Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, together with Sellic Spell

by J. R. R. Tolkien

as he lay on a hard and stony bed

  and venom burned him, and he bled,

  remembered the light of Heorot.

  *

  ALSO BY J.R.R. TOLKIEN

  THE HOBBIT

  LEAF BY NIGGLE

  ON FAIRY-STORIES

  FARMER GILES OF HAM

  THE HOMECOMING OF BEORHTNOTH

  THE LORD OF THE RINGS

  THE ADVENTURES OF TOM BOMBADIL

  THE ROAD GOES EVER ON (WITH DONALD SWANN)

  SMITH OF WOOTTON MAJOR

  Works published posthumously

  SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT, PEARL AND SIR ORFEO*

  THE FATHER CHRISTMAS LETTERS

  THE SILMARILLION*

  PICTURES BY J.R.R. TOLKIEN*

  UNFINISHED TALES*

  THE LETTERS OF J.R.R. TOLKIEN*

  FINN AND HENGEST

  MR BLISS

  THE MONSTERS AND THE CRITICS & OTHER ESSAYS*

  ROVERANDOM

  THE CHILDREN OF HÚRIN*

  THE LEGEND OF SIGURD AND GUDRÚN*

  THE FALL OF ARTHUR*

  The History of Middle-earth – by Christopher Tolkien

  I THE BOOK OF LOST TALES, PART ONE

  II THE BOOK OF LOST TALES, PART TWO

  III THE LAYS OF BELERIAND

  IV THE SHAPING OF MIDDLE-EARTH

  V THE LOST ROAD AND OTHER WRITINGS

  VI THE RETURN OF THE SHADOW

  VII THE TREASON OF ISENGARD

  VIII THE WAR OF THE RING

  IX SAURON DEFEATED

  X MORGOTH’S RING

  XI THE WAR OF THE JEWELS

  XII THE PEOPLES OF MIDDLE-EARTH

  * Edited by Christopher Tolkien

  COPYRIGHT

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  Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2014

  1

  All texts and materials by J.R.R. Tolkien

  © The Tolkien Trust 2014

  Preface, Introductions, Notes and all other materials

  © C.R. Tolkien 2014

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  The untitled illustration of a dragon and warrior that appears on page i of this book is reproduced courtesy of The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford and is selected from their holdings labelled MS. Tolkien Drawings 87, fol. 39.

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  INTRODUCTION TO THE TRANSLATION

  1 I am grateful to Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull for this reference.

  2 At that time I did various ‘amanuensis’ tasks to assist my father: recently I came upon a forgotten map of The Silmarillion, very carefully drawn and coloured, signed with my initials and the date 1940, though I have no recollection now of its making. Other indications suggest 1942: see the Notes on the Text of the translation, pp. 126–7, note on lines 2260–2.)

  COMMENTARY ACCOMPANYING THE TRANSLATION OF BEOWULF

  3 [The word scop meant ‘poet, minstrel’; the meaning of þyle was very various and can be uncertain in particular cases. Elsewhere in these lectures my father wrote:

  To learn by heart from other and older members of his craft was part of the occupation of the scop or minstrel, and the þyle, ‘recorder’ of genealogies, and stories in prose. But also it was his duty to make lays or tales or mnemonic lists concerning matters that came under his own contemporary observation, or came to him personally, as news from afar.]

  4 [‘Cædmon’s Hymn is famous as the only authentic piece that survives of the once renowned sacred poetry of the Whitby cowherd, Cædmon, who lived in the seventh century. The nine lines of the hymn were recorded by the Venerable Bede, and are found in an eighth century copy of his Latin Ecclesiastical History; they are thus among the very earliest recorded fragments of English.’

  ‘Cædmon lived to make a great mass of verse on Scriptural themes of the Old and New Testament and also to have many imitators. Bede says that none of them could compare with him. But we can no longer judge for ourselves for practically all have perished. Of Cædmon’s work that so greatly moved men of the earlier age (the seventh and eighth centuries) the only certainly genuine survivor is this first hymn.

