THE OLDEST ENGLISH EPIC T THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO ATUVNTA • SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON • BOMBAY CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO IHE OLDEST ENGLISH EPIC BEOWULF, FINNSBURG, WALDERE, DEOR, WIDSITH, AND THE GERMAN HILDEBRAND TRANSLATED IN THE ORIGINAL METRES WITH INTRODUCTIONS AND NOTES BY FRANCIS B. GUMMERE J? fc d a_4. NetD gotk THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1922 All rights reserved —tTT COPTRTOHT, 1909, Bt the macmillan company. Set and up eleotrotyped. Published April, 1909. Nortoooli ^K88 J. 8. Gushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. ^0 GEORGE LYMAN KITTREDGE KEENEST OF CRITICS, KINDEST OF FRIENDS PREFACE Old English epic in the specific sense is that ancient and wholly heathen narrative poetry which Englishmen brought from their continental home and handed down by the agency of professional singers. The material thus accumulated either kept its original form of the short full of lay, fit for chant or recitation at a banquet, immediate effects, often dramatic and always vigorous, or else it was worked over into longer shape, into more leisurely considered and more leisurely appreciated poems. This second class is represented by Beowulf, the sole sur- vivor in complete form of all the West-Germanic epic. Waldere, of which two brief fragments remain, seems also to have been an epic poem; like Beowulf, it has been adapted both in matter and in manner to the point of view of a monastery scriptorium. Finnshurg, on the other hand, so far as its brief and fragmentary form allows such a judgment, has the appearance of a lay. Its nervous, it fiery verses rush on without comment or moral; and agrees with the description of a lay which the court minstrel of Hrothgar sings before a festal throng, and of which the poet of Beowulf gives a summary. Not to traditions English at all, but closely related English of heroic verse, and the sole rescued specimen of all its kind in the old German language, is Hildehrand, evidently one has a lay. By adding this to the English material, vii viii PREFACE the entire salvage from oldest narrative poetry of the West-Germanic peoples in mass. Finally, there are two lays or poems purporting to describe at first hand the life of these old minstrels, who either sang in permanent and well-rewarded office for their king, or else wandered from court to court and tasted the bounty of many chief- tains. These two poems, moreover, contain many refer- ences to persons and stories of Germanic heroic legends that appear afterward in the second growth of epic, in the Scandinavian poems and sagas, in the cycle of the Nihe- lungen, Griidrun^ and the rest. Such is the total rescue from oldest English epic that fate has allowed. It deserves to be read in its full extent by the modern reader it is to him for the English ; and now presented first time in its bulk, and in a form which approximates as closely as possible to the original. The translator is under great obligations to Professor Walter Morris Hart, of the University of California, not only for his generous aid in reading the proof-sheets of this book, but also for the substantial help afforded by his admirable study of Ballad and Epic. CONTENTS CHAPTEK PAOB I. Beowulf 1 II. The Attack on Finnsburg 159 III. Waldere • . 164 IV. The Hildebrand Lay 171 V. The Singer and His Lay 178 Index 201 Ix THE OLDEST ENGLISH EPIC CHAPTER I BEOWULF rpHE manuscript^ is written in West-Saxon of the tenth century, with some Kentish peculiarities; it is evi- dently based on successive copies of an original in either Northumbrian or Mercian, which probably belonged to ^ the seventh century. Two scribes made this copy. One to con- wrote to verse 1939 ; the other, who seems have tributed those Kentish forms, finished the poem. There is some attempt to mark the verses, and a few long syl- the is of lables are indicated ; but general appearance prose. The original epic seems to have been composed by a single author,^ not for chant or recitation to the accom- paniment of a harp, but for reading, as a "book." 1 British but still Codex Vitellius, A, xv, Museum ; injured by fire, legible in most places, and, for Beowulf, complete. 