Here is a scene in King Hrothgar’s hall:
“After evening came
and Hrothgar had departed
to his court,
guarded the mansion
countless warriors,
as they oft ere had done,
they bared the bench-floor
it was overspread
with beds and bolsters,
they set at their heads
their disks of war,
their shield-wood bright;
there on the bench was
over the noble,
easy to be seen,
his high martial helm,
his ringed byrnie
and war-wood stout.”
Beowulf’s funeral pole is said to be—
“with helmets, war brands,
and bright byrnies behung.”
And in this oldest of Scandinavian romances we have the natural reflections—
“the hard helm shall
adorned with gold
from the fated fall;
mortally wounded sleep
those who war to rage
by trumpet should announce;
in like manner the war shirt
which in battle stood
over the crash of shields
the bite of swords
shall moulder after the warrior;
the byrnie’s ring may not
after the martial leader
go far on the side of heroes;
there is no joy of harp
no glee-wood’s mirth,
no good hawk
swings through the hall,
nor the swift steed
tramps the city place.
Baleful death
has many living kinds
sent forth.”
Reflections which Coleridge summed up in the brief lines—
“Their swords are rust,
Their bones are dust,
Their souls are with the saints, we trust.”
The wood-cut on page 316 is taken from a collection of various Saxon pictures in the British Museum, bound together in the volume marked Tiberius C. VI., at folio 9. Our wood-cut is a reduced copy. In the original the warrior is seven or eight inches high, and there is, therefore, ample room for the delineation of every part of his costume. From the embroidery of the tunic, and the ornamentation of the shield and helmet, we conclude that we have before us a person of consideration, and he is represented as in the act of combat; but we see his armour and arms are only those to which we have already affirmed that the usual equipment was limited. The helmet seems to be strengthened with an iron rim and converging ribs, and is furnished with a short nasal.
The figure is without the usual cloak, and therefore the better shows the fashion of the tunic. The banding of the legs was not for defence, it is common in civil costume. The quasi-banding of the forearm is also sometimes found in civil costume; it seems not to be an actual banding, still less a spiral armlet, but merely a fashion of wearing the tunic sleeve. We see how the sword is, rather inartificially, slung by a belt over the shoulder; how the shield is held by the iron handle across its hollow spiked umbo; and how the barbed javelin is cast.