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BEOWULF:
MYTH AS A STRUCTURAL
AND THEMATIC KEY
DISSERTATION
Presented to the Graduate Council of the
University of North Texas in Partial
Fulfillment of the Requirements
For the Degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
By
Marian A. Aitches, B.A., M.A.
Denton, Texas
May, 1990
C°f\
Aitches, Marian A., Beowulf:
Thematic Key.
Mvth as a Structural and
Doctor of Philosophy (English), May, 1990,
292 pp., bibliography, 470 titles.
Very little of the huge corpus of Beowulf criticism has
been directed at discovering the function and meaning of
myth in the poem.
Scholars have noted many mythological
elements, but there has never been a satisfactory
explanation of the poet's use of this material.
A close
analysis of Beowulf reveals that myth does, in fact, inform
its structure, plot, characters and even imagery.
More
significant than the poet's use of myth, however, is the way
he interlaces the historical and Christian elements with the
mythological story to reflect his understanding of the
cyclic nature of human existence.
The examination in Chapter II of the religious
component in eighth-century Anglo-Saxon culture demonstrates
that the traditional Germanic religion or mythology was
still very much alive.
Thus the Beowulf poet was certainly
aware of pre-Christian beliefs.
Furthermore, he seems to
have perceived basic similarities between the old and new
religions, and this understanding is reflected in the poem.
Chapter III discusses the way in which the characterization
of the monsters is enriched by their mythological
connotations.
Chapter IV demonstrates that the poet also
imbued the hero Beowulf with mythological significance.
The
discussion in Chapter V of themes and type-scenes reveals
the origins of these formulaic elements in Indo-European
myth, particularly in the myth of the dying god.
Chapter VI
argues that both historical and mythological layers of
meaning reflect traditional man's view of history as cyclic,
a temporal period with a beginning and an end.
At the
juncture between end and beginning is conflict, which is
necessary for regeneration.
The interlacing of Christian,
historical and mythic elements suggests the impossibility of
extricating the individual and collective historical
manifestations from the cosmic imperative of this cycle.
The Beowulf poet perhaps saw in the ancient myths which
permeated his cultural traditions the basis of meaning of
human existence.
•awfittppt
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Chapter
I.
BEOWULF IN THE TRADITION OF
MYTH AS LITERATURE
II.
III.
IV.
V.
. .
THE RELIGIOUS BACKGROUND OF BEOWULF
45
THE MONSTERS IN THE MYTH
97
THE HERO AS PRIEST-KING AND GOD
VII.
142
THE RELATIONSHIP OF MYTH TO
THEMES AND TYPE-SCENES
VI.
1
184
MYTH AND HISTORY IN BEOWULF
217
CONCLUSION
236
BIBLIOGRAPHY
244
ill
CHAPTER 1
BEOWULF IN THE TRADITION OF MYTH
AS LITERATURE
It was Voltaire's conviction that the study of myths is
an occupation for blockheads.1
If he is right, modern
criticism includes the work of many blockheads (surely not
all of whom are myth-critics).
Especially in the second
half of this century, it has become common in literary
criticism to uncover mythic patterns, rituals, and
archetypes.
This focus is largely the outcome of the wide
scope and popularity of formulations of theories of myth by
numerous scholars with a variety of approaches.2
Theoretical accounts include functionalism, which
describes myth in terms of its operation within a social
structure, often in connection with rituals.
Its major
spokesmen are Bernard Malinowski, who argues that myths
justify rites or ceremonies,3 and A. R. Radcliffe-Brown,
according to whom ritual and myth are not always
distinguished.4
Another group of theorists believes that
myth shows the universal character of the human psyche, that
it reveals certain characteristics of the functioning of the
human mind.
Obviously, Freud and Jung are important for
their psychological speculations on the significance of
myth.
Freud feels that myth is a symbolic representation of
conflict in the psyche and that it attempts to capture the
language of dreams.5
For Jung, archetypal forms
(transcendental symbolic forms) in man's psychic life are
revealed in myth, along with dreams, magic, ritual and art.6
Another theory of myth can be classified as "religious," in
the sense that its major proponents, Joseph Campbell7 and
Mircea Eliade,8 believe that the language of myth has a
religious or metaphysical foundation.
Still another school
of thought, most effectively represented by the work of
Ernst Cassirer, addresses myth as a self-contained symbolic
language, a body of symbolic forms.9
Finally, there are the
structural theorists, the best known of whom is Claude LeviStrauss.
Levi-Strauss contends that the meaning of
mythology "cannot reside in the isolated elements which
enter into the composition of a myth, but only in the way
those elements are combined."10
The work of all these and many more theorists of myth
has been used in the analysis of literature.
It is perhaps
fair to inquire why literary analysis should admit a
consideration of myth.
Malinowski writes that "myth
contains germs of the future epic, romance, and tragedy."11
The traditional narrative, Lord Raglan insists, "has no
basis either in history or in philosophical speculation, but
is derived from the myth. . . ,"12
Joseph Strelka contends
that "it is necessary to examine . . . mythical structures
in literature because time and again there has been a direct
inner link between literary language and the codes of myths
and dreams."13
Even such a caustic assessor of myth
criticism as William Righter grants that in some instances
in literature, the myth has a role "of bringing many things
together, of suggesting much through little."14
The main
reason for regarding myth as germane to the analysis of
literature may be found in "the universality of
myth . . . .
And behind this lies the notion that myth
conceals a message, is a code to be broken in order to
unfold the inner meaning."15
Like myth, literature can be a
message that must be decoded in order to expose its meaning.
Also, many of the major works in English literature since
Beowulf have plainly incorporated myth.
As Harry Slochower
has said, "A study of the great literary classics shows that
their themes are organically interwoven with mythic and
religious belief."16
Perhaps the relationship of myth to
literature is best explained by Righter:
"To our openness
in the face of ultimate questions to which we have no
answers and for which explanations are simply not
explanatory the myth poses another question 'It's like this,
isn't it?' And what follows is the story."17
Despite the popularity of myth criticism until fairly
recently, damning voices have often been heard.
Righter
4
disagrees with comparisons of literature to myth, with the
idea that "the particular is best explained through the more
18
general."
»
,
,
A fair complaint regarding much of myth
criticism is that "The myth may seem thin and lifeless
compared to the density and richness of the work which is
supposedly 'explained' by it."19
This is, as a matter of
fact, the problem with most myth criticism done on Beowulf.
Another sometimes well-founded charge is the existence of
suppressions and distortions, the replacement of "wishful
thinking or academic habit" for genuine insight.20
With all due consideration of these voices of caution,
the present study will discuss myth in Beowulf, not because
it is interesting to talk about myth but because a full
understanding of the shape and meaning of this poem depends
on a comprehensive examination of myth.21
The truth of this
statement, however, would not be supported by the amount of
relevant literature.
Only a small portion of the enormous
body of critical work on Beowulf deals with myth.
This fact
is curious, considering that the earliest studies of Beowulf
in the nineteenth century began with myth.
It was natural
that myth would be a first avenue of approach to the poem,
since the "science" of mythology developed in the nineteenth
century from the new hypothesis of a new primitive language
called Indo-European.
Max Miiller, who believed that "the
mythology of the Veda is to comparative mythology what
T
Sanskrit has been to comparative grammar," applied the
•
•
methods of comparative philology to mythology.
22
For modern critical scholarship the role of folklore,
myth, and ritual really began with the Brothers Grimm in the
nineteenth century, and the critical discussion of
mythological influences in Beowulf is no exception.
The
Grimms became interested in Beowulf at the beginning of
their active scholarly careers, even before the 1815
publication of Thorkelin's edition:
Jacob Grimm had seen a
sheet of the poem in advance and written his brother Wilhelm
about its importance.
Most often the Grimms used Beowulf
to illustrate Germanic story and culture.
In Deutsche
Heldensacre (1829), Wilhelm Grimm uses the poem for support
in his discussions of Weland, Sigemund, Waels, Fitela, Hama,
*
09
Eormenric, and Heremod.
Jacob Grimm's work with Beowulf is, of course, more
clearly related to mythology.
He freely uses Anglo-Saxon
poetic sources, including Beowulf, in Deutsche Mvtholoaie.
first published in 1835.24
As Eric G. Stanley points out,
the outstanding characteristic of Jacob Grimm's philological
work was his illustration of the post-Christianity
continuity of "pagan" concepts by examples from the AngloSaxon poetic vocabulary.
For instance, Grimm interprets
"gif mec Hild nime" (Beowulf 452, 1481) as mythological,
explaining that "Hild" is the name of one of the Valkyries,
specifically Bellona, the pagan goddess of war.
While such
etymological connections may seem far-fetched, Grimm offers
a reasonable explanation:
If we look carefully we shall find that traces of
pagan gods adhere to the poetry which followed
immediately upon the conversion of the Germanic
tribes; and how could it be otherwise, seeing that
all religion permeates also language, expression,
and the processes of thought?25
Grimm's insistence on the "paganism" in Anglo-Saxon
poetry and on the superiority of this mythological paganism
to what he perceived as Christian contaminations influenced
the methods and attitudes of Anglo-Saxon scholars for the
rest of the nineteenth century and even longer.26
Klaeber
reviews these theories, starting with that of John R.
Kemble, who originated the theory that the hero of Beowulf
was, before confusion with a historical person of the same
name (the nephew of Hygelac), originally Beowa (Beowulf I),
"a divine being worshipped by the Anglo-Saxons and credited
with wondrous deeds of the mythological order."
This theory
was widely accepted and further delineated by Karl
Mullenhoff, who made the connection of Beow with Sceaf
(sheaf) and Scyld (shield) and drew the conclusion that Beow
was thus equivalent to Frea, the god of fruitfulness.
Furthermore, both Grendel and his mother were thought to
personify the North Sea, and Beowulf's successful fights
against them symbolic of the "checking of the inundations of
the sea in the spring season."
Following this same line of
reasoning, the death of the old hero was seen as the coming
of winter, revealing an underlying seasons-myth. There were,
in this tradition, as Klaeber points out, quite a few
additional "more or less ingenious" mythologically-induced
theories advanced, also mostly by German scholars.
Examples
include views of Beowulf as a type of Balder, as a lunar
deity, and as a personification of elements of nature (wind,
•
•
27
storm, lightning).
It is, as W. W. Lawrence says, extremely difficult to
assess these scholars* mythological theories because of
their inconsistency and confusion with other theories.28
On
the positive side, these efforts provided a starting point,
and Mullenhoff's hypothesis in particular is significant as
"the first attempt of any consequence to account for the
non-historical events in the poem by appealing to
29
mythology."
Clearly, the shortcomings of these first
mythological studies of Beowulf lie in their fragmentary
nature.
These early scholars have in common the selection
of details, mainly based on philological considerations, for
the "proof" of mythological allusions.
in itself objectionable.
This method is not
One problem, however, is the
lengths to which some critics were willing to go to justify
the bias in favor of "pagan" elements, notably Grimm's
"characteristic mythologizing of the locutions.1,30
Another
problem is that no attempt was made to fit these
mythological details into a consideration of the poem in its
entirety.
It is exactly this failing which drew justifiably
negative responses like that of John Earle, who complains
that Mullenhoff's reading of Beowulf tries to demonstrate
that the poem "is not that highly organized thing which is
called a Poem, the life of which is found in unity of
purpose and harmony of parts" and that it tears the poem
apart as though it were "a thing without a core or any
organic centre."31
It is not surprising, then, that subsequent scholarcritics of Beowulf rejected the so-called mythical allegory
approach.
In 1909 W. W. Lawrence dealt what seemed to be a
death blow to these German investigations which, in his
view, "vastly exaggerated" the mythological elements.32
Although the early studies depend largely on the premise
that the "god" Beowa was the original hero, Lawrence
concludes that evidence does not warrant regarding Beowa as
the "divine hero" of the Grendel episode.33
Lawrence
strongly criticizes mythological interpretations of Beowulf
primarily on the basis that they are unnecessary:
"Beowulf
is no less heroic as a mortal facing with undaunted courage
these grisly phantoms of the moor and mere than as a god
subduing the sea or the darkness."34
On the other hand, he
makes a curious statement in which he seems to contradict
himself:
"Scholars have been slow to perceive that the
mythology in Beowulf is the ultimate goal of criticism, and
in no wise its starting-point."35
Here, although he does
not elaborate, Lawrence seems to be expressing
dissatisfaction with the fragmentary nature of previous
mythological approaches and wishing for a synthesis of these
elements with all the elements of the poem.
With this
indirectly stated demand it is difficult to disagree.
In spite of the rather inauspicious early history of
mythological approaches to Beowulf, critical studies of this
kind did not end with Lawrence's rejection.
In fact, J. R.
R. Tolkien's landmark study "Beowulf: The Monsters and the
Critics," considered by most scholars the beginning of
modern criticism of Beowulf as poetry, appeared in 1938.
Tolkien's interpretation is basically mythological.
He
makes his position clear near the beginning of his article.
In a listing of critical opinions of Beowulf, he refers to
the mythological readings as "very old voices these and
generally shouted down, but not so far out as some of the
newer cries."36
Even if modern taste resists myth, he says,
the Beowulf poet and his audience esteemed it:
"there was
room for myth and heroic legend and for blends of these."
Tolkien further elucidates his point of view when he refuses
10
to defend the "mythical mode of imagination" or to
disentangle "the confusion between myth and folk-tale,"
stating that "The myth has other forms than the (now
discredited) mythical allegory of nature: the sun, the
seasons, the sea, and such things."
And it is obvious that
it is of another form of myth that Tolkien is speaking when
he contends that the Beowulf poet has presented a myth
"incarnate in the world of history and geography."37
He
sees Beowulf as "something more significant than a standard
hero, a man faced with a foe more evil than any human enemy
of house or realm . . . and yet incarnate in time, walking
in heroic history. . . . "38
Tolkien argues that Beowulf is unified by the symbolic
meaning of the hero's battles with the monsters and that
combat is central to the theme of "man at war with the
hostile world, and his inevitable overthrow in Time."
He
insists, then, that the mythology in Beowulf as represented
by these battles reflects the basic meaning and purpose of
the poem.
He answers those critics who had complained that
the poet had misplaced important things at the outer edges
of the poem and unimportant, thinly disguised folktale
elements (monsters) at the center:
"The particular is on
the outer edge, the essential in the centre."39
His idea of
the relationship between the mythological and the historical
in the poem is further clarified when he states that the
11
poem "glimpses the cosmic and moves with the thought of all
men concerning the fate of human life and efforts; it stands
amid but above the petty wars of princes, and surpasses the
dates and limits of historical periods, however
important.1140
For Tolkien, this myth informs the structure of the
poem as well as the theme.
Because the myth reveals the
theme, it is understandable that the poem is not a
straightforward narrative.
He counters Klaeber's comment
that Beowulf "lacks steady advance," contending that
narrative advance was not intended.
The poem is, instead,
essentially a balance, an opposition of ends and
beginnings.
In its simplest terms it is a
contrasted description of two moments in a great
life, rising and setting; an elaboration of the
ancient and intensely moving contrast between
youth and age, first achievement and final
death.41
Obviously, Tolkien sees myth as the underlying structure,
finely balanced with other elements.
"The large symbolism
is near the surface," he states, "but it does not break
through, nor become allegory."42
Assessing Tolkien's contribution to the study of
Beowulf from a myth perspective is a daunting task, not
unlike that of a gnat sizing up a giant.
It is an accepted
12
fact that his example of directing criticism to the
understanding of Beowulf as a poem is invaluable.
Just as
incontestable is the worth of his attempt to discuss the
entire poem in terms of myth.
In this, he succeeded where
early proponents of mythological interpretation failed.
Nevertheless, because of the audience to whom his article is
addressed, he limits his consideration of mythical elements
largely to the "monsters."
Thus, his article is a starting
point for a complete investigation of myth in Beowulf and
its operation in the thematic context of the poem.
In spite of the far-reaching impact of Tolkien's
treatment of Beowulf on virtually all criticism of the poem
since 1938, no further discussion of Beowulf as myth
appeared in print until 1951.
Even then, it was only a
brief note vaguely titled "Beowulf," the purpose of which
was to refute the idea that Beowulf is divided into two
parts joined only loosely together by the hero.
Here S. J.
Johnson categorically states that the poem is "essentially a
primitive myth with additions," similar to most primitive
myths in that it is an "account of a tribal coronation
rite."43
The story of the deeds and death of the hero of
Beowulf. Johnson explains, follows the basic pattern of
Indo-European myth.
The hero, like Tammuz or Adonis, must
go through rites of passage before he can become king.
essential features of these rites of passage are victory
The
13
over an evil antagonist and descent to and return from the
underworld, which symbolizes rebirth into manhood.
Thus,
Johnson believes that the defeat of Grendel and the killing
of Grendel*s mother are "the initiation rites that make
possible Beowulf's good reign of fifty years."
Furthermore,
even in death, Beowulf follows the model of the hero whose
death "confers benefits on society."44
Johnson was apparently the first to connect the poem
explicitly with Indo-European myth.
And even though his
premise that most primitive myth is based on tribal
coronation rites is at best restrictive, his inherent
suggestion that a study of mythic rites of passage can lead
to a fuller understanding of the poem is useful, as will be
seen later in this paper.
The limitations of Johnson's
interpretation are the same as those which have beset most
handlings of the poem by myth-critics: selection of
disparate details, which taken separately are unconvincing,
and a lack of synthesis of the mythological elements with
other elements.
It may be that fashions in criticism simply shifted,
but perhaps these shortcomings lay behind the apparent lack
of interest on the part of Beowulf scholars in mythological
considerations, which lasted almost another decade.
Then,
from the late 1950's through the early 1970's, a number of
14
such studies appeared, undoubtedly the fruits of the vogue
that myth criticism in general was enjoying at that time.
In 1958, Peter F. Fisher analyzed Beowulf on the
principles outlined by Joseph Campbell in his theory of the
"monomyth" of the hero.45
Fisher views Beowulf as an epic
hero who is not just a symbol but the incarnation of racial
trials.
The emphasis in this kind of epic is on the
individual trials of the hero.
These trials, as outlined by
Campbell, involve three main tests, which Fisher identifies
in Beowulf.
The first involves the hero leaving the safety
of home to "encounter and overcome the initial trials of his
task," the events leading up to the fight with Grendel.
In
the process of undergoing this first test, the hero "defeats
or conciliates the power barring his passage or preventing
him from successfully completing his mission," as Beowulf
does in his encounters with the coast-guard, Wulfgar, and
Unferth.
After passing the first test of killing Grendel,
the hero must pass the threshold into "an unfamiliar and
frequently subterranean realm in search of the maternal root
of the earthly power which he has already encountered."
Obviously, Beowulf's fight with Grendel's mother fits here.
During the second test, the hero usually is granted
supernatural aid.
As Fisher notes, Beowulf receives the
giant-made sword and "returns to gain recognition by the
initiator of his quest," Hrothgar.
The third and final test
15
is faced by the hero after his return home and period of
kingship; in Beowulf. this is of course the fight with the
dragon.46
Fisher's use of Campbell's monomyth theory may
now seem an obvious application, but Campbell himself does
not mention Beowulf, and the connection had not been made
before, at least not in print.
Despite its relevance, Fisher's work is not referred to
in Carl Meigs' 1964 article "Beowulf. Mythology and Ritual:
A Common-Reader Exploration.1,47
In attempting to account
for the emotional response the poem still evokes, Meigs also
deals with Beowulf in Campbell's terms as well as those of
Jessie Weston.48
According to Meigs, applying the formulas
of Campbell and Weston results in "an idea of the structure
of Beowulf as inherently following the growth pattern in the
development of the hero."49
While admitting that there is
"no exact or continuous" parallel to the Grail stories,
Meigs conjectures that "there are momentary similarities in
agent and situation which offer the interesting, if
inevitably obscure, speculation that Beowulf also has in its
traditional background vegetation myth and fertility
ritual."50
He concludes:
As myth and ritual, Beowulf outlines the mythical
progress of a world hero; he is initiated into
kingship; he rules prosperously for a time in
which nothing particularly dreadful happens; and
16
he dies, encountering and defeating at the cost of
his own life, the last and greatest threat of all
to the health of his land. . . .51
Meigs believes that the emotional significance of the
poem lies not in ritual but rather in "the source of ritual,
the dream mythology of the individual mind expressed in
communal rites."52
This idea is again based on Joseph
Campbell, who explains myths in terms of modern
psychoanalysis.
In identifying Beowulf as archetypal
initiation myth, Meigs adds a new element to myth criticism
of the poem.
Whether or not his thesis is valid is
impossible to judge.
His reading is, however, open to the
criticism that it ignores the complexity of the poem.
Jeffrey Helterman also treats Beowulf as an archetypal
hero, but in a more unified and therefore more convincing
way.
Taking as his point of departure Tolkien's view of the
essential mythic content as "the conflict between chaos and
order," Helterman believes that representative of this
conflict in the poem are two mythologies.
The Norse
mythology, in which the "triumph of chaos" is the ultimate
conclusion, seems to overshadow the Mediterranean
(Christian) mythology, which "emphasizes the triumph of
spring and rebirth."
Nevertheless, Helterman contends,
Beowulf transcends its Germanic origins.
The actual defeat
of the hero is a symbolic victory in the sense of
17
"validation of a temporal act through its ritual
significance."
According to this theory, historical acts
are transformed "into archetypal acts which occur outside of
history and are, therefore, timeless."
The deeds that
Beowulf performs, then, have ritualistic value and repeat
the deeds of a god.
Beowulf, while neither god nor man
exactly, is a hero "repeating symbolically the acts of a
god."
For example, by having Beowulf remove his armor, the
poet indicates the timelessness of the Grendel fight:
"The
battle becomes a clash between two elemental forces."53
An equally interesting aspect of Helterman's thesis,
and one requiring less tricky reasoning, is that the
archetypal hero becomes demythologized as the poem
progresses, so that "Beowulf has descended fully into the
world of time" when he recounts his adventures to King
Hygelac.
According to Helterman, Beowulf begins this
process of descent in his battle with Grendel's mother,
where he is "away from the sacred precincts of Heorot."54
The demythologizing is complete by the end of the poem:
"When the dragon decimates Beowulf's qjfstol. he
symbolically destroys the hero's effectiveness as an
archetypal figure" because Beowulf has lost his center of
power" and no longer has "a place in which he can repeat the
archetypal act of creation."55
18
Janet Dow also deals with the archetypal descent of the
hero in Beowulf, but for her the descent is into himself
rather than history.
Obviously, the main thrust of Dow's
interpretation is psychological.
She suggests that Grendel
is "the shadow side of Beowulf" and that this is the monster
Beowulf battles.
The descent into the mere, she explains,
symbolizes the hero's return to the womb, "to his own
beginning."
The hero is initiated into "a new spiritual
existence" through his descent into the Underworld:
"he no
longer need fear death" because "he has faced its terrors
and attained a kind of immortality, the goal of all heroic
initiations.1,56
Dow believes that Beowulf, like Christ, has
his roots "in the same ancient mythos, but this is not to
say that Beowulf is a Christian hero."
