site him on the northern side. In this hall the queen, Hygd, does not sit with the king, as Wealhtheow among the Danes appears to do when the supper begins. Hygd comes in during the feast and bears the mead-cup round. Beowulf is then called on for his tale. He tells it from the beginning, and orders the treasures given him by Hrothgar to be brought into the hall. He gives everything away except one horse and the sword. The gray coat of mail he bestows on his lord Hygelac, crying, "Use it well," and four of the eight horses Hrothgar had given him. Three more of the horses, slender and of bright saddles, he gives to Hygd, and above all, the great and glorious collar, like the Brising collar, which Hygelac loses afterwards when he is slain in Friesland. Hygelac is not backward in return of gifts. He gives to Beowulf a sword enriched with gold, seven thousand in money, a country seat, the dignity of a prince. It is now, then, that Beowulf, when he is thirty years old, seems to have attained a settled position - heritable land, a home and its rights. With this interchange of gifts the first part of the poem closes.

The second part of the poem of Beowulf opens fifty years later, and is the tale of Beowulf's fight with the Fire-Drake, and of his death and burial. The history of those fifty years is soon told. On his return from his slaying of Grendel he had been Hygelac's faithful thegn. Always on foot, and in the front, in the clashings of battle, and also in peace, he had never failed his lord. But most of all he was true comrade in the last fight, when Hygelac fell in combat with the Frisians and the Hugs. He could not save his king, but he avenged him on Daeghrefn, the champion of the Hugs, and in the same way as he slew Grendel. "I slew him!" cries Beowulf, "not with the sword, but in battle I grasped the throbbing of his heart, and broke his bone-house." Nor was he wounded himself, but, carrying off thirty war-harnesses, went down to the sea, unpursued, so great was the terror of him, and swam (i.e. sailed) home with his old swimming skill over the seal's bath, to bring the news to Hygd, the wife of Hygelac. And Hygd, thinking her son Heardred too young for so many enmities, offered the throne to Beowulf. But the hero refused, faithful to his master's son, and brought him up and loved him and maintained him. But in vain, for Heardred fell, murdered by

2

1 Brego-stol, "a throne," hence "rule." When Hygd, after Hygelac's death, offers Beowulf the kingly power, it is brego-stol which she offers him. 2 This touch illustrates the way in which additions were made to a folk-tale. Beowulf has the strength of thirty men in the original tale. Here, then, the new inventor makes him carry off thirty coats of mail.

Eanmund. Beowulf then became king, and when he was settled, remembered vengeance and slew Eadgils, the brother of Eanmund, slayer of Heardred.

Noble, valorous, unconquered, he had outlived every enmity and every conflict, and dwelt, worshipped by his people, at peace, until when he was near his eightieth year the dragon came to spoil his folk. This was his final weird. We hear how the fate arose. One of his thegns found the secret barrow where the dragon's hoard was hidden, and stole a gold cup while the monster slept.

The account given of the building of this barrow and the hiding of the treasures in it is very romantic, and is either a legend used by the writer or is invented entirely by him. The lament of the prince reads like a separate piece of poetry which has been inserted by the singer. Portions of it resemble the fragment of the Ruined Burg, and the poetical quality of this little lyric, which might be quite isolated from the rest of the poem, is as good as that of the Ruin. As wild and

desolate too as the scenery in which it is placed, is the short story which leads up to the lament of the prince. Three hundred years ago, in Hygelac's land, this prince dwelt with his nobles. A great war, a life-bane, took away his folk, and of all, none at last was left but he. Mourning his friends," he wandered to and fro alone, "and wished for delay of death," even then, that he might enjoy the precious treasures, the last legacy of a noble race. But when he felt death at hand, he brought together all the costly things, gold cups and rings, treasured jewels, helms and swords, a golden banner, great dishes and old giants' work, and hid them in a huge mound, low by the headland near the moving of the waves, and sung over them his lament

now the heroes could not,
Lo, within thee long ago
Ghastly was the life-bane
every bairn away.
made leaving of this life!

