Beowulf: An Introduction to the Study of the Poem with a Discussion of the Stories of Offa and Finn

by R. W. Chambers

[730] Cf. Falk, Altnordische Waffenkunde, 28.

[731] I would suggest this as the more likely because, if the ring were inserted for a practical purpose, it is not easy to see why it later survived in the form of a mere knob, which is neither useful nor ornamental. But if it were used to attach the symbolical "peace bands," it may have been retained, in a "fossilized form," with a symbolical meaning.

[732] Most editors indeed do take it in this sense, though recently Schücking has adopted Stjerna's explanation of "ring-sword." In l. 322, Falk (27) takes hring-īren to refer to a "ring-adorned sword," though it may well mean a ring-byrnie.

[733] Actually, I believe, more: for two ring-swords were found at Faversham, and are now in the British Museum. For an account of one of them see Roach Smith, Collectanea Antiqua, 1868, vol. VI, 139. In this specimen both the fixed ring and the ring which moves within it are complete circles. But in the Gilton sword (Archæologia, XXX, 132) and in the sword discovered at Bifrons (Archæologia Cantiana, X, 312) one of the rings no longer forms a complete circle, and in the sword discovered at Sarre (Archæol. Cant. VI, 172) the rings are fixed together, and one of them has little resemblance to a ring at all.

[734] At Concevreux. It is described by M. Jules Pilloy in Mémoires de la Société Académique de St Quentin, 4^e Sér. tom. XVI, 1913; see esp. pp. 36-7.

[735] See Lindenschmit, "Germanisches Schwert mit ungewöhnlicher Bildung des Knaufes," in Die Altertümer unserer heidnischen Vorzeit, V Bd., V Heft, Taf. 30, p. 165, Mainz, 1905.

[736] Salin has no doubt that the Swedish type from Uppland (his figure 252) is later than even the latest type of English ring-sword (the Sarre pommel, 251) which is itself later than the Faversham (249) or Bifrons (250) pommel. See Salin (B.), Die Altgermanische Thierornamentik, Stockholm, 1904, p. 101. The same conclusion is arrived at by Lindenschmit: "Die ursprüngliche Form ist wohl in dem, unter Nr. 249 von Salin abgebildeten Schwertknopf aus Kent zu sehen"; and even more emphatically by Pilloy, who pronounces the Swedish Vendel sword both on account of its "ring" and other characteristics, as "inspirée par un modèle venu de cette contrée [Angleterre]."

[737] The Benty Grange helmet; see below, p. [358].

[738] Depicted by Clark Hall, Stjerna's Essays, p. 258.

[739] Clark Hall's Beowulf, p. 227.