graphic organizer, 5 hrs

A L S O BY S E A M U S H E A N E Y

P O E T R Y ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^

Death of a Naturalist I S E ^ ^ \ » J k # I I | E Door into the Dark %J E ^ ^ W W \ ^ L I

Wintering Out North

Field Work A N E W V E R S E T R A N S L A T I O N

Poems 1965-1975 Sweeney Astray: A Version from the Irish

Station Island The Haw Lantern S E A M U S H E A N E Y

Selected Poems 1966-1987 Seeing Things

Sweeney's Flight (with photographs by Rachel Giese) The Spirit Level

Opened Ground: Selected Poems 1966-1996

C R I T I C I S M

Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968-1978 The Government of the Tongue

The Redress of Poetry

PLAYS

The Cure at Troy: A Version of Sophocles' Philoctetes

W. W. NORTON & COMPANY

New York • London

Copyright©2000 by Seamus Heaney ^ m e m Q r y 0f Ted HugkeS All rights reserved u J °

Printed in the United States of America Designed by Cynthia Krupat

First bilingual edition 2000 published by arrangement with Farrar, Straus and Giroux First published as a Norton paperback 2001

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Beowulf. English & English (Old English)

Beowulf I [translated by] Seamus Heaney. — 1st ed. p. cm.

Text in English and Old English. 1. Heroes—Scandinavia—Poetry. 2. Epic poetry, English (Old).

3. Monsters—Poetry. 4. Dragons—Poetry. I. Heaney, Seamus. PE1383.H43 1999 829^.3—dC2i 99-23209

ISBN 0-393-32097-9 pbk.

W. W. Norton ir Company, Inc. 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110

www.wwnorton.com

W. W. Norton ir Company Ltd. Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T3QT

0

The Old English text of the poem is based on Beowulf, with the Finnesburg Fragment, edited by C. L. Wrenn and W. F. Bolton (University of Exeter Press, 1988), and is printed here by kind permission ofW. F. Bolton and the University of Exeter Press.

Contents

Introduction page ix

A Note on Names by Alfred David page xxxi

B E O W U L F page 2

Family Trees page 217

Acknowledgements page 219

Introduction

And now this is 'an inheritance'— Upright, rudimentary, unshiftably planked In the long ago, yet willable forward

Again and again and again.

B E O W U L F : THE P O E M

The poem called Beowulf was composed sometime between the middle of the seventh and the end of the tenth century of the first millennium, in the language that is to-day called Anglo-Saxon or Old English. It is a heroic narrative, more than three thousand lines long, concerning the deeds of a Scandinavian prince, also called Beowulf, and it stands as one of the foundation works of poetry in English. The fact that the English language has changed so much in the last thousand years means, however, that the poem is now generally read in translation and mostly in English courses at schools and universities. This has contributed to the impression that it was written (as Osip Mandelstam said of The Divine Comedy) "on official paper," which is unfortunate, since what we are dealing with is a work of the greatest imaginative vitality, a masterpiece where the structuring of the tale is as elab- orate as the beautiful contrivances of its language. Its narrative elements may belong to a previous age but as a work of art it lives in its own continuous present, equal to our knowledge of reality in the present time.

The poem was written in England but the events it describes are set in Scandinavia, in a "once upon a time" that is partly his- torical. Its hero, Beowulf, is the biggest presence among the war- riors in the land of the Geats, a territory situated in what is now southern Sweden, and early in the poem Beowulf crosses the sea to the land of the Danes in order to clear their country of a man-

eating monster called Grendel. From this expedition (which in- extent (if at all) the newly Christian understanding of the world volves him in a second contest with Grendel's mother) he returns which operates in the poet's designing mind displaces him from in triumph and eventually rules for fifty years as king of his his imaginative at-homeness in the world of his poem—a pagan homeland. Then a dragon begins to terrorize the countryside and Germanic society governed by a heroic code of honour, one Beowulf must confront it. In a final climactic encounter, he does where the attainment of a name for warrior-prowess among the manage to slay the dragon, but he also meets his own death and living overwhelms any concern about the soul's destiny in the enters the legends of his people as a warrior of high renown. afterlife.

We know about the poem more or less by chance because it ex- However, when it comes to considering Beowulf as a work of ists in one manuscript only. This unique copy (now in the British literature, there is one publication that stands out. In 1936, the Library) barely survived a fire in the eighteenth century and was Oxford scholar and teacher J.R.R. Tolkien published an epoch- then transcribed and titled, retranscribed and edited, translated making paper entitled "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" and adapted, interpreted and reinterpreted, until it has become which took for granted the poem's integrity and distinction as a canonical. For decades it has been a set book on English sylla- work of art and proceeded to show in what this integrity and dis- buses at university level all over the world. The fact that many tinction inhered. He assumed that the poet had felt his way English departments require it to be studied in the original con- through the inherited material—the fabulous elements and the tinues to generate resistance, most notably at Oxford University, traditional accounts of an heroic past—and by a combination of where the pros and cons of the inclusion of part of it as a com- creative intuition and conscious structuring had arrived at a pulsory element in the English course have been debated regu- unity of effect and a balanced order. He assumed, in other words, larly in recent years. that the Beowulf poet was an imaginative writer rather than some

For generations of undergraduates, academic study of the kind of back-formation derived from nineteenth-century folklore poem was often just a matter of construing the meaning, getting and philology. Tolkien's brilliant literary treatment changed the a grip on the grammar and vocabulary of Anglo-Saxon, and be- way the poem was valued and initiated a new era—and new ing able to recognize, translate, and comment upon random ex- terms—of appreciation. tracts which were presented in the examinations. For generations It is impossible to attain a full understanding and estimate of of scholars too the interest had been textual and philological; Beowulf without recourse to this immense body of commentary then there developed a body of research into analogues and and elucidation. Nevertheless, readers coming to the poem for sources, a quest for stories and episodes in the folklore and leg- the first time are likely to be as delighted as they are discomfited ends of the Nordic peoples which would parallel or foreshadow by the strangeness of the names and the immediate lack of episodes in Beowulf Scholars were also preoccupied with fixing known reference points. An English speaker new to The Iliad or the exact time and place of the poem's composition, paying The Odyssey or The Aeneid will probably at least have heard of minute attention to linguistic, stylistic, and scribal details. More Troy and Helen, or of Penelope and the Cyclops, or of Dido and generally, they tried to establish the history and genealogy of the the golden bough. These epics may be in Greek and Latin, yet the dynasties of Swedes and Geats and Danes to which the poet classical heritage has entered the cultural memory enshrined in makes constant allusion; and they devoted themselves to a con- English so thoroughly that their worlds are more familiar than sideration of the world-view behind the poem, asking to what that of the first native epic, even though it was composed cen-

x I Introduction Introduction \ xi

turies after them. Achilles rings a bell, but not Scyld Scefing. in a bunraku theatre in Japan, where the puppetry and the poetry Ithaca leads the mind in a certain direction, but not Heorot. The are mutually supportive, a mixture of technicolour spectacle and Sibyl of Cumae will stir certain associations, but not bad Queen ritual chant. Or we can equally envisage it as an animated car- Modthryth. First-time readers of Beowulf very quickly rediscover toon (and there has been at least one shot at this already), full of the meaning of the term "the dark ages," and it is in the hope of mutating graphics and minatory stereophonies. We can avoid, at dispelling some of the puzzlement they are bound to feel that I any rate, the slightly cardboard effect which the word "monster" have added the marginal glosses which appear in the following tends to introduce, and give the poem a fresh chance to sweep pages. "in off the moors, down through the mist bands" of Anglo-Saxon

Still, in spite of the sensation of being caught between a England, forward into the global village of the third millennium, "shield-wall" of opaque references and a "word-hoard" that is Nevertheless, the dream element and overall power to haunt old and strange, such readers are also bound to feel a certain come at a certain readerly price. The poem abounds in passages "shock of the new." This is because the poem possesses a mythic which will leave an unprepared audience bewildered. Just when potency. Like Shield Sheafson (as Scyld Scefing is known in this the narrative seems ready to take another step ahead into the translation), it arrives from somewhere beyond the known main Beowulf story, it sidesteps. For a moment it is as if we have bourne of our experience, and having fulfilled its purpose (again been channel-surfed into another poem, and at two points in this like Shield), it passes once more into the beyond. In the interven- translation I indicate that we are in fact participating in a poem- ing time, the poet conjures up a work as remote as Shield's fu- within-our-poem not only by the use of italics but by a slight neral boat borne towards the horizon, as commanding as the quickening of pace and shortening of metrical rein. The passages horn-pronged gables of King Hrothgar's hall, as solid and daz- occur in lines 883-914 and lines 1070-1158, and on each occasion zling as Beowulf's funeral pyre that is set ablaze at the end. a minstrel has begun to chant a poem as part of the celebration These opening and closing scenes retain a haunting presence in of Beowulf's achievement. In the former case, the minstrel ex- the mind; they are set pieces but they have the life-marking presses his praise by telling the story of Sigemund's victory over power of certain dreams. They are like the pillars of the gate of a dragon, which both parallels Beowulf's triumph over Grendel horn, through which wise dreams of true art can still be said to and prefigures his fatal encounter with the wyrm in his old age. pass. In the latter—the most famous of what were once called the "di-

What happens in between is what William Butler Yeats would gressions" in the poem, the one dealing with a fight between have called a phantasmagoria. Three agons, three struggles in Danes and Frisians at the stronghold of Finn, the Frisian king— which the preternatural force-for-evil of the hero's enemies the song the minstrel sings has a less obvious bearing on the im- comes springing at him in demonic shapes. Three encounters mediate situation of the hero, but its import is nevertheless with what the critical literature and the textbook glossaries call central to both the historical and the imaginative world of the "the monsters." In three archetypal sites of fear: the barricaded poem. night-house, the infested underwater current, and the reptile- The "Finnsburg episode" envelops us in a society that is at haunted rocks of a wilderness. If we think of the poem in this once honour-bound and blood-stained, presided over by the way, its place in world art becomes clearer and more secure. We laws of the blood-feud, where the kin of a person slain are bound can conceive of it re-presented and transformed in performance to exact a price for the death, either by slaying the killer or by re-

ii I Introduction Introduction \ xiii

ceiving satisfaction in the form of wergild (the "man-price"), a hall of his "ring-giver," Hygelac, lord of the Geats, the hero dis- legally fixed compensation. The claustrophobic and doom-laden courses about his adventures in a securely fortified cliff-top en- atmosphere of this interlude gives the reader an intense intima- closure. But this security is only temporary, for it is the destiny tion of what wyrd, or fate, meant not only to the characters in the of the Geat people to be left lordless in the end. Hygelac's al- Finn story but to those participating in the main action of Beowulf liances eventually involve him in deadly war with the Swedish itself. All conceive of themselves as hooped within the great king, Ongentheow, and even though he does not personally wheel of necessity, in thrall to a code of loyalty and bravery, deliver the fatal stroke (two of his thanes are responsible for bound to seek glory in the eye of the warrior world. The little na- this—see 11. 2484-89 and then the lengthier reprise of this mo- tions are grouped around their lord, the greater nations spoil for dent at II. 2922-3003), he is known in the poem as "Ongen- war and menace the little ones, a lord dies, defencelessness en- theow's killer." Hence it comes to pass that after the death of sues, the enemy strikes, vengeance for the dead becomes an ethic Beowulf, who eventually succeeds Hygelac, the Geats experience for the living, bloodshed begets further bloodshed, the wheel a great foreboding and the epic closes in a mood of sombre ex- turns, the generations tread and tread and tread. Which is what I pectation. A world is passing away, the Swedes and others are meant above when I said that the import of the Finnsburg pas- massing on the borders to attack, and there is no lord or hero to sage is central to the historical and imaginative world of the rally the defence, poem as a whole. The Swedes, therefore, are the third nation whose history and

One way of reading Beowulf is to think of it as three agons in destiny are woven into the narrative, and even though no part the hero's life, but another way would be to regard it as a poem of the main action is set in their territory, they and their kings which contemplates the destinies of three peoples by tracing constantly stalk the horizon of dread within which the main pro- their interweaving histories in the story of the central character. tagonists pursue their conflicts and allegiances. The Swedish di- First we meet the Danes—variously known as the Shieldings (af- mension gradually becomes an important element in the poem's ter Shield Sheafson, the founder of their line), the Ingwins, the emotional and imaginative geography, a geography which en- Spear-Danes, the Bright-Danes, the West-Danes, and so on—a tails, it should be said, no very clear map-sense of the world, people in the full summer of their power, symbolized by the high more an apprehension of menaced borders, of danger gathering hall built by King Hrothgar, one "meant to be a wonder of the beyond the mere and the marshes, of mearc-stapas "prowling the world." The threat to this gilded order comes from within, from moors, huge marauders / from some other world." marshes beyond the pale, from the bottom of the haunted mere Within these phantasmal boundaries, each lord's hall is an ac- where "Cain's clan," in the shape of Grendel and his troll-dam, tual and a symbolic refuge. Here is heat and light, rank and cere- trawl and scavenge and bide their time. But it also comes from mony, human solidarity and culture; the dugud share the without, from the Heathobards, for example, whom the Danes mead-benches with the geogod, the veterans with their tales of have defeated in battle and from whom they can therefore expect warrior kings and hero-saviours from the past rub shoulders retaliatory war (see 11. 2020-69). with young braves—pegnas, eorlas, thanes, retainers—keen to

Beowulf actually predicts this turn of events when he goes win such renown in the future. The prospect of gaining a glori- back to his own country after saving the Danes (for the time be- ous name in the wael-raes, in the rush of battle-slaughter, the ing, at any rate) by staving off the two "reavers from hell." In the pride of defending one's lord and bearing heroic witness to the

'v I Introduction Introduction | xv

integrity of the bond between him and his hall-companions—a For every one of us, living in this world bond sealed in the gleo and gidd of peace-time feasting and ring- means waiting for our end. Let whoever can giving—this is what gave drive and sanction to the Germanic win glory before death. When a warrior is gone, warrior-culture enshrined in Beowulf. that will he his best and only bulwark. (II. 1384-89)

Heorot and Hygelac's hall are the hubs of this value system upon which the poem's action turns. But there is another, outer In an age when "the instability of the human subject" is con- rim of value, a circumference of understanding within which the stantly argued for if not presumed, there should be no problem heroic world is occasionally viewed as from a distance and rec- with a poem which is woven from two such different psychic ognized for what it is, an earlier state of consciousness and oil- fabrics. In fact, Beowulf perfectly answers the early modern con- ture, one which has not been altogether shed but which has now ception of a work of creative imagination as one in which con- been comprehended as part of another pattern. And this circum- flicting realities find accommodation within a new order; and ference and pattern arise, of course, from the poet's Christianity this reconciliation occurs, it seems to me, most poignantly and and from his perspective as an Englishman looking back at most profoundly in the poem's third section, once the dragon en- places and legends which his ancestors knew before they made ters the picture and the hero in old age must gather his powers their migration from continental Europe to their new home on for the final climactic ordeal. From the moment Beowulf ad- the island of the Britons. As a consequence of his doctrinal certi- vances under the crags, into the comfortless arena bounded by tude, which is as composed as it is ardent, the poet can view the the rock-wall, the reader knows he is one of those "marked by story-time of his poem with a certain historical detachment and fate." The poetry is imbued with a strong intuition of wyrd hov- even censure the ways of those who lived in Mo tempore: ering close, "unknowable but certain," and yet, because it is

imagined within a consciousness which has learned to expect Sometimes at pagan shrines they vowed that the soul will find an ultimate home "among the steadfast offerings to idols, swore oaths ones," this primal human emotion has been transmuted into that the killer of souls might come to their aid something less "zero at the bone," more metaphysically tem- and save the people. That was their way, pered. their heathenish hope; deep in their hearts A similar transposition from a plane of regard which is, as it they remembered hell. (II. 175-80) were, helmeted and hall-bound to one which sees things in a

slightly more heavenly light is discernible in the different ways At the same time, as a result of his inherited vernacular culture the poet imagines gold. Gold is a constant element, gleaming and the imaginative sympathy which distinguishes him as an solidly in underground vaults, on the breasts of queens or the artist, the poet can lend the full weight of his rhetorical power to arms and regalia of warriors on the mead-benches. It is loaded Beowulf as he utters the first principles of the northern warrior's into boats as spoil, handed out in bent bars as hall gifts, buried in honour-code: the earth as treasure, persisting underground as an affirmation of

a people's glorious past and an elegy for it. It pervades the ethos It is always better of the poem the way sex pervades consumer culture. And yet the

to avenge dear ones than to indulge in mourning. bullion with which Waels's son, Sigemund, weighs down the

vi I Introduction Introduction \ xvii

hold after an earlier dragon-slaying triumph (in the old days, a s the s e a around cliffs," utterly a manifestation of the Germanic long before Beowulf's time) is a more trustworthy substance than heroic code. that which is secured behind the walls of Beowulf's barrow. By Enter then, fifty years later, the dragon. From his dry-stone the end of the poem, gold has suffered a radiation from the vau l t> from a nest where he is heaped in coils around the body- Christian vision. It is not that it yet equals riches in the medieval heated gold. Once he is wakened, there is something glorious in sense of worldly corruption, just that its status as the ore of all the way he manifests himself, a Fourth of July effulgence fire- value has been put in doubt. It is lsene, transitory, passing from working its path across the night sky; and yet, because of the hand to hand, and its changed status is registered as a symptom centuries he has spent dormant in the tumulus, there is a found- of the changed world. Once the dragon is disturbed, the melan- edness as well as a lambency about him. He is at once a stratum choly and sense of displacement which pervade the last move- o f the earth and a streamer in the air, no painted dragon but a fig- ment of the poem enter the hoard as a disabling and ominous u r e of real oneiric power, one that can easily survive the preju- light. And the dragon himself, as a genius of the older order, is d i c e which arises at the very mention of the word "dragon." bathed in this light, so that even as he begins to stir, the reader Whether in medieval art or in modern Disney cartoons, the has a premonition that the days of his empery are numbered. dragon can strike us as far less horrific than he is meant to be, but

Nevertheless, the dragon has a wonderful inevitability about i n the final movement of Beowulf, he lodges himself in the imagi- him and a unique glamour. It is not that the other monsters are n a t ion as wyrd rather than wyrm, more a destiny than a set of rep- lacking in presence and aura; it is more that they remain, for all tilian vertebrae. their power to terrorize, creatures of the physical world. Grendel Grendel and his mother enter Beowulf's life from the outside, comes alive in the reader's imagination as a kind of dog-breath accidentally, challenges which in other circumstances he might in the dark, a fear of collision with some hard-boned and im- n o t have taken up, enemies from whom he might have been dis- mensely strong android frame, a mixture of Caliban and hoplite. tracted or deflected. The dragon, on the other hand, is a given of And while his mother too has a definite brute-bearing about her, his home ground, abiding in his underearth as in his understand- a creature of slouch and lunge on land if seal-swift in the water, i n& waiting for the meeting, the watcher at the ford, the ques- she nevertheless retains a certain non-strangeness. As antago- t i o n e r who sits so sly, the "lion-limb," as Gerard Manley Hopkins nists of a hero being tested, Grendel and his mother possess an might have called him, against whom Beowulf's body and soul appropriate head-on strength. The poet may need them as fig- m us t measure themselves. Dragon equals shadow-line, the ures who do the devil's work, but the poem needs them more as psalmist's valley of the shadow of death, the embodiment of a figures who call up and show off Beowulf's physical might and knowledge deeply ingrained in the species which is the very his superb gifts as a warrior. They are the right enemies for a knowledge of the price to be paid for physical and spiritual sur- young glory-hunter, instigators of the formal boast, worthy vival. trophies to be carried back from the grim testing-ground— I r has often been observed that all the scriptural references in Grendel's arm is ripped off and nailed up, his head severed and Beowulf are to the Old Testament. The poet is more in sympathy paraded in Heorot. It is all consonant with the surge of youth with the tragic, waiting, unredeemed phase of things than with and the compulsion to win fame "as wide as the wind's home, / any transcendental promise. Beowulf's mood as he gets ready to

xviii | Introduction Introduction | xix

fight the dragon-who could be read as a projection of Beowulf's The wisdom °fa8e is worthless to him' own chthonic wisdom refined in the crucible of experience-re- Mornin8 afier morninZ' he wakes to remember calls the mood of other tragic heroes: Oedipus at Colonus, Lear at that his cMd has 8one; he has n0 interest

his "ripeness is all" extremity, Hamlet in the last illuminations of in livin8 on until another heir

his "prophetic soul": rS born in the Ml" • '

„ „ „„ , , u .• Alone with his longing, he lies down on his bed no easy bargain ° 6

would be made in that place by any man. and sin2s a lament; ^ything seems too large, the steadings and the fields.

