definite physical location. Details of the original northern conception, equated and blended with the Scriptural, are possibly sometimes to be seen colouring the references to Christian hell. A celebrated example is the reference in Judith to the death of Holofernes, which recalls remarkably certain features in Vðluspá. Cf. Judith 115: wyrmum bewunden, and 119: 01ðam wyrmsele with Vōl. 36 sá’s undinn salr orma hryggjum: which translated into O.E. would be se is wunden sele wyrma hrycgum.
34 Such as 168–9, probably a clumsily intruded couplet, of which the only certain thing that can be said is that it interrupts (even if its sense were plain) the natural connexion between 165–7 and 170; the question of the expansion (in this case at any rate skilful and not inapt) of Hrothgar’s giedd, 1724–60; and most notably lines 175–88.
35 Of course the use of words more or less equivalent to ‘fate’ continued throughout the ages. The most Christian poets refer to wyrd, usually of unfortunate events; but sometimes of good, as in Elene 1047, where the conversion of Judas is ascribed to wyrd. There remains always the main mass of the workings of Providence (Metod) which are inscrutable, and for practical purposes dealt with as ‘fate’ or ‘luck’. Metod is in Old English the word that is most nearly allied to ‘fate’, although employed as a synonym of god. That it could be so employed is due probably to its having anciently in English an agental significance (as well as an abstract sense), as in Old Norse where mjōtuðr has the senses ‘dispenser, ruler’ and ‘doom, fate, death’. But in Old English metodsceaft means ‘doom’ or ‘death’. Cf. 2814 f. where wyrd is more active than metodsceaft. In Old Saxon metod is similarly used, leaning also to the side of the inscrutable (and even hostile) aspects of the world’s working. Gabriel in the Hêliand says of John the Baptist that he will not touch wine: so habed im uurdgiscapu, metod gimarcod endi maht godes (128); it is said of Anna when her husband died: that sie thiu mikila maht metodes todelda, uured uurdigiscapu (511). In Old Saxon metod(o)giscapu and metodigisceft, equal Fate, as O.E. metodsceaft.
36 Compare, for instance, the intrusive commentary in Fóstbrœðra saga which observes in a description of a grim pagan character: ekki var hjarta hans sem fóarn í fugli, ekki var þat blóðfult, svá at þat skylfi af hræðslu, heldr var þat hert af enum hæsta hōfuðsmið í ōllum hvatleik (ch. 2); and again Almáttigr er sá sem svá snart hjarta ok óhrætt lét í brjóst Porgeiri; ok ekki var hans hugpryði af mōnnum ger né honum í brjóst borin, heldr af enum hæsta hōfuðsmið (ib.). Here the notion is explicitly (if unseasonably and absurdly) expressed.
37 It is not strictly true to say, as is said, for instance, by Hoops, that he is ‘identified’ with their heathen god. The Christian theory was that such gods did not exist, and were inventions of the Devil, and that the power of idols was due to the fact that he, or one of his emissaries, often actually inhabited them, and could be seen in their real hideousness if the veil of illusion was removed. Compare Aelfric’s homilies on St Bartholomew, and St Matthew, where by the power of an angel or saint the devil residing in idols was revealed as a black silhearwa.
38 Similarly it is the very marked character already by the poet given to Hrothgar which has induced and made possible without serious damage the probable revision and expansion of his sermon. Well done as the passage in itself is, the poem would be better with the excision of approximately lines 1740–60; and these lines are on quite independent grounds under the strongest suspicion of being due to later revision and addition. The actual joints have, nevertheless, if that is so, been made with a technical competence as good as that which I here assume for the earlier passage.
39 Kommentar zum Beowulf, p. 39.
1
ON TRANSLATION AND WORDS
No defence is usually offered for translating Beowulf. Yet the making, or at any rate the publishing, of a modern English rendering needs defence: especially the presentation of a translation into plain prose of what is in fact a poem, a work of skilled and close-wrought metre (to say no more). The process has its dangers. Too many people are willing to form, and even to print, opinions of this greatest of the surviving works of ancient English poetic art after reading only such a translation, or indeed after reading only a bare ‘argument’, such as appears in the present book. On the strength of a nodding acquaintance of this sort (it may be supposed), one famous critic informed his public that Beowulf was ‘only small beer’. Yet if beer at all, it is a drink dark and bitter: a solemn funeral-ale with the taste of death. But this is an age of potted criticism and pre-digested literary opinion; and in the making of these cheap substitutes for food translations unfortunately are too often used.
To use a prose translation for this purpose is, none the less, an abuse. Beowulf is not merely in verse, it is a great poem; and the plain fact that no attempt can be made to represent its metre, while little of its other specially poetic qualities can be caught in such a medium, should be enough to show that ‘Clark Hall’, revised or unrevised, is not offered as a means of judging the original, or as a substitute for reading the poem itself. The proper purpose of a prose translation is to provide an aid to study.
If you are not concerned with poetry, but with other matters, such as references to heroic names now nearly faded into oblivion, or the mention of ancient customs and beliefs, you may find in this competent translation all that you require for comparison with other sources. Or nearly all – for the use of ‘Anglo-Saxon’ evidence is never, of course, entirely safe without a knowledge of the language. No translation that aims at being readable in itself can, without elaborate annotation, proper to an edition of the original, indicate all the possibilities or hints afforded by the text. It is not possible, for instance, in translation always to represent a recurring word in the original by one given modern word. Yet the recurrence may be important.
Thus ‘stalwart’ in 198, ‘broad’ in 1621, ‘huge’ in 1663, ‘mighty’ in 2140 are renderings of the one word eacen; while the related eacencrœftig, applied to the dragon’s hoard, is in 2280 and 3051 rendered ‘mighty’. These equivalents fit the contexts and the modern English sentences in which they stand, and are generally recognized as correct. But an enquirer into ancient beliefs, with the loss of eacen will lose the hint that in poetry this word preserved a special connotation. Originally it means not ‘large’ but ‘enlarged’, and in all instances may imply not merely size and strength, but an addition of power, beyond the natural, whether it is applied to the superhuman thirtyfold strength possessed by Beowulf (in this Christian poem it is his special gift from God), or to the mysterious magical powers of the giant’s sword and the dragon’s hoard imposed by runes and curses. Even the eacne eardas (1621) where the monsters dwelt may have been regarded as possessing, while these lived, an added power beyond the natural peril. This is only a casual example of the kind of difficulty and interest revealed by the language of Old English verse (and of Beowulf in particular), to which no literary translation can be expected to provide a complete index. For many Old English poetical words there are (naturally) no precise modern equivalents of the same scope and tone: they come down to us bearing echoes of ancient days beyond the shadowy borders of Northern history. Yet the compactness of the original idiom, inevitably weakened even in prose by transference to our looser modern language, does not tolerate long explanatory phrases. For no study of the fragmentary Anglo-Saxon documents is translation a complete substitute.
But you may be engaged in the more laudable labour of trying actually to read the original
