[3] A sufferer, moreover, fully assures us that some remain, which “must baffle all conjecture;” and another critic has judicially decreed that, in every translation from the Anglo-Saxon that has fallen under his notice, “there are blunders enough to satisfy the most unfriendly critic.” “The Song of the Traveller,” in “The Exeter Book,” was translated by Conybeare; a more accurate transcript was given by Mr. Kemble in his edition of Beowulf; and now Mr. Guest has furnished a third, varying from both. We cannot be certain that a fourth may not correct the three.
[4] “Without exception!” is the energetic cry of the translator of Beowulf.
[5] The first line contains two words commencing with the same letter, and the second line has its first word also beginning with that letter. This difficulty seems insurmountable to a modern reader, for our authority confesses that, “In the Saxon poetry; as it is preserved in manuscripts, the first line often contains but one alliterating word, and, from the negligence of the scribes, the alliteration is in many instances entirely lost.”—Dissertation on Anglo-Saxon Poetry, Fraser’s Magazine, xii. 81.
[6] A striking instance how long a universal error can last, arising from one of these obscure conceits, is noticed by Mr. Grenville Pigott in his “Manual of Scandinavian Mythology.”
These warlike barbarians were long reproached that even their religion fomented an implacable hatred of their enemies; for in the future state of their paradisiacal Valhalla, their deceased heroes rejoiced at their celestial compotations, to drink out of the skulls of their enemies.
A passage in the death-song of Regner Lodbrog, literally translated, is, “Soon shall we drink out of the curved trees of the head;” which Bishop Percy translates, “Soon, in the splendid hall of Odin, we shall drink beer out of the skulls of our enemies.” And thus also have the Danes themselves, the Germans, and the French.
The original and extraordinary blunder lies with Olaus Wormius, the great Danish antiquary, to whose authority poets and historians bowed without looking further. Our grave Olaus was bewildered by this monstrous style of the Scalds, and translated this drinking bout at Valhalla according to his own fancy,—“Ex concavis crateribus craniorum;”—thus turning the “trees of the head” into a “skull,” and the skull into a hollow cup. The Scald, however, was innocent of this barbarous invention; and, in his violent figures and disordered fancy, merely alluded to the branching horns, growing as trees, from the heads of animals—that is, the curved horns which formed their drinking cups. If Olaus here, like Homer, nodded, something might be urged for his defence; for who is bound to understand such remote, if not absurd conceits? but I do not know that we could plead as fairly for his own interpolating fancy of “drinking out of the skulls of their enemies.”
This grave blunder became universal, and a century passed away without its being detected. It was so familiar, that Peter Pindar once said that the booksellers, like the heroes of Valhalla, drank their wine out of the skulls of authors.
[7] Hickes and Wanley mistook the “Ormulum,” a paraphrase of Gospel history, as mere prose; when in fact it is composed in long lines of fifteen syllables without rhyme.
[8] See “A Manual of Scandinavian Mythology,” by Mr. Grenville Pigott. 1839. “The Northern Mythology” will be found here not only skilfully arranged, but its wondrous myths and fables elucidated by modern antiquaries. It is further illustrated by the translation of the poem of Œhlenschläger, on “The Gods of the North;” whose genius has been transfused in the nervous simplicity of the present version.