OST ancient of English poems is the old saga which tells how Beowulf rescued Hrothgar from the attacks of Grendel, how he ruled afterwards over Hygelac's people, and died for them of a wound received in victorious combat with a dragon. The tale was brought into this country from Scandinavia by settlers from the North. It lived among our first English as a tradition, and was put into verse by a poet of this country, in the language formed here by a fusion of the dialects of settlers from various parts of the opposite shore. The poet was doubtless a monk, but he accurately reproduced the picture of old Scandinavian life, and the spirit of the northern heroes before Christianity was introduced

1 Our figure of Britannia has been taken from these coins of Antoninus Pius, the chief modification being the substitution of the

among them. It contented him to interpolate in two or three places a few lines associated with his Bible reading, but they are so few and lie so loosely in the context, that it is easy to leave them out of account. Our First-English version of the tale is probably as old as Cædmon's "Paraphrase," which has been described in the volume of this Library which illustrated English religion. The date of the poem is within the eighth century at latest.

There are two different nations concerned in the action of the story, Goths and Danes. The hero, Beowulf, is a Goth, and he brings help to Hrothgar, who is a Dane. The Goths of the poem were probably inhabitants of Gothland, the province of Sweden opposite Sjæland; and the Danes were the Danes of Sjæland, the large opposite island on which part of Copenhagen is built. Among different views of the history and geography of Beowulf, those of the late Dr. Grein seem to have most evidence in

trident of Neptune for the Roman standard. In the original the figure is meant to represent Rome mistress of Britain. The part of the design that stands for Britain is the rock upon which victorious Rome is sitting.

2 King Magnus of Norway, the son of Hacon, caused a body of laws to be devised by the best men of the kingdom, which received the assent of the people at a Thing, or General Assembly, held in Gula, or Guley, A.D. 1274. The Gula-Things-laws remained the basis of the Common Law of Norway.

finished by Styrmir the learned) makes by a natural mistake Skialdi the son of Heremod. Northern sagas have Hroar and Helgi for Hrothgar and Halga, leaving out Heorogar, whose life was short, and Ela, who was probably a woman. The line referring to Ela is defective and leaves the sex open to question, but probably Ela was a sister of Hrothgar, who married a king of the Swedish race of the Scylfings. Dr. Grein thought this might be Ongetheow, King of Sweden, who was contemporary with the children of Healfdene. According to Saxo Grammaticus, a Danish historian who died early in the thirteenth century, and whose history was chiefly based on sagas and popular traditions, Hrothgar at the beginning of his reign built himself a hall at Roeskilde, which is at the head of a deep fiord to the west of Copenhagen. As Heorot means a hart, Dr. Grein took the hall so named, which is the scene of the story, to be a residence built later at Hjortholm, or Hirschholm.

their favour. In Sjæland the Danes of the poem are under Hrothgar, whose home at Heorot Dr. Grein is disposed to identify with Hirschholm, about two miles from the sea and half-way on the road northward from Copenhagen to Helsingor. Near Hirschholm is the Siæl Lake, which may pass for the lake out of which Grendel came. The poem opens with a reference to Hrothgar's ancestry, which includes a Danish Beowulf, not to be confounded with Beowulf the Goth, who is the hero of the poem, and Hrothgar's helper in war. The Danish Beowulf was the son of Scyld Scefing, who founded a dynasty, and the son of that Beowulf was Healfdene, whose children were Heorogar, Hrothgar, Halga, and Ela. As Heorogar died not long after he had succeeded his father, and his son Heoroweard died in early youth, Hrothgar came early to chief rule, and was an old man who

Thus the poet told of the house-building and its consequences, after the setting forth of Hrothgar's ancestry:

Then was to Hrothgar given speed in war,
Honour in battle; his dear kinsmen then
Obeyed him gladly, till the youth grew up,
A numerous band of kindred. In his mind

It ran, that he would bid a court be built-
A mead-hall greater than had yet been known
By talk among the sons of men, therein
Would deal to young and old what God made his,
Except the people's share, and lives of men.
Then was I told that among many tribes
Wide went the call over the earth, to work
To adorn this home of the people. Time went by
Among men swiftly, till the chief of halls
Was all prepared, and Heorot was the name
That he, whose word had power, shaped for it.
He was not false to his promise, rings he gave
And treasure at the feast. There rose the hall
High crested; waiting to be tried by heat
Of hateful fire.