The poet has, she
argues, "made use of a universal theme that is not
Christian, but pre-Christian, the archetypal pattern of the
Savior-Hero who suffers, dies, and is reborn—a timeless
theme that has worked its enchantment on all men and in all
ages."57
What connection this theme has with the historical
component is unclear.
Other critics have approached the question of the
importance of mythological tradition in Beowulf in a
slightly different way.
G. V. Smithers is representative of
a group of scholars who were trying to revive the theory
that the poem is primarily based on Germanic pre-Christian
19
heroic and mythological tradition.
In Smithers' opinion, we
"cannot understand what Beowulf is really about without
recovering the buried meanings in the story; and we cannot
evolve a valid critical judgment of the poem without
understanding it in this sense as well as others."58
Smithers1 argument is that the first and second parts of
Beowulf are based on Scandinavian sources, now lost but
recorded in extant sagas.
In quite some detail, he uncovers
parallels between Beowulf and Scandinavian mythology as
revealed in the sagas.
His bias, reminiscent of Grimm, in
favor of the "heathen" is apparent in his reference to a
Christian idea as an "unhappy intrusion" in the poem.59
In
1966, Paul B. Taylor turned his attention to this same
argument. He takes a compromise position:
"Christian poetic
impulse and Germanic myth and legend are not only compatible
informing principles, but together constitute a major
contribution to Beowulf's overall artistry."60
The bulk of
his article is concerned with pointing out the similarities
between the Christian tradition and the northern
mythological tradition as recorded in the Icelandic Voluspa
and with showing how both traditions may be seen at work in
Beowulf, specifically in the portrayal of Heorot.
His
conclusion is that the poet's "conception of Heorot . . .
may be attributed to two traditions."
In fact, "It is
precisely from the point where Christian and pagan
20
traditions meet that the poet derives his informing
pattern.1,61
In the same vein is "The Essential Paganism of Beowulf"
by Charles Moorman.
Although the emphasis is on Germanic
heroic elements, Moorman does deal with mythology.
He
suggests that "in the end, the archetype of the poem, or at
least the folk elements from which it sprang, comes to
dominate its mood and theme."
For Moorman, it is not that
the Christian aspects are undesirable; they are simply
overshadowed by "the pessimism of Nordic mythology."
It is
evident that Moorman uses the term "mythology" here to mean
the large concepts underlying the mythological stories of a
culture:
Scandinavian mythology presented a negative,
pessimistic view of history in which man and earth
and giants were to be destroyed as the final act
of a conflict between gods and giants in which all
men, living and dead, were to take part.
Although
a new heaven and earth might eventually arise from
the ashes of the old, the present life of man was
marked not only by struggle, but by a sense of the
futility of struggle.62
Moorman also discusses the possibility that "the pagan
notion of kingship and ritual sacrifice" is reflected in
Beowulf.63
Although he does not say so, this notion is of
21
course based on "myth" in a wider sense than the way Moorman
uses the term.
A summary such as this would be incomplete without
turning to the work of Joseph Fontenrose, whose Python: A
Study of Delphic Mvth and its Origins was published in 1959.
Fontenrose, a classical scholar, is well known for his work
in mythology.
Relevant to the present study is his
application of the combat myth to Germanic myth and legend
in general and to Beowulf in particular.
As might be
expected, he sees Part I (combat with Grendel and his
mother) and Part II (combat with the dragon) as important
variants of the combat myth pattern found scattered around
the Mediterranean Sea and across Asia to Japan, as well as
in northern and western Europe.64
outlined as follows:
This pattern is broadly
The hero, who wants to cleanse the
land, fights two enemies, first a male and then a more
terrible female.
These enemies, who are terrorizing the
land, appear most often in dragon and/or giant shape and are
powers of death and of the sea.
descent into the lower world.
but the enemy is defeated.
his victory.
The hero must meet them by
He almost dies or does die,
At the end, the hero celebrates
Fontenrose systematically shows the points of
connection between Beowulf and the myth pattern, which are,
as is obvious to even novice readers of the poem, remarkably
numerous and significant.
While clearly a much more
22
extensive consideration of Beowulf as myth than previously
seen in the literature, Fontenrose's treatment is naturally
limited to his use of Beowulf as an illustration of the main
focus of his book.65
Eleven years after Fontenrose's Pvthon was published,
an article titled "Beowulf: Myth and Meaning" appeared, in
which Terry A. Babb also states that "Beowulf's three fights
are patterned on a combat myth which is itself a part of a
larger mythical pattern of creation and dissolution.1,66
Since his goal is literary criticism and not mythology, Babb
goes on to say that it is this myth which lends the poem its
"dignity and richness."
In his opinion, "Beowulf is an
elegy; its theme is the death of a people."67
It follows
that "the myth is used to illustrate and parallel the
historical predicament of the Geats and Danes."68
Babb
contends that "The myth has been so adapted that it is
Nordic history writ large. . . . "
The Geats and Danes, he
believes, are combatants "in the perennial struggle between
light and darkness, life and death, cosmos and chaos."69
Babb dismisses the Christian elements as "equivalents
for what had become vague or meaningless in older versions
of the poem."70
It is to Babb's credit that he attempts to
account for the myth, historical background, and Christian
elements in Beowulf.
Even so, his view of the theme seems
unnecessarily limiting.
And, in fact, he seems to
23
contradict himself in this respect when he argues that "The
mythical element . . .
is there to reconcile man to his
inevitable destruction.1,71
In this survey of the criticism addressing Beowulf from
the perspective of myth, Alvin A. Lee's The Guest Hall of
Eden is unique in its contention that Christianity and
specifically the Bible is the source of "the dominant
overall mythology and symbolism of Old English poetry."72
Although he devotes considerable space to Beowulf. Lee
admits that this poem "is not as clearly and unmistakably
shaped and informed by Christian myth and symbol" as the
other poems he considers.73
in Beowulf:
Lee recognizes four major myths
the "cosmogonic myth" (growth of Scylding
dynasty and building of Heorot) connected with the Christian
biblical creation story; "the myth of the Fall and the
beginnings of fratricide and crime" (attack on Heorot by
race of Cain); "the myth of the heroic redeemer" (victory
over race of Cain); and "the myth of the hero's death and
the return to chaos."74
For Lee, "each creative human
act . . . has its archetype in the creative and redemptive
acts of God or Christ."75
"Beowulf's immersion and
emersion" in the mere episode, for example, are
mythologically "both a descent into hell . . . and a
resurrection into a world newly restored by his acts of
rescue."76
But Beowulf is after all a man, and human
24
victory, however heroic, is only temporary.
Lee states:
"The theme of Beowulf is "human defeat in time-dominated
middle-earth,1,77 and the poet's vision is tragic:
"The
closing scene expresses a pronounced tragic sense of
confinement, of the putting into dark places of all that is
splendid in this world."78
If the vision is indeed tragic,
as many readers of the poem have agreed, it is difficult to
concur with Lee's interpretation that this tragic ending is
strictly the outcome of a Christian mythology informing the
poem.
Northern mythology's view of Ragnarok in which gods
and men alike are destroyed is darker, and all
creation/dissolution myths share this portrayal of the
inevitable power of chaos over order.
Considerable value
lies, however, in Lee's careful, detailed explication of the
Christian "layer" of meaning in the poem from a myth
perspective.
For eight years, no further treatments of myth in
Beowulf followed Lee's study of Christian mythology.
Then,
in 1980 two articles dealing with Beowulf in the context of
myth were included in the same collection of essays.
The
editor of this book, John D. Niles, explains in the
Introduction that the essays presented reflect a movement in
Beowulf criticism away from complicated symbolic
interpretations and back toward a view of the poem either
"as a Christian product or offshoot of a deep-rooted native
25
verse-making tradition.1,79
In a short essay,
Albert B.
Lord discusses the way in which "two discrete narrative
patterns" widely dispersed in Indo-European tradition are
interwoven in Beowulf.
The first pattern consists of the
absence and/or powerlessness of the ruler and/or hero
(Hrothgar and Beowulf), the devastation of his people and/or
land (Grendel at Heorot), and the return of the hero and/or
his power (peace returning to Heorot).
The second pattern
involves "the encounter of the hero and a companion, or
companions, with first a male monster, which he overcomes,
and then a female monster, or a divine temptress, who wants
to keep him in the 'other1 world."
After escaping these
monsters, the hero makes a journey in the course of which he
learns the answer to the question of "his own mortality or
immortality."
The last stage of this pattern is "a death at
a climactic point."80
Lord finds the significance of these
patterns in Beowulf in the fact that they give a mythic base
to Beowulf's actions as hero.
In the other myth-oriented article in this collection,
Michael N. Nagler uses "myth" in the sense frequently
encountered in contemporary literary criticism, as symbolic
metaphor.
He agrees with Fontenrose that the three fights
in Beowulf are based on the Python myth and that in this
poem "the myth takes the specific form of a clash between
the 'daemonic' forces of nature and the lightly
26
Christianized sky-god who orders, tempers, and after all has
81
created nature."
Concentrating on the fight with
Grendel's mother and drawing comparisons with the Odvssev.
Nagler illustrates how this myth informs the literary
features of the poem.
Nagler argues that the Beowulf poet
saw the Indo-European creation myth and the Old Testament
creation story as having the same meaning:
"Both levels of
mythology in his cultural tradition pointed to man's heroic
capacity to overcome disorder in himself, exemplified in
Christ's struggle and resurrection in the service of God."82
This line of argument leads Nagler directly to his
conclusion that the continuing power of the poem lies in
"the insight of the myth . . . into human nature."83
Entering the realm of psychological myth criticism, Nagler
sees the poem, and especially what he perceives as the
climactic fight in the mere, as primarily symbolic of the
struggle within the individual.
The monsters are the
"fiends within us," but "there is also a great source of
energy by which to control them."
Nagler explains this
energy source as "the untapped sources of will by which we
are, or could be, capable . . .
of choosing whether to hoard
our vitality for ourselves or use it to make our fullest
contribution to the forces of living order within us and
around us"84
This interpretation, while perhaps plausible,
27
seems an unnecessarily vigorous search for reasons to
explain Beowulf's power as a poem.
The most recent study of Beowulf from a "myth"
perspective is found in Paul C. Bauschatz's The Well and the
Tree, published in 1982.
The thesis of this book is that
"Germanic culture was dominated by its conception of its own
past," which is, as Bauschatz acknowledges, a wellestablished fact.85
Basic to Bauschatz's approach is his
use of "myth" as "a cultural manifestation of underlying
structural impulses."86
In other words, he does not view
myth as a narrative but rather as abstract structure, and
the structure he sees underlying Germanic culture is the
opposition between past and non-past events, which he
insists is unique among Indo-European peoples.
According to Bauschatz, "the most overt 'mythical'
representation" of the elements underlying Germanic culture
"is found in the 'iconic' figure formed by the union of the
world tree, Yggdrasil, and Urth's Well."87
He explains that
the tree signifies the worlds of men, gods, and other
beings.
The roots of the tree extend into the water of the
well, which nourishes the tree.
The well represents the
past, including the actions of all beings who exist in the
world—tree.
As the actions of men, gods, or giants are
collected in the well, "all actions become known, fixed,
28
accomplished."
And, of course, this stratified past
nourishes or significantly affects the non-past.88
In Chapter III, "Beowulf and the Nature of Events,"
Bauschatz applies this theory to an interpretation of the
structure of Beowulf and contends that it explains the way
events are presented throughout the poem.
"Every action
calls to itself other actions to which it is significantly
linked. . . .
Such linkage is valuable because it
illustrates and extends the significance of the associated
•
89
actions."
Naturally, Bauschatz considers "digressions" or
"extraneous" material to be essential to a full
understanding of the meaning of the poem.
All of the
references to Beowulf's earlier exploits, to other figures
such as Wiglaf or Hygelac, are necessary in conveying the
full significance of Beowulf's life.
"The importance of his
actions lies not only in what he performs . . . but in the
extent to which these actions touch upon and are touched by
other aspects of human activity from earliest times
onward. "90
It would be difficult and incorrect to disagree with
Bauschatz's conclusion that the poem is "the container of
Beowulf's life, his actions, and the actions of others whose
lives his touches in a significant way."91
It is, however,
equally difficult to see the myth of the Well of Urth and
the tree Yggsadril as directly informing the poem's shape.
29
Bauschatz seems to be examining Beowulf from a myth point of
view only in the sense that he has chosen an apt figure to
describe the interrelationship of past and present in the
poem.
From this summary of myth criticism of Beowulf, it is
clear that, while much has been said about the subject, a
complete discussion including all the mythological elements
in the poem has yet to be written.
Even more significant is
the need to identify and explain the relationship between
this level of meaning and the other components.
synthesis is the ultimate goal of this study.
Such a
It is hoped
that by achieving a thorough, systematic synthesis, the
interpretation of the poem offered here will escape the
charge that myth criticism is usually disappointing in the
sense that "It tells much of interest, but not what we
really want to know."92
An integral part of this synthesis involves accounting
for the Christian elements in Beowulf.
The extensively
treated argument over whether the poem is essentially
Christian or pagan will probably never be resolved.93
Opposing the "Patristic Exegetical" school of critics are
those who believe that the poet composed orally, drawing
from a large tradition of inherited pre-Christian formulas
and themes.
For these critics, the Christian elements are
late additions and not integral to the poem.94
For the
30
purposes of myth study, it is hardly necessary to decide in
favor of either Christian or "pagan."
95
James Frazer
In fact, neither Sir
•
nor Jessie Weston makes an effort to separate
the two developments.
In any case, it will be seen that
both pagan and Christian myths derive ultimately from the
same sources.
And since the unique texture of the poem is
produced by the careful interweaving of Christian and pagan
myth with the historical heroic elements, no attempt will be
made to determine special import for either Christian or
pagan.
It should also be obvious from the foregoing summary of
myth criticism of Beowulf that the term "myth" has been used
with a sometimes bewildering variety of meanings.
It is
imperative, then, to define the meaning of "myth" as it will
be employed in this paper.
G. S. Kirk claims that, while
not all oral tales are myths, "the only safe basis for a
broad definition of myth" is "non-literary tales . . .
repeated and developed by anonymous storytellers. . . .1,96
An even broader definition is put forward by Richard Chase:
"the simplest meaning of the Greek word 'myth' is the right
one: a myth is a story, myth is narrative or poetic
literature.1,97
Beowulf certainly fits both of these
definitions, but they are so broad that they fail to be
usable in any concrete application of myth to literature.
more specific explanation is offered by Lord Raglan, who
A
31
says that myth "embodies a situation of profound emotional
significance, . . . which is in its nature recurrent," and
which is represented by a "ritual which deals with the
situation and satisfies the need evoked by it."98
It is
primarily in this sense that myth will be explored in its
relationship to Beowulf.
Gwyn Jones distinguishes between myth and wondertale or
heroic legend, defining myth as a story involving gods which
deals with creation and with the nature of the universe.
Everything else is either wondertale or heroic legend, and
it is on this basis that Jones rejects Beowulf as myth."
It can easily be shown, however, that even by Jones'
definition of myth, Beowulf contains a mythological story.
Perhaps William Righter is correct when he says that
Joseph Margolis' definition of myth as "a schema of the
imagination" which is "capable of organizing our way of
viewing the world" is best for the purpose of literary
criticism.100
At least it is useful in speaking of the
workings of myth in Beowulf.
Thus, "myth" will designate a
recurring pattern of intense emotional significance, which,
within the poet's imaginative schema, is "capable of
organizing our way of viewing the world."
The emotional
import of this pattern is reinforced by its association with
the acts of gods, its metaphysical resonance.
32
Edward B. Irving, Jr., argues that Beowulf does not fit
the definition of myth because it lacks
cyclic or recurring reenactment of significant
events, so important in myth properly defined,
with its invariable associations with actual
regularly repeated rituals.
The historical nature
of the events and characters in itself takes the
story out of any cyclic pattern. . . .
If it
really happened, it happened once and once only.101
In fact, as this study will show, an examination of the
mythological elements clearly supports an interpretation of
Beowulf as myth, precisely as defined by Irving.
Even so,
Beowulf is neither myth nor rite; it is literature made out
of myths.
As Ruthven says of Euripides and Ovid, the
Beowulf poet has created "something which, in its stabilized
and codified form, is quite remote from what the
anthropologist encounters in his fieldwork.1,102
Nevertheless, myth and rite underlie its structure, its
characters and its plot and, most significantly, illuminate
its theme.
It will be seen that myth infuses not only the
recurring struggles with the monsters but informs the
imagery and diction used by the poet and controls his theme.
Certainly, no claim will be made for this study as a theory
of ultimate significance, but rather as a way of studying
Beowulf in terms of special significance.
33
Further, the historical level of the poem does not
force us to reject the cyclic nature of the events depicted
there; on the contrary, history repeats itself often enough
within the context of the poem.
The cyclic nature of the
historical events echoes the cyclic pattern revealed in the
mythological level of the poem.
These two levels of story
and meaning are further reinforced by the Christian
elements.
At any rate, as Lillian Feder warns, "Myths must
be regarded as both historical and perennial structures."103
This study will not deal primarily with origins,
neither those of natural phenomena, such as the rising and
setting of the sun, nor geographical, such as the diffusion
of myths from India.
Instead, the emphasis will be on the
structure and function of myths, the same emphasis given in
twentieth-century general studies of myth.
Further, the
present discussion will involve two concepts of myth:
myth
as a structure and myth as received mythological material.
It is not suggested that the Beowulf poet used myth
intentionally as modern practitioners like Yeats, Joyce, and
Eliot have.
While he may have been conscious of the mythic
elements he inherited from the tradition in which he was
working, he almost certainly did not invent myth for his own
purposes as, for example, Yeats did.
As David Daiches points out, modern critics tend to
view myth "as a kind of symbolic situation produced by the
TT
34
proper use of 'archetypal' imagery."104
While "archetypes"
do occur, this paper will avoid discussing Beowulf in terms
of Jungian archetypes.
Referring to Jung's theories of
archetypes, Ruthven says that they strikingly illustrate
"what Whitehead used to call the Fallacy of Misplaced
Concreteness, for Jung's 'collective unconscious' is no more
empirically verifiable than Noam Chomsky's 'deep structure,1
which similarly appears to explain everything except
itself."105
Another problem with this approach is aptly
summed up by Alan Dundes'guestion:
"If archetypes are
innate and 'genetic,' why aren't the same myths found in all
cultures?"106
Although "the cultural relative approach must
not preclude the recognition and identification of
transcultural similarities and potential universals," it
seems that Dundes is right when he reasons that "Mythology
must be studied in cultural context in order to determine
which individual mythological elements reflect and which
refract culture."107
Before beginning a detailed analysis of Beowulf as
myth, then, it is appropriate and perhaps even necessary to
look at the world in which the poet lived.
Only by a
complete understanding of the way in which mythology
permeated his culture and society can a true assessment of
the workings of myth in his poem be made.108
35
Notes
1
K. K. Ruthven, Mvth (London: Methuen, 1976) 18.
See
pages 85-100 for an extensive bibliography of works
concerning theories of myth criticism up to 1976.
2
The following summary is based on William Righter,
Mvth and Literature (London: Routledge, 1975) 18-22.
3
See especially Bernard Malinowsky,
Science. Magic
and Religion (New York: Anchor, 1954).
4
See A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, Structure and Function in
Primitive Society (London: Free, 1952) and Method in Social
Anthropology (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1958).
5
This belief can be seen throughout Freud's work, but
consult especially Sigmund Freud, On Dreams, trans. James
Strachey (London: Hogarth, 1952).
6
See especially Carl Jung, Psyche and Symbol. ed.
Violet S. De Laszlo (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1958).
7
Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces.
Bollingen Series 17, 2nd ed. (1949; Princeton, NJ: Princeton
UP, 1972).
8
See especially Mircea Eliade, Images and Symbols,
trans. Philip Mairet (1961; London: Sheed, 1969) and Mvth
and Reality, trans. Willard Trask (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
UP, 1963).
9
See Ernst Cassirer, Language and Mvth. trans. Suzanne
K. Langer (New York: Dover, 1946) and The Philosophy of
36
Symbolic Forms. Vol. 2: Mythical Thought, trans. Ralph
Monheim (New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1955).
10
Claude Levi-Strauss, "The Structural Study of Myth,"
in Myth: A Symposium, ed. Thomas Sebeok (Bloomington: U of
Indiana P, 1958), 53.
Levi-Strauss could be included with
Freud and Jung because of his suggestion that the structure
of myth may relate to organic features of the brain itself
(Righter 19).
11
As quoted in K. K. Ruthven, Mvth (London: Methuen,
1976) 58.
12
Lord Fitzroy Raglan, The Hero (New York: Vintage-
Knopf, 1956) 144.
13
Joseph P. Strelka, ed., Literary Criticism and Mvth
(University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1980) xii.
14
Righter 82.
15
Righter 19.
16
Harry Slochower, Preface, Mvthopoesis (Detroit:
Wayne State UP, 1970) 14-15.
17
Righter 94.
For a persuasive defense of myth
criticism, consult John B. Vickery, "Literary Criticism and
Myth: Anglo-American Critics," Literary Criticism and Mvth.
ed. Joseph P. Strelka (University Park: Pennsylvania State
UP, 1980) 210-37.
18
Righter 50.
19
Righter 45.
37
20
Righter 52.
21
Even so harsh a critic as Righter admits that the
decline of myth criticism may not so much reflect "that the
limitations of a method have been measured than that a
certain form of magic has ceased to beguile" 127.
22
,
As quoted m
23
Ruthven 3 3.
•
Eric G. Stanley, "The Continental Contributions to
the Study of Anglo Saxon Writings Up to and Including That
of the Grimms," Towards a History of English Studies in
Europe, ed., pref., & intro. Thomas Finkenstedt and ed. &
pref. Gertrud Scholtes (Augsburg: U of Augsburg, 1983) 19.
24
Stanley, "Continental Contributions" 23.
25
•
Eric G. Stanley, The Search for Anglo-Saxon Paganism
(Totowa, NJ: Rowman, 1975) 18.
This monograph, originally a
series of articles printed in Notes and Queries, outlines
the attempts made by scholars, mostly earlier ones, to
discover pagan (that is, non-Christian) elements in Beowulf.
Stanley refers to the poem's "Christian secularity" and
contends that "no amount of probing will reveal a pagan
core" x.
26
Stanley, Search 17.
27
Friedrich Klaeber, ed, Beowulf and the Fight at
Finnsburg (Lexington, MA: Heath, 1950) xxiv-xxv.
See
Klaeber cxlii-cxliii for a bibliography of sources and W. W.
Lawrence, "Some Disputed Questions of Beowulf Criticism,"
38
PMLA 24 (1909): 220-73 for a detailed criticism of specific
theories.
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
•
•
Lawrence, "Disputed Questions" 260.
•
Lawrence, "Disputed Questions" 258-59.
•
Stanley, "Continental Contributions" 22.
As quoted in Stanley, Search 43.
•
Lawrence, "Disputed Questions" 271.
•
Lawrence, "Disputed Questions" 258.
Lawrence, "Disputed Questions" 273.
35
.
Lawrence, "Disputed Questions" 261.
