dred, of the Waegmundings. Wyrd swept them all away, each at the fated hour; earls in their strength. I must go after them." This was the last word of the old man, the "last of the thoughts of his heart." And as Wiglaf sat there mourning, the thegns who had been untrue to their lord, and fled when they should have helped, eame stealing down from the holt where they had refuged, and, ashamed, gazed at Wiglaf and their king. Wearied he sat, near his lord's shoulders, and reproached them bitterly; and the deep disgrace it was for an English warrior to fail through cowardice in the duties of comradeship is nowhere better set forth than in the following speech "This, in sooth, one may say, who has a mind to speak the truth, that the Man-lord who gave fair things to you, the bright weeds of war in which here ye stand; when at the ale-bench he allotted helm and byrnie to the sitters in hall (as a warleader to his thegns, whom far off or near, the trustiest of men he was able to find) - has utterly wasted these weeds of the battle. When War met him, the king of the folk had no cause to boast of his comrades in arms. Too few of those who should ward him pressed round their Lord when the stress of fight came upon him." "Now shall getting gems, giving too of swords, and possession of the land, Beowulf, 1. 2864. I have translated this passage for its historic value. It equals the passage in Tacitus which describes the tie of chief to companion and companion to chief among the Germans, and which recounts the shame that fell on those who survived their lord. The news of the death of the king is now carried to the host who waited on the sea-edge the issue of the fight. The messenger describes what he has seen, and then (relating in an episode, which I have elsewhere spoken of, the blood-feud between themselves and the Sweons) predicts that the Sweons will come and harry them now that Beowulf is dead. There are treasures where he lies, but none shall wear them in memory of the dead, neither warrior nor maiden fair; and with the word he thinks again of the fates of war that over hung them because "the leader of their battle has ceased from laughter, from sport and singing joy." Therefore shall the maidens, sad of mood, of gold bereft, not once, but often, tread an alien land. Therefore shall the spear, Many a one, now morning-cold, be by fingers met around, shall be full of talking, This is a finer use than usual of the common poetic attendants of a battle, the wolf, the eagle, and the raven. The three are here like three Valkyrie, talking of all that they have done; and I have elsewhere said that the wild note that fills the passage is repeated centuries after in the ballad of the Two Ravens. Then all the host rose and went, weeping, to see the king where he lay, under the Ness of the Sea-Eagle, and the poet (whose work is here not a little spoiled by later insertions) paints the scene so that we see it with our eyes. They found the giver of rings dead, outstretched upon the meadow, and Naegling, his sword, broken by his side, and the Fire-Drake, scorched with his own gleeds, fifty feet of him, on the fireblackened and blood-stained ground. They saw the rocky arch above the cave, and the stream that rushed from it, and Wiglaf, seated on a stone in that grassy place, near his dear lord, and the shamed cowards standing by, and, in the midst of all, shining as if in mockery, golden cups and bowls scattered on the grass, rings and jewels, "swords that had lain a thousand winters, it seemed, in the lap of earth, so rusty, eaten through" were they; and above them, as fitted a dead hero, as was the honour of Seyld when he died, the golden banner glistened. Add to this the picture of the host descending into the hollow between the cliffs, and gathering round their king, and we see the whole as the poet meant us to behold it. Wiglaf tells them how bravely the battle was fought; how impossible it was to hold back the prince from dying for his folk; how he had seen the cave and the golden things and borne them forth to Beowulf while he was yet alive. "He bade me greet you, and prayed you to make a high barrow for him on the cliff. Let the bier be made ready, and I will show you the wonders of the hoard." Seven went with him, and one bore a lighted torch. Little was left in the cave, but they bore it forth, laded a wain with the wrought gold, heaved the dragon over the cliff, and carried the hoar-headed warrior to the point of Hrones-naes. Now the gleed shall fret on the War-strength of the warriors, showers in the fight, And the wannish flame wax high sent a-flying from the strings, Beowulf, 1. 3114. So cried Wiglaf in his pride and sorrow; and they burned their king, as I have told at the beginning; and then they made his barrow and sang his death-song." worked upon that place, that was high and broad, far and wide to be descried; they uptimbered there Then the Weder-folk and the best of Brands 1 armlets and bright gems, And the precious things of price, all that from the hoard So with groaning sorrowed as of old it was. tell their sorrow for their king. With these words of pathetic farewell Beowulf closes; and I think that this carefully-wrought conclusion, and this retrospective summary of the hero's character, go far to prove, however many ballads and lays may have been used by the writer, that the poem was composed as a whole, with one aim, by one poet. 1 Bronda betost. I do not think I can allege any authority for translating Brond here as a title of Beowulf. But the O. N. Brand-r a sword, often means a warrior, as the German Degen does. And we use the term "a good sword" for a good fighter. I have let the translation remain, but