BEOWULF.
45
nefne him witig Godwyrd forstōde,
ond ðæs mannes mōd.Metod eallum wēold
gumena cjnines,swā hē nū git dēð;
forþan bið andgitǣghwǣr sēlest,
1060ferhðes fore-þanc.Fela sceal gebīdan
lēofes ond lāþes,sē þe longe hēr
on ðyssum win-dagumworolde brūceð.
Þǣr wæs sang ond swegsamod ætgædere
fore Healfdeneshilde-wīsan,
1065gomen-wudu grēted,gid oft wrecen,
ðonne heal-gamenHrōþgāres scop
æfter medo-bencemǣnan scolde:
“Finnes eaferum,ðā hīe se fǣr begeat,
hæleð Healf-Dena,Hnæf Scyldinga,[1]
1070in Frēs-wæle[2]feallan scolde.
Ne hūru Hildeburhherian þorfte
Eotena trēowe;unsynnum wearð
- ↑ 1068—9. There are one or two difficulties here. (1) Heyne, followed by Earle, makes the episode begin with l. 1069. I agree with Wülcker and Bugge in regarding l. 1068 as the commencement, partly because this helps to get rid of the difficulty of (2) the government of eaferum. Kemble ‘[be] Finnes eaferum’; Heyne and Socin ‘Finnes eaferum [fram].’ I follow Grein in regarding eaferum as an instr. pl., with reference to feallan scolde. (3) Bugge (“Beiträge” xii. 29) has shown that the emendation Healfdenes for Healf-Dena is misleading, the latter being a tribal name, such as we find in ll. 1, 116, 383, 392. (4) I cannot follow Bugge, when be goes on to explain hæleð as acc. pl., anticipated by hīe in the previous line. This is to force hīe from its natural and obvious meaning, as referring to eaferum. He quotes as a parallel the hit of l. 1705; but the cases are not analogous, in that hit cannot possibly refer to anything gone before. I therefore take hæleð, with Heyne and Earle, as nom. sing., Hnæf Scyldinga being a parallel expression to hæleð Healf-Dena.
- ↑ 1070. MS. ‘infr es wæle’: “r altered from some other letter, after it a letter erased, then es on an erasure: that fres is all that the scribe intended to write, is shown by a line connecting r and e.”—Zupitza.