Trial soon came. The sound of minstrelsy reached to the darkness of a demon's home. The grim spirit was Grendel, the great strider of the marshes, who held the moors, the fen, and fastnesses.

had reigned fifty years at the opening of the poem. He was the great-grandson of Scyld, the founder of the dynasty of the Scyldings. The tradition was that Scyld, when Denmark was in great distress, came as a mysterious child in a ship laden with arms and treasure. The Danes received him as a gift from Heaven, and in good time made him their king. He reigned long and prosperously, subjecting many of the surrounding nations, founded a dynasty, and was, after death, by his own directions, put again into a ship with arms and treasure and sent adrift. No man ever heard whither that ship went. Scyld, Dr. Grein suggested, might have been an adventurous son of a Sceafa, who is said in an ancient poem, "Widsith's, or the Traveller's, Song," to have ruled over the Lombards. Roaming over the world he may have founded in Denmark a kingdom on the ruins of that which had Heremod, a cruel tyrant, for its last representative; Scyld perhaps helped his subjects to expel him. Ecgvela may have been the founder of that preceding dynasty, for in one part of Beowulf the Danes are called the children of Ecgvela. The "Norwegian Sverris saga" (by Abbot Karl Jonson,

He, when the night had come, went forth to see
The high hall, how the Ring Danes housed in it
After the beer-drinking. He found therein
A band of lords asleep after the feast,
Knowing no care that pales the lives of men.
Then, grim and greedy, the malignant wight,
Rugged and wroth, was ready soon, and took
Thirty thanes as they rested, thence again
Turned to go home with shout over his prey,
With the death-stricken seek his own abode.
Then before sunrise, with the early day
Was Grendel's craft in war disclosed to men.
Then after feasting was a wail upraised,
A great cry in the morning. The high chief,
Good honourable lord, sat cheerlessly,
Suffered sharp grief, sorrow the thane endured,
After they saw the track of the loathed foe,
The accursed spirit. That strife was for them

Too strong, sustained and loathsome. No more pause
Than for a night, and then again he shaped
More deadly bale, and for no feud and crime
Made moan, he was too firmly set on them.
'Twas easy then to find those who elsewhere
Sought distant beds, whom the clear token showed
The hall thane's hate: he who escaped the fiend
Held himself after that safest afar.

So Grendel ruled, one against many, warred
Against the right, until the best of halls

Stood empty. For long time, a twelve years' space,
The Scyldings' gentle lord endured his wrath,
With every woe, and sorrows limitless.

This is, of course, a mythical way of representing assaults of an enemy upon Hrothgar. Grendel's home is placed at the bottom of a lake. He comes up out of the water to make his attacks, and he disappears again into the water with his prey. The attacks upon Hrothgar's hall were therefore, no doubt, made by adventurers from over sea.

Openly, therefore, to the sons of men

Sadly in songs, it became known that Grendel
Made long war against Hrothgar, waged with him
Through many a half-year lasting war with wrong,
Would make no peace with any Danish man,
Nor end his deadly feud for pledge of gifts.

In the old Scandinavian life, blood feuds were continued between enemies until both sides agreed at the Thing, or general assembly, to an arrangement by which every slain man unavenged was paid for. The tidings of this merciless contest were spread from island to island and from land to land by the songs of the bards. These sang in the old halls for pleasure of the bands of warriors, each gathered round its chief, and to the people by the wayside, the deeds of the gods, and of the heroes whom they often linked with gods in their adventures, and whose lives they gradually shaped into such fables as the people were most glad to hear. Thus tales of battle and adventure in one land were chanted in another, and news travelled in a form that stirred imagination and gave impulse to many a new enterprise. Moreover, in old Scandinavian life there was little regard paid to a man who had not proved his quality by making a sea voyage as a warrior and bringing home his spoil. The young Norse gentleman was not fairly out in the world till he had gone out in a long boat and earned credit as a vikingr, or otherwise shown his spirit by success in war. vikingr (r is the masculine suffix, viking meant properly the expedition), received his name from vik, meaning a bay, because he set out from or sailed into and haunted the bays and fjords. The poem of Beowulf now proceeds to tell how the singers brought to the court of Hygelac their tales of the desolation of Heorot, and the suffering of Hrothgar from a relentless enemy. Beowulf, kinsman of Hygelac, a ruler over Goths, hearing these tales, was fired by the spirit of adventure. He, who had the strength of thirty men in his hand-grip, would man a long boat and put out on a glorious voyage. He would deliver Hrothgar from his enemy, and come back laden with the rewards thus earned.