The veteran king sat down on the cliff-top. He wished good luck to the Geats who had shared S u c h P a s s a § e s m a r k a n u l t i m a t e s t a S e i n P o e t i c attainment; they his hearth and his gold. He was sad at heart, a r e t h e ^aginative equivalent of Beowulf's spiritual state at the

unsettled yet ready, sensing his death. e n d ' w h e n h e t e l l s h i s m e n t h a t " d o o m o f b a t t l e w i l 1 b e a r [theirl His fate hovered near, unknowable but certain. (II. 2415-21) l o r d a w a y ' " i n the s a m e w a ^ t h a t t h e ^a-journeys so vividly de-

scribed in lines 210-28 and 1903-24 are the equivalent of his ex-

Here the poet attains a level of insight that approaches the vision- " e ' ary. The subjective and the inevitable are in perfect balance, what A t t h e s e m o m e n t s o f lY™ intensity, the keel of the poetry is is solidly established is bathed in an element which is completely deeP*y s e t i n the e l e m e n t o f s e n s a t i ° n w h i l e t h e mind's l o o k ° u t

sixth-sensed, and indeed the whole slow-motion, constantly self- s w a y s metrically and far-sightedly in the element of pure corn- deferring approach to the hero's death and funeral continues to prehension. Which is to say that the elevation of Beowulf is al- be like this. Beowulf's soul may not yet have fled "to its destined w a y s ' Paradoxically, buoyantly down to earth. And nowhere is place among the steadfast ones," but there is already a beyond- Ms m o r e o b v i o u s l y a n d memorably the case than in the account ,1 . . 1. . ,.. , . 1 . , , of the hero's funeral with which the poem ends. Here the inex- the-grave aspect to him, a revenant quality about his resoluteness. r This is not just metrical narrative full of anthropological interest o r a b l e a n d the e l e S i a c c o m b i n e i n a description of the funeral and typical heroic-age motifs; it is poetry of a high order, in which Pyr e b e i n S S o t r e a d y - i h e body b e i n § b u r n t ' a n d ihe b a r r o w b e i n § passages of great lyric intensity-such as the "Lay of the Last Sur- constructed-a scene at once immemorial and oddly contempo- vivor" (11. 2247-^6) and, even more remarkably, the so-called "Fa- ^ T h e G e a t w o m a n w h o c r i e s o u t i n d r e a d a s ^ flames c o n " ther's Lament" (11. 2 4 4 4^2) - r i se like emanations from some s u m e t h e b o d y o f h e r d e a d l o r d c o u l d c o m e s t r a i § h t f r o m a fissure in the bedrock of the human capacity to endure: late-twentieth-century news report, from Rwanda or Kosovo; her

keen is a nightmare glimpse into the minds of people who have It was like the misery felt by an old man s u r v i v e d t r a u m a t i c ' e v e n monstrous events and who are now be- who has lived to see his son's body i n S e x P o s e d t o a comfortless future. We immediately recognize swing on the gallows. He begins to keen h e r Predicament and the pitch of her grief and find ourselves the and weep for his boy, watching the raven b e t t e r f o r h a v i n S ^em expressed with such adequacy and dig- gloat where he hangs: he can be of no help. ^ a n d ^forgiving truth:

I T , , , . Introduction \ xxi KX J Introduction '

On a height they kindled the hugest of all sary of hard words in longhand, try to pick a way through the funeral fires; fumes ofwoodsmoke syntax, get the run of the meaning established in my head, and billowed darkly up, the blaze roared then hope that the lines could be turned into metrical shape and and drowned out their weeping, wind died down raised to the power of verse. Often, however, the whole attempt and flames wrought havoc in the hot bone-house, to turn it into modern English seemed to me like trying to bring burning it to the core. They were disconsolate down a megalith with a toy hammer. What had been so attractive and wailed aloud for their lord's decease. in the first place, the hand-built, rock-sure feel of the thing, began A Geat woman too sang out in grief, to defeat me. I turned to other work, the commissioning editors with hair bound up, she unburdened herself did not pursue me, and the project went into abeyance. of her worst fears, a wild litany Even so, I had an instinct that it should not be let go. An un- of nightmare and lament: her nation invaded, derstanding I had worked out for myself concerning my own Iin- enemies on the rampage, bodies in piles, guistic and literary origins made me reluctant to abandon the slavery and abasement. Heaven swallowed the smoke. task. I had noticed, for example, that without any conscious in-

(11. 3143-55) tent on my part certain lines in the first poem in my first book conformed to the requirements of Anglo-Saxon metrics. These lines were made up of two balancing halves, each half containing

ABOUT THIS TRANSLATION two stressed syllables—"the spade sinks into gravelly ground: When I was an undergraduate at Queen's University, Belfast, I / My father, digging. I look down"—and in the case of the sec- studied Beowulf and other Anglo-Saxon poems and developed ond line, there was alliteration linking "digging" and "down" not only a feel for the language but a fondness for the melan- across the caesura. Part of me, in other words, had been writing choly and fortitude that characterized the poetry. Consequently, Anglo-Saxon from the start. when an invitation to translate the poem arrived from the editors This was not surprising, given that the poet who had first of The Norton Anthology of English Literature, I was tempted to try formed my ear was Gerard Manley Hopkins. Hopkins was a chip my hand. While I had no great expertise in Old English, I had a off the Old English block, and the earliest lines I published when strong desire to get back to the first stratum of the language and I was a student were as much pastiche Anglo-Saxon as they were to "assay the hoard" (1. 2509). This was during the middle years pastiche Hopkins: "Starling thatch-watches and sudden swallow of the 1980s, when I had begun a regular teaching job at Harvard / Straight breaks to mud-nest, home-rest rafter" and so on. I and was opening my ear to the untethered music of some con- have written about all this elsewhere and about the relation of temporary American poetry. Saying yes to the Beowulf commis- my Hopkins ventriloquism to the speech patterns of Ulster—es- sion would be (I argued with myself) a kind of aural antidote, a pecially as these were caricatured by the poet W. R. Rodgers. Ul- way of ensuring that my linguistic anchor would stay lodged on ster people, according to Rodgers, are "an abrupt people / who the Anglo-Saxon sea-floor. So I undertook to do it. like the spiky consonants of speech / and think the soft ones

Very soon, however, I hesitated. It was labour-intensive work, cissy" and get a kick out of "anything that gives or takes attack / scriptorium-slow. I worked dutifully, like a sixth-former at home- like Micks, Teagues, tinkers' gets, Vatican." work. I would set myself twenty lines a day, write out my glos- Joseph Brodsky once said that poets' biographies are present in

xxii I Introduction Introduction | xxiii

the sounds they make and I suppose all I am saying is that I con- uisce, meaning water, and that the River Usk in Britain is there- sider Beowulf to be part of my voice-right. And yet to persuade fore to some extent the River Uisce (or Whiskey); and so in my myself that I was born into its language and that its language mind the stream was suddenly turned into a kind of linguistic was born into me took a while: for somebody who grew up in the river of rivers issuing from a pristine Celto-British Land of Cock- political and cultural conditions of Lord Brookeborough's North- aigne, a riverrun of Finnegans Wakespeak pouring out of the ern Ireland, it could hardly have been otherwise. cleft rock of some pre-political, prelapsarian, ur-philological

Sprung from an Irish nationalist background and educated at a Big Rock Candy Mountain—and all of this had a wonderfully Northern Irish Catholic school, I had learned the Irish language sweetening effect upon me. The Irish /English duality, the and lived within a cultural and ideological frame that regarded it Celtic/Saxon antithesis were momentarily collapsed, and in the as the language which I should by rights have been speaking but resulting etymological eddy a gleam of recognition flashed which I had been robbed of. I have also written, for example, through the synapses and I glimpsed an elsewhere of potential about the thrill I experienced when I stumbled upon the word which seemed at the same time to be a somewhere being remem- lachtar in my Irish-English dictionary and found that this word, bered. The place on the language map where the Usk and the which my aunt had always used when speaking of a flock of uisce and the whiskey coincided was definitely a place where the chicks, was in fact an Irish language word, and, more than that, spirit might find a loophole, an escape route from what John an Irish word associated in particular with County Deny. Yet Montague has called "the partitioned intellect," away into some here it was, surviving in my aunt's English speech generations unpartitioned linguistic country, a region where one's language after her forebears and mine had ceased to speak Irish. For a long would not be a simple badge of ethnicity or a matter of cultural time, therefore, the little word was—to borrow a simile from preference or official imposition, but an entry into further Ian- Joyce—like a rapier point of consciousness pricking me with an guage. And I eventually came upon one of these loopholes in awareness of language-loss and cultural dispossession, and Beowulf itself. tempting me into binary thinking about language. I tended to What happened was that I found in the glossary to C. L. conceive of English and Irish as adversarial tongues, as either/or Wrenn's edition of the poem the Old English word meaning "to conditions rather than both/ands, and this was an attitude which suffer," the word polian; and although at first it looked com- for a long time hampered the development of a more confident pletely strange with its thorn symbol instead of the familiar th, I and creative way of dealing with the whole vexed question—the gradually realized that it was not strange at all, for it was the question, that is, of the relationship between nationality, Ian- word that older and less educated people would have used in the guage, history, and literary tradition in Ireland. country where I grew up. "They'll just have to learn to thole," my

Luckily, I glimpsed the possibility of release from this kind of aunt would say about some family who had suffered an unfore- cultural determinism early on, in my first arts year at Queen's seen bereavement. And now suddenly here was "thole" in the University, Belfast, when we were lectured on the history of the official textual world, mediated through the apparatus of a schol- English language by Professor John Braidwood. Braidwood arly edition, a little bleeper to remind me that my aunt's lan- could not help informing us, for example, that the word guage was not just a self-enclosed family possession but an "whiskey" is the same word as the Irish and Scots Gaelic word historical heritage, one that involved the journey polian had

:iv | Introduction Introduction | xxv

made north into Scotland and then across into Ulster with the thing to find the tuning fork that will give you the note and pitch planters and then across from the planters to the locals who had for the overall music of the work. Without some melody sensed or originally spoken Irish and then farther across again when the promised, it is simply impossible for a poet to establish the trans- Scots Irish emigrated to the American South in the eighteenth lator's right-of-way into and through a text. I was therefore lucky century. When I read in John Crowe Ransom the line "Sweet to hear this enabling note almost straight away, a familiar local ladies, long may ye bloom, and toughly I hope ye may thole," my voice, one that had belonged to relatives of my father's, people heart lifted again, the world widened, something was furthered. whom I had once described in a poem as "big voiced Scullions." The far-flungness of the word, the phenomenological pleasure of I called them "big voiced" because when the men of the family finding it variously transformed by Ransom's modernity and spoke, the words they uttered came across with a weighty dis- Beowulf's venerability made me feel vaguely something for tinctness, phonetic units as separate and defined as delph plat- which again I only found the words years later. What I was expe- ters displayed on a dresser shelf. A simple sentence such as "We riencing as I kept meeting up with thole on its multicultural cut the corn to-day" took on immense dignity when one of the odyssey was the feeling which Osip Mandelstam once denned as Scullions spoke it. They had a kind of Native American solem- a "nostalgia for world culture." And this was a nostalgia I didn't nity of utterance, as if they were announcing verdicts rather than even know I suffered until I experienced its fulfilment in this lit- making small talk. And when I came to ask myself how I wanted tie epiphany. It was as if, on the analogy of baptism by desire, I Beowulf to sound in my version, I realized I wanted it to be speak- had undergone something like illumination by philology. And able by one of those relatives. I therefore tried to frame the fa- even though I did not know it at the time, I had by then reached mous opening lines in cadences that would have suited their the point where I was ready to translate Beowulf. Polian had voices, but that still echoed with the sound and sense of the opened my right-of-way. Anglo-Saxon:

So, in a sense, the decision to accept Norton's invitation was taken thirty-five years before the invitation was actually issued. Hwaet we Gar-Dena in gear-dagum But between one's sense of readiness to take on a subject and the peod-cyninga prym gefrunon, actual inscription of the first lines, there is always a problematical hu da sepelingas ellen fremedon. hiatus. To put it another way: from the point of view of the writer, words in a poem need what the Polish poet Anna Swir Conventional renderings of hwaet, the first word of the poem, once called "the equivalent of a biological right to life." The tend towards the archaic literary, with "lo" and "hark" and erotics of composition are essential to the process, some pre- "behold" and "attend" and—more colloquially—"listen" being reflective excitation and orientation, some sense that your own some of the solutions offered previously. But in Hiberno-English little verse-craft can dock safe and sound at the big quay of the Scullionspeak, the particle "so" came naturally to the rescue, be- language. And this is as true for translators as it is for poets at- cause in that idiom "so" operates as an expression which obliter- tempting original work. ates all previous discourse and narrative, and at the same time

It is one thing to find lexical meanings for the words and to functions as an exclamation calling for immediate attention. So, have some feel for how the metre might go, but it is quite another "so" it was:

KXVI | Introduction Introduction ) xxvii

So. The Spear-Danes in days gone by sometimes I alliterate only in one half of the line. When these and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness. breaches occur, it is because I prefer to let the natural "sound of We have heard of those princes' heroic campaigns. sense" prevail over the demands of the convention: I have been

reluctant to force an artificial shape or an unusual word choice I came to the task of translating Beowulf with a prejudice just for the sake of correctness,

favour of forthright delivery. I remembered the voice of the pot In general, the alliteration varies from the shadowy to the sub- as being attractively direct, even though the diction was orn, stantial, from the properly to the improperly distributed. Sub- and the narrative method at times oblique. What I had alwa stantial and proper are such lines as loved was a kind of foursquareness about the utterance, a feeli of living inside a constantly indicative mood, in the presence The fortunes of war favoured Hrothgar (I. 64) an understanding that assumes you share an awareness of t the highest in the land, would lend advice (I. 172) perilous nature of life and are yet capable of seeing it stead and find friendship in the Father's embrace (I. 188). and, when necessary, sternly. There is an undeluded qual: about the Beowulf poet's sense of the world which gives his lir Here the caesura is definite, there are two stresses in each half of immense emotional credibility and allows him to make gene: the line, and the first stressed syllable of the second half alliter- observations about life which are far too grounded in expe ates with the first or the second or both of the stressed syllables ence and reticence to be called "moralizing." These so-call in the first half. The main deviation from this is one which other "gnomic" parts of the poem have the cadence and force of earn translators have allowed themselves—the freedom, that is, to al- wisdom, and their combination of cogency and verity was age literate on the fourth stressed syllable, a practice which breaks something that I could remember from the speech I heard as the rule but which nevertheless does bind the line together: youngster in the Scullion kitchen. When I translate lines 24-25 "Behaviour that's admired / is the path to power among peot We have heard of those princes' heroic campaigns (I. 3) everywhere," I am attending as much to the grain of my origir and he crossed dver into the Lord's keeping (I. 27). vernacular as to the content of the Anglo-Saxon lines. But th the evidence suggests that this middle ground between oral h In the course of the translation, such deviations, distortions, syn- dition and the demands of written practice was also the groui copations, and extensions do occur; what I was after first and occupied by the Beowulf poet. The style of the poem is hospital foremost was a narrative line that sounded as if it meant busi- to the kind of formulaic phrases which are the stock-in-trade ness, and I was prepared to sacrifice other things in pursuit of oral bards, and yet it is marked too by the self-consciousness this directness of utterance. an artist convinced that "we must labour to be beautiful." The appositional nature of the Old English syntax, for exam-

In one area, my own labours have been less than thoroug pie, is somewhat slighted here, as is the Beowulf poet's resource- going. I have not followed the strict metrical rules that bound t fulness with synonyms and (to a lesser extent) his genius for Anglo-Saxon scop. I have been guided by the fundamental pi compound-making, kennings, and all sorts of variation. Usu- tern of four stresses to the line, but I allow myself several trar ally—as at line 1209, where I render yda ful as "frothing wave- gressions. For example, I don't always employ alliteration, ai vat," and line 1523, where beado-leoma becomes "battle-torch"—I

yiii I Introduction Introduction \ xxix

try to match the poefs analogy-seeking habit at its most original; A ~\Jn+p n n Mam PI and I use all the common coinages for the lord of the nation, variously referred to as "ring-giver," "treasure-giver," "his peo- ple's shield" or "shepherd" or "helmet." I have been less faithful, however, to the way the poet rings the changes when it comes to compounds meaning a sword or a spear or a battle or any bloody encounter with foes. Old English abounds in vigorous and evoc- ative and specifically poetic words for these things, but I have tended to follow modern usage and in the main have called a sword a sword.

There was one area, however, where a certain strangeness in old English, like Modern German, contained many compound the diction came naturally. In those instances where a local Ulster words, most of which have been lost in Modern English. Most of word seemed either poetically or historically right, I felt free to the names in Beowulf are compounds. Hrothgar is a combination use it. For example, at lines 324 and 2988 I use the word "graith" 0f w o r d s meaning "glory" and "spear"; the name of his older for "harness" and at 3026 "hoked" for "rooted about" because brother, Heorogar, comes from "army" and "spear"; Hrothgar's the local term seemed in each case to have special body and s o n s Hrethric and Hrothmund contain the first elements of their force. Then, for reasons of historical suggestiveness, I have in father's name combined, respectively, with ric (kingdom, empire, several instances used the word "bawn" to refer to Hrothgar's Modern German Reich) and mund (hand, protection). As in the hall. In Elizabethan English, bawn (from the Irish bd-dhun, a fort c a s e Gf the Danish dynasty, family names often alliterate. Mascu- for cattle) referred specifically to the fortified dwellings which i m e n a m e s of the warrior class have military associations. The the English planters built in Ireland to keep the dispossessed na- importance of family and the demands of alliteration frequently fives at bay, so it seemed the proper term to apply to the embat- ie ad to the designation of characters by formulas identifying tied keep where Hrothgar waits and watches. Indeed, every time them in terms of relationships. Thus Beowulf is referred to as I read the lovely interlude that tells of the minstrel singing in " s o n 0f Ecgtheow" or "kinsman of Hygelac" (his uncle and lord). Heorot just before the first attacks of Grendel, I cannot help The Old English spellings of names are mostly preserved in thinking of Edmund Spenser in Kilcolman Castle, reading the the translation. A few rules of pronunciation are worth keeping early cantos of The Faerie Queene to Sir Walter Raleigh, just before m m i n d . initial H before r was sounded, and so Hrothgar's name the Irish burned the castle and drove Spenser out of Munster alliterates with that of his brother Heorogar. The combination eg back to the Elizabethan court. Putting a bawn into Beowulf seems has the value of dg in words like "edge." The first element in the one way for an Irish poet to come to terms with that complex his- n a m e of Beowulf's father "Ecgtheow" is the same word as tory of conquest and colony, absorption and resistance, integrity "edge/' and, by the figure of speech called synecdoche (a part of and antagonism, a history which has to be clearly acknowledged something stands for the whole), ecg stands for sword and Ecg- by all concerned in order to render it ever more "willable for- theow means "sword-servant." ward / Again and again and again." Alfred David

S.H.

xx I Introduction

B E O W U L F

So. The Spear-Danes in days gone by The Dmes have , . , 1 1 1 1 i legends about their

and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness. warrior kings The We have heard of those princes' heroic campaigns. most famous was

Shield Shea/son, who founded the ruling

There was Shield Sheafson, scourge of many tribes, h°use

a wrecker of mead-benches, rampaging among foes. This terror of the hall-troops had come far. A foundling to start with, he would flourish later on as his powers waxed and his worth was proved. In the end each clan on the outlying coasts

io beyond the whale-road had to yield to him and begin to pay tribute. That was one good king.

Afterwards a boy-child was born to Shield, a cub in the yard, a comfort sent by God to that nation. He knew what they had tholed, the long times and troubles they'd come through without a leader; so the Lord of Life, the glorious Almighty, made this man renowned. Shield had fathered a famous son: Beow's name was known through the north.

20 And a young prince must be prudent like that, giving freely while his father lives so that afterwards in age when fighting starts

B E O W U L F 3

steadfast companions will stand by him and hold the line. Behaviour that's admired is the path to power among people everywhere.

Shield was still thriving when his time came sudd's fut and he crossed over into the Lord's keeping. His warrior band did what he bade them when he laid down the law among the Danes:

30 they shouldered him out to the sea's flood, the chief they revered who had long ruled them. A ring-whorled prow rode in the harbour, ice-clad, outbound, a craft for a prince. They stretched their beloved lord in his boat, laid out by the mast, amidships, the great ring-giver. Far-fetched treasures were piled upon him, and precious gear. I never heard before of a ship so well furbished with battle tackle, bladed weapons

40 and coats of mail. The massed treasure was loaded on top of him: it would travel far on out into the ocean's sway. They decked his body no less bountifully with offerings than those first ones did who cast him away when he was a child and launched him alone out over the waves. And they set a gold standard up high above his head and let him drift to wind and tide, bewailing him

50 and mourning their loss. No man can tell, no wise man in hall or weathered veteran knows for certain who salvaged that load.

Then it fell to Beow to keep the forts.

B E O W U L F 5

He was well regarded and ruled the Danes shield's heirs: his for a long time after his father took leave s°n Beow succeedl

° by Halfdane,

of his life on earth. And then his heir, Halfdane by the great Halfdane, held sway Hroth^r

for as long as he lived, their elder and warlord. He was four times a father, this fighter prince:

60 one by one they entered the world, Heorogar, Hrothgar, the good Halga and a daughter, I have heard, who was Onela's queen, a balm in bed to the battle-scarred Swede.

