¹ It is unnecessary to emend hildegeatwa to hildegearwa to appreciate the figure. Ll. 2361–2362^a are a variation upon l. 2360^a, sylfes cræfte. Under somewhat similar circumstances in Samson Agonistes (ll. 1493–4), Milton uses an analogous figure.

² Studies in English Philology: A Miscellany in Honor of Frederick Klaeber, edit. Kemp Malone, Martin B. Ruud (Minneapolis, Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1929), pp. 120–134.

³ J.E.G.P., xxv (1926), 157–172.

⁴ In Beowulf, particularly in its Scandinavian materials and probably as a result of a long series of manipulations of those materials, the nature of which can be guessed from such treatments of analogous materials as Hartland's Legend of Perseus, Kittredge's Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight, Malone's Literary History of Hamlet, and similar studies, many ideas have become so closely identified with realities that one can scarcely even guess what the original idea was. One can frequently see the process of identification at work in Beowulf itself.

⁵ Not to worry for the moment about possibly-Mercian Offa or about the chronology of the Scandinavian histories, there are still two strata or time-layers in the poem, the Christian and the Scandinavian-pagan. In the growth of a poem, when it is at least partly due to folk-variations, one expects its most recent materials to be least well fused with its earlier materials. One expects therefore that the Christian ideas of Beowulf will be less intimately identified with realities than its Scandinavian or pagan ideas. It is conceivable that the poem may be essentially unified and still have irrelevant pagan survivals or Christian intrusions in spots, for it is very likely that the poet's materials will get the better of him occasionally and leave him, for example, with an awkward literature-of-knowledge passage like Hroþgar's sermon. In short, there are diverse time-elements in Beowulf. But worse than that, there are consequent variations in the quality of the poem's artistry. The fusion of Christian with pagan elements was of course much more difficult for the author of Beowulf than was the fusion of diverse stories for the author of Sir Gawaine because the poet could not take precisely the same liberties with Christian sentiments that he might take with pagan; nor, so far as one can tell, did the poet like Milton have a philosophy that made all religious phenomena congruous to a central scheme. And so, the unity of Beowulf is to be judged partly by the poet's intention, since no man, however great, is able to do everything he wishes equally well. And so also, though Grendel is an “adversary” to be sure, one need not expect so close a connection between the pagan and Christian cosmologies and philosophies of Beowulf as one expects between them in the later and long-considered Paradise Lost. This fact does not mean that the unity of Chrisitan and pagan elements in Beowulf is inorganic. It does mean, however, that the union is not so complete perhaps, not the same, as the union of human and superhuman elements in, say, the Iliad, Paradise Lost, or the Aeneid.

⁶ Unfortunately, of course, the Scandinavian motifs of Beowulf, like Beowulf itself, were for a long while completely forgotten, so that now it is practically impossible to be a very intelligent reader. Recollection is neither spontaneous nor complete. One misses many of the “suggestions.”

⁷ Once the Poet has decided upon the fictions to embody his truths, he does not necessarily manipulate them as we would. 2 and ii and two, let us say, are concrete embodiments of ideas, and they make six. The classical poet may demonstrate this truth, “6,” by a kind of logic, a reality once-removed from actual experience: 2×3 = 6. But the early Teutonic poet is much more likely to reach his “6” by exhibiting 2+2+2 = 6; and to prove the rightness of the cumulation, not by the principle that 2 times 3 always equals 6, but by exhibiting the variations of the experience that 2+2+2 always equals 6: 2+ii+two = 6; ii+ii+ii=6; two+2+ii = 6; etc. This is the scientific method, suitable to primitive times not very apt in expressing subtle abstract or cause-effect relationships. And when the 2's begin to represent very complex ideas or ideals, it is the expressionist's method. It seems somewhat naïve. But when the end gets to be 8 instead of 6, the formula may begin to be very sophisticated indeed: 2+ii=4+two+4/2=iv = 8; etc. This is the formula of Beowulf with its kennings, variations, and three-part divisions. Not only is it sophisticated: being different from our usual way of thinking, it is even difficult.

⁸ No poem, I believe, was ever greatly written by a man uninterested in the resulting “6” or “8.” But to the extent that he is an authentic poet, just as he will deal with 2's rather than with 2-hood, so he will make the resulting “6” or “8” felt in a literature of power rather than explained in a literature of knowledge. If, therefore, Beowulf is artistic and unified, it will have its concluding “8.” But when one puts that “8” into words, one misrepresents it and the poem quite as much as when one tries to separate ideas from realities, truths from fictions, and for the same reason, that because Beowulf is a work of art its truths and fictions are inseparable, its “8” lost in its 2's.

⁹ I am peculiarly indebted to Professor Malone for encouragement and for many valuable suggestions.

