wise and wary, though winters few
in those fortress walls she had found a home,
Hæreth’s daughter. Nor humble her ways,
1930nor grudged she gifts to the Geatish men,
of precious treasure. Not Thryth’s pride showed she,
folk-queen famed, or that fell deceit.
Was none so daring that durst make bold
(save her lord alone) of the liegemen dear
1935that lady full in the face to look,
but forgéd fetters he found his lot,
bonds of death! And brief the respite;
soon as they seized him, his sword-doom was spoken,
and the burnished blade a baleful murder
1940proclaimed and closed. No queenly way
for woman to practise, though peerless she,
that the weaver-of-peace[1] from warrior dear
- ↑ Kenning for “wife.”
Englische Studien, xxxix, 108 f., seems a most happy solution of the problem presented by this passage. The old emendation,—
But Thrytho proved,
folk-queen fearsome, fell and cruel . . .
was rejected by recent editors because Thrytho is not a likely form of the name. Reading as the translation reads, one has a most likely bit of praise by negative, in the usual manner of this poet, for Hygd, who did not show the cruelty and haughtiness of Thryth, the legendary wife of Offa, king of the Continental Angles. With her legend is perhaps mingled a reference to the Anglo-Saxon queen of the Mercian Offa, Cynethryth. She died in 795, and is too late for the original version of the Beowulf, if those considerations have weight which are urged against a date for the original version later than the seventh century. See, however, Stevenson’s note to Asser’s Alfred, Capp. 14, 15, and p. 206, where the tale of Eadburh, daughter to Offa of Mercia, is told to explain why Wessex folk disliked the name of “queen.”—Thryth belongs to that well-known family of obstreperous maids who riot and rage until tamed by the right man. In no case can the description apply to Hygd, who is called “very young.”—There is some reason for thinking that The Banished Wife’s Complaint, an Anglo-Saxon lyric, is based on the story of Offa.