J. R. R. Tolkien, "Beowulf:
The Monsters and the
Critics," Proceedings of the British Academy 22 (1936): 24595, as rpt. in An Anthology of Beowulf Criticism, ed. Lewis
Nicholson (Notre Dame, IN: U of Notre Dame, 1963) 56.
37
38
Tolkien 63-64.
Tolkien 66.
39
Tolkien 67.
40
Tolkien 87.
41
Tolkien 81.
42
Tolkien 66,
43
44
S. F. Johnson, Explicator 9 (1951): no. 52.
Johnson finds that Beowulf meets many of the twenty-
two qualifications of a hero set forth by Lord Raglan in The
Hero (1936; New York: Knopf, 1956) 179ff.
45
Campbell 245-46.
39
46
Peter F. Fisher, "The Trials of the Epic Hero in
Beowulf." PMLA 73 (1958): 172-74.
47
Carl Meigs, Xavier University Studies 3 (1964): 89-
48
Jessie L. Weston, From Ritual to Romance (1920;
102.
Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1957).
49
Meigs 101.
50
Meigs 94.
51
Meigs 101.
52
Meigs 98.
53
Jeffrey Helterman, "Beowulf; The Archetype Enters
History," ELH 35 (1968): 3-4.
54
Helterman 16-17.
55
Helterman 19.
56
Janet Dow, "Beowulf and the 'Walkers in Darkness,'"
Connecticut Review 4 (1970): 44-46.
57
Dow 48.
58
•
G. V. Smithers, "Destiny and the Heroic Warrior
in Beowulf," Philological Essavs: Studies in Old and
Middle English Language and Literature. Ed. James L.
Rosier (The Hague: Mouton, 1970).
59
Smithers 17.
60
Paul B. Taylor, "Heorot, Earth, and Asgard:
Christian Poetry and Pagan Myth," Tennessee Studies in
Literature 11 (1966): 119.
40
61
Taylor 128.
62
Charles Moorman, "The Essential Paganism of
Beowulf." MLO 28 (1967): 18.
63
Moorman 12.
The relationship of sacral kingship to
myth will be dealt with in detail in Chapter IV of the
present study.
64
Joseph Fontenrose, Pvthon; A Study of Delphic Mvth
and Its Origins (Berkeley: U of California P, 1959): 521.
See Appendix 5: "The Combat in Germanic Myth and Legend,"
521-34.
A detailed list of characteristics of the combat
myth and its variants and subtypes may be found on pages 9-
11.
65
Fontenrose set out to show "that the Apollo-Python
myth and the Zeus-Typhon myth are two closely related
expressions of a single antecedent myth, itself a member of
a myth family that ranged over most of Europe and Asia" 465.
66
Terry A. Babb, "Beowulf: Myth and Meaning,"
Arlington Quarterly 2 (1970): 15.
This article is evidently
based on Fontenrose's work, and in fact Fontenrose is cited
several times; however, the author makes no mention of
Fontenrose*s discussion of Beowulf.
67
Babb 28.
68
Babb 15.
69
Babb 28.
70
Babb 24.
41
71
72
Babb 16.
•
A l v m A. Lee, The Guest Hall of Eden (New Haven, CT:
Yale UP, 1972) 6.
See pages 15-16 for a list of the
eighteen Christian myths on which Lee bases his discussion.
73
Lee 175.
74
Lee 211.
75
Lee 214.
76
Lee 209.
77
Lee 212.
78
Lee 223.
79
•
John D. Niles, Introduction, Old English Literature
in Context. Ed. John D. Niles (Cambridge: Brewer; Totowa,
NJ: Rowman, 1980) 9.
80
Albert B. Lord, "Interlocking Mythic Patterns in
Beowulf" 137-39.
Lord makes frequent comparisons of Beowulf
with the Iliad and the Odyssey in working out the details of
the patterns.
81
Michael N. Nagler, "Beowulf in the Context of Myth,"
Old English Literature in Context, ed. John D. Niles
(Cambridge: Brewer; Totowa, NJ: Rowman, 1980) 143.
82
Nagler 147.
83
Nagler 153.
84
Nagler 156.
85
Paul Bauschatz, The Well and the Tree: World and
42
Time in Early Germanic Culture (Amherst: U of Massachusetts
P, 1982) ix.
86
Bauschatz xiv.
87
Bauschatz xvii.
88
Bauschatz 19-20.
gg
Bauschatz 96-97.
Furthermore, any action is
important not for the way it occurs but because of its
possibilities as a fixed action to be related to other
facts.
For example, Beowulf's giving the sword hilt to
Hrothgar and Hrothgar's giving gifts to Beowulf not only
bind the two men together "but continually weave events into
each other and actually extend the physical presence of the
actions they commemorate" 101.
90
Bauschatz 104.
91
Bauschatz 116.
92
Graham Hough as quoted in Righter 72.
93
•
The major arguments in favor of the "Christian" side
of this argument may be found in:
F. Klaeber, "Die
Christlichen Elemente in 'Beowulf,'" Analia 35 (1911): lll36, 249-70, 453-82 and 36 (1912): 169-99; Marie P. Hamilton,
"The Religious Principle in 'Beowulf,'" PMLA 61 (1946): 30930; Dorothy Whitelock, The Audience of Beowulf (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1951);
Arthur G. Brodeur, The Art of Beowulf
(Berkeley: U of California P, 1959); Margaret E. Goldsmith,
43
"The Christian Perspective in Beowulf." CL 14 (1962): 71-80
and The Mode and Meaning of Beowulf (London: Athlone, 1970).
94
The seminal article for this point of view is F. P.
Magoun, "Oral-Formulaic Character of Anglo-Saxon Narrative
Poetry," Speculum 28 (1953): 446-67.
See also Robert P.
Creed, "The Making of an Anglo-Saxon Poem," ELH 26 (1959):
445-54 and Alain Renoir, A Kev to Old Poems (University
Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1988) 107-32.
95
Frazer, The Golden Bough. 1 vol. abr. ed. (New York:
Macmillan, 1963).
Both Frazer and Weston treat Christian
and pagan mythology as variations on the same basic
myth/ritual patterns which are shared by both traditions.
96
•
G. S. Kirk, "On Defining Myth," in Sacred Narrative,
ed. Alan Dundes (Berkeley: U of California P, 1984) 57.
07
•
Richard Chase, "Notes on the Study of Myth,"
Partisan Review 13 (1946): 338-46.
98
The italics are Chase's.
•
Lord Fitzroy Raglan, "Myth and Ritual," in Sacred
Narrative, ed. Alan Dundes (Berkeley: U of California P,
1984) 80.
In this paper, the subject of ritual will only be
tangentially discussed as it is related to myth in Beowulf.
For a study of ritual elements in the poem, consult Thomas
J. Gasgue, "A Study of Some Ritual Aspects of Old English
Poetry," Diss., U of Tennessee, 1970, 79-114.
99
-r-
.
Jones, Kings. Beasts & Heroes (London: Oxford UP,
1972) xvi-xvii.
44
100
Righter 96.
101
Irving, A Reading of Beowulf (New Haven, CT: Yale
UP, 1968) 86.
102
Ruthven 55.
103
Feder, "Myth, Poetry, and Critical Theory," in
Literary Criticism and Mvth. ed. Joseph P. Strelka
(University Park:
104
Pennsylvania State UP, 1980) 51.
David Daiches, Critical Approaches to Literature.
2nd ed. (London: Longman, 1981) 168.
105
Ruthven 21.
106
Alan Dundes, "Earth-Diver: Creation of the
Mythopoeic Male," in Sacred Narrative, ed. Alan Dundes
(Berkeley: U of California P, 1984) 270.
107
108
Dundes, "Earth-Diver" 290.
•
This statement reflects a basic premise of the
present study.
It is made with all due respect to the
tenets of New Criticism, whereby it is legitimate for a work
of art to mean something to a later period that it did not
mean to its original audience.
Indeed, I would agree that
Beowulf can mean something to us that it may not have meant
to its original audience; nevertheless, it seems an
unnecessarily careless omission not to attempt to discover
what the poem probably did mean to its first audience.
CHAPTER II
THE RELIGIOUS BACKGROUND OF BEOWULF
It seems fairly obvious that before one can arrive at
any conclusions regarding the role of mythic elements in
Beowulf, an understanding of the pre-Christian world view of
the Anglo-Saxons is essential.
It should be stressed that
what we have been trained to call "mythology" from a
thoroughly Christian cultural vantage point is the preChristian Anglo-Saxon's religion.
of looking at the world.
His belief shaped his way
A full grasp of pre-Christian
Anglo-Saxon religious ideas and practices is plainly
requisite to a complete understanding of the context in
which Beowulf was composed.
However, the information at
hand is quite limited, making it difficult to obtain
knowledge concerning the mysteries of Anglo-Saxon paganism
in spite of the late date of the so-called revival of
heathenism during the Christian period.
Written sources are particularly limited and vague as
regards the pre-conversion religious beliefs of the AngloSaxons.
Nevertheless, the absence of records does not mean
that heathen practices did not occur.
Writing was solely
the province of the Christian clergy from the time of King
45
46
Ethelbert to the Norman Conquest.
As J. S. Ryan explains,
the Church "was practising a policy of suppression,
and . . . such pagan material was not suitable for a Churchinspired record."1
Clearly, while Pope Gregory warned the
early church against blatantly attempting to stamp out all
traces of the old religion, it was not advantageous for the
Church to record heathen beliefs in detail.
In any case,
the later church was not so charitable, as is illustrated by
legal codes listing increasingly harsher penalties for
turning aside from Christianity.2
Since virtually all the
extant Anglo-Saxon written record is the work of clerics,
there are but scant traces of the old religion here.
Even so, the information can be pieced together.
As
William Chaney says,
Although no Anglo-Saxon work gives us full
information on pre-Christian religion in England,
almost no poem from before the Norman Conquest, no
matter how Christian its theme, does not reflect
it, and the evidence for pagan survivals and their
integration into the new faith goes beyond even
the literary sources.3
So while the corroboration for any statements made must be
painstakingly retrieved from admittedly disparate and
sometimes ambiguous sources, there is enough evidence to
47
gain some estimation of the role of pagan mythology in the
pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon world view.
One source commonly used to fill in blank spaces in the
description of Anglo-Saxon beliefs is the poetic written
record of Scandinavian mythology.
In this chapter, examples
from Scandinavian legends have purposely not been used to
substantiate Anglo-Saxon beliefs, on the premise that only
Anglo-Saxon evidence is patently admissible.
Nevertheless,
it seems logical to suppose that at least some of the
legends in such a poem as the Voluspa. which belongs to the
same tradition of alliterative half-lines as Beowulf, were
familiar to the poet and his audience.4
In fact, the Sutton
Hoo find has demonstrated that there was significant
cultural contact between the Anglians and the Scandinavians,
and even though Scandinavian mythology was not recorded in
writing until the tenth century, it surely existed long
before then.
It is not particularly adventurous to suppose
that wandering scops may have brought the stories of their
or other peoples' gods to courts in England or that an
English scop may have heard these stories and repeated them.
The problem is that by the time the Scandinavian beliefs
were written down, they may have changed substantially from
those with which eighth-century Anglo-Saxon culture came
into contact.
Thus, although such radical alterations are
unlikely, the use of Scandinavian parallels as sources of
48
information concerning Anglo-Saxon mythology will be as
limited as possible.
In order to judge which sources are most relevant, it
is necessary to determine a date for Beowulf.
This is in
itself problematic, as anyone familiar with the literature
knows.
A discussion of the possible dates and the arguments
offered in support of those is beyond the scope of the
present study, but as Colin Chase points out in the most
recent lengthy treatment of the subject, most commentators
date the poem from 650 to 800, although the West Saxon
manuscript in which the poem is preserved dates from around
1000.5
The position taken in this paper is that the poem
was fixed in its present form sometime during the first half
of the eighth century, perhaps a bit earlier but almost
certainly not later.
Another fundamental assumption is that Beowulf is a
unified whole; it is neither a loosely bound collection of
stories6 nor a pagan poem with late Christian
interpolations.7
This is not to say that the poet's sources
did not include a rich and varied native oral tradition.
fact, as William Whallon says:
"Composed in a traditional
language that would perhaps in itself have caused the past
to seem less remote, Beowulf . . . shows the customs,
ethics, and religion that the poet shared with his
audience."8
The poem as we have it, then, is the poem
In
49
composed by "the Beowulf poet," who was himself a Christian
but who was also familiar with the heathen religion which
had never, as will be amply demonstrated, died out.
It will
be shown in the following chapters of this paper that the
Beowulf poet incorporated mythological and historical
elements from traditional oral poetry into his poem with a
fine perception of their relation to the Christian elements
and their contribution to his theme.
He was very much aware
of and a part of his world and certainly understood and
shared the world view of his audience.
Beowulf was composed in either Northumbria or East
Anglia, almost certainly Mercia.9
Fortunately, there is
more information about the Anglians than about other
Germanic tribes.
Frederick Norman believes that they
probably subsumed a number of other tribes on the continent
and that their migration to England allowed them "to settle
down and to preserve their own individuality, character, and
identity."10
Although he does not mention mythological
stories, Norman does suggest that the Anglians may be
responsible for "a good deal of heroic material."
He
conveniently summarizes what we know of the people whose
descendants comprised the audience of Beowulf.:
We know that a rich store of story went over to
England with the Anglians, . . . that they
continued to collect heroic material from the
50
continent, . . . that in the eighth century they
are possessed of an astonishing amount of
information, in story form, from
Scandinavia, . . . that their relations with the
Danes who had gradually occupied deserted
continental Anglia remained friendly and intimate
for a long time after they had settled in
England. . . .11
From this starting point we can begin to examine the beliefs
of the eighth-century Anglians specifically and Anglo-Saxons
generally.
The oldest gods worshipped by the Anglo-Saxons were
apparently the same as those worshipped by the natives of
Britain.
The earliest archaeological discoveries such as
the rock tracings found throughout Western Europe, including
England, support the widespread existence of solar images
and cult objects during the Bronze Age in Celtic Britain.
The predominant images depicted in these tracings are
various circular forms, including spirals, spoked circles,
rosettes and swastikas, as well as "sun-bearing or wheelbearing ships."12
Celtic Christian pillar stones as well as
the Stonehenge megaliths also bear wheels and circle
crosses.13
Although more recent treatments of Stonehenge
have tended to concentrate on its astronomic aspect, T.C.
Lethbridge believes that Stonehenge, "known significantly
51
enough to Geoffrey of Monmouth as the 'Giant's Dance,'" was
constructed for the purpose of "the conducting of ritual and
religious dances at the rites of both sun and moon alike."14
It seems likely that the religion of early Britain combined
the two tendencies of nature cults:
the matriarchal cult of
the earth (as seen in the beliefs of the early Stone-Age
settlers of Europe) and the patriarchal cult of the sky (as
seen in the beliefs of the Indo-Europeans).15
Knowledge concerning Celtic Britain is relevant since
British mythology begins with the Celts and since the AngloSaxons apparently accommodated themselves to this religion
just as they would later do with Christianity.
In his study
of the chalk hill-figures of England, Lethbridge includes a
map showing the widespread distribution of surviving "traces
of pre-Saxon religious survivals" and argues that this
"serves to show the improbability of any large-scale
dispersal of the former population by the Anglo-Saxons."16
It also shows that Celtic beliefs were not exterminated by
the Anglo-Saxons; they were assimilated just as the
population was assimilated.
It must be recognized, however, that the basic beliefs
of the Celts were similar to beliefs held by people all over
the Indo-European world.
Consequently, essentially the same
beliefs may have been held by the Germanic tribes before
they even came in contact with the Celts.
If so, these
52
shared conceptions could only have made assimilation occur
more readily.
For instance, in Celtic mythology, there were
basically two tribes of gods who were always in conflict,
one named after the god Don, who was symbolic of the sea and
death, and the other after Tyr, who represented life and
light.17
It is not surprising that these "tribes" can be
easily identified in Beowulf, since the conflict between
life and death, light and dark is probably the oldest
mythological theme, certainly dating back to Indo-European
origins.
What is significant is the fact that this
mythological theme has persisted in England in varying
religious forms, inclusive of but not exclusively Christian.
Thus, as Chaney warns, Christianity should not be too much
divorced from "the culture, shaped by paganism, which formed
and even warped it. "18
Lethbridge contends that "the worship of the Earth
Mother, the moon, and of her husband, son, or lover the sun
was one of the most permanent beliefs in Britain."19
In the
Gogmagog Hills of East Anglia, Lethbridge excavated the
Wandlebury hillside chalk figures which made up a giant
tableau one hundred yards long and thirty yards high.
The
oldest, dating from the Celtic Iron Age, was a female
goddess on a horse.
Two more figures, a one-hundred-foot
warrior (with the familiar solar wheel symbol on his chest)
brandishing a fifty-foot sword and a second male figure one
53
hundred, seventeen feet high and eighty five feet wide were
added along with a chariot around 50 BC during the Celtic
Bronze Age.
Lethbridge interprets this scene as a depiction
of the battle of the forces of light, represented by the
moon (Epona, Magog, Earth Mother) and the sun (Gog, Sky
t
20
God), against the dark, represented by the warrior.
According to Lethbridge, this site and others like it
were centers of ritual activity.
The outlines of the chalk
figures were not filled in as a result of Cnut's law against
the worship of Sun and Moon in the eleventh century, and the
Wandlebury site was used for religious festivities until
around 1600, attesting to its continuing power of
attraction.
Finally, enough University members in the days
of the Tudors participated in rituals at Wandlebury "that
the University Senate had to take steps to discourage their
members from attending them."21
Obviously, their Celtic
provenance does not at all preclude the possibility that
these figures were used for religious purposes by the AngloSaxons.
As Chaney states, "The rites of pre-Saxon gods in
England" such as those at Wandlebury "survived the coming of
22
both the Anglo-Saxons and Christianity. . . . "
There is, in fact, good reason to believe that the
worship of sun/sky god and moon/earth goddess continued in
England, both before and after St. Augustine brought
Christianity to the Anglo-Saxons.
Evidence is found in the
54
Anglo-Saxon calendar, archaeology and literature.
The names
for the first and second days of the week continued to honor
the Sun and Moon.
In De Temporum Ratione, Bede says that
the heathen name of February was Solmonath, during which
time the pagans offered cakes to their gods.23
The name
Litha. meaning "moon," was given to two summer months.24
Almost half of two hundred fifty stamps on Anglo-Saxon
burial urns excavated from an Anglo—Saxon cremation cemetery
in Suffolk appear to be symbols of the sun: discs, circles
with rays, swastikas, and equal-armed crosses (which might
also be Christian symbols).25
The horse, serpent, boar, and
stag, all "animals associated with light and sun" are also
"uniquely connected with the burial urns."26
Male sun and
female moon faces frequently appear above the cross in
crucifixions in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts.27
The Anglo-Saxon
Charms also reflect religious beliefs pre-dating the worship
of personalized gods.
The charm which is sometimes called
VEcerbot. a fertility charm, contains both sun and earth
worship.
Moon-worship can be found in two charms in
Hprharinm 8 and 10, where the charms are to be performed
"when the moon is waning."28
As late as the first part of
the eleventh century, Cnut the Great passed laws forbidding
the worship of "the sun, moon, sacred groves and woods, and
•
hallowed hills and fountains."
29
55
This ancient religion was of course influenced and
transformed by the beliefs of pre-Christian Anglo-Saxons and
Christians.
The ancient gods were venerated along with the
personalized Germanic gods, and the pagan English had
priests and temples in which they set up idols.
This fact
is clear from Pope Gregory's often-quoted letter of June 17,
601, written to Abbot Mellitus, in which he says that the
idols must be smashed but that the temples are to be
consecrated for the use of Christianity.30
The problem is
determining the exact nature of heathen beliefs concerning
these gods.
Again, information about the gods of the Anglo-
Saxon heathen religion must be pieced together from varied
sources, and there is disagreement among scholars even as to
the exact list of gods.
The earliest personalized god known to have been
worshipped by the Anglo-Saxons is Tiw (or Tyr), the old Sky
Father, whose name is given to the third day of the week.
Sometime before 300 AD, he took on the attributes of a wargod, as may be seen in the correspondence of Old English
Tiwes-daeg to Latin Martis dies, the day of Mars.
Tiw is
one-handed, and his weapon is the sword, "used for sacred
oaths and in single combat a method of determining the
outcome of larger armed conflicts by means of divine
judgment."31
According to Hodgkin, Tiw was "so old . . .
that by the fifth century he had faded in the background of
56
•
32
men's minds."
Nevertheless, a seventh-century Anglo-Saxon
spearhead and a sword pommel bear the runic symbol t
»
for
33
this pagan war-god.
Branston notes that placename
evidence shows Tiw "was still worshipped by the English
after AD 450."
Tiw was remembered at Tuesley (Surrey),
Tislea (Hampshire) and Tyesmere (Worcestershire).
Tiw is
also connected with the chalk horse figure cut into the
hillside near Tysoe (Warwickshire), which means "Tiw's hill
spur."34
Some of the attributes of Tiw may later have been
taken over by Woden, especially since his huge spear could
determine the outcome of battle.35
Tiw may be identical
with the god known as Seaxnet, whom continental Saxons
worshipped until the ninth century. Seaxnet appears as
divine ancestor of the East Saxon kings, the only surviving
Anglo-Saxon royal genealogy to claim Seaxnet rather than
Woden.36
A second sky-god worshipped by the Anglo-Saxons is
Thunor (the English equivalent of Thor), whose name is
preserved in the name of the fifth day of the week.
Although Hodgkin suspects that all the gods except Woden
were "little more than mere names,"37 a case can be made
that Thunor continued to occupy a place in the heathen
religion after the passage to Britain.
The god of thunder,
whose hammer was the thunderbolt, Thunor was especially
revered by the common man and in particular the farmer.
57
"The proliferation of folk superstitions regarding thunder
and its prophetic value might be taken as proof of English
Thor veneration," as Ritzke-Rutherford acknowledges.38
Thunor seems to have been more popular than Woden in Essex
and Wessex, judging by the more frequent occurrence of his
name in placenames there.
Sacred sites of the god are
commemorated at Thunderfield (Surrey), Thundridge
(Hertfordshire) and at six places in Sussex, Essex, Surrey
and Hampshire in which Thunor 1 s name "precedes -leah an Old
English word meaning a 'wood' or 'woodland clearing,"
evidence for the worship of Germanic gods in sacred
39
groves.
•
Since Thunor was the god of farmers, the absence
of his name in the royal genealogies does not mean that he
was unimportant.40
In fact, in spite of his connection with
common man, one of the pieces found in the royal grave at
Sutton Hoo, a whetstone "sceptre," could be symbolically
associated with the sky god, since one story told about him
concerned a whetstone in his forehead.41
The main myth
connected with his name was his struggle with the World
Serpent, a myth with which the Old English were possibly
familiar.
In this role, Thunor is the champion against the
dark forces of chaos and destruction.
The dominant god of pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon religion
was Woden, whose name is commemorated in the name of the
fourth day of the week.
Hodgkin says that Woden, "chief god
58
of warriors," was replacing "Thunor, the Thunderer, the
weather-god beloved by the common people, much as Thunor"
had driven out Tiw.42
/Elfric, writing in the eleventh
century, identified Woden as Mercury, a man deified by the
heathens.43
Like most gods, Woden was identified with life
as dispenser of luck and with death as its controller.
