Got himel und erde lát zergán,
unt wil dernách ein schoenerz hán[[778]].
Dim and fragmentary as these rays of light may be which straggle to us through the veils of bygone ages, it is impossible not to recognize in them traces of that primæval faith which teaches the responsibility of man, the rule of just and holy beings superior to himself, and a future existence of joy and sorrow, the ultimate consequence of human actions. With what amount of distinctness this great truth may have been placed before their eyes, we cannot tell, but it is enough that we see it admitted in one of the most thoroughly heathen poems of the Edda, and confirmed by an Anglosaxon tradition totally independent of Christianity. Weak as it is while unsupported by the doctrine of a gracious Redeemer, it is not wholly inoperative upon the moral being of men; and its reception among the nations of the North must have tended to prepare them for the doctrine which in the fulness of time was to supersede their vague and powerless desires by the revelation of the crucified Saviour.
HEROES.—It now remains that we should bestow a few words upon the heroic names which figure in the Epopœa of the North, and which probably in many cases belong to the legends and the worship of gods now forgotten, or which at least represent those gods in their heroic form and character; even as the Iliad in Achilles may celebrate only one form of the Dorian Apollo, and the legends of Cadmus and Theseus may be echoes from an earlier cult of Jupiter and Neptune.
The hero Scyld or Sceldwa[[779]] has been mentioned as the godlike progenitor of the Scyldingas, the royal race of Denmark; but he also appears among the mythical ancestors of Wóden, in the genealogy of Wessex. It is a singular fact that the Anglosaxons alone possess the fine mythus of this hero; the opening division or canto of Beówulf relates of him that he was exposed as a child in a ship upon the ocean; a costly treasure accompanied the sleeping infant as he floated to the shores of the Gardanes, whose king he became; after reigning gloriously and founding a race of kings, he died, and was again sent forth in his ship, surrounded with treasures, to go into the unknown world, from which he came; he came to found a royal race[[780]], and having done so, he departs and nothing more is known of him. That this mythus was deeply felt in England appears from its being referred to even by the later chroniclers: Æðelweard[[781]] and William of Malmesbury[[782]] mention it at length, and a desire to engraft a national upon a biblical tradition not only causes Sceaf to be called by some authors the son of Shem, but leads to the assertion of the Saxon chronicle that Sceaf was the son of Noah, born in the ark[[783]], in obvious allusion to the miraculous exposure on the waters. The mention of Scani by Æðelweard may be taken in connection with a Norse tradition that Skjold was Skanunga goþ, a god of the Scanings. An Anglosaxon riddle in the Codex Exoniensis[[784]], and of which the answer seems to me to be only a shield, concludes with the very remarkable words,
| nama mín is mǽre, hæleðum gifre, and hálig sylf. | mighty is my name, rapacious among men, and itself holy. |
The second line seems to exclude the supposition of there being any reference to Almighty God, though Scyld, like Helm, is one of his names, examples of which are numerous in all Anglosaxon poetry. There are one or two places in England which bear the name of this god or hero: these are Scyldes treów[[785]], Scyldmere[[786]], and Scyldes heáfda[[787]]; but except in the genealogy of Wessex and the tradition recorded by Æðelweard and William of Malmesbury, there is no record of Sceaf.
As in the poem of Beówulf, Scyld is said to have a son called Beówulf from whom the kings of Sleswig are descended, so in the genealogy of Wessex, Scyld is followed by Beaw: there is some uncertainty in the form of the name, but upon comparison of all the different versions given by various chroniclers, we may conclude that it was Beówa or Beów, a word equivalent to Beówulf. The original divinity of this person is admitted by Grimm, but he suffers himself to be misled by some over-skilful German lexicographer who has added Beewolf to the list of English names for the woodpecker, and would render Beówulf as a sort of Latin Picus. I am not aware that any bird in England was ever called the beewolf, or that there are any superstitions connected with the woodpecker in England, as there are in Germany; the cuckoo and the magpie are our birds of augury. When Grimm then declares himself disposed not to give up the termination -wulf in the name, he has only the authority of the poem on his side, in defence of his theory: against which must be placed every other list or genealogy; and it seems to me that these are strongly confirmed by the occurrence of a place called, not Beówulfes hám, but Beówan hám[[788]], in immediate connection with another named Grendles mere[[789]]: Whatever the name, this hero was looked upon as the eponymus of various royal races, and this, though the names which have survived are obviously erroneous[[790]], is distinctive of his real character.
There are various other heroes mentioned in the poem of Beówulf and in the Traveller’s Song, some remembrance of which is still preserved in local names in various parts of England. A few words may not be misplaced respecting them. In the first-named poem, the hero’s lord and suzerain is invariably named Hygelác; after whose death Beówulf himself becomes king of the Geátas. As Hygelác is said to have perished in fight against the Franks, and as history records the fall of a Danish king Chochilachus in a predatory excursion into the Frankish territory about the beginning of the seventh century[[791]], Outzen, Leo and others have identified the two in fact as well as name, and drawn conclusions as to the mythical hero, from the historical prince. The coincidence is not conclusive: if Hygelác’s name were already mythical in the seventh century, it may easily have been given to any leader who ventured a plundering expedition into the Frankish territory, especially as the warlike records of an earlier Hygelác would be certain to contain some account of Frankish forays: nor was Hygelác, in Danish Hugleikr[[792]], by any means an uncommon name. On the other hand, if we admit the historical allusion, we must assign a date to, at any rate, that episode of the poem which is hardly consistent with its general character. I am therefore inclined to think that in this instance, as in so many others, an accidental resemblance has been too much relied upon: it is in fact quite as likely (or even more likely) that the historian should have been indebted to the legend, than that the poet should have derived his matter from history. It does seem probable that Hygelác enjoyed a mythical character among the Germans: in the “Altdeutsche Blätter” of Moriz Haupt[[793]], we find the following statement, taken from a MS. of the tenth century. “De Getarum rege Huiglauco mirae magnitudinis.—Et sunt mirae magnitudinis, ut rex Huiglaucus, qui imperavit Getis et a Francis occisus est, quem equus a duodecimo anno portare non potuit, cuius ossa in Rheni fluminis insula, ubi in oceanum prorumpit, reservata sunt et de longinquo venientibus pro miraculo ostenduntur.”
But Hygelác is not known in Germany only: even in England we have traces of him in local names: thus Hygeláces geát[[794]], which, as the name was never borne by an Anglosaxon,—so far at least as we know,—speaks strongly for his mythical character. That the fortunes, under similar circumstances, of a historical prince, of the same name or not of the same name, should have become mixed up with an earlier legend, is by no means unusual or surprising.