CHAPTER II

BEOWULF

Introduction

THE Beowulf MS. (Cotton Vitellius A. xv.) was one collected by Sir Robert Cotton. It was in Little Dea Westminster, when the fire which, in 1731, destroyed manuscripts took place, and was fortunately amon which were not fatally injured. In 1753, having spe time in the old dormitory at Westminster, it was tra to the British Museum.

In 1705 Wanley, employed by Hickes, the Angl scholar, to make a catalogue of the old northern books kingdom, discovered the poem of Beowulf in the Co library and calls it a tractatus nobilissimus poeticè scrip is a parchment codex, and the handwriting of the two is of the beginning of the tenth century. Thorkelin, a scholar, had two copies of it made in 1786, and publis whole of it for the first time in 1815. This edition m poem known, and it was discussed in English and reviews. Meantime, in 1805, Sharon Turner gave t account of the poem in his history of the AngloTurner again, in 1823, and Conybeare, in 1826, filled account and translated portions of Beowulf into English and in 1833 and 1837 John M. Kemble edited, with hi prefaces, and translated the whole of the poem. This arly book increased the interest of foreign scholars poem; and, since then, a great number of editions and lations have been published, while the essays, disser articles, and notices on the poem and the subjects conta it, fill a long list, and are written by English, French, G Dutch, Danish, and American scholars.

The poem, consisting of 3183 lines, is divided into tw by an interval of fifty years, the first containing Be

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great deeds against the monster Grendel and his dam, the second Beowulf's conquest of the Fire-drake and his death and burial. The first division may be again divided into twothe fight with Grendel, and the fight with Grendel's mother and some suppose that they are due to different hands. Several episodes are introduced which are linked on, often very roughly, to the history of Beowulf, and two or three of these seem to be taken from other sagas of even an earlier date than the original lays of the legend.

The same kind of controversy which has raged over the composition of the Iliad and Odyssey has raged also over Beowulf. It is said that it is a single poem composed by one man; and, on the contrary, that it is a poem built up, in process of time, by various hands, and consisting of various lays of different ages; and this opinion, to take one instance, has been worked out by Müllenhof with a minuteness which makes the most severe demands upon our credulity. We are to conceive first of two old lays by different authors, then of a continuation of one of these, and then of an introduction to the whole by two other authors. The fifth- a reviser― added another portion and altered the previous work to suit his addition, and another reviser, the sixth in the series, increased the poem by episodes from other sagas and by Christian interpolations. Elaborate arrangements of this kind are as doubtful as they are interesting. The main point, however, seems clear. Beowulf was built up out of many legends which in time coalesced into something of a whole, or were, as I think, composed together into a poem by one poet. The legends were sung in the Old' England across the seas, and brought to our England by the Angles, or by that band of Jutes or Saxons whom many suppose to have settled, at an early time, in northern Northumbria. They were then sung in Northumbria, added to by Northumbrian singers, and afterwards, when Christianity was still young, compressed and made into a poem by a Christian singer.

The first question we have to ask is with regard to the date of the story. Is it entirely mythical and legendary, or is there any actual history contained in it which will enable us to date its composition? Such a connection with known history has been suggested. The Hygelac of the poem, Beowulf's lord, has been identified with the King Chochilaicus, who is mentioned in the Historia Francorum of Gregory of Tours, and in another chronicle the Gesta Regum Francorum.

About 512-520, when the conquest of Britain had but begun, when the victory of the Britons at Mount Badon caused a long

We are

pause in the advance of the English, we are told that icus made an expedition from the modern Götaland to arii of the Frisian shore the Hetware of the poem der and to slay. When he was about to leave, having ships with slaves and spoil, the Frankish king Theod his son to attack him with an army of Franks and Fris the battle Chochilaicus fell and all the booty was reco This affair is four times mentioned in the poem of if we identify Hygelac with Chochilaicus. fate carried away Hygelac in feud against the Frisia fell under his shield. His life and the jewelled collar from Beowulf passed into the power of the Franks. himself, before he goes down to fight with the dragon, tel fight; how Hygelac fell, how he avenged his lord's deat other allusions are made in the poem to the same ex and battle. It is said, therefore, that it must have be the date of 520 that the main story of the poem arose. there can be no doubt, but we have also to remember th of the poem are drawn from lays older than 520; lays, which, as the preface about Scyld, may go back to a antiquity. But the poem itself carries us past the d Hygelac in 520 to Beowulf's death in 570. Only af date, then, could the last part-the fight with the D begin to be welded to the first part of the story, and thi take at least thirty years to accomplish. This would b to the year 600. If we take that date, and if we m poem Northumbrian, this first interweaving of the lay be made about the time of Æthelfrith, before Northum become Christian.1

The second question to ask is, Where is the scene poem laid? It has been supposed by some, who hold was composed from end to end in England, that the sc English, and Mr. Haigh has ingeniously endeavoured to its descriptions with places on the coast of Yorkshir there is not one word about our England in the poen single hint that the original singers knew of the exist such a people as the English in Britain. The persona