¹⁰ The poet seems to have preserved the memory of a meaningful situation when he mentioned Jutes and Frisians together in the Finn episode. And certainly he seems consistently to have had a kindlier feeling toward the eastern than toward the western tribes of the extra-peninsular group, for the Scandinavians are enemies of the Franks, Frisians, Jutes, and Bards, but Beowulf may ally himself with the Gifþas if he wants to, and Wealhpeow belongs to the Wylfings, with whom Hroþgar is able to arrange the payment of wergeld. The four-group division is nevertheless integrally a feature of the poem even though, answering the demands of history, metrics, or verisimilitude, the poet lists subdivision within each group. Beowulf makes the fourfold division when he boasts (ll. 2494–95) that as a Geat he has not had to buy aid from the other two Scandinavian powers or from the Continent, represented by the Gifþas. Finn's people are called Frisians (ll. 1093, 1126) and Jutes (ll. 1072, 1088, 1141, 1146), just as Hygelac's expedition is described variously as against the Franks (ll. 1210, 2912, 2921), Hugas (ll. 2502, 2914), Hetware (ll. 2363, 2916), and Frisians (ll. 1207, 2357, 2503, 2912, 2915). And the Geats maintain a Washingtonian policy toward the Continent; whereas the Danes, because of their location perhaps, are more liable to invasion from it and more likely to form alliances with it.

¹¹ Perhaps all three episodes were originally the fruit of one epic ferment. For the situation Hengest and Hildeburh find themselves in reminds one powerfully of the Sigemund-Signy complex, and Heremod and Sigemund are intimately contrasted with each other in Beowulf as they are in the later Hyndluljoþ.

¹² Judging by English traditions, preserved in Beowulf only in the genealogy of the Scyldings, and in discussions of impiety in connection with Grendel, one may guess that the half-Danes brought the Danes, in addition to prosperity, a new religion, a kind of nature-worship opposed to the nature-phallus worship of Freyr-Ing. If so, the poet, retaining reminiscences of this cult-war, consistently makes the new religion, to which Geatish Hreplings and Danish Scyldings adhere, Christian. Grendel's race becomes significant. And, after all, what has Ingeld to do with Christ?

¹³ A Lombard and a Heaþobard royal family are necessarily not related. But it is perhaps significant that later traditions made brothers out of Hroþgar's and Ingeld's fathers, Healfdene and Froda. In killing Froda, then, Hroþgar and his brothers kill their own uncle; and Hroþulf's is Hroþgar's sin visited upon the first generation. It is ironic that later traditionalists, having possibly forgotten early tribal history and the connection therefore between Lombard and Heathobard, accounted for the relationship between Healfdene and Froda by means of a daughter of a Swedish king! In a similar connection, it is perhaps worth noting that according to the Ynglingasaga and Skjoldungasaga, Starkarþr is made the slayer of Heremod. It is my opinion that Ecgþeow, Ecgwela, and Ecglaf were Heathobards, that Geats were involved in the Bardish feud, and that Swerting was an active actor in it. At any rate, since the poet names him, Swerting was a significant, suggestive name, the literary connection between the sons of Ecglaf, Ecgþeow, and Froda is practically a matter of record, and one is safe in assuming that tradition involved Hroþgar early in wars with his own kinsmen.

¹⁴ Although Heoroweard is mentioned only incidentally in Beowulf (ll. 2160–62), he played an important part in ending the Scylding dynasty.

¹⁵ Ironically, Hroþulf stands in much the same relation to his cousin Hreþric as Hroþgar stood to his nephew Heoroweard, both Hroþulf and Hroþgar being quite different from Beowulf, whose benevolence toward young Heardred is remarkable.

¹⁶ The Ganelonish Unferþ contains in his make-up evidences of most of the causes of Danish troubles. Judging by his probable name (“Infere”—Malone, “Hrethric,” P.M.L.A., xlii (1927), 303) and that of his father (“Ecglaf ”), one would suppose him to be at least a half-Bard. At any rate, he shows his knowledge of extra-peninsular affairs in the Breca incident. Unferþ is doomed to hell, says the Poet, for the murder of his kinsmen; yet Hroþgar tolerates him. And he is as ineffectual as Hroþgar or his thirty men to oppose Grendel. In short, though he sits at Hroþgar's feet while Hroþulf sits by his side and though both Hroþulf and Hroþgar trust him, this peace-marring son of Ecglaf is a literary protagonist to the helpful, reliable son of Ecgþeow.

