mentaton see here, and elsewhere in the poem, a Christian meaning, These will be more inclined to accept as genuine the defective stanza which follows the present stanza 49 in one manuscript, and which Schach includes, A literal translation carries so many inevitable, but perhaps inappropriate, connections with Christian terminology that I prefer to place it here, It seems in any case hard to fit mto the chronology and what seems to me the spirit ofthe poem, at least without the lost passages which must have accompamed It. The mighty one come, down on the day ofdoom, th.t powerful lord whorule$overaU, The final stanza bas also been the subject ofmuch conflicting interpretation, in whichthe dragon is seen in a variety offunctions from purifyingto threaten ing, Like Peter Hallberg and Paul Schach, I see its presence as a reminder that good cannot be disentangled from evil; to separate light from the darkness is to intensify the darkness,
THE GODS: A:SIR.AND VANIR
q,",?,Vu",uif Mythology frequently joins the same characters [Odin, Thor, and Frey1 in a triad, Among them alone are divided the three treasures forged by the dwarfs after losing a bet with the malicious mki: Odin gets the magic ring, Thor the hammer that is to be the instrument of his battles, and frey the wild boar with the golden bristles,! It is they, and only they, whom the v~luspd (strs, 53-56) describes as beingjolned in the supreme duels and deaths ofths eschatologi cal battle,' More generally, it is they-and the goddess freya, closely associated with frey and Njord-who dominate, who indeed monopolize almost all the
frmnGaJso{rh i. 4 ) 71r~ G~ fm Wa:ls The Germanic world ,----l----, i VQI ~u ngr I ·Sister (. ",) Sigemund Sign)' ("') Sigmundr=o I (the W",[sing) I I Fitela(nrjaofSig.) Sin·fjQlli Sigur"r I. Myth and Hero (d. OHG PN IMHG Si gfritJ (Sintar·)FizziloJ The earliest Gennanic literature. Old English, Old High German, Old Saxon, and Old Nor ~, knows a great many combats between heroes and dragons or heroic :!dversar. The identity orthe names and their re!atiom , the mythopoeic incest motif(probably ie5 . epical conflicts which hav e continued to seile popular imagination from the Dark rewnstructible for Old F.nglish as well), all point unequivocally to a common Ages right down 10 the 19th and 20I h centuries, in Ihe,.spon,e wlhe operas ofRi chard Gc""anic mythographic bao;kgrOllnd, whether the dragolHlayer is Si gemund as in Wagner, the still unabated vogue uflhe li terary creations of lhe di stinguished Browu/f.orhissonSigurl:lr/S igfritasclsewhere, lt iswiththis myth that wemaybegin. philologist J. R. R. Talkien. and the immense success of the game Dungeons and Sigemund's exploit is narrated as pan ofthe victory song composed tocelebrate Dragon... The themes of all theM: epic poems and tales have been repeatedly studied. B ~wulfsvictoryoverGrendel{g67ff,) . Inthisvictorysoogwehave a treasure house c3talogued,andanalyzedbyphilologistandfolklori .talike.andlheir.,imilarity to the ofthemetalanguage of Old Germanic poetry. 