1 This argument is based on the supposition that Beowulf was, at lea an historical personage. But the supposition is a doubtful one, and come to no certainty with regard to the date of the story. I have a sumed that the poem arose into shape in Northumbria, but Profess thinks that Mercia was the place of its birth, and Ten Brink endea establish West Saxon connections for it. Professor Earle's interesti The Deeds of Beowulf, has just been published, and his theory of the the poem is fully expounded in it.

tribes are all of the continent-North, South, East and West Danes, the Geats, the Sweons, and the Frisians. The Danes dwelt in Seeland, and their chief town was there; the Geats in Scandinavia, in Götaland, and their king's town was on the west coast near the mouth of the Götaelf. The name Wederas and Weder-Geatas suggested to Grein a connection with the Island Väderöe or Veiröe, and with the group of islands Väderöane. The scenery then is laid on the coast of the North Sea and the Kattegat, the first act of the poem among the Danes in Seeland, the second among the Geats in South Sweden.

It is held then that the earliest lays of the story arose among the Geats and the Danes, and it is chiefly with these tribes, their manners, and their customs, that we are here concerned. But their manners and their customs were the same as those of the Angles. Angle and Geat and Dane spoke the same language, and were all kinsmen and I am not sure whether we might not with propriety call Angle the tribes of South Sweden, or at least the Geats of the poem. At any rate Beowulf became English. The earliest lays of the poem were adopted by the older England on the mainland,' the scenery of the poem was scenery with which the elder English were well acquainted. before they came to Britain. However we may hold that the poem was altered and edited, its foundation lays were sung by a people who lived in South Sweden, in Denmark, in the Isles, and about the Elbe. Having thus conjectured the date at which the story began to take shape, and the place in which it arose, we may ask what theory we may form concerning its upbuilding. A multitude of theories have been put forward, differing here and there in minor points from one another. But the main lines are almost the same in the greater number, and I have brought them together here into as compact a form as I

1 There is a theory of Ettmüller's which is interesting. In his view the story arose in the sixth or seventh century among the Geatas, inhabitants of South Scandinavia, who along with the Danes set up a Dano-Gautic kingdom which lasted till 720 or 730 A.D. But there were Danish and Geat settlers from this kingdom in Northumbria in the eighth century, and these brought the Song of Beowulf with them. Then some English poet, a layman, perhaps a pagan, put it into vernacular English. Afterwards, in the eighth or ninth century, this poem was redone by a clerical person in the West Saxon dialect.

Another suggestion may be made. If it should ever come to be clearly established -as some believe-that a branch of the same Jutish folk who seized on Kent in 450, had, about the same time, settled on the coast of Scotland, south of the Forth, so that Eadwine when he came there found English already spoken in the country-why then, the mythical lays of Beowa (added afterwards to the Beowulf legend) may have been brought to this part of England and sung in English there as early as the fifth century—and by the very folk, the Jutes, among whom they originally rose. The Angles would then have found them there, heard them sung, and adapted these mythic lays to their Beowulf story.

can.1 The account is eclectic; I have added a few c of my own, and I must risk some repetition for th clearness.

The date of the death of Hygelac (512-520) is tak starting-point of the poem, and it is supposed that a Beowulf an historical who was pres personageoverthrow, a relation of Hygelac's, a mighty wa seaman, whose strength was very great- so that in it was said to be as the strength of thirty men slew the slayer of Hygelac in the fight. The fame of warrior (unmentioned in the Chronicle of Gregory had been, according to the poem, spread far and wide a Geats, the Island Danes, and the Angles, but now it be greater. In every hall, at every feast, while he was gests were sung, and out of these rude songs was fo germ of the story. After his death in 570 he grew legendary hero; wonderful tales collected round his like the story of the swimming match with Breca, and hood's deeds became more and more marvellous. T ends entered into the original historic lays or became lays. A hero saga had begun, and was spread all ov Sweden and Denmark, among Geats, Danes, Angles, a be among the Saxons. That is the first step. The the addition to the legend of already existing myth, an which were older than the historic Beowulf, older, than the sixth century. It is suggested that there w these Scandinavian, Danish, and Angle tribes an ancie concerning a divine hero whose name was Beowa, w introduction of the poem describes as one of the anc Hrothgar the Dane. Beowa is the son of Scyld, son who appears in the Anglo-Saxon genealogies as on ancestors of Woden. Beaw is his name in these gen and we find traces of him in some names of places in such as Beowanhamm and Grendlesmere. This myt was the real conqueror of Grendel and the conquero Dragon. As time went on, these mythic deeds we ferred to the historic Beowulf. The subject had no into almost epic proportions. Not very much later th part of the Grendel story was added to the first

1 They will all be found with all their differences in Wülker's pp. 269, etc. etc. The above account follows, on the whole, the an Brink, following others, makes of the origin of the lays; but it do allow, but rather avers, that the poem, as we have it, was put into fo poet, and with a distinct effort at unity of effect and purpose.