¹⁷ The Swedes and Geats have been at enmity for a long time, feuds between them having begun long before Beowulf played any part in international affairs. After the death of the Geatish Hreþel, the sons of the Swedish Ongenþeow (Onela and Ohtere) began a series of guerilla attacks upon the Geatish border (ll. 2472–78). Foes evidently feared Hreþel alive as they later feared Beowulf, but the Swedes probably thought that the Geats would be weakened by a war of succession after Hreþel's death, for Haeþcyn, the heir-apparent, was under a cloud, having (accidentally) killed his older brother, Herebeald, a deed, the poet tells us, that hastened Hreþel's death and might very well lead to a feud between Haeþcyn and his younger brother Hygelac. Haeþcyn succeeded peacefully to the throne, however, and contented himself not merely with repulsing the Swedes from Geatish Hreosnabeorh. Supported by Hygelac, he even led an avenging party against the Swedes into their own territory where, at first, he was so successful that he captured Ongenþeow's queen. At Hrefnawudu (ll. 2925 ff.), Ongenþeow re-attacked Haeþcyn, killed him, and rescued his own queen, forcing a small remnant of Haeþcyn's army to flee to Hrefnesholt (ll. 2935 ff.), still in Sweden, where he threatened to exterminate them. They were rescued by Hygelac, however, whose thanes, Eofor and Wulf Wonreding, avenged Haeþcyn's death by killing Ongenþeow after a difficult battle. This being the history of early Geatish-Swedish relationships, ll. 2924–27 are notable:

The Swedes are evidently the aggressors in this warfare if ll. 2472–78 mean anything. Hence, reversing Mr. Klaeber's cases in l. 2927, one should read: “Ongenþeow deprived Haeþcyn the Hreþling of his life when the war-Swedes got the people of the Geats to Hrefnawudu by first seeking them out (at Hreosnabeorh).” The Swedes, not the Geats, are naturally the arrogant ones. They were first over-confident when they attacked the Geats after Hreþel's death; and they are likely to be still more arrogant after Beowulf's death, for between the deaths of Hreþel and Beowulf three Swedes (Ongenþeow, Onela, and Eanmund) have been killed. Wiglaf consequently fears the worst, counting on no sympathy from Eadgils even though the Geats have supported him against Onela.

¹⁸ The chief difference between the situations in rising Sweden and falling Denmark is that where the Danes and Geats are officially allied, the Swedes and Geats are in almost perpetual border warfare. Hroþulf and the Bards menace Hroþgar and the Danes. Eadgils and the Geats menace Onela and Sweden.

¹⁹ Since Beowulf survives both battles, we are to presume, I suppose, that both Hygelac and Heardred were attacked when supported by only a small part of their armies. Onela's insecurity, the poet's theme and conception of the situation at the time in Scandinavia, and the character of Beowulf make Beowulf's succession plausible. Like the death of Hygelac in France, the death of Heardred in Geatland left the Geatish national strength unimpaired and the Geats still united—Beowulf still survived!

²⁰ The marriage between Onela and Hroþgar's sister (-in-law), for example, complicates Swedish–Danish–Geatish relations as a matter of course, for it involves an alliance between Swedes and Danes while Hroþgar and Hroþulf are united, and when Hroþulf rebels it involves an alliance between Swedes and that faction of the Danes to which the Beowulvian Geats are presumable opposed, the Hroþgar-Hreþric faction opposing Hroþulf. If Onela's wife is Hroþgar's sister, not Hroþulf's mother Yrsa, the situation is still worse, for then there will be no consistency between Beowulf's opposition to Onela and to Hroþulf unless he switches sides.

²¹ Opposing Onela, Eanmund and Eadgils automatically weaken him.

²² Onela's attack on Heardred and Hroþulf's on Hroþgar may very well have been a concerted action. Later, when Heoroweard attacks Hroþulf, there may have been a realignment among Danes and Geats.

²³ It is curious that the poet makes Beowulf an exile recalled by the Hreþlings to Geatland as a son of Ecgþeow, an opponent of Breca, or a Waegmunding.

²⁴ Not all the details of the situation are precisely clear and, for our purposes, need not be. The stranger may be Eadgils or Weohstan. The motives for the feud will be examined in greater detail under the head of the poet's Scheme of Things.

²⁵ I may ascribe to the poet additions which were made by his predecessors, for like Sir Gawaine and, the Green Knight, Beowulf probably has a long history. For my purposes it does not much matter whether the poet himself invented or only had sensibility to recognize the aptness of the inventions of others. Anyway, the poet “creates” not so much the giant figure as the surrounding for him to move in and, like a rabbit, take his color from. Beowulf, for example, may originally be Bjarki under a new name and banner; and both Beowulf and Bjarki may derive from an historical personage (Weohstan or another); yet their surroundings in their poems sufficiently differentiate them. Again, Beowulf II and Beowulf I, who doubltess also hæfde him on earme (ana) þritig manna mægencræft, may be ultimately the same person, or kin, related to Ecgþeow, descended from Ecgwela, conqueror of all Denmark—in each case, a Beowulf indicates a strong, unified nation. Yet Beowulf I has hardly any character in Beowulf. Or (it makes little difference) Beowulf may be a composite of several personages. At least, both he and his father are intruders in the family of Waegmund, and Beowulf's kin are unusually scattered, including as they do Aelfhere, Wiglaf, the bracycephalic Swerting, Hreþel, and Ecgþeow. But whatever his ultimate origin, this statement of Beowulf's family connections is enough for our and the poet's purpose: it reflects the buffer-state nature of Geatland, suggests a relationship be tween Heardred's successor and the royal houses of Sweden and Denmark, and makes Beowulf therefore an epic hero, fit heir to tribute from all Scandinavia.