'Mindful orlays' (gidda If""'y"dig)the themes or Greek. Indi•. arid OIhu legend and h~ ordered the compensation tQ be paid" oil Ooneanne d[eg forlheone",homGrendelwickedlykiIled, pe he wiO ~arn wynne gewegansceolde pej>l;gystmnniilt Grendelcwealdest till that one day v.ben he had to fight againstt!Jat.erpent (the fIght) H,v.hich Y()II killed Qrendel last night IllC lWO ",eli illustrate lhe inhent~d bldirectionality of the fon!1ula ~,--1 even where the le~lcal eJlpression Qf KILL has been renewed, from IE *g'hM- to Germanic ·kwo.ijall, Old English r.:wel/an OldNorscprovidesuswithapreciouspieceofevidenceforthechaltQelforthe Other verbs as well are woctated with the narration of dragon combat in Ixlth renewal and replacement of IE "g'hen_ by other verbs ltke Germani<: .!cwaljan or ·wigan (·W onnseinbani uxah<;>f1li a!puhelial hanYQ]undar nebnli5iminni atbanaverl'iir The ;npent's single bane (used ILl bait) the head of a~ o~. tn"t you will not kill VQlundr'swife, nor be<'ome tne nane (= Here kvelja and the periphrasisal hana veri1a (on which see below) are semantically I KILL SERPE~, I identical; the Choiceofeachi< guvemedby the alliteration. Thr: Old English nOUn bona (bana), Old Norse imni 'slayer, killer", is frequent in poetlc te~ts in both languages, In Beowulf it is applied both to heroes and (0 monsters; the dragon is the s\lbject. Cf. Grendel in 174] hona .rw(i)e nlah 'a killer is very near', 2082 hona blodigloJ 'the blwdy_toothed killer', and of the Worm who killed Beowulf and was killed by him,2824 bonaswylc< /trg '(hi.,) killer also la ydead' . In Old Norse thedragon is {he object. It is used twice with the dragon Fafnir as object, once of the WEAPON and once of the HER07 GdpisJpd 15' hVQs>os>'en'ii me1lbanaFMniJ You will hew With sharp sword, cur her byrnie w"h Farni~'s bQne (the ,w(led Gram) Oddrlinarwa/r 11: 1330-1 Wearl!him<;>nHeorote t6handbanan w..lg:fqwrHre iQr1ldu'alli ~ierbaniFMnia A wandering murderous sprite (Grendel's mother) slew him in Heorot. Eanh and Up-Ileaven shook when F6foir's bane(Siguri\r> vNb ~nd the po,tposed, Lndermite subject, who., n<;>t looked at (Brynhildr's) fortress.' 2078-9 himGre~delwe,;rr(l mirum magu!Jegtl~ t6 mu~bonan him, the famous ~oung retainer, Grendel slew by mQuth The r.f';t compound members hand- lI!ld ",ul)_ are fo, a~literatioo. Beowulf taunt, Unferth: lin", ro Kill a Dragan 41 The Germanic",orid (puhefir ...jbro:l'lrprnom I¥lbanaorllit peahliuplnumbr6 and the death ofHygelac's son in In Old High German note only fhe single but telling example of !he periphrasis. of tragic adversaries doomed to an ineluctable conflict. Hildebrand says of his son 2202-3 ondHeardride hildemeceas HadubraIld. who does nOt recognize his father (Hildebrandslied 54): under bordhrcotlan td bonan wurdon eddoihimotibaninwerdari and baltle-~words killed Heardrede under shield-covering. orf (,hall) kiil him. After Heardrede·s death Beowulf1egitimately succeeded to the kingship of the Geats: The construction is finally found in Old Sa~on ChrisfiaIl poetry as well: forexamples. 460 wear(l1l<.': Hc$ol:ife 10 handbonan see the work ofRo'emarie Luhr cited below. Old Norse knows another periphrasis with !he same word bani in tbe same He (Boowulfs father) slew Heatholaf. meaning· slay': ban(ajol"l'J bera af(+dative). literally 'bring the killer(' 5) word from', the 'death message·. The expression is explained by Gering s.v. as derived from !he s)'Man ie for dugelium D",ghrefne wear!! legal obligation of a murderer to acknowledge hirnselfas such. IO tohandbonan Hllgacempan Compare Fafni. pu mum b.iOom at banaverCa ReginokFMni to.Onomlghl'lsohowevu""gin.adire"ty""",,,,d""''''tnor.thoac!.cfkithngil..tfl:<:inglbe You will slay both. Reginn and Fafnir. ....OXalsoi"Gre.knq~~at.t5.;j26.r.d.'l"'c;"llyS.ppOO44.3l·P.whc,.i[i'!in.finaJintl><.ame ""'trio.t'lot .. lhatoc'upi.dbyrlia<;6.cpdttovinlho ..... 'ti.... Scoonthol.tlo,Nagyl974:lt7. G"",k atbwtave!& iiri HERO SLAY (*g'llcn-) SERPENTiHER01, t2 Se