Page:Gummere (1909) The Oldest English Epic.djvu/70

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54

THE OLDEST ENGLISH EPIC

XI

710Then from the moorland, by misty crags,
with God’s wrath laden, Grendel came.
The monster was minded of mankind now
sundry to seize in the stately house.
Under welkin he walked, till the wine-palace there,
715gold-hall of men, he gladly discerned,
flashing with fretwork.^[1] Not first time, this,
that he the home of Hrothgar sought,—
yet ne’er in his life-day, late or early,
such hardy heroes, such hall-thanes, found!
720To the house the warrior walked apace,^[2]
parted from peace;^[3] the portal opened,

though with forged bolts fast, when his fists had struck it,

↑ Whether the hall “flashed” or “glittered” to the monster’s vision as he came near, in this nocturnal raid, does not concern the poet, who uses a conventional description.
↑ This is the third announcement of the arrival, and it is such seemingly vain repetitions that caused Müllenhoff, ten Brink, Möller, and others to assume interpolations by several hands and to regard the poem as a series of “editions,” on the basis of a general accretion from short lays to the present conglomerate of adaptations, interpolations, and inconsistencies. The accretion theory is not ridiculous by any means; but it does not explain the Beowulf half so well as the assumption of a single author who wrote the present poem on the basis of old lays, and applied in its general construction the same methods of variation and repetition which obtain for every rhythmic period and almost for every sentence in Anglo-Saxon poetry at large. The first announcement of Grendel’s coming emphasizes the fact that it is by night; the second lays stress on the start from the moor; the third brings him to the hall, and to the action. See the same sort of repetition for an arrival, vv. 1640, 1644, below. If we will only apply to the whole web of narrative what we know of the web of sentence and period, much of the supposed awkwardness, “poor mendings,” “patchwork,” and so on, will prove simply the habit of all that national epic.—See also Hart, Ballad and Epic, pp. 194 ff.
↑ That is, he was a “lost soul,” doomed to hell.

[1] Whether the hall “flashed” or “glittered” to the monster’s vision as he came near, in this nocturnal raid, does not concern the poet, who uses a conventional description.

[2] This is the third announcement of the arrival, and it is such seemingly vain repetitions that caused Müllenhoff, ten Brink, Möller, and others to assume interpolations by several hands and to regard the poem as a series of “editions,” on the basis of a general accretion from short lays to the present conglomerate of adaptations, interpolations, and inconsistencies. The accretion theory is not ridiculous by any means; but it does not explain the Beowulf half so well as the assumption of a single author who wrote the present poem on the basis of old lays, and applied in its general construction the same methods of variation and repetition which obtain for every rhythmic period and almost for every sentence in Anglo-Saxon poetry at large. The first announcement of Grendel’s coming emphasizes the fact that it is by night; the second lays stress on the start from the moor; the third brings him to the hall, and to the action. See the same sort of repetition for an arrival, vv. 1640, 1644, below. If we will only apply to the whole web of narrative what we know of the web of sentence and period, much of the supposed awkwardness, “poor mendings,” “patchwork,” and so on, will prove simply the habit of all that national epic.—See also Hart, Ballad and Epic, pp. 194 ff.

[3] That is, he was a “lost soul,” doomed to hell.

[1]

[2]

[3]

Page:Gummere (1909) The Oldest English Epic.djvu/70

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