CHAPTER 4

The Exploration of Mind in Beowulf

1. Contrasts in directing and exploring minds

Centered on royal and ecclesiastical uses of language, Chapters 2 and 3 attest to a sustained practice for instructing minds during the Anglo-Saxon centuries. Royal codes, from Alfred’s reign on, typically begin with statements inclusive of almost all Anglo-Saxons partly because kings wish to win full adherence and allegiance. Old English homilies exemplify the task of shepherding communicants to steadfast faith and virtue. Yet the continual reliance on similar edicts in the codes and on analogous speech acts in homilies suggests a clear awareness of evident resistance. Kings and their councilors recognize gaps between promulgated edicts and actual compliance; homilists know that confession is difficult, loving kinship in communities uncertain, and faith in God unsteady. That these institutional efforts at directing minds remain undiminished testifies, however, not to doggedness but to a consciousness of the heart’s diverse impulses. Although likely to fall short, deontic utterances, variously worded, sometimes persuade recalcitrant audiences to help overcome divisiveness on complex issues. What the codes and homilies cannot reveal is the reception of audiences, the ways that deontic utterances either encounter perplexity, resistance and defiance, or else contribute to a desired response. The texts of codes and homilies offer, in short, a framework for directing or persuading minds.

The process of making and enacting decisions, of showing the minds of Anglo-Saxon audiences engaged, potentially if not directly, is poetic work, primarily that of the Beowulf poet. This concern with reflection and its consequences as more deeply characteristic of Beowulf than are scenes of battle or acts or heroism is a judgment still in need of debate. Lapidge’s view (1993: 374) of Beowulf as “taken up with reflection— on human activity and conduct, on the transience of human life,” a view that this chapter examines, goes largely unobserved. So pervasive is the idea of Beowulf as a heroic poem that Lapidge’s invitation to appreciate the poet’s engagement “with the workings of the human mind” eludes notice in, say, Bjork and Nile's handbook.1

84 1. Contrasts in directing and exploring minds

In his essay, Lapidge discusses the poet’s evocation of fear for Grendel as the mind’s disposition to regard what is “truly horrific” as emerging from what is “totally unfamiliar” (1993: 394). His argument rests on the experience of a first reading, the simultaneous discovery that Grendel attacks relentlessly yet remains a mysterious figure until his death. The poet’s initial words for the monster carry uncertain meanings, or relate nothing visual. The name Grendel is itself opaque; the first reference to him—“gæst” ‘demon’ or ‘spirit’—has an ambiguos sense; a subsequent epithet—“angena” ‘solitary one’—contains no visual element (1993: 377–82). Even when the detail on Grendel accumulates, especially after his death and beheading, his impact on the audience, although no longer nightmarish, is still powerful.

Complementary to Lapidge’s sense of an audience taken aback by Grendel is the impact that the monster has on Danes and Geats. If many in the poet’s Anglo-Saxon audience respond to Grendel with a dread akin to that of the Danes at Heorot, they very likely admire Beowulf’s intrepidity. This possibility of regarding Grendel diversely presupposes, then, an Anglo-Saxon audience of various dispositions. What is more, this contest between anxiety and courage, even in the same conciousness, does not exclude a curiosity in learning, too, about the mind of the alien Grendel. Remarkably, the texture of Beowulf supports this breadth of exploration in oneself and the other, the openness of the poem different from the projects of edicts and homilies.

As if these perspectives on the mind’s engagement with Grendel were insufficient, Beowulf’s narrator also speaks to questions of God’s attitude toward the monster and of human conduct:

ond þone ænne heht

golde forgyldan, þone ðe Grendel ær

mane acwealde,—swa he hyra ma wolde,

nefne him witig God wyrd forstode

ond ðæs mannes mod. Metod eallum weold

gumena cynnes, swa he nu git deð.

Forþan bið andgit æghwær selest,

ferhðes foreþanc. Fela sceal gebidan

leofes ond læþes se þe longe her

on ðyssum windagum worolde bruceð!

(1053–62)2

and [Hroðgar] gave the order to pay for him

with gold, whom Grendel had wickedly killed,

Beowulf 85

as he would have more of them had wise God

and the spirit of man not prevented fate.

The Ruler governed all the race of men, as he

now still does. Therefore discernment is every-

where best, forethought of mind. He shall live

to see much of the delightful and the hateful

who here makes long use of the world in these

days of strife.

In the aftermath of Grendel’s defeat, the narrator first proclaims Hroðgar’s honor, God’s justice, and Beowulf’s courage, but then expresses himself homiletically in a deontic statement on forethought. In this statement “andgit” and “foreþanc” emphasize as abstract nouns the value of thoughtfulness in a world subject to strife and delight.3 Chickering (1992: 303) notes that these abstract nouns spur “us to wonder.” Such wonder invites self-exploration, generated by fear and valor in Heorot.

The narrator’s homiletic exhortation on forethought also bridges the Grendel episode to others that later in the poem involve sorting out what to do. Hygd’s offer of the Geatish crown to Beowulf exemplifies an episode on succession, significant in the poem and applicable to issues of kingship in Anglo-Saxon history. Beowulf’s resolve to fight alone against the dragon, the result of forethought taken in extremity, very likely resonates with Anglo-Saxon discussions at the onset of battle. If the abstract nouns in the poet’s eulogy on Heorot’s rescue also prepares audiences for episodes of discernment and forethought, then his approaches to modes of thought call for explanation. In short, Lapidge’s thesis on Beowulf as a poem on “the workings of the human mind” merits sustained inquiry.

2. Exploratory pespectives on modes of thought and feeling

The poet’s design for Beowulf offers audiences some perspective on examining human, monstrous, and deific ranges of mind. These perspectives, already adumbrated, concern patterns of diction and types of episode. Lapidge analyzes diction that elicits visceral responses of horror and nightmare. The narrator’s abstract terms for discernment remind audiences that the poem’s episodes often demonstrate a quality of thought worth considering. The poem’s episodes, especially those that contain direct speech, provide opportunities in themselves for exploring modes of thought and feeling.

86 2.1 Maxims as a structural element

That the poem’s diction and episodes encourage audiences to consider characters’ feelings and thoughts has a further consequence of inviting reflection on oneself and one’s community. Does the diction on Danish

attitudes toward Beowulf at his first arrival show, for example, a duly considered regard for both his suddenness and promise? As king does

Beowulf’s long monologue on confronting the dragon disclose through his words a model of a wise leader able to command? Finally, this focus on diction and episode applies to the credibility of the poet in presenting the minds of the monsters and in alluding to deific thought and influence.

2.1 Maxims as a structural element

Since the poet’s narrator expresses generalized statements or maxims like that on “andgit” and “foreþanc” more often than any Dane or Geat, he erects an informal armature for Beowulf . His statements provide, as edicts in codes or as homiletic speech acts do, a fulcrum to help an audience appreciate thoughts and feelings embedded in the poem’s episodes. Yet the evocation of minds in such episodes also has a potential constraint on the significance of a generalized statement. Niles (1983: 200) contrasts, for example, the maxim on the need for discernment and forethought with the statement that in the midst of battle a warrior “na ymb his lif cearað” (1535b) ‘does not at all take heed for his life.’ Change the dynamics of an episode and the applicability of a generalized statement changes as well.4 So one purpose that maxims in Beowulf have is to challenge audiences to review how well conventional wisdom, honed into generalized statement, serves as a guide.

2.2 Diverse opinions in the episodes of Beowulf

That often enough conventional wisdom does not reliably direct characters in Beowulf to satisfying results is itself a matter of common knowledge. Burlin (1974: 47) speaks of “gnomic inconsequence” in Beowulf, of the poem’s narrative relying instead on “an inexorable rhythm” that alternates between “human security and fear, comfort and agony.”5 Such reliance has its own tradition, too, in the rhythms of heroic lays and in Aeneas’ struggles with difficult choices.6 Just as in Vergil’s epic Aeneas recalls, for example, the incendiary attack on Troy and conflicting impulses on how to meet it, so Beowulf confronts the dragon’s incendiarism. If Venus has Aeneas withhold himself from battle in order to take sail for Rome, Beowulf, supposing himself somehow a transgressor against God, reviews forms of combat familiar to him. After

Beowulf 87

describing three—a muster of warriors (2472–83), a face to face conflict of champions, posed before armies (2493–2509), or single-handed struggle (2518b–37)—he chooses, at last, to go it alone.

In numerous other episodes, likewise related to “characteristic scenes”

(Andersson 1992: 92) of older literature, speeches also abound, the views expressed open to the consideration of audiences. These speeches have in common an attention to the future, whether immediate or otherwise, and to the possible efficacy of proposed policies or acts. Whereas physical violence dominates episodes of battle against Grendel, his mother, and the dragon, the deployment of speeches elsewhere in Beowulf assures vigorous exchanges of attitudes and opinions.7 The poem’s sequence of characteristic scenes, many studied by Andersson and Harris, orders as well the analysis in this chapter of how the poet exposes diverse views to receptive audiences.8

2.3 Episodes in Beowulf and phrases for thought and feeling

Since much of Beowulf constitutes episodes of debate, forecast, and meditation, the likelihood is considerable that the poet’s audiences welcomed a discourse of ideas and opinions. Throughout the poem, audiences have opportunities to judge the force of discourse, from Beowulf’s arrival among the Danes to his death song and Wiglaf’s rebuke of the cowardly retainers. Moreover, if the opening lines of Beowulf are not mere convention but assert correctly that audiences “gefrunon” (2) ‘have heard’ narratives of past kings, then the poem’s episodes and diction have some familiarity.9 Such an assertion, however, makes no claim of informed knowledge either of the poem’s episodes and their genres nor of its diction and its resonance. Perhaps poems on Ingeld had greater circulation than Vergil’s Aeneid. Maybe the audience’s knowledge of phrases for thought and feeling included a sense of the poet’s hapax legomena as enrichments of texture.

Beowulf’s meditation before his advancing on the dragon offers some examples of the poet’s weaving episode and diction together. As the meditation unfolds the audience hears such phrases as “wroht gemæne” (2473b) ‘mutual antagonism,’ “gylpe wiðgripan” (2521) ‘grapple with gloriously.’ Each of these phrases appears in a context associated with different perceptions of warfare. The question to address is whether each such phrase would have drawn a common understanding among Anglo-Saxon audiences.

One test is contextual. The first phrase “wroht gemæne,” refers to recurrent animosities between Swedes and Geats: “herenið hearda

88 2.3 Episodes and phrases in Beowulf

syððan Hreðel swealt, / oððe him Ongenðeowes eaferan wæran / frome fyrdhwate” (2474–75a) ‘severe hostility, since Hreðel [King of the Geats] died, and Ongenðeow’s sons were bold and active in war against

them.’ A second test concerns the linkage of “wroht gemæne” to possibly comparable phrases in Old English poetry. In Juliana the devil

tells the saint, “Ic eall gebær / wraþe wrohtas geond werþeode / þa þe gewurdan widan feore / from fruman worulde fria cynne…” (1936: 127, 506b–9) ‘I fomented all, bitter animosities among nations, spread continually throughout humanity from the world’s beginning.’ Although “worht gemæne” and “worhtas geond werþeode” manifest some variation in form, they nevertheless share a common ground of meaning.10

A third test applies to the connection of “wroht gemæne” to the entire episode of Beowulf’s meditating on how to confront the dragon. Here a distinction presents itself. For if collocations with “wroht” center on animosities between peoples, then the recalled conflict between Geats and Swedes actually works against Beowulf’s battling the dragon with a muster of warriors. Although catastrophic, the dragon’s attack is not an episode in an enduring feud: to summon his retainers, then, is to Beowulf’s mind and possibly to the audience’s the wrong paradigm. So his turning from the Swedish wars introduces another paradigm, the contest between champions, the recalled vanquishing of Dæghrefn.11

The paradigm of a fight to the death between champions, positioned before opposing groups of warriors, is, however, no more tenable than that of peoples in prolonged feud. Hygelac’s raid on the Franks marks the occasion of Beowulf’s crushing Dæghrefn, a victory of one renowned warrior over another. As Beowulf speaks of the Frankish campaign, he honors Dæghrefn with the epithet “æþeling on elne” (2506a) ‘courageous prince.’ This honoring of courage in those destined for a violent death is the opening motif as well in The Fates of the Apostles. In the poem’s first lines the apostles as a group are “æþelingas” who “ellen cyðdon” ‘revealed courage’ (1932: 51, l.3). Shortly thereafter (1932: 51, l.13), Peter and Paul surrender their lives “þurg Neorones nearwe searwe” ‘through Nero's oppressive treachery.’12 The collocation of “æþeling” and “ellen” marks, then, the attributes of a champion, valorous against all odds, a linking of words that befits Anglo-Saxon thought, but not the dragon’s nature.

So finding the defeat of Dæghrefn inappropriate to the challenge of the dragon’s fury, Beowulf has one other model available in his recollections—the weaponless battle against Grendel. This model is,

Beowulf 89

however, idiosyncratic; the defeat of Grendel does not reflect a pattern of conflict identified with Anglo-Saxon tradition.13 Nor do the lines

presenting Beowulf’s memory of the Grendel fight evince any phrase of

thought or feeling indicative of any attested usage. Instead, Beowulf’s

utterances connect a word for feeling “gylpe” ‘gloriously’ (related to the sense of ‘boast’ and ‘vow’) to a rare verb “wiðgripan” ‘to grapple with’:

‘Nolde ic sweord beran,

wæpen to wyrme, gif ic wiste hu

wið ðam aglæcen elles meahte

gylpe wiðgripan, swa ic gio wið Grendle dyde…’

(2518b–21)

I would not bear a sword, a weapon to the worm,

if I knew how I might otherwise grapple glorious-

ly with the monster, as I once did against Grendel..

As if to underscore Beowulf’s sense of an unprecedented risk, the syntax of this sentence contains clauses evocative of problematic conditions. The subordinate clause, introduced by the hypothetical “gif ic wiste,” encapsulates, together with the clause of comparison on Grendel, Beowulf’s desire for a reliable strategy for vanquishing the dragon. The lack of alternatives acknowledged in the subordinate clause and the indirect allusion to God given strength in the comparative clause somewhat complicate his readiness to do battle. One complication is tactical—how to fight, unless with weapons; another is spiritual— whether deific judgment might now favor Beowulf despite his having supposedly incurred God’s anger(2329–32). Since Beowulf can neither fathom these complications nor know for certain the battle’s outcome, his utterance expresses, for all to hear, an evident gap between knowledge and faith. He cannot rely on traditional patterns of knowledge, like those for prosecuting feuds or for pitting one champion against another; his utterances instead feature a hapax legomenon and complex grammar.

