"Unfey, fearless, and his fate kept him" -- Túrin and Beowulf

The Lay of the Children of Húrin exists in two versions, neither of which tells the whole story its title promises. The second version is much more detailed than the first as far as it goes, but it doesn't go very far. Both versions, however, describe Túrin's earliest days in battle defending the realm of Doriath. The first version offers the following account:

Ere manhood’s measure   he met and slew
the Orcs of Angband   and evil things
that roamed and ravened   on the realm’s borders.
There hard his life,     and hurts he got him,              385
the wounds of shaft     and warfain sword,
and his prowess was proven     and his praise renowned, 

and beyond his years     he was yielded honour;

(Lays p. 16, lines 382-88)

The second version is very much the same as the first for the first four and a half lines, but then it rapidly diverges, inserting four and a half entirely new lines before returning to the same conclusion the first version offers: 

Ere manhood’s measure    he met and he slew

Orcs of Angband    and evil things                              745
that roamed and ravened    on the realm’s borders.
There hard his life,    and hurts he lacked not,
the wounds of shaft   and the wavering sheen
of the sickle scimitars,   the swords of Hell,
the bloodfain blades   on black anvils                      750
in Angband smithied,   yet ever he smote
unfey, fearless,    and his fate kept him.
Thus his prowess was proven    and his praise was noised
and beyond his years     he was yielded honour... 

            (Lays p. 116-17, lines 744-54) 

When studying Túrin, it's always a good idea to pay attention to any references to fate. So line 752-- "unfey, fearless, and his fate kept him"-- stuck out, with its two references to fate. "Fey," meaning "doomed to die," is not a word you see every day. "Unfey," meaning "not doomed to die," you see even less. The word has no entry in the OED, and though Google Ngram says it has been used it links to no books in which it is used. According to Google Ngram the word's usage peaked in 1896 -- peaked I say -- at a frequency of 0.0000000216% of all the words in all the books scanned by Google. That's 2.16 times out of every 10,000,000,000 words. For most purposes not requiring a supercollider, this is vanishingly small, quite literally. You need the Webb Telescope to find this thing.

Unless you're reading Tolkien, and you just happen to have been thinking about a line in Beowulf, where Beowulf talks about fighting sea monsters when he was young.

Ac on mergenne, mecum |wunde,                              565
be yðlafe uppe lægon,
sweordum aswefede, þæt syðþan na
ymb brontne ford brimliðende
lade ne letton. Leoht eastan com,
beorht beacen Godes, brimu swaþredon,                   570
þæt ic sænæssas geseon mihte
windige weallas. Wyrd oft nereð
unfægne eorl, þonne his ellen deah.

But in the morning [the sea monsters] lay dead
on the beach, wounded by my blade, 
slain by my sword,  so never again
did they hinder the voyages
of seamen on the deep sea.
Light had come in the east, God's bright beacon,
The sea had grown still, so I could see
the headlands and their windy walls. 
Fate often keeps an unfey man safe
when his courage avails.

The word unfægne is the masculine accusative singular of unfæge ("unfey"), an adjective which is modifying eorl ("man"), the direct object of the verb nereð ("keeps...safe"). Obviously unfæge derives from fæge ("fey"). Another, related word from elsewhere in Beowulf that should ring a bell is deaðfæge, "doomed to die/death," as in "Nine for mortal men doomed to die." It's important to recognize when reading this line from the Ring-verse that all mortal men are fated to die. That's the whole point, redundant though it may be, of the word "mortal." It is part of their nature. This is true whether we are thinking of fæge, unfæge, or deaðfæge; and this is what makes the escape from death those nine rings seem to promise "the chief bait of Sauron. It leads the small to a Gollum, and the great to a Ringwraith" (Letters #212).

So how can Beowulf speak of a man as unfæge when all men are fæge? As Beowulf himself says when explaining how he survived his fight with Grendel's mother: "Næs ic fæge ða gyt" -- "I was not doomed to die just yet" (line 2146). So fate (wyrd) and courage (ellen) can keep a man safe from dying at the wrong time. On the one hand this tells us that fate is not immutable, and on the other it does not necessarily mean that every man has a specific time to die. A man could be fated to do something he has not done just yet. It's also true that fate and courage do not save always, but merely often.

I find Tolkien's adaptation of Beowulf's words to describe Túrin here particularly interesting because I have been studying the workings of fate in the different versions of The Tale of the Children of Húrin. As I usually do, I am trying to understand this from the ground up, so to speak, looking at how it works in the story and what is said about it, rather than starting with a theory of how fate (doom, destiny, weird, etc) works and applying it to the text. 

In Tolkien's prose translation of Beowulf  he renders the phrase "Fate oft saveth a man not doomed to die, when his valour fails not" (Beowulf T&C 29). In his commentary on the lines he remarks (Beowulf T&C 256):

To go to the kernel of the matter at once: emotionally and in thought (so far as that was ever clear) this is basically an assertion not only of the worth in itself of the human will (and courage), but also of its practical effect as a possibility, that is, actually a denial of absolute Fate.

Tolkien also composed a translation in alliterative verse of the first 594 lines of Beowulf, which obviously would include lines 572-73. I would be very interested to see how closely it resembles "Unfey, fearless,   and his fate kept him" in The Lay of the Children of Húrin.

Face up, Face down with Gollum and Boethius

Recently I saw someone somewhere inline asking about Gandalf's characterization of Gollum in The Shadow of the Past.  

The most inquisitive and curious-minded of that family was called Sméagol. He was interested in roots and beginnings; he dived into deep pools; he burrowed under trees and growing plants; he tunnelled into green mounds; and he ceased to look up at the hill-tops, or the leaves on trees, or the flowers opening in the air: his head and his eyes were downward.

            (FR 1.ii.53)

The poster wanted to know what was so wrong about his not looking up but down. The characterization starts off well enough, but it begins to feel like something has gone wrong when it reaches "and he ceased ... air." And the last phrase, singled out and pointed to by the colon, reads like a final verdict in a capital case. So why is downward bad? 

It's part of an old notion that looking up, whether to the heavens or to heaven, is something that distinguishes humans from animals. Off the top of my head I am unsure where it started, but it can be found in Plato and Aristotle. Tolkien was certainly familiar with Plato's Timaeus, which along with the Critias, speaks of Atlantis, and helped inspire Númenor. The description from The Shadow of the Past quoted above makes me think that Tolkien would have more likely been drawing on Boethius' The Consolation of Philosophy, an exceptionally important work in the Middle Ages in Europe. There is even a translation of it into Old English, which has been attributed to Alfred the Great. It probably wasn't really translated by Alfred himself, however, and it's really more of a reboot than a straighforward translation. Tolkien certainly knew both of these works, each of which contains at a similar moment in its fifth book a poem on this difference between humans and animals. First take a look at my translation of a Latin poem from the fifth book of The Consolation of Philosophy. I include the original after that. I've also tried to keep the translation close to the original, line for line, more or less, if not word for word. It's not, however, a literal translation, and I have not tried putting it into verse.

Creatures of such different shapes wander the earth!

Some lie stretched in the dust and sweep it,

And propelled by the strength of their body

They drag a continuous furrow in the earth.

Others beat the air with their light wandering wings

And swim in liquid flight the vast spaces of the heavens.

Still others happily leave their footprints on the ground

Whether crossing green fields or entering a wood.