"Hold thou here, O Earth,
Hold the wealth of earls!
Warriors good had gotten it.
And the battle-death that bore
All my men, mine own, who
They have seen their joy in hall!

None is left the sword to bear,

chased with flakes of gold,

All the chiefs have gone elsewhere.
high-adorned with gold,

Or the cup to carry,
Costly cup for drinking.
Now the hardened helin,
Of its platings shall be plundered!
Those once bound to brighten

Sleeping are the polishers,
battle-masks (for war).

So alike the battle-sark that abode on field, (stricken)
O'er the brattling of the boards, biting of the swords,

Crumbles, now the chiefs are dead!

And the coat of ringèd mail

May far and wide no longer fare with princes to the field
At the side of heroes. Silent is the joy of harp,
Gone the glee-wood's mirth; nevermore the goodly hawk
Hovers through the hall; the swift horse no more
Beats with hoof the Burh-stead. Bale of battle ruinous

Many souls of men

So, in spirit sad,

sent away, afar."

in his sorrow he lamented,

All alone when all were gone - Thus unhappy, did he weep

In the day and night,

On his heart laid hold.

till the Surge of Death

Beowulf, 11. 2247, etc.

This is the hoard over which the dragon watches. The Worm and the place are both accurately described, and it is fitting that we should collect what is said of both, first of the worm, and then of the place. This dragon story is not, like that of Grendel, unique. There are a multitude of parallels to it in the Folk-Tales, and the most famous of these is the story in the Volsunga Saga. But the drake in Beowulf is not the huge earth-worm like Fafnir. That beast is found in our poem at line 887. He is there the guard of the hoard, and lives, like our present dragon, under a hoary rock, a wondrous spotted worm; and when he is slain, his own heat melts him away; like the chimaera, nothing of him is left. He, like the Volsunga Fafnir, is wingless, for it seems that men who became dragons had, as dragons, no wings.

The Fire-Drake here is the true dragon, our old Romance acquaintance, whose breath is fire, whose wings are strong (the wings mark the dragon proper), and who has feet and claws in front. At least it appears as if in the fight he threw his forefeet around Beowulf's neck. But he is also scaleless, naked, and Beowulf's sword and knife pierce his flesh, though the sword breaks on the bones of his head. Like many another dragon in Folk-Tales, he is a seeker, a finder, and a keeper of hidden treasures, of which he is proud, and which he guards with jealous covetousness. He lies round them in a cave, as Fafnir, like a Python, lay coiled over his hoard. So constant was this habit among the dragons, that gold is called Worms' bed; Fafnir's couch, Worms' bed-fire. Even in India, the cobras, especially their king, are guardians of treasure. hundred years before Beowulf met the drake, that beast, old is he (and great age is a characteristic of the dragons), flying by night, and wrapt in his own fiery breath, had found the ancient hoard. All day he watches it now in the hollow of the barrow under the hill, or sleeps around it. Probably he was not yet long enough to quite encompass it, since the gold

