chapter begin as No. I. This is the case in the other MS of the Pastoral Care[[531]]. Is there, then, such difficulty in the dissertation on the glory of the ancient Danish kings being treated as what, in fact, it is: a prologue or preface; and being, as such, simply left outside the numbering?
Still less can we argue for the identification of our hero, the son of Ecgtheow, with Frotho, and through him with Beow, from the supposed resemblances between the dragon fights of Beowulf and Frotho. Such resemblances have been divined by Sievers, but we have seen that it is the dissimilarity, not the resemblance, of the two dragon fights which is really noteworthy[[532]].
To prove that Beow was the original antagonist of Grendel there remains, then, only the mention in the charter of a Grendles mere near a Bēowan hamm[[533]]. Now this was not known to Kemble at the time when he formed his theory that the original slayer of Grendel was not Beowulf, but Beow. And if the arguments upon which Kemble based his theory had been at all substantial, this charter would have afforded really valuable support. But the fact that two names occur near each other in a charter cannot confirm any theory, unless that theory has already a real basis of its own.
(2) Beow
Therefore, until some further evidence be discovered, we must regard the belief that the Grendel and the dragon stories were originally myths of Beow, as a theory for which sufficient evidence is not forthcoming.
But note where the theory breaks down. It seems indisputable that Beowulf the Dane, son of Scyld Scefing, is identical with Beo(w) of the genealogies: for Beo(w) is son of Scyld[[534]] or Sce(a)ldwa[[535]], who is a Scefing. But here we must stop. There is, as we have seen, no evidence that the Grendel or dragon adventures were transferred from him to their present hero,
Beowulf the Geat, son of Ecgtheow. It would, of course, be quite possible to accept such transference, and still to reject the mythological interpretation of these adventures, just as it would be possible to believe that Gawain was originally a sun-hero, whilst rejecting the interpretation as a sun-myth of any particular adventure which could be proved to have been once told concerning Gawain. But I do not think we need even concede, as Boer[[536]] and Chadwick[[537]] do, that adventures have been transferred from Beowulf the Dane to Beowulf the Geat. We have seen that there is no evidence for such transference, however intrinsically likely it may be. Till evidence is forthcoming, it is useless to build upon Kemble's conjecture that Beowulf the Scylding sank into Beowulf the Wægmunding[[538]].
But it is due to Kemble to remember that, while he only put this forward as a tentative conjecture, what he was certain about was the identity of Beowulf the Scylding with Beow, and the divinity of these figures. And here all the evidence seems to justify him.
"The divinity of the earlier Beówulf," Kemble wrote, "I hold for indisputable.... Beo or Beow is ... in all probability a god of agriculture and fertility.... It strengthens this view of the case that he is the grandson of Sceáf, manipulus frumenti, with whom he is perhaps in fact identical[[539]]."
Whether or no Beow and Sceaf were ever identical, it is certain that Beow (grain) the descendant of Sceaf (sheaf) suggests a corn-myth, some survival from the ancient worship of a corn-spirit.