All these creatures, you see, differ in shape,

Yet their downward gaze can only weigh down their dull senses.

Mankind alone raises its lofty summit higher,

Stands erect and looks down on the earth as trivial.

Unless you have mud for brains, your human form bids  

You raise up your soul also when with face uplifted

You seek the heavens, lest your mind, weighed down

And inferior, sink down when your body is raised higher.

Quam uariis terras animalia permeant figuris!
Namque alia extento sunt corpore pulueremque uerrunt 
Continuumque trahunt ui pectoris incitata sulcum,
Sunt quibus alarum leuitas uaga uerberetque uentos
Et liquido longi spatia aetheris enatet uolatu,
Haec pressisse solo uestigia gressibusque gaudent
Vel uirides campos transmittere uel subire siluas.
Quae uariis uideas licet omnia discrepare formis,
Prona tamen facies hebetes ualet ingrauare sensus.
Vnica gens hominum celsum leuat altius cacumen
Atque leuis recto stat corpore despicitque terras.
Haec nisi terrenus male desipis, admonet figura,
Qui recto caelum uultu petis exserisque frontem,
In sublime feras animum quoque, ne grauata pessum
Inferior sidat mens corpore celsius leuato.

And now my translation of the Old English, followed by the original:

You might have noticed, if you enjoy such thoughts,

That many different creatures exist on the earth.

They have various colors and modes of movement

And forms of many kinds known and unknown.

Some creep and crawl, their whole body pressed to the earth;

they get no help from feathers, they cannot go on foot,

they cannot, as it is their fate, take pleasure in the earth.

Some others walk the earth on two feet,

some do so on four, some on beating wings

soar under heaven. Yet each of these creatures
inclines to the ground, bends its head down,

looks upon this world, wants from the earth

some necessity, some object of desire.

Man alone of God's creatures goes

with his face directed upwards.

By this it is betokened that his faith

and mind should look more up to heaven

than down, lest he turn his soul downward as a beast does.

It is not fitting that any man's mind

be bent downwards and his face upwards.

Hwæt ðu meaht ongitan, gif his ðe geman lyst,
Þætte mislice manega wuhta
geond eorðan farað ungelice.
Habbað blioh and fær bu ungelice
and mæg-wlitas manega cynna
cuð and uncuð. Creopað and snicað,
eall lichoma eorðan getenge;
nabbað hi æt fiðrum fultum, ne magon hi mid fotum gangan,
Eorð brucan, swa him eaden wæs.
Sume fotum twam foldan peððað,
Sume fierfete, sume fleogende
windað under wolcnum. Bið ðeah wuhta gehwylc
onhnigen to hrusan, hnipað ofdune,
on weoruld wliteð, wilnað to eorðan,
sume nedþearfe, sume neodfræce.

Man ana gæð metodes gesceafta
Mid his andwlitan up on gerihte.
Mid ðy is getacnod þæt his treowa sceal
and his modgeþonc ma up þonne niðer
habban to heofonum, þy læs he his hige wende
niðer swa ðær nyten. Nis þæt gedafenlic
þaet se modsefa monna æniges

niðerheald wese and þæt neb upweard.

So the problem with Gollum looking down all the time is that he has stopped being human and become an animal instead. This is analogous to something Boethius says earlier in The Consolation, that "the man who ceases to be human because he has abandoned goodness, turns into a beast since he cannot be transformed into a godlike state" (4.3). It's also worth remembering how Gollum is sometimes called "it" rather than "he," a "creature," a "thing," and is likened to an insect, a spider, and a dog. In fact, all of these words are used of him throughout The Taming of Sméagol. Fittingly, when Frodo and Sam first see Gollum in this chapter, he is "creeping" and "crawling" down the cliff-face head first, words which echo the sixth line in the Old English poem above: "creopað and snicað." I must admit, however, that I'm disappointed to find that "snicað" does not seem etymologically connected to "sneak." It would be so nice to hear Gollum's response to Sam's accusation of "sneaking" on the stairs: "snicð! snicð!" he hiscte."

"What's all this about stock and stone?" -- Treebeard echoes Hesiod

"Wood and water, stock and stone, I can master."

--- Treebeard

The word "stock" here comes from Old English "stocc," meaning "trunk" or "log."

As a phrase "stocks and stones" also goes back to OE, where it refers to idols made out of wood and stone. 

"Ge þeouiað fremdum godum, stoccum and stanum."

"You are servants of strange gods, [made] of stocks and stones." (Deuteronomy 28)

We also find it in Middle English in Chaucer's Troilus & Criseyde (3.589-90):

"He swor hir, yis, by stokkes and by stones,
And by the goddes that in hevene dwelle"

"He swore to her, 'indeed, by stocks and by stones,
And by the gods that in heaven dwell'"

And in Early Modern English in Milton sonnet 18: 

Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughter'd saints, whose bones
Lie scatter'd on the Alpine mountains cold,
Ev'n them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshipp'd stocks and stones;

And in a 19th book Tolkien surely knew:

"There was a worship of nature instead of stocks and stones."

A. H. Sayce, Principles of Comparative Philology

Now when Treebeard uses it, he certainly isn't referring to idols or pagan gods. Yet by putting this phrase in Treebeard's mouth to cover the wide range of things in Nature Treebeard is saying he can master, Tolkien gives the phrase new life and meaning. This is something Tolkien does with his sources, whatever they may be, whether words or stories. Think of what he does with the world "mathom," which means "treasure" in OE, but is used ironically in LotR to mean a gift that is anything but. Or Plato's Atlantis myth which Tolkien turns into Numenor. 

Now this morning I was reading the Greek poet Hesiod, who in his Theogony (35) says:

ἀλλὰ τί ἦ μοι ταῦτα περὶ δρῦν ἢ περὶ πέτρην;

"But what's all this about oak and stone?"

Another way to translate this would be 

"what's all this about tree and stone?" 

The Greek word here (δρῦν -- dryn) does mean "oak," but it also means just "tree" -- and so we're back to stock and stone.

But wait there's more. The word is also related to the word δρυάς, from which we get "dryad," a tree nymph, a word Tolkien uses in one of his best phrases, describing Ithlien as possessing "a dishevelled dryad loveliness."

And even more because, as Tolkien knew, the word used in Old English to translate "dryad" was "ælfen," and I'll give you one guess what that means. 

It always comes back to the elves. It's "ælfen" all the way down.

Was Tolkien riffing on Genesis A 36-38 at RK 5.vi.841? From the houses of lamentation to the House of Mirth.

While reading the Old English poem Genesis A this Monday evening (as one does) I came across the word helleheafas in the following passage (lines 36-38):

                                 sceop þam werlogan 

            wræclicne ham    weorce to leane,

            helleheafas,   hearde niðas

        [God] appointed for the faithbreakers
a miserable home    in repayment for their deed,
the lamentations of hell,      hard troubles.

The context here is the war in heaven imagined to have taken place before creation began, that is, before Genesis1. So, despite the title of the poem, it begins before the beginning, which for the early medieval English was an even better place to start. (It wasn't much of a war either. God swatted them into Hell without the least ado.)