Much of what is known about him is substantiated in the
written record.
Woden is referred to in the Nine Herbs
Charm as a magician:
none.
"The snake came crawling and struck at
But Woden took nine glory-twigs and struck the adder
so that it flew into nine parts. . . . " Branston explains
that the glory-twigs, wuldortanas. "represent the 'twigs of
Wuldor' or of the Sky Father . . .
been cut."44
on which runic signs had
Woden may also have been regarded as the
inventor of the runic alphabet since in Solomon and Saturn.
"Mercurius, the giant" is said to be the inventor of
letters.45
According to Ryan, occurrences of the "beasts of
battle" theme in Exodus. The Finnsbura Fragment. Genesis.
Elene, and Judith, as well as in Beowulf are references to
the cult of Woden, which is entirely possible since ravens
and wolves were traditional cult animals of this god.46
Ryan offers the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle entry for 491
describing the slaughter of every Celtic warrior at Pevensey
as "evidence that the first settlers in Britain practised
the rite of total immolation of an enemy host" in honor of
59
Woden.47
Hanging was another form of sacrifice to Woden:
the reference in Beowulf to the mourning father's son
hanging as a joy to ravens ("^onne his sunu hangaS / hrefne
to hro&re," 2447b-2448a) may have been for the contemporary
audience a clear reference to a heathen god.48
More tangible support is given by Brian Branston, who
points out that "Traces of his cult are scattered more
widely over the rolling English countryside than those of
any other heathen deity. . . .1,49
Wansdyke ("WSdnes die"),
an impressive earthwork extending from Hampshire to
Somerset, was contructed in the fifth and sixth centuries.50
The Vale of Pewsey just below Wansdyke is "associated with
the worship of Woden" but also has "religious affinities
going even further back into the Early Iron Age, as
evidenced by the White Horse cut into the chalk of the
hillside.1,51
Early Anglo-Saxon placename evidence
associates Woden with hills and artificial mounds,52
which
is particularly interesting in light of the giant hillside
figures.
Near the White Horse figure are places which in
the ninth century were still known as Wodnes beorh "Woden's
barrow" (now Adam's Grave) and Wodnes denu "Woden's valley."
Other placenames which reveal his widespread veneration are
Wednesbury and Wednesfield above the mouth of the Thames and
Woodnesborough (near Sandwich), to name only a few.53
It is
obvious, then, judging from the settlements named after him,
60
that Woden was widely venerated among the Angles of
Northumbria, the East and West Saxons of Essex and Wessex,
and the Jutes of Kent.
Most Anglo-Saxon kings traced their genealogies to
Woden and continued to do so even after converting to
Christianity.
He appears as an ancestor of the royal houses
of East Anglia and Mercia as well as those of Kent, Essex,
Wessex, Deira, Bernicia, and Lindisfarne.
Ryan believes
that "this fact . . . may be taken as a principal proof of
the deeply rooted worship of the divinity."54
This
tradition was a significant part of the tribal culture
since, as Sir Frank Stenton remarks, "kingship was less a
matter of political authority than of descent from ancient
gods. . . .,|55
Largely as a result of this divine ancestry,
the Anglo-Saxon king functioned as an intermediary with the
gods, whom his people would serve as they served him.
Naturally, as Jon Kasik explains, when the king converted to
Christianity and at the same time retained his descent from
ancient gods, serving the king's new God "would not have
required an alteration of a people's essential world
view. . . . "56
Woden's role as ancestor of kings is
indicative of the powerful position he occupied in AngloSaxon religion.
The boar was one of the cult objects associated with
Woden. However, this was an ancient cult figure, as attested
61
to by the first-century sandstone figure described by
Davidson as wearing a neckring "with a fine crested boar
carved on his chest, and a large staring eye on one side of
the body," a traditional symbol of the ancient sun-god.57
It is interesting that Woden was also known as a one-eyed
god, having traded his eye for the acquisition of hidden
knowledge.
Probably because of its association with Woden,
god of war and royalty, the boar was a symbol commonly
connected with kings and warriors.
Thus, "there are ten
representations of boars among the grave-goods" at Sutton
Hoo, including the interlocking boars on the clasps and
those on the eyebrows of the helmet.58
A boar also forms
the crest of a helmet from a seventh-century grave at Benty
Grange in Derbyshire, and Davidson conjectures that the gold
bristles of this boar might show a "link between the boar
and the sun."59
As mentioned earlier, Woden was the god of
warriors, and in Beowulf (303b-306a) the boar is said to
guard and protect warriors who wear it. Beowulf's boar
helmet cannot be pierced (1453-54).60
Davidson suggests
that the standard offered to Beowulf which had a boar on it
("eafor heafodsegn," 2152) possessed religious significance
as well as being a royal, ceremonial symbol.
She also sees
the golden collars such as that which Beowulf presents to
Hygd (2172) and which Hygelac wears in his last battle
62
(1202ff) as probable symbols of Odin (Woden) "worn by his
distinguished royal worshippers. "61
The boar symbol is, however, not only found in a
military context.
It appears on a woman's seventh-century
pendant (from White Low in Derbyshire) and on the ninthcentury Alfred Jewel made after the firm establishment of
Christianity.62
Obviously, the boar image retained its
power long after the official eradication of the heathen
religion.
The boar was also symbolically connected with fertility
deities.63
In addition to the Moon and Earth Goddess,
various personalized fertility gods and goddesses were
worshipped in Anglo-Saxon England.
The boar was the sacred
animal of the mother-goddess Nerthus and of Frey(r) and his
sister Frea, whose cult was derived from that of Nerthus.64
Most scholars agree that the earth goddess Nerthus was
worshipped by the Anglo-Saxons just as the Continental Angli
were faithful to her cult, even though fertility worship in
England did not develop as it had done among the ancestors
of the Anglo-Saxons.65
The continental Anglians were
probably the dominant member of a confederation of tribes
which practiced the cult of Nerthus, and it is doubtful that
they left her behind when they came to England.66
Chaney
sees a possible connection between the Sutton Hoo ship
burial and Nerthus: the ship was a cult object of Nerthus,
63
since she emerged from the sea.67
Although Anglo-Saxon
England does not offer incontrovertible evidence of the
fertility goddess Nerthus, "it is clear that, like their
continental neighbors (and, indeed like most pagan peoples),
the Anglo-Saxons acknowledged an Earth Mother whose favour
was essential if they were to survive."68
Chaney believes that the cult of the fertility god
Freyr (a son of Woden, identical to Frea) active among
continental Germanic peoples continued in England and that
"connotations of this deity may well have been present in
the use of frea as a common kenning for an earthly lord and
for the Anglo-Saxon king."
As Chaney notes, this term
appears seventeen times in Beowulf meaning "lord," and he
interprets this use of frea as possible proof that Frea
(Frey, Freyr) was known to the Anglo-Saxons.69
Branston
contends that the reference to the necklace of the Brosings
in Beowulf (1197-1200) is proof positive of the Anglo-Saxon
knowledge of the goddess Freya, since in Germanic mythology
this necklace was one of her famous possessions.70
Further
support for Frea's existence may be seen in English
archaelogical finds which demonstrate "certain rituals
associated with the fertility god in Scandinavian
mythology."71
According to Icelandic tradition, the priests
of Freyr (who owned a miraculous ship) were buried in ships,
64
so that this god may be the ultimate source of the practice
of ship funerals which took place in Anglo-Saxon Suffolk.72
A fertility god who was himself buried in a ship was
Balder the Beautiful, another son of Woden.
Apparently, his
name appears in the Old English genealogies as Bad-data73 and
in only one placename, Baldereslea.74
Although the case for
his having been worshipped in Anglo-Saxon England is
extremely weak, the existing evidence is so striking that it
demands consideration.
His name, derived from an IE root
*bal- meaning light, is the basis for the Old English word
bealdor meaning prince or lord.
This parallel suggests that
Balder may have been identical with Freyr.75
In spite of
the fact that he is not resurrected, Balder seems to belong
to the tradition of Tammuz/Osiris/Adonis, of the dying god
of vegetation who returns from death to his lover Earth.
As
told by Snorri Sturleson in the Prose Edda (c. 1200), Balder
is killed when a mistletoe is hurled at him.76
This myth
has, not surprisingly, been seen reflected in the
Cynewulfian poem Dream of the Rood, particularly when
Christ's cross says, "The warriors left me standing drenched
with blood; I was wounded to death with arrows."77
The
phrase "wounded with arrows" is also quoted in runes on the
seventh-century Ruthwell Cross, indicating that the AngloSaxons knew the myth of Balder's death before the later
Viking invasions.78
65
Frig, the daughter of Mother Earth whose name lives on
in the name of the fifth day of the week, is known in
Scandinavian tradition as the wife of Woden and mother of
Balder.
She is another fertility goddess almost certainly
worshipped by the Anglo-Saxons.
The only reference to Frig
found in the Anglo-Saxon written record "is the one by
Elfric towards the end of the Anglo-Saxon period, contained
in his homily De Falsis Deis, 'On False Gods, 1 " where she is
portrayed as the Germanic version of Venus.79
Placenames,
however, contain additional evidence for the existence of
her cult in Anglo-Saxon England.
Freefolk (Hampshire) is
recorded as Fricrefolc in the Domesday Book, and her name
appears in Frydaythorpe (East Riding) and less obviously in
Froyle and Frobury, villages whose names were once
identical, Old English Freohvll meaning "the hill of the
goddess Frig."80
There is considerable argument over whether two other
fertility goddesses were venerated by the Anglo-Saxons.
Eostre, whose name for April was appropriated for the
Christian celebration, and Hretha, whose rites were
supposedly celebrated in March, must have been fertility
goddesses, since their rites were celebrated in the spring.
Our sole authority for their existence is Bede.
Since he is
writing well after the establishment of Christianity, many
scholars have been reluctant to accept their existence,
66
accusing Bede of back formation, inventing goddesses to
match names of the months in the early Anglo-Saxon
81
calendar.
Stenton, however, insists that it would be
"incredible that Bede, to whom heathenism was sin, would
have invented a heathen goddess in order to explain the name
of the month of Easter."82
Very little is known about a fertility god named Ing.
He was considered by Germanic peoples to be the hero of the
Ingwine (the Danes).
The Old English Rune Poem says that
"Ing was first seen by men among the East Danes until he
afterwards went over the sea again."
A rather obscure
figure possibly identified with Freyr, who was titled 'Ingvi
and 'Ingunar,|83 Ing is strangely reminiscent of Scyld
Sceafing, who disappears over the sea in Beowulf.
Scyld Scefing, like Nerthus, also appears from the sea.
Scyld and Sceaf are traditional ancestors of at least West
Saxon royalty.
The sheaf, apparently seen as "the child of
the grain deity," was used as a religious symbol by the
Anglo-Saxons in a fertility ritual,84 and Sceaf and his son
Beow (barley) were probably associated with some sort of
harvest rites celebrated in September, known as Haleamonath
(Holy month) in pagan times.85
Scyld Sceafing's role in
Beowulf will be considered at length in Chapter IV, but it
is worth noting here that the original pagan story recorded
by the Old English chronicler /Ethelwere (who died around
67
the year 1000) says that Sceaf floated ashore as a baby on
the island Scania, where he was brought up and eventually
elected as king.
According to William of Malmesbury, who
died about 1142, Sceaf arrived at Scandza, an island in
Germany, in an oarless boat as a sleeping boy with his head
pillowed on a sheaf of corn.
When he grew up he became a
ruler in Old Anglia, the area from which the Angles came to
,
•
Britain.
86
•
It is interesting that when the Anglo-Saxon
kings converted to Christianity and added ancestors of Woden
to their genealogies, Sceaf, "who traditionally arrived by
boat, is neatly made the son of the ark-builder."87
One last possible "god" worshipped by the heathen
Anglo-Saxons remains to be considered.
The concept of wvrd
must be accounted for in the overall view of the way the
Anglo-Saxons looked at the world.
As Branston says, Wyrd is
the Old English version of a fundamental idea which is not
restricted to Old English mythology but is found generally
in Indo-European myth, "that of an all-powerful Fate or
Destiny . . . originally pictured as a woman, a dread
omnipotent personality to whom even the gods were subject."
Branston perceives Wyrd in Beowulf as undergoing the
transition to being subject to the Christian God.
He notes
that in the earlier Gnomic Poems: "the glories of Christ are
great; Wyrd is strongest of all."88
Many scholars have
tried to show Anglo-Saxon belief in a personalized Fate by
68
citing parallels from the tenth-century record of
Scandinavian mythology.
It seems prudent, however, to agree
with Dorothy Whitelock:
It would be natural enough that, even while yet
heathen, the Anglo-Saxons should feel that man's
destiny is outside his own control, but stronger
evidence would be necessary before we could assume
a belief in the fate-weaving Norns at the foot of
the world-tree Iggdrasil, as described in the much
later, poetic, mythology of the Scandinavians.89
Nevertheless, even if one resists the temptation to see a
female goddess in Old English treatments of fate, there is
surely something more in the depictions of wvrd than pure
abstraction.90
Long after the advent of Christianity and in spite of
the fact that England could claim to be officially Christian
by 664, the date of the Synod of Whitby, the pagan religion
continued to exert an influence over the people.
Illustrative are the activities of royalty, who led the
conversion to Christianity.
Raedwald, King of the East
Angles, is the most famous example of reluctance to desert
the old gods, although there surely must have been others
like him.
After returning from Kent, where /Ethelbert had
persuaded him to become Christian, he set up altars to both
Christ and Woden in the same temple.91
King ethelbert, who
69
swayed other kings to Christianity, was unable to convert
•
Q2
,
his own son.'
The sons of King Saebert of Essex reverted
to heathenism and expelled Bishop Mellitus upon their
father's death, in spite of having professed to be
Christians during his lifetime.93
When King Edwin (who had
been converted in 634) died, Northumbria "lapsed into
paganism."94
In most of the converted Anglo-Saxon kingdoms,
including East Anglia, royal apostasy occurred.95
The
continued interest of the Christian kings in their pagan
past is further attested to by a frieze sculpture depicting
a Sigmund story related in the Volsuncra Sacra.
This frieze
was found in the Old Minster of Winchester Cathedral, the
burial place of West Saxon kings, when it was destroyed in
1093 in preparation for the new Norman cathedral.96
Sutton Hoo offers another striking example of royal
adherence to the old ways.
When King Sigeberht the Learned,
who acceded to the throne of East Anglia in AD 631, was
killed in battle by the heathen Penda, the devoutly
Christian King Anna became the ruler.
It was, however,
"this apparently firmly converted kingdom" that "buried in
the old heathen fashion the rich funeral ship of Sutton
97
Hoo."
»
Although ship burial was apparently rare in Anglo-
Saxon England, the Sutton Hoo discovery confirms the
existence of this tradition in East Anglia.
As H. R. Ellis
Davidson mentions, this seventh—century royal grave was
70
located "in an East Anglian cemetery used for burials over a
long period of time before the arrival of the AngloSaxons. "98
The persistence of heathen beliefs is indeed manifest
in burial customs.
According to Elizabeth Martin-Clarke,
with the full acceptance of the tenets of the
Christian Church the burial of objects with the
dead ceases.
Pagan cemeteries were used in
England between the coming of the Anglo-Saxons and
about 700 AD when Christian burials within the
churchyards took their place.
The transition, however, was not abrupt.
As Martin-Clarke
says, "We should expect (and we find) a number of pagan
graves with Christian objects and vice-versa."99
The grave
mound burial itself has been interpreted as symbolic of
placing the dead body in the breast of the Earth Mother
goddess.100
religion.
Cremation is also connected with the heathen
As Ryan notes, in Germanic tradition the burning
of the dead constituted a sacrifice to Othin, who had in
fact instituted this custom and whose son Balder was burned
on a funeral pyre.
In England, cremation sites in heathen
cemeteries are located on hills mainly in the north (which
is logical since Thunor was worshipped more in the south),
and "large-scale cremation cemeteries" are found only in the
Anglian area.101
Ship-burial, such as that of Scyld in
71
Beowulf, is also associated with Woden as well as Balder and
Freyr.
According to Icelandic sources, the ship of the dead
is bound for the kingdom of Othin.102
This tradition may be
what the Beowulf poet obliquely refers to when he says of
Scyld floating out to sea that men do not know for a fact
who received this cargo ("hwa -pern hlaeste onfeng" 52).
The strength of the heathen religion is also reflected
in the laws enacted against it.
Paganism was apparently not
even outlawed in Kent until 640 AD, when King Eorcenberht
commanded that the idols be destroyed.103
A hundred years
after the arrival of Augustine, a king of Kent found it
necessary to legislate against the worship of "devils," the
Christian designation for the heathen gods.104
Even after
the end of the eighth century, by which time "the Church was
firmly established under the control of bishops,"105 laws
against the practice of the pagan religion were still
necessary.
Almost up until the Norman Conquest, in fact,
legal enactments testify that even if the rulers were
Christian, heathen beliefs and practices persisted among the
people, especially in stressful times.
This can be
seen in Beowulf, where the Christian king Hrothgar's men
resort to entreating the pagan gods to help them overcome
Grendel.
Chaney does not believe that the continuance of heathen
practices can be blamed on the Vikings.
He admits that such
72
ancient practices may have gained strength "by the arrival
of believing pagans from Scandinavia," but strongly denies
"that they had ever died out among the English or that they
reflect solely the customs of the newcomers from the
North."106
Alcuin's letter complaining that the monks
delighted in Germanic tales more than in God's word implies
"that even the religious in the great century of
Northumbrian monastic culture cared more for secular, pagan
reminiscence than for Christian learning."107
Hodgkin
remarks, "The century after Bede is generally regarded as an
age of increasing degeneracy of the English church," but
even earlier Bede wrote of "sham monasteries" controlled by
laymen, whose members included apostate monks.108
Even when no apostasy occurred, there was a gradual
blending of heathen and Christian elements.
Chaney explains
that "The pagan genealogies of the Woden-sprung kings were
in time assimilated to Christianity."
According to the
Anglo Saxon Chronicle entry for 855 AD, in the lineage of
King Aethelwulf of Wessex, "Woden is sixteenth in descent
from 'Sceaf, who is the son of Noah and was born in Noah's
Ark. '"109
In literature Beowulf is of course a prime example, but
discussion of this poem will be reserved for the remaining
chapters of this study.
References to heathen religion have
been noted in the seventh- or eighth-century Dream of the
73
Rood: critics have perceived Teutonic tree-worship as well
as striking similarities to the myth of the sacrificial god
Balder, son of Woden.110
Martin-Clarke has suggested that
the "old pagan myth" of Woden hanging on Yggdrasil Ash (the
world tree) is also "embedded in the account of the
crucifixion in the Dream of the Rood."
She further notes
the significance "of the fact that the lines of the poem are
carved in the old native runic letters" on the seventhcentury Ruthwell Cross.111
The Christian poet Cynewulf
signed his poems in runes, which were almost certainly
associated with pagan magic in the heathen religion,
indicating that the integration of pagan and Christian
elements may have been common custom.
Perhaps the clearest
demonstration in literature is seen in the Charms. which
also contain runes.
In the fertility charm mentioned
earlier, Christian terminology appears alongside the thriceintoned appeal to Erce, mother earth, and the pieces of
earth are carried to the church to have masses sung over
112
them.
•
Chaney discusses the importance of Anglo-Saxon
Charms as attesting to the survival of old superstitions and
beliefs and concludes that "these manifestations of popular
belief bear witness to the continuation of heathenism in
Anglo-Saxon England."113
While the names of the gods have
been suppressed, their stories seem to live on, most often
in a Christian setting.
74
Naturally, the combining of Christian and pagan
elements occurs outside literature, too.
Heathen figures
appear on Christian crosses and pagan symbols are found in
Christian graves.114
The seventh-century Franks Casket from
northern England is exemplary of the syncretism of the time.
Depicted on it are scenes from the Bible and classical as
well as pagan mythology.
One of the figures is Wayland, the
smith of the gods whose name appears in Beowulf. Waldere and
Deor's Lament, in spite of the Christian Church's strenuous
attempts to suppress such references to pagan heroes.
Interestingly enough, the artist of the Franks Casket carved
identifying runic inscriptions beneath the classical and
Christian scenes but not under the Wayland scene, indicating
his audience's greater familiarity with this pagan hero's
story.115
Clearly, the world-view of the Beowulf poet and
his audience admitted and accommodated many gods.
Sometimes the melding of Christian and pagan elements
is so subtle that the artist's intention is ambiguous.
This
ambiguity is further complicated by the near impossibility
of distinguishing one cultural pagan symbol from another.
The same predominant symbols appear in the mythologies of
Celtic, Germanic, and Scandinavian peoples, making rigid
distinctions among their cult practices difficult at best.
The overlapping use of religious symbols by Celtic, Germanic
and Icelandic peoples is not remarkable, because of
75
extensive parallels in their mythologies.
As Davidson says,
this resemblence "indicates an accepted framework, with
emphasis on certain symbols and motifs. . . .1,116
These same
symbols and framework can also be seen in Christian
mythology.
One example is the Sutton-Hoo purse-top with the
motif of a male figure flanked by two wolves which appear to
be in the process of eating him.
This motif has been
identified as "Daniel in the Lion's Den" as well as "the Sky
Father being swallowed by the Wolf."117
The probable
explanation is that such motifs descended from a common
Indo-European original, which will be fully discussed in the
ensuing chapters.
Christianity, however strong, was a relatively new
accretion to the set of beliefs comprising the Anglo-Saxon
world view.
Dorothy Whitelock points out that "The
Christian religion was established in Britain before the
English came, but there is no evidence that any of the
invaders deserted in its favour the rites of their
forefathers which they brought with them."118
Even King
Ethelbert of Kent, who so quickly adopted the new faith,
insisted on meeting Augustine out in the open because he
feared the stranger's magic.119
The newness of Christianity at the time of the
composition of Beowulf as compared to the long history of
the heathen religion can be fully realized by the fact that
76
royalty were still being converted in the seventh century.
The West Saxons were "free of Christian influence" when
Augustine died in 604.120
The infamous pagan Penda's son
Peada, who had been converted in 653 AD, sent missionaries
into East Anglia and central Mercia as well.121
As Stenton
has said, "throughout the country in which Augustine and his
companions laboured, heathenism was still a living religion
when it met the Christian challenge.1,122
It is logical to ask why, if the heathen religion was
so strong, the Anglo-Saxons were relatively easily converted
to Christianity.
After all, "/Ethelbert was baptized less
than three months after the arrival of Augustine, and there
was not a single martyrdom during the entire period of the
Anglo-Saxon conversion.1,123
There are several possible
reasons for this apparently smooth transition.
Nora
Chadwick reminds us that Christianity existed in Britain
long before Augustine's arrival.
She points out that
Britons became aware of Christianity during the Roman
occupation and that the intellectual contacts between
Britain and Rome created a climate favorable to the
Christian religion.124
In the case of King
Ethelbert of
Kent, the contact with Christianity was more intimate.
He
had been married to Bertha, a practicing Christian from
Paris, for nine years prior to St. Augustine's arrival, so
his readiness for the new faith can be easily accounted
77
125
for.