2.4 Audiences, episodes, diction, and the narrator’s voice

The perspective presented so far (2.1–2.3) benefits from methods in Old English critical studies, some already cited. To these studies, Renoir and Foley’s contributions on the receptivity of Anglo-Saxon audiences to poetry are indeed instructive in the job of understanding medieval minds. Although Renoir analyzes “the theme of the hero on the beach” (1988: 176–7), his observations on the diversity of a poet’s Anglo-Saxon

90 2.4 Audiences, episodes, diction, and the narrator’s voice

audience are fully apropos to the theme of this chapter. Beowulf’s meditative episode on the dragon, say, might have found some listeners who knew the Aeneid, maybe more who connected “wroht gemæne” and

“æðeling on elne” to patterns of warfare. That “wroht” and “on elne” refer successively to communal feelings during feuds and to a

champion’s personal courage in a losing cause probably had some currency as well. Further, “gylpe wiðgripan,” its hapax legomenon hardly a radical invention, reminds almost all listeners of Beowulf’s barehanded defeat of Grendel, a form of combat also to reject. So nearly all would have agreed that Beowulf’s recalling past battles and turning from them as somehow unsuited for overcoming a dragon speaks to a

typical mode of thought. The difficulties are unmistakable in thinking through what to do and of summoning courage requisite to the task.

Throughout Beowulf’s evaluations in this episode, the little the narrator says nevertheless underscores the “prudential assessment of the odds” (Nolan and Bloomfield, 1980: 503).14 In presenting Beowulf’s spoken mediation on possibly vanquishing the dragon, the narrator interposes with the comment that the heroic king “beotwordum spræc / niehstan siðe” (2510b–11a) ‘expressed vows for the last time.’ The context for the compound “beotword,” here as elsewhere, is that it befits the speech of a leader bent on perilous assault.15 So, as the narrator of Juliana says, Eleusius, governor of Nicomedia, vainly threatening to torture the saint, “frecne mode / beotwordum spræc” (1936: 118, l. 184b–85a) ‘expressed vows with a fierce heart.’ For the narrators to imply that Beowulf’s “beotword”is prudent and that Eleusis’ is rash conforms with an audience’s expectations on how to respond to heavily charged statements.16 The import of a narrator’s view is not so much to instruct as to relate enough adequate detail to allow discussions of a character’s involvement, whether Beowulf’s or Eleusis’.17

In general, the perspective discussed so far accords with Foley’s arguments (1991: 141–56) for resonant, traditional phrasing in Old English poetry. Foley’s broad view, to begin, of formal properties in phrasing (1991: 145) incorporates “whole-and multiline patterns, clusters, collocations of alliterative pairs, and even metrical predispostions,” some of these already illustrated. That such phrasing resonates beyond the Beowulf text depends on the premise that scops recited for mostly unlettered audiences familiar, even so, with an oral thesaurus of poetic diction. One further example of phrases in the thesaurus—“ece Drihten” ‘eternal Lord’—has besides its several occurrences in Beowulf a rich deployment, as Foley notes (1991: 152),

Beowulf 91

throughout Old English poetry. Together with other epithets for God, “ece Drihten” brings “a nominal…quality to the fore at the same time that it stands pars pro toto for the Christian God.” A thesaurus of

phrasings, their over-all numbers limited, harbors, then. “fully contextualized figure[s]…” that bear “ambient, immanent meanings.”

The scope of Foley’s analysis extends to narrative structures, to “typical scenes” that “serve as focal points for traditional meaning” (1991: 153). His examples (beasts of battle, exile, and the hero on the beach) are not exhaustive, yet their power illustrates “extratextual resonance” for traditional scenes. This mode of resonance, evoked below in scenes of sentinels, flyting, hall life, consultation, leave-taking, and death song, connects “the immanence of tradition to the indivdual text and individual moment.” The choice of these scenes rather than Foley’s three, is mainly due to the dialogues in them, to their often voicing divergent attitudes on what to do. Dialogues found in some patterns of traditional scenes, buttressed with groups of poetic phrasing, frequently dwell on how to proceed, while evincing a recognizable spectrum of thought and feeling.

3. The sentinel scene

Beowulf’s arrival among the Danes is also the first appearance of dialogue in the poem. Although he announces himself as a ready ally against Grendel, his undertaking encounters initial resistance from the coastguard and some ambivalence from Wulfgar. What a study of dialogue and commentary in the sentinel scene shows is a pattern of wariness common to Germanic texts modified to accommodate a measure of good will.

3.1 The tradition of uneasy welcome for strangers

Compared to traditional, mistrustful encounters between strangers, as recorded in Germanic narratives, the Beowulf poet introduces the possiblity of beneficial alliance. This prospect, unusual for sentinel scenes, induces a view of Beowulf different, say, from Sîvrit's abrupt coming to Worms in the Nibelungenlied18:

lat uns noch die moere, eine wîle stân.

wir wellen schiere hinnen; des ich guoten willen hân.

Man sol ouch unser schilde ninder von uns tragen.

wâ ich den künic vinde, kan mir daz iemen sagen,

Gunthern den rîchen ûz Búrgónden lant.

(Hennig 1977: 14)

92 3.1 The tradition of uneasy welcome

let our horses stay yet a while. We will soon be off,

for that is my intention. Also no one is by any means

to take our shields from us. Where may I find the king,

Gunther the mighty, lord of Burgandy, if someone can tell

me that?

Since the audience already knows Sîvrit's resolute intention as he speaks, his declining to have the horses stalled and his wishing to find King Gunther without delay complement each other.

Even at first glance, the discourse between Beowulf and the coast- guard intimates that together with a traditional suspiciousness, the Geats’ arrival promises an auspicious turn of events. To the coastguard’s, “Hwæt syndon ge searohæbbendra,” (237) ‘What sort of warriors are you,’ uttered while eying their byrnies and ship, Beowulf responds that

as a Geat, his father known to Danes, he comes “þurh holdne hige” (267a) ‘with a loyal heart.’ Beowulf’s declaration, as well as his further saying that he wishes to advise Hroðgar “hu he … feond oferswyðeþ” (279) ‘how he can overpower his enemy’ helps to prepare the audience for hopeful developments.19

The greeting of the Danish councilor Wulfgar, after the coastguard’s return to the sea watch, is itself expressive, despite a polished cordiality, of some wariness for foreigners. Although Wulfgar pretends to view Beowulf and his men as journeying “for wlenco, nalles for wræcsiðum, /ac for higeþrymmum,” (338b–9a) ‘for high spirit, not at all in exile, but for greatness of heart,’ the contrast proposed harbors an element of doubt.20

This discursive ambivalence, further, shares some resemblance to Hagen’s attitude in Nibelungenlied, who in a comparable sentinel scene recommends that King Gunther avoid antagonzing Sîvrit:

Nu suln wir den recken enpfâhen deste baz,

daz wir iht verdienen den sînen starken haz.

sîn lip der ist sô küene, man sol in holden hân;

er hât mit sînem ellen sô mänigu wunder getân.

(Hennig 1977: 18)

We should now welcome the warrior so much

the better, that we may earn anything other

than his intense hate. One should hold in high

regard his life which is so bold; he has coura-

geously done so many wonders.21

Beowulf 93

Just as Hagen believes that granting an audience to Sîvrit is prudent, so Wulfgar, too, requests of his king Hroðgar that he agree to “wordum wrixlan” (366a) ‘exchange words’ with the Geats. His favoring such

discourse is partly due to the diplomatic courteousness of Beowulf’s response to Wulfgar’s greeting:

Wille ic asecgan sunu Healfdenes,

mærum þeodne min ærende,

aldre þinum, gif he us genunnan wile,

þæt we hine swa godne gretan moton.

(344–7)

I wish to tell the son of Healfdene, glorious

king, your lord, my errand, if so good as he is,

he will allow us to address him.

The first two lines quoted exemplifies a chiasmic arrangement of the pronominal “ic” and “min” (designating Beowulf) with the nouns “sunu” and “þeodne,” a rhetorical gesture of friendliness.22 The juxtaposition of “he” “us” and “we” “hine” in the third and fourth lines, together with the appositive phrase “swa godne” also exhibits Beowulf’s adroit gesturing. This consciousness of appropriate style functions to help allay the uncertainties that color Wulfgar’s greeting and that inhere in Germanic sentinel scenes. For Anglo-Saxon audiences accustomed to such scenes Beowulf’s words project the possibility of innovation in poetic discourse and in the quest for stability—a perspective unmatched elsewhere in the Germanic narrative.23

Indeed, so infrequently does assistance from abroad seem likely that an adaptation from the Acts of the Apostles for Alfred’s code refers to risks posed by Christian proselytizers. Thus Alfred’s Old English version of Acts 15 reads in part that

we geascodon þæt ure geferan sume mid urum wordum to eow comon 7 eow hefigran wisan budon to healdanne þonne we him budon, 7 eow to swiðe gedwealdon mid ðam mannigfealdum, 7 eowra sawla ma forhwerfdon þonne hio geryhton. (1960: 1, 42–4)

we learned that our brethren came to you, some with our words, and ordered in a more oppressive manner than we required them that you constrain yourselves, and hindered you too much with manifold commands, and misled your souls more than they guided [them].

94 3.2 Traditional phrases and a hapax legomenon

Although Alfred’s chapter thereafter clarifies what the apostles had intended—to caution against idolatry—the acknowledged abuses of their biblical bretheren probably reflect analogous discourses in Anglo-Saxon

experience.24 So the Beowulf poet’s imagining a troop of Geats putting themselves in service of Danes afflicted with monstrous instability very likely disturbs customary expectations. In short, Wulfgar reflects a traditionally grounded circumspection at Beowulf’s announcement of good news.

3.2 Traditional phrases and a hapax legomenon in the sentinel scene

Since the coastguard and Wulfgar have at first a sentinel’s guardedness toward Beowulf that quickly evolves into acceptance, their changed attitudes raise questions on the poet’s design of their speeches. Presumably their words convey their changes in attitude, but whether the resonance of what they say chimes concordantly is open to study. Just as Beowulf’s speeches to the coastguard and Wulfgar differ rhetorically (see 3.1 for his use of chiasmus), although he requests from both an audience with Hroðgar, so theirs may differ.25 One form of resonance for words is akin to Foley’s sense of tradtitional phrasing (see 2.4); another derives from the freshness of a presumed hapax legomenon (see “wiðgripan” in 2.3). In regard to words for attitude or disposition, this contrast in resonance obtains, too, in the coastgurad and Wulfgar’s speeches.

In the coastguard’s two speeches, several phrases that have analogues elsewhere in Old English poetry fall into a sequence that traces his change in attitude toward Beowulf. The first speech imputes to Beowulf and his companions, in the phrase “gearwe ne wisson” (246b) ‘did not adequately know,’ a perhaps pretended ignorance of how to seek entry to Danish territories. That strangers dissimulate is true enough of Abraham in Gerar, who refers to Sarah as his sister “þy he wiste gearwe þæt he winemaga / on folce lyt freonda hæfde” (Genesis 1931: 78, ll. 2626–7) ‘since he knew full well that he had few close kinsmen, friends, among that people.’26 Further, to leave no doubt of his suspicions, the coastguard calls the Geats “leassceaweras” (253a) ‘spies,’ a hapax legomenon aimed at exposing them or making them reveal their background and mission.

For an Anglo-Saxon audience the coastguard’s eristic speech merits support, even though the poet has already introduced Beowulf as eager to serve the Danes and to test himself against Grendel. Indeed, Beowulf’s response validates, to start, an audience’s support of wariness, for his

Beowulf 95

phrase “holdne higne,” (267a) ‘trusty heart’ uttered early in his speech, deserves skepticism. To announce that one comes in trust, especially in

circumstances that require wariness, is to sow suspicion. A comparable

ambivalence attends the betrayal in Eden. Eve speaks to Adam until the

serpent’s guile possessing her possesses him, yet the narrator tries to forestall the audience’s censure, saying “Heo dyd hit þeah þurh holdne hyge…” (Genesis 1931: 24, l. 708) ‘She did it, however, with loyal thought…’27 Since Beowulf cannot win confidence with a phrase, his speech, as thereafter elaborated, attests to his respect for the coastguard and to his grasp of persuasive skills.

His speech, furthermore, his first in the poem, initiates the audience’s exposure to his suppleness of mind. Thus to manifest respect for the coastguard as well as to gain credence, Beowulf says,

ne sceal þær dyrne sum

wesan, þæs ic wene. Þu wast, gif hit is

swa we soþlice secgan hydron,

þæet mid Scyldingum sceaðona ic nat hwylc,

deogol dædhata deorcum nihtum

eaweð þurh egsan uncuðne nið,

hynðu ond hrafyl.

(271b–7a)

nor shall there be anything hidden, as I expect. You

know, if it is as we have truly heard say, that a mys-

terious persecutor, I don’t know which of your foes, ter-

rorizes with incredible violence, injury and slaughter,

among the Scildings on dark nights.

Beowulf’s facts, altering his status to that of a stranger who knows a terrible truth, also soften in part the coastguard’s militance. The disclosure of the terrible truth through the alliterative collocation “þæs ic wene. Þu wast,” a variant of it seen, too, in Pharaoh, aims to establish a basis for mutuality.28 Since the collocation affirms the coastguard’s power to judge Beowulf’s words, the truth of what he says becomes a device for transforming wariness into confidence.

Beowulf’s suppleness is an instrument, too, for demonstrating to the audience his ability to be respectful and tactful in persuading the coast-guard to conduct him to Heorot. So he continues his speech with the proposal that he can rescue the Danes from their plight:

Ic þæs Hroðgar mæg

þurh rumne sefan ræd gelæran,

96 3.2 Traditional phrases and a hapax legomenon

hu he frod ond god feond oferswyðeþ—

gyf him edwenden æfre scolde

bealuwa bisigu bot eft cuman—,

ond þa cearwylmas colran wurðaþ…

(277b–82)

With an open heart I may offer Hroðgar advice how

he, wise and good, will overcome the enemy, if change

from the distress of miseries, if relief, is ever to

come to him - and the upwellings of his sorrow are to be-

come cooler…

Although “rumne sefan” carries much the same idea as “holde higne,” the dominating motif here is the advice in store for Hroðgar. Yet such advice has its attendant complications. The psalmist, seeking God’s advice, uses words like Beowulf’s, but is uncertain of an answer to his prayer: “Gerece me on ræde and me ricene gelær” (Psalm 24, 4 1942: 81) ‘Guide me with advice and teach me quickly.’ The devil in Christ and Satan (1931: 143, l. 248) recounts the advice he gave before the rebellion in heaven; his first words, also like Beowulf’s, are these: “Ic can eow læran langsumne ræd” ‘I am able to provide you [angels] lasting advice.’ The grounds for complications are straightforward: advice from God on an immediate issue is unpredictably forthcoming; the advice of others often has its opacities. Whatever the audience’s impulses (the narrator had earlier praised Beowulf’s strength, his “eacen” (198a), not his wisdom), the decision here to act favorably on his proposal lies with the coastguard.