Now, while I recognized 'hell' in the first half of the word, I didn't immediately scan the second part as 'lamentation, mourning, wailing'. Checking the Dictionary of Old English the word helleheaf seems to occur only here in extant Old English. There isn't even an entry for it in the older Bosworth-Toller Old English Dictionary. When a word appears only once, scholars have a term for that, and like all 'proper' scholarly terms originating before the 20th Century, that term comes from Latin or in this case Greek: hapax legomenon (ἅπαξ λεγόμενον). It means 'said once.' A. N. Doane, the editor of my text of Genesis A, points out that there are some odd marks in the manuscript which make helleheafas hard to make out at first. It looks like it says helleheaftas, the second part of which -- heaftas -- doesn't seem to exist in Old English. 

This is precisely the sort of thing that would have made an old-school bold philologist like Tolkien cock an eyebrow. Hold that thought a moment.

Two things resonated in my head as a I read these lines. First, given the association of 'misery' and 'home' in the phrase wrætlicne ham in line 37, the retribution for the angels' rebellion in weorce to leane ('in repayment for their deed'), and the 'lamentations of hell' of helleheafas, I was reminded of RK 5.vi.841, where the Witch-king threatens Éowyn with ghastly payback for trying to hinder him:

‘Come not between the Nazgûl and his prey! Or he will not slay thee in thy turn. He will bear thee away to the houses of lamentation, beyond all darkness, where thy flesh shall be devoured, and thy shrivelled mind be left naked to the Lidless Eye.’

Second, the juxtaposition of the vowels in helleheafas made me think of a simliar juxtaposition in line 101 of Beowulf, which calls Grendel a feond in helle, 'a devil in hell.' Now some scholars have argued from time to time since the 1880s that, since Grendel is quite alive at this moment in the poem and thus is clearly not in hell, we should emend the words feond in helle to feond in healle. In this case Grendel is not 'a devil in hell', but a 'devil in the hall,' that is, in Heorot, Hrothgar's hall in Beowulf. Tolkien certainly knew of this suggested emendation, but appears to have discounted it. In his translation and commentary he uses 'devil in hell,' though he signals his awareness that Grendel's place in hell is at least metaphorical to start with (Beowulf T&C 158-59).

What I am wondering in view of all of this, is if Tolkien might have looked at helleheafas, 'lamentations of hell' and thought healleheafas, 'hall of lamentations' or 'halls of lamentation'? Not as a proposed emendation to the text of Genesis A, but simply as a word that might have existed and been an apt description of the house of misery where retribution is meted out. 

Consider also that the Witch-king immediately afterwards calls Éowyn a fool because 'no living man can hinder' him' and she laughs at him because she is 'no living man,' and the text underlines her laughter by noting that to Merry it seemed 'of all the sounds in that hour the strangest.' So we have a reference to 'the houses of lamentation' and someone laughing and being called a fool. This brings to mind Ecclesiastes 7:4 (KJV): 'The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.

In Tolkien's day this verse would have been quite well known, a popularity made even greater by the widespread fame of Edith Wharton's splendid and successful 1905 novel, The House of Mirth. Whether Tolkien read Wharton's novel is anybody's guess -- don't count him out -- but the title would have been familiar to him and its allusion would at any rate have been entirely clear. The Old English word heaf, which we find in helleheaf, may also be translated as 'mourning.' So the houses of lamentation to which the Witch-king refers are also the houses of mourning. And, as we all know, it is he who is really the fool here, not Éowyn. For him the house of mirth and the house of lamentation are one. So Tolkien is not simply retasking Macbeth in this particular scene, but also Ecclesiastes, maybe Edith Wharton, and just perhaps, with truly magnificent philological obscurity, Genesis A as well. 

__________________________

I'd like to thank my good friend, Simon Cook, for quoting a bit of Beowulf which reminded me of a bit of Genesis A, which sent me down a delightful rabbit-hole at 2 AM. ;-)

Guests, ghosts, and other creatures: Men as 'Guests' in Arda.

If you look up the word gyst -- 'guest, visitor, stranger, outsider, outlandish creature, enemy' -- in the Dictionary of Old English, you will find the following note: 

Wordplay on the senses of gyst¹;‘visitor, stranger’, and gāst‘spirit, soul; demon’ is common in poetry; some poetic examples spelled gæst(-) may alternatively be read as forms of gāst

Turning to the entry for gāst/gǣst -- 'breath, air, wind, spirit, soul, person, ghost, angel, demon', etc. -- you will find the same note. This observation is by no means new. Tolkien was well aware of it. He spoke of it in an appendix to Beowulf: The Monsters and Critics (1983: 35). 

Which all makes me wonder about the use of the 'guests' to describe Men, as seen by the Elves who quickly came to believe that the fëa of Men, that is, their souls or spirits, did not have Arda as their proper home. They were strangers in Arda, guests (S 42; Morgoth 315). The fëa of Men are at once gyst and gāst.

I want to explore this more later, but I am trying to finish my darn book. 

The Light that shines in the darkness -- Frodo and Sam in the Shadow of Death

Brocken Inaglory at the English Wikipedia [CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]

Lately, as part of another project, I've been working very closely with Shelob's Lair and The Choices of Master Samwise in Book Four, and The Tower of Cirith Ungol in Book Six of The Lord of the Rings. There is so much to comment upon in these chapters, so many links among them as well as between them and other chapters that it would take a discussion of some length to lay them all out.(Working on it.) There is one connection I finally recognized last night that I found so charming that I wanted to say a few words about it.

In Shelob's Lair the narrator points out that Gollum 'had bowed down and worshiped her, and the darkness of her evil will walked through all the ways of his weariness beside him, cutting him off from light and from regret' (TT 4.ix.723). I had long felt that we have here an echo of the Twenty-Third Psalm: 'surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life' (23.6). I became certain of this the other day when I noted that in the hymn which Sam, without knowing what he is saying, sings to Elbereth, he uses the word 'nguruthos' (TT 4.x.729), which Tolkien translates in Letter 211 (p.278) as 'the shadow of (the fear of) death'.* It is hard to imagine that a man of Tolkien's time, upbringing, and piety, did not intend another echo of the same psalm: 'yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death' (23.4).

Since Galadriel plays an important role, at least in the minds of Frodo and Sam during the episode with Shelob, I had also been thinking of her gift to Frodo of the star-glass to be 'a light when all other lights go out' and of her appearance in Sam's vision out of a blaze of blinding light. This moment when the darkness of Shelob is debilitating both Frodo and Sam seems to have been foreseen by Galadriel and provided for with her gift. The interplay of the powers of light and darkness in this scene also reminds us of what Haldir said of Galadriel's power: 'In this high place you may see the two powers that are opposed one to another; and ever they strive now in thought, but whereas the light perceives the very heart of the darkness, its own secret has not been discovered. Not yet' (FR 2.vi.352; cf. 2.vii.364-65). 

The other night I was reading aloud to a particular friend what I had been writing about all this. She immediately quoted the Gospel of John (1.5) 'and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot comprehend it'. 

And, as happens at such moments of revelation, the circle suddenly closed. 

Allusion, of course, is what we find here, not allegory. The echoes of the Latin 'comprehenderunt', are heard quite loudly in the English translation of John, but in Tolkien, more fittingly, they sound as dimly as the horns of Elfland. Yet sound they do. The light of the silmaril as borne by Eärendil and captured in the water of Galadriel's mirror does not suggest that she or Eärendil are Christ figures. Rather, it is a matter of all myths reflecting the 'true' myth (the evangelium), and of all uses of the imagery of light and darkness to represent good and evil having common elements. Our knowledge of the one shapes and enhances our understanding of the other. If anything, so many of the characters suggested as 'Christ-figures' in The Lord of the Rings simply underline the need for Christ, for Eru to enter his creation himself, because the Children of Ilúvatar, being fallen, cannot overcome the evil that is the cause and consequence of their own fall.