  One great book of scriptural verse has come down to us: MS Junius 11, often called the Cædmonian Manuscript. It used to lie on the show shelves of the Bodleian Library, and anyone who would take the trouble to walk up the winding stairs could go and look at it – where it is now I don’t know. It was written – I mean penned by the scribes – about A.D.1000; but though it contains matter that is very old (though dressed up in later spelling) it does not represent Cædmon’s work.’

  J.R.R.T., passages from lectures on Old English verse.]

  5 [‘Saxo Grammaticus (the lettered), the earlier books of whose Historia Danica are a store-house of Scandinavian tradition and poetry, clothed in a difficult and bombastic, but always amusing Latin’ (R.W. Chambers). Saxo was a Dane; he flourished in the latter part of the twelfth century, but of his life scarcely anything is known. Concerning Haldanus he wrote that the most remarkable thing about him was that ‘though he had made use of every opportunity that the times afforded for the display of his ferocity, his life was ended by old age and not by the sword.’]

  6 The religious connexions were with the culture gods, in Norse terms Njöðr and Frey (Yngvi-Frey). Hence we find the names Fróda and Ingeld as Heathobeard names. But also after the Danish seizure of this site we find the name Fréawaru given to Hrothgar’s daughter; and the Danes claim the title ‘Friends of Ing’.

  7 [In all the texts of the translation this is rendered ‘creature’, 83. Against his reference here to gǽst my father later pencilled a note suggesting that there may be a confusion with gæst, gest ‘stranger’. This, and the meaning o
f féond on helle, were discussed by him in Appendix (a), Grendel’s titles, to The Monsters and the Critics – where he said of the word gǽst that ‘in any case it cannot be translated either by the modern ghost or spirit. Creature is probably the nearest we can now get.’]

  8 [Wulfstan: eminent scholar and ecclesiast, Archbishop of York, died 1023.]

  9 [The reference is to the Old English poem Elene, one of several poems known to be the work of a poet named Cynewulf, from his having interwoven into passages of his verse the names of the Runic letters that spell out his name.]

  10 [To make this clearer to the eye, in addition to the brackets enclosing lines 134–5 (the translation of *168–9), which my father entered on the typescripts, I have inserted brackets to enclose also lines 143–50 (the translation of *180–8.)]

  11 [On Cynewulf see the footnote on p. 175. The subject of this poem is the discovery of the true Cross by St. Helena, the mother of the Emperor Constantine.]

  12 [Heardred was the son of Hygelac. The Hrædling dynasty: the descendants of Hrethel (Hrædla), father of Hygelac. On the forms Hrǽdla, Hrǽdling see the note to 358–9, pp. 238–9.]

  13 [In the complete translation, 2186, léod Scylfinga is translated ‘a lord of Scylfing race’.]

  14 [The sons of Ongentheow King of the Swedes were Ohthere and Onela (see the note to 48–9). Eanmund and Eadgils were the sons of Ohthere. When Onela became king his nephews fled the country and took refuge with the king of the Geats, who was now Heardred, the son of Hygelac slain in Frisia (2003–4). Both Heardred and Eanmund were slain in Onela’s subsequent attack, the slayer of Eanmund being Wihstan, Wiglaf’s father (2194–5); Beowulf then became king of the Geats. Afterwards, with the aid of Beowulf, Eadgils Ohthere’s son went north and slew Onela, his uncle, becoming himself king of the Swedes (2012–16). See the note to 303–4, at end.]

  15 [Gautar is the Old Norse form of O.E. Geatas.]

  16 [My father made a reference here, but by line-numbers only, to passages in the Old English poem known as The Wanderer. These counsels are cited in translation in the note to 329 ff.]