No wonder, then, that the outset of the coastguard’s second speech has a gnomic quality. “Æghwæþres sceal,” he says,

scearp scyldwiga, gescad witan,

worda ond worca, se þe wel þenceð

(287–9)

A keen warrior, who thinks rightly of words and

deeds, ought to know the difference between each.29

The coastguard’s reflectiveness here is comparable to the speaker’s in Vainglory, able

ongitan bi þam gealdre godes agen bearn,

wilgest on wicum, ond þone wacran swa some,

scyldum bescyredne, on gescead witan.

(1936: 147, ll. 6–8)

Beowulf 97

to perceive [as a wise man would], to know God’s own son,

welcome guest in villages, from his recitation

as different from someone weaker, fraudulent with sins.

Such thoughts on words and deeds requiring moral judgments also color the phrase “wel þenceð” and its close variants. Just as this phrase presents the coastguard’s preoccupation with thinking rightly, so, too, does God’s challenge to Andreas:

Ne meaht ðu þaes siðfætes sæne weorðan,

ne on gewitte to wac, gif þu wel þencest

wið þinne waldend wære gehealdan,

treowe tacen.

(1932: 9, 211–14a)

Nor could you turn cowardly over this journey,

nor too weak in understanding, if you think

rightly to keep faith, a true token, with your

Ruler.

These passages in Vainglory and Andreas assume that thinking rightly, contrasting words as reliable or misleading, and distinguishing virtuous from sinful deeds, is not easy, especially on dangerous missions. In both poems, too, the settings for these passages are preparatory, the speaker in Vainglory about to warn of life’s risks, God in Andreas about to forecast perils ahead. The coastguard does not, however, enjoy the guidance of a wise man nor of God; he has to decide for himself. His decision comes quickly, so immediately that he almost controverts the gist of his maxim, in his saying, “Ic þæt gehyre, þæt þis is hold weorod / frean Scyldinga” (290–91a) ‘I accept that, that this company will be loyal to the lord of the Scyldings.’ So the discrepancy between maxim, calling for deliberation, and circumstance, compelling rapid choice, affects the coastguard’s thinking, an experience Anglo-Saxon audiences well knew (see 2.) Moreover, Wulfgar’s subsequent reception of the Geats, his greeting shaded with ambivalence (see 3.1), argues that the poet expected some skepticism at the coastguard’s decision.

3.3 The narrator’s perspective on the sentinel scene

The armature that the narrator constructs (see 2.1) for the dialogues between Beowulf and the Danish men is properly modest in scope. Of the coastguard, he says that at the first sight of the Geats “hyne fyrwyt breac / modgehygdum” (232b–33a) ‘curiousity seized him, with numerous thoughts.’ Elsewhere in Beowulf and in Juliana, too, the

98 4. The narrator’s perspective on the flyting episode

phrase “hyne fyrwyt breac” indicates a rush of feeling to focus a character’s intentions. The coastguard is eager to accost the Geats;

Hygelac (1985) wants to hear what happened among the Danes; Wiglaf (2784) hurries to see whether Beowulf still lives, Eleusius (1936: 114, l. 27) cannot resist Juliana. For the sentinel scene this curiosity instills an appetite for talk, satisfied by the exchanges of Beowulf and the coastguard—the poem’s first dialogue—on the issue of motives.

Furthermore, the narrator’s view of the coastguard as “unforht” (287) ‘unafraid’ adds weight to his stature as a Danish warrior and spokesman. That he guides Beowulf and his Geatish companions to Wulfgar is a result, not of fear, but of an uncoerced judgment. As for Wulfgar, the narrator says that his “modsefa” ‘heart’ has “wig ond wisdom” (349a–50a) ‘valor and wisdom,’ a collocation linked to the ideal theme of sapientia et fortitudo.30

These epithets of mind and emotion for the coastguard and Wulfgar (the narrator has none for Beowulf in the sentinel scene) opportunely instance a brief acquaintance with Danish warriors. The choice of epithets—the coastguard as curious and unafraid, Wulfgar as courageous and wise—projects a sense of alertness. Whether or not audiences regard the coastguard as maybe too hasty in thought, the great likelihood is that he and Wulfgar, though minor characters, well fit the mold of admirable men.

4. The narrator’s perspective on the flyting episode

However much the narrator esteems the coastguard and Wulfgar, he qualifies his portrait of these hospitable Danes with that of Unferð, ready to contest Beowulf in a verbal duel. After recording Hroðgar’s joy at God’s beneficence in sending him a champion, the narrator depicts Unferð as scornful:

wæs him Beowulfes sið

modges merefaran, micel aefþunca,

forþon þe he ne uþe, þæt ænig oðer man

æfre mærða þon ma middangeardes

gehede under heofonum þonne he sylfa…

(501b–5)

Beowulf's venture, seafarer high in spirit,

was for him a great vexation, for he would not

grant that any other man should ever attain more

glory under the heavens in this world than he him-

self…31

Beowulf 99 This probing of Unferð’s displeasure also binds personal to social consciousness. His jealousy, unrelenting despite Hroðgar’s view of Beowulf’s mission as a gift of God, is a mode of response plausible to an Anglo-Saxon

audience. Unferð’s “micel æfþunca,” a phrase for his jealousy, also bespeaks his wanting to bask over others in Hroðgar’s favor, quite as Hagar seeks with “æfþancum” to supplant Sarah in Abraham’s eyes (Genesis 1931: 67, ll. 2239–43). Yet this wish for gratification in both Hagar and Unferð serves socially to confirm Abraham’s virility and to launch a useful flyting against Beowulf. What the narrator does, then, is to spill the muted reservations in the coastguard and Wulfgar’s speeches into Unferð’s pronounced envy. The flyting, after all, functions to release through a retainer’s animosity, his “æfþunca,” the xenophobic pressures of Danes in Heorot and Anglo-Saxons in the poet’s audience.

4.1 The flyting as episode

To test strangers by means of the flyting—a verbal duel of claim, defense and counterclaim—is to expose a tension between wanting to trust them and fearing their duplicity. Although familiar with Beowulf’s heritage and presumably glad of his presence, Hroðgar tacitly concurs, to quote Clover, with Unferð’s putting “the alien through the necessary paces” (1980: 460). The unexpected arrival of Beowulf, probably a sign of divine grace, generates as well a jealousy and suspicion in conflict with a grateful welcome.32 Desires for rescue, if catered to in unexpected ways, as, say, from a stranger’s proffered help, breed contradictory reactions, a pattern of behavior that the poet and his audience share. As Clover shows (1980: 450), contenders in episodes of flyting “may not know each other,” as when “a travelling hero enter[s] unfamiliar territory and hence [becomes] subject to hostile interrogation.”33

4.2 Traditional phrases in Unferð and Beowulf’s verbal duel

In conjunction with the structure of flytings, one element in a claim against an adversary is that he relishes renown so much that he will not heed sober advice. Thus in a sequence of rhetorical question and reply Unferð disparages the motives of Beowulf and Breca’s adventure at sea, inquiring directly whether

for wlence wada cunnedon

ond for dolgilpe on deop wæter

aldrum neþdon? Ne inc ænig mon,

ne leof ne lað, belean mihte

sorhfullne sið, þa git on sund reon…

(508–12)

for pride and account of foolhardiness you

tested the waters, risked your lives? No one,

100 4.2 Traditional phrases in Unferð and Beowulf’s verbal duel

friend nor foe, was able to dissuade you two

from your perilous journey, when you both set

forth swimming.

Even if the narrator has prejudiced the audience, the possible aspersions in Unferð’s question do not easily lose their edge. To be sure, Unferð’s “for wlence wada cunnedon” sounds at first blush like the whining of devils in Guthlac who complain that the saint “for wlence on westenne / beorgas bræce” (1936: 55, ll. 208–9a) ‘for pride levelled hills [that is, their refuge] in the wilderness.’ Yet other analogies are hard to dismiss as transparent examples of petty speech. Earlier on, the ambivalent Wulfgar had praised Beowulf and his companions “for wlenco,” (see 3.1). So the phrase may connote ‘valiant daring’ in Wulfgar's usage or ‘vainglory,’ as in Unferð’s question. Since Wulfgar and Unferð choose the same phrase to refer to Beowulf’s motives, the audience has reason to imagine that these councilors speak for divided minds in Heorot. That Unferð’s stance in the flyting is reasonably tenable, at least until Beowulf replies, draws some support, in fact, from the judgment of Babel, condemned “for wlence” in Genesis (1931: 51, l. 1673a). As for Unferð’s hapax legomenon “dolgilpe,” the range of response that it attracts probably corresponds with the weight given “for wlence.” The less credible Unferð is to those at Heorot or to the poet’s audience, the more “dolgilpe” pertains to his envy than to Beowulf’s youthful venture.

Two assertions in Beowulf’s defense of himself and his counterclaim against Unferð feature phrases that redound to his own high-mindedness and that point to his antagonist’s vulnerability. In defense of his participating in a contest at sea with Breca, Beowulf observes proverbially that “Wyrd oft nereð / unfægne eorl, þonne his ellen deah!” (572b–73) ‘Fate often saves a man from death so long as his courage is good!’ This trust in providence parallels what in the saint’s life Andreas tells his companions embarking across the seas to Mermedonia (1932: 15 ll. 459–60). Then, too, Beowulf’s gnomic expression is not abstract but caps his recalling sunrise over a calm sea, the new day combining with his trust as a promise of his survival. Although noble sentiments on past feats brighten a warrior’s mettle, still the counterclaim of flytings that follows a defense and nullifies an opponent’s opening claim (like Unferð’s) must convince audiences. They want to know whether a stranger like Beowulf has the acumen to scuttle Unferð’s load of misgivings and their own.

Beowulf is up to the mark in the flyting. In the counterclaim he delivers, Unferð’s noteriety as a fratricide and his failure so far to kill

Beowulf 101

Grendel are the topics that Beowulf exploits in a victorious conclusion. He tells Unferð,

…ðu þinum broðrum to banan wurde,

heafodmagum; þæs þu in helle scealt

werhðo dreogan, þeah þin wit duge.

Secge ic þe to soðe, sunu Ecglafes.

þæt næfre Grendel swa fela grya gefremede,

atol æglæca ealdre þinum,

hynðo on Heorote, gif þin hige wære,

sefa swa searogrim, swa þu self talast…

(587–94)

you killed your brothers, your close kin; for

that you are to suffer punishment in hell, even

though your intellect is good. I tell you the

truth, son of Ecglaf, that Grendel, that terrible

wretch, had never caused your lord so much dismay,

so much harm in Heorot, if your mind, your spirit,

were as fierce in battle, as you yourself suppose.

On its face these words testify to an altogether effective, rhetorical prowess, allaying any reservation about Beowulf’s capacities that Wulfgar, retainers in Heorot, or the poet’s audience might have. That “werhðo dreogan” has its counterpart in a flyting between Judas and the devil in Elene (1932: 92 l. 951b) is true but almost superfluous. That

“hynðo…hige” has a loose linkage with the anxieties of Adam and Eve, fearing “hynða unrim” ‘untold harms’ in hell and “higesorga” ‘sorrows of the heart’ (Genesis 1931 : 26 l. 776), shows a pattern for phrasing human inadequacy. The powerful economy of Beowulf’s counterclaim in rhetoric and diction foreshadows his conquest of Grendel and his mother. The hall joy that ensues is a tribute to his performance.

5. Succession in hall scenes: Heorot and elsewhere

The shift from uncertainty over Beowulf’s motives to unstinted affection for him, once he prevails over Grendel, propels in its wake the rewards he accumulates. Although reward for extraordinary valor and achievement is hardly a surprise, Hroðgar’s readiness to bestow his kingdom on Beowulf turns reciprocity into worry at Heorot. Hill (1995: 100–03) explains persuasively the dynamics governing the episode of Beowulf’s reticence at Hroðgar’s proffering him the Danish crown and at Wealhþeow’s dissent. Nothing Hroðgar says is a formal commitment, yet his desire in wanting Beowulf “for sunu” (947) ‘as a son’ rewarded with

102 5.1 Episodic traditions

dynastic gifts of armor and a gold standard, claims much attention in Heorot. These expressions of desire—words of endearment, gifts of heirlooms—display also, in Hill’s view (1995: 107), the poet’s tact in delineating “complex gestures,” requisite for a court mindful of Hroðgar’s age. That Hroðgar declares his preference for Beowulf is evident, but Wealhþeow’s intervention demonstrates, too, that the choice of a successor demands consultation.

Such consultation does not rely on procedures in legal texts (they are silent on choosing kings) but on the poet’s weighing Hroðgar’s support for Beowulf against other attitudes at Heorot.34 Thus to have Wealhþeow advocate in behalf of her sons Hreðric and Hroðmund as rightful successors cogently tempers her husband’s declaration. Wealhþeow’s dissent, furthermore, squares with Anglo-Saxon precedents, maybe not so sharply pointed as hers, of successions contested.35 By Alfred’s time, ca. 867, the idea of crowning a candidate outside a royal line drew disfavor, if the Anglo-Saxon chronicler’s implicit objection to Ælle as an “ungecynde cyning” ‘king not having a natural right’ is representative (Plummer 1892–9: 68–9).36

5.1 Episodic traditions

Although hall scenes in Germanic literature record gift giving as a ritual of hospitality to visitors from afar, none instances, as Beowulf does, a grant of future kingship. One distant likeness to Hroðgar’s sentiments is Gunther and Prünhilde’s as they witness Sîvrit’s return to Iceland (after

wrestling with a giant porter and the dwarf Albrîch) with Nibelung warriors (Hennig 1977: 77–83). Yet their reception of Sîvrit and his thousand men, Prünhilt distributing treasure to them, is lavishly hospitable but unrelated to his singular feat. For Prünhilt never learns of Sîvrit’s deeds. That Gunther instead deceives her, assures her that Sîvrit and the Nibelung warriors “sint mîne man” (Hennig 977: 81, l. 509b) ‘are my men,’ typifies his bad faith. So her gifts are not a sign of her esteem for Sîvrit’s valor but a demonstration (marred by Dancwart’s Burgundian excess in pleasing recipients at her expense) of her magnificence.

What is more, this hall scene, as does the one in Heorot, includes

matters of succession. Preparing to leave Iceland for Burgandy, Prünhilt says, “wem lâz ich mîniu lant?” (Hennig 1977: 82, l. 530b) ‘to whom shall I leave my lands.’ The choice of her mother’s brother keeps Iceland under the rule of the royal family and excludes the possible eventuality that Hroðgar envisions.

Beowulf 103

The value of this episode in the Nibelungenlied, though not at all genetic, lies in its structural elements, patently attractive to Continental and insular audiences. As in Beowulf , so here, the poet pairs the might of a hero against gigantic strength, emphasizes the sumptuosness of gifts, and makes succession a focus of discourse. Although these elements have different profiles in the two poems, their configurations, even if independently designed, presuppose audiences similarly intrigued.