2 There is no positive evidence for any date of origins. All critics place it before the ninth century. The eighth brought monastic coiTup- tion to Northumbria while the described with its ; seventh, by Beda, austerity of morals, its gentleness, its tolerance, its close touch with milder forms of heathenism, matches admirably the controlling mood of the epic. " " 8 This attitude towards the so-called Homeric question in Beowulf must be explained and defended elsewhere, though a few hints are given in the following pages. B 1 2 THE OLDEST ENGLISH EPIC Libraries were then forming in England, and so edifying a poem as this could well find its place in them. Of course, the number of persons who heard the manuscript read aloud would be in vast excess of those who learned its contents through the eye. The poet may or may not have been a minstrel in early life; in any case he had turned bookman. He was familiar to some extent with the monastic learning of his day, but was at no great distance from old heathen points of view; and while his Christianity is undoubted, he probably lived under the influence of that "confessional neutrality," which ten Brink assumed for the special instance, and which his- torians record for sundry places and times. Above all, the poet knew ancient epic lays, dealing with Beowulf's adventures, which were sung in the old home of the and in and were carried over to Angles, Frisia, England ; out of these he took his material, retaining their form, and style, rhythmic structure, many of their phrases, their conventional descriptions, and perhaps for some passages their actual language. Finnshurg and Hildelrand give one an approximate idea of these older lays, which were of the property professional minstrel, the gleeman or scop. This or scop^ "maker," is always mentioned by the epic poet with respect. His business was to recite or chant to the music of a harp the lays of bygone generations before or chieftain king in court or hall, precisely as our epic ^ describes the scene. He must also on occasion compose, "put together" in the literal sense, a lay about recent happenings, often carrying it abroad from court to court as the news of the day.2 Out of such old lays of Beowulf's 1 See especially B., 1066 ff., and the two poems Widsith and Dfior. 2 See 149 ff. B.y For see the classical B. ff. extemporizing, passage, , 867 BEOWULF 3 adventures, our poet selected, combined, and retold a complete story from his own point of view. Comment, reflection, and a certain heightening of effect, are his peculiar work, along with a dash of sentiment and an elegiac tone such as one feels one should not meet in a Finnshurg, even if the whole of that lay were preserved. Attempts to prove that the poem was translated or para- phrased from a Scandinavian original have been utterly unsuccessful. Quite obsolete, too, as in the case of Homer, " " is the idea that Beowulf is primitive and popular poetry. is its material has been sifted Its art highly developed ; through many versions and forms. The characters of this epic of Beowulf are all continental Germanic. The scene of action for the first adventure is in hall was at a Denmark ; and Hrothgar's probably place now called Leire, not far from the fiord of Roeskilde. Where the fight with the dragon took place and Beowulf came to his death, depends on the opinion which one holds in regard to the home of the hero. There are two theo- ries; certainty, despite the recent proclamation of it, is out of the question. Beowulf is said to belong to the "Geatas"; and the majority of scholars^ hold that these Geatas were a tribe living in the southern part of Sweden. But some powerful voices have been raised for the Geatas as Jutes, who lived in what is now Jutland. In either case. Angles and Frisians, and whatever peoples were grouped about the Elbe, the Weser, and the Ems, would note with great interest, and hold long in memory, an expedition of Geatas which should proceed to the lower Rhine and there find defeat at the hands of a Frankish 1 Including Henrik Schtick, whose essay on the Geatas (Upsala, 1907) is thought by some reviewers to be final in its conclusions. 4 THE OLDEST ENGLISH EPIC prince. Such an expedition actually occurred; it is the historical foundation not, to be sure, of the events of the epic, but of the existence of its characters. It is men- tioned several times in the poem,^ and is also matter of sober chronicle; its date is in the second decade of the sixth century. Gregory of Tours, in his History of the Franks^ says that Chochilaicus, king of the Danes, — in another and later story, say of the seventh century, this " chieftain is called king of the Getse," — invaded Holland in viking fashion, took a good store of plunder, and got it later his boats he was and killed Theu- on ; but fought by debert, son of the Frankish king, his booty was recaptured, and many prisoners were taken. It is etymologically certain that Chochilaicus is the Hygelac of our epic, uncle to Beowulf; and there is no reason to doubt the tradition that the hero himself, though not mentioned by the chron- icle, was with his kinsman and chieftain, and escaped after the defeat by a masterful piece of swimming.