[77] The identification of Fifeldor with the Eider has been doubted, notably by Holthausen, though he seems less doubtful in his latest edition (third edit. II, 178). The reasons for the identification appear to me the following. Place names ending in dor are exceedingly rare. When, therefore, two independent authorities tell us that Offa fought at a place named Fifel-dor or Egi-dor, it appears unlikely that this can be a mere coincidence: it seems more natural to assume that the names are corruptions of one original. But further, the connection is not limited to the second element in the name. For the Eider (Egidora, Ægisdyr) would in O.E. be Egor-dor: and Egor-dor stands to Fifel-dor precisely as egor-stream (Boethius, Metra, XX, 118) does to fifel-stream (Metra, XXVI, 26), "egor" and "fifel" being interchangeable synonyms. See note to Widsith, l. 43 (p. 204). It is objected that the interchange of fifel and egor, though frequent in common nouns, would be unusual in the name of a place. The reply is that the Old English scop may not have regarded it as a place-name. He may have substituted fifel-dor for the synonymous egor-dor, "the monster gate," without realizing that it was the name of a definite place, just as he would have substituted fifel-stream for egor-stream, "the monster stream, the sea," if alliteration demanded the change.
[78] The Deeds of Beowulf, LXXXV.
[79] See below, pp. [105]-12, and [Appendix (D)] below.
[80] Wihtlæg appears in Saxo as Vigletus (Book IV, ed. Holder, p. 105).
[81] Nibelungen Lied, ed. Piper, 328.
[82] Book IV (ed. Holder, p. 102).
[83] Kemble, Beowulf, Postscript IX; followed by Müllenhoff, etc. So, lately, Chadwick (H.A. 126): cf. also Sievers ('Beowulf und Saxo' in the Berichte d. k. sächs. Gesell. d. Wissenschaften, 1895, pp. 180-88); Bradley in Encyc. Brit. III, 761; Boer, Beowulf, 135. See also Olrik, Danmarks Heltedigtning, I, 246. For further discussion see below, [Appendix (A)].
[84] Beo—Scyld—Scef in Ethelwerd: Beowius—Sceldius—Sceaf in William of Malmesbury. But in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle five generations intervene between Sceaf and his descendant Scyldwa, father of Beaw.
[85] "Item there is vii acres lond lying by the high weye toward the grendyll": Bury Wills, ed. S. Tymms (Camden Soc. XLIX, 1850, p. 31).
[86] I should hardly have thought it worth while to revive this old "cesspool" theory, were it not for the statement of Dr Lawrence that "Miller's argument that the word grendel here is not a proper name at all, that it means 'drain,' has never, to my knowledge, been refuted." (Pub. Mod. Lang. Assoc. Amer. XXIV, 253.)