»
Since he used his power and influence to persuade
the kings of almost all the other kingdoms to convert to the
new religion, it is not illogical to suggest /Ethelbert as a
factor in the comparatively quick conversion.
A variety of other explanations have been offered.
It
has been noticed that the polytheism of Germanic religion
may have facilitated the acceptance of another god, the
Christian one.126
Another explanation frequently offered is
that the Anglo-Saxon pre-Christian religion had no center of
control or authority, with a consequent lack of orthodoxy
and ability to punish apostasy.127
The absence of a "creed,"
a formal presentation of beliefs, would obviously have
greatly contrasted with the religion of Augustine.
Hodgkin
conjectures that the Anglo-Saxons were unable to work their
beliefs "into a coherent system like that of the Icelanders
in a later age" because they lived in small, isolated
communities.128
This lack of coherence may well have put the
traditional Germanic religion at a disadvantage.
Another
reason given for the advantageous position of Christianity
is that there was not a strong sense of the sanctity of the
pagan temples,129 which would explain why Christian
missionaries were able to use them as Christian churches, in
effect deposing the old gods and setting up a new one.
Finally, the decision to change religions might have been an
essentially pragmatic one, as it was for Coifi, a heathen
78
priest in the court of King Edwin of the Angles.
According
to Bede, the King, uncertain about accepting Christianity,
consulted his councilors.
Coifi replied that the new
religion might be better; the old one was not particularlyefficacious since others, less devout than he, had received
more favors from the king.130
Chaney disagrees with any interpretation which would
imply weakness of the heathen religion.
On the contrary, he
contends that the very strength of the pagan beliefs and the
many ways in which Christian beliefs paralleled these
explain why the Anglo-Saxons could accommodate themselves to
the new faith.
He believes, for example, that "The relation
of heathen king with heathen religion continues in the
relation of Christian king with Christian Church." Chaney
perceives a general
continuity between present and past and the
working within a tradition while accommodating to
the Christian faith, instead of a radical break
with the past and the casting off of deeply
embedded tribal-centred processes of thought.131
Related to this view is still another eminently plausible
explanation of why the Anglo-Saxons may have found it fairly
natural to accept the new religion: in many cases Christian
practices subsumed rather than supplanted the earlier
religious practices.
For example, Christianity's
79
incorporation of local pagan symbols into its iconography
and of "heathen customs into the conduct of the Christian
year"132 surely contributed to its acceptance.
There are some who would not agree that the AngloSaxons readily embraced Christianity.
Margaret Murray
contends that "the Augustine mission concentrated on the
rulers, and through them forced their exotic religion on a
stubborn and unwilling people." It is not necessary to agree
with Murray's extreme views in order to concur with her
statement that "No religion dies out with the dramatic
suddenness claimed by the upholders of the CompleteConversion Theory."
She believes that the continual influx
of pagan peoples over several centuries "more than
counterbalanced the small number of immigrant Christians"
and that "though the rulers professed Christianity, the
great mass of the people followed the old gods. . . . "133
This opinion is not far from Whallon's comment
concerning the Christianity of Beowulf:
"The Danes are
nominally converted but insecure in their faith and not far
removed from heathenism."134
Whallon believes that "Beowulf
came from a people who had recently been converted from
worshipping gods of the sky."
God has displaced "the native
sky-gods" and demoted "wyrd as a secondary agency."
These
native sky-gods, Tiw or Thunor or Woden, then became "both
the gast-bona worshipped in the Danish apostasy (177) and
80
the bona who, like Apollo, wounds the defenseless with his
arrows (1743)
For with no alteration of cosmology, the
heavens came to be filled by God."135
It seems safe to
concur with Branston's conclusion that Anglo-Saxons of 1500
years ago depended "on the gods and goddess of the sky,
earth, and weather in combat with the demon giants of flood,
fire, drought, and pestilence" for their success or
failure.136
The world view reflected in Beowulf undoubtedly admits
the supernatural along with the natural.
A. R. Skemp
describes this cultural milieu as "a world in which the
supernatural and the natural, the marvellous and the
commonplace, formed adjunct territories in daily
•
1VI
experience.11
Monsters and dragons filled the earth as
gods filled the earth and the sky.
As Dorothy Whitelock
states, "the evidence of place-names supports well the
statements of the Cottom Gnomic Poem that • a dragon, old,
proud of its treasure, shall (be) in a mound1 and 'a -pvrs
shall inhabit the fens, alone in the depths of the
country1. . . .1,138 This world was especially conducive to
the survival of myth.
As Judith Vaughn-Sterling says,
Hand-in-hand with the references to the
supernatural found in both Anglo-Saxon poetry and
ritual magic are allusions to mythological stories
or to heroic legends of the past, which are
81
intended, perhaps, to bolster the validity of epic
tales being told, or the strength of spells being
cast.139
One has only to read a book such as Charles Hardwick's
Traditions. Superstitions, and Folk-Lore (1872), which
records numerous instances of "heathen" beliefs still held
in nineteenth-century England, to perceive that the Beowulf
poet must surely have lived in a cultural environment rich
in mythology as a real part of daily life.
It should be clear by now that the eighth-century
Anglo-Saxon was indeed religious, despite the ultimate
impossibility of determining the extent to which
Christianized Anglo-Saxons actually believed in the
supernatural beings of pagan mythology.
Even the poetry
usually labeled "secular" is by no means free of references
to heathen and/or Christian religion.
As Frederick Norman
states, "The only truly secular narrative preserved is The
Battle of Finnsburcr." in which "There is no reference to the
Deity, or to any deity. . . . "140
Elizabeth Martin-Clarke aptly compares Beowulf with a
church in Rome which represented cultures from the twelfth
century to all the way back long before Christ, to "a chapel
thought to be used for the worship of the Egyptian god,
Mithras."141
The world view of the audience of Beowulf
reflected a similar depth and synthesis.
As Davidson says,
82
"Long after the Christian church had been firmly
established, story-tellers and artists turned back to the
old ways of thought for inspiration and imagery."142
Beowulf poet is no exception.
The
Davidson is surely correct
that it is "beyond dispute that the Anglo-Saxon craftsmen
were aware of obvious parallels between heathen legends and
Christian teaching" and that similar "deliberate attempts to
harmonize heathen and Christian elements can indeed be seen
all through Beowulf.1,143
The rest of this paper will be devoted to showing that
the Beowulf poet worked within this tradition but that he
reinterpreted traditional materials according to his
personal beliefs and as they contributed to the
demonstration of his theme.
He seems to have seen the old
traditions in light of the Christian interpretation of life.
In this respect, he is like the other Christians who
produced virtually all extant Old English verse.
As Norman
puts it, "God is never very far from their thoughts even
when they are dealing with essentially non-religious
matters.11144
The goal of the present study is to discover exactly
what the Beowulf poet is dealing with.
Much critical effort
has been expended trying to solve what Norman calls the real
crux: "how can we account for the well-informed interest
taken by a Northern English Anglian audience . . .
in a poem
83
the central theme of which is the exploits of a Geatish hero
at a Danish court" and "the fight of this same hero, when
king of the Geats, against a dragon. . . .1,145
In the first
place, the exploits of a Geat are the theme of Beowulf no
more than the exploits of a Dane are the theme of Hamlet r
one might just as well ask why a sixteenth-century English
audience was so interested in a story about Danes.
It is
difficult to understand why so many critics have found it
amazing that Beowulf is "a story wrought in Christian
England but concerning a hero whose life is set against the
background of events and peoples in northern Europe in the
sixth century.1,146
No one particularly questions such poetic
distancing in later literature.
The theme of Beowulf continues to speak to us because
it is not geographically or historically limited.
The theme
is reflected in the historical level of the poem certainly,
but it is grounded in the confluence of pre-Christian and
Christian mythology which was so crucial a factor in the
world of the Beowulf poet and his audience.
By examining this mythology, we may discover "something
of the mvth which transcends the poetry," and in so doing
achieve "some feeling for the past beliefs, some greater
response to the poetry itself, and the primitive nature of
the beliefs, in fact, more respect for the monsters, and
less for the critics."147
It is to these monsters which we
84
must now turn, for they are an integral part of the
mythological level of meaning in the poem and thereby
central to the poet's theme.
85
Notes
1
J. S. Ryan, "Othin in England," Folklore 74 (1963):
2
Ryan 465.
3
William A. Chaney, The Cult of Kingship in Anglo-
462.
Saxon England: the Transition from Paganism to Christianity
(Berkeley: U of California P, 1970) 2-3.
4
William Whallon, Paper I, "Allegorical, typological,
or neither: Three Short Papers on the Allegorical Approach
to Beowulf and a Discussion," Anglo-Saxon England 2 (1973):
286.
5
Colin Chase, ed., The Dating of Beowulf (Toronto: U
of Toronto P, 1981) 8.
In this book, scholars present
widely varying opinions of the date of Beowulf, from the
sixth to the eleventh century.
Many arguments in the past
have been presented in favor of a date of 650-725.
See
William W. Lawrence, Beowulf and the Epic Tradition
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1928); Ritchie Girvan, Beowulf
and the Seventh Century (1935; London: Methuen, 1971); and
Sune Lundqvist, "Sutton Hoo and Beowulf," trans, and ed. R.
L. S. Mitford, Antiguity 22 (1948): 131-40.
Chase explains that this was the opinion given by
Karl Mullenhoff, who believed that "sixty percent of the
extant poem had been interpolated" 4.
7
The first of many to argue this point of view was
86
Bernard ten Brink, "Beowulf." Untersuchunaen. Quellen und
Forschungen zur Sprach-und Kulturgeschichte 62 (Strassburg
1888), as discussed by Chase, 4.
8
William Whallon, "The Christianity of Beowulf," MP 60
(1962): 86.
9
Frederick Norman, "The Early Germanic Background of
Old English Verse," in Medieval Literature and Civilization.
ed. D. A. Pearsall and R. A. Waldron (London: Athlone; New
York: Oxford UP, 1969) 15.
The provenance of the poem has
been argued over slightly less than its date.
See Dorothy
Whitelock, The Audience of Beowulf (Oxford: Clarendon, 1951)
for the opinion that the Mercian court of Offa is as
possible as Northumbria in the Age of Bede.
Substantial
support in favor of East Anglia was offered by Rupert BruceMitford in his supplementary chapter of the 1971 reissue of
Ritchie Girvan, Beowulf and the Seventh Century (1935;
London:
Methuen, 1971) 96.
Considering the relation of the
Sutton Hoo find to Beowulf. Bruce-Mitford emphasizes a
possible connection between Swedish and East Anglian rulers
that he sees reflected in Beowulf.
10
Norman 16.
11
Norman 25-26.
12
•
Jean Ritzke-Rutherford, Light and Darkness in AngloSaxon Thought and Writing (Frankfurt: Lang, 1979) 35-37.
87
13
John R. Allen, Early Christian Symbolism in Great
Britain and Ireland (London, 1887) 96-97.
14
T. C. Lethbridge, Gogmagog: The Buried Gods (London:
Routledge, 1957) 130-131.
15
Ritzke-Rutherford 16.
16
Lethbridge 161.
17
Marc Alexander, British Folklore. Mvths and Legends
(London: Weidenfeld, 1982) 9.
18
Chaney 5.
19
Lethbridge 156.
20
•
Lethbridge 91ff.
He identifies Gog with Helith, the
sun god which he says is represented by the Cerne giant and
mentions that Gog and Magog were particularly celebrated in
London.
He connects Magog, Earth Mother and Horse Goddess,
with many other traditions in England involving a white
horse, including the White Horse of Uffington (another
hillside chalk-figure), Lady Godiva (Gog-diva), the fine
lady who rode the white horse to Banbury Cross, and the
hobby-horse ceremonies dotted over a wide area, and the
white-horse banner of Wessex.
This is particularly
intriguing considering Tacitus' description of the sacred
white horses of the Germans.
21
Lethbridge 64.
22
Chaney 2.
Gale R. Owen, Rites and Religions of the Analo-
23
88
Saxons (Newton Abbot, Devon: David; Totowa, NJ: Barnes,
1981) 49.
24
Kenneth Harrison.
"The Primitive Anglo-Saxon
Calendar," Antiquity 47 (1973): 285.
Harrison also explains
that when a year of thirteen months occurred, a third Litha
was added and the month was called Thrilitha.
This is
interesting in light of the customary three faces or phases
of the Moon Goddess.
25
Lethbridge 140-141.
26
Ritze-Rutherford 41.
27
Jackson J. Campbell, "Some Aspects of Meaning in
Anglo-Saxon Art and Literature," Annuale Mediaevale 15
(1974): 36.
28
•
Brian Branston, The Lost Gods of England (1957; New
York: Oxford UP, 1974) 49-51.
29
Charles Hardwick, Traditions. Superstitions, and
Folk-Lore (1872; New York: Arno, 1872) 28-29.
30
Bede's Ecclastical History of the English People,
ed. Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon,
1969) Ch. XXX, 107.
Ritzke-Rutherford 24.
91
,
32
Robert H.Hodgkin, A History of the Anglo-Saxons
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1935) II, 29.
33
34
Owen 59.
Branston 42.
89
35
H. R. Ellis Davidson, Mvths and Symbols in Pagan
Europe (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse UP, 1988) 90.
36
Owen, 30.
Owen suggests that Seaxnet may have
originally been acknowledged by all the Saxon tribes, since
there is no extant genealogy for the South Saxons and the
West Saxon genealogy is "a political 'borrowing' from their
Anglian superiors."
37
Hodgkin 239.
38
Ritzke-Rutherford 28-29.
39
Branston 42.
40
Ryan, footnote 3, 462.
41
Davidson, Mvths and Symbols 128.
42
Hodgkin, II, 28.
43
Milton Gatch, Loyalties and Traditions (New York:
Pegasus, 1971) 31.
Woden is commonly accepted as the
equivalent of Mercury, and their parallel positions are
reflected in the names of the fourth day of the week in
Latin languages (Fr. 'mercredi,• Sp. 'miercoles•).
44
Branston 97.
45
Ryan 476.
46
Ryan 469-72.
47
Ryan 474.
Fr. Klaeber, ed.
Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg
(Lexington, MA: Heath, 1950).
Subsequent references to this
edition will appear parenthetically within the text.
90
4Q
Branston 41.
50
Ryan 463.
51
Branston 41.
52
Davidson, Myths and Symbols 91,
53
Branston 41.
54
Ryan 462.
Frank M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford:
55
Clarendon, 1943) 37.
56
•
Jon C. Kasik, "The Use of the Term Wvrd in Beowulf
and the Conversion of the Anglo-Saxons,11 Neophilologus 63
(1979): 129.
57
Davidson, Mvths and Symbols 49.
58
59
Chaney 121-22.
•
Davidson, Mvths and Symbols 49-50.
60
Two different types of boar helmets seem to be
described in Beowulf.
As Chaney notes, the description of
Beowulf's helmet as "besette swin-licum" (1453) suggests the
Sutton Hoo type, but the Benty Grange type is reflected in
the line "sweord swate fah swin ofer helme" (1286).
61
H. R. Ellis Davidson, "Archaeology and Beowulf,"
Beowulf and Its Analogues, ed. and trans. G. N. Garmonsway
and Jacqueline Simpson (New York: Dutton, 1971) 354-55.
62
Owen 31.
63
64
Davidson, "Archaeology and Beowulf" 354
Chaney 124.
91
65
Chaney 88.
66
Norman 22 and 26.
67
Chaney 101.
68
Owen 33.
69
Chaney 50-51.
Similarly, Whallon argues that the
word F der may be "a survival from heathenism, since father
was an epithet of Odin in Old Norse, and since Tiw father
would be an exact cognate of Jupiter."
He also believes
that the use of Metod in Beowulf (2526-27) as a kenning for
wyrd suggests "that some of the kennings for God may have
been established in the poetic diction prior to the advent
of Christianity. . . . " 8 9
70
Branston 143.
71
Owen 31.
72
Owen 32.
70
t
Ritzke-Rutherford 31.
74
Branston 157.
75
Ritzke-Rutherford 30-31.
76
As quoted in Branston 158-61.
77
"Forleton me f a hilderincas / standan steame
bedrifenne.
62
Eall ic waes mid straelum forwundod."
LI. 61b-
' The Dream of the Rood, in An Old English Anthology, ed.
W. F. Bolton (Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP, 1966) 98.
Branston 162.
7 0
79
•
•
Christine Fell, Women in Anglo-Saxon England
92
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1984) 27.
Fell remarks, "It is a sad
irony that under Christian theology the day of Frig should
become . . .a day of fasting and abstinence" 28.
80
Branston 42.
81
Cf. Fell 28.
82
Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England 98.
83
Owen 30.
84
Chaney 89.
85
Owen 4 9 .
86
Branston 19.
87
Owen 3 3 .
88
Branston 64-65.
•
89
Dorothy Whitelock, Beginnings of English Society
(Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1954) 28.
90
I have made a distinction between male and female in
the foregoing discussion of deities in the heathen religion
of the Anglo-Saxons.
Actually no clear distinction exists,
just as Frey and Freya are identical.
Male and female
deities share many of the same symbols.
The horse was
associated with the Moon Goddess as well as with Woden and
Tiw.
The boar was sacred to the Sun God, Woden, Nerthus,
and Freyr/Freya.
The ship is a cult-object associated with
the Sun God, Woden (particularly through his son Balder),
Freyr, and Sceaf as well as with the Mother-Goddess Nerthus.
Many gods started as female, such as the original deities of
93
the Northwest European tribes, and became male as the result
of contact with a contrary Indo-European belief in a supreme
male god.
91
•
Bruce Dickens, "English Names and Old English
Heathenism," Essays and Studies 19 (1933): 149.
92
Dickens 148.
93
•
Harold Smith, Saxon England (London: Dent, 1953) 81.
94
Owen 137.
95
Chaney 167.
96
97
Gatch 33.
Chaney 161-62.
98
•
Davidson, Myths and Symbols 128.
99
D. Elizabeth Martin-Clarke, Culture in Early Anglo-
Saxon Encrland (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 1947) 9.
Martin-Clarke concentrates on what she call the first period
of the Anglo-Saxon w o r l d — t h e period from the coming of the
Angles and Saxons to Britain until the middle of the eighth
century—"the age of Bede, Beowulf, and the Arts" 7.
100
Davidson, Gods and Mvths 19.
101
Ryan 466.
•
H. R. Ellis Davidson, The Road to Hel (New York:
102
Greenwood, 1968) 62.
103
Chaney 43.
104
Dorothy Whitelock, The Audience of Beowulf (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1951) 21.
94
105
Owen 152.
106
Chaney 45.
107
Gatch 29.
108
Hodgkin 417-18.
109
Chaney 41-42.
110
Cf. Hodgkin 461 and Martin-Clarke 33.
111
Martin-Clarke 34-36.
112
Charles Dale Cannon, "The Religion of the AngloSaxons," Univ. of Mississippi Stud, in Eng. 5 (1964): 31.
113
Chaney 45-46.
114
•
See H. R. Ellis Davidson, "Gods and Heroes in
Stone,"
Early Cultures of Northwest Europe, ed. Cyril Fox
and Bruce Dickens (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge UP, 1950).
115
116
117
118
119
•
Davidson, "Gods and Heroes in Stone" 127.
Davidson, Myths and Symbols 218.
Branston 88.
•
Whitelock, Beginnings 19.
Bede's Ecclesiastical History. Ch. XXV, 75.
120
Cannon 22.
121
Chaney 165-66,
122
Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England 102.
An opposing point
of view is expressed by John Godfrey, The Church in AngloSaxon England (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge UP, 1962) 65.
Godfrey feels that the relative ease with which the British
population was converted indicates that the heathen religion
95
of the Anglo-Saxons was considerably weakened by the time
Augustine arrived.
123
Cannon 22.
124
Nora Chadwick, "Intellectual Contacts between
Britain and Gaul in the Fifth Century," Studies in Earlv
British History. H. M. Chadwick et. al. (Cambridge, Eng.:
Cambridge UP, 1954) 199ff.
125
Branston 57.
126
Cannon 32.
127
Ryan 461.
Ryan thinks that this lack of
centralization is perhaps due to a detrimental effect caused
by geographical displacement, by the passage across the
North Sea.
This explanation seems illogical, since Germanic
religion certainly flourished when the Scandinavians made a
sea passage to Iceland and created a center for their
religion.
128
Hodgkin 234-44.
129
Cannon 17.
130
Bede's Ecclesiastical History. Ch. XIII, 183
131
Chaney 185.
1 ^9
Branston 38.
133
Margaret Murray, God of the Witches (1952; Garden
City, NY: Archon, 1960) 5-6.
134
Whallpn 87.
135
Whallon 89.
96
136
137
Branston 52.
A. R. Skemp, "Notes on Anglo-Saxon Charms," MLR 6
(1911): 263.
138
«
Whitelock, The Audience of Beowulf 75.
A great deal
more will be said in Chapter III about how monsters and
dragons were perceived by the audience of Beowulf.
139
•
Judith A. Vaughn-Sterling, "The Anglo Saxon Metrical
Charms: Poetry as Ritual," JEGP 82 (1983): 188.
140
Norman 3.
141
Martin-Clarke 38-39.
142
Davidson, Myths and Symbols 12.
143
Davidson, "Gods and Heroes" 133.
144
Norman 4.
145
Norman 9.
146
Gatch 32.
147
Ryan 480.
I have taken Ryan's words out of context.
He is arguing from a narrower view for a more "sympathetic
study of the old poetry for evidence of the cult of Woden."
CHAPTER III
THE MONSTERS IN THE MYTH
Most studies of the Beowulf monsters have felt the
presence of Professor Tolkien's imposing shadow, and the
present effort is no exception.
This chapter supports
Tolkien's view of the three monsters as "creatures, feond
mancvnnes (enemies of mankind), of a similar order and
kindred significance."1
The monsters are, as Tolkien
contends, at the center of Beowulf and integral to its
theme.
The purpose here is to extend Tolkien's discussion
of the monsters by illustrating that their significance for
the audience of Beowulf was deepened by connotations related
to pre-Christian, pagan religion.
Because of their
connections with heathen mythology, the monsters contribute
to the richness of the mythological layer of meaning.
Further, while their genealogies may indeed be traced to
separate traditional folk-tales and legends, the Beowulf
poet has bound the three monsters together by reference to
one overriding myth clearly related to the historical and
Christian layers or levels of meaning.
The poet offers little information about the monsters'
physical characteristics.
Thus, it is perhaps wise to
97
98
assume that what he does tell may have some significance.
Grendel, he says, treads the paths of exile "on weres
waestmum," except that "he waes mara
^onne slnig man S^er."2
Though he has the form of a man, he fights with a superhuman
grip (as does Beowulf).
On the basis of this
characteristic, he can be viewed as bear-like,3 an
observation fortified by the fact that he also has claws.
Obviously, Grendel shares many characteristics with Beowulf,
not the least of which is his superhuman strength and giant
size.
As Stephen Bandy says, the theme of gigantism "runs
deep in the poem, touching perhaps many other figures
besides the eotenas—among them . . . Beowulf himself."4
The poet specifically refers to Grendel as an eoten (761a)
and to Beowulf's watch against him as an eotenweard (668b).
