with house and high-seat.[1] They held in common
land alike by their line of birth,
inheritance, home: but higher the king
because of his rule o’er the realm itself.
2200Now further it fell with the flight of years,
with harryings horrid, that Hygelac perished,[2]
and Heardred, too, by hewing of swords
under the shield-wall slaughtered lay,
when him at the van of his victor-folk
- ↑ The seat in hall like a throne occupied by the owner and the head of the clan.
- ↑ On the historical raid into Frankish territory between 512 and 520 A.D. The subsequent course of events, as gathered from hints of this epic, is partly told in Scandinavian legend. Heardred succeeds to the throne; for Beowulf most honorably refuses Hygd’s proposal and serves the young king as guardian and chief vassal. But the reign is short. If with Gering we put 518 as the date of Hygelac’s fall, it would not be long before Heardred took up the cause of Eanmund and Eadgils, sons of Ohtere, both of them rebels against their uncle Onela, the Swedish king. Onela makes a raid into the territory of Heardred and kills him. Then Beowulf succeeds. His further relations with this feud will be noted below.—Heardred is called Hereric’s nephew. As the sister’s son was a conspicuous relationship, and men had names from it analogous to the patronymic method, one may suppose that Hygd had a brother Hereric.
says “seven thousand.” In v. 2994 Wulf and Eofor each get “a hundred thousand in land and winding rings.” A hide in England meant about 120 acres, though “the size of the acre varied.” Wulf and Eofor together would thus get a tract as large as England itself; see Mr. W. H. Stevenson’s note in his edition of Asser’s Alfred, p. 154. He points out that the numeral refers to both land and treasure. In this passage the seven thousand may also include the value of “house and high-seat,” with vague idea of treasure in the bargain. Both numerals, then, the seven thousand and the hundred thousand, are indefinite expressions of quantity, somewhat as when one now says of a man that he is “worth a million.”
