[2716.] se æðeling is Beowulf.
[2718.] ęnta geweorc is a stereotyped phrase for anything that occasions wonder by its size or strangeness.
[2720.] healde. Heyne, following Ettmüller, reads hēoldon, thus arbitrarily changing mood, tense, and number of the original. Either mood, indicative or subjunctive, would be legitimate. As to the tense, the narrator is identifying himself in time with the hero, whose wonder was “how the stone-arches ... sustain the ever-during earth-hall”: the construction is a form of oratio recta, a sort of miratio recta. The singular healde, instead of healden, has many parallels in the dependent clauses of Beowulf, most of these being relative clauses introduced by þāra þe (= of those that ... + a singular predicate). In the present instance, the predicate has doubtless been influenced by the proximity of eorð-ręced, a quasi-subject; and we have no more right to alter to healden or hēoldon than we have to change Shakespeare’s gives to give in
“Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.”
(Macbeth, II, I, 61.)
[2722.] The þegn ungemete till is Wiglaf, the bravest of Beowulf’s retainers.
[2725.] hē ofer bęnne spræc. The editors and translators of Beowulf invariably render ofer in this passage by about; but Beowulf says not a word about his wound. The context seems to me to show plainly that ofer (cf. Latin supra) denotes here opposition = in spite of. We read in Genesis, l. 594, that Eve took the forbidden fruit ofer Drihtenes word. Beowulf fears (l. 2331) that he may have ruled unjustly = ofer ealde riht; and he goes forth (l. 2409) ofer willan to confront the dragon.
[2731-33.] þǣr mē ... gelęnge, if so be that (þǣr ... swā) any heir had afterwards been given me (mē gifeðe ... æfter wurde) belonging to my body.
[2744-45.] geong [= gǫng] ... scēawian. See note on ēode ... sittan, [p. 137, ll. 19-20]. In Mn.E. Go see, Go fetch, etc., is the second verb imperative (coördinate with the first), or subjunctive (that you may see), or infinitive without to?
[2751-52.] mīn ... līf. See note on ęnde-dæg ... mīnne, [p. 137, ll. 16-17].