The fortunes of war favoured Hrothgar. King Hrothgar Friends and kinsmen flocked to his ranks, buMs Heorot HaU

young followers, a force that grew to be a mighty army. So his mind turned to hall-building: he handed down orders for men to work on a great mead-hall

70 meant to be a wonder of the world forever; it would be his throne-room and there he would dispense his God-given goods to young and old— but not the common land or people's lives. Far and wide through the world, I have heard, orders for work to adorn that wallstead were sent to many peoples. And soon it stood there, finished and ready, in full view, the hall of halls. Heorot was the name he had settled on it, whose utterance was law.

80 Nor did he renege, but doled out rings and torques at the table. The hall towered, its gables wide and high and awaiting a barbarous burning. That doom abided, but in time it would come: the killer instinct unleashed among in-laws, the blood-lust rampant.

B E O W U L F 7

Then a powerful demon, a prowler through the dark, Hemot is threatened nursed a hard grievance. It harrowed him to hear the din of the loud banquet every day in the hall, the harp being struck

90 and the clear song of a skilled poet telling with mastery of man's beginnings, how the Almighty had made the earth a gleaming plain girdled with waters; in His splendour He set the sun and the moon to be earth's lamplight, lanterns for men, and filled the broad lap of the world with branches and leaves; and quickened life in every other thing that moved.

So times were pleasant for the people there Grendel, a monster until finally one, a fiend out of hell, descended from

J Cain s clan,

began to work his evil in the world. begins to prowl Grendel was the name of this grim demon haunting the marches, marauding round the heath and the desolate fens; he had dwelt for a time in misery among the banished monsters, Cain's clan, whom the Creator had outlawed and condemned as outcasts. For the killing of Abel the Eternal Lord had exacted a price: Cain got no good from committing that murder

no because the Almighty made him anathema and out of the curse of his exile there sprang ogres and elves and evil phantoms and the giants too who strove with God time and again until He gave them their reward.

So, after nightfall, Grendel set out Grendel attacks for the lofty house, to see how the Ring-Danes eoro>

B E O W U L F 9

were settling into it after their drink, and there he came upon them, a company of the best asleep from their feasting, insensible to pain

120 and human sorrow. Suddenly then the God-cursed brute was creating havoc: greedy and grim, he grabbed thirty men from their resting places and rushed to his lair, flushed up and inflamed from the raid, blundering back with the butchered corpses.

Then as dawn brightened and the day broke Grendel's powers of destruction were plain: their wassail was over, they wept to heaven and mourned under morning. Their mighty prince,

130 the storied leader, sat stricken and helpless, humiliated by the loss of his guard, bewildered and stunned, staring aghast at the demon's trail, in deep distress. He was numb with grief, but got no respite for one night later merciless Grendel struck again with more gruesome murders. Malignant by nature, he never showed remorse. It was easy then to meet with a man shifting himself to a safer distance

140 to bed in the bothies, for who could be blind to the evidence of his eyes, the obviousness of that hall-watcher's hate? Whoever escaped kept a weather-eye open and moved away.

So Grendel ruled in defiance of right, King Hrothgar's one against all, until the greatest house , l!f7ss""

0 ° helplessness

in the world stood empty, a deserted wallstead. For twelve winters, seasons of woe,

B E O W U L F 1 1

the lord of the Shieldings suffered under his load of sorrow; and so, before long,

150 the news was known over the whole world. Sad lays were sung about the beset king, the vicious raids and ravages of Grendel, his long and unrelenting feud, nothing but war; how he would never parley or make peace with any Dane nor stop his death-dealing nor pay the death-price. No counsellor could ever expect fair reparation from those rabid hands. All were endangered; young and old

160 were hunted down by that dark death-shadow who lurked and swooped in the long nights on the misty moors; nobody knows where these reavers from hell roam on their errands.

So Grendel waged his lonely war, inflicting constant cruelties on the people, atrocious hurt. He took over Heorot, haunted the glittering hall after dark, but the throne itself, the treasure-seat, he was kept from approaching; he was the Lord's outcast.

170 These were hard times, heart-breaking The Danes, hard- tor the prince of the Shieldings; powerful counsellors, frfse 'turyor

r o r neip f0 heathen gods

the highest in the land, would lend advice, plotting how best the bold defenders might resist and beat off sudden attacks. Sometimes at pagan shrines they vowed offerings to idols, swore oaths that the killer of souls might come to their aid and save the people. That was their way,

B E O W U L F 13

their heathenish hope; deep in their hearts 180 they remembered hell. The Almighty Judge

of good deeds and bad, the Lord God, Head of the Heavens and High King of the World, was unknown to them. Oh, cursed is he who in time of trouble has to thrust his soul in the fire's embrace, forfeiting help; he has nowhere to turn. But blessed is he who after death can approach the Lord and find friendship in the Father's embrace.

So that troubled time continued, woe 190 that never stopped, steady affliction

for Halfdane's son, too hard an ordeal. There was panic after dark, people endured raids in the night, riven by the terror.

When he heard about Grendel, Hygelac's thane At the court of King was on home ground, over in Geatland. vgeac'" eat

warrior prepares to

There was no one else like him alive. help Hmthgar In his day, he was the mightiest man on earth, high-born and powerful. He ordered a boat that would ply the waves. He announced his plan:

200 to sail the swan's road and search out that king, the famous prince who needed defenders. Nobody tried to keep him from going, no elder denied him, dear as he was to them. Instead, they inspected omens and spurred his ambition to go, whilst he moved about like the leader he was, enlisting men, the best he could find; with fourteen others the warrior boarded the boat as captain, a canny pilot along coast and currents.

B E O W U L F 15

210 Time went by, the boat was on water, The hem and his in close under the cliffs. t r o of sffrom the

land ofthe Geats

Men climbed eagerly up the gangplank, sand churned in surf, warriors loaded a cargo of weapons, shining war-gear in the vessel's hold, then heaved out, away with a will in their wood-wreathed ship. Over the waves, with the wind behind her and foam at her neck, she flew like a bird until her curved prow had covered the distance

220 and on the following day, at the due hour, those seafarers sighted land, sunlit cliffs, sheer crags and looming headlands, the landfall they sought. It was the end of their voyage and the Geats vaulted over the side, out on to the sand, and moored their ship. There was a clash of mail and a thresh of gear. They thanked God for that easy crossing on a calm sea.

When the watchman on the wall, the Shieldings' lookout The Danish cmst- 230 whose job it was to guard the sea-cliffs, suard chaUe"g^the

outsiders

saw shields glittering on the gangplank and battle-equipment being unloaded he had to find out who and what the arrivals were. So he rode to the shore, this horseman of Hrothgar's, and challenged them in formal terms, flourishing his spear:

"What kind of men are you who arrive rigged out for combat in coats of mail, sailing here over the sea-lanes

240 in your steep-hulled boat? I have been stationed

B E O W U L F 17

as lookout on this coast for a long time. My job is to watch the waves for raiders, any danger to the Danish shore. Never before has a force under arms disembarked so openly—not bothering to ask if the sentries allowed them safe passage or the clan had consented. Nor have I seen a mightier man-at-arms on this earth than the one standing here: unless I am mistaken,

250 he is truly noble. This is no mere hanger-on in a hero's armour. So now, before you fare inland as interlopers, I have to be informed about who you are and where you hail from. Outsiders from across the water, I say it again: the sooner you tell where you come from and why, the better."

The leader of the troop unlocked his word-hoard; The Geat hero the distinguished one delivered this answer: m ~ s hi™df

" and explains his

260 "We belong by birth to the Geat people mission and owe allegiance to Lord Hygelac. In his day, my father was a famous man, a noble warrior-lord named Ecgtheow. He outlasted many a long winter and went on his way. All over the world men wise in counsel continue to remember him. We come in good faith to find your lord and nation's shield, the son of Halfdane. Give us the right advice and direction.

270 We have arrived here on a great errand to the lord of the Danes, and I believe therefore there should be nothing hidden or withheld between us.

B E O W U L F 1 9

So tell us if what we have heard is true about this threat, whatever it is, this danger abroad in the dark nights, this corpse-maker mongering death in the Shieldings' country. I come to proffer my wholehearted help and counsel. I can show the wise Hrothgar a way

280 to defeat his enemy and find respite— if any respite is to reach him, ever. I can calm the turmoil and terror in his mind. Otherwise, he must endure woes and live with grief for as long as his hall stands at the horizon, on its high ground."

Undaunted, sitting astride his horse, The coast-guard the coast-guard answered, "Anyone with gumption all™s the Geats t0

and a sharp mind will take the measure of two things: what's said and what's done.

290 I believe what you have told me: that you are a troop loyal to our king. So come ahead with your arms and your gear, and I will guide you. Whaf s more, I'll order my own comrades on their word of honour to watch your boat down there on the strand—keep her safe in her fresh tar, until the time comes for her curved prow to preen on the waves and bear this hero back to Geatland. May one so valiant and venturesome

300 come unharmed through the clash of battle."

So they went on their way. The ship rode the water, broad-beamed, bound by its hawser and anchored fast. Boar-shapes flashed

B E O W U L F 21

above their cheek-guards, the brightly forged work of goldsmiths, watching over those stern-faced men. They marched in step, hurrying on till the timbered hall rose before them, radiant with gold. Nobody on earth knew of another

310 building like it. Majesty lodged there, its light shone over many lands. So their gallant escort guided them to that dazzling stronghold and indicated the shortest way to it; then the noble warrior wheeled on his horse and spoke these words: "It is time for me to go. May the Almighty Father keep you and in His kindness watch over your exploits. I'm away to the sea, back on alert against enemy raiders."

320 It was a paved track, a path that kept them They arrive at in marching order. Their mail-shirts glinted, eorot

hard and hand-linked; the high-gloss iron of their armour rang. So they duly arrived in their grim war-graith and gear at the hall, and, weary from the sea, stacked wide shields of the toughest hardwood against the wall, then collapsed on the benches; battle-dress and weapons clashed. They collected their spears in a seafarers' stook, a stand of greyish

330 tapering ash. And the troops themselves were as good as their weapons.

Then a proud warrior questioned the men concerning their origins: "Where do you come from, carrying these decorated shields and shirts of mail,

B E O W U L F 23

these cheek-hinged helmets and javelins? I am Hrothgar's herald and officer. I have never seen so impressive or large an assembly of strangers. Stoutness of heart, bravery not banishment, must have brought you to

Hrothgar."

34° The man whose name was known for courage, Beowulf announces the Geat leader, resolute in his helmet, !S mme

answered in return: "We are retainers from Hygelac's band. Beowulf is my name. If your lord and master, the most renowned son of Halfdane, will hear me out and graciously allow me to greet him in person, I am ready and willing to report my errand."

Wulf gar replied, a Wendel chief Formalities are renowned as a warrior, well known for his wisdom °serve

350 and the temper of his mind: "I will take this message, in accordance with your wish, to our noble king, our dear lord, friend of the Danes, the giver of rings. I will go and ask him about your coming here, then hurry back with whatever reply it pleases him to give."

With that he turned to where Hrothgar sat, an old man among retainers; the valiant follower stood four-square in front of his king: he knew the courtesies.

360 Wulfgar addressed his dear lord: "People from Geatland have put ashore. They have sailed far over the wide sea. They call the chief in charge of their band

B E O W U L F 25

by the name of Beowulf. They beg, my lord, an audience with you, exchange of words and formal greeting. Most gracious Hrothgar, do not refuse them, but grant them a reply. From their arms and appointment, they appear well born and worthy of respect, especially the one

370 who has led them this far: he is formidable indeed."

Hrothgar, protector of Shieldings, replied: Hrothgar recognizes "I used to know him when he was a young boy. Beowulf's name and

J " J approves his arrival

His father before him was called Ecgtheow. Hrethel the Geat gave Ecgtheow his daughter in marriage. This man is their son, here to follow up an old friendship. A crew of seamen who sailed for me once with a gift-cargo across to Geatland returned with marvellous tales about him:

380 a thane, they declared, with the strength of thirty in the grip of each hand. Now Holy God has, in His goodness, guided him here to the West-Danes, to defend us from Grendel. This is my hope; and for his heroism I will recompense him with a rich treasure. Go immediately, bid him and the Geats he has in attendance to assemble and enter. Say, moreover, when you speak to them, they are welcome to Denmark."

At the door of the hall, 390 Wulfgar duly delivered the message:

"My lord, the conquering king of the Danes, bids me announce that he knows your ancestry; also that he welcomes you here to Heorot and salutes your arrival from across the sea.

B E O W U L F 2 7

You are free now to move forward to meet Hrothgar, in helmets and armour, but shields must stay here and spears be stacked until the outcome of the audience is clear."

The hero arose, surrounded closely Beowulf enters 4oo by his powerful thanes. A party remained Heorot Her g i ™ m

J x k J account of his heroic

under orders to keep watch on the arms; exploits the rest proceeded, led by their prince under Heorot's roof. And standing on the hearth in webbed links that the smith had woven, the fine-forged mesh of his gleaming mail-shirt, resolute in his helmet, Beowulf spoke: "Greetings to Hrothgar. I am Hygelac's kinsman, one of his hall-troop. When I was younger, I had great triumphs. Then news of Grendel,

410 hard to ignore, reached me at home: sailors brought stories of the plight you suffer in this legendary hall, how it lies deserted, empty and useless once the evening light hides itself under heaven's dome. So every elder and experienced councilman among my people supported my resolve to come here to you, King Hrothgar, because all knew of my awesome strength. They had seen me boltered in the blood of enemies

420 when I battled and bound five beasts, raided a troll-nest and in the night-sea slaughtered sea-brutes. I have suffered extremes and avenged the Geats (their enemies brought it upon themselves, I devastated them). Now I mean to be a match for Grendel, He declares he will settle the outcome in single combat. fight Grendd

B E O W U L F 2 9

And so, my request, O king of Bright-Danes, dear prince of the Shieldings, friend of the people and their ring of defence, my one request

430 is that you won't refuse me, who have come this far, the privilege of purifying Heorot, with my own men to help me, and nobody else. I have heard moreover that the monster scorns in his reckless way to use weapons; therefore, to heighten Hygelac's fame and gladden his heart, I hereby renounce sword and the shelter of the broad shield, the heavy war-board: hand-to-hand is how it will be, a life-and-death

440 %ht with the fiend. Whichever one death fells must deem it a just judgement by God. If Grendel wins, it will be a gruesome day; he will glut himself on the Geats in the war-hall, swoop without fear on that flower of manhood as on others before. Then my face won't be there to be covered in death: he will carry me away as he goes to ground, gorged and bloodied; he will run gloating with my raw corpse and feed on it alone, in a cruel frenzy,

450 fouling his moor-nest. No need then to lament for long or lay out my body: if the battle takes me, send back this breast-webbing that Weland fashioned and Hrethel gave me, to Lord Hygelac. Fate goes ever as fate must."

Hrothgar, the helmet of Shieldings, spoke: Hrothgar recollects a "Beowulf, my friend, you have travelled here friendship and teiis

J J of Grendel s raids to favour us with help and to fight for us.

B E O W U L F 3 1

There was a feud one time, begun by your father. 460 With his own hands he had killed Heatholaf,

who was a Wulfing; so war was looming and his people, in fear of it, forced him to leave. He came away then over rolling waves to the South-Danes here, the sons of honour. I was then in the first flush of kingship, establishing my sway over all the rich strongholds of this heroic land. Heorogar, my older brother and the better man, also a son of Halfdane's, had died.

47° Finally I healed the feud by paying: I shipped a treasure-trove to the Wulfings and Ecgtheow acknowledged me with oaths of allegiance.

"It bothers me to have to burden anyone with all the grief Grendel has caused and the havoc he has wreaked upon us in Heorot, our humiliations. My household-guard are on the wane, fate sweeps them away into Grendel's clutches—

but God can easily halt these raids and harrowing attacks!

480 "Time and again, when the goblets passed and seasoned fighters got flushed with beer they would pledge themselves to protect Heorot and wait for Grendel with whetted swords. But when dawn broke and day crept in over each empty, blood-spattered bench, the floor of the mead-hall where they had feasted would be slick with slaughter. And so they died, faithful retainers, and my following dwindled.

B E O W U L F 33

"Now take your place at the table, relish 490 the triumph of heroes to your heart's content."

Then a bench was cleared in that banquet hall A feast in Heomt so the Geats could have room to be together and the party sat, proud in their bearing, strong and stalwart. An attendant stood by with a decorated pitcher, pouring bright helpings of mead. And the minstrel sang, filling Heorot with his head-clearing voice, gladdening that great rally of Geats and Danes.

From where he crouched at the king's feet, unferth strikes a 500 Unferth, a son of Ecglaf s, spoke ,scor ani note

contrary words. Beowulf's coming, his sea-braving, made him sick with envy: he could not brook or abide the fact that anyone else alive under heaven might enjoy greater regard than he did: "Are you the Beowulf who took on Breca un/erth's version of in a swimming match on the open sea, " s™mmi"S contest risking the water just to prove that you could win? It was sheer vanity made you venture out

510 on the main deep. And no matter who tried, friend or foe, to deflect the pair of you, neither would back down: the sea-test obsessed you. You waded in, embracing water, taking its measure, mastering currents, riding on the swell. The ocean swayed, winter went wild in the waves, but you vied for seven nights; and then he outswam you, came ashore the stronger contender. He was cast up safe and sound one morning

B E O W U L F 35

520 among the Heathoreams, then made his way to where he belonged in Bronding country, home again, sure of his ground in strongroom and bawn. So Breca made good his boast upon you and was proved right. No matter, therefore, how you may have fared in every bout and battle until now, this time you'll be worsted; no one has ever outlasted an entire night against Grendel."

Beowulf, Ecgtheow's son, replied: Beowulf corrects 530 "Well, friend Unferth, you have had your say n'ert

about Breca and me. But it was mostly beer that was doing the talking. The truth is this: when the going was heavy in those high waves, I was the strongest swimmer of all. We'd been children together and we grew up daring ourselves to outdo each other, boasting and urging each other to risk our lives on the sea. And so it turned out. Each of us swam holding a sword,

540 a naked, hard-proofed blade for protection against the whale-beasts. But Breca could never move out farther or faster from me than I could manage to move from him. Shoulder to shoulder, we struggled on for five nights, until the long flow and pitch of the waves, the perishing cold, night falling and winds from the north drove us apart. The deep boiled up and its wallowing sent the sea-brutes wild.

550 My armour helped me to hold out; my hard-ringed chain-mail, hand-forged and linked,

B E O W U L F 3 7

a fine, close-fitting filigree of gold, kept me safe when some ocean creature pulled me to the bottom. Pinioned fast and swathed in its grip, I was granted one final chance: my sword plunged and the ordeal was over. Through my own hands, the fury of battle had finished off the sea-beast.

"Time and again, foul things attacked me, Beowulf tells of his 56o lurking and stalking, but I lashed out, mdml in lke sm

gave as good as I got with my sword. My flesh was not for feasting on, there would be no monsters gnawing and gloating over their banquet at the bottom of the sea. Instead, in the morning, mangled and sleeping the sleep of the sword, they slopped and floated like the ocean's leavings. From now on sailors would be safe, the deep-sea raids were over for good. Light came from the east,

570 bright guarantee of God, and the waves went quiet; I could see headlands and buffeted cliffs. Often, for undaunted courage, fate spares the man it has not already marked. However it occurred, my sword had killed nine sea-monsters. Such night-dangers and hard ordeals I have never heard of nor of a man more desolate in surging waves. But worn out as I was, I survived, came through with my life. The ocean lifted

580 and laid me ashore, I landed safe on the coast of Finland.

Now I cannot recall any fight you entered, Unferth,

B E O W U L F 39

that bears comparison. I don't boast when I say Unferth rebuked. that neither you nor Breca were ever much Beowulf reaffirms his

J determination to

celebrated for swordsmanship defeat Grendei or for facing danger on the field of battle. You killed your own kith and kin, so for all your cleverness and quick tongue, you will suffer damnation in the depths of hell.

590 The fact is, Unferth, if you were truly as keen or courageous as you claim to be Grendei would never have got away with such unchecked atrocity, attacks on your king, havoc in Heorot and horrors everywhere. But he knows he need never be in dread of your blade making a mizzle of his blood or of vengeance arriving ever from this quarter— from the Victory-Shieldings, the shoulderers of the spear. He knows he can trample down you Danes

600 to his heart's content, humiliate and murder without fear of reprisal. But he will find me different. I will show him how Geats shape to kill in the heat of battle. Then whoever wants to may go bravely to mead, when morning light, scarfed in sun-dazzle, shines forth from the south and brings another daybreak to the world."

Then the grey-haired treasure-giver was glad; weaihtheow, far-famed in battle, the prince of Bright-Danes HrothgarSaueen,

r ° graces the banquet

and keeper of his people counted on Beowulf, 610 on the warrior's steadfastness and his word.