Three

SO

cup is stolen from him, and there is evidence in the poem that the thief got in between his head and his tail (11. 2289–2290), and I have somewhere else seen a folk-tale in which this element of the dragon story appears, and where, owing to this gap, the hoard is robbed by a peasant. He is, however, fifty feet in length. He moves on the earth, hunts his foe by scent, smells round his cave; hunts also by sight, and finds the footsteps of the robber near the cavern. He is once called the Earth-Drake, a name I have not elsewhere seen. But the air is also his proper element. He flies in it, and is called the wide-flier, the deadly lift-flier, the war-flier. But it is always by night that he flies. He is the old foe who comes out in the twilight; before day dawns he returns to his cave. In this he is quite unlike those dragons who sun their gold in fine weather. But our dragon is wholly of the night. It is said of him: "Who, all on fire, seeks to the mountains, naked, full of hate, flying through the night enfolded in flame; whom the earth-dwellers gazed at from far," and it is a fine touch of description. Fire, then, as well as earth and air, is in his power. Fire is his very nature; he goes forth with burning, winged with flame. Fire is his weapon; when he is robbed, he longs to take vengeance by fire, but he must wait till nightfall. Then he rushes from the cave, and rising in the air, spits forth gleeds, and the hate he feels intensifies the glow. When he comes forth to fight, he breathes hot and venomous fire, the hot sweat of battle; it wells from his breast. His breath of fire enwraps him, so that he seems embroidered with gouts of flame. The steam of his breathing is like the hot gore of battle; earth resounds as he moves over it. In the crisis of the fight he gathers in his breath till his breast swells, and pours a welter of flame on Beowulf, flinging it far and wide. Finally, he can make himself into a bow, or like a ring; he rolls along in curves when he comes out of his lair. Like so many dragons then, splendour and pliability mark him; and "glitter, gold and fire," as Grimm says of other worms, gather round his presentation. Moreover, he lives close to the desolate and hoar heath that runs inland from his cavern, and the wild heath is the constant companion of the northern and gold-guarding dragons. A dragon is called a heath-worm. The "fani-gold" is gold of the fen in the heath where dragons lie. It is on the "glistening heath" that Fafnir has his den, and the haeden gold of Beowulf may mean gold of the heath as well as heathen gold. This then is the image of the great beast, whom the hero, like Hercules, Apis, Jason, Sigmund, Sigurd, Frotho, and a hundred others, lays to sleep; by whose

breath he dies, like Thor by the breath of the Midgard serpent.1

The poet not only describes the beast, he enables us to place him. The scenery and his refuge may be conceived with clearness from many indications in the poem. The Nesses rise one after another along the coast, with dips of land beneath them. The loftiest of these is called Hrones-naes the Whale's Ness; next to it is Earna-naes the Sea-Eagles' Ness. The cliff-face descends between these in a scoop, and the meadowy space between the two Nesses is walled in on either side by their lateral rocks. On the top of one of these ridges is a grove of trees. Close to these trees, on the edge of the rock wall, and looking over to the opposite rocks where the worm has his shelter, Beowulf sits before he goes down to the meadow below to fight the dragon; on the same ridge his thegns watch the old king contending with the beast, and into the wood behind, all of them, save Wiglaf, fly in fear. It is on this side also that Beowulf, with his back to the cliff below, is driven to bay by the dragon. On the other side, but higher up the dell, nearer to the edge of the sea-cliff, whence the raging of the waves may be heard, the great barrow stands, built by the prince over the treasures and bodies of his tribe. Near it is the cave, entered into by a rocky arch, within which are the treasures and the lair of the worm. A stream breaks out of the mouth of the cave, and flows down the slope of the meadow, to lose itself in

1 There is another picture of a dragon in Anglo-Saxon literature which I may as well insert here for the sake of comparison. It is in the Fifty-Second Riddle of Cynewulf. The beast he conceives has two resemblances to the Beowulf dragon. He is a swift flier in the air, and a guardian of treasure. But a new touch is added by Cynewulf. This dragon dives into the waves and disturbs the sea. Like the dragon of Beowulf, he has paws with which he walks the earth. These are the four wondrous beings with which the riddle begins

Then the riddle changes from plural to singular, from the feet of the dragon to the dragon himself

Swifter than the swallows,
In the deep, he dived,
Like a fighting warrior;
O'er flaked heaps of gold,

swimming quickly in the air!
dashed it into foam,

then he showed the ways
to all the four beings.

"Dashed it to foam" is, literally, behaved himself stormily in it, and the last lines mean that the dragon led his four feet to the place where the gold lay, each piece of it piled in a heap, overlapping the other like plates of iron on a stitched coat of mail.

2 It is suggested that the name may be connected with Rân, the giant goddess of the sea, the daughter of Egir-Ran's Naes; but with Earna-naes immediately following, the unmythological explanation is plainly right.