Blogging Beowulf: Fit XXIII, lines 1557-1650

31 March 2009

When we last left our hero, he had just managed to throw Grendel’s mother off of him and to stand up. Now, in a bit of deus ex machina (foreshadowing is not one of the poem’s strong points), Beowulf sees a sword hanging on the wall, grabs it, and swings at the neck of Grendel’s mother. He connects, breaking her neck and killing her. Beowulf looks around the chamber and sees Grendel’s body and then cuts off Grendel’s head as a trophy. The sword blade melts from the heat of Grendel’s blood.

Meanwhile, back up at the surface of the lake, the Danes and the Geats are despairing of Beowulf’s life. The Danes leave, returning to Heorot. The Geats, remain, hoping against hope that their leader is still alive. Finally, Beowulf emerges from the lake, carrying Beowulf’s head, the hilt of the sword he found, and the sword Hrunting. They return to Heorot, making a spectacular entrance, dragging Grendel’s head by the hair across the floor.

The description of the death of Grendel’s mother is worth repeating, lines 1557-1569:

Ġeseah ðā on searwum      siġeēadiġ bil,
ealdsweord eotenisc,      ecgum þyhtiġ,
wigena weorðmynd;      þæt [wæs] wæpna cyst,
būton hit wæs māre      ðonne æniġ mon ōðer
tō beadulāce      ætberan meahte,
gōd ond ġeatoliċ,      ġīganta ġeweorc.
Hē ġefēng þa fetelhilt,      freca Scyldinga
hrēoh ond heorogrim,      hrinġmæl ġebræġd
aldres orwēna,      yrringa slōh,
þæt hire wið halse      heard grāpode,
bānhringas bræc;      bil eal ðurhwōd
fægne flæschoman;      hēo on flet ġecrong;
sweord wæs swātiġ,      secg weorce ġefeh.

(He saw among the war-gear a victory-blessed sword,
an ancient sword made by giants,   mighty in its edges,
an honor of warriors;      it was the best of weapons,
except it was more      than any other man
to battle      could bear,
good and splendid,      the work of giants.
He grasped the linked hit, the bold one of the Scyldings
fierce and sword-grim,      drew the ring-marked sword
despairing of life,      angrily struck
it against her neck      grasped hard,
and broke her vertebrae;      the sword went through
the doomed body;      she fell dead on the floor;
the sword was bloody,   the man rejoiced in the deed.)

You can see the deus ex machina here. Where did the sword come from? There is no mention of it or other war-gear in the earlier description of the chamber. This is typical of medieval narrative; many of the story-telling conventions, like foreshadowing and continuity, that we prize today are absent. Again we have the loving description of the weapon. Two words in the passage are of note, vertebrae are bānhringas, or bone-rings, and bloody is swātiġ, the root of our modern sweaty. Swāt, or sweat, referred to any bodily fluid in Old English, not just perspiration. Also note in line 1556b, the translation would better be placed earlier: “grasped hard and drew the ring-marked sword.” Again, Old English inflections allow much great flexibility in syntax than does Modern English.

The melting of the sword is nicely described in metaphor, lines 1605b-1610a:

                  Þā þæt sweord ongan
æfter heaþoswate      hildeġiċelum,
wiġbil wanian;      þæt wæs wundra sum,
þæt hit eal ġemealt      īse ġelīcost,
ðonne forstes bend      fæder onlæteð,
onwindeð wælrāpas.

                  (Then the sword began
from the battle-sweat      into war-icicles,
the battle-sword to all melt;      it was a wonder
that it all melted      most-like ice,
when the bond of frost      the Father loosens,
and unwinds the water-ropes.)

Again we have sweat for blood, this time heaþoswate, or battle-sweat. Note that Old English syntax allows the verb phrase, ongan eal ġemealt, began to all melt, to be split.

The poem’s treatment of Grendel’s mother is rather odd to the modern sensibility. She is earlier described as weaker and less formidable than her son, yet she almost kills Beowulf while the hero has little difficulty dispatching the son. And once dead, her body is ignored; the head of Grendel is the appropriate trophy. Is this sexism? Or is it that the actions of Grendel’s mother are justified? She is seeking retribution for the death of her son, but Grendel’s has killed more people, over a longer period, and with no justification, he is the true enemy whose head should be displayed.

