Blogging Beowulf: Fit VI, Lines 371-455

12 February 2009

This fit opens with Hrothgar speaking (maþelode). The Danish king tells Wulfgar, and presumably his assembled nobles, that he remembers Beowulf as a boy (Beowulf’s father served in the Danish court) and that he has heard from seafarers that Beowulf has grown into a great warrior with the strength of thirty men. He declares that Beowulf’s arrival is literally a God-send and that if the Geat can defeat Grendel, he will reward him with many treasures. Wulfgar goes back to the Geats and bids them enter the hall, wearing their armor, but leaving their weapons and shields at the door.

Beowulf and his men enter Heorot and Beowulf introduces himself to Hrothgar, giving the king a bit of an oral résumé. In the past, Beowulf says that he captured five enemy in a battle on one occasion. On another he slew a race of giants. And on yet a third, he battled successfully with sea-monsters. So he is an experience monster-killer. He has come to defeat Grendel and asks that he and his men be allowed to fight the monster. Since Grendel does not use weapons, Beowulf will eschew them as well, fighting with his bare hands. If he should fail, Hrothgar need not worry about burial, since Grendel will have eaten him. In that case, all he asks is that his armor be returned to Hygelac, the king of the Geats.

Again, this fit has a lot of talking, but it’s terrific language, especially Beowulf’s speech to Hrothgar. The speech is rife with litotes. Our hero refers to the terror that Grendel has wrought as Grendles þinġ, or the Grendel affair (literally, thing). And he says (lines 424b-426a):

                              (Nū wið Grendel sceal,
wið þam āglæ¯ċan,     āna ġehēġan
ðinġ wið þyrse.

                              Now with Grendel [I] shall
with the adversary,     hold a meeting
with the demon.)

Not only is this understatement, but it is referring back to the exchange of words, the wordum wrixlan.

His announcement that he will fight bare-handed is also great, lines 438b-441:

                              ac iċ mid grāpe sceal
fōn wið fēonde     ond ymb feorh sacan,
lāð wið lāþum;     ðær ġelyfan sceal
dryhtnes dōme     sē þe hine dēað nimeð.

                              (But I shall with grasp
grapple with the fiend     and [we shall] fight for our lives,
foe against foe;     he who death takes
to the Lord’s judgment     shall be resigned.)

I just love the lāð wið lāþum line. Also, the sharp-eyed will note that my translation here changes the order of some of the half-lines. To wit, I switched the last and the penultimate b half-lines. Since Old English is inflected, syntax, or word order, is much less important. And in poetry you will often have the subject buried at the end of very long and complex sentence. This one wasn’t so long, but the sē þe (he who) does come toward the end. When translating, you have to move words around for it to make any sense in modern English. Also, prepositions and pronouns are frequently omitted; they’re often superfluous in an inflected language and are frequently dropped in poetry for metrical reasons. You have to add them back in modern English.

Another great passage is Beowulf saying there will be no need to tend to his corpse in case he loses, lines 445b-451:

                              Nā þū mīnne þearft
hafalan hydan,     ac hē mē habban wile
d[r]ēore fāhne,     ġif meċ dēað nimeð:
byreð blōdiġ wæl,     byrġean þenċeð,
eteð āngenġa     unmurnlīċe,
mearcað mōrhopu—     nō ðū ymb mīnes ne þearft
līċes feorme     lenġ sorgian.

                              (You will have no need
to hide my head     but he will have had me
stained with blood     if death takes me:
[he] bears [my] bloody corpse     intending to eat [it],
the solitary one eats     ruthlessly,
[and] marks [his] lair on the moors—     you will have no need over
caring for my body     [nor] to grieve long.)

Covering the head is a burial practice. Note that the phrase dēað nimeð (death takes) is repeated from the passage above.

The fit also ends with a great half-line, indicating the attitude Anglo-Saxons had toward fate and destiny:

Gæð ā wyrd swā hīo scel.

(Fate always goes as it shall.)

Lincoln/Darwin Day

12 February 2009

Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were both born 200 years ago today. Ben Zimmer has a post on the Word Routes blog over at the Visual Thesaurus site on the two men’s respective contributions to the English lexicon.

Zimmer counts 144 words in the OED with Darwin as the first cited author, but only one from Lincoln, the word Michigander.

It’s an interesting post, but I’m not sure how Zimmer got the number 144. You have to do considerable disentangling of authors with the same name (Charles’s grandfather, Erasmus, was a prolific writer, and Charles’s children wrote as well, and his son, Francis, co-authored some papers with Charles), but whatever the number actually is, 144 isn’t far off.

Blogging Beowulf: Fit V, lines 320-370

10 February 2009

Again, not a lot of action happens here. Beowulf and his companions approach Heorot, where they are greeted by a warrior named Wulfgar. The warrior announces himself as Hrothgar’s herald and asks them their business, again in very formal language. Beowulf gives his name—the first time we hear it in the poem and requests an audience with Hrothgar. Wulfgar departs to the interior of Heorot, where he confers with Hrothgar, advising the king that, based on the impressive appearance of the Geats, that he ought to receive them.