otherwise it would be "the best, the most famous of Burnings." CHAPTER IV 66 THE EPISODES OF BEOWULF," AND THE 66 FIGHT AT THE episodes in the poem of Beowulf are sufficiently important to deserve separate treatment. One of them is connected with the Fight at Finnsburg, a distinct fragment of heathen English poetry; and this fragment is included in this chapter. Another, the first episode, is the story of Scyld and his burial, but this belongs so plainly to the mythical elements in the poem that I reserve it for the chapter on those ele ments. I begin, therefore, with the second episode which is that of Beowulf's swimming match with Breca. On the evening of his arrival at Hrothgar's court, Beowulf is mocked by the jealousy of Hunferth, who is the king's feast-companion. "Art thou that Beowulf who strove with Breca in swimming, risking your lives in the deep water, when winter's flood weltered with great billows? Seven nights ye strove, and he conquered thee in swimming." Beowulf answered, full of wrath, that Hunferth was a liar, and that the victory was his, not Breca's. He describes his adventure, his battle with the seamonsters, his coming to the land. The interest of the story lies in this that even if the story be mythical, it is coloured by the sea-life of our ancestors or of their northern kindred. Many were the young men in the ancient days who challenged one another to go forth in winter time upon the sea to fight 1 There are those, of whom Laistner is the most minute, who turn the whole of this Breca and Beowulf story into a Nature myth. "Beowulf, who is a wind hero" (the cloud-cleanser, for Laistner makes Beowa = der Feger, and Wolf = Nebel), "is in this story of Breca, the spring-wind. Breca is der Brecher, who rules over the Brondings, that is, the sons of the flaming brand, and is himself a son of Beanstan who stands for Bohnstein, the sun. His swimming wager with Beowulf through the wintry sea, in the teeth of the icy northern storm, means 'the sun and the wind fight with the winter."" This is the most interesting of the mythical explanations of the story. There are many others, but they are easily imagined and easily invented. with whales and great seals and the walrus.1 Five nights Beowulf and Breca kept together, not swimming, but sailing in open boats (to swim the seas is to sail the seas), then storm drove them asunder when they were near the land some indented coast where the sea-beasts had their haunt. "Flood I may as well introduce here in a note two verses and a half of AngloSaxon poetry, which belong to that early time when Christianity and Heathendom were still somewhat interwoven. They are supposed to be of the eighth century, and they refer to some whale or walrus hunt on the sea-coast. The lines seem apart from the English type of poetry, and I should conjecture that they were carved much later by some Englishman who had been roving with the Northmen, and who, perhaps by way of the Mediterranean, came to France, and left his casket behind him. This inference is suggested by the history of the lines. They are cut in runes on the side of a casket made of whale or walrus bone, and they record the closing event of the hunt. On another of its sides is the rude carving of a scene (as Bugge has shown) out of the Weland saga. A woman, Beadohild, comes to Weland; the body of her murdered brother lies at her feet, and another man, Egil, Weland's brother, catches birds that Weland may make his feather-garment for his flight. Over his head Egili may be traced, written in runes. The casket was found, as well as conflicting evidence will allow us to judge, in the sacristy of a church at Clermont-Ferrand in Auvergne. Thence it came into possession of a family in Auzon, HauteLoire, and was used as a work-basket. The silver bands were removed from it, and it fell into pieces. In this state it was bought at Paris from an antiquarian dealer by Franks, who gave it to the British Museum. The next thing to say is that the maker not only knew the Weland saga, but was also a Christian, for on the side opposite the scene from the saga is carved the birth of Christ, and the worship of the Magi. In runic writing near the three men the word Magi is cut. Stephens identified the carving on the top and the sides of the casket as the Taking of Jerusalem, the Beheading of John the Baptist, and the Suckling of Romulus and Remus by the Wolf. It is plain that these identifications are disputable. If the Latin wolf-story be really represented, it suits my conjecture that the writer was a Northumbrian who went with a Viking to the Mediterranean. One side, long lost, has now, I am told, been found, and is said to represent part of the Siegfried story. The lines have been translated in many different fashions; and we owe to Mr. Sweet the explanation of gasric by garsecg, which makes the last line clear. But he makes fiscflodu the subject and ban the object. "The fish-flood lifted the whale's bones on to the mainland." Wülker has shown, as I think, the impossibility of this translation. Flodu is a neuter plural, and must be the object after ahof and ban the subject. The whale's bone he takes to mean the whole whale, and translates "the whale heaved up the fish-floods." Ferg(enbyrig) has also its difficulty; and Sweet translates it by "the mainland"; but, again, Wülker seems right when he translates it wasserburg, meeresburg. Fergen, firgen, frequently means "water, the sea," and fergen byrig would be "a sea like a fortress." Wülker does not, however, ask himself what the writer of the runes saw when he was writing them, nor is there any need for the harsh taking by him of the bone of the whale for the whole body of the |