He is so big that it takes four men to carry his head to the
gold-hall (1634b-39).
According to H. R. Ellis Davidson,
the motif of the enormous head "suggests the representation
of a god,"5 which may have been the poet's purpose in
describing the size of Grendel's head.
As a giant, Grendel is related to the "eotenas and ylfe
ond orcneas, / swylce gigantas,
13).
jCa wiS Gode wunnon" (112-
Hrothgar's word for Grendel is ealdcrewinna (1776), and
the poet calls him "Godes andsaca" (1682).
The tradition of
giants striving against God is again mentioned in connection
with the giant-made sword with which Beowulf has killed
99
Grendel's mother.
The poet says that on the hilt was
written the origin of the ancient strife, "sySpan flod
ofsloh / gifen geotende
giganta cyn" (1689b-1690).
It is
often assumed that this flood is the Biblical Flood.6
The
poet, however, could also be referring to the World Flood of
pagan mythology, in which giants were likewise annihilated.7
The gods and goddesses of ancient mythology were depicted as
giants, as is clear from the giant hillside chalk figures in
Britain, of which the Cerne giant and the Wandlebury giants
are two examples.
Furthermore, as Oliver Emerson explains,
"Early English commentators associated the divinities of the
heathen with the giants. . . .1,8
Commenting on where the
poet got the idea of giants, William Whallon says that since
the idea is found in "Homer as well as in the Edda" it may
be assumed "with greater confidence . . . that it was preGermanic, or common to all the Indo-European nations."9
Thus, the Anglo-Saxon audience may easily have perceived
Grendel as a pagan deity.
As such, he certainly would be
the enemy of God.
Grendel is descended from Cain, the ancestor of the
race of giants.
As a type of Cain, a "miere mearcstapa"
(103), a sceaduqenaa (703) and ancrencra (449), he is
condemned to wander.
David Williams calls Cain Beowulf's
"ultimate antagonist" as progenitor of monsters, but
according to myth Cain himself is a descendant, "originally
100
sired by Satan."10
Grendel is also associated with the
devil: he is a "feond on helle" (101), a "helle gast"
(1274), "se ellengwst" (86), "se grimma giest" (102), and one
°f
the
helrunan (163).
fifelcvnnes (104).
Grendel is monstrous, a |?vrs (426a),
A horrible, flame-like light glows from
his eyes (726b-727) .
The poet calls him an "atol Sglasca"
(592, 732, 816) and an "atol angengea" (165).
Beowulf
refers to Grendel as "eatol Kfengrom" (2074).
He is "wiht
unhaelo, / grim ond graedig" (120b-121a) and "feond mancynnes
(164).
He is "se manscaSa" (712) who "Godes yrre bafr"
(711).
It is possible that in this characterization of
Grendel as a monster there are vestiges of ancient heathen
tales, but now the monster is explained by the new religion
and thereby associated with Cain and Satan.
Grendel may also be associated with Loki of
Scandinavian mythology.
Jacob Grimm was the first to
identify Grendel with Loki, "the evil-bringer, and in the
end destroyer of the gods."11
Eugene Crook contends that
"the poet interpolates references to Cain and Abel
gratuitously in place of the expected references to Loki."12
It is plausible to assume that the poet recognized the
similarities between the pagan myth and the Christian story
and purposely played on both myths, thereby enriching his
poem.
As Rosemary Woolf explains, the devil, owing to
traits which the Church ascribed to him, had "natural
101
affinities" with Northern mythological characters,
particularly Loki, whom gods bound and placed in a cave,
where he was supposed to remain until Ragnarok, just as
Satan was said to lie bound in hell until Judgment Day.
Woolf also mentions that Loki and the devil are both shapeshifters, one of the devil's shapes being the dragon.13
This association, albeit circuitous, may have been known by
the Anglo-Saxon audience of Beowulf.
If so, Grendel and his
mother may have been seen arising in dragon-form at what is
the doom of Beowulf and Apocalypse for the Geats.
The poet introduces the second monster as "Grendles
modor/ides aglxcwif" (1258b-1259a).
She has no name, which
may be intended to accentuate her role as a symbolic figure.
At the very least, she seems to represent the negative
female principle.
She is referred to as an "atol ise wlanc"
(1332, a horrible one glorying in carrion), and Helen Damico
contends that "The Beowulf poet follows the customary
portrayal of the valkyrie as a deadly battle-demon in his
characterization of Grendel's mother."14
All the poet says
about the appearance of Grendel's mother is that she has the
form of a woman, "idese onllcnes" (1351).
Damico thinks
that the use of the word ides denotes Grendel's mother as a
valkyrie and/or pagan priestess and marks the polarized
relationship between Grendel's mother and Wealtheow, who is
also an ides.
She further suggests that the two figures
102
might be a "stylistic rendering of a single persona" in
which the diametrically opposed qualities and traits of the
characters . . . act like the opposing poles of magnets."15
Similarly, according to Jane Chance, in her role "as a
monstrous mother and queen" Grendel's mother perverts the
role of "the queen as peace pledge or peace-weaver" and as
such is the counterpoint for Wealtheow.16
Damico never
specifies who the "single persona" might be, although she
mentions the association of Wealtheow with Freya and
compares Wealtheow with Yrsa, the queen of the Swedes who
"reigned over a court that was the center of the flourishing
cult of Odin, Frey, and Thor. . . . "17
It is possible to
see this single figure as the mother goddess and Grendel's
mother as the destructive hag side of the earth goddess who
is nurturing in her positive face.
Williams, in fact,
argues that "Grendel's dam may be seen as an Eve figure, the
origin of evil progeny. . . ,"18
in Chance's opinion,
Grendel's mother is a "parodic inversion" of the Virgin
Mary,19 the Christian version of the Mother Goddess.
Whereas Grendel, "se fe moras heold, / fen ond fafsten"
(103b-104a), is primarily associated with the surface of the
earth on
deep.
which men walk, his mother is a creature of the
She is a brimwvlf (1506, 1599), a "grundwyrgenne, /
merewif mihtig" (1518b-1519a) and a "gryrellcne grundhyrde"
103
(2136).
The mere where her underground home is situated is
depicted as an other-worldly place.
As Damico states,
the location of the mere has the aura of sacred
ground, a place of prohibition, analagous to the
sacred groves where Tacitus alleges the Germans
worshipped their deities.
The underwater hall
itself with its supernatural light, magic sword,
and hoarded treasure is evocative of the sacred
underwater temples of pagan England.20
The poet says that Grendel's mother is less terrifying than
her son, "just as the power of women, the war-horror of a
woman, is in comparison to that of an armed man" (1282b1284).
This seems, however, to be deliberate irony since
she is the one who almost kills Beowulf and against whom he
has to use magic and not just the strength of his grip.21
According to Patricia Belanoff, the poet is implying that
what Beowulf needs to fear is "something far more alien."22
In Scandinavian mythology females were commonly accorded
great power and dignity, as is revealed by one of Thor's
epithets: "Slayer of Giantesses."
Belanoff notes that the
tradition of elemental strength being concentrated in a
female figure can also be seen in the Old English riddles,
in which "nature's forces—particularly water—are often
personified as powerful women."23
104
Critics have been somewhat sympathetic with Grendel's
Mother, finding her motive for revenge understandable.24
Nevertheless, such interpretations seem to wander far from
the Anglo-Saxon audience's probable response to her.
It is
impossible to fully comprehend how this audience would have
seen Grendel's mother without considering her function in
relationship to the dragon.
The dragon, the last of the three monsters, is closely
connected in the poem with Grendel's mother as well as with
her son.
Like Grendel and his dam, the dragon is of
imposing size, fifty feet long (3042).
The dragon, a
mansceafta (2514) and a %eodscea%a (2278, 2688) is the
disruptive end to Beowulf's peaceful reign of fifty years,
just as Grendel the manscafra (712, 737) and leodsceaSa
(2093) disturbs Hrothgar's fifty-year reign of peace.
This
dragon is a liqdraca (2333), a "frecne fyrdraca" (2689), and
the poet also says a great deal about fire in connection
with Grendel's mother.
On the waters of the mere a fearful
wonder is seen, "fyr on flode" (1366), reminiscent of the
flame-like light which shines from Grendel's eyes.
When
Beowulf reaches the hall of Grendel's mother, the first
thing he sees is fvrleoht (1516).
The blood of Grendel's
mother is so hot that it melts the blade of the sword (161516).
Similarly, a stream wells out of the mouth of the
105
dragon's mound, its waters boiling hot from the dragon's
fire.
There are other similarities between the dragon and
Grendel's mother.
Although the dragon is sometimes simply
called dracan (2211, 2290, 2402), mostly it is the treasureguarding, barrow-sitting dragon of tradition:
hea(um) h(aep)e
hord beweotode" (2212).
"se 8e on
It is called a
hordweard (2293, 2303, 2593, the "beorges hyrde" (2304);
"beorges weard" (2524, 2580); "fraetwa hyrde" (3133).
Grendel's mother too is referred to as a guardian: she and
her son are "huses hyrdas" (1666).
She is a qrundhvrde
(2136), and her cave also contains a treasure-hoard.
Grendel's mother is graedicr (1499) and aifre (1277) like the
dragon.
They both remain in their cave-like dwellings near
the sea until the actions of men activate their responses.
In each case, a man from outside explores the region which
each has controlled.
The path to the mere is "uncu
gelad"
(1410), just as the path to the dragon's barrow is "eldum
uncuS" (2214).
The mere of Grendel's mother and the
dragon's barrow-cave are both, as Kathryn Hume has noted,
anti-halls.25
The dragon is also related to Grendel's
mother indirectly through Wealtheow as a cup-bearer. (It is
the theft of the cup, ironically intended as a frioffowaSre
(2282), which brings about the abrupt end of Beowulf's
peaceful reign.)
Like Grendel's mother, the dragon comes
106
from underground to destroy man's attempts at order, the
halls and homes above-ground.
Grendel's mother is an
"aettren ellorgSst (1617), and the dragon is the attorsceafran
(2839) whose attor (2715) is the cause of Beowulf's death.
There may even be a link between the two in the fact that
Grendel's mother tries to kill Beowulf with a seax, the
weapon with which Beowulf delivers the final blow to the
dragon.
In the end only an "ealdsweord etonisc" (2616)
could avail in combat against the dragon, just as the
"ealdsweord eotenisc" £1558), "giganta geweorc" (1562) is
the instrument of death for Grendel's mother.
Grendel's
mother is called a qrundwvraenne (1518), and the dragon
quite literally becomes an accursed monster of the deep
after its burial.
The similarities between what Adrien
Bonjour calls the demoniac and draconic monsters are
undoubtedly, as he says, much more important than the
differences.26
In connecting the monsters, the poet prepares his
audience for the dragon in advance.
Just after the gleeman
has recounted the coming of Beowulf, he recites the tale of
Sigemund the slayer of the dragon Fafnir, who was first a
giant before becoming a dragon.
In an accepted analogue of
Beowulf, then, there is a distinct connection between giant
and dragon.27
Interestingly, the implied comparison of
Beowulf and Sigemund follows the slaying of Grendel, and
107
Sigemund is specifically mentioned as having earlier slain
"ealfela eotena cynnes" (883).
The sword with which Beowulf
kills Grendel 1 s mother has a hilt ornamented with serpents
and a blade which melts, possible connections with the fiery
serpent/dragon.
Robert P. Creed points out that the dragon
is introduced with the same formula, "o&
Sect an ongann"
(2210b), that was used earlier to introduce Grendel
oo
(1006).
Scarcely over a hundred lines before the dragon
appears, the poet has Beowulf mentioning the strange glove
made of dragon skins which Grendel was carrying.
Furthermore, having called Grendel and his mother devils,
the poet specifies that this pouch was made by "deofles
craeftum" (2088) .
Grendel (2518-21).
Beowulf himself associates the dragon with
Then, analagous to Grendel's earlier
anger at hearing the singing of men, the dragon is described
by the poet as being aroused by "mannes reorde" (2555a).
The dragon, then, is an extension of Grendel's dam, of
the forces that shaped her and her kind.
The poet makes
this continuity evident when he says "fa se wyrm onwoc,
wroht waes genlwad" (2287) .
The strife does not begin with
the worm, he seems to say; it is simply renewed when the
dragon awakes.
Literally the dragon wakes up to find that a
man has disturbed his treasure; on another level, its
awakening is symbolic of the awakening of dormant but still
living forces of evil and destruction.
The seemingly
108
uneventful disposal of the dead dragon, in which it is
unceremoniously shoved over the cliff, is not without
significance.
faeefmian
The poet says "leton w€g niman, / flGd
fraetwa hyrde" (3132b-3133), and the dragon
disappears into the sea.
Nevertheless, it is clear that the
dragon lives on in a symbolic sense.
He is embraced by the
sea and rests underwater, even as Grendel's dam remains in
her cave in the depths of the mere.
Although she and her
son are both decapitated Beowulf takes only Grendel's head
with him.29
The second return from the mere and the feast
following the defeat of Grendel's mother seem less exultant,
possibly because there is a recognition of the continuity of
evil, of the certainty that another enemy will come forth,
which it of course does in the form of the dragon.
It is
good to remember that the sea in traditional Old English
iconography is the realm inhabited by the "hron," the "whale
of the Vulgate, also called Leviathan, the dragon of the
depths."30
And in Revelation 12:4, the beast appears from
the sea, causing men to worship the dragon.31
Just as the
spirit of Grendel's mother lived again in the dragon's
depradations, the dragon's spirit as a force of chaos awaits
rebirth.
wund,
Beowulf says, "nu se wyrm ligeft," / swefeS sare
since bereafod" (2745b-2746).
The dragon may indeed
be sleeping in death, but symbolically it is destined to
109
live forever, just as the forces of darkness are never
permanently quelled.
It has been noticed before that there is a kind of
progression in the monsters in terms of their increasing
strength as adversaries.32
However, the progression from
human-like to elemental seems more significant.
Neither the
dragon nor Grendel's mother is named, the only characters
appearing in the poem who are not named.
Possibly this
indicates a shared status as symbols of unspecified,
elemental chaos. Perhaps the dragon is even more appalling
as it is more elemental.
Grendel and his mother are giants,
members of the race of Cain, a man.
the shapes of a man and a woman.
They are recognized as
On the other hand, the
dragon is sexless, totally non-human, elementally ambiguous,
completely outside the world of men.
Grendel has a name,
ventures into the heart of the world of men, and the Geats
know where he lives.
While Grendel attacks Heorot because
he is an exile, because he cannot be part of the ordered
world of men, the dragon attacks the Geats because its
separation from the world of men has been violated by an
exile.
figure.
In this scheme, Grendel's mother is a transition
She lacks a name and only once intrudes on Heorot.
She is as a mother obviously female, but, as Belanoff has
noticed, she is "designated by many substantives which are
not sex—related. . .1,33 as well as the masculine seccr
110
(1379a).
As Jane Chance notes, the poet sometimes refers to
her with a masculine pronoun (se_£e instead of seo fe
1260a and 1497b, for example).34
in
Unlike Grendel and his
mother, whose lineage is explained, the dragon's provenance
is a mystery.35
All the poet tells of its past is that,
flying at night, burning and enveloped in flames, it sought
a hoard in the earth until it found the treasure over which
it has watched undisturbed for three hundred years (2278).
The poet is careful to state that this dragon lurked in
the mound for three hundred years before being killed, and
Wiglaf believes the dragon would have stayed there "o?
woruldende" (3083).
This phrase would possibly have
reminded the Beowulf audience of Mi^garSsormr, the Encircler
of the World in Scandinavian mythology and the doom of the
gods at the end of the world, languishing in the sea
bordered by the mountain ranges of Giantland.36
The
original audience might also have thought more readily than
a modern reader of the serpent-dragon NiUhoggr coiled at the
base of Iggdrasil, the World Tree, slowly eating the roots
until it is killed by Odin's son Thor, who, like Beowulf,
also dies in the fight.37
The dragon's arrival in Geatish
territory 250 long years before Beowulf even becomes king is
indeed comparable to the serpent Iggdrasil gnawing at the
roots of the tree of life.
Before Beowulf battles Grendel
or his dam, before Hrothgar's people suffer their
Ill
destruction, the dragon is there in Geatland hoarding the
treasure which will be buried with Beowulf.
It seems
evident that the Beowulf dragon is no less symbolic than
Yeats' rough beast or Hardy's Shape of Ice.
Ascertaining the symbolic meaning of the dragon has
been the subject of much Beowulf scholarship.
There is wide
disagreement as to the dragon's significance.
Professor
Tolkien calls it "a personification of malice, greed,
destruction (the evil side of heroic life), and of the
undiscriminating cruelty of fortune that distinguishes not
good or bad (the evil aspect of all life) .1,38 Gang
criticizes this interpretation and contends that the dragon
is not malevolent because he was provoked by theft while
simply carrying out his function of guarding the treasure.39
Lawrence agrees that the dragon's "raids were not made, like
Grendel1s, out of devilish malice, but in defence of his
treasure."
Other critics have interpreted the dragon as
"the fate that settles down on old societies."41
Simpson
contends that in the dragon section of Beowulf as well as in
most other British dragon tales, there is a "total absence
of religious or moral notions. . . .1,42
Such interpretations which fail to recognize the evil
nature of the dragon seem dryly intellectual, remote from
the emotional overtones which the dragon undoubtedly had for
the audience of Beowulf.
This audience was certainly
112
familiar with dragons.
traditions:
Several placenames attest to such
Drake Howe in North Yorkshire and Drakelow in
Derbyshire, first recorded in 772, are two examples.
In
Lincolnshire, the bones of a dragon are supposedly interred
in a long barrow.43
The Cotton Gnomes state, "draca sceal
on hlaewe, / frod, fraetwum wlanc."44
Ethelwerd's Chronicle,
in the entry for 773, refers to "some monstrous serpents"
seen in Sussex.45
The famous entry in the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle for 793 plainly says that "fiery dragons were seen
flying through the air."
There is also a reference at the
beginning of the Finnsbura Fragment:
the gables are
burning, and the poet states rather ironically, "Ne
dagaS eastan,
ne her draca ne fleoge'S."46
is ne
Knut Stjerna
claims that there is no archaelogical confirmation of
Beowulf's dragon,47 but as Davidson illustrates, this is not
true.
A small seventh-century workbox bears
the earliest picture we have of the dragon fight
in Teutonic art. . . .
More dramatic confirmation
of the Anglo-Saxon poet comes from the Sutton Hoo
shield, on which there is a dragon equipped with
four pairs of wings and jaws filled with sharp
teeth."48
Surely Adrien Bonjour is right to insist that however
real dragons may have been to Anglo-Saxons, they "definitely
suggested unpleasant associations.1,49
At the very least,
113
the Anglo-Saxon poet and his audience would have perceived
the dragon as a portent of evil.
In the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle entry mentioned above, the dragon is seen as a
portent of the great famine which occurred in Northumbria in
793.
Textual evidence alone suggests that the Beowulf
dragon is more than the passive treasure-guarding creature,
if such a presence can be called passive.
The poet calls it
a ni(3draca (2273), "se la^a" (2305), a "la3 lyftfloga"
(2315) and a "Weard unhiore" (2413).
This dragon is a
grvreaieste (2560) and, like Grendel, an aalieca (2520, 2534,
2905), a "nl& gaest" (2699) and "se gaest" (2312).
Grendel, the dragon is a ^eodsceaBa (2688).
Also like
The foldbuend
fear it very much (3274b-3275a), an irony which may or may
not be intentional, since the dragon itself quite literally
dwells in the earth.
Finally, as Edward B. Irving says,
"the dragon's chief weapon and its most memorable attribute
is fire, and fire . . . has only destructive and deadly
connotations in the poem."50
It has been suggested that since the poet does not
specifically call the dragon a devil as he does Grendel and
his dam, the dragon is a different creature, somehow less
monstrous, more natural and thus less evil.61
difficult position to defend.
This is a
In the first place, perhaps
the poet did not go to great lengths to name the dragon as
evil because it already carried such a heavy load of
114
negative connotations.
On the other hand, Grendel is a
specifically named monster/giant, and it was to the poet's
advantage to place such a specific character squarely in the
tradition to which he wanted the audience to see that he
belonged, at least on one level.
The Beowulf dragon's
physical connection with the serpent-demon group of
mythological figures is specified in the text.
The poet
refers to it most frequently as a wvrm (2287, 2307, 2348,
2567, 2669, 2705, 2745, 2759, 2902, 3039).
It is a
hrinqbogan (2561) and a "wyrm wohbogan" (2827).
it coils up
quickly in battle with Beowulf, "se wyrm gebeah
snude
tosomne" (2567b-2568a).
As Paul Newman points out, "the
devil was most clearly identified in his dragon-serpent
guise.
This form passed into folklore where the dragon and
the devil were sometimes interchangeable."52
The fullest
development of the tradition to which Newman refers is of
course later than Beowulf. but it seems that at least the
beginnings of such a tradition were known to the poem's
original audience.
As newly converted Christians, Anglo-Saxons would
surely have been aware of the meaning of the dragon in
Christianity.
Dragons appear throughout Old English
religious literature such as the Vespasian Psalter and the
Vespasian Hymn 7, which speaks of the "hatheortinis drsecena"
(dragon's wrath) .
In the poem Be Domes Da^re. the pains of
115
hell are flames and gnawing dragons, an image which is often
used in homiletic tradition and saints' lives.53
As Evans
points out, "the Christian church and its central documents"
have provided "the resources as well as the belief-system
necessary for interpreting dragon lore in its spiritual
dimension."
The biblical story of the Apocalypse introduces
Satan as "a great red dragon . . . who waits to devour a
child soon to be born of 'a woman clothed with the sun, with
the moon under her feet. 1 " (It is remarkable, if only a
coincidence, that this is a description of the earth/moon
goddess.)
An angel binds this dragon, who is specifically
called the ancient serpent, the Devil and Satan, for a
thousand years and throws him into a pit which is then
sealed, "that he should deceive the nations no more."54
Of
course, men knew then what men know now, that evil is never
permanently bound and has always existed to deceive nations
and men.
As Gang states, "In heathen mythology the monsters
had been the foes of the gods, winning at the final battle
in which the earth is destroyed.
In the Christian poem of
Beowulf the same monsters become the foes of the One
God. . . ,"55
There is, however, evidence that the Beowulf dragon is
more than the typical Christian dragon, more than the enemy
of God.
no
wa
As Irving urges, "the Christian references are in
Y necessary concomitants of evil monsters."56
116
Certainly, as M. B. McNamee admits, "for the allegory a
physical monster drawn from the old myths would serve the
purpose better than a theologically accurate devil as long
as the monster is associated with the powers of hell."57
John D. Niles insists that this is "a flesh-and-blood flying
dragon and not a mythological creature."58
Nevertheless, no
matter how vividly the dragon is portrayed, it is, like
every dragon, by definition a mythological creature and as
such probably has wider significance.
