) to inflexions, words of the A-type, as lándes, were very frequent in Old English. These have usually been replaced by monosyllables, as land’s, or the B-phrase of land. The placing of a subordinate stress on the middle syllable of all trisyllables beginning with a long stress as búndènne, ðáncèdon, līðènde (compared with modern hándily, ínstantly) is another marked difference between the language of the Beowulf period and that of the present.
A literal rendering of this passage, word by word and in the same order, would run as follows. Words expressed in Old English by inflexions are in brackets.
The poetical words are underlined. In addition, the compounds war-gear 215, wish-journey 216, foamy-neck 218, curved-prow 220, sea-cliffs 222, sea-capes 223, sea-timber 226, war-raiment 227, wave-passage 228, are poetical, whether the separate elements are so or not.
Here B represents three words for boat, two poetical (flota, naca), and one normal (bāt); in addition there are the ‘kennings’ in 220, 223, 226. W represents three words for wave, one normal (wǣg), one more literary and archaic but not confined to verse (ȳð), and one (strēam ‘current, stream’) whose application to the sea is mainly poetical. M represents five words for men, different in each case, three poetical (beornas, secgas, guman), and two used in prose (weras ‘adult males, husbands’; lēode ‘people’). S represents four words for sea, three poetical (sund, in prose ‘swimming’; holm, brim), and one normal (sǣ).
The letters B, W, M, S are here used simply to show the frequency of the poetical ‘synonyms’, and the way they are employed. It is not implied that the variations are pointless, or that the poet is using different counters of precisely the same value but different metrical colours – such different colour is in any case a point of poetical value. Thus flota is literally ‘floater’, and is therefore in fact a simple kenning for boat; sund means ‘swimming’; holm probably ‘eminence’ (the high sea); brim is properly ‘breakers, surf’. On beornas (See here)
This literal version also illustrates other important points. It will be noted that the stop comes normally in the middle of the line. Sense-break and metrical break are usually opposed. This is not so at the beginning, at line 216, and at the end of the passage. That is because we have in this extract a ‘verse-period’, subdivided at 216. The previous ‘period’ ended at the end of 209. We then have a transition-phrase, stopped off and occupying one half-line, a not uncommon Old English device. The period describing the journey then proceeds, often in short sentences straddling the line-endings. An exceptionally long passage without a full stop is 217 departed – 223 sea-capes. There is an end-stop at 216 marking the end of the launching and the setting out; and an end-stop marking the end of the period at 228. The next period begins with 229, where the poet turns to the Danish coastguard.
The frequent fall in significance, which goes together with the frequent metrical and phonetic fall in stress and pitch, can also be noted at the end of lines. 212, 213, 215, 220, 221, 225, 226, 227, 228 end in finite verbs, 224 in an unemphatic adverb, and 223 in the second element of a compound.
To these may be added gelīcost (subordinate to fugle) 218. We thus have some 12 ‘falling’ endings out of 19.
The force was renewed and the tone raised at the beginning of the line (as a rulefn25), and there the strongest and heaviest words were usually placed. The more significant elements in the preceding final half-line were frequently caught up and re-echoed or elaborated. Thus 210–11 boat-boat; 212–13 waves-sea; 214–15 bright trappings – war-gear well-made; 221 land is elaborated in 222–23 as cliffs by the breaking waves, steep hills, and capes jutting into the sea.
This ‘parallelism’ is characteristic of the style and structure of Beowulf. It both favours and is favoured by the metre. It is seen not only in these lesser verbal details, but in the arrangement of minor passages or periods (of narrative, description, or speech), and in the shape of the poem as a whole. Things, actions, or processes, are often depicted by separate strokes, juxtaposed, and frequently neither joined by an expressed link, nor subordinated. The ‘separate strokes’ may be single parallel words: there is no ‘and’ between flota 210, bāt 211; strēamas 212, sund 213; guman 215, weras 216; and similarly 221–23, 226–27. Or sentences: in 224–28 the landing of the men, who moored their ship, while their shirts of mail rang as they moved, is dealt with by separate verbs, unconnected but each with the subject lēode. Into this series is inserted, without any connecting word, the short sentence || ‘shirts rattled, war-raiment’||.fn26 On a larger scale: the strife of the Swedes and Geats in the later part of the poem is dealt with in separate passages, describing prominent incidents on both sides that are not worked into a narrative sequence. Finally, Beowulf itself is like a line of its own verse written large, a balance of two great blocks, A + B; or like two of its parallel sentences with a single subject but no expressed conjunction. Youth + Age; he rose – fell. It may not be, at large or in detail, fluid or musical, but it is strong to stand: tough builder’s work of true stone.
