Beowulf

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There are literal versions of
Beowulf
. I have not tried to compete with them. This is an interpretation, not a translation. Myth seems to me to have a peculiar importance for children, as for poets: it lives in them. I have tried to have this telling as a living thing. In sticking to the text of the original epic, it may be loose. In sticking to the root-meaning of that poem, I hope that it is tight. There are many Englishings of the text. I worked with Kemble (1837), the first, through Thorpe, Grein, Wyatt, Earle, and Clark-Hall, down to the very fine recent edition of Klaeber (1951) and Wrenn (1958). Often I consulted in order to go somewhere else. The somewhere else I wanted to go was
back and in
.

One retells old myths and legends hoping to be rewarded with the discovery that their meaning is still very much alive and creative. I feel in writing this that I discovered something about
Beowulf
. I hope that the reader will find what I found and enjoy it. To me, it is an essential story, and therefore never to be fixed.

R.N.

Long ago there was no king in the land of the Danes, and they all wanted one. When a ship without sails or sailors came drifting in from sea, they went to meet it looking for a wonder, and sure enough there was a child in the ship. The child was curled asleep on a sheaf of ripe corn, with gold and swords heaped round about him. A golden flag flapped at the mast.

“This is Odin’s doing!” cried a fisherman with a big white beard that blew in the wind like spindrift. “We need a king, and he sends us this child across the sea. I’m sure he is a prince.”

“Of course he is,” said someone else. “Look at his clenched fists and the way he smiles in his dreams. Oh, he’s royal all right!”

“Perhaps he is Odin’s son,” said a third.

Now, Odin was a great god. So the child was taken gently from the ship and wrapped
in rich robes and hailed as ruler of all the Danes. They called him Scyld Scefing.

Scyld grew up to be strong and brave, the terror of his enemies. He was tall as a tower and his eyes blazed like bonfires when he was angry. Running into battle, he could shout so loudly that men felt the cry like a hammer on their heads, and fell down dead of fright. His sword was so long and heavy that no one else could lift it. His horned helmet was big enough to put an eagle in. When he sat down to supper, in a chair carved out of a whole oak tree, the cooks ran to and fro bringing him bulls to eat, and barrels of beer that he drained in one go. His laughter cracked stones.

For all this, Scyld Scefing was kind and wise, and his people loved him. Under his rule, peace came to the land of the Danes, because none of the neighbor countries dared to fight with such a giant. Instead, they brought him gifts and tributes so that he would not go to war against them. The treasury swelled until it was like a hill of jewels.

At last Scyld got to be an old man. His stride was still enormous, but no longer did his feet strike thunder from the earth. His body bent, and his eyes—which once could have outstared the sun—grew watery. He could not eat a whole bull anymore.

Scyld knew his end was near. He called his warriors to him and told them what they must do.

“Build me a great ship,” he said, his trumpet tongue now shrunken to a whisper, “and let the decks of the ship be strewn with gold, and swords stacked upon the gold. And hang my shield and corselet in the prow, that the waves may know me and show respect. And in the heart of the ship, under the tall mast that must have no sail, prepare a bed that will burn. And in the heart of the bed let a sheaf of corn be planted.”

His warriors were sad, but they did as he said. Scyld lay on a silver litter at the water’s edge and watched with tears as the ship was made ready. When all had been done as he had commanded, he dragged himself on board and lay down on the bed. They piled jewels on his chest where the great heart beat uncertainly, like the footfalls of a messenger near journey’s end. They saluted him, one after another, and returned to the shore in silence. Dawn was coming, and the air smelt salty cold.

The sheaf of corn flickered into thin green flame. Then it was gold and raging. The whole ship blazed as it moved against the wind and out to the waiting sea.

Scyld Scefing left a son who ruled after him, and that son had another son, named Healfdene. Healfdene had three sons, Hrothgar, Heorogar, and Halga, and a daughter whose name has been forgotten, although she was beautiful and witty and married Onela, king of the Swedes. All Scyld’s heirs had some of Scyld in them, though none had quite such giant strength. Of the three sons of Healfdene, Hrothgar was strongest, and when his father died they made him king.

Hrothgar had a backbone that would bend to no man. He was bold and fierce, with red hair, a jutting jaw, and eyes like naked swords. While still a boy, he had killed a bear with his own hands. It was not a particularly big bear, but the deed was sufficient to make him famous. Hrothgar himself did not boast, but his poets sang his praises all over the land
of the Danes, and men came flocking to join his army.

One day Hrothgar made up his mind to build a great hall with some of the spoils he had won in war. “I had a dream,” he told his retainers, “and in the dream I saw a hall that was bigger than any hall built since the beginning of the world. The floors shone, and the roofs were gold. There was ivory everywhere, and a throne where a king could sit. Just such a place I am going to make. Poets will sing in it—of fights and wounds and the might of my grandfather, Scyld Scefing. And my own brave men will eat and drink in it. I shall call the hall Heorot.”

Stone for the building of the hall Heorot came from all over the world. The masons planned, and the diggers dug down so that it was founded on rock. The banging of hammers and chink of chisels filled the air, summer, autumn, winter, and spring. It looked like a sleeping giant covered with ants as the builders went about their task.

At last Heorot was finished. It stood tall and firm on the edge of the misty fen. By day, it towered above men’s heads like a second sun, so bright were its walls and roofs. By night, the torchlight blazing from its high windows, it was like a huge sentinel who did
not sleep. Everyone agreed that the king had built a wonder.

Hrothgar said: “I am pleased. My dream has come true.” And he sent out messengers inviting the most noble lords in the land to come to a banquet to celebrate the opening of Heorot’s doors.

Poets sang at the feast, and the guests had so much to eat and drink that some of them could hardly walk. Hrothgar gave every man present a ring from his treasury. The music of the harp and the happy shouting of the warriors echoed out across the dark fen and drowned the crying of birds that flew in the night.

The banquet over, the guests retired to sleep. Hrothgar had had sleeping chambers built for the most important ones, far away from the smoke and bustle of the kitchens, with great curved couches comfortably heaped with skins. Only the king’s bodyguard, thirty of his toughest fighting men, remained in the hall itself. They were supposed to keep awake and watch for enemies, but, as it turned out, they were all so weary from the feast that they soon slept too. They satisfied their consciences with the thought that Hrothgar was now so strong a ruler that no
one would dare to attack him. Soon hall Heorot was a palace of snores.