So the laughter started, the din got louder and the crowd was happy. Weaihtheow came in, Hrothgar's queen, observing the courtesies. Adorned in her gold, she graciously saluted

B E O W U L F 4 1

the men in hall, then handed the cup first to Hrothgar, their homeland's guardian, urging him to drink deep and enjoy it because he was dear to them. And he drank it down like the warlord he was, with festive cheer.

620 So the Helming woman went on her rounds, queenly and dignified, decked out in rings, offering the goblet to all ranks, treating the household and the assembled troop until it was Beowulf's turn to take it from her hand. With measured words she welcomed the Geat and thanked God for granting her wish that a deliverer she could believe in would arrive to ease their afflictions. He accepted the cup, a daunting man, dangerous in action

630 and eager for it always. He addressed Wealhtheow; Beowulf, son of Ecgtheow, said:

"I had a fixed purpose when I put to sea. Bammifsformal As I sat in the boat with my band of men, °ast

I meant to perform to the uttermost what your people wanted or perish in the attempt, in the fiend's clutches. And I shall fulfil that purpose, prove myself with a proud deed or meet my death here in the mead-hall."

This formal boast by Beowulf the Geat 640 pleased the lady well and she went to sit

by Hrothgar, regal and arrayed with gold.

Then it was like old times in the echoing hall, Hrothgar leaves proud talk and the people happy, j ™ n Bemmlfs

loud and excited; until soon enough

B E O W U L F 43

Halfdane's heir had to be away to his night's rest. He realized that the demon was going to descend on the hall, that he had plotted all day, from dawn-light until darkness gathered again over the world

650 and stealthy night-shapes came stealing forth under the cloud-murk. The company stood as the two leaders took leave of each other: Hrothgar wished Beowulf health and good luck, named him hall-warden and announced as follows: "Never, since my hand could hold a shield have I entrusted or given control of the Danes' hall to anyone but you. Ward and guard it, for it is the greatest of houses. Be on your mettle now, keep in mind your fame,

660 beware of the enemy. There's nothing you wish for that won't be yours if you win through alive."

Hrothgar departed then with his house-guard. The lord of the Shieldings, their shelter in war, left the mead-hall to lie with Wealhtheow, his queen and bedmate. The King of Glory (as people learned) had posted a lookout who was a match for Grendel, a guard against monsters, special protection to the Danish prince. And the Geat placed complete trust

670 in his strength of limb and the Lord's favour. He began to remove his iron breast-mail, took off the helmet and handed his attendant the patterned sword, a smith's masterpiece, ordering him to keep the equipment guarded. And before he bedded down, Beowulf, Beowulf renounces that prince of goodness, proudly asserted: the use ofwmpons

B E O W U L F 45

"When it comes to fighting, I count myself as dangerous any day as Grendel. So it won't be a cutting edge I'll wield

680 to mow him down, easily as I might. He has no idea of the arts of war, of shield or sword-play, although he does possess a wild strength. No weapons, therefore, for either this night: unarmed he shall face me if face me he dares. And may the Divine Lord in His wisdom grant the glory of victory to whichever side He sees fit."

Then down the brave man lay with his bolster The Geats await under his head and his whole company ren e s aitac

690 of sea-rovers at rest beside him. None of them expected he would ever see his homeland again or get back to his native place and the people who reared him. They knew too well the way it was before/ how often the Danes had fallen prey to death in the mead-hall. But the Lord was weaving a victory on His war-loom for the Weather-Geats. Through the strength of one they all prevailed; they would crush their enemy and come through

700 in triumph and gladness. The truth is clear: Almighty God rules over mankind and always has.

Then out of the night came the shadow-stalker, stealthy and swift; the hall-guards were slack, asleep at their posts, all except one; it was widely understood that as long as God disallowed it, the fiend could not bear them to his shadow-bourne.

B E O W U L F 47

One man, however, was in fighting mood, awake and on edge, spoiling for action.

710 In off the moors, down through the mist bands Grendei strikes God-cursed Grendei came greedily loping. The bane of the race of men roamed forth, hunting for a prey in the high hall. Under the cloud-murk he moved towards it until it shone above him, a sheer keep of fortified gold. Nor was that the first time he had scouted the grounds of Hrothgar's dwelling— although never in his life, before or since, did he find harder fortune or hall-defenders.

720 Spurned and joyless, he journeyed on ahead and arrived at the bawn. The iron-braced door turned on its hinge when his hands touched it. Then his rage boiled over, he ripped open the mouth of the building, maddening for blood, pacing the length of the patterned floor with his loathsome tread, while a baleful light, flame more than light, flared from his eyes. He saw many men in the mansion, sleeping, a ranked company of kinsmen and warriors

730 quartered together. And his glee was demonic, picturing the mayhem: before morning he would rip life from limb and devour them, feed on their flesh; but his fate that night was due to change, his days of ravening had come to an end.

Mighty and canny, A Gmt warrior Hygelac's kinsman was keenly watching pms es

for the first move the monster would make. Nor did the creature keep him waiting

B E O W U L F 49

but struck suddenly and started in; 740 he grabbed and mauled a man on his bench,

bit into his bone-lappings, bolted down his blood and gorged on him in lumps, leaving the body utterly lifeless, eaten up hand and foot. Venturing closer, his talon was raised to attack Beowulf where he lay on the bed; he was bearing in with open claw when the alert hero's comeback and armlock forestalled him utterly. The captain of evil discovered himself Beowulf's fight with

750 in a handgrip harder than anything rm e

he had ever encountered in any man on the face of the earth. Every bone in his body quailed and recoiled, but he could not escape. He was desperate to flee to his den and hide with the devil's litter, for in all his days he had never been clamped or cornered like this. Then Hygelac's trusty retainer recalled his bedtime speech, sprang to his feet and got a firm hold. Fingers were bursting,

760 the monster back-tracking, the man overpowering. The dread of the land was desperate to escape, to take a roundabout road and flee to his lair in the fens. The latching power in his fingers weakened; it was the worst trip the terror-monger had taken to Heorot. And now the timbers trembled and sang, a hall-session that harrowed every Dane inside the stockade: stumbling in fury, the two contenders crashed through the building.

770 The hall clattered and hammered, but somehow survived the onslaught and kept standing:

B E O W U L F 51

it was handsomely structured, a sturdy frame braced with the best of blacksmith's work inside and out. The story goes that as the pair struggled, mead-benches were smashed and sprung off the floor, gold fittings and all. Before then, no Shielding elder would believe there was any power or person upon earth capable of wrecking their horn-rigged hall

780 unless the burning embrace of a fire engulf it in flame. Then an extraordinary wail arose, and bewildering fear came over the Danes. Everyone felt it who heard that cry as it echoed off the wall, a God-cursed scream and strain of catastrophe, the howl of the loser, the lament of the hell-serf keening his wound. He was overwhelmed, manacled tight by the man who of all men was foremost and strongest in the days of this life.

790 But the earl-troop's leader was not inclined Beowulf's thanes to allow his caller to depart alive: defend him

he did not consider that life of much account to anyone anywhere. Time and again, Beowulf's warriors worked to defend their lord's life, laying about them as best they could with their ancestral blades. Stalwart in action, they kept striking out on every side, seeking to cut straight to the soul. When they joined the struggle

800 there was something they could not have known at the time,

that no blade on earth, no blacksmith's art could ever damage their demon opponent.

B E O W U L F 53

He had conjured the harm from the cutting edge of every weapon. But his going away out of this world and the days of his life would be agony to him, and his alien spirit would travel far into fiends' keeping.

Then he who had harrowed the hearts of m e n Grendel is defeated, with pain and affliction in former times Be0wuiffulfils his

1 boast

810 and had given offence also to God found that his bodily powers failed him. Hygelac's kinsman kept him helplessly locked in a handgrip. As long as either lived, he was hateful to the other. The monster's whole body was in pain, a tremendous wound appeared on his shoulder. Sinews split and the bone-lappings burst. Beowulf was granted the glory of winning; Grendel was driven under the fen-banks, fatally hurt,

820 to his desolate lair. His days were numbered, the end of his life was coming over him, he knew it for certain; and one bloody clash had fulfilled the dearest wishes of the Danes. The man who had lately landed among them, proud and sure, had purged the hall, kept it from harm; he was happy with his nightwork and the courage he had shown. The Geat captain had boldly fulfilled his boast to the Danes: he had healed and relieved a huge distress,

830 unremitting humiliations, the hard fate they'd been forced to undergo, no small affliction. Clear proof of this could be seen in the hand the hero displayed high up near the roof: the whole of Grendel's

B E O W U L F 5 5

shoulder and arm, his awesome grasp.

Then morning came and many a warrior The morning after: gathered, as I've heard, around the gift-hall, rdiefand reioicings

clan-chiefs flocking from far and near down wide-ranging roads, wondering greatly

840 at the monster's footprints. His fatal departure was regretted by no-one who witnessed his trail, the ignominious marks of his flight where he'd skulked away, exhausted in spirit and beaten in battle, bloodying the path, hauling his doom to the demons' mere. The bloodshot water wallowed and surged, there were loathsome upthrows and overturnings of waves and gore and wound-slurry. With his death upon him, he had dived deep

850 into his marsh-den, drowned out his life and his heathen soul: hell claimed him there.

Then away they rode, the old retainers with many a young man following after, a troop on horseback, in high spirits on their bay steeds. Beowulf's doings were praised over and over again. Nowhere, they said, north or south between the two seas or under the tall sky on the broad earth was there anyone better

860 to raise a shield or to rule a kingdom. Yet there was no laying of blame on their lord, the noble Hrothgar; he was a good king.

At times the war-band broke into a gallop, letting their chestnut horses race

B E O W U L F 57

wherever they found the going good on those well-known tracks. Meanwhile, a thane Hrothgar's minstrel of the king's household, a carrier of tales, sings about Beowulf

a traditional singer deeply schooled in the lore of the past, linked a new theme

870 to a strict metre. The man started to recite with skill, rehearsing Beowulf's triumphs and feats in well-fashioned lines, entwining his words.

He told what he'd heard The tale of repeated in songs about Sigemund's exploits, tgemun , t e

r o o -r dragon-slayer. all of those many feats and marvels, Appropriate for the struggles and wanderings of Waels's son, Z^Greldei things unknown to anyone except to Fitela, feuds and foul doings confided by uncle to nephew when he felt

880 the urge to speak of them: always they had been partners in the fight, friends in need. They killed giants, their conquering swords had brought them down.

After his death Sigemund's glory grew and grew because of his courage when he killed the dragon, the guardian of the hoard. Under grey stone he had dared to enter all by himself to face the worst without Fitela. But it came to pass that his sword plunged

890 right through those radiant scales and drove into the wall. The dragon died of it. His daring had given him total possession of the treasure hoard, his to dispose of however he liked. He loaded a boat:

B E O W U L F 5 9

Waels's son weighted her hold with dazzling spoils. The hot dragon melted.

Sigemund's name was known everywhere. He was utterly valiant and venturesome, a fence round his fighters and flourished therefore

900 after King Heremod's prowess declined and his campaigns slowed down. The king was betrayed, King Heremod

1 •, 3 • T .1 3 3 remembered and ambushed in Jutland, overpowered . . . ...

1 ' contrasted with

and done away with. The waves of his grief Beowulf had beaten him down, made him a burden, a source of anxiety to his own nobles: that expedition was often condemned in those earlier times by experienced men, men who relied on his lordship for redress, who presumed that the part of a prince was to thrive

910 on his father's throne and defend the nation, the Shielding land where they lived and belonged, its holdings and strongholds. Such was Beowulf in the affection of his friends and of everyone alive. But evil entered into Heremqd.

Meanwhile, the Danes kept racing their mounts down sandy lanes. The light of day broke and kept brightening. Bands of retainers galloped in excitement to the gabled hall to see the marvel; and the king himself,

920 guardian of the ring-hoard, goodness in person, walked in majesty from the women's quarters with a numerous train, attended by his queen and her crowd of maidens, across to the mead-hall.

When Hrothgar arrived at the hall, he spoke,

B E O W U L F 6 1

standing on the steps, under the steep eaves, King Hwthgar gives gazing at the roofwork and Grendel's talon: "T*8*' *; re'ief ° ° ofHeorot and adopts

"First and foremost, let the Almighty Father Beowulf "in his be thanked for this sight. I suffered a long eart

harrowing by Grendel. But the Heavenly Shepherd 930 can work His wonders always and everywhere.

Not long since, it seemed I would never be granted the slightest solace or relief from any of my burdens: the best of houses glittered and reeked and ran with blood. This one worry outweighed all others— a constant distress to counsellors entrusted with defending the people's forts from assault by monsters and demons. But now a man, with the Lord's assistance, has accomplished something

940 none of us could manage before now for all our efforts. Whoever she was who brought forth this flower of manhood, if she is still alive, that woman can say that in her labour the Lord of Ages bestowed a grace on her. So now, Beowulf, I adopt you in my heart as a dear son. Nourish and maintain this new connection, you noblest of men; there'll be nothing you'll want for, no worldly goods that won't be yours.

950 I have often honoured smaller achievements, recognized warriors not nearly as worthy, lavished rewards on the less deserving. But you have made yourself immortal by your glorious action. May the God of Ages continue to keep and requite you well."

Beowulf, son of Ecgtheow, spoke:

B E O W U L F 6 3

"We have gone through with a glorious endeavour Beowulf's account of and been much favoured in this fight we dared t e^g ' against the unknown. Nevertheless,

960 if you could have seen the monster himself where he lay beaten, I would have been better pleased. My plan was to pounce, pin him down in a tight grip and grapple him to death— have him panting for life, powerless and clasped in my bare hands, his body in thrall. But I couldn't stop him from slipping my hold. The Lord allowed it, my lock on him wasn't strong enough, he struggled fiercely and broke and ran. Yet he bought his freedom

970 at a high price, for he left his hand and arm and shoulder to show he had been here, a cold comfort for having come among us. And now he won't be long for this world. He has done his worst but the wound will end him. He is hasped and hooped and hirpling with pain, limping and looped in it. Like a man outlawed for wickedness, he must await the mighty judgement of God in majesty."

There was less tampering and big talk then The trophy: 980 from Unferth the boaster, less of his blather GrmdeVs shoulder

and claw

as the hall-thanes eyed the awful proof of the hero's prowess, the splayed hand up under the eaves. Every nail, claw-scale and spur, every spike and welt on the hand of that heathen brute was like barbed steel. Everybody said there was no honed iron hard enough to pierce him through, no time-proofed blade

B E O W U L F 6 5

that could cut his brutal, blood-caked claw.

990 Then the order was given for all hands The damaged hail to help to refurbish Heorot immediately: repa,re

men and women thronging the wine-hall, getting it ready. Gold thread shone in the wall-hangings, woven scenes that attracted and held the eye's attention. But iron-braced as the inside of it had been, that bright room lay in ruins now. The very doors had been dragged from their hinges. Only the roof remained unscathed

1000 by the time the guilt-fouled fiend turned tail in despair of his life. But death is not easily escaped from by anyone: all of us with souls, earth-dwellers and children of men, must make our way to a destination already ordained where the body, after the banqueting, sleeps on its deathbed.

Then the due time arrived A victory feast for Halfdane's son to proceed to the hall. The king himself would sit down to feast.

1010 No group ever gathered in greater numbers or better order around their ring-giver. The benches filled with famous men who fell to with relish; round upon round of mead was passed; those powerful kinsmen, Hrothgar and Hrothulf, were in high spirits in the raftered hall. Inside Heorot there was nothing but friendship. The Shielding nation was not yet familiar with feud and betrayal.

B E O W U L F 67

Then Halfdane's son presented Beowulf victory gifts with a gold standard as a victory gift, presented t0 Beowu,f

an embroidered banner; also breast-mail and a helmet; and a sword carried high, that was both precious object and token of honour. So Beowulf drank his drink, at ease; it was hardly a shame to be showered with such gifts in front of the hall-troops. There haven't been many moments, I am sure, when men exchanged four such treasures at so friendly a sitting. An embossed ridge, a band lapped with wire

1030 arched over the helmet: head-protection to keep the keen-ground cutting edge from damaging it when danger threatened and the man was battling behind his shield. Next the king ordered eight horses with gold bridles to be brought through the yard into the hall. The harness of one included a saddle of sumptuous design, the battle-seat where the son of Halfdane rode when he wished to join the sword-play:

1040 wherever the killing and carnage were the worst, he would be to the fore, fighting hard. Then the Danish prince, descendant of Ing, handed over both the arms and the horses, urging Beowulf to use them well. And so their leader, the lord and guard of coffer and strongroom, with customary grace bestowed upon Beowulf both sets of gifts. A fair witness can see how well each one behaved.

The chieftain went on to reward the others: The other Geats are 1050 each man on the bench who had sailed with Beowulf rewar *

B E O W U L F 69

and risked the voyage received a bounty, some treasured possession. And compensation, a price in gold, was settled for the Geat Grendel had cruelly killed earlier— as he would have killed more, had not mindful God and one man's daring prevented that doom. Past and present, God's will prevails. Hence, understanding is always best and a prudent mind. Whoever remains

1060 for long here in this earthly life will enjoy and endure more than enough.

They sang then and played to please the hero, Another performance words and music for their warrior prince, ^ f e mmstre

harp tunes and tales of adventure: there were high times on the hall benches and the king's poet performed his part with the saga of Finn and his sons, unfolding the tale of the fierce attack in Friesland where Hnaef, king of the Danes, met death.

Hildeburh, a Danish 1070 Hildeburh princess married to

had littk Cause the Frisian King Finn, loses her son

tO Credit the Jutes: (unnamed here) and

son and brother, hZ 6™*;«™f» a fight at Finn s hall

she lost them both on the battlefield.

She, bereft and blameless, they

foredoomed, cut down and spear-gored. She,

the woman in shock, waylaid by grief,

B E O W U L F 7 1

Hoe's daughter— how could she not

lament her fate when morning came

and the light broke on her murdered dears?

And so farewell delight on earth,

1080 war carried away Finn's troop of thanes,

all but a few. HOW then COUld Finn The Danish attack is

. 1 . , r 1 • bloody but hold the line . , .. ,, ,.

mdeaswe. Hnaefis Or fight On killed, Hengest takes

, ,, , ... T T . charge and makes a to the end with Hengest, . ... _. ,

° truce with Finn and how Save the Frisians

the rump of his force from that enemy chief?

So a truce was offered as follows: first

separate quarters to be cleared for the Danes,

hall and throne to be shared with the Frisians.

Then, second: every day

at the dole-out of gifts Finn, son ofFocwald,

1090 should honour the Danes, bestow with an even

hand to Hengest and Hengest's men

the wrought-gold rings,

B E O W U L F 7 3

bounty to match the measure he gave

his own Frisians— to keep morale

in the beer-hall high. Both Sides then The Danish

j j .1 • . survivors to be sealed their agreement. . J . ° quartered and given With Oaths to HengeSt parity of treatment

r • with the Frisians Finn swore ana their allies, the

openly, solemnly, jutes that the battle survivors

would be guaranteed honour and status.

No infringement by word or deed,

1100 no provocation would be permitted.

Their own ring-giver after all

was dead and gone, they were leaderless,

in forced allegiance to his murderer.

So if any Frisian stirred up bad blood

with insinuations or taunts about this,

the blade of the sword would arbitrate it.

A funeral pyre The bodies of the .1 i slain burnt on the was then prepared, r r pyre

effulgent gold brought out from the hoard.

B E O W U L F 75

The pride and prince of the Shieldings lay

mo awaiting the flame. Everywhere

there were blood-plastered coats of mail.

The pyre was heaped with hoar-shaped helmets

forged in gold, with the gashed corpses

of well-horn Danes — many had fallen.

Then Hildeburh ordered her own

son's body be burnt with Hnaef's,

the flesh on his bones to sputter and blaze

beside his uncle's. The woman wailed

and sang keens, the warrior went up.

1120 Carcass flame swirled and fumed,

they stood round the burial mound and howled

as heads melted, crusted gashes

spattered and ran bloody matter.

The glutton element flamed and consumed

the dead of both sides.

B E O W U L F 77

Their great days were gone. Warriors scattered

to homes and forts all over Friesland,

fewer now, feeling loss of friends.

Hengest Stayed, The Danes, homesick

lived OUt that Whole and resentful, spend a winter in exile

resentful, blood-sullen 1130 winter with Finn,

homesick and helpless. No ring-whorled prow

could up then and away on the sea.

Wind and water raged with storms,

wave and shingle were shackled in ice

until another year appeared in the yard

as it does to this day, the seasons constant,

the wonder of light coming over us.

