Page:Gummere (1909) The Oldest English Epic.djvu/42

Wide, I heard, was the work commanded,
75for many a tribe this mid-earth round,
to fashion the folkstead. It fell, as he ordered,
in rapid achievement that ready it stood there,
of halls the noblest: Heorot^[1] he named it
whose message had might in many a land.
80Not reckless of promise, the rings he dealt,
treasure at banquet: there towered the hall,
high, gabled wide, the hot surge waiting
of furious flame.^[2] Nor far was that day
when father and son-in-law stood in feud

85for warfare and hatred that woke again.^[3]

1. That is, “The Hart,” or “The Stag,” so called from decorations in the gables that resembled the antlers of a deer. This hall has been carefully described in a pamphlet by Heyne. The building was rectangular, with opposite doors—mainly west and east—and a hearth in the middle of the single room. A row of pillars down each side, at some distance from the walls, made a space which was raised a little above the main floor, and was furnished with two rows of seats. On one side, usually south, was the high-seat, midway between the doors. Opposite this, on the other raised space, was another seat of honor. At the banquet soon to be described, Hrothgar sat in the south or chief high-seat, and Beowulf opposite to him. The scene for a flyting (see below, v. 499) was thus very effectively set. Planks on trestles—the “board” of later English literature—formed the tables just in front of the long rows of seats, and were taken away after banquets, when the retainers were ready to stretch themselves out for sleep on the benches. Some additional comment will be found in the excellent notes in Mr. Clark Hall’s translation of Beowulf, p. 174.
2. Fire was the usual end of these halls. See v. 781, below. One thinks of the splendid scene at the end of the Nibelungen, of the Nialssaga, of Saxo’s story of Amlethus, and many a less famous instance.
3. It is to be supposed that all hearers of this poem knew how Hrothgar’s hall was burnt,—perhaps in the unsuccessful attack made on him by his son-in-law Ingeld. See vv. 2020 fl., and the note, where Beowulf tells of an old feud which this marriage is to set aside, and hints that the trouble will not be cured even by such a remedy. He too thinks that “warfare and hatred will wake again.”—See also Widsith, vv. 45 ff.