Now "Beowulf" is an exceedingly rare name. The presence of the earlier Beowulf, Scyld's son, seems then to demand explanation, and many critics, working on quite different lines, have arrived independently at the conclusion that either the story of Grendel and his mother, or the story of the dragon, or both stories, were originally told of the son of Scyld, and only afterwards transferred to the Geatic hero. This has indeed been generally accepted, almost from the beginning of
Beowulf criticism[[83]]. Yet, though possible enough, it does not admit of any demonstration.
Now Beowulf, son of Scyld, clearly corresponds to a Beow or Beaw in the West Saxon genealogy. In this genealogy Beow is always connected with Scyld and Scef, and in some versions the relations are identical with those given in Beowulf: Beow, son of Scyld, son of Scef, in the genealogies[[84]], corresponding to Beowulf, son of Scyld Scefing, in our poem. Hence arose the further speculation of many scholars that the hero who slays the monsters was originally called, not Beowulf, but Beow, and that he was identical with the hero in the West Saxon pedigree; in other words, that the original story was of a hero Beow (son of Scyld) who slew a monster and a dragon: and that this adventure was only subsequently transferred to Beowulf, prince of the Geatas.
This is a theory based upon a theory, and some confirmation may reasonably be asked, before it is entertained. As to the dragon-slaying, the confirmatory evidence is open to extreme doubt. It is dealt with in Section VII (Beowulf-Frotho), below. As to Grendel, one such piece of confirmation there is. The conquering Angles and Saxons seem to have given the names of their heroes to the lands they won in England: some such names—'Wade's causeway,' 'Weyland's smithy'—have survived to modern times. The evidence of the Anglo-Saxon charters shows that very many which have now been lost existed in England prior to the Conquest. Now in a Wiltshire charter of the year 931, we have Bēowan hammes hecgan mentioned not far from a Grendles mere. This has been claimed as evidence that the story of Grendel, with Beow as his adversary, was localized in Wiltshire in the reign of Athelstan, and perhaps had been localized there since the settlement four centuries previously. Until recently this was accepted as definitely
proving that the Beowulf-Grendel story was derived from an ancient Beow-myth. Yet one such instance of name-association is not conclusive. We cannot leave out of consideration the possibility of its being a mere chance coincidence, especially considering how large is the number of place names recorded in Old English charters. Of late, people have become more sceptical in drawing inferences from proper names, and quite recently there has been a tendency entirely to overlook the evidence of the charter, by way of making compensation for having hitherto overrated it.
All that can be said with certainty is that it is remarkable that a place named after Beowa should be found in the immediate proximity of a "Grendel's lake," and that this fact supports the possibility, though it assuredly does not prove, that in the oldest versions of the tale the monster queller was named Beow, not Beowulf. But it is only a possibility: it is not grounded upon any real evidence.
These crucial references occur in a charter given by Athelstan at Luton, concerning a grant of land at Ham in Wiltshire to his thane Wulfgar. [See Birch, Cartularium Saxonicum, 1887, vol. II, p. 363.]
... Ego Æðelstanus, rex Anglorum ... quandam telluris particulam meo fideli ministro Wulfgaro ... in loco quem solicolae œt Hamme vocitant tribuo ... Praedicta siquidem tellus his terminis circumcincta clarescit....
ðonne norð ofer dūne on mēos-hlinc westeweardne; ðonne adūne on ðā yfre on bēowan hammes hecgan, on brēmeles sceagan ēasteweardne; ðonne on ðā blācan grǣfan; ðonne norð be ðēm ondhēafdan tō ðǣre scortan dīc būtan ānan æcre; ðonne tō fugelmere tō ðān wege; ondlong weges tō ottes forda; ðonon tō wudumere; ðonne tō ðǣre rūwan hecgan; ðæt on langan hangran; ðonne on grendles mere; ðonon on dyrnan geat....
Ambiguous as this evidence is, I do not think it can be dismissed as it is by Lawrence (Pub. Mod. Lang. Assoc. Amer. XXIV, 252) and Panzer (Beowulf, 397), who both say "How do we know that it is not the merest chance?" It may of course be chance: but this does not justify us in basing an argument upon the assumption that it is the merest chance. Lawrence continues: "Suppose one were to set up a theory that there was a saga-relation between Scyld and Bikki, and offered as proof the passage in the charter for the year 917 in which there are mentioned, as in the same district, scyldes treow and bican sell.... How much weight would this carry?"