5.2 Traditional phrases in speeches on Beowulf’s possible kingship

Hroðgar and Wealhþeow are the principals who consider the designation of Beowulf as the Danish successor. Beowulf, for his part, says nothing at first either to Hroðgar’s offer of adoption or to Wealhþeow’s request that in respect to her son he should be “dædum gedefe,” (1227) ‘kind in deeds.’ Although reticent throughout his stay at Heorot, at his departure he alludes to Hroðgar’s uneasiness about the future and to Wealhþeow’s care for her sons’ patrimony. His pledges to aid Danes against invaders and to extend hospitality to Hreðric transform differences on succession into an alliance of realms and a friendly sponsorship of a prince’s journey. Throughout this discourse on Beowulf’s future in the affairs of the Danes, customary phrases in Old English poetry and hapax legomena afford audiences some insight on the principals’ thoughts and feelings.

To begin with Hroðgar, his sense of indebtedness to Beowulf precedes the overpowering of Grendel. Putting Heorot in Beowulf’s charge, Hroðgar says to him,

Hafa nu ond geheald husa selest,

gemyne mærþo, mægenellen cyð,

waca wið wraþum! Ne bið þe wilna gad,

gif þu þæt ellenweorc aldre gedigest.

(658–61)

Take and keep the best of halls now, bear glory in mind,

show courage, watch fiercely! There will be no lack of

good things, if you endure alive that work of courage.

This short exhortation identifies the resources expected of Beowulf if he is successfully to defend Heorot and to earn Hroðgar’s gratitude. It calls for vigilance, courage, and a mindfulness of glory, in phrases reminiscent of the broad Old English vocabulary that weds virtue to strife. The imperatives “hafa nu ond geheald,” like those in the charm against the theft of cattle—“hafa þæt feoh and heald þæt feoh” (1942: 125, l. 8) ‘keep that herd and hold the property’—implicitly urge militance against

104 5.2 Traditional phrases on Beowulf’s possible kingship

the marauder Grendel. From the nouns “mægen” and “ellen” the poet fuses a compound, a hapax legomenon, “mægenellen” that alerts his audience to the rare but necessary courage that Hroðgar has in mind. To sustain such courage, moreover, Beowulf must have, as Hroðgar's phrase “gemyne mærðo” reminds him, a dedication to glory and renown, like that enunciated in The Seafarer (see Chapter 5, section 9.2). The concept of glory, also integral to Judgment Day II, as in the line “Ic gemunde eac mærðe drihtnes” (1942: 58. l. 21) ‘I remembered the glory of God,’ unites secular and religious poetry, then, as an apex of attainment. For Beowulf to set heart and mind to Hroðgar’s exhortation and to relieve the Danes’ fears of Grendel are acts deserving the recompense promised in “Ne bið þe wilna gad.”

They are also acts to elicit from Hroðgar condign deeds, the very most that he can give. So amid the exultation over Grendel’s dismemberment at Heorot, Hroðgar’s keenest moment is to say,

Nu ic, Beowulf, þec,

secg betsta, me for sunu wylle

freogan on ferhþe; heald forð tela

niwe sibbe. Ne bið þe nænigre gad

worolde wilna, þe ic geweald hæbbe.

(946b–50)

Now in my heart I wish to love you, Beowulf,

best of men, as my son; let this new kinship

continue henceforth. For you there shall be no

lack whatsoever of good things in this world for

you that I have in my power.

Whether or not Hroðgar is speaking figuratively about adoption, his again saying (in nearly the same words) “ne bið þe nænigre gad / worolde wilna” makes a contingent promise firm.37 This phrase, as an assurance of satisfaction, as a commitment to pleasure desire to the fullest, is itself almost an Anglo-Saxon talisman. In The Husband's

Message “nis him wilna gad” (1936: 227, l. 44) discloses the desire of the speaker, who has worldly riches, for reunion and joint rule with his wife, a “þeodnes dohtor” (1936: 227, l. 46) ‘a lord’s daughter.’

That “freogan on ferhþe” is a phrase confirming Hroðgar’s unstinting regard, his concomittant desire to confer the almost unimaginable on Beowulf, finds suitable confirmation in other contexts. In Riddle 54 Williamson (1982: 196) glosses the phrase “ferðþum freogað” (1936: 208 l. 12) as ‘the cost of love,’ not a reference to making kings but to

Beowulf 105

creating viscerally, to conceiving an infant and churning butter. Consciously or not, the poet and riddler prefigure with forms of the verb “freogan” and the noun “ferhþ” something possible: a Danish kingship for Beowulf, a baby for a milkmaid.38 This kind of prefiguration, however, faces the inexorable oppugnance of Wealhþeow, both a queen and a mother.

Her strategy is, however, not to demean but to insist on a joy consistent with honors due to Beowulf and with future Danish kingship for her own sons. To Hroðgar she says,

Þu on sælum wes,

goldwine gumena, and to Geatum spræc

mildum wordum, swa sceal man don!

Beo wið Geatas glæd, geofena gemyndig,

nean ond feorran þu nu hafast.

Me man sægde, þæt þu ðe for sunu wolde

hererinc habban. Heorot is gefælsod,

beahsele beorhta; bruc þenden þu mote

manigra medo, ond þinum magum læf

fold ond rice, þonne ðu forð scyle,

metodsceaft seon.

(1170–80a)

Be joyful, gold-friend of men, and speak

kindly to the Geats, as a man ought to do!

Be gracious to the Geats, mindful of the

gifts, from near and afar, you now have.

Someone has told me that you would have the

warrior for your son. Heorot is purged, bright

ring-hall; enjoy the tribute of many while you

can, and leave your land and kingdom to your

kin, when you go forth to see your fate's decree.

Wealhþeow’s recommendations on pleasures for her husband and on gracious rather than excessive largess for Beowulf and the Geats have in their wording, too, a cultural imprimatur.39 Her phrase “on sælum,” meant to enhearten Hroðgar now that Grendel has fled Heorot, is also the poet’s of Exodus, chosen to depict Moses’ victorious army. Her greater object, to delimit the extent of Hroðgar’s bountifulness, makes itself manifest through the customary collocations “mildum wordum” and “beo… glæd.” So Wealhþeow, as she firmly counsels Hroðgar, would have him converse, too, with “mildum wordum,” gracious to the Geats yet in mood less expansive than he has so far been. A like care for monitoring what one says is discernible in Precepts, its fatherly

106 5.2 Traditional phrases on Beowulf’s possible kingship

admonitions spoken with “mildum wordum” (1936: 142, l. 60), especially in urging an adherence to true statements. As for the collocation “beo… glæd,” its presence in Wealhþeow’s frank address also suits her plan to have Hroðgar act in concert with her views. To have Hroðgar’s concurrence is for Wealhþeow to achieve the delight that the psalmist ascribes to like-minded brothers:

Efne hu glædlic bið and god swylce,

þætte broður on an begen hicgan,

þær hig ænne sculan eard weardian.

(1932a: 127–8, v. 1)

Indeed how agreeable and good likewise,

that brothers both think as one, where

they inhabit one land.

Lacking, however, any overt concurrence from Hroðgar, Wealhþeow continues her enterprise in behalf of her sons, mainly with Beowulf. Her quest to safeguard her sons’ right to the Danish throne hardly diminishes. Not at all monitory, as she had been with Hroðgar, Wealheow seeks Beowulf’s help, wishing him, in phrases mostly conventional, both wealth and happiness:

Wes þenden þu lifige,

æþeling, eadig! Ic þe an tela

sincgestreona. Beo þu suna minum

dædum gedefe, dreamhealdende!

(1224b–7)

As long as you live, prince, be prosperous!

I wish you well with your treasures. While you

have your joy be kind in your deeds to my sons.

Wealhþeow’s words all but mirror Maxims I in its formulaic “Eadig bið se þe in his eþle geþiho” (1936: 158, l. 37) ‘Happy is he who prospers in

his land,’ whereas her “Beo…gedefe” has some affinity to the psalmist's prayer

Drihten, drihten, þu eart gedefe mægen

hælo minre, and þu min heafod scealt

on gefeohtdæge feondum awergean.

(1932a: 137, 1. 7)

Lord, Lord, you are the kindly strength of my

safety, and you shall cover my head against

Beowulf 107

enemies in the day of battle.

Moreover, for Wealhþeow to call Beowulf “dreamhealdende,” a hapax legomenon and exclamatory epithet, is for her to energize her felicitations. Here as she tries to enlist Beowulf as an ally, as she had earlier sought to curb Hroðgar's excessiveness, her acumen proves more than adequate for the complexities of succession.

5.3 Succession and the narrator’s audience

Nowhere in the discourse on succession does the narrator comment on the thoughts and feelings of the principals, nor does he impart a view of his own. Instead, he indirectly asks everyone in the poem’s audience to review the modes of succession presented and their acceptability. In a single half line, the narrator says of Wealhþeow that “heo fore þæm werede spræc” (1215b) ‘she spoke before that assembly.’ Since uncodified succession is a process fraught with uncertainty throughout the history of Anglo-Saxon England, the poet’s audience has good reason to feel immediately engaged.

Furthermore, the collocation “werede spræc” applies analogously to the public setting in Daniel, where marvelling at a miracle and at Daniel as an oneirocritic, Nebuchadnezzar “wordum spræc [,] werodes ræswa” (1931: 125, l. 486) ‘leader of the assembly spoke.’ To hear a leader speak, whether in Heorot or in Babylon, comprises a circumstance analogous to that of parishioners listening to a homily. So the process of choosing a successor, although not ostensibly a moral dictate, connects debate in Anglo-Saxon political thought with Wealhþeow’s speech act in Heorort.

That the Beowulf poet bridges Heorot to succession as a recurrent problem for Anglo-Saxons appears in his supplementing royal dialogues (see 5.2) and the comment on Wealhþeow’s audience with further detail. One aspect of succession that troubles Wealhþeow but that she diplomatically skirts is the loyalty of kin and retainers to her sons. Of her nephew Hroþulf she says that his loyalty to her sons ought to be inviolable, inasmuch as a lad she and Hroðgar had benefited him, “arna gefremedon” ‘had acted honorably.’ Yet honor is a contingency of soul, as the poet of Judgment Day II teaches, a virtue in those for whom the eternal flame of vengeance “wile… are gefremman (1942: 62, ll. 155b–6b) ‘will act compassionately.’ If Hroþulf’s willingness to uphold the Danish princes is at all suspect, so is the loyalty of Heorot’s retainers. Of them Wealhþeow says,

108 6. Consultation in Hygelac’s hall and Freawaru’s marriage

Her is æghwylc eorl oþrum getrywe,

modes milde, mandrihtne hold,

þegnas syndon geþwære, þeod ealgearo,

druncne dryhtguman doð swa ic bidde.

(1228–31)

Here each man is true to another, mild

in mood, loyal to his lord, warriors united,

a willing troop, retainers flushed with wine

do as I say.

These attributes are also contingencies, just as Hroþulf’s is. As the speaker in Partridge says, a man of mild mood “milde mod” (1936: 174, l. 9), responds with friendship whenever another is true. An unpredictable reciprocity also affects groups, mixing them like waters of the sea, according to Maxims I, so that they “beoþ þeoda geþwære” (1936: 158, l. 56) ‘are united as people,’ if no wind bestirs them. Wealhþeow’s praise for her audience in Heorot, then, has a heightening dimension, encouraging through her words a greater degree of commitment than any might have otherwise given. Her audacity in behalf of her sons is altogether commendable both in Heorot and in the halls of the narrator’s audience.

6. Consultation in Hygelac’s hall and Freawaru’s marriage

Beowulf’s return to the Geatish homeland removes him as a successor in Heorot, yet his consultation with Hygelac unexpectedly unfolds a relevant fact: Freawaru’s betrothal to Ingeld. Had the poet brought her into the scenes at Heorot, her availability as a bride would have possibly qualified Hroðgar and Wealhþeow’s different stances on his eligibility for the kingship. Extraordinary bravery wins a king’s stalwart a royal

bride, as in the case of Eofor who for his killing Ongenþeow marries

Hygelac’s daughter.40 Yet why the poet eschews alluding to Freawaru while Beowulf is among the Danes has to be speculative.

Whatever the reasons for delaying notice of her, Beowulf’s foreseeing the bloodshed that awaits her men at her husband Ingeld’s court has its place in literary tradition. As part of a consultation episode, this foreseen disaster figures as a loose analog (scarcely deliberate) to events at Heimer’s estate in the Volsunga Saga.41 The place of Freawaru and Ingeld’s marriage in Beowulf’s consultation with Hroðgar lies within the context of experiences at Heorot. Similarly, Sigurd and Brynhild’s affair commences, also as a recent experience, on his way to Frakkland where he finds her asleep. Other comparable elements are the recent defeat of

Beowulf 109

monsters (Fafnir in the saga), foster kinship (Beowulf and Hygelac, Brynhild and Heimer), gifts given, and portents of marital disaster. News from elsewhere and forecasts of the future as a part of hospitality and consultation are inherent in Continental and insular literature.

The structuring of these elements, the fashioning of dialogue, and the participation of the principals militate, however, against any genetic linkage between the saga and Beowulf. One difference, above all, between these works is the setting chosen for discussing likely responses to marital possiblities: Hygelac sits in his hall; Brynhild and Sigurd privately in her “skemmuni” (Olsen 1906–8: 59) ‘chamber.’ In Beowulf the setting in Hygelac’s hall frames a friendly reunion, a tableau to contrast with the bloody melee predicted for Ingeld’s court when Freawaru’s Danish contingent parade captured swords. In the Volsunga Saga, the setting of private consultation and vows in Brynhild’s chamber yields to a courtly round of drugged mead that turns Sigurd to marrying Gudrun. Alone with Brynhild, Sigurd says, the audience overhearing him, “ek skal þik eigha eda eingha konu ella” (Olsen 1906–08: 60) ‘I shall marry you or no other woman.’ Together with King Gjuki, the royal family and retainers, the audience more readily a part of the assemblage, Sigurd says, “Hafit þauck fyrir ydra sęmd, ok þetta skal þiggia” (Olsen 1906–08: 65), ‘My thanks for your honor, and I shall accept that [offer to marry].’ Although differently structured, both works arrange for their audiences episodes of fond consultation and treacherous hospitality.

6.1 The narrator’s frame for the consultation scene

Just at the entering of Beowulf into Hygelac’s hall, the narrator lays out the formalities of their meeting. The manner of their reunion has a dignity briefly summarized; the returned hero, as the narrator relates,

mandryhten

þurh hleoðorcwyde holdne gegrette,

meaglum wordum.

(1978b–80a)

greeted his lord with loyal, ceremonious

speech, with earnest words.