Then winter was gone, spring comes earth's lap grew lovely,

longing woke in the cooped-up exile

for a voyage home— 1140 but more for vengeance,

some way of bringing things to a head:

his sword arm hankered

B E O W U L F 79

to greet the Jutes. So he did not balk

once Hunlafing placed on his lap

Dazzle-the-Duel, Danish warriors the best sword of all, spur themselves i0

J renew the feud. Finn whose edges Jutes is MM, MS

knew Only tOO Well. stronghold looted, u his widow,

Thus blood Was Spilled, Hildeburh, carried the gallant Finn back to Denmark

slain in his home after Guthlaf and Oslaf

back from their voyage made old accusation:

the brutal ambush, the fate they had suffered,

1150 all blamed on Finn. The mildness in them

had to brim over. The hall ran red

with blood of enemies. Finn was cut down,

the queen brought away and everything

the Shieldings could find inside Finn's walls —

the Frisian king's gold collars and gemstones —

swept off to the ship. Over sea-lanes then

back to Daneland the warrior troop

bore that lady home.

B E O W U L F 8 1

The poem was over, the poet had performed, a pleasant murmur

1160 started on the benches, stewards did the rounds with wine in splendid jugs, and Wealhtheow came to sit in her gold crown between two good men, uncle and nephew, each one of whom still trusted the other; and the forthright Unferth, admired by all for his mind and courage although under a cloud for killing his brothers, reclined near the king.

The queen spoke: "Enjoy this drink, my most generous lord; raise up your goblet, entertain the Geats

1170 duly and gently, discourse with them, be open-handed, happy and fond. Relish their company, but recollect as well all of the boons that have been bestowed on you. The bright court of Heorot has been cleansed and now the word is that you want to adopt this warrior as a son. So, while you may, bask in your fortune, and then bequeath kingdom and nation to your kith and kin, before your decease. I am certain of Hrothulf.

1180 He is noble and will use the young ones well. He will not let you down. Should you die before him, he will treat our children truly and fairly. He will honour, I am sure, our two sons, repay them in kind when he recollects all the good things we gave him once, the favour and respect he found in his childhood."

She turned then to the bench where her boys sat, Hrethric and Hrothmund, with other nobles' sons,

B E O W U L F 83

all the youth together; and that good man, 1190 Beowulf the Geat, sat between the brothers.

The cup was carried to him, kind words afts presented, spoken in welcome and a wealth of wrought gold "'c" '"g" T^'

r <-><-> Beowulf will present

graciously bestowed: two arm bangles, it in due course to a mail-shirt and rings, and the most resplendent KingHygeiac, who

0 L will die wearing it

torque of gold I ever heard tell of anywhere on earth or under heaven. There was no hoard like it since Hama snatched the Brosings' neck-chain and bore it away with its gems and settings to his shining fort,

1200 away from Eormenric's wiles and hatred, and thereby ensured his eternal reward. Hygelac the Geat, grandson of Swerting, wore this neck-ring on his last raid; at bay under his banner, he defended the booty, treasure he had won. Fate swept him away because of his proud need to provoke a feud with the Frisians. He fell beneath his shield, in the same gem-crusted, kingly gear he had worn when he crossed the frothing wave-vat.

1210 So the dead king fell into Frankish hands. They took his breast-mail, also his neck-torque, and punier warriors plundered the slain when the carnage ended; Geat corpses covered the field.

Applause filled the hall. Then Wealhtheow pronounced in the presence of the

company: "Take delight in this torque, dear Beowulf, wear it for luck and wear also this mail

B E O W U L F 8 5

from our people's armoury: may you prosper in them! Be acclaimed for strength, for kindly guidance

1220 to these two boys, and your bounty will be sure. You have won renown: you are known to all men far and near, now and forever. Your sway is wide as the wind's home, as the sea around cliffs. And so, my prince, I wish you a lifetime's luck and blessings to enjoy this treasure. Treat my sons with tender care, be strong and kind. Here each comrade is true to the other, loyal to lord, loving in spirit.

1230 The thanes have one purpose, the people are ready: having drunk and pledged, the ranks do as I bid."

She moved then to her place. Men were drinking wine Bedtime in Heomt at that rare feast; how could they know fate, the grim shape of things to come, the threat looming over many thanes as night approached and King Hrothgar prepared to retire to his quarters? Retainers in great numbers were posted on guard as so often in the past. Benches were pushed back, bedding gear and bolsters

1240 spread across the floor, and one man lay down to his rest, already marked for death. At their heads they placed their polished timber battle-shields; and on the bench above them, each man's kit was kept to hand: a towering war-helmet, webbed mail-shirt and great-shafted spear. It was their habit always and everywhere to be ready for action, at home or in the camp, in whatever case and at whatever time the need arose

B E O W U L F 87

1250 to rally round their lord. They were a right people.

They went to sleep. And one paid dearly Another threat is for his night's ease, as had happened to them often, lurking in the night

ever since Grendel occupied the gold-hall, committing evil until the end came, death after his crimes. Then it became clear, obvious to everyone once the fight was over, that an avenger lurked and was still alive, grimly biding time. Grendel's mother, monstrous hell-bride, brooded on her wrongs.

1260 She had been forced down into fearful waters, the cold depths, after Cain had killed his father's son, felled his own brother with a sword. Branded an outlaw, marked by having murdered, he moved into the wilds, shunned company and joy. And from Cain there sprang misbegotten spirits, among them Grendel, the banished and accursed, due to come to grips with that watcher in Heorot waiting to do battle. The monster wrenched and wrestled with him

1270 but Beowulf was mindful of his mighty strength, the wondrous gifts God had showered on him: He relied for help on the Lord of All, on His care and favour. So he overcame the foe, brought down the hell-brute. Broken and bowed, outcast from all sweetness, the enemy of mankind made for his death-den. But now his mother had sallied forth on a savage journey, grief-racked and ravenous, desperate for revenge.

She came to Heorot. There, inside the hall, Grendei's mother 1280 Danes lay asleep, earls who would soon endure Mac

B E O W U L F 89

a great reversal, once Grendel's mother attacked and entered. Her onslaught was less only by as much as an amazon warrior's strength is less than an armed man's when the hefted sword, its hammered edge and gleaming blade slathered in blood, razes the sturdy boar-ridge off a helmet. Then in the hall, hard-honed swords were grabbed from the bench, many a broad shield

1290 lifted and braced; there was little thought of helmets or woven mail when they woke in terror.

The hell-dam was in panic, desperate to get out, in mortal terror the moment she was found. She had pounced and taken one of the retainers in a tight hold, then headed for the fen. To Hrothgar, this man was the most beloved of the friends he trusted between the two seas. She had done away with a great warrior, ambushed him at rest.

Beowulf was elsewhere. 1300 Earlier, after the award of the treasure,

the Geat had been given another lodging. There was uproar in Heorot. She had snatched their

trophy, Grendel's bloodied hand. It was a fresh blow to the afflicted bawn. The bargain was hard, both parties having to pay with the lives of friends. And the old lord, the grey-haired warrior, was heartsore and weary when he heard the news: his highest-placed adviser, his dearest companion, was dead and gone.

B E O W U L F 91

1310 Beowulf was quickly brought to the chamber: Beowulf is the winner of fights, the arch-warrior, summone came first-footing in with his fellow troops to where the king in his wisdom waited, still wondering whether Almighty God would ever turn the tide of his misfortunes. So Beowulf entered with his band in attendance and the wooden floor-boards banged and rang as he advanced, hurrying to address the prince of the Ingwins, asking if he'd rested

1320 since the urgent summons had come as a surprise.

Then Hrothgar, the Shieldings' helmet, spoke: Hwthgar laments "Rest? What is rest? Sorrow has returned. the <"* ^his

counsellor. He Alas for the Danes! Aeschere is dead. knows GrenM's He was Yrmenlaf's elder brother ™(ter must avmge

her son

and a soul-mate to me, a true mentor, my right-hand man when the ranks clashed and our boar-crests had to take a battering in the line of action. Aeschere was everything the world admires in a wise man and a friend.

1330 Then this roaming killer came in a fury and slaughtered him in Heorot. Where she is hiding, glutting on the corpse and glorying in her escape, I cannot tell; she has taken up the feud because of last night, when you killed Grendel, wrestled and racked him in ruinous combat since for too long he had terrorized us with his depredations. He died in battle, paid with his life; and now this powerful other one arrives, this force for evil

1340 driven to avenge her kinsman's death. Or so it seems to thanes in their grief,

B E O W U L F 93

in the anguish every thane endures at the loss of a ring-giver, now that the hand that bestowed so richly has been stilled in death.

"I have heard it said by my people in hall, The country people's counsellors who live in the upland country, tales abou> the

A J monsters

that they have seen two such creatures prowling the moors, huge marauders from some other world. One of these things,

1350 as far as anyone ever can discern, looks like a woman; the other, warped in the shape of a man, moves beyond the pale bigger than any man, an unnatural birth called Grendel by country people in former days. They are fatherless creatures, and their whole ancestry is hidden in a past of demons and ghosts. They dwell apart among wolves on the hills, on windswept crags and treacherous keshes, where cold streams

1360 pour down the mountain and disappear under mist and moorland.

A few miles from here The haunted mere a frost-stiffened wood waits and keeps watch above a mere; the overhanging bank is a maze of tree-roots mirrored in its surface. At night there, something uncanny happens: the water burns. And the mere bottom has never been sounded by the sons of men. On its bank, the heather-stepper halts: the hart in flight from pursuing hounds

1370 will turn to face them with firm-set horns and die in the wood rather than dive beneath its surface. That is no good place.

B E O W U L F 95

When wind blows up and stormy weather makes clouds scud and the skies weep, out of its depths a dirty surge is pitched towards the heavens. Now help depends again on you and on you alone. The gap of danger where the demon waits is still unknown to you. Seek it if you dare.

1380 I will compensate you for settling the feud as I did the last time with lavish wealth, coffers of coiled gold, if you come back."

Beowulf, SOU. of EcgtheOW, Spoke: Beowulf bolsters "Wise sir, do not grieve. It is always better Hmthga''s cmmge-

^ J He proclaims the

to avenge dear ones than to indulge in mourning. heroic code that For every one of us, living in this world guides their lives

means waiting for our end. Let whoever can win glory before death. When a warrior is gone, that will be his best and only bulwark.

1390 So arise, my lord, and let us immediately set forth on the trail of this troll-dam. I guarantee you: she will not get away, not to dens under ground nor upland groves nor the ocean floor. She'll have nowhere to flee to. Endure your troubles to-day. Bear up and be the man I expect you to be."

With that the old lord sprang to his feet The expedition to and praised God for Beowulf's pledge. the mere

Then a bit and halter were brought for his horse 1400 with the plaited mane. The wise king mounted

the royal saddle and rode out in style with a force of shield-bearers. The forest paths were marked all over with the monster's tracks,

B E O W U L F 9 7

her trail on the ground wherever she had gone across the dark moors, dragging away the body of that thane, Hrothgar's best counsellor and overseer of the country. So the noble prince proceeded undismayed up fells and screes, along narrow footpaths

1410 and ways where they were forced into single file, ledges on cliffs above lairs of water-monsters. He went in front with a few men, good judges of the lie of the land, and suddenly discovered the dismal wood, mountain trees growing out at an angle above grey stones: the bloodshot water surged underneath. It was a sore blow to all of the Danes, friends of the Shieldings, a hurt to each and every one

1420 of that noble company when they came upon Aeschere's head at the foot of the cliff.

Everybody gazed as the hot gore kept wallowing up and an urgent war-horn repeated its notes: the whole party sat down to watch. The water was infested with all kinds of reptiles. There were writhing sea-dragons and monsters slouching on slopes by the cliff, serpents and wild things such as those that often surface at dawn to roam the sail-road

1430 and doom the voyage. Down they plunged, lashing in anger at the loud call of the battle-bugle. An arrow from the bow of the Geat chief got one of them as he surged to the surface: the seasoned shaft stuck deep in his flank and his freedom in the water

B E O W U L F 99

got less and less. It was his last swim. He was swiftly overwhelmed in the shallows, prodded by barbed boar-spears, cornered, beaten, pulled up on the bank,

1440 a strange lake-birth, a loathsome catch men gazed at in awe.

Beowulf got ready, Beowulf arms for the

donned his war-gear, indifferent to death; underwater fight his mighty, hand-forged, fine-webbed mail would soon meet with the menace underwater. It would keep the bone-cage of his body safe: no enemy's clasp could crush him in it, no vicious armlock choke his life out. To guard his head he had a glittering helmet that was due to be muddied on the mere bottom

1450 and blurred in the upswirl. It was of beaten gold, princely headgear hooped and hasped by a weapon-smith who had worked wonders in days gone by and adorned it with boar-shapes; since then it had resisted every sword. And another item lent by Unf erth at that moment of need was of no small importance: the brehon handed him a hilted weapon, a rare and ancient sword named Hrunting. The iron blade with its ill-boding patterns

1460 had been tempered in blood. It had never failed the hand of anyone who hefted it in battle, anyone who had fought and faced the worst in the gap of danger. This was not the first time it had been called to perform heroic feats.

When he lent that blade to the better swordsman, Unferth, the strong-built son of Ecglaf,

B E O W U L F 1 0 1

could hardly have remembered the ranting speech he had made in his cups. He was not man enough to face the turmoil of a fight under water

1470 and the risk to his life. So there he lost fame and repute. It was different for the other rigged out in his gear, ready to do battle.

BeOWUlf, SOn Of E c g t h e O W, S p o k e : Beowulf takes his

"Wisest of kings, now that I have come mve

to the point of action, I ask you to recall what we said earlier: that you, son of Halfdane and gold-friend to retainers, that you, if I should fall and suffer death while serving your cause, would act like a father to me afterwards.

1480 If this combat kills me, take care of my young company, my comrades in arms. And be sure also, my beloved Hrothgar, to send Hygelac the treasures I received. Let the lord of the Geats gaze on that gold, let Hrethel's son take note of it and see that I found a ring-giver of rare magnificence and enjoyed the good of his generosity. And Unferth is to have what I inherited: to that far-famed man I bequeath my own

1490 sharp-honed, wave-sheened wonderblade. With Hrunting I shall gain glory or die."

After these words, the prince of the Weather-Geats was impatient to be away and plunged suddenly: without more ado, he dived into the heaving depths of the lake. It was the best part of a day before he could see the solid bottom.

B E O W U L F 1 0 3

Quickly the one who haunted those waters, Beowulf is captured who had scavenged and gone her gluttonous rounds y ren e smo er

for a hundred seasons, sensed a human 1500 observing her outlandish lair from above.

So she lunged and clutched and managed to catch him in her brutal grip; but his body, for all that, remained unscathed: the mesh of the chain-mail saved him on the outside. Her savage talons failed to rip the web of his warshirt. Then once she touched bottom, that wolfish swimmer carried the ring-mailed prince to her court so that for all his courage he could never use the weapons he carried; and a bewildering horde

1510 came at him from the depths, droves of sea-beasts who attacked with tusks and tore at his chain-mail in a ghastly onslaught. The gallant man could see he had entered some hellish turn-hole and yet the water did not work against him because the hall-roofing held off the force of the current; then he saw firelight, a gleam and flare-up, a glimmer of brightness.

The hero observed that swamp-thing from hell, the tarn-hag in all her terrible strength,

1520 then heaved his war-sword and swung his arm: the decorated blade came down ringing and singing on her head. But he soon found His sword fails to do his battle-torch extinguished: the shining blade amage

refused to bite. It spared her and failed the man in his need. It had gone through many hand-to-hand fights, had hewed the armour and helmets of the doomed, but here at last the fabulous powers of that heirloom failed.

B E O W U L F 105

Hygelac's kinsman kept thinking about 1530 his name and fame: he never lost heart.

Then, in a fury, he flung his sword away. He fights back with The keen, inlaid, worm-loop-patterned steel his hare ha'"is

was hurled to the ground: he would have to rely on the might of his arm. So must a man do who intends to gain enduring glory in a combat. Life doesn't cost him a thought. Then the prince of War-Geats, warming to this fight with Grendel's mother, gripped her shoulder and laid about him in a battle frenzy:

1540 he pitched his killer opponent to the floor but she rose quickly and retaliated, grappled him tightly in her grim embrace. The sure-footed fighter felt daunted, the strongest of warriors stumbled and fell. So she pounced upon him and pulled out a broad, whetted knife: now she would avenge her only child. But the mesh of chain-mail on Beowulf's shoulder shielded his life, turned the edge and tip of the blade.

1550 The son of Ecgtheow would have surely perished and the Geats lost their warrior under the wide earth had the strong links and locks of his war-gear not helped to save him: holy God decided the victory. It was easy for the Lord, the Ruler of Heaven, to redress the balance once Beowulf got back up on his feet.

Then he saw a blade that boded well, Beowulf discovers a a sword in her armoury, an ancient heirloom m'g t y s w o r m

J slays his opponent

from the days of the giants, an ideal weapon, 1560 one that any warrior would envy,

B E O W U L F 107

but so huge and heavy of itself only Beowulf could wield it in a battle. So the Shieldings' hero, hard-pressed and enraged, took a firm hold of the hilt and swung the blade in an arc, a resolute blow that bit deep into her neck-bone and severed it entirely, toppling the doomed house of her flesh; she fell to the floor. The sword dripped blood, the swordsman was elated.

1570 A light appeared and the place brightened He proceeds to the way the sky does when heaven's candle heheai GrendeVs

J J corpse

is shining clearly. He inspected the vault: with sword held high, its hilt raised to guard and threaten, Hygelac's thane scouted by the wall in Grendel's wake. Now the weapon was to prove its worth. The warrior determined to take revenge for every gross act Grendel had committed— and not only for that one occasion

1580 when he'd come to slaughter the sleeping troops, fifteen of Hrothgar's house-guards surprised on their benches and ruthlessly devoured, and as many again carried away, a brutal plunder. Beowulf in his fury now settled that score: he saw the monster in his resting place, war-weary and wrecked, a lifeless corpse, a casualty of the battle in Heorot. The body gaped at the stroke dealt to it after death:

1590 Beowulf cut the corpse's head off.

Immediately the counsellors keeping a lookout

B E O W U L F 1 0 9

with Hrothgar, watching the lake water, Forebodings of those saw a heave-up and surge of waves ™ ' " ore

and blood in the backwash. They bowed grey heads, spoke in their sage, experienced way about the good warrior, how they never again expected to see that prince returning in triumph to their king. It was clear to many that the wolf of the deep had destroyed him forever.

1600 The ninth hour of the day arrived. The brave Shieldings abandoned the cliff-top and the king went home; but sick at heart, staring at the mere, the strangers held on. They wished, without hope, to behold their lord, Beowulf himself.

Meanwhi l e , the SWOrd The sword blade

began to wilt into gory icicles, me ts

to slather and thaw. It was a wonderful thing, the way it all melted as ice melts when the Father eases the fetters off the frost

1610 and unravels the water-ropes. He who wields power over time and tide: He is the true Lord.

The Geat captain saw treasure in abundance Beowulf returns but carried no spoils from those quarters ""' f e sx"°' ,s \'

1 l and Grendel s head except for the head and the inlaid hilt embossed with jewels; its blade had melted and the scrollwork on it burnt, so scalding was the blood of the poisonous fiend who had perished there. Then away he swam, the one who had survived the fall of his enemies, flailing to the surface.

1620 The wide water, the waves and pools were no longer infested once the wandering fiend

B E O W U L F H I

let go of her life and this unreliable world. The seafarers' leader made for land, resolutely swimming, delighted with his prize, the mighty load he was lugging to the surface. His thanes advanced in a troop to meet him, thanking God and taking great delight in seeing their prince back safe and sound. Quickly the hero's helmet and mail-shirt

1630 were loosed and unlaced. The lake settled, clouds darkened above the bloodshot depths.

With high hearts they headed away along footpaths and trails through the fields, roads that they knew, each of them wrestling with the head they were carrying from the lakeside cliff, men kingly in their courage and capable of difficult work. It was a task for four to hoist Grendel's head on a spear and bear it under strain to the bright hall.

1640 But soon enough they neared the place, fourteen Geats in fine fettle, striding across the outlying ground in a delighted throng around their leader.

In he came then, the thane's commander, He displays the arch-warrior, to address Hrothgar: Gre"deVs head

^ in Heorot

his courage was proven, his glory was secure. Grendel's head was hauled by the hair, dragged across the floor where the people were drinking, a horror for both queen and company to behold.

1650 They stared in awe. It was an astonishing sight.

Beowulf, son of Ecgtheow, spoke:

B E O W U L F 113

"So, son of Halfdane, prince of the Shieldings, A brief account we are glad to bring this booty from the lake. of the fight It is a token of triumph and we tender it to you. I barely survived the battle under water. It was hard-fought, a desperate affair that could have gone badly; if God had not helped me, the outcome would have been quick and fatal. Although Hrunting is hard-edged,

1660 I could never bring it to bear in battle. But the Lord of Men allowed me to behold— for He often helps the unbefriended— an ancient sword shining on the wall, a weapon made for giants, there for the wielding. Then my moment came in the combat and I struck the dwellers in that den. Next thing the damascened sword blade melted; it bloated and it burned in their rushing blood. I have wrested the hilt from the enemies' hand, avenged the evil

1670 done to the Danes; it is what was due. And this I pledge, O prince of the Shieldings: you can sleep secure with your company of troops in Heorot Hall. Never need you fear for a single thane of your sept or nation, young warriors or old, that laying waste of life that you and your people endured of yore."

