Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, together with Sellic Spell

by J. R. R. Tolkien

  This poem – it has no title in the manuscript – has by a modern consensus quite rightly been called Beowulf: Beowulf is indeed the ‘hero’, absolutely: no poem could be more about one exclusive hero than this poem. Here we learn that Beowulf was the son and heir of Scyld, and at 41 ff. (*53 ff.) that he succeeded his father, and that he was succeeded by his son, Healfdene. The Beowulf of the exordium (*1–52, 1–40), therefore, is not the hero of the poem! One of the oddest facts in Old English literature; and it is only made the odder when we observe that Beowulf is a very rare name indeed. In Old English it only occurs in this poem, and in biuulf the name of an abbot (otherwise unknown) inserted in the Liber Vitae (or list of benefactors) of Durham.

  The question is bound up with Scyld and Scéfing, with all the traditions enshrined and blended in the exordium, and with the general interpretation of the poem. But I will indicate these points.

  The oddity of the appearance of the rare name Beowulf given to two distinct persons in this one poem can only be explained as:

  (a) mere accident: these two characters in tradition just happened to have the same name, and the author could not help himself;

  (b) error: the names became assimilated by scribes, since the poet made the poem;

  (c) deliberate: the poet gave this name to the two characters, or assimilated their names, on purpose: for some object of his own, or because of some theory he held.

  (a) is highly improbable. Moreover, there is fairly conclusive evidence that the character in the mythical genealogy should have the mythical monosyllabic non-heroic name Beow ‘barley’ going with Scéaf ‘sheaf’.

  Was Beow altered by the poet to Beowulf? Or is it a scribal blunder? Beow would scan much better at both occurrences in the poem of Beowulf son of Scyld; but as much licence is allowed with proper names that is not conclusive.

  There is no trace outside our poem of a Beowulf in connexion with Scyld or Sceaf. But neither is that conclusive: since our poet is not merely repeating, but is using and reshaping old traditions for his own ends. Nowhere else are Scyld and Sheaf combined; or the mysterious arrival in a boat, with a glorious departure in a ship to an unknown destiny, added. The funeral with which the poem ends deliberately echoes the funeral with which it begins. That is a point of art. But it cannot be made to cover a deliberate assimilation of names also. For various reasons:

  (1) Because the poet, though a poet and willing to modify and select his material to suit his purpose, respected old traditions, especially dynastic ones: and this legendary sequence Sceaf – Beow was well-known in his day, and remained so for a long time.

  (2) The similarity of names would not help his artistic purpose, but blur it. The second funeral ‘echoes’ the first, but they are thus ‘compared’ only to mark their complete contrast. The first marks the departure of a strange half-divine restorer, who leaves a once-forlorn people under a glorious house. The second, the fall of a last defender of a people’s liberty, leaving them without hope.

  (3) And of course finally, because the first funeral was not that of Beow/Beowulf but of Scyld.

  Our manuscript is c.1000, something like 250 years after the poem was made. It no doubt remained a famous poem – so that even scribes employed to make a new copy might well know the general content and that its hero was Beowulf before ever they took up the pen. But knowledge of the legendary and old dynastic matter had grown dim.

  I personally believe that the poet made Beow the son of Scyld; and that Beowulf is a later alteration. Because it is certainly an alteration – yet a purposeless one, and therefore unlikely to be one made by the poet, an artist, a man very sensitive to repetitions and significant correspondences. Yet no one has ever been able to show that this correspondence is anything but a nuisance and a distraction. Beowulf of the Geats has no lineal connexion at all with Beowulf of the Scyldings, and never alludes to him, as he surely would when he came marching into Heorot; or else Hrothgar would, when Beowulf the Geat’s lineage is under discussion.

  The way out that has been sought – by asserting that the two Beowulfs are in the poem different characters, but that this is due to the chances of tradition: one and the same folklore hero has become divided into two – that does not attract me. I do not think that either of the Beowulfs are historical. The first certainly not – a mere step in a fictitious genealogy preceding the first historical name Healfdene; nothing more is known of him, and his only function is to hand on the realm. The second only historical, if at all, in the sense and degree that King Arthur is: an historical germ, a real person perhaps, about which practically everything that is told is borrowed from myth, folklore, or sheer invention. But the two are not on the same ‘unhistorical’ plane. Beow/Beowulf ‘Barley’ is the glorification (by genealogists) of a rustic corn-ritual myth. Beowulf the bear-man, the giant-killer comes from a different world: fairy-story.

