Allusion has already been made to some of these points. Did the rule excluding galanas or blood-fine within the kindred extend beyond the gwely to the greater kindred? What happened to a tribesman in a feud between his paternal and maternal kindreds? Did he abstain from taking sides, or did a marriage so far unite two families or kindreds as to make them one for the purpose of blood-fine or feud, so as to prevent the feud or blood-fine from arising?
These are questions upon which we want light from the point of view of Welsh tribal custom, and upon which we approach Beowulf for light, with eyes open also to other matters of tribal usage as they may turn up.
An 8th century story of blood feuds.
Beowulf for the present purpose may be taken as an Anglian or Northumbrian recension of a story founded upon Scandinavian tradition, and designed for use or recital at some 8th century royal court—possibly, if Professor Earle’s suggestion be correct, that of King Offa.
The western horizon of the story extends to the Frisian shores, but the scene seems chiefly to lie in the Baltic.
The plot involves tribal relations between a chieftain of the Danes possibly of Zealand, and two Swedish chieftains. The two latter concern us most, and they seem to be the chiefs of two kindreds—Geats and Swedes—Beowulf himself being the link between them, his mother having married from one into the other kindred. This marriage at any rate was one between two kindreds.
There is no apparent effort on the part of the poet to enlighten the reader or those who heard him either upon the pedigrees of the persons mentioned in his story or upon the rules of Scandinavian tribal custom. But it happens that, by incidental hints dropped in the telling of the tale, the pedigree of each of the kindreds involved can be fairly made out, and has already been made out by translators and critics.
involving blood feuds between Beowulf’s paternal and maternal kindred.
And as the story involves a homicide within Beowulf’s maternal kindred, and fighting and bloodshed between the kindreds in spite of the marriage link, and as it deals also with outside feuds, it happens to present remarkable opportunities for studying the action of tribal custom in various cases.
The evidence it gives is made all the more valuable by its being an Anglian version of Scandinavian traditions, inasmuch as the poet, or his Anglian interpreter, assumes throughout that the laws of the game, under Scandinavian tribal custom, were too well known to need explanation to his Anglian audience. So that by inference it would seem that the customs of Baltic chieftains were familiar at the court of Offa, and not very far removed from those of Anglian tradition.