Then the gold hilt was handed Over Beowulf presents the to the old lord, a relic from long ago saMnW"" t0

' b b Hrothgar

for the venerable ruler. That rare smithwork 1680 was passed on to the prince of the Danes

when those devils perished; once death removed that murdering, guilt-steeped, God-cursed fiend, eliminating his unholy life

B E O W U L F 115

and his mother's as well, it was willed to that king who of all the lavish gift-lords of the north was the best regarded between the two seas.

Hrothgar spoke; he examined the hilt, that relic of old times. It was engraved all over and showed how war first came into the world

1690 and the flood destroyed the tribe of giants. They suffered a terrible severance from the Lord; the Almighty made the waters rise, drowned them in the deluge for retribution. In pure gold inlay on the sword-guards there were rune-markings correctly incised, stating and recording for whom the sword had been first made and ornamented with its scrollworked hilt. Then everyone hushed as the son of Halfdane spoke this wisdom.

1700 "A protector of his people, pledged to Uphold Hrothgar's address

truth and justice and to respect tradition, t0 eowu' is entitled to affirm that this man was born to distinction. Beowulf, my friend, your fame has gone far and wide, you are known everywhere. In all things you are even-

tempered, prudent and resolute. So I stand firm by the promise of

friendship we exchanged before. Forever you will be your people's mainstay and your own warriors' helping hand.

Heremod was different, He contrasts 1710 the way he behaved to Ecgwala's sons. Beowulf with King

J ° Heremod His rise in the world brought little joy to the Danish people, only death and destruction.

B E O W U L F 117

He vented his rage on men he caroused with, killed his own comrades, a pariah king who cut himself off from his own kind, even though Almighty God had made him eminent and powerful and marked him from the start for a happy life. But a change happened, he grew bloodthirsty, gave no more rings

1720 to honour the Danes. He suffered in the end for having plagued his people for so long: his life lost happiness.

So learn from this and understand true values. I who tell you have wintered into wisdom.

It is a great WOnder Hrothgar's discourse

how Almighty God in His magnificence on the dmgers of 0 J ^ power

favours our race with rank and scope and the gift of wisdom; His sway is wide. Sometimes He allows the mind of a man of distinguished birth to follow its bent,

1730 grants him fulfilment and felicity on earth and forts to command in his own country. He permits him to lord it in many lands until the man in his unthinkingness forgets that it will ever end for him. He indulges his desires; illness and old age mean nothing to him; his mind is untroubled by envy or malice or the thought of enemies with their hate-honed swords. The whole world conforms to his will, he is kept from the worst

1740 until an element of overweening enters him and takes hold while the soul's guard, its sentry, drowses, grown too distracted. A killer stalks him,

B E O W U L F 119

an archer who draws a deadly bow. And then the man is hit in the heart, the arrow flies beneath his defences, the devious promptings of the demon start. His old possessions seem paltry to him now. He covets and resents; dishonours custom

1750 and bestows no gold; and because of good things that the Heavenly Powers gave him in the past he ignores the shape of things to come. Then finally the end arrives when the body he was lent collapses and falls prey to its death; ancestral possessions and the goods he hoarded are inherited by another who lets them go with a liberal hand.

"O flower of warriors, beware of that trap. Beowulf is exhorted Choose, dear Beowulf, the better part, *°be mindful ofthe

1 fragility of life

1760 eternal rewards. Do not give way to pride. For a brief while your strength is in bloom but it fades quickly; and soon there will follow illness or the sword to lay you low, or a sudden fire or surge of water or jabbing blade or javelin from the air or repellent age. Your piercing eye will dim and darken; and death will arrive, dear warrior, to sweep you away.

"Just so I ruled the Ring-Danes' country No life is immune to ,770 for fifty years, defended them in wartime da"ser: Hrothgar's

J J experience proves it

with spear and sword against constant assaults by many tribes: I came to believe my enemies had faded from the face of the earth. Still, what happened was a hard reversal

B E O W U L F 121

from bliss to grief. Grendel struck after lying in wait. He laid waste to the land and from that moment my mind was in dread of his depredations. So I praise God in His heavenly glory that I lived to behold

1780 this head dripping blood and that after such harrowing I can look upon it in triumph at last. Take your place, then, with pride and pleasure and move to the feast. To-morrow morning our treasure will be shared and showered upon you."

The Geat was elated and gladly obeyed A feast. The warriors the old man's bidding; he sat on the bench. And soon all was restored, the same as before. Happiness came back, the hall was thronged, and a banquet set forth; black night fell

1790 and covered them in darkness. Then the company rose

for the old campaigner: the grey-haired prince was ready for bed. And a need for rest came over the brave shield-bearing Geat. He was a weary seafarer, far from home, so immediately a house-guard guided him out, one whose office entailed looking after whatever a thane on the road in those days might need or require. It was noble courtesy.

That great heart rested. The hall towered, 1800 gold-shingled and gabled, and the guest slept in it

until the black raven with raucous glee announced heaven's joy, and a hurry of brightness overran the shadows. Warriors rose quickly, impatient to be off: their own country

B E O W U L F 123

was beckoning the nobles; and the bold voyager longed to be aboard his distant boat. Then that stalwart fighter ordered Hrunting to be brought to Unferth, and bade Unferth take the sword and thanked him for lending it.

1810 He said he had found it a friend in battle and a powerful help; he put no blame on the blade's cutting edge. He was a considerate man.

And there the warriors stood in their war-gear, Beowulf and his eager to go, while their honoured lord band prepare to approached the platform where the other sat. The undaunted hero addressed Hrothgar. Beowulf, son of Ecgtheow, spoke: "Now we who crossed the wide sea have to inform you that we feel a desire

1820 to return to Hygelac. Here we have been welcomed and thoroughly entertained. You have treated us well. If there is any favour on earth I can perform beyond deeds of arms I have done already, anything that would merit your affections more, I shall act, my lord, with alacrity. If ever I hear from across the ocean that people on your borders are threatening battle as attackers have done from time to time, I shall land with a thousand thanes at my back

1830 to help your cause. Hygelac may be young to rule a nation, but this much I know about the king of the Geats: he will come to my aid and want to support me by word and action in your hour of need, when honour dictates that I raise a hedge of spears around you. Then if Hrethric should think about travelling

B E O W U L F 125

as a king's son to the court of the Geats, he will find many friends. Foreign places yield more to one who is himself worth meeting."

1840 Hrothgar spoke and answered him: Hrothgar declares "The Lord in His wisdom sent you those words that Beowulf is fit to

J be king of the Geats

and they came from the heart. I have never heard so young a man make truer observations. You are strong in body and mature in mind, impressive in speech. If it should come to pass that Hrethel's descendant dies beneath a spear, if deadly battle or the sword blade or disease fells the prince who guards your people and you are still alive, then I firmly believe

1850 the seafaring Geats won't find a man worthier of acclaim as their king and defender than you, if only you would undertake the lordship of your homeland. My liking for you deepens with time, dear Beowulf. What you have done is to draw two peoples, the Geat nation and us neighbouring Danes, into shared peace and a pact of friendship in spite of hatreds we have harboured in the past. For as long as I rule this far-flung land

i860 treasures will change hands and each side will treat the other with gifts; across the gannet's bath, over the broad sea, whorled prows will bring presents and tokens. I know your people are beyond reproach in every respect, steadfast in the old way with friend or foe."

Then the earls' defender furnished the hero Gifts presented, with twelve treasures and told him to set out, farewells iaken

B E O W U L F 127

sail with those gifts safely home to the people he loved, but to return promptly.

1870 And so the good and grey-haired Dane, that high-born king, kissed Beowulf and embraced his neck, then broke down in sudden tears. Two forebodings disturbed him in his wisdom, but one was stronger: nevermore would they meet each other face to face. And such was his affection that he could not help being overcome: his fondness for the man was so deep-founded, it warmed his heart and wound the heartstrings

1880 tight in his breast. The embrace ended

and Beowulf, glorious in his gold regalia, stepped the green earth. Straining at anchor and ready for boarding, his boat awaited him. So they went on their journey, and Hrothgar's generosity was praised repeatedly. He was a peerless king until old age sapped his strength and did him mortal harm, as it has done so many.

Down to the waves then, dressed in the web The Geats march of their chain-mail and warshirts the young men marched ac lot es ore

1890 in high spirits. The coast-guard spied them, thanes setting forth, the same as before. His salute this time from the top of the cliff was far from unmannerly; he galloped to meet them and as they took ship in their shining gear, he said how welcome they would be in Geatland. Then the broad hull was beached on the sand to be cargoed with treasure, horses and war-gear. The curved prow motioned; the mast stood high

B E O W U L F 129

above Hrothgar's riches in the loaded hold.

1900 The guard who had watched the boat was given a sword with gold fittings and in future days that present would make him a respected man at his place on the mead-bench.

Then the keel plunged and shook in the sea; and they sailed from Denmark.

Right away the mast was rigged with its sea-shawl; They sail from sail-ropes were tightened, timbers drummed Denmar and stiff winds kept the wave-crosser skimming ahead; as she heaved forward, her foamy neck was fleet and buoyant,

1910 a lapped prow loping over currents, until finally the Geats caught sight of coastline and familiar cliffs. The keel reared up, wind lifted it home, it hit on the land.

The harbour guard Came h u r r y i n g OUt They arrive at to the rolling water: he had watched the offing Hygelac's strmghM

long and hard, on the lookout for those friends. With the anchor cables, he moored their craft right where it had beached, in case a backwash might catch the hull and carry it away.

1920 Then he ordered the prince's treasure-trove to be carried ashore. It was a short step from there to where Hrethel's son and heir, Hygelac the gold-giver, makes his home on a secure cliff, in the company of retainers.

The building was magnificent, the king majestic, ensconced in his hall; and although Hygd, his queen,

B E O W U L F 131

was young, a few short years at court, Queen Hygd her mind was thoughtful and her manners sure. introduced. The

story of Queen Haereth's daughter behaved generously Moithryth, Hygd's

1930 and stinted nothing when she distributed °^osite'is told ** 0 the poet

bounty to the Geats. Great Queen Modthryth

perpetrated terrible wrongs. If any retainer ever made bold to look her in the face, if an eye not her lord's stared at her directly during daylight, the outcome was sealed: he was kept bound in hand-tightened shackles, racked, tortured until doom was pronounced—death by the sword, slash of blade, blood-gush and death qualms

1940 in an evil display. Even a queen outstanding in beauty must not overstep like that. A queen should weave peace, not punish the innocent with loss of life for imagined insults. But Hemming's kinsman put a halt to her ways and drinkers round the table had another tale: she was less of a bane to people's lives, less cruel-minded, after she was married to the brave Offa, a bride arrayed in her gold finery, given away

1950 by a caring father, ferried to her young prince over dim seas. In days to come she would grace the throne and grow famous for her good deeds and conduct of life, her high devotion to the hero king who was the best king, it has been said, between the two seas or anywhere else on the face of the earth. Offa was honoured far and wide for his generous ways,

B E O W U L F 133

his fighting spirit and his far-seeing i960 defence of his homeland; from him there sprang Eomer,

Garmund's grandson, kinsman of Hemming, his warriors' mainstay and master of the field.

Heroic Beowulf and his band of men Beowulf and his crossed the wide strand, striding along '™?"" w e "

" " in Hygelac s hall

the sandy foreshore; the sun shone, the world's candle warmed them from the south as they hastened to where, as they had heard, the young king, Ongentheow's killer and his people's protector, was dispensing rings

1970 inside his bawn. Beowulf's return was reported to Hygelac as soon as possible, news that the captain was now in the enclosure, his battle-brother back from the fray alive and well, walking to the hall. Room was quickly made, on the king's orders, and the troops filed across the cleared floor.

After Hygelac had offered greetings to his loyal thane in lofty speech, he and his kinsman, that hale survivor,

1980 sat face to face. Haereth's daughter moved about with the mead-jug in her hand, taking care of the company, filling the cups that warriors held out. Then Hygelac began to put courteous questions to his old comrade in the high hall. He hankered to know every tale the Sea-Geats had to tell.

"How did you fare on your foreign voyage, Hygelac questions dear Beowulf, when you abruptly decided eowu'

B E O W U L F 135

to sail away across the salt water 1990 and fight at Heorot? Did you help Hrothgar

much in the end? Could you ease the prince of his well-known troubles? Your undertaking cast my spirits down, I dreaded the outcome of your expedition and pleaded with you long and hard to leave the killer be, let the South-Danes settle their own blood-feud with Grendel. So God be thanked I am granted this sight of you, safe and sound."

Beowulf, Son of EcgtheOW, Spoke: Beowulf tells what

2000 "What happened, Lord Hygelac, is hardly a secret ^ZTmnl *" *"* any more among men in this world— myself and Grendel coming to grips on the very spot where he visited destruction on the Victory-Shieldings and violated life and limb, losses I avenged so no earthly offspring of Grendel's need ever boast of that bout before dawn, no matter how long the last of his evil family survives.

When I first landed 2010 I hastened to the ring-hall and saluted Hrothgar.

Once he discovered why I had come the son of Halfdane sent me immediately to sit with his own sons on the bench. It was a happy gathering. In my whole life I have never seen mead enjoyed more in any hall on earth. Sometimes the queen herself appeared, peace-pledge between nations, to hearten the young ones and hand out a torque to a warrior, then take her place.

B E O W U L F 1 3 7

2020 Sometimes Hrothgar's daughter distributed ale to older ranks, in order on the benches: I heard the company call her Freawaru as she made her rounds, presenting men with the gem-studded bowl, young bride-to-be to the gracious Ingeld, in her gold-trimmed attire. The friend of the Shieldings favours her betrothal: the guardian of the kingdom sees good in it He foresees the grim and hopes this woman will heal old wounds consequence of a

proposed marriage

and grievous feuds. But generally the spear

2030 is prompt to retaliate when a prince is killed, no matter how admirable the bride may be.

"Think how the Heathobards will be bound to feel, when the Danes their lord, Ingeld, and his loyal thanes, amZ" *"'*

0 J wedding, their hosts, when he walks in with that woman to the feast: the Heathobards, Danes are at the table, being entertained, wiU be **"*'°

0 avenge an old defeat

honoured guests in glittering regalia, burnished ring-mail that was their hosts' birthright, looted when the Heathobards could no longer wield their weapons in the shield-clash, when they went down

2040 with their beloved comrades and forfeited their lives. Then an old spearman will speak while they are drinking, having glimpsed some heirloom that brings alive memories of the massacre; his mood will darken and heart-stricken, in the stress of his emotion, he will begin to test a young man's temper and stir up trouble, starting like this: 'Now, my friend, don't you recognize your father's sword, his favourite weapon, the one he wore when he went out in his war-mask

2050 to face the Danes on that final day?

B E O W U L F 139

After Wethergeld died and his men were doomed the Shieldings quickly claimed the field, and now here's a son of one or other of those same killers coming through our hall overbearing us, mouthing boasts, and rigged in armour that by right is yours.' And so he keeps on, recalling and accusing, working things up with bitter words until one of the lady's retainers lies

2060 spattered in blood, split open on his father's account. The killer knows the lie of the land and escapes with his life. Then on both sides the oath-bound lords will break the peace, a passionate hate will build up in Ingeld and love for his bride will falter in him as the feud rankles. I therefore suspect the good faith of the Heathobards, the truth of their friendship and the trustworthiness of their alliance with the Danes.

But nOW, my lord, The tale of the fight

2070 I shall carry on with my account of Grendel, mi r™ * J J resumed

the whole story of everything that happened in the hand-to-hand fight.

After heaven's gem had gone mildly to earth, that maddened spirit, the terror of those twilights, came to attack us where we stood guard, still safe inside the hall. There deadly violence came down on Handscio and he fell as fate ordained, the first to perish, rigged out for the combat. A comrade from our ranks had come to grief in Grendel's maw:

2080 he ate up the entire body. There was blood on his teeth, he was bloated and furious,

B E O W U L F 1 4 1

all roused up, yet still unready to leave the hall empty-handed; renowned for his might, he matched himself against me, wildly reaching. He had this roomy pouch, a strange accoutrement, intricately strung and hung at the ready, a rare patchwork of devilishly fitted dragon-skins. I had done him no wrong, yet the raging demon wanted to cram me and many another

2090 into this bag—but it was not to be once I got to my feet in a blind fury. It would take too long to tell how I repaid the terror of the land for every life he took and so won credit for you, my king, and for all your people. And although he got away to enjoy life's sweetness for a while longer, his right hand stayed behind him in Heorot, evidence of his miserable overthrow as he dived into murk on the mere bottom.

2100

"I got lavish rewards from the lord of the Danes Beowulf recalls the for my part in the battle, beaten gold feast in Heorot

and much else, once morning came and we took our places at the banquet table. There was singing and excitement: an old reciter, a carrier of stories, recalled the early days. At times some hero made the timbered harp tremble with sweetness, or related true and tragic happenings; at times the king

2110 gave the proper turn to some fantastic tale, or a battle-scarred veteran, bowed with age, would begin to remember the martial deeds

B E O W U L F 143

of his youth and prime and be overcome as the past welled up in his wintry heart.

"We were happy there the whole day long and enjoyed our time until another night descended upon us. Then suddenly He tells about the vehement mother avenged her son GrendeI's mother

and wreaked destruction. Death had robbed her, 2120 Geats had slain Grendel, so his ghastly dam

struck back and with bare-faced defiance laid a man low. Thus life departed from the sage Aeschere, an elder wise in counsel. But afterwards, on the morning following, the Danes could not burn the dead body nor lay the remains of the man they loved on his funeral pyre. She had fled with the corpse and taken refuge beneath torrents on the mountain. It was a hard blow for Hrothgar to bear,

2130 harder than any he had undergone before. And so the heartsore king beseeched me in your royal name to take my chances underwater, to win glory and prove my worth. He promised me rewards. Hence, as is well known, I went to my encounter with the terror-monger at the bottom of the tarn. For a while it was hand-to-hand between us, then blood went curling along the currents and I beheaded GrendeI's mother in the hall

2140 with a mighty sword. I barely managed to escape with my life; my time had not yet come. But Halfdane's heir, the shelter of those earls, again endowed me with gifts in abundance.

B E O W U L F 145

"Thus the king acted with due custom. I was paid and recompensed completely, given full measure and the freedom to choose from Hrothgar's treasures by Hrothgar himself. These, King Hygelac, I am happy to present to you as gifts. It is still upon your grace

2150 that all favour depends. I have few kinsmen who are close, my king, except for your kind self." Then he ordered the boar-framed standard to be brought, Beowulf presents the battle-topping helmet, the mail-shirt grey as hoar-frost Hygelac fth,the

r r ° o J treasures he has won

and the precious war-sword; and proceeded with his speech.

"When Hrothgar presented this war-gear to me he instructed me, my lord, to give you some account of why it signifies his special favour. He said it had belonged to his older brother, King Heorogar, who had long kept it,

2160 but that Heorogar had never bequeathed it to his son Heoroweard, that worthy scion, loyal as he was.

Enjoy it well."

I heard four horses were handed over next. Beowulf bestowed four bay steeds to go with the armour, swift gallopers, all alike. So ought a kinsman act, instead of plotting and planning in secret to bring people to grief, or conspiring to arrange the death of comrades. The warrior king

2170 was uncle to Beowulf and honoured by his nephew: each was concerned for the other's good.

I heard he presented Hygd with a gorget,

B E O W U L F 1 4 7

the priceless torque that the prince's daughter, Wealhtheow, had given him; and three horses, supple creatures, brilliantly saddled. The bright necklace would be luminous on Hygd's breast.

Thus BeOWUlf bore himself With valour; Beowulf's exemplary

he was formidable in battle yet behaved with honour life ,s extolled

and took no advantage; never cut down 2180 a comrade who was drunk, kept his temper

and, warrior that he was, watched and controlled his God-sent strength and his outstanding natural powers. He had been poorly regarded for a long time, was taken by the Geats for less than he was worth: and their lord too had never much esteemed him in the mead-hall. They firmly believed that he lacked force, that the prince was a weakling; but presently every affront to his deserving was reversed.

2190 The battle-famed king, bulwark of his earls, Hygeiac presents ordered a gold-chased heirloom of Hrethel's Beowulf with a

sword and great

to be brought in; it was the best example tracts of land of a gem-studded sword in the Geat treasury. This he laid on Beowulf's lap and then rewarded him with land as well, seven thousand hides, and a hall and a throne. Both owned land by birth in that country, ancestral grounds; but the greater right and sway were inherited by the higher born.

2200 A lot was to happen in later days Time passes. in the fury of battle. Hygelac fell Beowulf rules the

J J u Geats for fifty years and the shelter of Heardred's shield proved useless

B E O W U L F 149

against the fierce aggression of the Shylfings: ruthless swordsmen, seasoned campaigners, they came against him and his conquering nation, and with cruel force cut him down so that afterwards

the wide kingdom reverted to Beowulf. He ruled it well for fifty winters, grew old and wise

2210 as warden of the land until one began

to dominate the dark, a dragon on the prowl A dragon awakes. from the steep vaults of a stone-roofed barrow An aci;idental 'heft

1 provokes his tvrath

where he guarded a hoard; there was a hidden passage, unknown to men, but someone managed to enter by it and interfere with the heathen trove. He had handled and removed a gem-studded goblet; it gained him nothing, though with a thief's wiles he had outwitted the sleeping dragon; that drove him into rage,

2220 as the people of that country would soon discover.