²⁶ Beowulf's strength is as the strength of thirty because it derives ultimately from the well-being of himself and the Geats. It is therefore potent to protect either Danes or Geats from the king of Cain so that throughout all Scandinavia Beowulf becomes the great hero and Geatland the dominant power of the time, apt also to preserve Geatland from Franks or Swedes. Beowulf is memorable because he fulfills well his duties to Hroþgar, Hygelac, Heardred, and the victims of the dragon, thereby preserving good feeling among the Geats and adding considerably to his own character. He is able to preserve peace by means of war. He represents the Geats at their best, ideally unlike the Danes, strong in unity and in courage to maintain their national self-respect, not weak through liability to treachery from internal or external foes. This strength is God-given. Misused or like a hoard allowed to rust in disuse, it will fail. Still, the strong Beowulf is not too literally a symbol. Truth is identified with fiction or reality, and Beowulf is also a conventionalized figure. He is at once a Samson or an Arthur and a bear of a fellow, superhuman as a fighter against man or beast, as a swimmer, as a ruler, and as a kinsman. These qualities are added to his character cumulatively throughout the poem until just as the personages of the dragon and of Grendel become more and more vivid in their respective parts of Beowulf, at the end of the poem Beowulf is a much more complicated, admirable, believable creature than at the beginning when he boasts of his feats with Breca and the scop sings his praises with those of Sigemund. It is significant that a surprising number of the defining episodes follow the fights with Grendel or the dragon rather than precede them, as though the poet were pointing his narrative, having previously only prepared the way for doing so.

²⁷ Grendel and Grendel's dam, again, are purely connotative characters who derive personality cumulatively from an over-confident unguardedness on the part of the Danes, from their inclination to sloth and a consequent neglect of their own self-preservation as well as of their services to their God, from their resultant liability to being murdered by the Bards or, worse, by nearer kinsmen, and to being therefore punished by God. Significantly, Grendel belongs to the race of Cain. And even more significantly and impressively, his exact origin is unknown—who was the father of this murderous ælwiht? The sins of fathers are visited on third and fourth generations. Who remembers the first?

²⁸ The dragon is also a connotative creature, gathering strength the longer it lives in the poem. Its origins are suitably obscurer than Grendel's. To the same extent that Beowulf represents the Geats at their best, this dragon represents them as they are debased. Notably it brings out their cupidity and cowardice. Partly for this reason, Beowulf is not able to rely only upon his own bear-like strength in fighting it. The dragon disperses and finally destroys that þritiges manna mægencreæft which was been the salvation of the Geats and Danes. For three hundred years, during the reigns of all the Hreþlings, this dragon has been hoarding up ancient wealth in Geatland, likely to begin pillaging the moment any attempt was made to distribute that wealth. The non-use of that wealth, since it has insured Geatish harmony, is better than the use, which provokes the dragon. The treasure is not only cursed; it is also intimately associated with the debasement of the Geats; for instance, with the cowardice of the ten who take to the woods and with the curse of the Geats which falls from Wiglaf's lips after Beowulf's death—the behavior of these Geats is of course a marked variation upon the behavior of those Geats who waited for Beowulf beside the mere after the Danes had left it in despair of ever seeing Beowulf again. And the dragon is strong, not only in its own fiery right, but also because the Geats and Danes are weak, their alliance at least impotent, and because they are consequently liable to attack from Franks and Swedes. Such being the case, the dragon scarcely fights in any combatable way, and Beowulf is ominous before he attacks: a king cannot well fight internal factions because his strength is divided against itself since he has either to fight two of his own destructive armies or, amidst general destruction, to array himself with one against the other. In the first part of Beowulf, anticipating Beowulf's might throughout Scandinavia and its probable consequences, Hroþgar warns Beowulf specifically against the dragon in warning him not to be over-confident in his strength, never to be unguarded against the approach of the traitor by night. Yet Beowulf is taken by surprise! The dragon, then, is not a materialization of a war between Swedes and Geats, Danes and Geats, or Bards or Franks and Geats. For both Beowulf and Wiglaf or his herald indicate how easily such attacks are anticipated, and according to Wiglaf, the Swedes and Franks will attack the Geats after Beowulf's death. There is no specific evidence in Beowulf of enmity between Bards and Geats; and the Danes, according the Wiglaf's herald (l. 3005), have been ruled well by the Geats. The dragon is rather a materialization of the disintegration of the Geatish-Scandinavian empire from within, of a state of affairs peculiarly in Geatland, causally and effectually complicated by conditions in Sweden and Denmark, that made the Geats liable to attack from Swedes and Franks. Just as Grendel and his dam embody, not specifically a war between Bards and Danes or between Hroþulf and Hroþgar, but rather both and the conditions which made the Danes liable to both, so the dragon embodies, not specifically a death-feud between Geats and Franks or Swedes, but rather a state of affairs, sapping the national strength of the Geats (killing Beowulf), by which the Geats are made liable to either. Later to be referred to, the dragon's association with the mysterious stranger and with the relics of dead men add to his character. His great age, too, makes him terrifying. If the numbers “thirty” or “fifty” conveyed an impression of immensity, what must have been the effects of “three hundred” and “one thousand”?