  Well, there it is. I think that the unfortunate ‘chance’ that placed a character in the genealogy of the Scyldings with a name that began with the same letters as Beowulf, the fairy-story hero, has with the aid of two scribes both extremely ignorant of and careless with proper names – even Scriptural Cain gets turned into camp ‘battle’ in line *1261 (1048) – produced one of the reddest and highest red herrings that were ever dragged across a literary trail – already difficult enough to follow.

  16 in Scedeland; *19 Scedelandum in

  Scedeland contains the Old English form of the very ancient name seen now in the name Scandinavia. Its original form was Skaðin- (cf. Old Norse Skaði the giantess who went on snowshoes). The old name Skadinaujō or Skadinawī = ‘the isle or peninsular of Skaðin-’ (which seems sometimes to have included what we call Norway and Sweden but probably not modern Denmark) was Latinized as Scadinavia: Scandinavia is a literary altered form.

  The Old English form was Scedeníg (*1686; Sceden-isle 1415), the Old Norse Skáney (< Skaðney), whence modern Swedish Skåne. The Norse (old and modern) forms were usually applied to the very tip of Sweden (Skåne), which anciently and indeed until modern times belonged to Denmark, and was in fact (I think) the ancient home of the Danes. Scedelandum here probably means more or less the same as what we mean by Scandinavia. Scedenigge in *1686 is definitely however the land of the Danes.

  17–18 he dwells in his father’s bosom; *21 on fæder [bea]rme

  The manuscript is damaged at the edges and here only rme (with room for two or three preceding letters) is preserved. bearm is literally ‘lap’, but figuratively means ‘protection, possession’: it is the best filling of the gap. Cf. 32 ‘on his lap lay treasures’ (*40 him on bearm læg) where bearm is used literally, but in a context which explains its connotation: the jewels were laid on his lap in token of his ownership and kingship. The doctrine is that a young man (a prince) should already in his father’s lifetime begin the practice of that prime virtue of Northern kings, generosity, by giving gifts to loyal knights – gifts which are still technically in his father’s bearm. It is the gifts and treasures rather than the young man that are in his father’s lap!

  [The translation (as given above) does not accord with this.]

  18–19; *22–4 that . . . there cleave to him loyal knights of his table (O.E. gewunigen wilgesíþas) and the people stand by him (O.E. léode gelǽsten)

  This is an example of Old English ‘parallelism’: the verb and subject are repeated but with variations, while the object ‘him’ remains the same. ‘Parallelism’ is not mere repetition, nor mere verbosity or word-spinning, under the necessity of ‘hunting the letter’, as this simple example shows. The wilgesíþas are the ‘beloved companions’, the members of the king’s Round Table, the knights of his household or comitatus, who stand by his side at need; léode is more general: chief men, people: they follow him and render service.

  21; *26 ff. The ship-burial of Scyld

  [My father observed that since his purpose in these lectures was to ‘assist in construing Beowulf’ he could not discuss what light can be thrown on the shi
p-burial of Scyld by other northern heroic traditions and by archaeology, but nonetheless wrote on the subject as follows.]

  One may say briefly that ship-burials of chieftains Norse and English did occur in historical fact (as revealed both by tradition and archaeology); and that the dating is reasonably sound. We cannot of course ‘date’ the fictitious Scyld – but the dramatic time of Beowulf is the sixth century, with a background of dimmer and older traditions of the fifth century (to which Healfdene, Ongentheow &c. belong), and that is near enough in agreement with archaeological dating of ship-burials.