Finally, the end of the fit where Beowulf and his men make their entry into Heorot, lines 1647-50:

Þā wæs be feaxe      on flet boren
Grendles hēafod,      þær guman druncon,
egesliċ for eorlum      ond þære idese mid,
wlitesēon wrætliċ      weras on sāwon.

(Then by the hair was      borne across the floor
Grendel’s head,      where men were drinking,
terrible for the men      and for the lady with them,
the amazing spectacle      the men looked at.)

Aptronyms

27 March 2009

Mark Peters over at Good magazine has an article on aptronyms--names of people that reflect their profession, like a gardener named Allen Bloom.

Blogging Beowulf: Fit XXII, Lines 1473-1556

19 March 2009

Beowulf begins the fit by asking Hrothgar to look after his men, willing his possessions to Hygelac, the king of the Geats, and saying the sword Hrunting should be returned to Unferth should he die. Then Beowulf dives into the mere. He is immediately attacked by Grendel’s mother and by various other sea creatures, but is protected by his armor—reminiscent of the earlier story of the swimming contest. He reaches the bottom of the mere, where he finds himself in some sort of hall, glowing with fire-light.  Beowulf strikes at Grendel’s mother with Hrunting, but the blade has no effect. He tosses away the sword, intending to wrestle—much as he did with Grendel. He throws her to the ground, but she grasps him and he falls. She then leaps on top of him and draws a long knife, but again his armor protects him. Beowulf manages to throw her off him and stand up. What will happen to our hero? Tune in next time. Same Beo-time; same Beo-channel.

We see that despite the earlier claim that she is less of a warrior because she is female, Grendel’s mother poses a bigger problem for Beowulf than her son did. Beowulf had the upper hand on Grendel (heh! heh!) from the beginning of that fight, but Grendel’s mother proves to be a more formidable opponent.

We again get the pattern of Beowulf saying words, how he will prevail in battle, before going into the fight. He did it the evening before the fight with Grendel, and the poem makes the point that he in the midst of the fight he recalled those words. A hero is one whose deeds match his words. Here Beowulf says, “iċ mē mid Hruntinge dōm ġewyrċe, oþðe meċ dēað nimeð” (“I will work glory for myself with Hrunting, or death will take me”).

Note that Old English doesn’t have a future tense, nor does it use auxiliary verbs like will or shall to express futurity. The present tense doubles to express futurity, with context largely providing the indication of what is meant. Literally, this sentence reads, “I work glory for myself with Hrunting, or death takes me.” Technically, Modern English doesn’t have a proper future tense either; we use auxiliary verbs to mark the future—which we often call, somewhat inaccurately, the future tense. Old English doesn’t use auxiliary verbs in this fashion. The verb sculan, the root of our modern shall, denotes obligation more than simple futurity, and willan denotes desire for. Both auxiliary verbs were commonly used in future contexts, but denoting the future was not their primary purpose and the future could be implied without them. The obligation/desire distinction still exists in our Modern English shall and will, but the two words are becoming conflated and their primary purpose is to express futurity.

Also in Old English, the verb beon, to be, carried a sense of present action continuing into the future, as opposed to wesan, which denoted a simple present. In Modern English, these two forms have melded into our verb to be. See the Big List entry for more details.

Other things going on this fit:

Line 1495 says that Beowulf swam through the water for hwil dæġes before coming to the bottom of the mere. Literally, this means a while of the day. No one really knows how long the poet intended this to be. It is a period of time that, today, is indeterminate, although it could have had specific meaning a thousand years ago.

Grendel’s mother is referred to as a brimwylf in line 1506. This translates as she-wolf of the sea. Also, in 1511 the other sea-monsters are said to be hildetūxum, or with battle-tusks.

In line 1523, the sword Hrunting is called a beadolēoma, or battle-light, a neat kenning that appears several times in the poem.

Unlike her son, Grendel’s mother uses weapons. This makes her somewhat closer to human. In particular, the weapon she uses is called, in line 1545, a seax, a short sword (or long knife) that is the root of the ethnic name Saxon. The Saxons were literally people who used a seax in battle. The poet almost certainly did not intend to imply that Grendel’s mother was a Saxon; she simply used a knife. The specific choice of seax in this line is for alliteration.

