4 May 2009
Beowulf continues the tale of his battle with Grendel. He describes the feasting and celebrations afterwards and tells of how he defeats Grendel’s mother.
This is a pretty straight-forward fit, except that it should be noted that there is no clear division between this fit and the previous one in the manuscript. No one is really sure where fit XXX is supposed to start. As it is really just a recap of what has happened (“Previously on Beowulf...”), there isn’t much to say about it narratively. A few notes on language:
It’s probably time to mention the verb brucan, meaning to make use of, to enjoy. It gets quite a bit of use in the poem. In this fit it appears in lines 2096b-97, referring to Grendel:
Hē on weġ losade,
lytle hwīle līfwynna brē(a)c.(He escaped away,
and for a little while made use of life-joys.)
Brucan is almost always used in the context of making use of worldly things while one is still alive, making the most of life while it lasts. The theme of transitory life is a big one in medieval literature and so it is here as well.
There’s a neat triple alliteration in line 2136, grimne gryrelicne grundhyrde, the grim, terrible guardian of the deep. The –hyrde is our modern -herd, as in shepherd. The grund is ground, in this case referring to the lake bottom where Grendel’s mother dwells. So literally it would be ground-herd, but is probably best translated in context as guardian of the deep.