²⁹ Beowulf uses these conventions. The raven serves in both capacities. It devours Hreþel's murdered son (ll. 2446 ff.) and it announces dawn blithely on the day after Beowulf's fight with Grendel's dam (ll. 1799 ff.). It is probably serving in both capacities when it is represented as chortling with the eagle over slaughtered Geats whom it and the wolf have divided (l. 3021). Grendel's dam suitably guards the wulfhleoþu (l. 1358). And a very interesting further study might be made of impressionistic writing in Beowulf.

³⁰ The poet seems to have had a well-defined theory of poetry, a theory similar to that which persisted with variations in English rhetorics to the Renaissance. It reminds one singularly of Chapman's “mystery” and of his confidence that he had actually communed with Homer. Through Hroþgar's scop (ll. 874–82), for example, the author of Beowulf tells us implicitly that he can relate happenings known factually only to the participants therein, evidently meaning to say that his themes involve not merely those outward events which are apparent to anyone, but rather inner and less obvious matters of motivation and judgment, matters to be learned deductively from a full knowledge of the whole story to which particular events contribute or through a cosmic philosophy by which to judge and understand particular events. To be able to perceive unknown, unseen, implicit rather than explicit truths is, in fact, the “mystery” of a scop, whose trade requires him, like Widsiþ, mysteriously to seek out and dwell with heroes. At the same time that he associates inner with outer truths in this fashion, the “mystery” of the scop requires him also to tell a good story, a story conforming to the rules of his trade more rigidly than history, and a story satisfactory to the cultured, conventionalized tastes of his audiences. Even in Germanic times, when a nation's destinies rested primarily upon the fates of its kings and heroes, the fall of a nation was at once an excessively complicated and a curiously abstract business. The underlying story, then, must be simplified. Abstract causes and effects must be made visible or, at least, felt actors in the plot. And without essentially altering the true history and damnable fate of peoples, reality must be heightened and refined aesthetically. If, like the author of Beowulf, the poet is thinking epically, moreover, nations and kings, abstract causes and effects, heroes and monsters must be brought understandably under the domination of the prevailing “fate” or philosophy of the poem. Hence, the monsters.

³¹ Ælmihtig, alwalda, anwalda, cyningwuldor, demend dæda, dryhten, ealdmetod, frea, God, helm heofena, metod, wuldres wundra, etc.

³² It is intuitive with races, as evidenced by the fact that they use the word dom, for example, in a large sense to mean “doom” or “destiny” and in a narrower sense to mean “choice” or “volition.”

³³ A situation comprehended in all its incidental ramifications of cause and effect, personality influencing personality and principle reacting upon principle, invariably has in it something of the appearance of inevitability, as in Hamlet, where Nemesis seems almost as omnipresent as it is in the Eumenides. Something of this kind of inevitability is felt in Beowulf, where it has an additional but elusive vitality on account of one's awareness that all is not explicit because of the poet's expressionistic method and of his trial-by-combat philosophy, because also of our want of explicit knowledge of people and events. One of the most interesting structural features of the poem is the variation upon an immediate-cause motif. Not only is there Fate. Not only are there ultimate causes for tragedy, such as guilt for mis- or dis-using blessings. There is generally also an immediate cause, the peace-marring son of Ecglaf of the first part, the garrulous Starkarþr-like old man of the Ingeld episode in the middle part, and the hoard-robbing stranger of the last part. The poet leaves no loop-hole. Wyrd is a judgment sent upon individual men, but it often comes to them in old age. There are ultimate causes of trouble, but there is often the immediate, sometimes well-intentioned mischief-maker too. So sure are the poet and his characters of this fact that Beowulf is made dramatically to prophesy him in the Ingeld episode. The poet may be involved in logical inconsistencies, but he was a poet, and there are no spiritual contradictions here. This “trial-by-combat” fatalism was not ultimately different from that of Boethius, whose God overrules, not choice, but the consequences of choice.

