Blogging Beowulf: Fit XVII, lines 1125-1191

8 March 2009

The scop finishes up the song about Hnæf, Hengist, and Finn. Hengist and the Danes lived with Finn and the Frisians for the winter, unable to sail home due to weather. But they did not forget the wrong done to them, and come spring they struck back in revenge, killing Finn and looting his treasury. Then they sailed home, taking Finn’s wife, Hildeburh back to her Danish homeland.

When the song ends, we get another mention of Unferth, and then Wealhtheow performs another cup ceremony and makes a plea that Beowulf watch out and be a benefactor to her two young sons. She also reminds Hrothulf, Hrothgar’s nephew and likely heir, of the kindness and wealth that she and her husband have given him, and that he has an obligation to care for her sons when Hrothgar eventually passes. There is a strong implication in the poem that Hrothulf will dispatch the two young boys as soon as he can get away with it to secure his place on the throne, a bit of political intrigue to spice up the main plot of monster-killing.

We learn a bit more about Unferth, the counselor who challenged Beowulf before the fight with Grendel, accusing the hero of being less than he maintained. In line 1165 he is called a þyle, an orator or spokesman. Some have maintained that this actually means that he is a court jester of sorts, also pointing out that he is referred to as being drunk when he makes his earlier challenge. But he seems to be more than an entertainer. He is also described here as, lines 1165-68a (this section is hypermetrical):

                  Swylċe þær Ūnferþ þyle
æt fotum sæt frēan Scyldinga;      ġehwylċ hiora his ferhþe trēowde,
þæt hē hæfde mōd miċel,   þēah þe hē his magum nære
ārfæst æt ecga ġelacum.

(                  Likewise, there Unferth the spokesman
sat at the foot of the king of the Scyldings;      each of them trusted his spirit,
that he had great courage,      though he was not with his kinsman
honorable in the play of edges.)

The ecga ġelacum, or play of edges, is swordplay, a reference to Unferth having killed his brothers. Here, that act is described as something less than completely honorable, but probably short of criminal—as he still maintains an honorable position at the king’s side. Ārfæst can be translated as merciful, as well as honorable, so the translator can spin how the modern audience reacts to the character. The poet tantalizes us with snippets of Unferth’s backstory, but never gives us the complete low-down on him. Whether the Anglo-Saxon audience would be familiar with the character from other tales, or if they would be similarly tantalized is not known.

We are similarly tantalized by the subtextual story of Hrothgar’s succession. Hrothgar earlier leaned toward adopting Beowulf—to what degree is open to interpretation. Here Wealhtheow puts the kibosh on that in lines 1175-76a:

Mē man sæġde      þæt þū ðē for sunu wolde
hereri[n]ċ habban.      Heorot is ġefælsod,
bēahsele beorhta;      brūc þenden þū mōte
maniġra mēdo,      ond þīnum māgum læf
folc ond rīċe,      þonne ðū forð scyle,
metodsceaft seon. 

(I have been told      that you would for a son
have this warrior.      Heorot is cleansed,
the bright ring-hall;      enjoy while you can
your many rewards,      and leave to your kinsmen
your people and kingdom,      when you must go forth
to see the decree of fate.)

She goes on to attempt to enlist Beowulf and Hrothulf in the guardianship of her sons. There is a lot of political intrigue just below the surface of Hrothgar’s court. And from this intrigue, which we never learn the full details of—it is a minor subplot, almost subtext—Wealhtheow emerges as one of the most fully rounded characters in the poem. While she is certainly not a focus of the poem, she is something more than just a minor character—I haven’t counted, but I suspect she has more speaking lines than anyone except Beowulf, Hrothgar, and Wiglaf (who appears in the final part of the poem.) She has depth and her own purposes and ambitions. She is more than just a trophy wife to an aged king, but something of a power in the court. No mean feat for a woman in the warrior society of Germanic tribes.

She is also portrayed as a skilled political maneuverer.  Her wording in the above-cited passage indicates this. She was present when Hrothgar “adopted” Beowulf, but here she gives herself plausible deniability by invoking the omnipresent and impersonal man, or they, as reporter of the fact.

We’re shortly going to be introduced to the other major female character in the piece, Grendel’s mother.

Blogging Beowulf: Fit XVI, Lines 1050-1124

7 March 2009

More gifts are given, this time to Beowulf’s men, including a payment for the man killed by Grendel. Then the rest of the fit is a diversion, the recounting of a song sung by Hrothgar’s scop, the story of Hnæf and Finn. Hnæf, a Dane, visits his sister, Hildeburh in Friesland, where she is married to the King of the Frisians, Finn. There is some unspecified treachery and the Danes are attacked. (Possibly by a party of Jutes—but the text is unclear. The Jutes may be working with the Frisians, or the Jutes and the Frisians may be one and the same people, or maybe the Jutes are actually monsters; the word for Jute and the word for giant are identical, eoten. Presumably the Anglo-Saxon audience was familiar with the tale and wouldn’t be confused by the elliptical references.)

