and hung it with helmets and harness of war
3140and breastplates bright, as the boon he asked;
and they laid amid it the mighty chieftain,
heroes mourning their master dear.
Then on the hill that hugest of balefires
the warriors wakened. Wood-smoke rose
3145black over blaze, and blent was the roar
of flame with weeping (the wind was still),
till the fire had broken the frame of bones,
hot at the heart. In heavy mood
their misery moaned they, their master’s death.
3150Wailing her woe, the widow[1] old,
her hair upbound, for Beowulf’s death
sung in her sorrow, and said full oft
she dreaded the doleful days to come,
deaths enow, and doom of battle,
3155and shame.—The smoke by the sky was devoured.
The folk of the Weders fashioned there
on the headland a barrow broad and high,
by ocean-farers far descried:
in ten days’ time their toil had raised it,
3160the battle-brave’s beacon. Round brands of the pyre
a wall they built, the worthiest ever
that wit could prompt in their wisest men.
They placed in the barrow that precious booty,
- ↑ Compare the account of Hildeburh at her brother’s funeral, above, vv. 1114 ff. Nothing is said of Beowulf’s wife in the poem, but Bugge—whose restoration of the text is followed here—surmises that Beowulf finally accepted Hygd’s offer of kingdom and hoard, and, as was usual, took her into the bargain. In any case a praefica (with differences) belonged to the Germanic funeral, and chanted her vocero. Specimens of these laments, which often, as here, expressed forebodings for the future, may be found in the present writer’s Beginnings of Poetry.