It is intriguing also to note that the Earendel whom Tolkien found in the Old English poem Christ (1.104), and who sparked the creation of Middle-earth, was understood by some to represent Christ and by others John the Baptist**. In either event, he is the morning star, who presages the sun and brings light and hope to those who 'have had to endure the dark shadow of death' (1.118: deorc deaþes sceadu  dreogan sceoldan), like Sam facing Shelob and like the speaker of the psalm.

Most interesting, finally, are the words of John the Evangelist*** who seems almost in dialogue with this question of who 'the Light' is, as if answering a question already raised during the lifetime of John the Baptist and Jesus -- some thought Jesus might be John come again, others that the Baptist might be the Messiah -- or anticipating that such a question would be raised again and clarifying the truth of the matter ahead of time (1.6-8):

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.

Tolkien asserted that his work was 'fundamentally Christian'. He meant that adverb literally, as in 'at its foundation'. This makes sense because his themes are themselves at the foundation of our reality and Middle-earth's. 

__________________________________

* The parenthesis glosses the words before it, explaining them, not adding to them.

** See Cook The Christ of Cynewulf, a 1964 reprint of the 1909 impression, with the notes beginning on p. 88. Since identification of Earendel with Christ or with John the Baptist, except perhaps by Tolkien, is not relevant here, I have not engaged with scholarship later than Tolkien's discovery of him. Given Eärendil's role as the one who prepares the way for the (semi-)divine intervention of the Valar, Tolkien may have seen Earendel as more likely to be John the Baptist.

*** Coincidentally, perhaps, Tolkien regarded John the Evangelist as his patron saint (Letter 309), though the shared name was a coincidence.

Waiting for Aeschere's Head -- Beowulf 1419b-1423

I've been re-reading Beowulf lately, my second time through the poem in Old English. It brings joy and laughter to my geeky soul, not least because somehow it got easier between the first and second readings. Of the many things that have delighted me, I wanted to mention lines 1419b-1423. Not only are they a great example of the things you can do with word order in an inflected language, but what they do here in particular is funny. 

Just a bit of background first. Beowulf has killed Grendel and Grendel's mother has come looking for revenge. She breaks into Heorot in the middle of the night and carries off Ӕschere, one of king Hrothgar's most trusted advisers. The next morning a posse of Danes (Hrothgar's folk) and Geats (Beowulf's) sets out for the lair of Grendel and his mother.

                                Denum eallum wæs,
winum Scyldinga,   weorce on mode
to geþolianne,   ðegne monegum,
oncyð eorla gehwæm,   syðþan Æscheres
on þam holmclife   hafelan metton.

                               For all the Danes it was,
for the friends of the Scyldings*, a pain in their hearts
to endure, for many a thane,
a grief for every warrior, once they
found Ӕschere's head on the sea-cliff. 

Richard Rohlin was just talking the other day over at Blog on the Barrow-Downs about ways in which the Beowulf poet builds tension in a story that most of his audience would have known. It's an excellent post which I encourage you to read for its discussion of shifting perspectives within the story. Here and now, we're on a much smaller scale, an elegant and balanced little sentence that withholds the crucial piece of information until the very end, poor Ӕschere's head, the twenty-first of twenty-two words.

Here's what you might call an exploded view, which aims to make clear how nice a sentence this is:

For all the Danes

it was

for the friends of the Scyldings

a pain in their hearts to endure

for many a thane

a grief

for every warrior

once they found Ӕschere's head on the sea-cliff.

All of the phrases beginning 'for' are interlaced with the verbal structure of the sentence, while 'grief' is in apposition with 'a pain...endure.' 

It's like a walk down a long dark hallway in a horror movie. You know something bad is coming, just around the next corner, and somehow it still takes you by surprise when you finally get there. Richard Rohlin and I also both got a laugh out of the fact that in the Old English Ӕschere is quite literally separated from his head. 

And if this kind of humor appeals to you, you should take a long look at Tom Shippey's Laughing Shall I Die: Lives and Deaths of the Great Vikings.

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*The Scyldings were the dynasty that ruled the Danes in Beowulf. 'Friends of the Scyldings' is synonymous with Danes.

And Death Shall Be No More -- The Dream of the Rood ll. 112-14

Lairich Rig / The Ruthwell Cross

Frineð he for þære mænige   hwær se man sie,
se ðe for dryhtnes naman    deaðes wolde
biteres onbyrigan,   swa he ær on ðam beame dyde.

He will ask before the multitude   where the man is,
Who for the Lord's name's sake  would taste
Of bitter death,   just he already did on the tree.

The Dream of the Rood  ll. 112-14 

The verb onbýrigan in line 114 means 'to taste of'. It is a compound of býrigan, 'to taste'. What I find cool here is the echo of a different, but very similar sounding verb, byrigan, which means 'to bury'. It  differs only in the length of the 'y'. But I like the distant suggestion that those who taste of death, as Christ has already done on the cross, also bury it. 

________________________________

Scholars have likely noted this ten thousand times already. Nevertheless....

Etymology is Destiny, Saruman, Saruman

As many are aware, Tolkien derived the name 'Saruman' from Old English. The entry in Bosworth- Toller for searu starts with ambiguity (I.) and moves straight to the 'bad sense' (II.). The good sense (III.) comes in a distant and by comparison feeble third, all the examples of which are adverbial uses of the instrumental case. searwum, 'skillfully, ingeniously, with art'. Amid the wealth of marvelous, damning examples under sense II. we find right near the end of the section a quote from the Blickling Homilies (173.8) in which St. Peter tells St. Paul of Simon Magus and recounts

'Hwylce searwa se drý árefnde what artifices the sorcerer practised'

So while it is true to say that searu can be either negative or positive, the surviving evidence indicates that negative is the far more common meaning. When we also consider that the word is so frequently ambiguous that this uncertainty merits the first place in the dictionary entry, it seems a fitting source for the name of a wizard who, even as his 'wickedness' was 'laid bare' (TT 3.ix.567), had proclaimed himself no longer Saruman the White, but 'Saruman of Many Colours' (FR 2.ii.259):

'I looked then and saw that his robes, which had seemed white, were not so, but were woven of all colours, and if he moved they shimmered and changed hue so that the eye was bewildered.'

Since Tolkien named him Saruman from his first appearance in his plot outlines (Treason 70, 72-73), his character and his fate were coeval with his name.

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Works Consulted

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But How Do You Really Feel, Mr Bliss?

Since I never read introductions first, I only just looked at the preface to Dunning and Bliss' edition of The Wanderer just last night, after reading the poem five or six times back to back. At the end of the first paragraph (vii) appears the following sentence:

If we appear to have singled out Dr. Leslie rather often for disagreement, this is because his [edition] is usually the most accessible, and often the most able, defence of interpretations which we find unacceptable.

Well alrighty then. That in turn made me think of this passage from another source:

This was unexpected and rather difficult. There was some scattered clapping, but most of them were trying to work it out and see if it came to a compliment. 