Here, as before in Beowulf’s greeting to the coastguard, a stranger to a Danish guardian, the word “holdne” (267a and 1977b) recurs, but its import now is not the same. In the sentinel scene (see 3.2) the phrase “holdne hige” ‘loyal thoughts’ instances a self-report to test; in this scene

110 6.2 Beowulf’s diction and narrative for the Heaðo-Bard scene

of reunion, “hleoðorcwyde holdne,” the narrator’s summarizing collocation, is straightforward in sense. This difference in the interpretation of Beowulf’s assurances given at an armed border and at his reunion with Hygelac also depends on the audience’s trust in the hero. After hearing of Beowulf’s conduct at Heorot who would doubt his word at home? The formality of the scene and the use of “holdne” to modify a noun of speaking have some resemblance, also, to the depicted ritual of baptizing Myrmidons in Andreas. Gathered together, the converts “cwædon holdlice hyran woldon / onfon fromlice fullwihtes bæð…” (1932: 48, l. 1639–40) ‘said faithfully that they would obey, boldly take the baptismal bath…’42 Although the scene in Andreas is a religious ritual rather than one of consultation, both are alike in their seriousness.

As if to enhance the seriousness of Beowulf’s formal entrance into Hygleac’s hall, the narrator supplies the phrase “meaglum wordum,” linguistically recognizable in Exodus, in Moses’ advice to the Israelites. The message given is that

Run bið gerecenod, ræd forð gæð,

hafað wislicu word on fæðme,

wile meagollice modum tæcan…

(1931: 106, l. 526–8)

The writing [in Scripture] will be

explained, advice will go forth, it

has words of wisdom in its depths, it

desires earnestly to instruct minds…

For the narrator as intermediary between audiences and the forthcoming consultation, the earnestness conveyed by “meaglum,” found nowhere else in Beowulf, is indisputable.

6.2 Beowulf’s diction and narrative for the Heaðo-Bard scene

The consultation itself portrays Beowulf as a critic of Hroðgar’s leadership, a frankness unwarranted in Heorot but welcome to Hygelac, whose “fyrwet” (1985b) ‘curiosity’ is also the audience’s (see 3.3). Speaking of Hroðgar, Beowulf praises the king yet predicts that despite

the hopes in Heorot for Freawaru and Ingeld’s marriage, peace between

the Danes and Heaðo-Bards will fail. Thus the admiration for Hroðgar’s graciousness as a “rumheort cyning” (2110b) ‘generous king’ is as genuine as the belief in God, voiced in Lord's Prayer II, as the “rumheort hlaford” (1942: 63, l. 63) ‘compassionate Lord.’ Further, Beowulf has

Beowulf 111

an appreciation for Hroðgar that transcends the king’s munificence, that encompasses a heartfelt capacity as he recalls the past. At such moments, Hroðgar’s “hreðer,” Beowulf says, “inne weoll” (2113b) ‘heart welled within,’ a phrase that in Christ (1936: 18, l. 539) refers to the disciples who, seeing the Ascension, sorrow, too, at the Messiah’s departure. Yet generosity and depth of feeling are not in themselves constituents of prudence; for Beowulf, in fact, thinks Hroðgar’s assumptions on marrying his daughter to Ingeld misguided.

These assumptions and the reasons for their erroneousness need but few lines of analysis. Beowulf says that Hroðgar

þæt ræd talað,

þæt he mid ðy wife wælfæhða dæl,

sæcca gesette. Oft seldan hwær

æfter leodhyyre lytle hwile

bongar bugeð, þeah se bryd duge!

(2027b–31)

subscribes to that advice that he

may settle some part of his conflicts,

of his deadly feuds, through the young

woman. How seldom it is everywhere that

though the bride is outstanding the deadly

spear lies at rest even a little while after

a nation’s battlefield defeat.

Hroðgar’s assumption that marriage palliates armed conflict is wishful, Beowulf’s skepticism already borne in his phrase “sæcca gestte,” the verb in the subjunctive mood. This disparity between seeking and attaining such peace, a commonplace in Anglo-Saxon England, colors
Eleusius’ speech, too, in Juliana; as he tells the saint who has rejected him,

þu ær wiþ hi

geþingige, ond him þoncwyrþe

æfter leahtorcwidum lac onsecge,

sibbe gesette. Læt þa sace restan,

lað leodgewin.

(1936: 118, l. 197b–200a)

you should beforehand conciliate with them

[the Roman gods] and make offerings after

your abusive speech, settle on peace. Let

the conflicts subside, the hateful strife.

112 6.2 Beowulf’s diction and narrative for the Heaðo-Bard scene

Even though Eleusius would remedy Juliana’s scorn for the gods, he hopes as well for her consent in marriage (and a subsequent control of her), all of them doomed projects. So if the phrase “sæcce gesette,” as spoken by Beowulf, wins concurrence from the poem’s audience, “sibbe gesette,” Eleusius’ phrase, obviously does not. Beowulf has, then, a grounded skepticism of mind that eludes both Hroðgar and Eleusius.43 In his generalization (2029b–31) on the rarity of peace through marriage, Beowulf is explicitly skeptical. His forthrightness springs into notice from the hapax legomenon “bongar,” the synecdochic deadly spear ready to fly and dispatch survivors of a “leodhryre,” this compound also a hapax legomenon.

The rupture, moreover, that Beowulf foresees as permanently impairing Hroðgar’s program of peace through marriage is a narrative on the future, singularly concordant, too, with Germanic tradition. Although scarcely little substantiates the Messenger’s warning of Geatish exile once the Swedes attack (2922–88), the Heaðo-Bard episode, as Beowulf imagines it, adds a crucial moment to familiar texts.44 For Beowulf to foretell the clash between Ingeld’s Heaðo-Bards and Freawaru’s Danes also inscribes him as a narrator in his own right, not of the past but of the future. That he speaks of the future, moreover, as if traditional texts on the enmities between Heaðo-Bards and Danes were not yet extant, establishes him for the audience as uncommonly prescient. Such discernment in the young Beowulf, a quality of mind for the Anglo-Saxon audience to perceive as remarkable, accords to his words a full measure of respect.45

What Beowulf as a narrator infers from the clash in Ingeld’s hall is a

set of grievances, exacerbated by Danish insensitivity and articulated through phrases inherent in Anglo-Saxon poetic diction. So the old, Heaðo-Bard warrior, his grievances unabated, according to Beowulf, “onginneð geomormod geongum cempan / þurh hreðra gehygd higes cunnian, / wigbealu weccean…” (2044–46a) ‘begins sad of mind to try the thought in a young warrior’s heart and mind, to stir up baleful strife…’ The phrases “onginneð geomormod” and “þurh hreðra gehygd higes” in this context funnel the old warrior’s grievances to his companion’s disposition, he a catylyst, the young man susceptible to influence.

Texts other than Beowulf do not, however, exhibit in their phrasing such a juxtaposition. In Andreas the saint, imprisoned and scourged, “Ongan þa geomormod to gode cleopian” (1932: 42, 1. 1398) ‘began, then, sad of mind to call to God,’ but divine assistance, if not immediate,

Beowulf 113

needs no persuasion. In The Wanderer the phrase “hreðra gehygd” occurs in a precept on prudence for warriors (see Chapter 5, section 8.2), not, as in Beowulf’s narrative, in a deliberate incitement. Although all three texts evoke stressful situations, each proposes a separate form of response—instigated, patient, or prudent—for audiences to survey. Such a survey depends, not on the concurrent availability of the three texts, but on the general supposition that a sadness of mind, attributable to hostilities, leads to diverse acts. As a part of Anglo-Saxon tradition, the precept of The Wanderer, a teaching very likely independent of particular texts, vouches for a broad cognizance of continual threats to communal stability.

In the hall of the Heaðo-Bards, according to Beowulf, resentment will threaten and then wreck a “freondscipe fæstne” (2069a) ‘firm friendship’ with the Danes. An instance, too, of this phrase in The Meters of Boethius is clearly apropos. The precariousness of stable relations among neighboring peoples imposes itself on Boethius who, imprisoned by Theodoric, trusts to God to gather them together “mid freondscipe fæste” (1932a: 169, l. 90). That this phrase concludes Beowulf’s skeptical account of marriage as a dependable surety effects an insightful gap between aspirations for peace and probable actualities.

7. The tradition of leave-taking scenes

Leave-taking in Beowulf , as opposed to arrivals or bonding in marriage, rouses feelings of sorrow, premonitions, too, of permanent absence. The scene of Beowulf’s departure from Heorot is a moment for parting gifts, farewells at water’s edge, their hopes and forebodings intermingled.46 In the Nibelungenlied, the leave-taking of Sîvrit and Kriemhilt from Worms is a complex affair, the principals vowing allegiance until death, although Hagen and Ortwîn refuse to join their entourage.47 This departure in the Nibelungenlied evidences, then, a pattern distinct in feeling from Beowulf, joy mingled with refusal, rather than a tempered sadness. The frequency of leave-taking scenes is patently due to narrative development and to the receptivity of audiences.

7.1 Beowulf’s leave-taking from Heorot

At the departure from Heorot after extraordinary achievement, Beowulf does not, as the audience might expect, say anything specific of

Grendel or Grendel’s mother. Instead, his words at leave-taking tactfully,

114 7.1 Beowulf’s leave-taking from Heorot

almost unnoticeably, resume Hroðgar’s thoughts on succession (see 5.2). After announcing his readiness to sail back to Hygelac, Beowulf then expresses himself in a manner reminiscent of what Hroðgar had earlier said:

Wæron her tela,

willum bewenede; þu us wel dohtest.

Gif ic þonne on eorþan owihte mæg

þinre modlufan maran tilian,

gumena dryhten, ðone ic gyt dyde,

guðgeweorca, ic beo gearo sona.

(1820a–5)

As for our desires, [we] were well

treated here; you have been indeed

good to us. If I may then earn more

of your love in the world than I have

yet done, king of men, through any warlike

deeds, I shall soon be ready.

Athough the noun “willa” in the poem has various inflections, in Beowulf’s final words its form as “willum” reflects tellingly on Hroðgar’s earlier “wilna” (660b) and (950a). In those contexts “wilna” itself had had a reflective value in the king’s pronouncements, first of great rewards should Beowulf prevail against Grendel, then of possible kingship (see 5.2). Now in Beowulf’s farewell, “willum” collocated with the hapax legomenon “bewenede” frees the king from any doubt that Beowulf is departing with any sense of residual dissatisfaction. Similarly, Beowulf's “modlufa” answers to Hroðgar’s verb “freogan” (948a), the connotations of both words, from the standpoint of farewell, indicative of a lasting, mutual endearment, not of acutal commitments.

In turn, Hroðgar’s farewell to Beowulf has the earmarks of ritualistic speech. To the pledge of ready assistance, Hroðgar says,

Þe þa wordcwydas wigtig Drihten

on sefan sende; ne hyrde ic snotorlicor

on swa geongum feore guman þingian.

Þu eart mægenes strang, ond on mode frod,

wis wordcwida!

(1841–5a)

To you, wise God sent those words to your

mind; never have I heard a man so young in

life make a wiser speech. You are mighty in

strength and wise in mind and words!

Beowulf 115

God’s wisdom, evidenced in human endowments, is a theme in Hroðgar’s sermon and here, also, in his praise of Beowulf. The same theme informs Nebuchadnezzar’s speech on the miraculous rescue of the three Jewish officials in Babylon and on Daniel’s oneirocritical skills. Just as Hroðgar exclaims that God “on sefan sende” Beowulf’s wise words, so Daniel’s discernment, for Nebuchadnezzar, are what the “ælmihtig… in sefan sende” (1931: 124, ll. 484a–5a) ‘Almighty sent into his mind.’ Hroðgar’s phrase “wis wordcwida” designates a gift, too, of God, who likewise invests in Daniel, for the sake of interpreting Nebuchadnezzar’s second dream, “wisne wordcwide” (1931: 126, l. 535a) ‘wise words.’ That variants of the phrases “on sefan sende” and “wis wordcwida” have currency in Hroðgar’s formal farewell and in the discourse of Nebuchadnezzar’s majestic assembly assigns them an institutional status. The incidence of these phrases in Beowulf and Daniel stems from the incorporation of an Anglo-Saxon register as distinctly aristocratic.

Yet this aristocratic register does not alone circumscribe the leave-taking of Beowulf from Hroðgar. The labors of the hero in behalf of Heorot surpass what lies in institutional and complimentary rhetoric. So to Beowulf and Hroðgar’s rhetoric, the poet has the narrator append their embrace at farewell as an uncommon moment.

7.2 The narrator’s report of the farewell from Heorot

Although the men’s embrace follows and outtops in directness the formalities of their last words to each other, the narrator has the audience

focus nearly altogether on Hroðgar’s feelings. What rules this emphasis is Hroðgar’s unhappy premonition that he cannot enjoy beyond this moment of embrace the company of his people’s champion.48 The diction of the embrace spirals inward, the image begun and ended as Hroðgar kissed, “gecyste” (1870a), and hugged Beowulf, “be healse genam” (1872a), then wept, “hruron him tearas” (1872b), and became heart-stricken. Nowhere else limned in extant Old English poetry, this image of unhappiness has two compounds, the rare “breostwylm” (1877a) ‘breast-welling’ and the hapax legomenon “hygebend” (1878b) ‘heart-string.’ In its singularity the image is absorbingly incisive.

Nevertheless, the context of the image is public, in full view of Danes and Geats, as if the narrator’s articulating Hroðgar’s emotions puts the private and the communal immediately together. This conjunction of the private and the communal is furthermore deliberate, for the narrator says,

Him wæs bega wen

116 7.2 The narrator’s report of the farewell from Heorot

ealdum infrodum, oþres swiðor,

þæt hie seoððan no geseon moston,

modige on meþle.

(1873b–6a)

The expectation for them both was,

for the very old and wise one,

especially more than for the other,

that they might not see each other again,

their spirits high in council.

Regretful at leave-taking, Hroðgar is representative of his people’s feelings; as the leader of the Geatish band, Beowulf has an eagerness for home that competes with any regrets. That the phrase “modige on meþle” concretizes the public setting for Hroðgar’s emotions is, however, a usage inherent in Old English poetry. A similar union of the private and communal inspirits Moses and the Jews in Exodus:

Ahleop þa hæleðum hildecalla,

bald beohata, bord up ahof,

heht þa folctogan fyrde gestillan,

þenden modiges meðel monige gehyrdon.

(1931: 98, ll. 252–55)

Then the war-herald leaped up before his

men, bold leader, raised up his shield,

ordered the chieftans to quiet the army,

while many heard the counsel of their brave

commander.

Moses’ leap, inspired by God, ranges out from himself to his commanders and to the army hitherto in flight from Pharaoh’s legions. The phrase “modiges meðel” resonates with the Beowulf poet’s “modige on meþle,” both placing speech at the center of gatherings. Audiences for either poem, moreover, position themselves variously, in Exodus with Moses and his followers (more distantly with God or Pharaoh’s army), in Beowulf with the Danes and the Geats. Disparate feelings play over the shore of the Red Sea and in Heorot. If the army of Jews is strengthening itself to dispatch their enemies, to leave them forever behind, Beowulf and his companions, with due respect and consideration, are determinedly bound elsewhere. Farewells and scenes of looming battle teem with an efflorescence of feelings often overlapping.

