8 May 2009
The fit starts with the concluding lines of the history of the feud between the Swedes and the Geats (another example of how the fit divisions are senseless). Beowulf indirectly avenges the death of Heardred by supporting the Swedish exile Eadgils wigum ond wæpnum (with warriors and weapons) in his fight to gain the Swedish throne. Action then cuts back to the dragon, where Beowulf takes twelve men with him to fight the beast. They are led to the dragon by the thief who stole the cup, the thirteenth man in the company. Beowulf, knowing his end is near, starts another flashback, telling his men of his growing up in the Geatish court. He was raised by Hrethel the king as if he were a son. Hrethel had three natural sons, Herebeald, Hæthcyn, and Hygelac. Hæthcyn killed Herebeald in an archery accident, devasting Hrethel and sending the king into a deep depression and decline.
There’s a great passage about Beowulf’s state of mind prior to the fight with the dragon, lines 2419a-24:
Him wæs ġeōmor sefa,
wæfre ond wælfūs, wyrd unġemete nēah,
sē ðone gomelan grētan sceolde,
sēċean sāwle hord, sundur ġedælan
līf wið līċe; nō þon lange wæs
feorh æþelinges flæsce bewunden.( He was mournful of spirit,
restless and ready for death, his fate immeasurably near,
[a fate] which should greet the old man,
to seek the hoard of his soul, to divide asunder
life from the body; not for long was
the prince’s life bound to the flesh.)
There is some confusion over the killing of Herebeald, not over the facts but how it is treated in the text. In line 2441 the text calls the accident a feohlēas ġefeoht (inexpiable fight). It is an action that cannot be compensated or atoned for, an accident. Yet lines 2444-46a contain this gnomic statement:
Swā bið ġeōmorlīċ gomelum ċeorle
to ġebīdanne, þæt his byre rīde
ġiong on galgan.(So it is sad for an old man
to live to see, his son ride
young on the gallows.)
Normally Hæthcyn would not be executed for such an accident. Is the old man a generic figure, or is he Hrethel the king? The lines may reference an old practice of the cult of Odin in which a warrior who dies, but not in battle is posthumously hanged on a gallows, a great shame.
The hanging corpse is described in line 2448 as hrefne tō hrōðre (for the enjoyment of ravens), a rather macabre image.
Hrethel is also criticized for not seeking to create another heir, although he still has a son to inherit the throne. This is fairly significant in that inheritance and the passing on of a legacy is a major theme of the poem. Beowulf dies without an heir, and his death signals the end of an era. Lines 2451b-54:
ōðres ne ġymeð
tō ġebīdanne burgum in innan
yrfeweardas, þonne se ān hafað
þurh dēaðes nyd dæda ġefondad.( he cares not another
to live to see inside the fortress
an heir, when that one has
through the necessity of death come the end of his deeds.)
This entire fit is very dark and elegiac, and concludes with these wonderfully evocative lines, 2455-59:
Ġesyhð sorhċeariġ on his suna būre
wīnsele wēstne, windġe reste,
rēot[ġ]e berofene; rīdend swefað,
hæleð in hoðman; nis þær hearpan swēġ,
gomen in ġeardum, swylċe ðær iū wæron.(The sorrowful one looks on his son’s chamber
the deserted wine-hall, the windswept resting place,
mournful bereft; the riders sleep,
the heroes in their graves; there is no harp music,
or amusement in the enclosure, as there was of old.)