(FR 1.i.30)

_________________________

The Wanderer, T. P Dunning & A. J. Bliss edd., Methuen 1969. 

_________________________

ἄειδε δ’ ἄρα κλέα ἀνδρῶν, or not

By the time the Iliad reaches Book 9 the war is going so badly for the Achaeans without Achilles that even Agamemnon is willing to beg him to come back. Since great kings do not generally do their own begging -- see Book 24, however -- Agamemnon sends Aias, Odysseus, and Phoenix, Achilles' old tutor, with promises of vast amends, to win Achilles over. When the three emissaries reach the tent of Achilles, they find him preoccupied with the very sort of heroics they hope for from him:

Μυρμιδόνων δ᾽ ἐπί τε κλισίας καὶ νῆας ἱκέσθην,
τὸν δ᾽ εὗρον φρένα τερπόμενον φόρμιγγι λιγείῃ
καλῇ δαιδαλέῃ, ἐπὶ δ᾽ ἀργύρεον ζυγὸν ἦεν,
τὴν ἄρετ᾽ ἐξ ἐνάρων πόλιν Ἠετίωνος ὀλέσσας:
τῇ ὅ γε θυμὸν ἔτερπεν, ἄειδε δ᾽ ἄρα κλέα ἀνδρῶν. 

They came to the huts and ships of the Myrmidons,
And found him taking pleasure in a clear toned lyre,
both fair and ingenious, and upon it was a silver bridge.
He chose it from the spoils when he took the city of Eëtion;
With this he delighted his heart, and sang the glorious deeds of men.

(Iliad ix.185-89)

Over a thousand years later another poet far from Troy was singing of men's glory, but not only that. In The Battle of Maldon the anonymous poet takes a moment to make sure that others remembered the names and lineage of three brothers who ran away:

Hi bugon þa fram beaduwe þe þær beon noldon.
þær wearð Oddan bearn ærest on fleame,
Godric fram guþe, and þone godan forlet
þe him mænigne oft mear gesealde;
he gehleop þone eoh þe ahte his hlaford,
on þam gerædum þe hit riht ne wæs,
and his broðru mid him begen ærndon,
Godwine and Godwig, guþe ne gymdon,
ac wendon fram þam wige and þone wudu sohton,
flugon on þæt fæsten and hyra feore burgon,
and manna ma þonne hit ænig mæð wære,
gyf hi þa geearnunga ealle gemundon
þe he him to duguþe gedon hæfde.
Swa him Offa on dæg ær asæde
on þam meþelstede, þa he gemot hæfde,
þæt þær modiglice manega spræcon
þe eft æt þearfe þolian noldon. 

Then those who had no wish to be there turned from the battle.
There, Godric, the son of Odda, proved first in flight
From battle, and forsook the good man
Who had often given him many a horse;
Godric leaped on the horse which his lord owned,
Onto the saddle which it was not his right to mount,
And both his brothers galloped off with him:
Godwin and Godwig, of battle they took no heed,
And went from the conflict and headed for the woods;
They fled to its fastness and saved their lives,
And more men than was at all right followed,
Had they kept in mind all gracious acts
Which their lord had done for them and their benefit.
So Offa had told Byrthnoth one day
At the meeting place, when he held an assembly,
That many would speak boldly there
Words they would not live up to at need.

(185-201)

Nor was this the poet's last word on the feckless sons of Odda. He returned to them twice more in the extant text. At lines 237-42 he points out that Godric's flight on his lord's horse had misled his men into thinking that it was Byrtnoth himself who was deserting them. This caused the shield-wall to break. And he later mentioned another man named Godric, son of Æþelgar, whom he hastens to identify as 'not the Godric who avoided the battle' (325).

My first reaction as I read about the feckless sons of Odda was amusement. I thought of 'Brave Sir Robin' in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and of the scene in the Star Trek (TOS) episode, 'Bread and Circuses', where the master of ceremonies threatens a gladiator who will not fight with 'You bring this networks ratings down, Flavius, and we'll do a special on you.' But as I read on, one warrior after another, old and young, stepped forward and was named with his lineage. Each vowed to avenge his lord, then plunged into the battle and died. The more I read of these men, the more hostile and personal the lines directed at Godric, Godwin, and Godwig seemed. The author of Maldon is unknown, and the poem's date disputed, but anger at treachery can linger for generations. And it can linger even longer in the memory of a people that feels disinherited and oppressed. Whenever the poet wrote it, his wrath at Odda's sons seems keen. He tried to make sure that the evil these men did lived after them, as surely as he sang the glorious deeds of the other men who died that day. For today at least he has done both. 

Dol biþ se þe eaðmod leofaþ?

This morning I sat down to finish The Seafarer. As I usually do, I copied out the lines I was going to translate, trying to get a sense of them as write. Almost at once something seemed a bit odd to my still uncaffeinated eye. (The pot was on, just not there yet.) The first sentence made sense grammatically, but even in the world turned upside down in which we now live it just didn't fit its context, as follows:

Dol biþ se þe eaðmod leofaþ; cymeþ him seo ar of heofonum. 

Foolish be he who lives meekly; to him comes grace from heaven.

So, foolish are the meek, but they get rewarded anyway? That didn't seem even vaguely beatitudinous. I double-checked my vocabulary. I double-check the text I'd written out. Those were the meanings of the words, and those were the words I'd written. As I continued on through the next lines, that first seemed even stranger. It fit less and less with what the poet said. 

What was I missing?

A whole line, as it turned out:

Dol biþ se þe him his drythen ne ondrædeþ: cymeþ him se deaþ unþinged.
Eadig biþ se þe eaþmod leofath; cymeþ him seo ar of heofonum. 

Foolish be he who does not fear the Lord: to him comes death unlooked for.
Blessed be he who lives meekly; to him comes grace from heaven.

Since I copy out three or four words at a time, my eye must have skipped because three of the first four words are the same. 

So once again my respect and sympathy for those in the scriptorium grows. Alcuin said there'd be days like this.

Long Ago

Last night I returned home after a rare pleasant evening with a friend, watching the day fade into the shadow of the sea. It was late and I was tired, but still I thought I might squeeze in a dozen lines or so of The Seafarer before I could no longer keep my eyes open. I wrote out the lines I meant to translate, and was glad to see that my arm and hand didn't hurt too much. 

I didn't get far, maybe a sentence or so in, before I conceded the battle. My head kept dipping, my eyes closing no matter how I wanted them open. Sleep had the better of me.

This morning when I returned to my desk and glanced over what I had done, I noticed that in the very middle of my vocabulary notes I had scrawled the words 'long ago'. But these words have no source in the lines I was translating, or even on the same page. 

Where had I been? Where had I gone in my sleep that I chose to write down these words?

Things You Find In Grammar Books

From A Guide to Old English, sixth edition (2001) by Bruce Mitchell and Fred C. Robinson.

...the O[ld] E[nglish verb distinguished only two tenses ... the present and the preterite. Hence ... the two simple tenses are often used to express complicated temporal relationships. This is one of the things which made Professor Tolkien once say in a lecture that most people read OE poetry much more quickly than did the Anglo-Saxon minstrel, reciting or reading aloud as he was to an audience which needed time to pick up the implications of what he was saying. And this would apply, not only to the subject-matter, especially to the hints and allusion which frequently had great significance, but also to the relationship between paratactic sentences ... and to the actual relationship in time between two actions both of which were described by a simple tense of a verb. 