Anyway, after days of fighting Hnæf is slain and his retainer Hengist becomes the leader of the Danish contingent. Hengist and the remnant of the Danish troops control the mead-hall and the Frisians are too few to dislodge them, so, with winter coming on, the two sides come to an uneasy truce. The fit ends with the funeral pyre of Hnæf and his nephew, Hideburh’s and Finn’s son, who was also killed in the fighting.

Now the edited text I’ve been editing is the 2008 fourth edition of Klaeber’s Beowulf, edited by R.D. Fulk, Robert E. Bjork, and John D. Niles. (Frederick Klaeber, the original editor, died in 1954.) Overall, it’s a good text and the emendations are, by and large, fairly conservative and thoroughly explained in notes. But the text has one whopper of an emendation in this fit—they’ve added a whole new character. Actually, they’ve just named the anonymous scop who sings the song of Hnæf and Finn.

The line in question is 1066, which Fulk, et.al., render as, starting at line 1065:

gomenwudu grēted,      ġīd oft wrecen,
ðonne Healgamen     Hrōþgares scop
æfter medobenċe     mænan scolde
Finnes eaferan

(The lyre greeted,     the song often recited,
then Healgamen     Hrothgar’s scop
along the mead-bench     should tell of
Finn’s son.)

What Fulk, et.al., have done is capitalize Healgamen, which literally means hall-entertainment, making it into the name of the scop. There is also an emendation on line 1068a, where they change the dative plural eaferum, sons, to the accusative singular eaferan. Most editors treat both healgamen, hall-entertainment, and Finnes eaferan, Finn’s son, as grammatically equivalent, they are both objects of the verb mænan. Other editors insert the preposition be, about, before Finnes to accomplish this (which, since be takes the dative as object, also solves the problem of the dative eaferum, but it creates a problem with meter. The traditional translation is:

(Then Hrothgar’s scop, along the mead-bench, should recite the hall-entertainment about Finn’s sons.)

Fulk, et.al., claim that mænan does not mean recite in any other appearance in Old English, it only means to tell of. And since you can’t “tell of” hall-entertainment, healgamen cannot be the object of the verb. Instead, it is the object of the sentence and the name of the scop.

While this makes elegant grammatical sense and conserves the text in the manuscript (no additional prepositions necessary), it flies in the face of the naming conventions in the story. No other character has an allegorical name like this. And elsewhere Fulk, et.al., roundly criticize other commentators who would turn Unferth’s name into an allegorical one. Also, while perhaps mænan does not exactly mean to recite, it alliterates with medobenċe and that is probably the reason for its being chosen—the audience being trusted to understand the unusual sense. In the end, this is not a conservative emendation at all. Living with imperfect grammar, usage, or meter is much more conservative than introducing a whole new name into the story.

This probably sounds like a lot of “inside baseball” talk and a lot of fuss over what is actually just the capitalization of one letter, but it is illustrative of the issues faced in dealing with this poem, as well as other Old English works. There are lots of other cases of similar issues throughout the poem—albeit none that go so far as to create a new name for a character. After 1,000 years, we’re still arguing over exactly what the poem says. This isn’t a case of where the manuscript is damaged and there is argument over what it said originally. Nor is it a case of whether or not the scribe made an error. The words on the manuscript page are clear to read, it’s what they mean that is murky.

Before I end, I want to highlight the word gomenwudu. It means lyre or harp, but literally it’s entertainment-wood. It’s just a really neat compound and Old English is replete with fun words like this.

Next up, how Hengist and the Danes get back at Finn.

Blogging Beowulf: Fit XV, Lines 991-1049

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.

Good On Dare

6 March 2009

Mark Peters of Good online magazine has an article on the Dictionary of American Regional English.

Blogging Beowulf: Fit XIV, Lines 925-990

5 March 2009

We get a pair of speeches in this fit, one from Hrothgar and the other from Beowulf. Not much else happens here. There are two things of note here, however. 

The first is the question of whether Beowulf is a legitimate successor to Hrothgar. There is quite a bit of scholarly commentary on the question of kingship and succession in the poem and one particular passage draws attention, lines 946b-48a, where Hrothgar says: “nū iċ, Bēowulf, þeċ, secg bet[e]sta, mē for sunu wylle freoġan on ferhþe” (Now I will love you, Beowulf, the best of men, as a son in my heart ). Is Hrothgar adopting Beowulf here? It’s not an important point as far as the plot of the poem goes, but how you interpret the lines colors how you read the actions and words of Wealhtheow and the courtiers. For my part, I don’t think it’s meant as a formal adoption. Hrothgar is simply expressing affection for the man who rid him of the problem of Grendel.

The second thing of note is in line 973a, where Beowulf is describing his fight with Grendel. He refers to Grendel as fēasceaft guma (wretched man). The use of guma, man, is very interesting and highly unusual. Grendel has been described in all sorts of monstrous terms up to this point, but never referred to as a man. The line alliterates of / f /, so guma wasn’t chosen for metrical purposes. We’ll come back to this in the next fit, where there is an expansion of this and a discussion of Grendel, death, and salvation.