Albert B. Lord believes that the Grendel fights
exemplify a narrative pattern "found fairly widely in IndoEuropean epic or story tradition"--the encounter of the hero
with first a male monster, then a female monster or deity
who wants to keep him in the "other world."59
Larry Benson
notes that "In the Grettis Sacra version of the Grendel
story, the hero fought first with a female monster and then
with a male," which is not surprising "since that represents
an ascending order of difficulty."60
The Beowulf poet's
version, a reversal of the order in the Grettis Saoa. seems
to follow the more widespread Indo-European pattern
mentioned by Lord.
Such a tale is the Babylonian Epic of
Creation, the Enuma Elish, which has numerous parallels in
other cultures.
Joseph Fontenrose has examined Grendel and
his dam as the dragon pair, mother and son, of this myth.
He compares them to Apsu and Tiamat, whom Marduk had to meet
117
on her own ground, as well as to Vritra and Danu (Indra's
opponents) and the dragon and dragoness which Apollo had to
deal with.61
In all these instances, the female roust be
fought after the male has been defeated, and she is a more
powerful adversary, just as Grendel's mother is more
powerful than Grendel.
The catalyst of Grendel 1 s mother 1 s
transformation into a destructive force is the death of her
son, and, as Simpson points out, the fury which turned
Tiamat into "an agent of destruction" was caused by the
killing of Apsu.
The sea—beasts which attack Beowulf on
his way to the bottom of the mere are comparable to the
water-demons which attend Tiamat.
Tiamat and Apsu and their counterparts in other myths
are clearly part of the Mother Goddess cult which emphasizes
the child as son of the mother.
Like Apsu, Grendel has no
known father, and perhaps his mother's designation only as
his mother represents her role as mother goddess.
Even
Grendel's association with Cain may be meaningful.
Emerson
points out that in the Scripture, it is not clear "why Cain,
'a tiller of the ground,' was in error in bringing to
sacrifice of the fruit of the ground.'"63
A possible
explanation is that Cain's sacrifice was appropriate for the
Earth Goddess but not for the sky-god who demanded live
sacrifices such as those offered by Abel.
As discussed in
Chapter II, there is considerable evidence in support of the
118
worship of the Earth Mother, the moon, and her husband, son,
or lover, the sun as one of the oldest and most enduring
beliefs in Britain.
It is perhaps, then, not so incredible
that Grendel and his mother would have been seen by the
Anglo-Saxon audience as types of the Earth Mother goddess
and her son.
Of course, since the poem is thoroughly Christian in
perspective, only their negative aspects survive, which
incidentally is what happened to all the gods of pagan
mythology when passed through the Christian seive.
As Lord
indicates, "There is an essential difference between the
adversaries" in the ancient myths and those in Beowulf:
"In
the former the adversaries are 'sacred,1 and therefore the
opposition to them by the hero is tantamount to
sacrilege.1,64
The difference is, however, not so
fundamental after all.
According to Whallon, "the trolls
and firedrakes were a menace to the missionary unless he
could provide them with a biblical basis. . . .1,65
The
monsters in Beowulf may represent sacred gods in heathen
mythology, but since Beowulf is a Christian hero, these
figures are certainly no longer sacred and in fact have been
transmuted into demons which must be overcome.
It is logical to ask how the dragon fits into this
reading.
Does such an interpretation imply that the
dragon's part in the poem is indeed separate?
On the
119
contrary, it seems obvious that the dragon is a mythological
extension of Grendel's mother as Mother Goddess, a link
further substantiated by the textual ties discussed above.
As Newman mentions, serpent-dragons were "surrogates of the
Mother Goddess" and as such were thought of as being divine
or god-like.66
Newman points out that there is "a definite
connection between the Mother Goddess and the dragon" and
that the mother goddess and child were worshipped by the
•
•
67
Draconxans or Typhonians.
•
He explains that Typhon, the
Egyptian mythical parallel to Tiamat, "was known and
worshipped as the Dragon of the Deep."68
She also had a
son, Set, who by virtue of being the murderer of his brother
Osiris, can be identified with Cain and of course with
Grendel.
This same goddess Typhon eventually emerged as the
seven-headed Beast of Revelation, and her son Set took on
the title of Satan, Lord of Hell.69
It seems reasonable,
then, to consider Grendel's dam as a dragon-type, the female
spirit emblematic of the goddess in her negative aspect.
This connection is even apparent in the dwelling-places
of the two monsters.
They both live in cave-like
structures, and as Cirlot explains, the cave "appears fairly
often in emblematic and mythological iconography as the
meeting-place for figures of deities, forebears or
70
archetypes."
•
It xs well known that the cave is a womb-
symbol, which would link both figures to the Great Mother
120
tradition.
The under-water dwelling of Grendel's mother is
reminiscent of the underground spring in which the female
dragon is slain by Apollo.71
The poet makes a point to
mention the forest surrounding both the mere and the barrow,
which is perhaps meaningful in light of the fact that forest
symbolism is also "connected at all levels with the
symbolism of the female principle or of the Great Mother."72
Whatever the symbolic relationship may be, the Anglo-Saxon
audience would certainly have been aware of sacred groves
connected with the worship of the pagan deities, including
the Earth Goddess.
Grendel's mother lives in a hall in the
earth under water, and the dragon lives underground too,
near the sea in which it ultimately rests.
Both earth and
sea appear in cosmogonies from ancient to modern times with
the same connotation of fertility and relationship to the
73
mother goddess.
According to Robert Graves, the Mother
Goddess commonly took the form of "a marine deity with
temples by the sea-shore.1,74
Thus, it is possible that both
the dragon and Grendel's mother are representations of the
Mother Goddess.
There is a distinct connection between the battle with
Grendel's dam and the battle with the dragon.75
Other
critics of Beowulf working from a mythic viewpoint have
noted the symbolic importance of the battle in the mere.
fact, Michael Nagler argues that it is "the central combat
In
121
•
•
•
.
•
76
of Beowulf" and concentrates his entire discussion on it.
Nagler's focus seems to betray a limited understanding of
the almost identical symbolic value of Grendel's mother and
the dragon.
Peter F. Fisher explains that some versions of
the dragon myth "speak of the dragon as a water spirit to
whom human victims were sacrificed" and argues that the
connection between the dragon fight and the other two
episodes is therefore "made even more definite."77
As
evidenced by the death of Tvastu in Vedic and Balder in
Nordic mythology, the slaying of gods is a fairly common
motif in mythology, and, as Puhvel says, "This motif
involves centrally the slaying of a deity with a weapon
uniquely suited for this purpose, in the fundamental myth
*
78
, ,
, ,
apparently his own."
So it is fitting that the giantH
goddesses represented by Grendel 1 s mother and the dragon are
slain using weapons made by giant-gods.
The dragon apparently completes the traditional triad
of deities.
The number of monsters in Beowulf is
undoubtedly a reflection of a widespread tradition.
T. C.
Lethbridge explains that in mythology any god or goddess
"was at one time part of a trinity representing youth,
middle age and age, corresponding to the three phases of the
moon," the Mother Goddess.
These trinities were separated
with the passage of time and the gods worshipped
•
t
•
individually.
7Q
In his study of medieval number symbolism,
122
Vincent Hopper notes that "The Scandinavian races, among
innumerable trios, elevated the three Norns, three colors of
the rainbow, three roots of Iggdrasil, and three gods, Odin,
Thor, and Frey.
Much of Teutonic mythology follows this
triadic pattern.
•
•
The Celtic races also worshipped three80
headed deities."
•
•
•
•
So it is not surprising that the Beowulf
poet introduces three monsters.
It is also not amazing that the dragon in Beowulf would
have universal significance: allusions to dragon-slaying are
found in the myths of all cultures.
Tiamat, the Babylonian
goddess-dragon who was killed by the sun-god Marduk, has
been discussed earlier.
Egyptian mythology tells of a
serpent dragon named Apep or Apophis who attacks the boat of
the sun-god Horus every night and, although bound or cut
into pieces, returns to renew the combat.
In Greek
mythology, the she-dragon Python is slain by Apollo, the
Greek parallel to Horus.
It would in fact be more unusual
if Anglo-Saxon mythology did not include such a myth.
Charles Hardwick states categorically that "there can be
little doubt the fiery-dragons and the numerous huge worm
traditions of the North of England enshrine relics of Aryan
•
•
81
superstitions."
Newman believes that the serpent-dragon became an enemy
of Christianity in the first place because of its
associations with the ancient female goddesses, in which
123
role it was revered.82
The Christian dragon is, in fact,
part of the Indo-European dragon-myth tradition.
Simpson
notes that the Canaanite seven-headed dragon-serpent's name
"Lotan" is the same word as "Leviathan" and that the sky-god
Baal's destruction of Lotan was transferred to Yahweh, who,
according to Psalm 74, "breakest the heads of dragons in the
•
•
waters" and "the heads of Leviathan m
•
QQ
pieces."
Beryl
Rowland also states that stories of dragon-slaying saints
such as St. George were taken from ancient dragon-combat
myths.
She believes that such combats originally
"symbolized the destruction of paganism" but were later
"incorporated into the archetypal legend. . . .I|84 Newman
explains that the dragons killed by the saints "may be
interpreted as the pagan deities whose following was once
widespread.1,85
A complete consideration of the dragon's role
necessarily includes its treasure.
While it is known that
the dragon came to Europe from the East, how the dragon came
to be so closely connected with treasure (especially gold)
and with the burial mound in England and in Scandinavia is
apparently still a matter of conjecture.
According to
Davidson, the suggestion that "the fiery dragon is a drought
symbol . . . does not explain his preoccupation with
gold,"86 an ancient and widespread element of the dragon's
character.
Ladon, the dragon who watches over the golden
124
apples in the Garden of the Hesperides, provides a classical
antecedent for the gold-hoarding dragon.87
The hoarding dragon is also a central figure of IndoEuropean mythology.
The Rig-Veda tells the story of the
battle between Indra, the sky-god and Vritra, a dragonlike
creature who captured rain-clouds and withheld the waters
from the earth.88
Clearly, in India, water would be
regarded as the primary life-giving source, just as in cold
climates like those of Scandinavia and England, the sun
would be the key element.
As the death of Vritra would
release the life-giving waters, the death of the dragon in
Beowulf would be expected to release a life-giving element.
Since the dragon in these ancient myths is almost always
involved in a fight with the sky-god, it does not seem
illogical to suggest that the gold hoarded is symbolically
related to the life-giving light of the sun.
The poet says
that the dragon is an "eald uhtscea^a", an ancient enemy of
the dawn, just as he is a 3eodscea%a
(2278, 2688).
It is
no accident that the Beowulf dragon hoards this gold in
darkness under the earth and that Beowulf intends to unearth
it and use it as a life-giving force for the Geatish people.
As Williams explains, the dragon "hides treasure that could
be used as a means of social good, as the pagans in Elene
hide the true cross—not for their own good, but to deprive
man of its benefits."89
125
It seems prudent to agree with Greenfield's conclusion
that "we had better view the significance of the treasure as
a problem that will forever remain unresolved. . . .1,90
Nevertheless, without pushing the point too far, the golden
treasure can be interpreted as a symbol of light, which, as
treasure in Anglo-Saxon society generally does, nourishes.
This fits in with Fontenrose's view of the treasure as
"precious cosmic materials which the chaos dragon has
withheld."91
Mythically, then, the treasure partly
represents light withheld from the sky-god, its rightful
owner.
This meaning is connected to the historical level,
where the treasure is the life-giving element of heroic
society, in effect light withheld from the world of men.
And these symbolic values intersect with the Christian view
of worldly treasure as symbolic of the transitoriness of the
things of the world.92
The slayer of the dragon is of course the winner of the
hoarded treasure.
Without the dragon-slayer, the dragon has
no meaningful existence in the poem or the myth.
The
dragon's purpose, in fact, is to defeat and be defeated by
the hero.
In this relationship lies the answer to the
presentation of the dragon as both the double and the
antagonist of the hero.
The dragon and Beowulf are
described in much the same terms.
The two figures are
referred to as "5a agliebean" (2592) . Like Beowulf, the
126
dragon is a solitary figure.
He and Beowulf are both old,
wise in winters (2209, 2277).
The dragon is a hordweard,
while Beowulf is an e^elweard. a "folces weard" (2210,
2513) .
The j?eodscea5a (2688) ends the life of the
•fjeodcvning (2694) .
The dragon is "fyre befangen" (2274) ,
and Beowulf becomes with "fyre befongen" after his war-blade
fails him (2595).
Irving says that "the dragon is a little
like a mock king . . .; the dragon's castle is after all a
93
grave."
•
Even in death, the dragon is identified with
Beowulf, as it is pushed into the sea where Beowulf had
begun his heroic career.
Ironically, the burial
mound, home of the dragon, becomes Beowulf's final resting
place after the king is burnt to ashes by fire, the element
of the dragon.
But the resolution of this discussion must be delayed
until the role of the treasure-winner has been fully
explored.
devoted.
It is to this hero which the next chapter is
Once this last piece has been properly placed into
the puzzle, the broad outlines of the myth and its
relationship to Beowulf can be clearly discerned.
127
Notes
1
J. R. R. Tolkien.
Critics,"
"Beowulf:
The Monsters and the
Proceedings of the British Academy 22 (1936):
245-295, as rpt. in An Anthology of Beowulf Criticism, ed.
Lewis Nicholson (Notre Dame, Indiana: U of Notre Dame, 1963)
86.
2
Friedrich Klaeber, ed. Beowulf and the Fight at
Finnsburg, 3rd ed. (Lexington, MA.: Heath, 1950), 11. 135253.
Subsequent references to this edition will appear
parenthetically within the text.
3
See W. W. Lawrence, Beowulf and Epic Tradition
(Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1928) 161 and Janet Dow, "Beowulf
and the 'Walkers in Darkness, 1 " Connecticut Review 4 (1970):
45.
Walter W. Skeat, "The Monster Grendel in Beowulf," JP
15 (1886): 120-131, goes farther and insists that Grendel
and his mother are actually presented as bears.
4
Stephen C. Bandy, "Cain, Grendel, and the Giants of
Beowulf." PLL 9 (1973): 235.
Bandy discusses gigantism in
terms of "moral ambivalence," whereas in this study it will
be discussed in myth terms as related to the positive and
negative faces of the gods.
The full discussion of this
theme will be found in Chapter V.
Jeffrey Helterman,
"'Beowulf': The Archetype Enters History," JELH 35 (1968):
128
11, argues from a Jungian standpoint that Grendel is the
dark side of Beowulf's subconscious.
5
H. R. Ellis Davidson, Mvths and Symbols in Pagan
Europe (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse UP, 1988) 75.
6
Cf., for example, Dorothy Whitelock, Audience of
Beowulf (Oxford: Clarendon, 1951) 5.
7
Brian Branston argues strongly that the creatures who
drown in the flood "have been lifted straight from the
Anglo-Saxon pagan mythology" and that the poet's reference
to them as descendants of Cain is a deliberate attempt to
Christianize the native pagan myth.
See The Lost Gods of
England (1957; New York: Oxford UP, 1974) 174.
8
Oliver F. Emerson, "Legends of Cain, Especially in
Old and Middle English," PMLA 21 (1906): 913.
9
William Whallon, "Paper 1, Allegorical, Typological,
or Neither: Three Short Papers on the Allegorical Approach
to Beowulf and a Discussion," Anglo-Saxon England 2 (1973):
286.
10
David Williams, Cain and Beowulf: A Study in Secular
Allegory (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1982) 15-17.
11
Betty S.Cox, Cruces of Beowulf (The Hague: Mouton,
1971) 100, note 30.
12
Eugene J. Crook, "Pagan Gold in Beowulf." American
Benedictine Review 25 (1974): 223.
Charles Moorman, "The
Essential Paganism of Beowulf." MLO 28 (1967): 7, expresses
129
a similar point of view; he believes that "the
identification of Grendel with the race of Cain . . .
is
best taken simply as a means of expanding and intensifying
the poet's vision of the evil forces of pagan nature that
Beowulf faces."
19
Rosemary Woolf, "The Devil in Old English Poetry,"
Essential Articles for the Study of Old English Poetry. ed.
Jess B. Bessinger, Jr. and Stanley J. Kahrl (Hamden, CT:
Archon, 1968) 164-65.
Woolf also mentions Solomon and
Saturn and Guthlac. where the devils assailing the saint
turn themselves into human and serpent shape.
14
Helen Damico, Beowulf's Wealtheow and the Valkyrie
Tradition (Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1984) 46.
15
Damico, 51.
She discusses the inherent ambivalence
in the valkyries and disir, groups of subsidiary pagan
deities.
As she points out, "Both categories are armed,
powerful, priestly. . . . Some honor and guard the heroking; others wish to destroy him" 69-70.
Obviously, Damico
sees Wealtheow as related to the positive aspects of the
valkyries and disir.
16
Jane Chance, Woman as Hero in Old English Literature
(Syracuse, NY: Syracuse UP, 1986) 108.
Chapter 7,
"Grendel's Mother as Epic Anti-Type of the Virgin and
Queen," 95-108, is an interesting discussion and highly
relevant to the present study.
Damico had earlier discussed
130
the "antipodal relationship" between Grendel's mother and
Wealtheow, contending that "This pairing is the most extreme
example of the poet's style of characterization, the
juxtaposition of opposites. . . . " 21.
Much earlier Jeffrey
Helterman proposed that "Mrs. Grendel represents the dark
side of Wealhtheow . . . whose function in the society is as
peace-weaver and cup-bearer" 15.
17
Damico 173.
18
Williams 110, note 4.
19
Chance 97.
20
Damico 70.
21
Martin Puhvel, 'Beowulf'and Celtic Tradition
(Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 1979) 18-19,
believes that the Celtic folklore motif of "the demonic hag
more dangerous in fight than her similarly evil son"
influenced Beowulf.
22
»
»
Patricia Belanoff, "The Changing Image of Women in
Old English Poetry," Diss., New York University, 1982, 94.
23
Belanoff 95.
24
See Klaeber, lii (Introduction) and John Leyerle,
"Beowulf the Hero and the King," Medium AEvum 34 (1965): 90.
25
Hume 68.
26
•
•
Adrien Bonjour, "Monsters Crouching and Critics
Rampant: or the Beowulf Dragon Debated," PMLA 68 (1953):
309-11).
T. M. Gang, "Approaches to Beowulf," RES 3 (1952):
131
8, states, "If there were any hint of a connexion between
the dragon and Grendel, or the least suggestion that the
former was connected with other unpleasant incursions from
the fearsome world outside our little circle of light, we
might concede it had universal significance."
As Bonjour
illustrates, a careful examination of the text shows that
there are indeed rather broad hints of a connection between
the dragon and Grendel.
Bonjour enumerates many
similarities between Grendel and the dragon in his defense
of Tolkien's interpretation of the dragon as "a
personification of malice, greed, and destruction."
27
Peter Lum, Fabulous Beasts (New York: Pantheon,
1951): 108.
Fafnir had killed his father and driven his
brother into exile (details curiously reminiscent of Cain,
Unferth and Grendel) so that he alone could possess the
treasure given by Odin as payment for the building of
Valhalla.
He brooded and gloated over his treasure and in
time his giant form changed into that of a dragon.
Marc
Alexander discusses the connection in British folk-tales of
giants as well as dragons to barrows; see British Folklore.
Myths and Legends (London: Weidenfeld, 1982) 44-45.
28
Robert P. Creed, "'. . . Wel-Hwelc JJecwsep. .
The Singer as Architect," Tennessee Stud, in Lit. 11 (1966):
141.
These introductions occur just after Hrothgar and
Beowulf are happily seated on their respective thrones.
132
Creed is arguing for the unity of the poem, and close
identification of Grendel, his dam, and the dragon does
contribute to the argument that Beowulf is of one piece.
This is indeed a significant point, since critics such as
Francis P. Magoun, Jr. have argued not only for multiple
authorship of the surviving Beowulf material but for the
division of the poem into Beowulf A and Beowulf B:
See
"Beowulf B: A Folk Poem on Beowulf's Death," in Early
English and Norse Studies in Honor of Hugh Smith, ed. Arthur
Brown and Peter Foote (London: Methuen, 1963) 127-40).
W.
P. Ker, Epic and Romance (1896; New York, NY: Dover, 1957)
160, also contends that "The adventure with the dragon is
separate from the earlier adventures.
It is only connected
with them because the same person is involved in both."
29
Juan Eduardo Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols. 2nd
ed., trans. Jack Sage (New York: Philos. Lib., 1971) 141,
notes that the head is the symbol of the spiritual principle
"as opposed to the vital principle represented by the body
as a whole."
his head away.
Thus, Grendel is truly dead when Beowulf takes
There is, in fact, evidence that in England
of heathen times, the head of an animal or human was offered
to a heathen deity.
This practice, according to A. W.
Smith, "The Luck in the Head: A Problem in English
Folklore," Folklore 73 (1962): 13-24, is only one example of
widespread primitive veneration of the head resulting from
133
the belief that the soul resides in the head.
Smith, "The
Luck in the Head: Some Further Observations," Folklore 74
(1963): 398, contends that "the existence of a distinctive
type of head-luck custom" in England is "reasonably
ascribable to a pagan English origin."
30
Willem Helder, "Beowulf and the Plundered Hoard," NM
78 (1977): 324.
31
Martin Green, "Man, Time, and Apocalypse in The
Wanderer. The Seafarer, and Beowulf," JEGP 74 (1975): 513.
32
•
Leyerle believes that the force of the monsters
increases as their motivation "becomes better justified" 91.
This seems an unlikely explanation.
Nevertheless, the
dragon's power for destruction is remarkably greater than
that of Grendel or his mother.
Although Grendel murders
many of the Danes, he is unable to destroy Heorot.
The
dragon overcomes untold numbers of men and their homes with
his fiery breath and melts Beowulf's hall with surges of
fire.
Grendel is unable to even approach Hrothgar's
gifstol; the dragon burns up the qifstol of the Geats.
While Grendel's mother kills only one man, the dragon
annihilates whatever he can find of men and their edifices.
In his efforts to destroy the objects of his hatred, Grendel
has only the strength of his own hand-grip which is, while
considerable, nothing in comparison with the dragon's
equipment.
Although Grendel»s mother is a more difficult
134
opponent than her son, her strength and creature-made
weapons are ones against which a man, at least a hero, can
fight with hope of success.
In contrast, the dragon
performs its devastation with the elemental weapon of fire,
against which no man-made (or giant-made) weapon can
prevail. It wounds Beowulf with this fire and kills him with
its venomous bite, weapons against which neither superhuman
strength nor supernatural sword can protect Beowulf.
It
takes two men, one a renowned hero and king, to kill this
dragon.
33
Belanoff 98.
34
Chance 95.
Richard Butts,"The Analogical Mere:
Landscape and Terror in Beowulf." ES 68 (1987): 120,
suggests that such masculine references
may be "hinting at
the possibility of which Hrothgar himself may be unaware—
that the fiend which Beowulf must face is as much within as
without."
35
It has been suggested that the dragon is the last
survivor transformed.
Davidson believes that the account of
the dragon occupying the hoard which had been left open "is
a rationalization of the idea (which would be repugnant to a
Christian audience) that the dead man himself became a
dragon."
This interpretation is not perhaps so implausible
as it may first seem, since it is "a familiar idea in Old
Norse literature"; even Fafnir turned into a dragon when he
135
had gotten possession of Andvari's treasure (Myths and
Symbols. 181).