The

When from his home Hygelac's thane had heard,
Good among Goths, of Grendel's deeds, he then
The strongest of the living race of man,
Noble and prosperous, he bade prepare
A good sea traverser, said he would seek
Over the swan road the brave king, great prince,
Because he was in need of men. That voyage
The wise blamed little, though they loved him much,
But whetted his keen mind, foretold good end.
Fifteen, the bravest warriors he could find
Among the Goths, the good chief chose, with them

A NORSE WARRIOR (INGOLFIR), A.D. 874. (From Thordur Thorlaksson's edition of the "Landnama Bok."

He sought the floating wood. A warrior skilled
In shallow seas made known the bounds of land.
A space of time passed on, afloat on waves
The boat lay by the hill, the ready men
Mounted the prow; the shallow waters rolled
Upon the sand; the warriors bare bright arms
Into the bark's hold, war gear well prepared.
Upon the chosen path the men shoved out
The banded wood. On waves of the deep sea
The floater, foamy necked, departed then,
Speeded by wind, and most like to a bird,
Until the twisted prow had run for an hour
Of the second day, and then the voyagers
Saw land, the sea cliffs glitter, the steep hills,
The broad sea nesses. Then in shallower sea
The sailors' voyage ended. Quickly thence
Up stepped the Weder's people on the plain,
Bound the sea wood, shook war-shirts, and thanked
God,

Who eased for them their way across the waves. But when the Scyldings' warder from the wall, He who should keep the cliff by the deep sea, Saw shields bright by the boat's side, ready store Of arms for the war-path, upon his thoughts Broke the desire to know what men those were.

In those days of the vikings there was constant occupation for the warder of the coast. This warder rode down to the shore, shaking his lance, and asked who the men were, in coats of mail, who were bearing arms over the sea into his country. "I am placed here," he said, "to watch that no evil-doer come with a force of ships to harm the Danes. Men never came more boldly with arms in their hands and ignorant of the watchword. I have never seen a greater earl than one of you, a man not seldom honoured in arms, unless his countenance belie him. Now I must know whence you come, before you advance further to spy the land. Now, ye far-dwelling seafarers, my plain

The

ing Hygelac (Norse, Hugleikr), attacked, in a plundering expedition, the Frankish Hattuarii who lived by the Lower Rhine. The poem of Beowulf tells incidentally that Hygelac made such an expedition against the Hætware, whom it also calls Franks and Merovingians. The Hætware, joined by the Frisians that is, the inhabitants of West Friesland, that stretches southward to the Maas-overcame and slew Hygelac in history as in the poem. tradition of the battle was still current about the mouth of the Rhine in the tenth century, when some large bones, found on one of its islands, were ascribed to the king Huiglaucus, who ruled over the Geti (Geaten is the First-English form for Goths), and was killed by the Franks. As Hygelac was living when his nephew Beowulf left his court to assist Hrothgar and his Danes, the date of the incidents transformed into the story of Grendel must be about the year 500.

He was the son, Beowulf said, of Ecgtheow, and had come with his comrades in faithful friendship

thought is that you had best make this known quickly."

Beowulf replied that they were of the high race of the Goths, from the hearth of Hygelac, that his own father was a noble chief named Ecgtheow, who died in old age, and was known widely through the earth.

From other passages of the poem it may be inferred that Ecgtheow was of the royal family of Sweden, and had married the daughter of Hrethel, chief of the Goths, and father of Hygelac. Hrethel succeeded his elder brother Hæthcyn when Hæthcyn was killed in battle by the men of the neighbouring Scandinavian province, Svearike, under their chief Ongetheow. Hygelac had then come with a new force to retrieve the fortune of the Goths, whose chief he became, and in that second struggle Ongetheow had fallen. Beowulf, brought up from seven years old at the court of his grandfather Hrethel, was nephew to Hæthcyn and Hygelac. He had from his childhood known his uncle Hygelac, to whom he was one of the most faithful of hearthsharers. Now it is an aid to the fixing of something like a date for the events which in this poem have been transformed into a tale of wonder, to know that Hygelac can be identified with a person known to history. Between the years 510 and 520 there is record by Gregory of Tours and the Gesta Regum Francorum that a chief named Chocilaicus, or Chocilagus, which would be the Frankish way of express

to help the warder's lord, Hrothgar, the son of Healfdene. They had heard of the malice of Grendel, and were come to bring remedy.

