6 March 2009
This fit sees more celebrations in Heorot and Beowulf gets a lot of really cool gifts: armor, swords, rings, horses, etc. While there is not much plot exposition here, there are some interesting passages.
The first spans the last line of the previous fit and the first of this one. The previous section ended with a reference to Grendel’s blōdġe beadufolme, or bloody battle-hand, his severed arm. This one begins with:
Ðā wæs hāten hreþe Heort innanweard
folmum ġefrætwod.(Then it was quickly ordered that the interior of Heorot
be adorned by hands.)
No, the poet isn’t saying that hands were nailed to the walls, but that many people were to decorate the hall for the celebration. It’s the juxtaposition of folm, or hand, in the two adjacent lines that is worth remarking.
In another carry-over from the last section, I had mentioned that there Grendel was called guma, or man. This one carries that forward, discussing Grendel’s death in terms of Christian understanding of human mortality, lines 1002b-08a:
Nō þæt yðe byð
tō befleonne, —fremme sē þe wille—
ac ġesēċan sceal sāwlberendra,
nyde ġenydde, niþða bearna,
grundbūendra ġearwe stōwe,
þær his līċhoma leġerbedde fæst
swefeþ æfter symle.( Not that it is easy
to escape [from death] —try it, he who would—
but [all] must seek of soul-bearers
compelled by necessity of sons of men
of inhabitants of earth that place that is made ready;
there his body fast on a bed of death
sleeps after the feast.)
Or with a more modern syntax to make it more understandable: “Not that it is easy to escape from death—try it, he who would—but, compelled by necessity, all must seek that place of soul-bearers, of sons of men, of inhabitants of earth that is made ready; there his body, fast on a bed of death, sleeps after the feast.” Because Old English, unlike our modern tongue, is an inflected language, word order is much more variable. In modern English, syntax carries much of the grammatical load and is comparatively inflexible.
Grendel, now dead, is being considered in a very different light, that of a mortal human with a soul.
Often a single word can open up whole new avenues of interpretation. Such is the case with lines 118b-19:
nalles fācenstafas
Þēod-Scyldingas þenden fremedon( no acts of treachery
the people of the Scyldings then performed.)
The key word is þenden, meaning then or at that time. The poet is saying that during the celebrations the Danes (the people of the Scyldings) did not perform treachery, but implies that they did or will at some other time. This is another element in the thread of succession to Hrothgar’s throne and is an allusion to a Richard III-like tale of the deaths of Hrothgar’s two young boys. More on that in coming sections.
The latter half of the fit is devoted to description of the wonderful treasures that Hrothgar gives to Beowulf as a reward for dispatching Grendel. Line 1032 has a kenning of note, fē[o]la lāf. This literally means “the leavings of files” and means sword, that which is left over after you have removed the filings created by sharpening. It’s a neat reversal, usually the filings are considered to be the leavings, but here it is the blade itself. Note that this is an emendation; the manuscript actually reads fēla lāf, or many leavings, which makes no sense in the context of a list of gifts. Most editors, therefore, consider this to be a scribal error and add the “o.”
Next up, the Tale of Hnæf and Finn.