The intruder who broached the dragon's treasure and moved him to wrath had never meant to. It was desperation on the part of a slave fleeing the heavy hand of some master, guilt-ridden and on the run, going to ground. But he soon began to shake with terror; in shock the wretch

panicked and ran 2230 away with the precious

metalwork. There were many other heirlooms heaped inside the earth-house,

B E O W U L F 151

because long ago, with deliberate care, Long ago, a hoard somebody now forgotten """ mden'"the

J earth-house by the

had buried the riches of a high-born race last survivor of a in this ancient cache. Death had come forgotten race

and taken them all in times gone by and the only one left to tell their tale, the last of their line, could look forward to nothing

2240 but the same fate for himself: he foresaw that his joy in the treasure would be brief.

A newly constructed barrow stood waiting, on a wide headland close to the waves, its entryway secured. Into it the keeper of the hoard had carried all the goods and golden ware worth preserving. His words were few: "Now, earth, hold what earls once held and heroes can no more; it was mined from you first by honourable men. My own people

2250 have been ruined in war; one by one they went down to death, looked their last on sweet life in the hall. I am left with nobody to bear a sword or burnish plated goblets, put a sheen on the cup. The companies have departed. The hard helmet, hasped with gold, will be stripped of its hoops; and the helmet-shiner who should polish the metal of the war-mask sleeps; the coat of mail that came through all fights, through shield-collapse and cut of sword,

2260 decays with the warrior. Nor may webbed mail range far and wide on the warlord's back beside his mustered troops. No trembling harp, no tuned timber, no tumbling hawk swerving through the hall, no swift horse

B E O W U L F 153

pawing the courtyard. Pillage and slaughter have emptied the earth of entire peoples." And so he mourned as he moved about the world, deserted and alone, lamenting his unhappiness day and night, until death's flood

2270 brimmed up in his heart. Then an old harrower of the dark The dragon nests in

happened to find the hoard open, the ha"™and r L L guards the gold

the burning one who hunts out barrows, the slick-skinned dragon, threatening the night sky with streamers of fire. People on the farms are in dread of him. He is driven to hunt out hoards under ground, to guard heathen gold through age-long vigils, though to little avail. For three centuries, this scourge of the people had stood guard on that stoutly protected

2280 underground treasury, until the intruder unleashed its fury; he hurried to his lord with the gold-plated cup and made his plea to be reinstated. Then the vault was rifled, the ring-hoard robbed, and the wretched man had his request granted. His master gazed on that find from the past for the first time.

When the dragon awoke, trouble flared again. The dragon in He rippled down the rock, writhing with anger urmm

when he saw the footprints of the prowler who had stolen 2290 too close to his dreaming head.

So may a man not marked by fate easily escape exile and woe by the grace of God.

The hoard-guardian scorched the ground as he scoured and hunted

B E O W U L F 155

for the trespasser who had troubled his sleep. Hot and savage, he kept circling and circling the outside of the mound. No man appeared in that desert waste, but he worked himself up by imagining battle; then back in he'd go

2300 in search of the cup, only to discover signs that someone had stumbled upon the golden treasures. So the guardian of the mound, the hoard-watcher, waited for the gloaming with fierce impatience; his pent-up fury at the loss of the vessel made him long to hit back and lash out in flames. Then, to his delight, the day waned and he could wait no longer behind the wall, but hurtled forth in a fiery blaze. The first to suffer

2310 were the people on the land, but before long it was their treasure-giver who would come to grief.

The dragon began to belch out flames The dragon wreaks and burn bright homesteads; there was a hot glow havoc °"the Geats

that scared everyone, for the vile sky-winger would leave nothing alive in his wake. Everywhere the havoc he wrought was in evidence. Far and near, the Geat nation bore the brunt of his brutal assaults and virulent hate. Then back to the hoard

2320 he would dart before daybreak, to hide in his den. He had swinged the land, swathed it in flame, in fire and burning, and now he felt secure in the vaults of his barrow; but his trust was unavailing.

Then Beowulf was given bad n e w s , Beowulf's ominous a hard truth: his own home, ff"gs about the

dragon

B E O W U L F 1 5 7

the best of buildings, had been burnt to a cinder, the throne-room of the Geats. It threw the hero into deep anguish and darkened his mood: the wise man thought he must have thwarted

2330 ancient ordinance of the eternal Lord, broken His commandment. His mind was in turmoil, unaccustomed anxiety and gloom confused his brain; the fire-dragon had rased the coastal region and reduced forts and earthworks to dust and ashes, so the war-king planned and plotted his revenge. The warriors' protector, prince of the hall-troop, ordered a marvellous all-iron shield from his smithy works. He well knew

2340 that linden boards would let him down and timber burn. After many trials, he was destined to face the end of his days in this mortal world; as was the dragon, for all his long leasehold on the treasure.

Yet the prince of the rings was too proud Beowulf s pride and to line up with a large army prmeess sustain him

against the sky-plague. He had scant regard for the dragon as a threat, no dread at all of its courage or strength, for he had kept going

2350 often in the past, through perils and ordeals of every sort, after he had purged Hrothgar's hall, triumphed in Heorot and beaten Grendel. He outgrappled the monster and his evil kin.

One of his cruellest hand-to-hand encounters had happened when Hygelac, king of the Geats, was killed

B E O W U L F 159

in Friesland: the people's friend and lord, A flashback Hrethel's son, slaked a sword blade's Hyge'"^ dmth' J

Beowulf s rearguard

thirst for blood. But Beowulf's prodigious action and escape 2360 gifts as a swimmer guaranteed his safety: acro$s t e sea

he arrived at the shore, shouldering thirty battle-dresses, the booty he had won. There was little for the Hetware to be happy about as they shielded their faces and fighting on the ground began in earnest. With Beowulf against them, few could hope to return home.

Across the wide sea, desolate and alone, Beowulf acts as the son of Ecetheow swam back to his people. c°uns* m t °

0 r r Hygelac s heir,

There Hygd offered him throne and authority Heardred 2370 as lord of the ring-hoard: with Hygelac dead,

she had no belief in her son's ability to defend their homeland against foreign invaders. Yet there was no way the weakened nation could get Beowulf to give in and agree to be elevated over Heardred as his lord or to undertake the office of kingship. But he did provide support for the prince, honoured and minded him until he matured as the ruler of Geatland.

Then over sea-roads Heardred is 2380 exiles arrived, sons of Ohthere. T ™ " ,

Swedish feuds and

They had rebelled against the best of all slain the sea-kings in Sweden, the one who held sway in the Shylfing nation, their renowned prince, lord of the mead-hall. That marked the end for Hygelac's son: his hospitality was mortally rewarded with wounds from a sword. Heardred lay slaughtered and Onela returned

B E O W U L F 1 6 1

to the land of Sweden, leaving Beowulf to ascend the throne, to sit in majesty

2390 and rule over the Geats. He was a good king.

In days to come, he contrived to avenge Beowulf inherits the the fall of his prince; he befriended Eadgils *J«J*'sMks the

when Eadgils was friendless, aiding his cause with weapons and warriors over the wide sea, sending him men. The feud was settled on a comfortless campaign when he killed Onela.

And so the son of Ecgtheow had survived every extreme, excelling himself in daring and in danger, until the day arrived

2400 when he had to come face to face with the dragon. The lord of the Geats took eleven comrades The day 0/ and went in a rage to reconnoitre. reck™ing: Beowulf

u and his troop

By then he had discovered the cause of the affliction reconnoitre being visited on the people. The precious cup had come to him from the hand of the finder, the one who had started all this strife and was now added as a thirteenth to their number. They press-ganged and compelled this poor creature to be their guide. Against his will

2410 he led them to the earth-vault he alone knew, an underground barrow near the sea-billows and heaving waves, heaped inside with exquisite metalwork. The one who stood guard was dangerous and watchful, warden of that trove buried under earth: no easy bargain would be made in that place by any man.

The veteran king sat down on the cliff-top.

B E O W U L F 163

He wished good luck to the Geats who had shared Beowulf s his hearth and his gold. He was sad at heart, forebodings

2420 unsettled yet ready, sensing his death. His fate hovered near, unknowable but certain: it would soon claim his coffered soul, part life from limb. Before long the prince's spirit would spin free from his body.

B e o w u l f , S o n Of E c g t h e O W, S p o k e : He recalls his early „•.„ , . . 1 T • j 1 T daysas 0 ward it

Many a skirmish I survived when I was youne „. ., . „ J J O Ktng Hrethel s court

and many times of war: I remember them well. At seven, I was fostered out by my father, left in the charge of my people's lord.

2430 King Hrethel kept me and took care of me, was open-handed, behaved like a kinsman. While I was his ward, he treated me no worse as a wean about the place than one of his own boys, Herebeald and Haethcyn, or my own Hygelac. For the eldest, Herebeald, an unexpected An accidental killing deathbed was laid out, through a brother's doing, md its Bad

consequences for

when Haethcyn bent his horn-tipped bow Hrethel and loosed the arrow that destroyed his life. He shot wide and buried a shaft

2440 in the flesh and blood of his own brother. That offence was beyond redress, a wrongfooting of the heart's affections; for who could avenge the prince's life or pay his death-price? It was like the misery felt by an old man HretheVs loss who has lived to see his son's body reflected in "The

J Father s Lament

swing on the gallows. He begins to keen and weep for his boy, watching the raven gloat where he hangs: he can be of no help. The wisdom of age is worthless to him.

B E O W U L F 1 6 5

2450 Morning after morning, he wakes to remember that his child is gone; he has no interest in living on until another heir is born in the hall, now that his first-born has entered death's dominion forever. He gazes sorrowfully at his son's dwelling, the banquet hall bereft of all delight, the windswept hearthstone; the horsemen are sleeping, the warriors under ground; what was is no more. No tunes from the harp, no cheer raised in the yard.

2460 Alone with his longing, he lies down on his bed and sings a lament; everything seems too large, the steadings and the fields.

Such was the feeling of loss endured by the lord of the Geats after Herebeald's death. He was helplessly placed to set to rights the wrong committed, could not punish the killer in accordance with the law of the blood-feud, although he felt no love for him. Heartsore, wearied, he turned away from life's joys, chose God's light

2470 and departed, leaving buildings and lands to his sons, as a man of substance will.

"Then over the wide sea Swedes and Geats Beowulf continues battled and feuded and fought without quarter. f a c c o u n ' °fwars

0 * between the Geats

Hostilities broke out when Hrethel died, and the Swedes Ongentheow's sons were unrelenting, refusing to make peace, campaigning violently from coast to coast, constantly setting up terrible ambushes around Hreasnahill. My own kith and kin avenged

2480 these evil events, as everybody knows,

B E O W U L F 167

but the price was high: one of them paid with his life. Haethcyn, lord of the Gears, met his fate there and fell in the battle. Then, as I have heard, Hygelac's sword The Swedish king, was raised in the morning against Ongentheow, ongentheow, dies at

0 0 ° the hands ofEofor,

his brother's killer. When Eofor cleft one of Hygelac's the old Swede's helmet, halved it open, thmes

he fell, death-pale: his feud-calloused hand could not stave off the fatal stroke.

2490 "The treasures that Hygelac lavished on me Beowulf recalls his I paid for when I fought, as fortune allowed me, f°"rf, d"vs in

r ° Hygelac s retinue

with my glittering sword. He gave me land and the security land brings, so he had no call to go looking for some lesser champion, some mercenary from among the Gifthas or the Spear-Danes or the men of Sweden. I marched ahead of him, always there at the front of the line; and I shall fight like that for as long as I live, as long as this sword

2500 shall last, which has stood me in good stead late and soon, ever since I killed Dayraven the Frank in front of the two armies. He brought back no looted breastplate to the Frisian king, but fell in battle, their standard-bearer, high-born and brave. No sword blade sent him to his death, my bare hands stilled his heartbeats and wrecked the bone-house. Now blade and hand, sword and sword-stroke, will assay the hoard."

2510 Beowulf spoke, made a formal boast Beowulf's last boast for the last time: "I risked my life

B E O W U L F 1 6 9

often when I was young. Now I am old, but as king of the people I shall pursue this fight for the glory of winning, if the evil one will only abandon his earth-fort and face me in the open."

Then he addressed each dear companion one final time, those fighters in their helmets, resolute and high-born: "I would rather not use a weapon if I knew another way

2520 to grapple with the dragon and make good my boast as I did against Grendel in days gone by. But I shall be meeting molten venom in the fire he breathes, so I go forth in mail-shirt and shield. I won't shift a foot when I meet the cave-guard: what occurs on the wall between the two of us will turn out as fate, overseer of men, decides. I am resolved. I scorn further words against this sky-borne foe.

"Men at arms, remain here on the barrow, 2530 safe in your armour, to see which one of us

is better in the end at bearing wounds in a deadly fray. This fight is not yours, nor is it up to any man except me to measure his strength against the monster or to prove his worth. I shall win the gold by my courage, or else mortal combat, doom of battle, will bear your lord away."

Then he drew himself up beside his shield. The fabled warrior in his warshirt and helmet

2540 trusted in his own strength entirely and went under the crag. No coward path.

B E O W U L F 171

Hard by the rock-face that hale veteran, Beowulf fights the a good man who had gone repeatedly ragon

into combat and danger and come through, saw a stone arch and a gushing stream that burst from the barrow, blazing and wafting a deadly heat. It would be hard to survive unscathed near the hoard, to hold firm against the dragon in those flaming depths.

2550 Then he gave a shout. The lord of the Geats unburdened his breast and broke out in a storm of anger. Under grey stone his voice challenged and resounded clearly. Hate was ignited. The hoard-guard recognized a human voice, the time was over for peace and parleying. Pouring forth in a hot battle-fume, the breath of the monster burst from the rock. There was a rumble under ground. Down there in the barrow, Beowulf the warrior

2560 lifted his shield: the outlandish thing writhed and convulsed and viciously turned on the king, whose keen-edged sword, an heirloom inherited by ancient right, was already in his hand. Roused to a fury, each antagonist struck terror in the other. Unyielding, the lord of his people loomed by his tall shield, sure of his ground, while the serpent looped and unleashed itself. Swaddled in flames, it came gliding and flexing

2570 and racing towards its fate. Yet his shield defended the renowned leader's life and limb for a shorter time than he meant it to: that final day was the first time when Beowulf fought and fate denied him

B E O W U L F 173

glory in battle. So the king of the Geats raised his hand and struck hard at the enamelled scales, but scarcely cut through: the blade flashed and slashed yet the blow was far less powerful than the hard-pressed king

2580 had need of at that moment. The mound-keeper went into a spasm and spouted deadly flames: when he felt the stroke, battle-fire billowed and spewed. Beowulf was foiled Beowulf's sword of a glorious victory. The glittering sword, '"'s "" infallible before that day, failed when he unsheathed it, as it never should have. For the son of Ecgtheow, it was no easy thing to have to give ground like that and go unwillingly to inhabit another home

2590 in a place beyond; so every man must yield the leasehold of his days.

Before long the fierce contenders clashed again. The hoard-guard took heart, inhaled and swelled up and got a new wind; he who had once ruled was furled in fire and had to face the worst. No help or backing was to be had then AH but one of from his high-born comrades; that hand-picked troop eowufs an

0 r r withdraw to safety

broke ranks and ran for their lives to the safety of the wood. But within one heart

2600 sorrow welled up: in a man of worth the claims of kinship cannot be denied.

His name was Wiglaf, a son of Weohstan's, mgkf stands by Us a well-regarded Shylfing warrior or

related to Aelfhere. When he saw his lord

B E O W U L F 175

tormented by the heat of his scalding helmet, he remembered the bountiful gifts bestowed on him, how well he lived among the Waegmundings, the freehold he inherited from his father before him. He could not hold back: one hand brandished

2610 the yellow-timbered shield, the other drew his sword— an ancient blade that was said to have belonged to Eanmund, the son of Ohthere, the one Weohstan had slain when he was an exile without friends. The deeds of He carried the arms to the victim's kinfolk, wigiafs father,

Weohstan, recalled

the burnished helmet, the webbed chain-mail and that relic of the giants. But Onela returned the weapons to him, rewarded Weohstan with Eanmund's war-gear. He ignored the blood-feud, the fact that Eanmund was his brother's son.

2620 Weohstan kept that war-gear for a lifetime, the sword and the mail-shirt, until it was the son's turn to follow his father and perform his part. Then, in old age, at the end of his days among the Weather-Geats, he bequeathed to Wiglaf innumerable weapons.

And now the youth was to enter the line of battle with his lord, his first time to be tested as a fighter. His spirit did not break and the ancestral blade would keep its edge, as the dragon discovered

2630 as soon as they came together in the combat.

Sad at heart, addressing his companions, wigiafs speech to Wiglaf spoke wise and fluent words: the shirkers

"I remember that time when mead was flowing, how we pledged loyalty to our lord in the hall,

B E O W U L F 177

promised our ring-giver we would be worth our price, make good the gift of the war-gear, those swords and helmets, as and when his need required it. He picked us out from the army deliberately, honoured us and judged us

2640 fit for this action, made me these lavish gifts— and all because he considered us the best of his arms-bearing thanes. And now, although he wanted this challenge to be one he'd face by himself alone—the shepherd of our land, a man unequalled in the quest for glory and a name for daring—now the day has come when this lord we serve needs sound men to give him their support. Let us go to him, help our leader through the hot flame

2650 and dread of the fire. As God is my witness, I would rather my body were robed in the same burning blaze as my gold-giver's body than go back home bearing arms. That is unthinkable, unless we have first slain the foe and defended the life of the prince of the Weather-Geats. I well know the things he has done for us deserve better. Should he alone be left exposed to fall in battle? We must bond together,

2660 shield and helmet, mail-shirt and sword." Then he waded the dangerous reek and went wigiafgoes to under arms to his lord, saying only: Bemmlf's aid

"Go on, dear Beowulf, do everything you said you would when you were still young and vowed you would never let your name and fame be dimmed while you lived. Your deeds are famous, so stay resolute, my lord, defend your life now

B E O W U L F 179

with the whole of your strength. I shall stand by you."

After those words, a wildness rose The dragon attacks 2670 in the dragon again and drove it to attack, agmn

heaving up fire, hunting for enemies, the humans it loathed. Flames lapped the shield, charred it to the boss, and the body armour on the young warrior was useless to him. But Wiglaf did well under the wide rim Beowulf shared with him once his own had shattered in sparks and ashes.

Inspired again by the thought of glory, the war-king threw his whole strength behind a sword-stroke

2680 and connected with the skull. And Naegling snapped. Another setback Beowulf's ancient iron-grey sword let him down in the fight. It was never his fortune to be helped in combat by the cutting edge of weapons made of iron. When he wielded a sword, no matter how blooded and hard-edged the blade his hand was too strong, the stroke he dealt (I have heard) would ruin it. He could reap no advantage.

Then the bane of that people, the fire-breathing dragon, The dragon's third was mad to attack for a third time. °"sk"ght He draws

blood

2690 When a chance came, he caught the hero in a rush of flame and clamped sharp fangs into his neck. Beowulf's body ran wet with his life-blood: it came welling out.

Next thing, they say, the noble son of Weohstan wigiafgets past the saw the king in danger at his side flames and strikes

and displayed his inborn bravery and strength.

B E O W U L F 181

He left the head alone, but his fighting hand was burned when he came to his kinsman's aid. He lunged at the enemy lower down

2700 so that his decorated sword sank into its belly and the flames grew weaker.

Once again the king Beowulf delivers the

gathered his strength and drew a stabbing knife fatal wound

he carried on his belt, sharpened for battle. He stuck it deep into the dragon's flank. Beowulf dealt it a deadly wound. They had killed the enemy, courage quelled his life; that pair of kinsmen, partners in nobility, had destroyed the foe. So every man should act, be at hand when needed; but now, for the king,

2710 this would be the last of his many labours and triumphs in the world.

Then the wound dealt by the ground-burner earlier began to scald and swell; Beowulf discovered deadly poison suppurating inside him, surges of nausea, and so, in his wisdom, the prince realized his state and struggled towards a seat on the rampart. He steadied his gaze on those gigantic stones, saw how the earthwork was braced with arches built over columns.

2720 And now that thane unequalled for goodness with his own hands washed his lord's wounds, swabbed the weary prince with water, bathed him clean, unbuckled his helmet.

Beowulf Spoke: in Spite Of his WOUnds, Beowulf senses that

mortal wounds, he still spoke he is near death

for he well knew his days in the world

B E O W U L F 183

had been lived out to the end: his allotted time was drawing to a close, death was very near.