  The author of Beowulf was not a heathen, but he wrote in a time when the pagan past was still very near: so near that not only some facts were remembered, but moods and motives also. His source was no doubt primarily oral and literary: actual mention and description of these things in lays and stories. There must have been far more visible ‘archaeological’ evidence in his day in England than now. But that will not help in the case of real ship-burial (in which the ship is actually set adrift); and a man of the West Marches (as I believe our poet to have been) would not often see such mounds as those at Sutton Hoo. If he did, he would require tradition (lay or history) to explain their contents and purpose. People who dug into graves and carried off the treasures dedicated to the dead were still in those days called thieves and not archaeologists.

  There is probably not much heightening of the picture (by exaggeration, for instance): granted that Scyld ended his days as a glorious, conquering king, and was given a ship-burial, he might indeed be accompanied by a great mass of costly things; and of feorwegum frætwa gelǽded (*37; ‘treasures brought from regions far away’ 29) would be strictly true. The treasure in the Sutton Hoo burial, for instance, included things that had come from the eastern Roman Empire. The position of the body in the centre, by the mast, with treasure in the lap and about it, has also archaeological support.

  More interesting, however, are the concluding lines, and the suggestion – it is hardly more; the poet is not explicit, and the idea was probably not fully formed in his mind – that Scyld went back to some mysterious land whence he had come. He came out of the Unknown beyond the Great Sea, and returned into It: a miraculous intrusion into history, which nonetheless left real historical effects: a new Denmark, and the heirs of Scyld in Scedeland. Such must have been his feeling. For almost certainly we must attribute to him the choice of ship-burial for Scyld Scefing. The miraculous arrival in a boat he derived from ancient traditions concerning the mythical culture-hero Sceaf. It was he that rounded it off by using traditions of ship-burial to make a moving and suggestive ‘departure’. At any rate nowhere else do we find this ending for Scyld or Sceaf.

  In the last lines ‘Men can give no certain account of the havens where that ship was unladed’ we catch an echo of the ‘mood’ of pagan times in which ship-burial was practised. A mood in which what we should call the ritual of a departure over the sea whose further shore was unknown, and an actual belief in a magical land or other world located ‘over the sea’, can hardly be distinguished – and for neither of these elements or motives is conscious symbolism, or real belief, a true description. It was a murnende mód filled with doubt and darkness.

  The lines are precious. It is very rarely that we have any written text so near to ‘archaeological’ time in the North. Not more than a century divides Beowulf from Sutton Hoo.

  [I give here the conclusion of the brief prose tale of Sheaf, written by my father for The Lost Road, of which I have given the opening passage in the note to line 3, Scyld Scéfing. The closely associated alliterative poem King Sheave did not reach his departure.

  But it came to pass after long years that Sheaf summoned his friends and counsellors, and he told them that he would depart. For the shadow of old age was fallen upon him (out of the East) and he would return whence he came. Then there was great mourning. But Sheaf laid him upon his golden bed, and became as one in deep slumber; and his lords obeying his commands while he yet ruled and had command of speech set him in a ship. He lay beside the mast, which was tall, and the sails were golden. Treasures of gold and of gems and fine raiment and costly stuffs were laid beside him. His golden banner flew above his head. In this manner he was arrayed more richly than when he came among them; and they thrust him forth to sea, and the sea took him, and the ship bore him unsteered far away into the uttermost West out of the sight or thought of men. Nor do any know who received him in what haven at the end of his journey. Some have said that that ship found the Straight Road. But none of the children of Sheaf went that way, and many in the beginning lived to a great age, but coming under the shadow of the East they were laid in great tombs of stone or in mounds like green hills; and most of these were by the Western sea, high and broad upon the shoulders of the land, whence men can descry them that steer their ships amid the shadows of the sea.]