  17 In his farewell speech Hrothgar says (*1855–63): ‘Thou hast achieved this, that between the peoples, Geats and Danes, mutual peace shall be, and the strife and cruel enmity shall cease, that they before waged; that while I rule this wide realm, treasures shall be exchanged, and many men shall with good will greet one another over the sea where the gannet bathes, many a ring-prowed ship over the deep shall bring gifts and tokens of friendship.’ This would naturally be interpreted that right down to Beowulf’s arrival there had been tension and even war between the two realms.

  [With this passage compare that in the complete translation, 1554–62.]

  18 A legitimate deduction from his military success in the Swedish war, turning defeat into crushing victory; and from his great (historical) raid into the Frankish realm, which in itself reflects (a) ascendancy over the Swedes and absence of fear on his northern borders, (b) friendship with the Danish king, and (c) power and greed.

  19 [In my father’s own edition of Exodus, published by Joan Turville-Petre in 1981, p.57, he noted: ‘Lyft-edoras is probably “borders of the sky”, i.e. the horizon; eodor means both “fence (protection)” and “fenced enclosure, a court”. The phrase should therefore mean “broke through the fences of the sky”.’]

  20 [In the light of these considerations my father changed the translation from its original form in the typescript C ‘when five I bound, and made desolate the race of monsters, and when I slew amid the waves’ to ‘where five I bound making desolate’, and he also underlined the ‘and’ in ‘and when I slew’.]

  21 Consider the remarkable passage 1767–74, *2105–13, when Beowulf reports that Hrothgar himself, at the feast celebrating the death of Grendel, performed and apparently gave specimens of most ‘genres’ of entertainment: (i) harp-playing, (ii) recitation of lays, historical and tragic, (iii) telling wonder-stories [syllíc spell *2109] correctly (that is, according to received form), (iv) making an elegiac lament on the passing of youth to old age.

  22 See my ‘reconstruction’ or specimen Sellíc Spell which I hope to read later. I think that Beowulf had one (or two) companions, also eager to try the feat. Beowulf took the last turn. And [that] will explain his passivity while Grendel kills and devours ‘Handshoe’ (1745–9, *2076–80), evidently the slǽpendne rinc of *741 (‘a sleeping man’, 604).

  23 Part of the point, I think, of the ic ána passage, in which Beowulf asks Hrothgar to leave only Geats in the hall, is that some at least of the bravest of the Danish warriors would have wished to remain also, for saving of Danish honour, after such a challenge by aliens.

  24 [After these words my father cited the Old English text, line *2502, [ic . . . Dæghrefne wearð] tó handbonan, in his translation 2103 ‘my hands were Dæghrefn’s death’. But subsequently he struck out the words tó handbonan and wrote in the margin: ‘handbona means “actual slayer” and can be used of killing with weapons. So in *2506 it is necessary to say (after using handbona) ne wæs ecg bona “no sword-edge was his slayer”,’ 2107.]

  25 The white bear (ursus maritimus) might seem a connecting link; but the ‘polar bear’ seems not to have been known, even in Scandinavia, until the settlements in Iceland (end of the ninth century) and Greenland (end of the tenth century). It was then called hvítabjörn. Traditionally, the first hvítabjörn was brought to Norway by Ingimund the Old c. A.D. 900. In any case one is reminded rather of tales from the northern isles about demonic sea-creatures, sometimes of seal-form, that may molest the dwellings of men near the sea, begetting offspring on women, or carrying them off. Some such ravages may well be referred to in the Wedera níð [*423, ‘the afflictions of the windloving Geats’ 341–2] that Beowulf avenged [see note to p. 230, 338–43]. [Against the latter part of this note my father wrote that references were required but that he could not at that time recover them.]

  26 [ablaut: a term used of the alternation in the vowels of related word forms, as e.g. drink, drank, drunk.]