Beowulf 117

8. The tradition of the death song

The death song as a traditional genre is near the close of Beowulf a counterweight to the episode of leave-taking. Harris (1992: 11) defines

the attributes of the genre as “a retrospective narrative centered on the speaker’s life experience and delivered in the hour of his death.”49 This definition, as Harris shows (1992: 12) applies to at least ten episodes in diverse works, such as Orvar-Odds saga, Ásmundar saga kappabana, and Krákumál. The definition subsumes under its elements of content and manner a group of subsidiary characteristics common to Norse literature and to Beowulf (Harris 1992: 14–21). The speaker has mortal wounds, refers to his plight, yet talks of his inheritance and justifies his life. Mindful of the short time left, he stipulates what funeral he wishes, avers that he must die, and alludes to fate or omens of death. Two other subsidiary characteristics—the valedictory farewell and a prophesy for the dying man’s people—do not typically belong to his song but to the messages of survivors. The ampleness of these charcteristics and their recurrence situate the speaker at a limen, his death song a congeries of thoughts and feelings, a legacy for audiences.

Yet the death song, meant as a legacy, differs in impact from public leave-taking. Instead of an assemblage as in Heorot or elsewhere of warriors beside their lord, Beowulf has Wiglaf for his immediate audience in the aftermath of the dragon fight. Even so, the presence of a survivor does not guarantee that the death song will generate a formulaic pattern of consequences. As news of a hero’s death spreads to kin and communities, responses vary considerably, an indication of likely gaps between what the song says and what the future holds.50 Wiglaf, for example, refrains from supposing the treasure taken from the dragon’s barrow as beneficial although Beowulf gives thanks for it in his death song.51 In place of such thanks the poem ends with prophesy of disaster in a spirit of mourning. Revenge is a second form of response, as when in Orms þáttr Ásbjörn prúði’s warning in his death song correctly anticipates the killing of his slayer, Brusi the giant. Here, having learned from Brusi’s half-sister Menglöð of his foster-brother’s slaying, Ormr and his men go to the giant’s cave and take retribution. In some narratives, the death song has no perceptible consequence but yields either to misinformation or to a slayer’s seizing an opportunity. Thus the Norse analogs of the Hildebrandslied distinguish the content of the death song from what subsequently happens. In Saxo’s version, half-brothers duel (rather than father and son in Hildebrandslied), but Hildiger’s death

118 8.1 Beowulf’s last words and traditional expressions

song obviously belies the spreading rumor of Haldan as slain. In Ásmundar saga kappabanna as well, a duel of half-brothers precipitates Hildebrand's death song, but thereafter his slayer does not so much mourn as he woos a bride. However much death songs conform in themselves to a generic pattern, their influence among survivors and broader audiences is hardly uniform, the link between the dead and the living unpredictable. If death songs have little purchase on the future, they nevertheless instill in audiences a rememberance of those who, at least in Germanic literature, had exemplified the heroic life.

8.1 Beowulf’s last words and traditional expressions

The death song as Wiglaf listens, has three parts. In the first, he hears Beowulf’s thoughts on an inheritance for the son he did not have and a defense of his own life. The second part, delayed until after Wiglaf’s visit to the dragon’s barrow, is Beowulf’s prayer of thanksgiving for the treasure found in it. Beowulf’s final statement is his farewell to Wiglaf. Phrases in each part correlate semantically and contextually with others in the Old English corpus, particularly with phrases in the Psalms.

As for his conduct as king, Beowulf’s death song reiterates what the narrator has already said, namely, that he ruled effectively for fifty winters (2209a, 2733a), that in those years

næs se folcyning,

ymbesittendra ænig ðara,

þe mec guðwinum gretan dorste,

egesan ðeon.

(2733b–6a)

there was not a king of any people,

not any of those neighboring, who dared

to attack me with warriors, to threaten

carnage.

The phrase “egesan ðeon,” reminiscent of Beowulf’s promise at leave-taking to help Danes against enemies that “egesan þywað” (1827b), has an intertextual analog, too, in God’s symbolic threat to the Egyptians. Psalm 77 praises God’s safeguarding his people when “He Ægypti egesan geþywde / mid feala tacna and forebeacna” (1932a: 42, l. 43) ‘He, with many signs and portents threatened terror against Egypt.’ Although the psalmist berates the Jews in other verses for disobeying God, the reminder here of protection, of “egesan” in subduing Egypt, emphasizes what kings, divine or human, must do. Referring to ruthless

Beowulf 119

power, “egesa” is a term of praise for kings able to frighten enemies, as God and Scyld Scefing do, or to conquer threat, as Beowulf does. Since memories of God’s terrifying power and of Scyld Scefing’s ravaging are vital to audiences, so in Beowulf’s death song “egesan ðeon” reminds Anglo-Saxons of honors due him.

A protector of his people, Beowulf also exculpates himself from charges of having wrongfully sworn many oaths: “ne me swor fela / aða on unriht” (2738b–9a). His understated testimony here is evidence of his

humility, just as in Psalm 118 “eadmed” (1932a: 112, v. 107) ‘humility’ is a thematic word on the swearing of vows. It appears directly after the psalmist says to God, “Ic aðas swor and eac hycge, þæt ic soðne dom symble healde” (1932a: 112, v. 106) ‘I swore oaths and also resolve that I will always uphold true justice.’ Whatever his form of belief, Beowulf is mindful at death as in his youth of Wealdend, the eternal ruler of men, to whom, by his very words, he is accountable.52 Anglo-Saxons had reason, then, to take Beowulf as exemplary of a king to cherish for his mettle and his integrity.

The thanksgiving prayer in the second part of the death song commences as follows:

Ic ðara frætwa Frean ealles ðanc,

Wuldurcyninge wordum secge,

ecum dryhtne, þe ic her on starie,

þæs ðe ic moste minum leodum

ær swyltdæge swylc gestrynan.

(2794–8)

I express thanks in my words to the Lord,

the King of glory, eternal God, that I may

gaze here on all of this treasure, that I

was allowed to gain such for my people before

the day of my death.

The phrase “wordum secge” is a locution, too, of the same psalmist who says, “Ic aðas swor.” It directly follows in Psalm 118 the bidding prayer of verse 12 that says, “lær me mid lufan, hu ic læste well / and ic þine soðfæstnysse sweotule cunne” (1932a: 104) ‘teach me with your love how I may do well and how I may clearly know your truth.’ Then the psalmist says, verse 13, “Ic on minum welerum wordum secge / ealles þines muðes meahte domas” (1932a: 104) ‘On my lips I say in my words all the mighty decrees of your mouth.’ If “secge wordum” is a formula for prayerful utterance, then its very use in Beowulf’s death song enables audiences to judge whether thanking God for treasure is praiseworthy.53

120 8.2 The narrator’s sense of the death song

The death song ends with Beowulf prepared in some sense to join his forebears:

ealle wyrd forsweop

mine magas to metodsceafte,

eorlas on elne; ic him æfter sceal.

(2814b–16)

fate swept off all my kin, men of courage,

to death; I shall follow after them.

The appositive “eorlas on elne” is an epithet, too, for a people’s past as well as a family’s. The Danes, as the narrator says at the poem’s outset, accomplished courageous tasks, goals that Beowulf admires his ancestors for pursuing. In a poem celebrating memories of the dead, the past stands as a canvas, except for the appalling Heremod, of honorable people and actions.54 In Beowulf’s final words, moreover, past joins future, his desire for a permanent identification with his kin, men of courage, his last.

That courage is a crucial virtue, so fully entrenched that its necessity is axiomatic, appears, too, in an appositive phrase of The Wanderer:

Til biþ se þe his treowe gehealdeþ, ne sceal næfre his

torn to rycene

beorn of his breostum acyþan, nemþe he ær þa bote

cunne,

eorl mid elne gefremman.

(1936: 137, ll. 112–14a)

Good is he who keeps to his faith, nor is he ever to

reveal too quickly his sorrow in his heart, unless he,

a man with courage, knows beforehand how to provide the

remedy.

As in Beowulf , so in The Wanderer, courage fends off despair, upholds one’s belief, and serves as a cardinal virtue. The appositive phrases with “elne” qualify similar contexts in both poems, Beowulf aiming to share

in his kin’s fate, The Wanderer’s preceptor recommending courage in

those who seek heaven.

8.2 The narrator’s sense of the death song

Beowulf’s death song, evocative of his last thoughts and feelings, has two immediate auditors: Wiglaf and the poem’s narrator. Although Wiglaf supervises Beowulf’s funeral rituals in accordance with

Beowulf 121

instructions in the death song, he does not otherwise paraphrase or comment on it. The narrator, however, brackets the death song with phrases to frame it as a distinctive episode.

His first comments depict Beowulf as conscious of the little time left, as readying to express his final words:

he ofer benne spræc,

wunde wælbleate; wisse he gearwe,

þæt he dæghwila gedrogne hæfde,

eorðan wynne…

(2724b–7a)

he spoke, injured as he was by a mortal

wound; he knew surely that he had

experienced for his allocated days his

earthly joy…

Two of the narrator’s phrases—“wisse he gearwe” and “eorðan wynne”—are, in other contexts, harbingers of contrasting eternities. In Genesis, the sequence “se hellsceaða gearwe wiste” (1931: 24, l. 695) ‘the devil well knew,’ refers to God’s anger against Adam and Eve, their infernal fate before them. In Guthlac, a blessed soul is ready to yield earthly joy, “eorþan wynne” (1936: 49. l. 2), for heaven.55 That these phrases foreshadow different eternities has some pertinence for Beowulf as he recites his death song. Although a wise ruler for fifty years, he concedes, as he speaks, his failing to have a son, an heir for his weaponry and presumably a leader for the Geats.56 What bearing Beowulf’s heroic life and his omissions have on his destiny is, moreover, not for the narrator to judge. The two phrases that he employs— “wisse he gearwe” and “eorðan wynne”—imply, under the color of their intertextual contexts, that Beowulf’s fate is for the eternal to decide.57

To put a closing frame on the death song, the narrator says, “Þæt wæs þam gomelan gingæste word / breostgehygdum, ær he bæl cure” (2817–8a) ‘For the old hero that was the last word from his heart’s thoughts, before he would go to the pyre.’ The compound “breostgehygd” has intertextual connotations here (akin to the phrases on what Beowulf already knew and on his earthly joy) that project eternities of either bliss or woe. The Judgment Day II instances this compound twice in contexts that promise salvation for a crucified thief who repents and eternal misery for anyone confident of deliverance. So the poet of this pentential work (a translation of De Die Judicii) says of the repentant thief,

122 9. Phrases for the mind of God

Se sceaþa wæs on rode scyldig and manful,

mid undædum eall gesymed;

he drihtene swa þeah, deaðe gehende,

his bena bebead breostgehigdum.

(1942: 59, ll. 57–60)

The thief on the cross was guilty and evil,

all burdened with wicked deeds, even so he

entrusted, near to death, the thoughts of

his heart to God.

The second instance of this compound appears in a general warning:

Ne mæg þær æni man be agnum gewyrhtum

gedyrstig wesan, deman gehende,

ac ealle þurhyrnð oga ætsomne,

breostgehyda and se bitera wop…

(1942:62–3, ll. 170–3)

Nor through his own merits is anyone there,

before the Judge, able to be bold, but fear

and bitter weeping shall strike all together,

in the thoughts of the heart…

Since the narrator is a Christian, as Beowulf is not, his withholding judgment on what eternal fate the hero is to have accords with orthodox doctrine. By implication, the narrator’s phrases and compound comport with the sensibility of Anglo-Saxons dedicated to the idea of forebears as heroic yet reluctant to suppose them eternally saved. The ambiguities arising from the intertextual patternings of the narrator’s two phrases and compound suggest an Anglo-Saxon quality of mind drawn to ancestral achievements but not to anticipating God’s eternal judgments. In short, Anglo-Saxon audiences mostly regarded past heroes as glorious but approached the future circumspectly.

9. Phrases for the mind of God

Since God’s judgment of Beowulf is unknowable, a plausible inference in general is that the divine mind lies beyond human understanding. The Beowulf poet has Hroðgar speak to the gap between human and divine minds; “Wundor is to secganne,” the king of the Danes says,

hu mihtig God manna cynne

þurh sidne sefan snyttru bryttað

eard ond eorlscipe…

(1724b–6a)

Beowulf 123

It is a wonder, even at the saying of

it, how mighty God distributes to mankind,

through his spacious mind, wisdom, land,

and nobility…

To include “sidne sefan” in this quotation is to delineate, through a spatial metaphor, an infinitude beyond human capacity to fathom. This metaphor, the mind as spacious, occurs elsewhere, in Guthlac to rejoice in the saint’s capacities, and in Elene to disdain the wisdom of Jews who deny Christ’s divinity. Guthlac, the poet says, is exceptional for no one else is able “swa deoplice dryhtnes geryne / þurh menniscne muð areccan / on sidum sefan” (1936: 81, ll. 1121–3a) ‘to explain with his spacious mind God’s mystery so trenchantly through a human mouth.’ The majestic Elene challenges the Jews to summon expounders of Scripture able to demonstrate their intransigence, to overcome her animadversions “þurh sidne sefan” (1932: 76, l. 376).58

Such a hierarchical sense of God’s thought and distributive power, wondrously greater than a saint’s, untold times superior to the wisdom of five hundred Jews, transcends generic frameworks.59 In Beowulf, this belief, accepted by Danes and Geats and the Christian narrator, permeates episodes regardless of genre. So what complements Hrothgar’s homiletic wonder on deific powers of mind is the beneficence of God’s intervening against Grendel but the inexplicability of his abstaining from the dragon fight. Here are two moments crucial to narrative, both perplexing in their way on why it is that God intervenes and why it is that he does not. This perplexity motivates Hroðgar’s homiletic wonder as well as the wonder of Danes, Geats and the audience.

9.1 Phrases for Godly judgment and emotion in monster episodes

In some instances, however, the deific mind, if not immediately observable, none the less manifests a force to conquer monstrous acts. Several phrases on God’s powers of mind, whether in Beowulf or elsewhere in Old English poetry, have some relevance for the treatment of monsters and others who disturb heavenly mandates. God’s power to judge, for example, receives special notice in Beowulf through the phrase, “forscrifen hæfde” (106b) ‘had condemned,’ a reference by the narrator to Cain’s clan, among them Grendel. The same phrase in Christ and Satan (1931: 136, l. 33b) sentences the rebellious angels of heaven.