³⁴ At least, it is an irrelevancy. To view Hroþgar as an ideal king is to make him too explicit a character and to attach too much importance to the first or expository part of Beowulf. It is also to neglect the larger theme of the story even in the first part and to miss seeing evidences of a tragic flaw in Hroþgar's character as representative of the Danes. The poem centers around Beowulf and the Geats, not Hroþgar and the Danes. In the first part Beowulf is making glorious use of the jawbone of an ass. In the second, he is blindly pulling down a Temple upon himself and, worse, his people. In the first, he contrasts with Hroþgar; in the second, with his earlier self.

³⁵ An explanation of the unity of Beowulf should help to explain such passages as (ll. 168–169):

because the difficulties are not those of manuscript illegibility or ultimately even of literal translation. I take this passage to mean: Grendel could not touch [harm, attack] the throne [Hroþgar's], the [national] treasure, because he lacked the Lord's permission, although he didn't know that (but his mind did not know it; cp. l. 2672). That is to say, although Grendel could distress Hroþgar and Denmark, inhabiting their rich hall on dark nights and paralyzing their army, he could not, because the Lord would not let him, utterly destroy Denmark, whose wealth (more than Geatland's) was her strength and still sufficient to maintain the nation. Sent by God, Beowulf was coming to the rescue, although of course the brutish Grendel knew nothing of God's intentions toward himself or Beowulf. Since nations as well as heroes are subject to wyrd, analogous situations are suggested elsewhere in Beowulf. The Frankish expedition and Onela's attack upon Heardred were nearly disastrous, but in each case Geatland was still too strong to be subdued, and Beowulf consequently survived. Unfortunately, however, other translations of this passage also make sense as much in keeping with the philosophy of the poem. In politics any foe is heathen, particularly when a foreigner or rebel, and Hroþgar could not very well serve the Lord with treasure, or show his love or gratitude, while he was being plundered daily or nightly. Either “he [Hroþgar] could not serve the Lord with treasure, or show his love” or “he [Hroþgar] could not distribute treasure from his throne on account of the Lord's prohibition” makes the same sense. For one serves the Lord with treasure by using it well on earth, which Grendel prevents, and Grendel is the Lord's agent until Beowulf arrives.

³⁶ This conclusion is to recollect Grendel's character and to read the cause from the effect.

³⁷ In contrast to Hroþgar and the Danes, Beowulf the Geat is awake and ready with his strength even at night. Whereas Grendel is a scourage sent to whip the heedless Danes, Beowulf is a guard appointed by God to punish Grendel and so to avert that wyrd which the Danes had hitherto deserved. Though he could send thirty thanes to hell at once, Grendel could not therefore dispatch Beowulf without God's high permission (l. 706). Beowulf contrasts himself with the Danes, whom he rebukes in his battle-of-words with Unferþ. He even contrasts himself with the unguarded sleeping Honscio, a Geat (l. 2089). And by his strength alone, Beowulf is consequently able to do what all the Danes toegther have failed to do (l. 940). In his innocence and godly strength, put to good use as evidenced by results (l. 1555) and therefore approved by God, Beowulf serves as an ally of wyrd and of God (ll. 381, 665, 696, 734, 1056). While Geatland is united as it is under the Hreþlings, while its unity is unmenaced by blood-relatives like Hroþulf or Eadgils or by relatives-in-law like those of Ingeld–Freawaru or Offa–Đryþ, while its chiefs are watchful against dissension as Hygelac was when he allowed Haeþcyn to mount the Geatish throne or as Beowulf was when he refused to usurp Heardred's place there, while they are looking forward to the public good and their thanes are consequently alert to save and preserve them as Eofor and Wulf were in the interests of the Hreþlings (cp. Weohstan)—while Geatland is united in contrast to Denmark or Sweden, while Beowulf is consequently watchful, Beowulf's strength avails, the strength of thirty men, of a nation, approved by God the doomer.