(108, emphasis added)

Most people? 

_____

Conditions expressed by the word-order V[erb].-S[ubject] without a conjunction -- e.g., 'Had I plenty of money, I would be lying in the sun in Bermuda' -- occasionally occur in OE prose.

(99)

A sentence clearly composed in winter by someone not getting rich from writing an Old English grammar.

_____

'It has already been pointed out in § 179.4 that unreality is timeless in OE' (109)

§ 179.4 reads:

and þæt wisete eac weroda Drihten
þæt sceolde unc Adame yfele gewurðan
ymb þæt heofonrice, þær ic ahte minra handa geweald

'and the Lord of Hosts also knew that things would turn out badly between Adam and me about that heavenly kingdom, if I had control of my hands.'

...[the sentence] here might refer to something which is impossible at the time when Satan spoke -- the implication being 'if only I had control of my hands now, but I haven't'. But it could also be translated 'God knew that trouble would arise between Adam and me if I were to have control of my hands'.

.... Does this interpretation mean that there was a possibility that Satan might have control of his hands ... or that such a thing was impossible when God spoke? The issue here is complicated by questions of God's foreknowledge, though perhaps our own knowledge of the story enables us to dismiss the latter possibility. But enough has been said to make it clear that the Anglo-Saxon 'rule' that 'unreality is timeless' is not without its advantages.

(109, emphasis added)

Nothing, and I mean nothing, screws with the mood of a verb like questions of divine foreknowledge. Had Apollo only used the subjunctive, Oedipus might have been lying in the sun in Bermuda.

Aglæca

 Grendel © John Howe

There was just something about the word aglæca -- 'awesome opponent, ferocious fighter' as the DOE defines it -- that seemed familiar.  From the first time I encountered it in Beowulf, it rang a bell. There the poet most frequently uses it to describe Grendel or the Dragon as, according to the gloss in Klaeber, 'one inspiring awe or misery, formidable one, afflicter, assailant, adversary, combatant' (italics original):

ac se æglæca    ehtende wæs,
deorc deaþscua    duguþe ond geogoþe
seomade ond syrede; 

but the æglæca   was after them,
a dark death shadow,    warriors old and young
he lay for and ambushed; 

(Beowulf 159-61)

Elsewhere we find it used of Satan or sundry devils, in a way that combines their characteristic wretchedness and hostility:

Satan seolua ran    ond on susle gefeol,
earm æglece. 

Satan himself ran    and fell into Hell,
wretched æglæca.

(Christ and Satan 711-12)

And:

                                    Blace hworfon
scinnan forscepene,    sceaðan hwearfedon,
earme æglecan,    geond þæt atole scref
for ðam anmedlan    þe hy ær drugon.

                                    They turned black,
spirits transformed,     the devils wandered,**
the wretched aglæca,   through that horrid pit
because of the pride    they had formerly shown. 

(Christ and Satan, 71-73)

Beowulf and the Dragon ©John Howe

Even when the word is used, for example, of Beowulf himself, it stresses ferocity and hostility, as when the poet describes both Beowulf and the Dragon with it:

                              Næs ða long to ðon
þæt ða aglæcean    hy eft gemetton.

                                 It was not so long
before the æglæca    met each other again.

(Beowulf 2591-92)

So, clearly, the word describes a fierce opponent who inspires awe and is sometimes also seen as wretched. This would all certainly apply to Grendel, Satan, and the devils, if not to Beowulf and the Dragon. Now, as I said, there was always something about this word that seemed familiar, but it wasn't until the other night that I made the connection and realized of whom it made me think.  Both because of the harsh, guttural sound of the word and the qualities of those it describes, aglæca reminds me of Uglúk, leader of the Uruk-Hai in The Two Towers. 

I am quite well aware that this suggestion is entirely circumstantial. It may well be completely wrong. I haven't been able to find any direct evidence, but it seemed an intriguing possibility that I thought worth mentioning. I would welcome any evidence, for or against, as well as notice of any scholarly treatment I may have missed. 

**Here is one case in which all those who wander are indeed lost.

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Works Consulted

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The blood-ice of battle, the unseen hand of God, the blind eyes of men -- Beowulf 1584-1650

In my pilgrimage through Beowulf I often encounter phrases or passages in which the skill of the poet fills me with wonder.  In the lines below he weaves together the bloody aftermath of Beowulf's battle against Grendel's mother in her underwater cave with the slow anxious waiting of the Danes and Geats on the shore. It's a bit of a long extract, but I hope you'll bear with me, first for the Old English, and then for my hellehinca translation, which I am using lest I seem to be criticizing those of scholars far more proficient than I am. I'll try to keep the howlers to a rare few.

He him þæs lean forgeald,
reþe cempa, to ðæs þe he on ræste geseah           1585
guðwerigne Grendel licgan,
aldorleasne, swa him ær gescod                            
hild æt Heorote. Hra wide sprong,
syþðan he æfter deaðe drepe þrowade,
heorosweng heardne, 7 hine þa heafde becearf.      1590

Sona þæt gesawon, snottre ceorlas,
þa ðe mid Hroðgare on holm wliton,                    
þæt wæs yðgeblond eal gemenged
brim blode fah. Blondenfeaxe,
gomele ymb godne, ongeador spræcon                   1595
þæt hig þæs æðelinges eft ne wendon,
þæt he sigehreðig secean come                            
mærne þeoden. Þa ðæs monige gewearð
þæt hine seo brimwylf abreoten hæfde.
Ða com non dæges. Næs ofgeafon                        1600
hwate Scyldingas. Gewat him ham þonon,
goldwine gumena. Gistas setan                            
modes seoce, 7 on mere staredon;
wiston, 7 ne wendon, þæt hie heora winedrihten
selfne gesawon. 

                            Þa þæt sweord ongan               1605
æfter heaþoswate hildegicelum,
wigbil wanian. Þæt wæs wundra sum,                  
þæt hit eal gemealt, ise gelicost,
ðonne forstes bend Fæder onlæteð,
onwindeð wælrapas, se geweald hafað                   1610
sæla 7 mæla. Þæt is soð Metod.

Ne nom he in þæm wicum, Weder-Geata leod,
maðmæhta ma, þeh he þær monige geseah,
buton þone hafelan 7 þa hilt somod
since fage. Sweord ær gemealt,                             1615
forbarn brodenmæl. Wæs þæt blod | to þæs hat,
ættren ellorgæst se þær inne swealt.
Sona wæs on sunde, se þe ær æt sæcce gebad,
wighryre wraðra. Wæter up þurhdeaf,
wæron yðgebland eal gefælsod,                             1620
eacne eardas, þ se ellorgast
oflet lifdagas 7 þas lænan gesceaft.