Also in that same line, it says that Grendel’s mother ofsæt þā þone seleġyst (she ofsæt the hall-guest); she had just thrown Beowulf to the ground and has turned and attacked him. Exactly what ofsæt means is uncertain. It most likely means to beset or to set upon, but some have taken it to mean to sit upon, with the attendant sexual implications. While this may make sense with Angelina Jolie playing the role, any reading of sexual implication in the original poem is pretty far-fetched. There is almost no sexuality in Beowulf (lots about gender roles, but little or nothing about sexual acts or desires). It may mean that she leaped on top of him, but it’s a simple attack, not a rape.

While I implied in my summary above that there is a cliff-hanger ending to this fit, it’s not really the case in the poem, which tells us explicitly that Beowulf is going to win. Lines 1554-1556 read:

Ġewēold wīġsigor      wītiġ drihten;
rodera rædend      hit on ryht gescēd
yðelīċe,      syþðan hē eft āstōd.

(Brought about war-victory      the wise Lord;
the ruler of the heavens      decided it for the right one
easily,      once he stood up again.)

This is another example of the strange interplay between agency and fate that is going on in the poem. God is deciding who will win, but he only decides once Beowulf shakes off the attack of Grendel’s mother and gets back onto his feet.

Coming up next: Beowulf defeats Grendel’s mother with a bit of deus ex machina, he mutilates Grendel’s corpse, and returns to Heorot in victory.

Blogging Beowulf: Fit XXI, lines 1383-1472

18 March 2009

Beowulf responds to Hrothgar, saying he will kill Grendel’s mother. So Beowulf, Hrothgar, and a small army march to the mere where she lives. When they get there, they find Æschere’s head on a cliff above the mere. The water is filled with sea monsters and one of the Geatish bowmen kills one the creatures and drags it to shore. Beowulf puts on his armor for the swim. (Not the most realistic thing to do, but hey! This is a poem about monsters, so what do you want? It’s no more absurd than most Hollywood action movies.) Unferth, who insulted Beowulf when he first appeared at Hrothgar’s court, gives Beowulf a famous sword, named Hrunting, to use against the monster.

When I first read this section, I was immediately struck by the similarity with the scene in The Lord of the Rings before the gates of Moria. We have a pool, over hanging trees, sea monsters, and a fight with the sea monsters. Tolkien, of course, was an Old English scholar and intimately familiar with Beowulf. And evidently this specific terrain is a staple of Anglo-Saxon literature, appearing in a number of works. I have no doubt that this fit was in his mind when he penned that scene from LOTR. (I’ve avoided references to LOTR so far in this blog series, but the modern reader can’t escape it when reading Beowulf. Tolkien borrowed heavily from Old English in coming up with names and languages in his works, everything from Frodo (wise), to Theoden (king), Deagol (secret), and mearas (horse).)

There is some interesting language in the fit. At the beginning, Beowulf utters the gnomic statement, lines 1384b-85, “sēlre bið æġhwæm þæt hē his frēond wrece þonne hē fela murne.” (“It is better for one that he avenge his friend than he mourn too much.”)

There are a couple of kennings. Line 1429 has seġlrāde, or sail-road, for the sea. Line 1440 has wægbora, or wave-roamer, for sea monster.

The sword Hrunting is described in loving detail, and throughout the poem weapons get this treatment. Line 1459 tells us that it is ātertānum fāh, or decorated with poison-stripes. This is probably a reference to the serpentine-like patterns produced on pattern-welded steel. Line 1460 says the sword has been āhyrded heaþoswāte, or hardened with battle-sweat (i.e., blood). And lines 1463b-64 tell us that this upcoming fight næs þæt forma sīð þæt hit ellenweorc æfnan scolde (is not the first time that it had to perform a work of valor).

Finally, we learn a bit more about the mysterious Unferth (lines 1465-71a):

Hūru ne gemunde      mago Ecglāfes,
eafoþes cræftiġ,      þæt hē ær ġespræc
wīne druncen,      þa hē þæs wæpnes onlāh
selran sweordfrecan;      selfa ne dorste
under yða ġewin      aldre ġenēþan,
drihtscype dreogan;      þær hē dome forlēas,
ellenmærðum.

(Indeed, did not remember      the son of Ecglaf,
crafty of strength,      what he had said before
drunk with wine,      when he lent this weapon
to the better swordsman;      he himself did not dare
in a fight under the waves      to risk his life,
to perform bravery;      there he lost glory,
his fame for courage.)

It seems that some of the earlier negative commentary about Unferth may be from an after-the-fact perspective. At the time he was considered one of Hrothgar’s best, but his unwillingness to accompany Beowulf into the mere causes him to lose face.