Complementing God’s exercise of judgment is his righteous anger. For the narrator to say of Grendel, nearing Heorot for the last time, that

124 9.1 Phrases for Godly judgment and emotion in monster episodes

he “Godes yrre bær” (711b) ‘bore God's anger’ is to bind absolute will to his deific irascibility.60 Moreover, the words “God” and “yrre” collocate three times in Genesis, once in The Phoenix. In The Phoenix, God’s anger (1936: 105 l. 408b) befalls Adam and Eve, yet the poet first says that the “ealdfeondes æfest” (1936: 105 l. 401a) ‘devil’s envy’ had degraded them. In Genesis the anger of God directs itself against Adam and Eve (1931: 24 ll. 695, 740) and afflicts the angels in rebellion (1931: 4 l. 34). Since Cain carries the venom transmitted through his parents, Grendel, as a descendant, embodies the deformities of monstrous passions. What the Beowulf poet charts is a descent of deific anger and of vice from biblical times to a prolonged threat against Danes.

God’s will also has the power, suggested by the phrase “Metod nolde,” ‘the Ruler did not wish,’ to cancel passionate but deadly acts, whether monstrous or defensible. Twice in Beowulf “Metod nolde” (706b, 967b) is an indicator of such cancellation, once to quell, almost altogether, Grendel’s murderous intent, and, once to prevent his dying in Heorot. Analogous to God’s intercession against Grendel’s ravening on Geats (except for Hondscioh) is his frustrating Nebuchadnezzar’s burning three Jewish officials, for as the narrator of Azarias says, “ne metod wolde” (1936: 93, l. 164). Audiences are left to infer for themselves the divine reason for this just intervention, its occurrence extraordinary, a miracle recorded.

God’s preventing the death of Grendel in Heorot generates not a unit

of narration but an opportunity for Beowulf to predict the condemnatory judgment against the monster. This prediction entails a nuanced use of phrases. First, through the phrase “Metod nolde” (967b) Beowulf, not the poem’s narrator, ascribes to God’s will his own failure to stop Grendel’s flight. Secondly, such a recognition of God’s will is itself preparatory to Beowulf’s also saying, “him scir Metod scrifan wille” (979) ‘the glorious ruler will judge him.’ Here the verb “scrifan” echoes the earlier “forscrifen” (106b), the condemnation of Grendel in “balwon bendum” (977a) ‘baleful bonds,’ an image of God’s exclusive privilege. In sum, God’s passions and judgments, most saliently against enemies, take precedence from time to miraculous time, as Anglo-Saxon audiences knew, over human impulses.

What is even more intriguing is the view of God in the battles against Grendel’s mother and the dragon. As for Grendel’s mother, neither her moment of vengeance nor of defeat labors under the shadow of God’s animus or condemnation. The narrator identifies her genealogically with Cain but omits in his account of her and her wasteland the deific

Beowulf 125

banishment that had marked her son’s introduction. What the narrator does say is that God “on ryht gesced” (1555b) ‘had decided rightly’ on Beowulf’s victory, a statement to please the audience, well before the Geats and the Danes welcome him back. Here God is beneficent as he is in Exodus at the battle of Moses’ army against Pharaoh’s. With victory on the Red Sea the Jews “on riht sceodon” (1931: 107 1. 587b) ‘rightly shared’ the treasures of the defeated Egyptians, including Joseph’s wealth. That God’s beneficence brings rejoicing in Heorot before episodes of Beowulf’s leave-taking is itself parallel to the celebration of victory that closes Exodus. For God to decide rightly on the outcome of battle or for an army to share rightly under divine aegis is an occasion that adumbrates deliverance.

No such celebratory deliverance follows the description and vanquishing of the dragon (see 8.1 and 8.2). Nor does the Beowulf poet anywhere speculate on what a deific attitude toward the dragon might be. Instead, audiences learn what Beowulf and Wiglaf discern in the mind of a deity seemingly absent despite the dragon’s holocaust. For Beowulf such absence produces images of a deity passionately disaffected:

wende se wisa, þæt he Wealdende

ofer ealde riht ecean Dryhtne

bitre gebulge; breost innan weoll

þeostrum geþoncum, swa him geþywe ne wæs.

(2329–32)

the wise man imagined that acting against

old law he must have sorely angered the Ruler,

the eternal Lord; his breast swelled within

with dark thoughts, what for him was not typical.

The first part of this quotation, the narrator reporting rather than directly presenting Beowulf’s thoughts on deific anger, harkens back to the anger visited on Grendel. Grendel’s carnage, as if an act linearly descended from Cain's murderousness, incurs God's anger; a supposed breaking of “ealde riht” likewise incurs, for Beowulf and the narrator, deific anger. Whatever “ealde riht” may mean, the old Beowulf perceives a deity (as does the narrator) passing judgment, not on the Grendel kin, but on him as king of the Geats.61 His trust in deific favor shaken, Beowulf is not to regain his youthful confidence in his distinction, possibly not even in the afterlife (see 8.2). This sense of a spiritual chasm between the divine and the human also informs Resignation.

126 9.1 Phrases for Godly judgment and emotion in monster episodes

Toward the end of that poem the speaker confesses to transgressive acts, his spirit sick, his own mind “bittre abolgen” (1936: 218, l. 110a) ‘bitterly enraged,’ having endangered his chasmal rift from God. Although in Beowulf and Resignation the phrases “bittre gebulge” and “bittre abolgen”differ in their attributions of anger, God’s and man’s, both poems remind audiences of how harrowing displacement is. For Beowulf the king, moreover, the consciousness of deific deprivation transforms him, as though a spiritual illness had come upon him just as it had the speaker in Resignation.

This transformation accounts, too, for the phrase “þeostrum geþoncum,” plural in form to connote a recurrence of unaccustomed dark thoughts that, as the narrator tells the audience, now possess Beowulf. Such thoughts well up, flooding the cavity of Beowulf’s breast, filling what had earlier on brimmed with deific grace. Such impoverishment overwhelms, as well, three thousand Jews, who in Elene represent a people once God’s own, but who rejected the incarnation and thereby succumbed to “þeostrum geþancum” (1932: 74, l. 312a) ‘dark thoughts.’

The phrases “bittre gebulge” and “þeostrum geþoncum” in Beowulf do not, of course, parallel the exact functions of their analogs in the overtly Christian Resignation and Elene. That the grammatical mood of “bittre gebulge” is subjunctive, the phrase’s import a conjecture on God’s permitting the dragon’s incendiarism, his anger concretized in fire, argues an inexplicability. Although Beowulf lays the devastation of the Geats to his somehow angering Wealdend, this dismaying rationale, grounded in deific rule of time and circumstance, substitutes for sheer chance or ignorance.62 Such probing for explanation exacts costs for Beowulf, his oneness with the divine lost, as is the Jews’ in Elene and the speaker’s in Resignation, yet the basis therefore disparate. Beowulf’s loss is not an upshot of anger but a fact that reason scarcely understands; his dark thoughts overflow, not from his rejecting Christianity, but from his feeling irretrievable loss.

Despite this sense of loss, Beowulf and, subsequently, Wiglaf resist

despair, as the cowards among the Geatish retainers do not. Indeed, Wiglaf nearly demeans his timid cohorts, telling them,

God wat on mec,

þæt me is micle leofre, þæt minne lichaman

mid minne goldgyfan gled fæðmie.

(2650b–52)

God knows this about me, that it is much dearer

Beowulf 127

to me that my body, beside my gold-giver's, should

enfold fire.

He persuades none of his companions to shun cowardice, but earns the respect of audiences, and sends his vow to heaven. His attestation to God, furthermore, consorts with the lines closing the first verse paragraph in The Fortunes of Men: “God ana wat / hwæt him weaxendum winter bringað!” (1936: 154, ll. 8b–9) ‘God alone knows what the years will bring the growing youngster!” For Wiglaf, who is to act courageously, and for the young man in The Fortunes of Men, his future still undefined, God is a determining but not an intimate presence. To join Beowulf in battle, although not necessary, is a choice that impels Wiglaf, that he almost calls upon God to witness. Wiglaf’s vow clearly has an insistence unmatched in The Fortunes of Men, a poem on talents that God allocates to young men and on the paths they may choose. What authenticates Wiglaf’s intensity, moreover, is the Geatish devastation, a crisis intenser than any circumstance outlined in The Fortunes of Men. Unimpeded by God, the dragon’s holocaust spurs Wiglaf to act, his courage sure, his heart with Beowulf, both facing death without any expectation of deific beneficence.

9.2 The monstrous mind from a secular perspective

If audiences do not benefit from deific wisdom on the dragon’s nature, they learn somewhat more of it from Beowulf’s narrator. The fund of phrases in Old English poetry that the narrator uses for the dragon’s mind is ample, greater than for Grendel’s mother, about the same as for Grendel. As for the generic contexts of these phrases, contexts that structure the deadly acts of the monsters, their form most nearly parody

traditional sentinel and leave-taking scenes. So Grendel, for whom these scenes receive fullest elaboration, happens first on unprepared Danes, then later comes on Beowulf as hall guard. Grendel’s leave-taking Danes helpless in the first, God overruling Beowulf in the second (see “Metod nolde” under 9.1) are also a parody of tradition, his two departures unimpeded. The generic contexts applicable to Grendel’s mother and the dragon are sentinel scenes, both also parodic. Grendel’s mother participates in two parodic sentinel scenes, first as she attacks an unprepared Heorot, then as she awaits Beowulf in the waters of the mere. The dragon is also a sentinel, the guardian of his barrow, asleep during the theft of his cup. Like her son, Grendel’s mother flees Heorot, her leave-taking as sudden as her coming, while the dragon’s death near its barrow precludes the use of this traditional scene.

128 9.2.1 The narrator and Beowulf’s phrases for Grendel’s mind

9.2.1 The narrator and Beowulf’s phrases for Grendel's mind

During the scenes of Grendel at Heorot, his lust and appetite, partly identified by the narrator with phrases also found elsewhere in Old English poetry, surge horridly. Having seized thirty Danes in his first raid, Grendel departs “huðe hremig” (124a) ‘exulting in his spoils,’ a phrase likewise an appositive for Constantine in Elene (1932: 70, l. 149a), victoriously departing from a battleground of slain Huns. That Constantine is a Christian, a conqueror over Huns, makes “huðe hremig” a phrase ripe for constrastive valences, the condition of a man’s soul supposedly taking precedence over his carnage. A second phrase, this for a Grendel fleeing Heorot, is “aldres orwena” (1002a), his ‘despairing for his life’ a gloss on his unforeseen flight from wrestling with Beowulf. Mortally wounded, Grendel the cannibal grotesquely leaves his shoulder and arm behind.63 This departure thus transmutes a leave-taking scene into a life-rending episode (without a death song).

Elsewhere, the phrase “aldres orwena,” for Grendel’s departure to death, has a like connotation of extremity in a synonymous phrase, “feores orwena” ‘despairing of life.’ So in Andreas, an old Myrmidon, “feores orwena“ (1932: 33, l. 107b), cravenly rescues himself from his city’s cannabilistic throng, when he offers his son for their devouring. The wretchedness connoted by “feores orwena” (1936: 155, l. 40b) descends, too, on a prisoner fated in The Fortunes of Men to die on the gallows, “his lif sceacen” (1936: 155, l. 39b) ‘his life fled,’ his body a

raven’s feast. These phrases for Grendel’s exultation and despair constitute, then, a polarity, attuned to the wild unknown, discordant in the communal settings that he ravages and flees.

As for the parodic sentinel scenes of Grendel’s coming to Heorot, his arrival on Beowulf’s watch fuses the monster’s polar emotions to his polar thoughts. The narrator’s phrases here, as in the leave-taking scenes, fashion for Anglo-Saxon audiences a quality of mind inimical to communal life. In regard to Grendel’s cannabilistic feelings, at the sight of Geats asleep in Heorot, just before Beowulf’s grip stays him, the audience learns that “his mod ahlog” (730b) ‘his heart laughed.’ This exultation is the inverse of a similar phrase in Andreas, “ure mod ahloh” (1932: 15, l. 454b) ‘our heart laughed,’ uttered as the saint’s seafaring companions hear how he had once watched Christ still the waters.64 The saint’s laughter, unlike Grendel’s, emanates from fellowship with companions and Christ.

To qualify Grendel’s laughter further, the narrator also denies him any semblance of contentment; the monster is, even before his fatal struggle,

Beowulf 129

“dreamum bedæled” (721a) ‘deprived of joys.’ His is a spiritually emasculated condition, much like that of the fallen angels in Christ and Satan, also “dreamum bedelde” (1931: 137, l. 68). In sum, Grendel’s despair is incipient, for even when he exults and laughs he cannot share in human joys. His capacity to think also pales before human potential.

In the leave-taking scene, the narrator’s phrase for Grendel’s thoughts —“wiste þe geornor” (821b) ‘knew the more surely’—resembles that for Beowulf just before death (see 8.2) and has an analog, too, in Christ and Satan. There God banishes Satan to hell, telling him, “Wast þu þonne þe geornor þæt þu wið god wunne” (1931: 158, l. 704), ‘You will know then more surely that you strove against God,’ a prediction enunciated as well in a leave-taking scene. Both phrases—Grendel’s on his impending death (his knowing that “aldres wæs ende gegongen” (822) ‘the end of his life had come’) and God on Satan’s fate—delimit thought within an irremediable finality. The oncoming of death for Grendel drives him from Heorot, his knowledge of his doom stimulating a “gryreleoð” (786a) ‘terrible song,’ a parody of Beowulf's last words, a devolution to make Danes shudder. Such a song bursts, metonymically, too, from the byrnie of a Viking, slain at a thrust in The Battle of Maldon (1942: 15, l. 285). Violence in these songs overtakes any semblance of thought on the past, present, or future; instead, Grendel’s passion and the Viking’s threaten Danish and Anglo-Saxon comity.

In retrospect, Beowulf reprehends Grendel’s destructiveness. In

consultation with Hygelac (see 6.1) he discredits Grendel’s campaign against the Danes:

he worna fela

Sige-Scyldingum sorge gefremede,

yrmðe to aldre…

(2003a–5b)

he very often reaped sorrow among

the Sige-Scyldingas, misery all the time…

In this censure of Grendel’s havoc at Heorot, Beowulf’s phrase “yrmðe to aldre” sounds a note of relentlessness. It has overtones commensurate, moreover, with the temper of life after the devil corrupts Adam and Eve. The poet of Juliana has the devil boast that he so taught them that

hi lufan dryhtnes,

ece eadgiefe anforleton,

beorhtne boldwelan, þæt him bæm gewearð

130 9.2.2 The narrator on Grendel’s mother

yrmðu to ealdre, ond hyra eaferum swa…

(1936: 127 501b–4a)

they abandoned the Lord’s love, the eternal

benefactor, paradise, so that misery forever

overtook them both and their children…

Whatever God existed for early Germanic peoples, Beowulf regards Grendel, in terms plain enough for Anglo-Saxons, as misery’s agent, eager to rupture communities and to sow discord.

