The greatest of all Old English poems is the epic, Beowulf.[2] It consists of more than three thousand lines, and probably assumed approximately its present form in Northumbria about A.D. 700. It is a crystallization of continental myths; and, though nothing is said of England, the story is an invaluable index to the social, political, and ethical ideals of our Germanic ancestors before and after they settled along the English coast. It is most poetical, and its testimony is historically most valuable, in the character-portraits that it contains. The fatalism that runs through it, instead of making the characters weak and less human, serves at times rather to dignify and elevate them. “Fate,” says Beowulf (l. 572), recounting his battle with the sea-monsters, “often saves an undoomed man if his courage hold out.”
“The ethical essence of this poetry,” says Ten Brink, “lies principally in the conception of manly virtue, undismayed courage, the stoical encounter with death, silent submission to fate, in the readiness to help others, in the clemency and liberality of the prince toward his thanes, and the self-sacrificing loyalty with which they reward him.”
Note 1.—Many different interpretations have been put upon the story of Beowulf (for argument of story, see texts). Thus Müllenhoff sees in Grendel the giant-god of the storm-tossed equinoctial sea, while Beowulf is the Scandinavian god Freyr, who in the spring drives back the sea and restores the land. Laistner finds the prototype of Grendel in the noxious exhalations that rise from the Frisian coast-marshes during the summer months; Beowulf is the wind-hero, the autumnal storm-god, who dissipates the effluvia.
[1.] This does not, of course, include the few short poems in the Chronicle, or that portion of Genesis (Genesis B) supposed to have been put directly into West Saxon from an Old Saxon original. There still remain in Northumbrian the version of Cædmon’s Hymn, fragments of the Ruthwell Cross, Bede’s Death-Song, and the Leiden Riddle.
[2.] The word bēowulf, says Grimm, meant originally bee-wolf, or bee-enemy, one of the names of the woodpecker. Sweet thinks the bear was meant. But the word is almost certainly a compound of Bēow (cf. O.E. bēow = grain), a Danish demigod, and wulf used as a mere suffix.
[II. STRUCTURE.]
(a) Style.
In the structure of Old English poetry the most characteristic feature is the constant repetition of the idea (sometimes of the thought) with a corresponding variation of phrase, or epithet. When, for example, the Queen passes into the banquet hall in Beowulf, she is designated at first by her name, Wealhþēow; she is then described in turn as cwēn Hrōðgāres (Hrothgar’s queen), gold-hroden (the gold-adorned), frēolīc wīf (the noble woman), ides Helminga (the Helmings’ lady), bēag-hroden cwēn (the ring-adorned queen), mōde geþungen (the high-spirited), and gold-hroden frēolīcu folc-cwēn (the gold-adorned, noble folk-queen).
And whenever the sea enters largely into the poet’s verse, not content with simple (uncompounded) words (such as sǣ, lagu, holm, strēam, męre, etc.), he will use numerous other equivalents (phrases or compounds), such as waþema gebind (the commingling of waves), lagu-flōd (the sea-flood), lagu-strǣt (the sea-street), swan-rād (the swan-road), etc. These compounds are usually nouns, or adjectives and participles used in a sense more appositive than attributive.
It is evident, therefore, that this abundant use of compounds, or periphrastic synonyms, grows out of the desire to repeat the idea in varying language. It is to be observed, also, that the Old English poets rarely make any studied attempt to balance phrase against phrase or clause against clause. Theirs is a repetition of idea, rather than a parallelism of structure.