"Now is the time when I would have wanted He thinks back on 2730 to bestow this armour on my own son, ,s l'e

had it been my fortune to have fathered an heir and live on in his flesh. For fifty years I ruled this nation. No king of any neighbouring clan would dare face me with troops, none had the power to intimidate me. I took what came, cared for and stood by things in my keeping, never fomented quarrels, never swore to a lie. All this consoles me,

2740 doomed as I am and sickening for death; because of my right ways, the Ruler of mankind need never blame me when the breath leaves my body for murder of kinsmen. Go now quickly, He bids Wigiafto dearest Wiglaf, under the grey stone '"sfct the hoard

0 " J ana return with a where the dragon is laid out, lost to his treasure; portion of the hurry to feast your eyes on the hoard. reasure Away you go: I want to examine that ancient gold, gaze my fill on those garnered jewels; my going will be easier

2750 for having seen the treasure, a less troubled letting-go of the life and lordship I have long maintained."

And so, I have heard, the son of Weohstan Wiglaf enters the quickly obeyed the command of his languishing ragon s arrow

war-weary lord; he went in his chain-mail under the rock-piled roof of the barrow, exulting in his triumph, and saw beyond the seat a treasure-trove of astonishing richness,

B E O W U L F 185

wall-hangings that were a wonder to behold, glittering gold spread across the ground,

2760 the old dawn-scorching serpent's den packed with goblets and vessels from the past, tarnished and corroding. Rusty helmets all eaten away. Armbands everywhere, artfully wrought. How easily treasure buried in the ground, gold hidden however skilfully, can escape from any man!

And he saw too a standard, entirely of gold, hanging high over the hoard, a masterpiece of filigree; it glowed with light

2770 so he could make out the ground at his feet and inspect the valuables. Of the dragon there was no remaining sign: the sword had despatched him. Then, the story goes, a certain man plundered the hoard in that immemorial howe, filled his arms with flagons and plates, anything he wanted; and took the standard also, most brilliant of banners.

Already the blade of the old king's sharp killing-sword had done its worst: the one who had for long

2780 minded the hoard, hovering over gold, unleashing fire, surging forth midnight after midnight, had been mown down.

Wiglaf went quickly, keen to get back, He returns with excited by the treasure. Anxiety weighed on his brave heart—he was hoping he would find the leader of the Geats alive where he had left him helpless, earlier, on the open ground.

B E O W U L F 187

So he came to the place, carrying the treasure, and found his lord bleeding profusely,

2790 his life at an end; again he began to swab his body. The beginnings of an utterance broke out from the king's breast-cage. The old lord gazed sadly at the gold.

"To the everlasting Lord of All, Beowulf gives thanks to the King of Glory, I give thanks and orders the

0 J ° construction of a that I behold this treasure here in front of me, barrow to that I have been allowed to leave my people commemorate him so well endowed on the day I die. Now that I have bartered my last breath

2800 to own this fortune, it is up to you to look after their needs. I can hold out no longer. Order my troop to construct a barrow on a headland on the coast, after my pyre has cooled. It will loom on the horizon at Hronesness and be a reminder among my people— so that in coming times crews under sail will call it Beowulf's Barrow, as they steer ships across the wide and shrouded waters."

Then the king in his great-heartedness unclasped Beowulf's last words 2810 the collar of gold from his neck and gave it

to the young thane, telling him to use it and the warshirt and the gilded helmet well.

"You are the last of us, the only one left of the Waegmundings. Fate swept us away, sent my whole brave high-born clan to their final doom. Now I must follow them." That was the warrior's last word.

B E O W U L F 1 8 9

He had no more to confide. The furious heat of the pyre would assail him. His soul fled from his breast

2820 to its destined place among the steadfast ones.

It was hard then on the young hero, The dragon too has having to watch the one he held so dear been destroyed there on the ground, going through his death agony. The dragon from underearth, his nightmarish destroyer, lay destroyed as well, utterly without life. No longer would his snakefolds ply themselves to safeguard hidden gold. Hard-edged blades, hammered out and keenly filed, had finished him

2830 so that the sky-roamer lay there rigid, brought low beside the treasure-lodge.

Never again would he glitter and glide and show himself off in midnight air, exulting in his riches: he fell to earth through the battle-strength in Beowulf's arm. There were few, indeed, as far as I have heard, big and brave as they may have been, few who would have held out if they had had to face the outpourings of that poison-breather

2840 or gone foraging on the ring-hall floor and found the deep barrow-dweller on guard and awake.

The treasure had been won, bought and paid for by Beowulf's death. Both had reached the end of the road through the life they had been lent.

Before long

B E O W U L F 191

the battle-dodgers abandoned the wood, The battle-dodgers the ones who had let down their lord earlier, come ac

the tail-turners, ten of them together. When he needed them most, they had made off.

2850 Now they were ashamed and came behind shields, in their battle-outfits, to where the old man lay. They watched Wiglaf, sitting worn out, a comrade shoulder to shoulder with his lord, trying in vain to bring him round with water. Much as he wanted to, there was no way he could preserve his lord's life on earth or alter in the least the Almighty's will. What God judged right would rule what happened to every man, as it does to this day.

2860 Then a stern rebuke was bound to come wiglaf rebukes them from the young warrior to the ones who had been

cowards. Wiglaf, son of Weohstan, spoke disdainfully and in disappointment: "Anyone ready to admit the truth will surely realize that the lord of men who showered you with gifts and gave you the armour you are standing in—when he would distribute helmets and mail-shirts to men on the mead-benches, a prince treating his thanes in hall

2870 to the best he could find, far or near— was throwing weapons uselessly away. It would be a sad waste when the war broke out. Beowulf had little cause to brag about his armed guard; yet God who ordains who wins or loses allowed him to strike with his own blade when bravery was needed.

B E O W U L F 193

There was little I could do to protect his life in the heat of the fray, yet I found new strength welling up when I went to help him.

2880 Then my sword connected and the deadly assaults of our foe grew weaker, the fire coursed less strongly from his head. But when the worst happened too few rallied around the prince.

"So it is goodbye now to all you know and love on your home ground, the open-handedness, the giving of war-swords. Every one of you He predicts that with freeholds of land, our whole nation, enemies win now

attack the Geats

will be dispossessed, once princes from beyond get tidings of how you turned and fled

2890 and disgraced yourselves. A warrior will sooner die than live a life of shame."

Then he ordered the outcome of the fight to be reported to those camped on the ridge, that crowd of retainers who had sat all morning, sad at heart, shield-bearers wondering about the man they loved: would this day be his last or would he return? He told the truth and did not balk, the rider who bore news to the cliff-top. He addressed them all:

2900 "NOW the people's pride and love, A messenger tells the

the lord of the Geats, is laid on his deathbed, p e o r \ t h a t Beowulf is dead

brought down by the dragon's attack. Beside him lies the bane of his life, dead from knife-wounds. There was no way Beowulf could manage to get the better of the monster with his sword. Wiglaf sits at Beowulf's side, the son of Weohstan,

B E O W U L F 195

the living warrior watching by the dead, keeping weary vigil, holding a wake

2910 for the loved and the loathed. Now War is looming He foresees wars

over our nation, soon it will be known ""*the.Frmks and the Frisians

to Franks and Frisians, far and wide, that the king is gone. Hostility has been great among the Franks since Hygelac sailed forth at the head of a war-fleet into Friesland: there the Hetware harried and attacked and overwhelmed him with great odds. The leader in his war-gear was laid low, fell amongst followers; that lord did not favour

2920 his company with spoils. The Merovingian king has been an enemy to us ever since.

"Nor do I expect peace or pact-keeping The Swedes too win of any sort from the Swedes. Remember: st,rike'° ave"ge *"

J slaughter of

at Ravenswood, Ongentheow Ongentheow slaughtered Haethcyn, Hrethel's son, when the Geat people in their arrogance first attacked the fierce Shylfings. The return blow was quickly struck by Oh there's father. Old and terrible,

2930 he felled the sea-king and saved his own aged wife, the mother of Onela and of Ohthere, bereft of her gold rings. Then he kept hard on the heels of the foe Ongentheow's last and drove them, leaderless, lucky to get away, engagement at

J ° J Ravenswood: he

in a desperate rout into Ravenswood. cornered a Geatish His army surrounded the weary remnant 'orce

where they nursed their wounds; all through the night he howled threats at those huddled survivors,

B E O W U L F 197

promised to axe their bodies open 2940 when dawn broke, dangle them from gallows

to feed the birds. But at first light when their spirits were lowest, relief arrived. They heard the sound of Hygelac's horn, Hygelac relieved the his trumpet calling as he came to find them, besieged Geats

the hero in pursuit, at hand with troops.

"The bloody swathe that Swedes and Geats cut through each other was everywhere. No one could miss their murderous feuding. Then the old man made his move,

2950 pulled back, barred his people in: Ongentheow withdrew to higher ground. Ongentheow Hygelac's pride and prowess as a fighter m rew

were known to the earl; he had no confidence that he could hold out against that horde of seamen, defend wife and the ones he loved from the shock of the attack. He retreated for shelter behind the earthwall. Then Hygelac swooped on the Swedes at bay, his banners swarmed into their refuge, his Geat forces

2960 drove forward to destroy the camp. There in his grey hairs, Ongentheow The Swedish king was cornered, ringed around with swords. ' ° u s i'or f ff'

" He survived a blow And it came to pass that the king's fate from mif, hit back, was in Eofor's hands, and in his alone. but was killed by

Wulfs brother, Eofor

Wulf, son of Wonred, went for him in anger, split him open so that blood came spurting from under his hair. The old hero still did not flinch, but parried fast, hit back with a harder stroke:

2970 the king turned and took him on.

B E O W U L F 199

Then Wonred's son, the brave Wulf, could land no blow against the aged lord. Ongentheow divided his helmet so that he buckled and bowed his bloodied head and dropped to the ground. But his doom held off. Though he was cut deep, he recovered again.

"With his brother down, the undaunted Eofor, Hygelac's thane, hefted his sword and smashed murderously at the massive helmet

2980 past the lifted shield. And the king collapsed, The shepherd of people was sheared of life.

"Many then hurried to help Wulf, bandaged and lifted him, now that they were left masters of the blood-soaked battleground. One warrior stripped the other, looted Ongentheow's iron mail-coat, his hard sword-hilt, his helmet too, and carried the graith to King Hygelac; he accepted the prize, promised fairly The victorious Grafs

2990 that reward would come, and kept his word. retume ome For their bravery in action, when they arrived home Eofor and Wulf were overloaded by Hrethel's son, Hygelac the Geat, with gifts of land and linked rings that were worth a fortune. They had won glory, so there was no gainsaying his generosity. And he gave Eofor his only daughter to bide at home with him, an honour and a bond.

"So this bad blood between us and the Swedes, 3000 this vicious feud, I am convinced,

B E O W U L F 201

is bound to revive; they will cross our borders The messenger and attack in force when they find out pcredifs tha*ihe

J Swedes will soon

that Beowulf is dead. In days gone by retaliate when our warriors fell and we were undefended he kept our coffers and our kingdom safe. He worked for the people, but as well as that he behaved like a hero.

We must hurry now With Beowulf gone,

to take a last look at the king a ^ f i * ™ ^ awaits

and launch him, lord and lavisher of rings, 3010 on the funeral road. His royal pyre

will melt no small amount of gold: heaped there in a hoard, it was bought at heavy cost, and that pile of rings he paid for at the end with his own life will go up with the flame, be furled in fire: treasure no follower will wear in his memory, nor lovely woman link and attach as a torque around her neck— but often, repeatedly, in the path of exile they shall walk bereft, bowed under woe,

3020 now that their leader's laugh is silenced, high spirits quenched. Many a spear dawn-cold to the touch will be taken down and waved on high; the swept harp won't waken warriors, but the raven winging darkly over the doomed will have news, tidings for the eagle of how he hoked and ate, how the wolf and he made short work of the dead."

Such was the drift of the dire report that gallant man delivered. He got little wrong

3030 in what he told and predicted. The whole troop

B E O W U L F 203

rose in tears, then took their way The Geatsfind the to the uncanny scene under Earnaness. two ° *es

There, on the sand, where his soul had left him, they found him at rest, their ring-giver from days gone by. The great man had breathed his last. Beowulf the king had indeed met with a marvellous death.

But what they saw first was far stranger: the serpent on the ground, gruesome and vile,

3040 lying facing him. The fire-dragon was scaresomely burnt, scorched all colours. From head to tail, his entire length was fifty feet. He had shimmered forth on the night air once, then winged back down to his den; but death owned him now, he would never enter his earth-gallery again. Beside him stood pitchers and piled-up dishes, silent flagons, precious swords eaten through with rust, ranged as they had been

3050 while they waited their thousand winters under ground. That huge cache, gold inherited from an ancient race, was under a spell— which meant no one was ever permitted to enter the ring-hall unless God Himself, mankind's Keeper, True King of Triumphs, allowed some person pleasing to Him— and in His eyes worthy—to open the hoard.

What came about brought to nothing the hopes of the one who had wrongly hidden

3060 riches under the rock-face. First the dragon slew that man among men, who in turn made fierce amends

B E O W U L F 205

and settled the feud. Famous for his deeds a warrior may be, but it remains a mystery where his life will end, when he may no longer dwell in the mead-hall among his own. So it was with Beowulf, when he faced the cruelty and cunning of the mound-guard. He himself was ignorant of how his departure from the world would happen. The high-born chiefs who had buried the treasure

3070 declared it until doomsday so accursed that whoever robbed it would be guilty of wrong and grimly punished for their transgression, hasped in hell-bonds in heathen shrines. Yet Beowulf's gaze at the gold treasure when he first saw it had not been selfish.

Wiglaf, son of Weohstan, spoke: wigiaf ponders "Often when one man follows his own will Beowulf •* fate many are hurt. This happened to us. Nothing we advised could ever convince

3080 the prince we loved, our land's guardian, not to vex the custodian of the gold, let him lie where he was long accustomed, lurk there under earth until the end of the world. He held to his high destiny. The hoard is laid bare, but at a grave cost; it was too cruel a fate that forced the king to that encounter. I have been inside and seen everything amassed in the vault. I managed to enter although no great welcome awaited me

3090 under the earthwall. I quickly gathered up a huge pile of the priceless treasures handpicked from the hoard and carried them here where the king could see them. He was still himself,

B E O W U L F 207

alive, aware, and in spite of his weakness he had many requests. He wanted me to greet you He reports Beowulf's and order the building of a barrow that would crown last mshes

the site of his pyre, serve as his memorial, in a commanding position, since of all men to have lived and thrived and lorded it on earth

3100 his worth and due as a warrior were the greatest. Now let us again go quickly and feast our eyes on that amazing fortune heaped under the wall. I will show the way and take you close to those coffers packed with rings and bars of gold. Let a bier be made and got ready quickly when we come out and then let us bring the body of our lord, the man we loved, to where he will lodge for a long time in the care of the Almighty."

3110 Then Weohstan's son, stalwart to the end, wigiaf gives orders had orders given to owners of dwellings, for the huUing ofa

funeral pyre

many people of importance in the land, to fetch wood from far and wide for the good man's pyre.

"Now shall flame consume our leader in battle, the blaze darken round him who stood his ground in the steel-hail, when the arrow-storm shot from bowstrings pelted the shield-wall. The shaft hit home. Feather-fledged, it finned the barb in flight."

3120 Next the wise son of Weohstan He goes with seven called from among the king's thanes thma t0 remove the

" treasure from the a group of seven: he selected the best hoard and entered with them, the eighth of their number,

B E O W U L F 2 0 9

under the God-cursed roof; one raised a lighted torch and led the way. No lots were cast for who should loot the hoard for it was obvious to them that every bit of it lay unprotected within the vault, there for the taking. It was no trouble

3130 to hurry to work and haul out the priceless store. They pitched the dragon over the clifftop, let tide's flow and backwash take the treasure-minder. Then coiled gold was loaded on a cart in great abundance, and the grey-haired leader, the prince on his bier, borne to Hronesness.

The Geat people built a pyre for Beowulf, Beowulf"s funeral stacked and decked it until it stood four-square, hung with helmets, heavy war-shields

3140 and shining armour, just as he had ordered. Then his warriors laid him in the middle of it, mourning a lord far-famed and beloved. On a height they kindled the hugest of all funeral fires; fumes of woodsmoke billowed darkly up, the blaze roared and drowned out their weeping, wind died down and flames wrought havoc in the hot bone-house, burning it to the core. They were disconsolate and wailed aloud for their lord's decease.

3150 A Geat woman too sang out in grief; A Geat woman's with hair bound up, she unburdened herself ua

of her worst fears, a wild litany of nightmare and lament: her nation invaded, enemies on the rampage, bodies in piles, slavery and abasement. Heaven swallowed the smoke.

B E O W U L F 211

Then the Geat people began to construct Beowulf's barrow a mound on a headland, high and imposing, a marker that sailors could see from far away, and in ten days they had done the work.

3160 It was their hero's memorial; what remained from the fire they housed inside it, behind a wall as worthy of him as their workmanship could make it. And they buried torques in the barrow, and jewels and a trove of such things as trespassing men had once dared to drag from the hoard. They let the ground keep that ancestral treasure, gold under gravel, gone to earth, as useless to men now as it ever was. Then twelve warriors rode around the tomb,

3170 chieftain's sons, champions in battle, all of them distraught, chanting in dirges, His people lament mourning his loss as a man and a king. They extolled his heroic nature and exploits and gave thanks for his greatness; which was the proper

thing, for a man should praise a prince whom he holds dear and cherish his memory when that moment comes when he has to be convoyed from his bodily home. So the Geat people, his hearth companions, sorrowed for the lord who had been laid low.

3180 They said that of all the kings upon the earth he was the man most gracious and fair-minded, kindest to his people and keenest to win fame.

B E O W U L F 213

Family Trees

Acknowledgements

Family Trees

Family trees of the Danish, Swedish, and Geatish dynasties. Names given here are the ones used in this translation.

THE DANES or THE SHIELDING5

S H I E L D S H E A F S O N

Beow

Halfdane I I I I ,

Heorogar H R O T H G A R Halga daughter m. m.

Wealhtheow Onela the Swede

I I I Heoroweard Hrethric Hrothmund Freawaru Hrothulf

m. Ingeld the

Heathobard THE GEATS

Hrethel

Herebeald Haethcyn H Y G E L A C daughter m. m.

Hygd Ecgtheow

daughter Heardred B E O W U L F m.

Eofor

THE SWEDES Ongentheow

Ohthere Onela I " J 1 m-

Eanmund Eadgils daughter of Halfdane

Acknowledgements

The proposal that I should translate Beowulf came in the early 1980s from the editors of The Norton Anthology of English Literature, so my first thanks go to M. H. Abrams and Jon Stallworthy, who encouraged the late John Benedict to commission some preliminary passages. Then, when I got going in earnest four years ago, Norton appointed Professor Alfred David to keep a learned eye on what I was making of the origi- nal, and without his annotations on the first draft and his many queries and suggested alternatives as the manuscript advanced towards com- pletion, this translation would have been a weaker and a wobblier thing. Al's responses were informed by scholarship and by a lifetime's experi- ence of teaching the poem, so they were invaluable. Nevertheless, I was often reluctant to follow his advice and persisted many times in what we both knew were erroneous ways, so he is not to be held responsible for any failures here in the construing of the original or for the different directions in which it is occasionally skewed.

I am also grateful to W. W. Norton & Co. for allowing the translation to be published by Faber and Faber in London and Farrar, Straus and Giroux in New York.

At Faber's, I benefited greatly from Christopher Reid's editorial pencil on the first draft and Paul Keegan's on the second. I also had important encouragement and instruction in the latter stages of the work from col- leagues at Harvard, who now include by happy coincidence the present Associate General Editor of The Norton Anthology, Professor Stephen Greenblatt. I remember with special pleasure a medievalists' seminar where I finally recanted on the use of the word "gilly" in the presence of Professors Larry Benson, Dan Donoghue, Joseph Harris, and Derek Pearsall. Professor John R. Niles happened to attend that seminar and I

was lucky to enjoy another, too brief discussion with him in Berkeley, worrying about word choices and wondering about the prejudice in favour of Anglo-Saxon over Latinate diction in translations of the poem.

Helen Vendler's reading helped, as ever, in many points of detail, and I received other particular and important comments from Professors Mary Clayton and Peter Sacks.

Extracts from the first hundred lines of the translation appeared in The Haw Lantern (1987) and Causley at 70 (1987). Excerpts from the more re- cent work were published in Agni, The Sunday Times, The Threepenny Re- view, The Times Literary Supplement; also in A Parcel of Poems: For Ted Hughes on His Sixty-fifth Birthday and The Literary Man, Essays Presented to Donald W. Hannah. Lines 88-98 were printed in January 1999 by Bow & Arrow Press as a tribute to Professor William Alfred, himself a translator of the poem and, while he lived, one of the great teachers of it. Bits of the introduction first appeared in The Sunday Times and in an article entitled "Further Language" (Studies in the Literary Imagination, vol. XXX, no. 2). The epigraph to the introduction is from my poem "The Settle Bed" (See- ing Things, 1991). The broken lines on p. 151 indicate lacunae in the orig- inal text.

S.H.