on hand gehwearf. Hē gehēold tela
fīftig wintra (wæs ðā frōd cyning,
2210eald ēþel-weard), oð ðæt ān[1] ongan
deorcum nihtum draca rīcs[i]an,[2]
sē ðe on hēa[um] hlǣwe hord[3] beweotode,
stān-beorh stēapne;[4] stīg under læg
eldum uncūð. Þǣr on innan gīong
2215[5]niða nāt-hwylc : : : : : : : gefēng
hǣðnum horde hond : : : : : : : :
- ↑ 2210. Later hand ‘ôn.’ Cf. l. 100.
- ↑ 2211. AB ‘ricsan,’ now gone.
- ↑ 2212. MS. very indistinct; nothing in AB between hea and hord. Zupitza ‘hea[ðo]-hlæwe,’ and in a foot-note: “what is left of the two letters after hea justifies us in reading them ðo.” As I can assign no satisfactory meaning to heaðo-hlǣwe, I have emended as in the text. Grein suggested ‘hēare hǣðe’ (so Heyne).
- ↑ 2213. Later hand ‘stearne.’
- ↑ 2215—2231. Here I have closely followed Zupitza’s transliteration, except in one particular. Much is very doubtful—readings, punctuation, division into lines. Zupitza gives only the lines of the MS., without division into verse lines, except that he marks with an asterisk and numbers every fifth line of the poem. In illegible passages he employs “as many colons as letters seem to have been lost.” I differ from Zupitza, as well as from Grein and Heyne, in the division and numbering of these lines, and with good reason. Between fah ne and þeofes they make two lines and a half, 2217 (2)–2219; I make it one line and a half, as in the text. Zupitza’s arrangement of these two and a half lines (using exactly the number of letter spaces he gives in his transliteration) would be this:
2217 ne hē æt syððan
2218 : : : : : þ[ēah] ð[e hē]
2219slǣpende be syre : : : : deCompare this with the text and it will be seen that the material, which comfortably fills a line and a half, is hopelessly inadequate for two and a half. On the other hand, in ll. 2229 and 2230 they make the first sceapen conclude the first half of 2229 and the second sceapen come in the first half of 2230. But, besides the improbability of the same word being re-
