him. At any rate the hell (of fire) is only predicted for those showing malice (sliðne nið), and it is not plain that the freoðo of the Father is ultimately obtainable by none of these men of old. It is probable that the contrast between 92–8 and 175–88 is intentional: the song of the minstrel in the days of untroubled joy, before the assault of Grendel, telling of the Almighty and His fair creation, and the loss of knowledge and praise, and the fire awaiting such malice, in the time of temptation and despair.
But it is open to doubt whether lines 181–88 are original, or at any rate unaltered. Not of course because of the apparent discrepancy – though it is a matter vital to the whole poem: we cannot dismiss lines simply because they offer difficulty of such a kind. But because, unless my ear and judgement are wholly at fault, they have a ring and measure unlike their context, and indeed unlike that of the poem as a whole. The place is one that offers at once special temptation to enlargement or alteration and special facilities for doing either without grave dislocation.38 I suspect that the second half of line 180 has been altered, while what follows has remodelled or replaced a probably shorter passage, making the comment (one would say, guided by the poem as a whole) that they forsook God under tribulation, and incurred the danger of hell-fire. This in itself would be a comment of the Beowulf poet, who was probably provided by his original material with a reference to wigweorþung in the sacred site of Heorot at this juncture in the story.
In any case the unleugbare Inkonsequenz (Hoops) of this passage is felt chiefly by those who assume that by references to the Almighty the legendary Danes and the Scylding court are depicted as ‘Christian’. If that is so, the mention of heathen þeaw is, of course, odd; but it offers only one (if a marked) example of a confusion of thought fundamental to the poem, and does not then merit long consideration. Of all the attempts to deal with this Inkonsequenz perhaps the least satisfactory is the most recent: that of Hoops,39 who supposes that the poet had to represent the Danish prayers as addressed to the Devil for the protection of the honour of the Christengott, since the prayers were not answered. But this attributes to the poet a confusion (and insincerity) of thought that an ‘Anglo-Saxon’ was hardly modern or advanced enough to achieve. It is difficult to believe that he could have been so singularly ill instructed in the nature of Christian prayer. And the pretence that all prayers to the Christengott are answered, and swiftly, would scarcely have deceived the stupidest member of his audience. Had he embarked on such bad theology, he would have had many other difficulties to face: the long time of woe before God relieved the distress of these Christian Danes by sending Scyld (13); and indeed His permission of the assaults of Grendel at all upon such a Christian people, who do not seem depicted as having perpetrated any crime punishable by calamity. But in fact God did provide a cure for Grendel – Beowulf, and this is recognized by the poet in the mouth of Hrothgar himself (381 ff.). We may acquit the maker of Beowulf of the suggested motive, whatever we may think of the Inkonsequenz. He could hardly have been less aware than we that in history (in England and in other lands), and in Scripture, people could depart from the one God to other service in time of trial – precisely because that God has never guaranteed to His servants immunity from temporal calamity, before or after prayer. It is to idols that men turned (and turn) for quick and literal answers.
NOTES
1 The Shrine, p. 4.
2 Thus in Professor Chambers’s great bibliography (in his Beowulf: An Introduction) we find a section, §8. Questions of Literary History, Date, and Authorship; Beowulf in the Light of History, Archaeology, Heroic Legend, Mythology, and Folklore. It is impressive, but there is no section that names Poetry. As certain of the items included show, such consideration as Poetry is accorded at all is buried unnamed in §8.
3 Beowulf translated into modern English rhyming verse, Constable, 1925.
4 A Short History of English Literature, Oxford Univ. Press, 1921, pp. 2-3.1 choose this example, because it is precisely to general literary histories that we must usually turn for literary judgements on Beowulf. The experts in Beowulfiana are seldom concerned with such judgements. And it is in the highly compressed histories, such as this, that we discover what the process of digestion makes of the special ‘literature’ of the experts. Here is the distilled product of Research. This compendium, moreover, is competent, and written by a man who had (unlike some other authors of similar things) read the poem itself with attention.
5 I include nothing that has not somewhere been said by some one, if not in my exact words; but I do not, of course, attempt to represent all the dicta, wise or otherwise, that have been uttered.
6 The Dark Ages, pp. 252–3.
7 None the less Ker modified it in an important particular in English Literature, Mediæval, pp. 29–34. In general, though in different words, vaguer and less incisive, he repeats himself. We are still told that ‘the story is commonplace and the plan is feeble’, or that ‘the story is thin and poor’. But we learn also at the end of his notice that: ‘Those distracting allusions to things apart from the chief story make up for their want of proportion. They give the impression of reality and weight; the story is not in the air … it is part of the solid world.’ By the admission of so grave an artistic reason for the procedure of the poem Ker himself began the undermining of his own criticism of its structure. But this line of thought does not seem to have been further pursued. Possibly it was this very thought, working in his mind, that made Ker’s notice of Beowulf in the small later book, his ‘shilling shocker’, more vague and hesitant in tone, and so of less influence.
8 Foreword to Strong’s translation, p. xxvi: (See here)
9 It has also been favoured by the rise of ‘English schools’, in whose syllabuses Beowulf has inevitably some place, and the consequent production of compendious literary histories. For these cater (in fact, if not in intention) for those seeking knowledge about, and ready-made judgements upon, works which they have not the time, or (often enough) the desire, to know at first hand. The small literary value of such summaries is sometimes recognized in the act of giving them. Thus Strong (op. cit.) gives a fairly complete one, but remarks that ‘the short summary does scant justice to the poem’. Ker in E. Lit. (Med.) says: ‘So told, in abstract, it is not a particularly interesting story.’ He evidently perceived what might be the retort, for he attempts to justify the procedure in this case, adding: ‘Told in this way the story of Theseus or Hercules would still have much more in it.’ I dissent. But it does not matter, for the comparison of two plots ‘told in this way’ is no guide whatever to the merits of literary versions told in quite different ways. It is not necessarily the best poem that loses least in précis.
10 Namely the use of it in Beowulf, both dramatically in depicting the sagacity of Beowulf the hero, and as an essential part of the traditions concerning the Scylding court, which is the legendary background against which the rise of the hero is set – as a later age would have chosen the court of Arthur. Also the probable allusion in Alcuin’s letter to Speratus: see Chambers’s Widsith, p. 78.
11 This expression may well have been actually used by the eald geneat, but none the less (or perhaps rather precisely on that account) is probably to be regarded not as new-minted, but as an ancient and honoured gnome of long descent.
12 For the words hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare þe ure mœgen lytlað are not, of course, an exhortation to simple courage. They are not reminders that fortune favours the brave, or that victory may be snatched from defeat by the stubborn. (Such thoughts were familiar, but otherwise expressed: wyrd oft nereð unfœgne eorl, þonne his ellen deah.) The words of Byrhtwold were made for a man’s last and hopeless
