But the whole difficulty merely arises from reading more into the words of the Episode than the text will warrant. It is not asserted in the Episode that Hildeburh found her kinsfolk dead in the morning, but that in the morning she found "murderous bale amid her kinsfolk." Hildeburh woke up to find a fight in progress: how long it went on, the Episode does not say: but that it was prolonged we gather from ll. 1080-5: and there is no reason why the deadly strife which Hildeburh found in the morning might not have lasted five days or more, before it culminated in the death of Hnæf.
Thirdly, the commander in the Fragment is called a "war-young king." This, it has been said, is inapplicable to Hnæf, since he is brother of Hildeburh, who is old enough to have a son slain in the combat.
But an uncle may be very young. Beowulf speaks of his uncle Hygelac as young, even though he seems to imply that his own youth is partly past[[457]]. And no advantage, but the reverse, is gained, even in this point, if, following Möller's hypothesis, and assuming that the fight narrated in the Fragment takes place after the treaty with Finn, we make the "war-young king" Hengest. For those who, with Möller, suppose Hengest to be brother of Hnæf, will have to admit the avuncular difficulty in him also.
Section V. Some Difficulties in Bugge's Theory
We may then, I think, accept as certain, that first come the events narrated in the Fragment, then those told in the Episode in Beowulf. But we are not out of our troubles yet. There are difficulties in Bugge's view which have still to be faced.
The cause of the struggle, according to Bugge and his adherents, is a treacherous attack made by Finn upon his
brother-in-law Hnæf. According to the Episode, it is the Eotens who are treacherous; so Eotens must be another name for the Frisians.
The word occurs three times in the genitive, Eotena; once in the dative, Eotenum: as a common noun it means "giant," "monster": earlier in Beowulf it is applied to Grendel and to the other misbegotten creatures descended from Cain. But how "giant" can be applied to the Frisians, or to either of the contending parties in the Finnsburg fight, remains inexplicable[[458]]. Eotena must rather be the name of some tribe. But what tribe? The only people of whom we know, possessing a name at all like this, are the people who colonized Kent, whom Bede calls Jutes, but whose name would in Anglian be in the genitive Ēotna, but in the dative Ēotum, or perhaps occasionally Ēotnum, Ēotenum[[459]]. Now a scribe transliterating a poem from an Anglian dialect into West-Saxon should, of course, have altered these forms into the corresponding West-Saxon forms Ȳtena and Ȳtum. But nothing would have been more likely than that he would have misunderstood the tribal name as a common noun, and retained the Anglian forms (altering eotum or eotnum into eotenum) supposing the word to mean "giants." After all, the common noun eotenum, "giants," was quite as like the tribal name Ēotum, which the scribe presumably had before him, as was the correct West-Saxon form of that name, Ȳtum.
It is difficult therefore to avoid the conclusion that the "Eotens" are Jutes: and this is confirmed by three other pieces of evidence, not convincing in themselves, but helpful as subsidiary arguments[[460]].