9.2.2 The narrator on Grendel’s mother

Enormously powerful, Grendel either exults monstrously or despairs, as his thoughts shift from cannabilism to desparate flight. His polarities of mind leave no place for civility. As for Grendel’s mother, nothing in her narrative dispels the idea that her mind is like her son’s. Headed for Heorot, like her son before her, Grendel’s mother, as the narrator says,

gifre and galgmod gegan wolde

sorhfulne sið sunu deoð wrecan.

(1277–8)

ravenous and gloomy, wished to go on a griev-

ous journey to avenge her son’s death.

Like Grendel, too, the mother has an appetite for killing and a disposition mired in dreariness.66 Her grievous journey (“sorhfulne sið”) takes an outcast’s path, similar to that of the saint’s antagonistic devil in Juliana,

whose pursuit of her has met “sorg on siþe” (1936: 125, l. 443a) ‘grief in journeying.’67

9.2.3 The narrator on the dragon

As in the instance of Grendel and his mother, the sentinel scene for the dragon opens soon enough onto acts of angry attack. The narrator’s descriptive details reiterate this surge of anger. At the door of Heorot during Beowulf’s watch Grendel becomes “yrremod” (726) ‘angry in mood,’ the compound a hapax legomenon, vividly enhanced by a detail for his eyes that “stod ligge gelicost” (726b–8a)‘shone forth most like fire.’ When Beowulf dives to the bottom of the mere Grendel’s mother grips him, “grim ond grædig” (1499a) ‘angry and fierce.’68 The discovery of the cup’s theft makes the dragon “gebolgen” (2304) ‘angry,’ ready to requite its loss with fire—“lige” (2305b). Maybe not surprisingly, this monstrous anger bears some resemblance to the

Beowulf 131

behavior of Guðlaf and Oslaf after they return to Finn’s court and complain of his fierce attack on the resident Danes.69 The narrator then says, “ne meahte wæfre mod / forhabban in hreþre” (1150b–51a) ‘the restless heart could not remain lodged in the breast.’70 This almost gnomic pronouncement on animus generalizes what Anglo-Saxon audiences knew of assaults and feuds—what monstrous anger accompanies them.71

Battle itself does little to drain combatants of their anger. The dragon persists furiously, “fæhða gemyndig” (2689b) ‘mindful of feuds,’ a phrase comparable to Ælfwine's “fæhðe gemunde” (1942: 225b) ‘remembered the feud’ in The Battle of Maldon. Whether or not audiences deem a cause honorable, these phrases on feud capture bestial and human minds in images of engrossing passion. In the hapax legomenon “bealohycgende” (2565a) ‘hostile,’ a participle for the dragon and Beowulf, a like conjunction of consuming anger animates them in battle. The narrator’s hapax legomenon raises a question about anger and monstrosity, about the circumstances that make anger righteous.

10. Conclusion

Just as the hapax legomenon “bealohycgende” challenges audiences to consider the dragon and Beowulf’s anger, so many other phrases (and genres) in Beowulf encourage inquiry into the workings of mind. Although Irving (1989: 18–9) cautions against analytic procedues for unmasking or ironizing character, his advocating techniques of contrast actually endorses the idea of exploring minds. As he says of the holocaust narrative and its portent for Geats (1989: 102), they “invite us to observe and reflect on the contrast between the dragon’s… outrage and Beowulf’s human response…” For Irving (1989:113–4), audiences also contrast nuances of diction, like that in Beowulf’s death song between what was “wolde” (2729b) ‘wished’ and what granted, “gifeðe” (2730b). This capacity for Anglo-Saxon audiences to observe and reflect on formulaic phrases and on hapax legomena that allude to thought and feeling, moreover, does not confine itself to Beowulf alone. Although the full Old English corpus is irrecoverable, to compare and contrast formulaic phrases in Beowulf and in other extant poems is at least indicative of Anglo-Saxon practice.

This chapter’s organization brackets formulaic phrases with Beowulf's anthology of genres, themselves a group of literary modes mostly derived from customs of orality. Ricoeur conceives of genres as

132 10.1 Participants in a semiotic model of Beowulf

paradigms, their rules changing slowly, resistant to change, particularly “folktale, the myth, and in general the traditional narrative” (1984: 1, 69). As for audiences, “received paradigms structure…[their] expectations” (1984: 1, 76). These expectations comport with this chapter’s thesis: they embrace hopes, fears, wishes, choices, “rational calculations, curiosity—in short, every private or public manifestation aimed at the future” (1984: 3, 208). Beowulf’s genres, traditional paradigms, surely allow Anglo-Saxon minds to react to an imagined past for Germanic tribes, rendered as if still unfolding into an unknown future. The formulaic phrases and the genres in Beowulf, furthermore, support a semiotic model for an over-all sense of Anglo-Saxon thoughts and feelings.

10.1 Participants in a semiotic model of Beowulf

In the semiotic frameworks of Chapters 2 and 3 on codes and homilies, kings and preachers function as promulgators of speech acts designed to inculcate or praise virtues in Anglo-Saxon auditors. In this chapter the poet of Beowulf is also a promulgator, not directly of morality and faith, but of history, apportioned in several genres. Since the poet transmits his history through a narrator and through the voices of the Germanic past, they, too, have semiotic functions. The narrator in this sense is an intermediary, but those who speak, as it were, from the Germanic past (together with God and the monsters) are participnats. The poet’s Anglo- Saxon audiences are interpreters of his history, aided partly by what they know of the genres and diction that he uses.

10.2 A semiotic model for exploring the minds of the participants

The participants’ minds in Beowulf—human, deific, monstrous— necessitate a classification compatible with what Anglo-Saxon interpreters can learn of them. This classification, instanced by sections 3. through 9.2.3, partly depends on whether the genres of the poem help to eludicate the participants’ thoughts and feelings. The classification is straightforward: genres foster exploration of human participants’ thoughts and feelings but not those of God nor of the monsters. In short, the minds of human participants, according to this simple classification, are subject to context, whereas the deific and monstrous mind is not. That God is sui generis removes the contextual factors of genres as instrumental for knowing the deific mind. Nothing in Beowulf contradicts Hroðgar’s statement that God’s mind is wondrous rather than explicable. That Beowulf’s monsters behave angrily or violently in parodic sentinel

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scenes and that Grendel despairs in his parodic leave-taking scene are limits assumed as typical for their minds. The persistent curiosity on their natures that Grendel and his mother stimulate arises, however, from their human forms and from their genealogy, also a genre exploited in Beowulf.72

A second attribute of a semiotic classification for the minds of participants in Beowulf is their ontological status. The deific mind, unconditioned by generic context, is dimly accessible through analogy. What is inarguably unjust to Anglo-Saxon minds, for instance, is unjust to God. So God’s anger at Grendel is comprehensible, because cannibalism is immoral in the Germanic world. God’s bitter anger at Beowulf, though convincing to some critics, seems, however, more readily an inference of a dismayed king than an articulation of deific punishment.73 The hostility in Beowulf's monstrous minds is, in contrast, predictable; curiosity about their lives in their own domains, however, must remain unsatisfied. The poem invites admiration on the monsters’ workmanship—the engravings on the hilt, the intricacy of Grendel’s glove— but refrains from alluding to the quality of mind that produces them.

The human participants in Beowulf operate under no fixcd limitation or under any predictable rule. Their minds are largely responsive in thought and feeling, instead, to possibilities latent in the poem’s several genres. Thus Unferð is aggressively hostile as Beowulf’s antagonist in the flyting scene, yet accommodating elsewhere. Beowulf is decisive in the sentinel scene at Heorot but reflective before he goes it alone against the waiting dragon. In short, human participants in Beowulf have minds constructed from what the poet discovers in the genres of his tradition.

The ontological status of Beowulf’s participants has a similar parallel in the formulaic phrases of the poem’s speeches. Since neither God nor monsters speak, phrases about them in Beowulf that even partly coincide with those in other poems cannot alter their status. As for Beowulf’s speaking participants, whichever of their phrases that appear in other poems provide an additional perspective on their thoughts and feelings. A semiotic model, then, for participants’ minds consists of classifying them according to their ontological status and to their susceptibility to specific practices in the poem’s several genres.

10.3 The narrator’s mind in a semiotic model

As an intermediary between Beowulf’s participants and its auditors the narrator speaks, but his mind is not a construct of the poem’s genres. Nor

134 10.4 The mind of the poet in a semiotic model of Beowulf

does he register, except for his gnomic utterances and his opening “Hwæt,” an intermediary’s response to the episodes he recites. Instead, his mind is a locus of credibility that depends on his oral skills and on his taste in poetry. This investing the narrator with credibility, rather than the poet directly, is one way to reckon with Anglo-Saxon composition and performance. If the composition of Beowulf is an act distinguishable from its performance (and if poets and scops have complementary but different jobs), then the narrator is more than a fictive intermediary. Thus in actual performance, the narrator who is credible earns the audience’s respect for his skills in delivery and the cogency of the poem. Just as a scop’s skills in delivery is an index of his talent, so is his choice of poems to memorize a cogent determinant of his taste and judgment. Even if a narrator must accede to a lord’s requests, readiness in preparation (the poems a scop has learned) and aptness in delivery are irrefutable hallmarks.

What conduces also to a narrator’s credibility is strangely the record of animadversions against Old English secular poetry, those like Alcuin’s “Quid Hinieldus cum Christo ?” (Alcuin 1895: 183) ‘What has Ingeld to do with Christ?’ Such criticism gains impetus from Alcuin’s already perceiving the attraction that poems like Beowulf have for audiences, for whom scops as narrators are credible conveyors of truth. That Beowulf’s narrator passes muster is clear: his gnomes accord with folk wisdom; the history he recites is as plausible to Anglo-Saxon audiences as the Aeneid is to Romans. Altogether, the poet, as he creates Beowulf, creates as well an identity for a narrator.

10.4 The mind of the poet in a semiotic model of Beowulf

The Beowulf poet has at his command traditional genres, formulaic phrases and hapax legomena, the Bible and Germanic lore, as well as a gift or making his narrator credible. To weld together all these and other

dimensions of Beowulf is to exercise a creativity astutely capable also of

molding human and monstrous minds, of renewing wonder at God. Such creativity, in Ricoeur's exposition (1984: 1, 68) inheres in the productive imagination. Briefly put, the productive imagination “is not only rule-governed, it constitutes the generative matrix of rules.” The rules of a genre like that of a death song, spelled out as Harris has done (see 8.) are both traditional and malleable.

The productive imagination essentially both absorbs the rules of a genre and adeptly reformulates them. Analogously, the productive imagination both masters formulaic phrases and reshapes Old English

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words as hapax legomena, instrumental, at least, for conceiving minds of the past. This imaginative arrangement and presentation of the poem’s genres as well as its formulaic phrases and hapax legomena are semiotic practices. Beowulf is paradigmatically traditional yet innovative. Insofar as the poet cogently upholds traditions of genre and Old English phrasing, some of it gnomic, he fulfills the potential of a semiotic matrix. That he depicts monsters innovatively in parodies of sentinel and leave-taking genres is a deflection from the semiotic matrix, not a wholly radical procedure. Moreover, should audiences find his hapax legomena on the thoughts and feelings of early Danes and Geats enlightening, he creates fresh avenues through customary, semiotic configurations.

10.5 Dispositions of Old English audiences in a semiotic model

The little that is known or confidently inferred of Anglo-Saxon audiences supports the prospect that although they had heard much of the lore in Beowulf they enjoyed innovation. One form of innovation appealing to them is the Beowulf poet’s images. So Niles says (1983: 19) that the image of the mere “called to the mind of one late Anglo-Saxon churchman the specific landscape of hell,” largely appropriated for his Blickling homily 17. A further measure of the innovation enjoyed, as Whitelock implies (1951: 36), is the economy of the poem’s narrative. For her, the narrator’s mentioning Heoroward’s name enables “an act of the Scylding drama…[to] leap into his audience’s minds, one of the most famous events in northern story…” To amplify the Beowulf narrative, then, with Heoroward’s slaying of Hroþulf, reminded of his honorable fosterage (see 5.3) yet unashamed to kill Wealhþeow’s son Hreðric, “would be pointless,” uneconomical.

Besides their mimetic inclinations, as in the instance of the Blickling homilist, and their thorough familiarity with northern story, the audience values Beowulf for its contemporizing past turns of mind. In many of

the poem’s genres, the participants wrestle with alternatives on what to

do or on what to expect, alternatives still very much alive in Anglo-Saxon times. These alternatives oppose one another in a semiotic paradigm of polar choices. Among human participants, the genre termed the sentinel scene casts strangers arriving, their credentials largely unknown, as possibly friendly or hostile, the guards at a border depending on intuition. The flyting polarizes opponents, yet what audiences must evaluate is a stranger’s mettle, whether or not he can verbally defeat a formidable antagonist. If hall scenes generically envelop circuits of contrastive discourse, such as Hroðgar and

136 10.5 Dispositions of Old English audiences

Wealhþeow’s on succession, then they are arenas for opposing structures of meaning, characteristic of semiotic paradigms. Consultative scenes include discourses heard in halls that normally unfold cooperatively rather than dissentingly. Even so, consultants may inject dissent, as in Beowulf’s predicting for Hygelac that disaster will subvert Hroðgar’s diplomacy in marrying Freawaru to Ingeld. Leave-taking as a genre blends disparate feelings of mutual regard and sadness, yet neither intensities (Beowulf, not Hroðgar, looks ahead keenly) nor promises of reunion need to balance each other. This lack of balance, then, illuminates for audiences a contradiction between outward tokens of fellowship and inner wishes. The death song, finally, implicates the narrator like no other genre, for his formulaic phrases, considered intertextually, characterize him as wavering on the nature of Beowulf’s afterlife.

Throughout this group of genres a semiotic paradigm divides the affinities of heart and mind. Go one way and the world is a haven of trust, competence, disinterest, companionship, harmony, and eternal beneficence. Go another and the world is a wasp's nest of suspicion, pretence, privilege, loss, strife, and eternal punishment. These abstract polarities, vitalized in the genres of Beowulf, elude resolution in the poem. The poet and his audience face these polarities that inhabited their Germanic past and attend their thoughts and feelings in their Anglo-Saxon world. For them to dwell during a recitation of Beowulf on

the minds of their forebears is a lesson of the highest order in self-discovery.

Self-discovery is also the subject of Chapter 5. The audience for shorter poems is the Anglo-Saxon polity of the late tenth, early eleventh centuries, subjected periodically to Viking invasion and to a king unable to protect his realm. Although apprehension gripped late Anglo-Saxons, it cannot alone dictate how they viewed poems like The Battle of Maldon, Deor, or elegies. The argument to follow, then, explores how late Anglo-Saxons saw themselves in the light of poetry.

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