The bulk of the fit is the aforementioned conversation between Beowulf and Wulfgar, but it opens with a great description of the Geats approaching Heorot in their armor, lines 321b-323a:

                              Gūðbyrne scān
heard hondlocen;      hrinġīren scīr
song in searwum.

                              The war-byrnies shone
hard, hand-linked;      the bright iron-rings
in the armor rang out.

And in lines 327b-331a:

                              Byrnan hringdon,
gūðsearo gumena;      gāras stōdon,
sæ¯manna searo      samod ætgædere,
æscholt ufan græġ;      wæs se īrenþrēat
wæpnum ġewurþad. 

                              The byrnies resounded
the armor of the men;      spears stood with
the armor of the sea-men      together,
ash-wood with gray above;      the iron-troop was
honored by its weapons.

There are some neat alliterative phrases in the fit. Line 350a has wīġ ond wīsdōm, meaning valor (literally, war) and wisdom and line 366a has wordum wrixlan, and exchange of words.

While not a lot of action happens here, quite a bit of sub-text is going on. I’ll go into more detail in the next installment, but there is a lot of political protocol and posturing going on here. For example, when Beowulf announces who he is, he says in lines 342a-343:

                              "Wē synt Hiġelāces
bēodġenēatas;      Bēowulf is mīn nama.”

                              “We are Hygelac’s
table-companions;      Beowulf is my name.”

Hygelac is the king of the Geats, and before he gives his name, he gives his political relationship with his lord. He is putting the relationship in precedence over his personal identity.

Also of note is the use of the word maðelode, meaning spoke, in line 360a. This word keeps recurring in the next fit. The verb maðelian is used to denote formal speech. Beowulf and Wulfgar are not merely conversing, they are engaging in a series of formal, almost ritualistic, statements.

Blogging Beowulf: Fit IV, lines 258-319

5 February 2009

Not a lot of action happens in this fit, which consists mostly of speeches by Beowulf and by the coastal watch, but there is some interesting language and some themes are developed.

Beowulf, still unnamed, answers the challenge of the coastal watch, declaring who they are and his lineage (without giving his name) and that they are on an errand to give counsel to Hrothgar about how to defeat Grendel. The officer of the coastal watch sets a guard on Beowulf’s ship and conducts them to Heorot, at which point he takes leave of them.

The fit opens with one of the most famous lines from the poem, famous mainly for one word, word-hoard:

Him se yldesta          andswarode,
werodes wīsa,          wordhord onlēac.

(The eldest one          answered him,
leader of the troop,          unlocked his word-hoard.)

It’s a great word and the image of unlocking a treasury of words as one starts a speech is a powerful one. And it compares with the image of a noble distributing treasure to his people, but in this case a treasure of fair and kind words.

Throughout this passage there is an opposition of words and deeds. Beowulf unlocks his word-hoard. He declares in line 278 that he has come to ræd ġelæran (give counsel) to Hrothgar, even though he comes armed and clearly intends to fight Grendel, not to just give advice. The officer of the coastal watch says (lines 287b-289):

                                  Æġhwæþres sceal
scearp scyldwiga          ġescād witan,
worda ond worca,          sē þe wēl þenċeð.

(                                   Each sharp shield-warrior
should          distinguish between
words and deeds,          if he thinks well.)

Meaning that he has heard Beowulf’s words and trusts him, even though he has come to Denmark under arms.

In contrast, Beowulf calls Grendel, in line 275, a dēogol dædhata, a secret persecutor or literally, a secret hater by deeds. Beowulf is set up as a warrior who bears arms openly and in daylight, but who speaks fair and honest words. Grendel, on the other hand, is the secretive tormentor who comes by cloak of night and commits evil deeds.

There is also an interesting thematic introduction of the role of fate in lines 280-81. Beowulf says his “advice” will be useful:

ġyf him edwenden          æfre scolde
bealuwa bisigu,          bōt eft cumin—
ond þā ċearwylmas          cōlran wurðaþ;
oððe ā syþðan          earfoðþrāge,
þrēany¯d þolað          þenden þær wunað
on hēahstede          hūsa sēlest.

(if change to him          should ever
come and in turn relief          of afflictions, of trouble—
and the seething of sorrows          become cooler;
or always          in a time of tribulation,
will suffer dire distress          while he dwells
in the lofty place          the best of houses.)

Beowulf can only help if it is fated to be so. He is an instrument of fate, possessing no agency of his own.

A few other words of note. There is the word wicg (pronounced / widge / ), meaning horse. It’s notable simply for its humorous pronunciation, at least to the modern ear. The word is related to way and the German wegand is from an Old Germanic root meaning to carry.

Last time I wrote about physical metaphors being used to denote emotions. In line 278 Beowulf says he has come þurh rūmne sefan, or with a large heart or spirit. Big-hearted is a metaphor we still use today.

Finally, at the end of the fit, as he departs, the coastal watchman prays that fæder alwalda, or father almighty, will guard Beowulf and his companions in their journey. It is one thing to have Christian references in expositional text, but this appears in dialogue. There is clearly a very complex relationship going on between the Christian world of the poet and the pre-Christian world of the story. The poem was created by a Christian society, but hearkened back to a pre-Christian era. I wonder how much more blending of cultural attitudes I’ll encounter as I go.