  So ends the exordium proper, giving the background of mystery and antiquity behind the renowned Scylding house. In the manuscript the ‘section’ or ‘canto’ numeration begins with ‘I’ at Ðá wæs on burgum (*53, 41). But we have not really yet reached the action. Another passage follows, 41–69 (*53–85), giving a further account of the ‘Arthurian’ court of Heorot, glorious and doomed, gnawed already by the canker of treachery. The members of the ‘house’ are touched on, and their external political relations; and the building of the ‘hall’ Heorot. This is apt and skilful. It is a necessary transition from the remote antiquity we began with, and it gives the real ‘scene’ against which the action is to take place. Both the politics (the relations of Danes and Swedes, 48–9, *62–3) are important, and the actual hall. It is within that nexus of political relations and royal policies that the Anglo-Saxon poet sees and places his tale; just as much as he sees and locates his monster in the famous building Heorot. The significance of much that follows is lost if we do not realize that to put Grendel into Heorot is like telling a ghost-story localized in Camelot (in romantic effect) and in the Tower of London (in historicity). And if we do not realize that the Danish house was allied with the mortal enemies of the Geats: with the Swedes.

  44; *57 Healfdene

  We here meet for the first time the name Healfdene, Norse Halfdanr. The name was not used in England as a ‘given’ name, although it is here preserved in English form. It thus can only be the knowledge of Healfdene Scylding that causes the viking King Healfdene, who attacked England in 871 and later, to be given an exact rendering of his Norse name [in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle] when the other chieftains’ names all appear in oddly garbled forms like Sidroc.

  Halfdanr became an extremely popular Scandinavian name. But its use and popularity seem to go back to the ancient fame of Halfdanr Skjöldungr, the equivalent of our character. Though Scylding legend has been very much dislocated in Norse, and Halfdanr is often remembered only as a figure in isolation, it is notable that the very epithets we meet here in Beowulf are also attached to him in Norse: he is named hǽstr Skjöldunga (‘highest’: which may originally have meant ‘tallest’ or ‘most glorious’); he is Halfdanr gamli ‘Healfdene the Old’ (‘aged and fierce in war’ 45, gamol ond gúðréouw *58), reputed to have lived to a great age, and to have held his power until a natural death (cf. þenden lifde *57, ‘while he lived’ 45, which we perceive to mean ‘to the end of his life’) – although he had, as Saxo says, lost no opportunity of exercising his atrocitas (cf. gúðréouw).5

  We may at least conclude that a commanding figure in ancient Danish legend was ‘Halfdane’, and that there is a connexion between the Norse and English traditions; indeed they both have the same historical basis.

  48–9 [a daughter] I have heard that was Onela’s queen, dear consort of the warrior Scylfing; *62–3 (manuscript reading) hýrde ic þæt elan cwén Heaðo-Scilfingas healsgebedda

  There is no lacuna and no sign of confusion in the manuscript; but that it is corrupt is shown (a) by *62 being metrically deficient, and (b) by the absence of a verb after þæt. At least we may be sure
that wæs is part of what has dropped out between elan and cwén. We know also that more has gone, because *62 still does not scan with the addition of wæs, and Elan is an impossible name – as an almost certain first guess it is a genitive parallel to -Scilfingas (as = aes = es). We may therefore assume fairly safely that the missing part was (a) a woman’s name, (b) wæs, (c) a man’s name ending -elan. Also that the woman’s name and her husband’s obligingly alliterated: but we don’t know what was the initial letter, as a princess’s name did not necessarily begin with the dynastic letter (cf. Fréawaru sister of Hréðríc and Hróðmund sons of Hróðgár).

  To aid our further guessing we have Scilfingas. This was the name of the great Swedish house. This alliance may have been, and probably was, connected with the not far past enmity between Danes and Geats (you could not be friends with both Geats and Swedes!) – cf. 1554–8 ‘Thou hast accomplished that between these peoples, the Geatish folk and spearmen of the Danes, a mutual peace shall be, and strife and hateful enmities shall sleep which erewhile they used’ (*1855–8). The fact that the most famous of the Scylfings was Onela son of Ongentheow (2197, 2463; *2616, *2932) is so remarkable that any other name would have to have very strong evidence. But there is no other trace of this marriage of Onela.

  65 (*81) ff. The hall towered high . . . awaiting the warring billows of destroying fire . . .

  Here we have a reference to the doom in store for Heorot, the glorious hall. It is characteristic of our poet (and of most Anglo-Saxon poets who have left any traces) to put in this dark note of doom immediately after telling of the hall’s new-built splendour. The ‘doom’ is of course derived from lays or tales in which the destruction of Heorot by fire was an event (in the past).