Although the heathen Angles had their own runic alphabet, it is unlikely that any poetry was written down until a generation had grown up trained in the use of the Latin letters learned from Christian missionaries. We cannot determine the date at which some book-learned man, interested in poetry, took down from the lips of a minstrel one of the stories that he had been accustomed to sing. It may have been before 700; much later it can hardly have been, for the old heathen poetry, though its existence might be threatened by the influence of the church, was still in vigorous life. The epic of Beowulf was not the only one that was reduced to writing: a fragment of the song about Finn, king of the Frisians, still survives, and possibly several other heroic poems were written down about the same time. As originally dictated, Beowulf probably contained the story outlined at the beginning of this article, with the addition of one or two of the episodes relating to the hero himself—among them the legend of the swimming-match. This story had doubtless been told at greater length in verse, but its insertion in its present place is the work of a poet, not of a mere redactor. The other episodes were introduced by some later writer, who had heard recited, or perhaps had read, a multitude of the old heathen songs, the substance of which he piously sought to preserve from oblivion by weaving it in an abridged form, into the texture of the one great poem which he was transcribing. The Christian passages, which are poetically of no value, are evidently of literary origin, and may be of any date down to that of the extant MS. The curious passage which says that the subjects of Hrothgar sought deliverance from Grendel in prayer at the temple of the Devil, “because they knew not the true God,” must surely have been substituted for a passage referring sympathetically to the worship of the ancient gods.
An interesting light on the history of the written text seems to be afforded by the phenomena of the existing MS. The poem is divided into numbered sections, the length of which was probably determined by the size of the pieces of parchment of which an earlier exemplar consisted. Now the first fifty-two lines, which are concerned with Scyld and his son Beowulf, stand outside this numbering. It may reasonably be inferred that there once existed a written text of the poem that did not include these lines. Their substance, however, is clearly ancient. Many difficulties will be obviated if we may suppose that this passage is the beginning of a different poem, the hero of which was not Beowulf the son of Ecgtheow, but his Danish namesake. It is true that Beowulf the Scylding is mentioned at the beginning of the first numbered section; but probably the opening lines of this section have undergone alteration in order to bring them into connexion with the prefixed matter.
Bibliography.—The volume containing the Beowulf MS. (then, as now, belonging to the Cottonian collection, and numbered “Vitellius A. xv.”) was first described by Humphrey Wanley in 1705, in his catalogue of MSS., published as vol. iii. of G. Hickes’s Thesaurus Veterum Linguarum Septentrionalium. In 1786 G.J. Thorkelin, an Icelander, made or procured two transcripts of the poem, which are still preserved in the Royal Library at Copenhagen, and are valuable for the criticism of the text, the MS. having subsequently become in places less legible. Thorkelin’s edition (1815) is of merely historic interest. The first edition showing competent knowledge of the language was produced in 1833 by J.M. Kemble. Since then editions have been very numerous. The text of the poem was edited by C.W.M. Grein in his Bibliothek der angelsächsischen Poesie (1857), and again separately in 1867. Autotypes of the MS. with transliteration by Julius Zupitza, were issued by the Early English Text Society in 1882. The new edition of Grein’s Bibliothek, by R.P. Wülker, vol. i. (1883), contains a revised text with critical notes. The most serviceable separate editions are those of M. Heyne (7th ed., revised by A. Socin, 1903), A.J. Wyatt (with English notes and glossary, 1898), and F. Holthausen (vol. i., 1905).
Eleven English translations of the poem have been published (see C.B. Tinker, The Translations of Beowulf, 1903). Among these may be mentioned those of J.M. Garnett (6th ed., 1900), a literal rendering in a metre imitating that of the original; J. Earle (1892) in prose; W. Morris (1895) in imitative metre, and almost unintelligibly archaistic in diction; and C.B. Tinker (1902) in prose.
For the bibliography of the earlier literature on Beowulf, and a detailed exposition of the theories therein advocated, see R.P. Wülker, Grundriss der angelsächsischen Litteratur (1882). The views of Karl Müllenhoff, which, though no longer tenable as a whole, have formed the basis of most of the subsequent criticism, may be best studied in his posthumous work, Beovulf, Untersuchungen über das angelsächsische Epos (1889). Much valuable matter may be found in B. ten Brink, Beowulf, Untersuchungen (1888). The work of G. Sarrazin, Beowulf-studien (1888), which advocates the strange theory that Beowulf is a translation by Cynewulf of a poem by the Danish singer Starkadr, contains, amid much that is fanciful, not a little that deserves careful consideration. The many articles by E. Sievers and S. Bugge, in Beiträdge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Litteratur and other periodicals, are of the utmost importance for the textual criticism and interpretation of the poem.
(H. Br.)
[1] Printed in Berger de Xivrey, Traditions Tératologiques (1836), from a MS. in private hands. Another MS., now at Wolfenbüttel, reads “Hunglacus” for Huiglaucus, and (ungrammatically) “gentes” for Getis.
BEQUEST (from O. Eng. becwethan, to declare or express in words; cf. “quoth”), the disposition of property by will. Strictly, “bequest” is used of personal, and “devise” of real property. (See [Legacy]; [Will or Testament].)