  27 [The original text of my father’s translation (356–9) of *443–5 was ‘Methinks he will . . . devour without fear the Geatish folk, as oft he hath the proud hosts of your men.’ This depends on the interpretation of the text as mægenhréð manna. In a note to the present commentary on this matter he remarked that mægenhréð ‘might-triumph of men’ occurs nowhere else; and ‘even if this is supposed to mean “triumphal force [i.e. troop] of men” it is a singularly unhappy way of referring to men who have actually been killed and eaten.’ The later text was pencilled in on the typescript C. (See the Notes on the Text, p. 113, 356–9.)

  28 Like football ‘stars’ acquired to strengthen a team, but with this distinction: the champion got the money or other payment, not the chieftain or people whom he had left. Unless of course, like Ecgtheow, he had got into trouble (a feud), in which case his adherence could be obtained by settling his debts (see 379–80, *470).

  29 Actually, as the time-scheme is presented, Beowulf was only ‘fed’ by Hrothgar for three days: the day of his arrival, followed by the match with Grendel; the day of the feast of victory, followed by the coming of Grendel’s dam; the day of the assault on Grendel’s lair, followed by the final feast. Beowulf left early next day.

  30 [This is not actually stated: it is said only that ‘She had borne away that corse in her fiend’s clutches beneath the mountain stream’.]

  31 [Added later:] There is a tinge of irony here: ‘You have come feorran? [*430; ‘from so far away’ 348] ‘Not too far for your father when he needed help. Not too far, then, to come and pay the debt.’

  32 [For the successive alterations made to the translation in this passage see the Notes on the Text, p. 114, 395–7.]

  33 For example, it could apply to proverbs or platitudes of received wisdom. Such pronouncements as that in 465–6, the subject of the last note, were a gidd.

  34 [Klaeber took the view that the emendation geséon [ne] meahton ‘has
a false ring; one would expect, at least, something like leng geséon ne meahton’ (‘could see (the sun) no longer’).]

  35 At any rate in the first part. The second part perhaps less so: in any case it is too much interrupted by the weight of history outside the immediate event.

  36 [Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, translated by J.R.R. Tolkien, stanzas 27–28.]

  37 [Beowulf *2162, ‘Use all the gifts with honour’ 1816.]

  38 [God alone knows.]

  39 ‘loyal’ here means ‘dutiful, doing what is required (at the required time) as a ‘loyal’ servant would. So in the Towneley play of Noah (15th century): ‘This forty dayes has rayn beyn; it will therefor abate full lele.’

  40 Béowulfes síð may well have been the actual name by which the earlier lay (or lays) dealing with Beowulf’s coming to Heorot was known.

  41 The unkingly crimes of avarice and ungenerous hand, and of treachery and murder of men of his own court, are charged against him in 1436 ff., *1711 ff.

  42 It would of course be understood that he would present much of this wealth to his own lord Hygelac on his return. It is in fact recorded that he gave Hygelac all the first four gifts (1807 ff., *2152 ff., where we learn that the corslet had been Heorogár’s, and was in fact specially sent to Hygelac), and also four of the horses; and gave Wealtheow’s necklace to Queen Hygd.

  43 If, as seems most probable, under the words eam his nefan (*881) ‘mother’s brother to nephew’ [translation 716–17, ‘of such matters, brother to his sister’s son’], which is correct if incomplete, lies the same story as in the Völsunga Saga, in which Sinfiötli was the son of Sigmundr and his sister.

  44 stedig ‘fixed moveless’ is only recorded in the derived sense ‘sterile’, but it must have existed in the original sense, as the ancestor of our ‘steady’, because there is a verb derived from it, stedigian, ‘bring to a stand, stop’.

  45 [The translation 803–4, cited above, which goes back to the first typescript, ‘At the tip was each one of the stout nails most like unto steel’, shows the emendation of steda to stíðra.]

  46 [The story of Glámr can be readily found in R.W. Chambers, Beowulf, An Introduction, where extracts from the Grettis Saga, with translations, are given.]