Page:Gummere (1909) The Oldest English Epic.djvu/211

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THE SINGER AND HIS LAY
195

concord of kin as cousins[1] together,
after they routed the race of Wicings,
laid prone the pride of the power of Ingeld,
hewed down at Heorot the Heathobard line.

50So I fared through many a foreign realm[2]
this wide earth o’er, as weal or ill
came to my ken; of my kin bereft,
far from my folk, I followed onward.
Wherefore I can sing and say my tales,
55to men in the mead-hall make my lay,
how high-born heroes heaped me gifts.
I was with Huns and with Hrethan Goths,[3]
with Swedes and with Geats[4] and with Southern Danes,
with Wenlas[5] and with Wærnas and with the Wicings,
60with Gefthas and with Winedas and with Geflegas,
with Angles and with Sueves and with Ænenas,
with Saxons and with Scygan and with the Swordmen,

with Hronas and with Deanas and with Heatho-Reamas.[6]
  1. In the old sense of “uncle-and-nepliew,” which is the literal meaning of the text. In the ballad of Arthur and Gawain, uncle and nephew, the former says to the latter: “thou art my coz,”—sister’s son.
  2. Rhys, Celtic Heathendom, p. 248, notes that the Celtic bards also pretended to have been present at the scenes they describe.
  3. Huns and Goths, as before with Attila and Eormanric, belong together. See Waldere and Hildebrand.
  4. See the introduction to the Beowulf.
  5. Wulfgar in Beowulf, v. 348, is “prince of the Wendlas,” perhaps a tribe of Danes well to the north. Müllenhoff identifies them with the Vandals, who once lived by the Baltic, as did the Wenedas (Wends). The old grouping, before that great movement of the tribes which made the heroic age, is here regarded as unbroken.
  6. Tribe in southern Norway. See Beowulf, vv. 519 f. In translating vv. 59–63 a superfluous “I was” is omitted. The verses are longer than others, except 68 f., 76, and 79–84.