³⁸ Two main difficulties rise in the way of our reading Beowulf easily, our want of exact knowledge of early Scandinavian history and the practical necessity we are under to read more literally than we were intended to read. Neither the internal situation in Geatland nor the international complications are quite clear. It seems reasonably obvious to me that Waegmundings and Hreþlings battled for the succession to Heardred's throne; and it is probable that a Waegmunding succeeded Heardred immediately, partly as a result of Onela's influence, and kept the Geatish nation intact for a while. But it is not clear to which group the treasure belonged, nor is it clear what were the motives for distributing it. Presumably the treasure is part of the national resources of the Geats: it dates back one thousand years, interminably. Presumably it belonged to the Hreþlings, since it is heathen, since its owner is dead, and since it was hoarded during all their reigns, for three hundred years. But it may have belonged to the ancestors of the Waegmundings. And presumably either Eadgils, urging the Hreþling group fatally to fight the Waegmundings and other followers of Onela, or else Weohstan and Wiglaf, returning from Sweden and displacing the Hreþlings, reviving an old feud, brought about the robbery of the hoard. But the difficulties are still many, since the Geats as a nation are represented by Beowulf rather than by Waegmunding or a Hreþling. The Geat ruler's motives in distributing the wealth are therefore not clear. He may have tried therewith to reëstablish a single Scandinavian empire, assuming there had been one. He may have received more revenue than could possibly be used and so have upset balances. He may simply have robbed the dead without God's high permission, He may, in short, have robbed peer to pay peasant or he may have robbed peri to pay peer. At any rate, he sacrificed national strength for national wealth, creating factions. As for the international complications—Professor Malone has suggested that eventually, because of Eadgils's marriage with Yrsa, Hroþulf and Eadgils became allies. After Heoroweard's death, which followed apparently soon after Hroþulf's, little is known of Danish affairs. But, before, it seems reasonable to imagine that Hroþulf's followers resented Geatish influence, just as it seems also reasonable to suppose that Eadgils, with a brother to avenge on the Waegmundings, joined these Danish radicals against pro-Hroþgar-Hreþric Geats. Under a Waegmunding, the Geats are left with the Heoroweard or Hreþric faction in Denmark and with the Onela-Waegmunding faction in Geatland and Sweden, possibly opposed by a Hreþling group. This alignment is consistent, Hroþgar, Onela, and Beowulf being good kings, with Waegmundings being patronized by the Swedish Onela just as Ecgþeow-Beowulf was patronized by Hroþgar. If Beowulf has any connection with Bjarki, however, it is also conceivable that Heardred's successor, married to Hrut, making common cause with the Danes against Bards or Swedes, was forced to join Hroþulf finally to resist an invasion by Swedes and Geats under Heoroweard and, at a distance, Eadgils. Hroþgar's gifts to Beowulf may even mean that Hroþgar thereby puts Beowulf before Heoroweard as a possible remote successor to the Danish throne. As representative of the Geats, the dual nature of Beowulf, Waegmunding and Hreþling, makes conclusion now impossible? It is enough for our purposes, at any rate, that in fighting the dragon, apart from the treasure involved, Beowulf is fighting almost against himself to preserve Geatish peace and prosperity, and the means are unusual for him. Even in the rise of the Geats to prosperity, however, as indicated by Onela's patronage of Beowulf and Wiglaf's succession to him, it is notable that the Swedes like their sword play an ironic rôle.

³⁹ That is to say, an historical situation is described by means of conventions. The treasure, for example, is 1000 years old. It has been hoarded by the dragon for 300 years. It is deposited in a battlefield by the last of a race or dynasty; it constitutes a monument to the dead. It is heathen. And it is cursed. All these characteristics are conventions. A battlefield is sacred whether it is a scene of an early baronial war (between Waegmunding and Hreþling), of a rebellion of early Geats from an original Scandinavian empire, or of a rebellion of Geats from a single people like the Eruli, originally inhabiting Geatland. Again, a hoarded treasure is not necessarily cursed: God may give Sigemund a sword for gaining such treasure. But this hoard is cursed conventionally. Robbing the dead of their treasures is dishonoring their “external soul,” as awful as grave-rifling (it amounts to that!). The hoard is cursed because it is heathen. It is also cursed because it has been in disuse, because it has economic significance. Finally, it is cursed because the death of Beowulf proves it is cursed. There is no conflict between the conventional, economic, and philosophic characteristics of the hoard. There is only a proper identification of an idea with conventional reality to make a good story.

⁴⁰ Gogmagog must always be stronger than either Gog or Magog. To the extent that both represent Geats, Beowulf and the dragon are fighting against themselves. Beowulf cannot therefore rely only on his bare strength, since figuratively part of it is in the dragon.

⁴¹ When one speaks of Beowulf's fault, consequently, one is speaking of the Geats's fault, which may be that of the Hreþlings in allowing unwatchfully treasure to be hoarded, of Waegmunding in heedlessly desiring it for its own sake, or of the Geats generally in being carelessly surprised by its discovery.

⁴² Unlike Hroþulf or Eadgils or Heremod, Beowulf can boast that he has not been instrumental in killing his kinsmen (ll. 2179, 2741). Unlike Hroþgar, although he also grows old, Beowulf himself stands up to fight the invading monster, relying upon no ally (l. 2494) although he has allies. Unlike possibly Finn, Hengest, or Ingeld, Hroþulf or Eadgils, Beowulf has sworn no false oaths (l. 2738). And unlike Hygelac, it is his virtue that he stayed at home and cared for his own (ll. 2736–38) in Scandinavia. The existence of a flaw in his personal or political character is revealed only in his old age and made bearable partly because of the inscrutability of God. He desires the wealth for his people, not for himself. Finally, he attacks the dragon bravely alone.

⁴³ Beowulf is ominous when he realizes that he will not be able to rely only upon his own strength in his battle with the dragon (cp. ll. 2180–83), and he tells us implicitly that it has been sent by God, who decrees Beowulf's death in fighting it, wrathful at the breaking of an old law which the hero of the poem is naturally not very explicit in defining (l. 2329).