Com þa to lande, lidmanna helm,
swiðmod swymman. Sælace gefeah,
mægenbyrþenne, þara þe he him mid hæfde.          1625
Eodon him þa togeanes, Gode þancodon,
ðryðlic þegna heap þeodnes gefegon,
þæs þe hi hyne gesundne geseon moston.
Ða wæs of þæm hroran helm 7 byrne
lungre alysed. Lagu drusade,                                  1630
wæter under wolcnum, wældreore fag.
Ferdon forð þonon feþelastum
ferhþum fægne foldweg mæton,
cuþe stræte. Cyningbalde men
from þæm holmclife hafelan bæron                         1635
earfoðlice heora æghwæþrum
felamodigra. Feower scoldon
on þæm wælstenge weorcum geferian
to þæm goldsele Grendles heafod.
Oþ ðæt |semninga to sele comon,                           1640
frome fyrdhwate feowertyne
Geata gongan, 

                         gumdryhten mid,
modig on gemonge, meodowongas træd.
Ða com in gan ealdor ðegna,
dædcene mon dome gewurþad,                               1645
hæle hildedeor, Hroðgar gretan.
Þa wæs be feaxe on flet boren
Grendles heafod, þær guman druncon,
egeslic for eorlum, 7 þære idese mid,
wliteseon wrætlic. Weras onsawon.                         1650

And:

[for his murders] the fierce warrior paid Grendel back then, as soon as he saw him lying on his bed, drained by the battle, lifeless, wounded just as their fight at Heorot had left him. Yet his body leaped once it felt Beowulf's blow in death, a hard sword blow, and Beowulf cut off his head. (1584-90)

At once the wise men, who were looking on the water with Hrothgar, saw that the surging waters were all stirred up, the lake colored with blood.  The greybeards around the king said "together" that they no longer had hope of this hero, that he would come with victory in hand to seek their renowned prince. Many of them agreed that the seawolf had done away with him. Then came the ninth hour of the day. The brave Scyldings left the steep shore; [Hrothgar] the gold-friend of men set off for home. Sick at heart the guests remained sitting and stared at the mere. They wished -- and did not expect -- that they would see their own friendly lord again. (1591-1605)

Then that sword, that battle-blade, began to melt into dripping icicles from the blood of battle. It was a thing of wonder, that it all dissolved, just as ice does when the Father who has dominion over seasons and times lets loose the bonds of frost, unwinds the death-ropes that bind ice. That is the true God. (1605-11)

Though he saw many treasures in that place, the prince of the Geats took none but the head and the sword hilt bright with jewels. Its blade of patterned steel had dissolved by now, had burned away. So hot was that blood, so venomous the otherworldly spirit which perished therein. In a moment he was in the water, he who had survived the fall of his enemies in battle. Up through the water he swam. The surging waves were now all cleansed, the immense lands cleansed, now that that otherworldly spirit had let go the days of his life and this fleeting world. (1612-22)

He came then to land, this guardian of his seamen, stouthearted at swimming. He rejoiced in the huge burden of the sea-booty he had with him. To him then, came the mighty crowd of his thegns; they thanked God, and rejoiced in their prince because they had been allowed to see him unharmed. From that bold man his helm and hauberk were soon loosed. The lake had settled down, the water shining under heaven with the blood of slaughter. Then they set off along the path from that place, glad at heart; they measured the road, the known way. Men bold as kings bore the head from the steep shore, a hard thing for any two of them. So four had to carry the head on a battle-spear, still no easy task, from there to the gold hall, until at last they came to that place, fourteen Geats, brave and ready for war. (1623-42)

Among them their lord, in high spirits with his men, trod the mead-plains. Then the prince of these thegns, a man keen for deeds, decked in glory, a warrior valiant in battle, entered the hall to greet Hrothgar. Then was Grendel's head carried by his hair onto the floor of the hall, where the men were drinking, a terrible sight for the nobles and their lady with them, an astonishing thing to behold. The men looked on. (1642-50)

The first lines here (1584-90) set the tone for what follows. The stillness of Grendel's corpse and the violence of the blow that makes even the dead leap prefigure the activity of Beowulf and the passivity of those who wait for him above. The hero says nothing -- he strikes -- while the grey-haired wise men say too much, and draw the wrong conclusions from the blood they see in the troubled waters. Not unreasonably, they despair of the hero's chances against the otherworldly 'seawolf' (brimwylf, 1599) in her own element.  But the 'brave Scyldings' tarry a while yet before they go, presumably waiting for Hrothgar who had been most forward in his welcome of Beowulf and generous in the rewards he bestowed on him, a generosity of which goldwine ('gold-friend', 1602) reminds us. 

'Gæð a wyrd swa hio scel­­' -- 'fate goes ever as it must' -- Hrothgar might have said here, echoing Beowulf himself, as he now turned for hearth and hall, and, presumably, for the renewed vengeance of Grendel's mother that night. The story of the Scyldings seems to loop back to where it began, with the life of the hall as usual by day, and death expected by night. But it is with the faithful Geats that our attention and sympathies abide: though 'sick at heart' (modes seoce, 1603) and expecting never to see their lord again, they stay behind abandoned by their hosts -- a relationship to which gistas ('guests', 1602),  juxtaposed with goldwine, also bears witness.

The North Cape of Norway and the Midnight Sun

Returning to Beowulf then, we encounter one of the most vivid and foreign images I have ever come across, a metaphor that reaches so far beyond my experience that it seems to inhabit those endless strange vistas of 'pure northernness' that C. S. Lewis speaks of in Surprised by Joy (73). The sword began to melt æfter heaþoswate hildegicelum, literally 'in battle icicles after the sweat of war' (1606). As odd as heaþoswat 'the sweat of war' might have seemed at first, it took scarcely a moment to recognize that it meant 'blood shed in battle', but hildegicelum drove me first to the glossary at the back of Klaeber's Beowulf, where it was defined as 'battle-icicle'. What? Battle-icicle? Here was a gloss that shed light without illumination.

The North Cape of Norway and the Midnight Sun

Then I looked to the commentary to see what it had to say: not a word -- which serves only to prove further what I have long held, that the likelihood of a note is inversely proportional to the need for one. Bosworth-Toller was slightly more helpful with its definition, 'a drop of blood', which I think is strictly wrong, but useful in conjuring the image of something dripping, as water does from a melting icicle, or blood from a sword. It at least helped me to begin to see the image the poet was invoking with such clarity and force for his intended audience. The discovery that there was an Old Norse word, blóðiss, 'blood-ice', meaning 'sword', in the later poem Liðsmannaflokkr showed me a sword viewed in similar terms. (My thanks to Eleanor Parker, The Clerk of Oxford, for this word.) And so the image took shape in my mind, of the bloody sword itself beginning to melt in Beowulf's hand, dripping like an icicle. Of all the strange images I've met so far in Beowulf this one has struck me as perhaps the strangest and most memorable.

As A. G. Brodeur said in The Art of Beowulf:

The unique compound hildegicel .... has no specific referent: 'the sword began ... to diminish in battle-icicles.'  The poet imagined the blade as melting in the she-troll's blood as icicles melt in the sun. This is an implied simile, projecting before the mind's eye the aspect of metal melting into the fingered shapes of melting ice. Curiously enough, hildegicel, though it is not a kenning, was evoked by an imagination working in a manner resembling the processes of thought behind the skaldic kenning diguljökull, 'ice of the crucible,' for the concept 'silver.'  As silver melts in the crucible, so ice melts in the sun. In hildegicel the thought is similar, but it is not concealed and strained as in the skaldic kenning; it is visualized and communicated in a clear and lovely image. The first element of the compound directly links with the image of steel dissolving like icicles with the warlike function of the sword itself.