The answer surely is that the occurrence of the two names together in the charter would, by itself, give no basis whatever for starting such a theory: but if, on other grounds, the theory were likely, then the occurrence of the two names together would certainly have some corroborative value. Exactly how much, it is impossible to say, because we cannot estimate the element of chance, and we cannot be certain that the grendel and the beowa mentioned are identical with our Grendel and our Beowulf.
Miller has argued [Academy, May 1894, p. 396] that grendles is not a proper name here, but a common noun signifying "drain," and that grendles mere therefore means "cesspool."
Now "grindle" is found in modern dialect and even in Middle English[[85]] in the sense of "a narrow ditch" or "gutter," but I doubt if it can be proved to be an Old English word. Evidence would rather point to its being an East Anglian corruption of the much more widely spread drindle, or dringle, used both as a verb "to go slowly, to trickle," and as "a small trickling stream." And even if an O.E. grendel as a common noun meaning "gutter" were authenticated, it seems unlikely to me that places were named "the fen," "the mere," "the pit," "the brook"—"of the gutter." There is no ground whatever for supposing the existence of an O.E. grendel = "sewer," or anything which would lead us to suppose grendles mere or gryndeles sylle to mean "cesspool[[86]]." Surely it is probable, knowing what we do of the way in which the English settlers gave epic names to the localities around their settlements, that these places were named after Grendel because they seemed the sort of place where his story might be localized—like "Weyland's smithy" or "Wade's causeway": and that the meaning is "Grendel's fen," "mere," "pit" or "brook."
Again, both Panzer and Lawrence suggest that the Beowa who gave his name to the ham may have been, not the hero, but "an ordinary mortal called after him" ... "some individual who lived in this locality." But, among the numerous English proper names recorded, can any instance be found of any individual named Beowa? And was it in accordance with the rules of Old English nomenclature to give to mortals the names of these heroes of the genealogies[[87]]?
Recent scepticism as to the "Beow-myth" has been largely due to the fact that speculation as to Beow had been carried too far. For example, because Beow appeared in the West Saxon genealogy, it had been assumed that the Beow-myth belonged essentially to the Angles and Saxons. Yet Beow would seem to have been also known among Scandinavians. For in somewhat later days Scandinavian genealogists, when they had made the acquaintance of the Anglo-Saxon pedigrees, noted that Beow had a Scandinavian counterpart in a hero whom they called Bjar[[88]]. That something was known in the north of this Bjar is proved by the Kálfsvísa, that same catalogue of famous heroes and their horses which we have already found giving us the counterparts of Onela and Eadgils. Yet this dry reference serves to show that Bjar must once have been sufficiently famous to have a horse specially his own[[89]]. Whether the fourteenth century Scandinavian who made Bjar the Northern equivalent of Beow was merely guessing, we unfortunately cannot tell. Most probably he was, for there is reason to think that the hero corresponding to Beow was named, not Bjár, but Byggvir[[90]]: a correspondence intelligible to modern philologists as in agreement with phonetic law, but naturally not obvious to an Icelandic genealogist. But however this may be, the assumption that Beow was peculiarly the hero of Angles and Saxons seems hardly justified.
Again, since Beow is an ancestor of Woden, it was further assumed that he was an ancient god, and that in the story of his adventures we had to deal with a nature-myth of a divine deliverer who saved the people from Grendel and his mother, the personified powers of the stormy sea. It is with the name of Müllenhoff, its most enthusiastic and ablest advocate, that this "mythological theory" is particularly associated. That Grendel is fictitious no one, of course, would deny. But Müllenhoff and his school, in applying the term "mythical" to those portions of the Beowulf story for which no historical explanation could be found, meant that they enshrined nature-myths. They thought that those elements in heroic poetry which could not be referred back to actual fact must be traced to ancient stories in which were recorded the nation's belief about the sun and the gods: about storms and seasons.