The warder replied from the back of his horse that a keen warrior distinguishes words from deeds. But he hears this to be a friendly band, and he will show the way to his lord's hall, while his companions haul up their new-tarred boat upon the sand, to stay till the return of those who may escape the rush of war. So they departed, leaving their boat on the soil, bound and anchored.

Enwreathed with gold, over their faces rose
A boar-like crest, fire-hardened, many-hued,
It held the life in guard. Warlike and fierce
The men pressed on, together they went down,
Till gay and golden, rich in timber work,
They saw that greatest house under the sun,
The king's house, whose light lighted many lands.

Their brave guide, having pointed out the house to Beowulf and his followers, wished them success, as he turned his horse and rode back to his watch over the sea.

A stone pavement led to Hrothgar's hall, and the hall itself, built after the manner of the Norsemen, was of a form which has its main features, at this day, not wholly unrepresented by an Icelandic homestead. A kitchen, a dark store-room, the byre

for cattle are clustered against a large long room, of which the roof, with a few small glazed openings, shows its outline behind the other buildings. This long room is the family room, the eating room, and sleeping room. The sleeping berths surround the room, arranged against the wall, exactly as they did of old, in the greater hall of a Norse chief, that was also the living room for his followers, their eating room and sleeping room; kitchen, storeroom, stabling for the horses of the warriors were clustered outside its walls. The hall itself must be large enough to give room at the feast and the beerdrinking to the band that went out upon all the expeditions, helped to bring plunder in, and received from the chief seat behind the table on the dais, from the gift-stool, their several shares of the spoil. It must also be strong enough to close its doors

hall with his men, there was a place of dignity assigned to him and to the members of his family; but he might have, as Hrothgar had, a private sleeping room outside the walls of his great hall.

He

Into such a hall Beowulf marched with his men, by the lower entrance. They halted within the doorway, placed their shields against the wall, their shirts of mail upon benches, and piled their javelins, in sign that they came as friends and meant no treason. Then came to them Wulfgar, a chief who acted in Hrothgar's court as Master of the Ceremonies. asked whence they came thus fully armed; they seemed to have come for pride of achievement, not as exiles. Beowulf replied, and Wulfgar then walked up the hall, placed himself with due ceremony of obeisance before Hrothgar, where he sat among his chiefs, old and hairless, and repeated what

against assault, and serve as a rude fortress in the time of need. The breadth of the hall made pillars necessary. There was a high-roofed nave with side aisles. Within the aisles, against the walls, if necessary also against the pillars, were the benches used as beds by night, and many of them by day as shelves for the beer and mead of the heroes. In the midst of the hall was a long hearth piled with burning fuel, of which the smoke rose and gathered above; along the nave, on each side of the fire, long tables with benches on the side of them next the wall, and stools on the side next the fire, were used by the chief's hearth-sharers for their feasting, and a cross-table on a dais at the head of the room was for the chief and his nobler friends. There was a separate place at the table for the children of the household. The chief's entrance was immediately to the dais; the entrance for the people was at the lower end of the hall. Near that entrance was a sort of sideboard for the cups and dishes. There were some luxuries of decoration, and tapestries might be stretched at a certain height from pillar to pillar. When the chief himself slept in the same

he had heard. Old Hrothgar at once knew his visitor, remembered his father Ecgtheow and whom he had married, knew also that Beowulf was famed for having the strength of thirty in his hand-grip. God in his mercy must have sent him to the help of the West Danes. Then Beowulf was led up to the high table, and declared to Hrothgar his whole purpose in coming against Grendel, and made some boast of his own prowess in former trials. If he died in the conflict he would need no burial. Grendel would eat him. But let his breastplate be sent to Hygelac; it was Weland's work, the legacy of Hrethel. Fate goes ever as it must.

Old Hrothgar recalled, in answering, his ancient relations with Beowulf's father Ecgtheow, and lamented the harms done by Grendel. Over the ale-cup his men had often promised to abide Grendel's attack and meet him with their swords; but at dawn there was blood on the floor, and the number of his faithful followers was less.

"Now sit to the feast, and as thy mind shall prompt Unseal brave thought among the warriors."