(Brodeur, 21-22, emphases original)

But the poet does more. He uses this 'clear and lovely image' to reach beyond that vast northern world. The implied simile of hildegicel leads into an explicit comparison to real ice that reveals the hand of the 'true God' who is the master of nature and the enemy of otherworldly creatures like Grendel and his mother, identified long since in the poem as belonging to the race of Cain (in Caines cynne, 107). And since the poet has also recently told us that Beowulf had the favor of God in his fight with Grendel's mother (1550-56), the mention of God here, final and emphatic in 'This is the true God', is an affirmation of his belief in the moral as well as natural order of the universe. Beyond 'the huge, clear spaces hanging above the Atlantic in the endless twilight of northern summer' (Lewis, 73) is a power both immanent and transcendent.

From the true God we return to the true hero who seems to disdain any 'treasure' that is more than a proof of his victory. We return also to the sword, but the image is now of heat. All but the hilt of the sword has 'burned away' (forbarn, 1616) in the 'hot' blood and venomous 'otherworldly spirit' (ellorgæst, 1619) of the monster. These lines even contain an echo of the prior lines on the sword through the poet's use of the related compound verbs, onlætan and oflætan. Just as God 'lets loose' (onlæteð, 1611) the bonds of frost -- thus, presumably, releasing the Spring -- so now the 'otherworldly spirit' (ellorgast, 1623) 'let go' (oflet, 1624) its life, thus purifying the lands and waters its existence had polluted.  And the word I have rendered as 'fleeting' (lænan, 1622) identifies this world as a 'loan' (læn), an image frequently found in biblical contexts. As such it, too, points to God. 

With that the hero returns to the land and is reunited with his thegns, who were no more hopeful than Hrothgar and his counselors, just more faithful. They had also looked upon the turbulent, bloody waters, misunderstood what they were seeing, and despaired. That Beowulf has both conquered his enemies and survived his battle with them transforms the 'sick at heart' (modes seoce, 1603), waiting deedless on the shore, into men as brave and active as he is. 'Glad in spirit' (ferhþum fægne, 1635) and 'bold as kings' (cyningbalde, 1636), they begin their reunion with their prince by thanking God -- whom they clearly regard as to some degree responsible for his return -- and end it by relieving him of the burden of Grendel's head, which four of them have difficulty carrying. No longer are they Hrothgar's gistas ('guests', 1602) who stare rather pathetically at the mere, but change as they 'measure the road' back to Heorot from a ðryðlic þegna heap, a powerful but undifferentiated 'lot' or 'heap' of thegns, to fourteen individual Geats, unnamed to be sure, yet eager and ready for war (1627). 

Finally, though Beowulf's thegns are invigorated by his return, Hrothgar's Danes experience nothing of the kind. Just as they were drinking before Beowulf first arrived (480-95), so they are drinking now; and just as before they could only look at the mere, so, too, now they can only look at the head in terror and astonishment. As I noted above, they seem to have lapsed back into the resignation that they showed at first. It is tempting, with all the emphasis in this passage on the decisive role of the true God in nature and in Beowulf's cause, to see a contrast between the old beliefs and the new. This is especially so since Beowulf himself immediately attributes his victory and survival to God's intervention, and assures Hrothgar that now, unlike before, he can sleep the night through without fear for his men (1654-78).

The study of Christian elements in Beowulf is a road long and well travelled, a cuþe stræte if you will, but it is not my road here today, however often the two might intersect (see Klaeber, lxvii-lxxix for an excellent summary).  Rather I have tried to illustrate the poet's use of single, clear, and striking image to help weave together the different scenes and levels of the tale he is telling, of events and interventions seen and unseen, and of misunderstandings of what is seen that are as poignant and revealing as Helen, standing upon the walls of Troy and thinking that she does not see her brothers in the field among the Achaeans because her faithlessness has so shamed them that they dare not show their faces (Iliad 3.280-91, trans. Fagles). Thanks to the poets, however, the audience knows better. Castor and Pollux are long dead; but Beowulf, by the grace of God, still lives.

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Works Consulted

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Morþorhete and the Spirit of Mordor

The day after Sam rescues Frodo from the tower of Cirith Ungol, two orcs, an Uruk and a smaller tracker, nearly catch them, but a fight breaks out between them:

The big orc, spear in hand, leapt after him. But the tracker, springing behind a stone, put an arrow in his eye as he ran up, and he fell with a crash. The other ran off across the valley and disappeared.  

For a while the hobbits sat in silence. At length Sam stirred. 'Well I call that neat as neat,' he said. 'If this nice friendliness would spread about in Mordor, half our trouble would be over.' 

'Quietly, Sam,' Frodo whispered. 'There may be others about. We have evidently had a very narrow escape, and the hunt was hotter on our tracks than we guessed. But that is the spirit of Mordor, Sam; and it has spread to every corner of it. Orcs have always behaved like that, or so all tales say, when they are on their own. But you can't get much hope out of it. They hate us far more, altogether and all the time. If those two had seen us, they would have dropped all their quarrel until we were dead.'  

(RK 6.ii.927)

As is often the case with Tolkien a glance at Beowulf can prove interesting. For in line 1105 we encounter a word that suits the orcs and Frodo's description of them perfectly.  It is morþorhete, a compound of morþor, whose primary meaning is 'murder' and from which of course derives 'Mordor', and hete, 'hate.' Morþorhete, occurring only here in extant Old English, denotes a murderous or deadly hatred. Keep in mind, moreover, that every time we see orcs interacting with each other, whether they are of different kinds, as here, of different loyalties (TT 3.iii.444-60), or of different commands (TT 4.x.734-42; RK 6.i.899-910, they always come to blows. So the word is generally applicable to orcs. 

In Beowulf the word appears in the account of the oath that was meant to restore peace after the attack on Finnsburgh:

  Ða hie getruwedon    on twa healfa                        1095

  fæste frioðuwære.    Fin Hengeste         

    elne unflitme    aðum benemde

    þæt he þa wealafe    weotena dome

    arum heolde,    þæt ðær ænig mon

    wordum ne worcum    wære ne bræce,                   1100

    (ne) þurh inwitsearo    æfre gemænden,

    ðeah hie hira beaggyfan    banan folgedon,

    ðeodenlease,    þa him swa geþearfod wæs.

    Gyf þonne Frysna hwylc    frecnen spræce

    ðæs morþorhetes    myndgiend wære,                    1105

    þonne hit sweordes ecg    syððan scede.*

Then they concluded strong terms
Of peace for both sides. Finn declared
On oath to Hengest, nobly, with no dispute,
That he, by the authority of his council,
And with acts of kindness, would rule
The sad remnant, that neither by word
Nor by deed would any man break the accord,
Nor through malice would they ever complain --
Though, kingless now, they followed the killer
Of their generous lord: it had been
Necessary for them. Then if any of the Frisians
With reckless speech called to mind
Their murderous hate, a sword would settle it.*

The connection here is not to be found in the details of the story of Finn and Hengest, but in the morþorhete that remains alive just below the surface, so ready to break forth that only the threat of violence can suppress it even temporarily.  In the end the terms do not prove strong enough, any more for Finn and Hengest than for the orcs Frodo and Sam see in Mordor.  A passion so strong can unite or divide.

© Tim Kirk

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*The translation offered above is mine, based on the text and notes in Klaeber's Beowulf (Toronto, 2014). It may not be elegant, but I believe that it is at least not inaccurate. There are, however, points in the Old English that are not entirely clear, but these do not touch the issue of morþorhete directly.