⁴⁴ After prophesying that Beowulf's strength will be felt and praised geond widwegas, Hroþgar warns Beowulf against proud overconfidence and the unexpected approach of the enemy by night and against sloth and the consequent non-distribution of rings and loss of heroic character. During the early part of his career Beowulf aided the Danes, fought with Hygelac against the Franks, and avenged Heardred upon Onela. But the latter part of that career appears to have been passed inactively till the surprise attack of the dragon roused Geatland, and the effect of this luxurious inactivity, answering Hroþgar's prophecies, is evident in the facts that a base fellow first surprises the Geats by discovering the dragon and that Beowulf's berserkers turn cowardly at a critical moment. The Geats should certainly have been on guard, for there were many more or less obvious reasons for the development of factions among them. Beowulf's companions should have been loyal, for they had sworn to be so. And Beowulf should have been wiser than his predecessors, having been warned. The dragon, specializing in burning buildings rather than killing people, ruining Geatland's prosperity at its core, nevertheless surprises the Geats, and partly because of its and Beowulf's nature, partly because of the complementary cowardice of Beowulf's men, destroys þritiges manna mægencræft.

⁴⁵ Since in detail Beowulf is a symphony of variations, for example, one expects the last part to be a variation upon the first. And if Beowulf is unified at all, one expects, not only that Hroþgar's sermon will prove significant, but also that the philosophy of the poem will be carried to its logical applied conclusion.

⁴⁶ One of the descriptions of the robbing of the hoard is also dramatic. The theme of this particular version of the theft is its effects (ll. 2287–90):

First we are told of the ultimate effect of the raping of the hoard: strife is occasioned among the Geats. Then we are told of the immediate effect of the discovery of the theft upon the dragon. It smelled about for the robber and finally located the enemy's footprints. By a natural, but sudden, transition, we are told of the immediate effect of the robbery on the thief. Yet undoomed, but frightened, he sneaked away, sneaked past the very head of the sleeping wyrm. In this pictorial drama, it is notable that the narrative sequence of events is almost precisely reversed. The passage is not narrative, but purely drama of situation. The descriptions of the viewing of Grendel's hand also illustrate the dramatic qualities of Beowulf, the poet's interest in effects upon observers and his visualization of the situation. The most terrific part of the fight with Grendel was his attempt to get out of the hall alive, so great a struggle that, though the frame of the building remained intact like the roof, the walls were swiþe tobrocen, eal inneweard irenbendum fæst, heorras tohlidene (ll. 999–1002), it being necessary to put Heorot in order again before the celebration of Beowulf's victory could take place (ll. 991–994). The morning after the fight, then, there are two significant tokens of its fierceness, the arm and the sound roof of the hall rising above the skeleton frame (l. 835), all the rest of the building being disordered. When Hroþgar comes to Heorot, its roof and the arm beneath it testify graphically to the strength of both Grendel and Beowulf. Unferþ sees the same two tokens (ll. 980–983) exactly as Hroþgar sees them.

The hand was still under the roof; that is, so to speak, in the wall-less hall. The use of ofer (1983), like a disjunctive use of “and,” is idiomatic, but the idiom survives in such a phrase as “passing a bill over a veto” and it seems natural when one considers Old English usages of the word. L. 983 is most easily translated as “they saw the hand in addition to the roof,” ofer being used as in the very common phrase ofer þaet. But this translation does not fully render ofer, which commonly means “among” or “amidst,” as (ll. 2298–99) se þe næs gerad … sægde ofer ealle or (Fates of the A., l. 15) Ge neh ge feor is þin nama halig, wuldre gewlitigad ofer werþeoda. Ofer is used in this sense particularly when the slighter, but more potent thing is likely to be lost in the midst of a group of the same thing or among larger things, but which nevertheless centers attention: thus, sum (sæda) feoll ofer stanscyligean. Hence, ofer has something of the force of “in spite of,” and is commonly used to denote “contrary to” or “in spite of” in phrases like the following in Caedmon and elsewhere: ofer Godes est, ofer his willan, ofer drihtnes word, ofer witena dom, ofer meotodes bibod, etc. In l. 983, consequently, ofer means almost “in spite of,” having at the same time the connotation of “in the midst of” or “in addition to.” The hand was visible in spite of (in the midst of, or beneath) the larger roof, also a great and curious testimony to the fierceness of the combat. This usage is comparable to that in l. 2724, he ofer benne spræc.

⁴⁷ When it came to the historical background, obviously the poet was something of a pedant, as his probably apt allusions to Hereic, Swerting, and others indicate. The effect of this pedantry was, on the whole, good, for it counteracted a tendency to abstraction which outcrops in Hroþgar's sermon.