Cf. G. V. Smithers, "Destiny and the Heroic
Warrior in Beowulf." Philological Essays, ed. James L.
Rosier (The Hague: Mouton, 1970) 11.
Smithers theorizes
that "the last survivor must have entered the mound with his
treasure while still alive and have turned into a dragon at
death" and offers this theory as a plausible explanation of
the presence of the last survivor in the poem.
36
Branston 187.
37
Jonathan D. Evans, "The Dragon,"
Mythical and
Fabulous Creatures, ed. Malcolm South (New York: Greenwood,
1987) 43.
Jacqueline Simpson, British Dragons (London:
Batsford, 1980) 26, argues that although no allusions to
these Scandinavian cosmological myths survive in Anglo-Saxon
written records, versions of them may well have been known
to the pre-Christian English.
Also, as discussed in Chapter
II, there is sufficient evidence, such as the Sutton Hoo
find, to support the possibility of such familiarity, even
before the Viking invasions brought renewed and reinforced
knowledge of Scandinavian religion.
38
Tolkien 66.
39
Gang 8.
40
Lawrence, Beowulf and
41
EPIC
Tradition
208.
Harry Berger, Jr. and H. Marshall Leicester, Jr.,
"Social Structure as Doom: The Limits of Heroism in
136
Beowulf." Old English Studies in Honour of John C. Pope, ed.
Robert B. Burlin and Edward B. Irving, Jr. (Toronto: U of
Toronto P, 1974) 67.
Leyerle also contends that "The
dragon, little more than an agent of fate, presents the
inevitable challenge to Beowulf's heroic susceptibilities.11
In Leyerle's view, the dragon is Beowulf's nemesis largely
through the hero's own fault:
"He disdains the use of an
adequate force against the dragon" 95.
42
•
•
Simpson 116.
•
Simpson does discuss the two
exceptions, the stories of Piers Shonks, where the devil and
the dragon are allies, and Sir John Lambton, where the devil
and the dragon are identified as the same.
Simpson 29.
44
As quoted in Stanley Greenfield, "'Gifstol'and
Goldhoard in Beowulf." Old English Studies, ed. Robert B.
Burlin and Edward B. Irving (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1974)
108.
45
•
J. A. Giles, ed., Six Old English Chronicles
(London: Bell, 1900) 18.
46
Klaeber 245, 1. 3.
47
Knut Stjerna, Essays on Questions Connected with the
Old English Poem of Beowulf, trans. John R. Clark Hall
(Coventry: Curtis, 1912) 39.
48
H. R. Ellis Davidson, "The Hill of the Dragon,"
Folklore 61 (1950): 180.
137
49
Bonjour, "Monsters Crouching" 305.
50
Edward B. Irving, A Reading of Beowulf (New Haven,
CT: Yale UP, 1968) 216.
51
See Gang, especially
52
Paul Newman, The Hill of the Dragon (Totowa, NJ:
6-8.
Rowman, 1980) 35.
53
Evans 41.
KA
Evans 39.
55
Gang 4.
56
Edward B. Irving, Rereading Beowulf (Philadelphia:
U of Pennsylvania P, 1989) 12.
M. B. McNamee, "Beowulf—An Allegory of Salvation?"
JEGP 59 (1960): 194.
58
John D. Niles, 'Beowulf': The Poem and Its Tradition
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1983) 193.
Niles seems to
contradict himself when he suggests that perhaps the dragon
is a threshold figure which reminds Beowulf of the "limits
that bound all earthly success" 30.
59
Albert B. Lord, "Interlocking Mythic Patterns in
Beowulf." Old English Literature in Context, ed. John D.
Niles (Cambridge: Brewer; Totowa, NJ: Rowman, 1980) 141.
Lord's discussion is limited to Grendel and his mother.
Martin Puhvel, 'Beowulf'and Celtic Tradition (Waterloo,
Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 1979) 17, also discusses an
echo of ancient Indo-European tradition in the fight with
138
Grendel's mother.
He notes the powerful female demons of
Persian mythology and the fact that Persephone was, before
Hades, the ruler of the Underworld.
He believes that the
roles of Grendel and his mother reflect a transitional stage
"marked by lack of uniformity in the relative attribution of
powers to demons along lines of sex."
60
Larry D. Benson, "The Originality of Beowulf,"
The
Interpretation of Narrative, ed. Morton W. Bloomfield
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1970) 32.
61
Joseph Fontenrose, Pvthon: A Study of Delphic Mvth
and its Origins (Berkeley: U of California P, 1959) 525-26.
62
Simpson 20.
63
Emerson, "Legends" 845.
64
Lord, "Interlocking Mythic Patterns" 140.
65
William Whallon, "The Christianity of Beowulf," MP
60 (1962): 92.
66
Newman 214-215.
67
Newman 20.
68
Newman 14.
69
Newman 16.
70
Cirlot 40.
71
Fontenrose 13.
72
Cirlot 112.
73
Cirlot 13 2.
139
74
Robert Graves, The White Goddess (1948; New York:
Farrar, 1966) 380.
75
One of the cruces related to the mere scene
preceding the battle is the mention of the horn (1423).
It
is tempting to interpret the horn as a symbol of the
earth/moon goddess.
While the better part of valor
intrudes, such an interpretation seems as reasonable as that
offered by Laura Braswell, "The Horn at Grendel's Mere:
'Beowulf' 1417-72," NM 74 (1973): 466-72.
According to
Braswell, the purpose of the horn is "to incite water
creatures into movement which then exposes them to the
hunters waiting on the banks of the mere."
She feels that
this lends realism to the scene and shows the author's
"skill in making credible the improbable material of
folklore."
7fi
•
Michael N. Nagler, "Beowulf in the Context of Myth,"
Old English Literature in Context, ed. John D. Niles
(Cambridge: Brewer; Totowa, NJ: Rowman, 1980) 143.
77
Peter F. Fisher, "The Trials of the Epic Hero in
Beowulf," PMLA 73 (1958): 179.
7R
Puhvel, 'Beowulf'and Celtic Tradition 26.
79
•
T. C. Lethbridge, Gog Magog: The Buried Gods
(London: Routledge, 1957) 158.
Cf. Graves 257 and all of
Chapter Twenty-Two, "The Triple Muse."
140
80
»
•
Vincent Hopper, Medieval Number Symbolism (New York:
Cooper Square, 1969) 203.
81
•
Charles Hardwick, Traditions. Superstitions, and
Folk-Lore (1872; New York: Arno, 1980) 44.
82
83
Newman 17.
•
•
Simpson 21.
•
•
The full implications of this myth for
Beowulf
will be discussed in Chapter V.
84
Beryl Rowland, Animals with Human Faces; A Guide to
Animal Symbolism (Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 1973) 69.
85
Newman 236.
86
Davidson, "The Hill of the Dragon" 182.
87
Newman 38.
88
Evans 31.
Evans also mentions that in Indian
mythology one thousand dragon-like beings inhabit Patala,
the watery region under the earth, where "they reign in
great splendor and guard treasures."
89
Williams 65.
Qfl
Stanley B. Greenfield, "'Gifstol'and Goldhoard in
Beowulf." Old English Studies, ed. Robert B. Burlin and
Edward B. Irving, Jr. (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1974) 115.
91
Fontenrose 527.
92
Paul B. Taylor, "Traditional Language of Treasure in
Beowulf." JEGP 85 (1986): 203, notes that there are no blunt
"condemnations of earthly goods or burial treasures in
Beowulf." such as that in The Seafarer (11. 97-102).
141
However, as Kemp Malone, "Symbolism in 'Beowulf': Some
Suggestions," English Studies Today. Second Series, ed. G.
A. Bonnard (Bern: Francke, 1961) 90, says that the hoard
"exemplifies . . . the vanity of worldly goods. . . . "
Q9
,
.
Irving, Reading 209.
CHAPTER IV
THE HERO AS PRIEST-KING AND GOD
No character in Old English literature has been so
frequently and so thoroughly dissected and explicated as
Beowulf.
His motives, words and actions have been examined.
He has been alternately praised and criticized, seen as the
ideal heroic warrior as well as a flawed Christian hero.
Others before now have discussed him as a mythological,
archetypal figure; the purpose here is to attempt a fresh
and more comprehensive account of how Beowulf's character
functions in the poem, particularly on the mythological
level of meaning.
Bernard Huppe' cautions the literary
critic in search of the hero to be aware of limits and to
understand that the "given" of a literary scholar "is not
history, myth, theology, but the hero celebrated by a
literary artist, a poet."1
This chapter will demonstrate
that discovering the hero celebrated by the Beowulf poet
involves considering Beowulf in mythological as well as
historical and religious contexts.
In significant aspects
of his characterization, Beowulf is revealed as a
mythological figure.
It is impossible to see Beowulf as less than
superhuman, if not god-like.
As Harry Berger and H.
142
143
Marshall Leicester note, "A kind of mana attaches to this
hero, a misty and superstition-ridden aura of the uncanny,
the ' unheimlich.11,2
In his youth he swims for at least five
days in a stormy sea, slaying sea-monsters through it all.
Beowulf is said to have the strength of thirty men, and
indeed he swims across the sea from the battlefield in
Frisia to Geatland carrying the armor of thirty men.
The
giant-made sword with which he kills Grendel's dam is "mare
Sonne a»nig mon ofcer / to beadulace
aetberan meahte."3
And,
unlike Hrothgar, in his old age Beowulf is still strong
enough to insist on singlehandedly fighting the monster who
is ravaging his kingdom.
John Pope comments on Beowulf's
"preternatural resistance to physical decay" in his old age
and considers it "a mark of his heroic endowment."4
This
supernaturally enduring strength also serves to support his
image as god-king.
In the context of Germanic kingship alone, Beowulf
would have been viewed as divine.
William Chaney explains
that kingship among pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon tribes
depended basically on descent from ancient gods as
demonstrated by the possession of mana. "a charismatic power
on which his tribe depends for its well-being."
This force
was "distinct from mere physical power or strength. . . .1,5
Henry Myers refers to this same quality as Heil and explains
how it differs from 'luck':
144
Unlike the modern idea of 'fortune,1 Heil was not
separable from personal ability.
A king won his
battles through his Heil. but his Heil gave him
special abilities; it did not compensate for the
lack of them.
The Germanic king was expected to
look and act his part.
He was supposed to be the
best fighter and athlete among his men and to
overawe strangers with his very presence.6
All this could easily describe Beowulf.
When he first
appears on the beach in Denmark, the coast guard
automatically singles him out:
Naefre ic maran geseah
eorla ofer eorpan,
secg on searwum;
waepnum geweorSad,
Bonne is eower sum,
nis ^aet seldguma,
naefne him his wlite leoge,
aenlic ansyn. (247b-251a)
In his early career, as Fred C. Robinson mentions, "Beowulf
seems to be protected by the manner in which nature reacts
in concord with the hero's needs—as if nature were itself
charmed."7
The sky and sea, for example, calm suddenly,
thus making it possible for Beowulf to get back to land
after his swimming match with Breca (569-70).
As his body
burns on the funeral pyre, the winds likewise cease, not
disturbing the smoke bearing his spirit to the heavens.
145
The poet also seems to portray Beowulf as more than a
man, even a heroic man, in the exchange with Unferth.
The
description of the swimming match with Breca during which
Beowulf slays sea-monsters with his sword parallels the
struggle with Grendel's mother.
details that are later repeated.
The poet includes numerous
Beowulf says that when he
and Breca are swimming, the weather is cold, the north wind
turns against them, and the waves are rough; but after he
has slain the sea-monsters, "Leoht iastan com, / beorht
beacen Godes,
brimu swa^redon" (569b-570).
Later, as
Beowulf and Hrothgar approach the mere,
ponon ySgeblond
up astigeS
won tQ wolcnum,
-fonne wind styref?
la3 gewidru
oS faet lyft drysmaj?,
roderas reotaS.
(1373-1376a)
And after Beowulf has defeated Grendel's mother, a light
shines in the hall (1571-1572a), and the mere becomes calm
(1630b).
In both contests, a point is made of Beowulf's
being saved by the mail-coat which he wears (cf. 550-553 and
1547-1553).
The struggle with the enemy is described in
remarkably similar terms.
The young Beowulf is drawn to the
bottom of the sea by the "fah feondscaSa", fast in its grim
grasp until it is granted to him to reach the aalaecan with
the point of his battle-sword and destroy the "mihtig
meredeor" by his own hand (553-558).
The poet says that in
146
the fight with Grendel's mother Beowulf is borne to the
bottom of the mere by the brimwvlf. caught in her terrible
grasp.
He is almost overcome by her when he sees the giant-
made sword with which he is finally able to kill her.
The significance of these parallels seems to be that the
poet intended the audience to see Beowulf from the very
beginning as a god-like figure, pitted against the monsters,
giants, and all others of the race of Cain.
It is appropriate that the Breca story, which
introduces Beowulf as at least a potential mythic figure, is
in answer to the taunts of Unferth.
His name does not
alliterate in the usual way with that of his father, so the
poet may have meant to introduce him as a symbolic figure.
Beowulf's charge that "1$u yinum bro^rum
to banan wurde"
(587) places Unferth squarely among the monsters and Cains
of the world.
Furthermore, when Beowulf addresses Unferth
directly as "sunu Ecglafes" (590), the poet may have
reinforced the role of Unferth as a descendant of the
"sword-leavings," the ancient strife.
Hilda Ellis Davidson
discusses the fact that Unferth possesses information which
the other Danes seem not to have concerning Beowulf and that
Beowulf likewise possesses knowledge of Unferth's past.
She
sees Unferth as a -Jfulr. who in Old Norse literature is able
to discover what is hidden.
She discerns mythic
significance in the word-contest between Beowulf and
147
Unferth:
"In the mythological poems of the Edda. such
contests of knowledge are raised from a human setting to a
cosmic level, as gods and giants compete and the loser is
destroyed."8
Beowulf specifies that he killed "niceras nigene" (575)
during the swimming match with Breca.
The number nine
"particularly connected with fertility, religion, and magic"
in northern mythology may very well have had significance
for the audience, especially as the number associated with
Thor (the Norse version of Thunor) .9
In his fights with all
three monsters, Beowulf probably also reminded the AngloSaxon audience of Thunor since, as Brian Branston
contends,"the main myth connected with Thunor's name, his
fight with a demon of darkness, was known to the Old
English."10
After all, Thor slays the World Serpent and
afterwards dies from its venom.
Also, the poet calls
Beowulf eotenweard (668b), a phrase which aptly describes
Thor's role in Asgard as guardian against invading giants.11
It may be worth noting that in Northern mythology Thor
struggles against "the serpent sea, only to be defeated
('slain') at the approach of winter again."12
Plainly
Thunor is a fertility god, a god who dies and is reborn each
spring.
Beowulf's name, the subject of much scholarly debate,
quite possibly carries mythological connotations identifying
148
him as a dying god.
The hero's name was explained by Grimm
as Bienen-Wolf ("bee-wolf") , the generally accepted
translation.13
whelp") .14
It may originally have meant Barwelf ("bear-
In any case, both interpretations have the same
general meaning of "bear."
No satisfactory explanation of
Beowulf's name has been offered.
As Betty Cox states, no
convincing "connection, heroic, mythical, classical,
Christian, linguistic, has been found to explain the hero's
name."15
The question remains as to why Beowulf is depicted
as a bear.
It is interesting that Artemis, one of the
manifestations of the Great Mother Goddess or Moon Goddess,
was known as the Bear-Mother as early as 3000 B.C.16
The
bear is symbolically related to the moon in its alternate
disappearance and appearance.17
Primitive people regarded
the bear as special because it appeared to die and come back
•
to life.
18
•
Its habit of disappearing into hibernation in
the winter and reappearing in the spring may have also
caused it to be associated with the mythic dying god.
In
the Kalevala the bear is said to have been born "in the
lands between sun and moon," and to have died "not by men's
hands, but of his own will."19
However, because there is no
evidence that the bear possessed this meaning in Anglo-Saxon
culture, the suggestion that Beowulf as "bear" might have
149
been viewed as a dying god is decidedly tentative, except
that more evidence exists.
There may be an astrological explanation for why
Beowulf is depicted as a bear, one which identifies him as a
dying god.
The constellations of Ursa Major and Draco are
contiguous and are visible in the winter just after
sunset.
20
•
t
It is perhaps worth speculating about the
significance of these facts.
According to Otto Rank, myths
were at some time projected for certain reasons
upon the heavens, and may be secondarily
transferred to the heavenly bodies. . . . The
significance of the unmistakable traces—the fixed
figures, and so forth—that have been imprinted
upon the myth by this transference must by no
means be underrated. . . .21
In ancient myth, Beryl Rowland explains, the bear is "the
majestic and luminous god of storms and sunshine." He is
also traditionally "the progenitor of the magic hero in
22
saga."
Joseph Fontenrose sees the fight with Grendel as a
Bearson tale, which is in itself the result of the combat
myth travelling north at an early period and being
influenced by the Sleeping-Bear cult. . . . "
He suggests
that the fight with the dragon is a different variant of the
combat myth, conforming "more closely to the familiar
dragon-slayer tales of northern and western Europe" such as
150
•
•
2*1
«
•
Sigurd/Fafnir and St. George.
The astrological evidence,
however, seems to indicate the existence of a myth involving
the dragon and bear.
Considerable astrological knowledge is
exhibited in Northern mythology,24 so perhaps the Beowulf
poet could have known of such a myth.
It is interesting to note that The Great Bear
constellation consists of seven stars, the number most
frequently associated with the dragon in lore.
For example,
the beasts of Revelation have seven heads, as does
Leviathan.
Typhon rules the seven stars known as Ursa
Major, and the name of her son Set means "seven."25
Set
also happens to be the murderer of his brother Osiris.26
So
here in the Typhon myth is the female dragon figure, with a
son who is associated with Cain, just as Grendel clearly is.
She rules over the Great Bear, just as the Beowulf dragon
finally rules over Beowulf, the great bear hero of the poem.
In this sequence, there exists the possibility that the
dragon is indeed Grendel 1 s dam in a formidable
transformation.
As Fafnir transformed from a giant to a
dragon, Grendel's dam, a giantess, reappears in the ultimate
form of the archetypal dragon to defeat the bear-like hero.
Another possible explanation for the hero's name
meaning simply "bear" is that it is a purposeful avoidance
of the true name.
In many cultures, there is a strong
belief in the power of the name.
According to Robert
151
Graves, "In ancient times, once a god's secret name had been
discovered, the enemies of his people could do destructive
magic against them with it."27
In his discussion of mana in
euphemisms, Edward Clodd states that other names are
sometimes used to confuse or deceive even death.
One
example he gives occurs in the Kalevala. where the "sacred
Otso" is also called the "honey-eater" who gives his life as
"a sacrifice to Northland."28
Beowulf, as "bee-wolf" or
bear is also of course a "honey-eater," and it is not
inconceivable that his true and sacred name, perhaps once
known, became lost in the oral transmission of the myth.
This loss would have been even more conceivable if Beowulf
at one time had been regarded as a god; there is even more
mana connected with the name of a god because to know the
name gives the utterer the power to invoke him.29
A definitive interpretation, however, of the exact
meaning of Beowulf's name is neither possible nor necessary.
It seems likely that his name held many if not all of these
associations for the poet's original audience and that the
name itself thus enriched the hero as a character,
particularly in his role as a mythological figure.
Beowulf's name clearly links him with the god Woden,
the chief of the god of warriors as well as a fertility god
in northern mythology.
The use of animal mimes for
distinguished men was common practice in Scandinavia, and
152
the bear and wolf were most often used in the formation of
these names.
Davidson suggests that this custom was
probably based on pre-Christian beliefs in which the bear
and wolf were associated with battle-magic and closely
linked with Woden.30
Beowulf's name with its double
interpretation of wolf and bear quite likely would have
called forth associations with Woden in the minds of the
eighth century audience.
There does, in fact, seem to be other evidence to
support a distinct connection between Beowulf and Woden.
The second part of Beowulf's name associates him with
berserkrs. warriors who are called "wolf-coats" in Old Norse
verse, and whose particular god was Woden.31
In Old
Icelandic, the name berserkr means "bear-shirt" and is
perhaps derived from the belief that they took on animal
form by changing their skins and thereby gained animal
strength.
According to Charles Hardwick, Beow or Beowulf
is one of Woden's ancestors in his Anglo-Saxon pedigree.
Also, Hardwick argues that the name of Beowulf's tribe is
related etymologically to Woden.
Woden's ncime in his aspect
of fertility god was Gautr, the god of abundance.33
The
imagery connecting Beowulf with Woden as war-god and as
fertility god may link his function on the historical level
as ideal heroic warrior with his function on the
153
mythological level as the god whose death ushers in new
life.
Beowulf is also closely connected to the fertility god
Scyld Sheafing, son of Sheaf, a corn-spirit.,
As Peter F.
Fisher says, the description of Scyld with its suggestion of
divine origins gives the idea that Beowulf is also divine in
some way and thus sets the tone.34
An interesting and
perhaps not entirely irrelevant connection between sheaf and
wolf is found in the British tradition of wolf-as-cornspirit, traces of which still exist in twentieth-century
England.35
The Scyld passage has long been treated as a crux
because of the difficulty of accounting for the identical
names of Scyld's son and of the hero.
Another problem has
been the inability to see the correspondence between the
Scyld passage and the entire poem, not just the first
section.36
A basic assumption here is that Beowulf the Dane
is identified with Beow, a corn god.37
The poet
specifically states the name of Beowulf Scvldinaa (53), and
it is reasonable to suppose that this is intentional,
especially since this name connects the hero Beowulf in the
minds of the audience with the divine ancestor of the
Scyldings.
Rank notes that "the transference of mythical
motifs from the life of the older hero to a younger one
154
bearing the same name" is "a universal process in myth
formation.,|38
An examination of the similarities between Scyld and
Beowulf supports the interpretation of Beowulf as a
reappearance of the dying god in cosmic time.
Scyld arrives
from an unknown origin, and Beowulf's origins too are
unclear.
His mother is nameless.
He says that his father
is Ecgtheow, but as has been noticed before, his name does
not alliterate as it would according to Germanic custom.39
Besides, as son of "Ecg-theow," Beowulf could have been
regarded as the descendant of the "(priestly) servant of the
sword."
The sword is an ancient symbol, weapon of the sun-
god, who manifests himself both as warrior god and fertility
god.
In a discussion of Freyr, Davidson notes that "the
child coming over the sea from an unknown realm to bring the
land blessing suggests a deity continually dying and being
reborn. . . .1,40 As Graves puts it, "the variously named
God of the Year always came out of the sea."41
clearly fits this mold:
Scyld
the waves of the sea carry him to
the land he is destined to defend.
Beowulf also comes from
over the sea, albeit from a known realm, to defend first
Denmark, then later his own Geatland.
the sea.
Scyld also returns to
Although Beowulf does not return to the sea in
death, he is portrayed throughout the poem as a creature of
155
the sea.
He survives five nights and days in the swimming
match with Breca, and, after his successful struggles with
the sea-monsters, the sea bears him to Finlcind.
Similarly,
the dead Scyld is given to the ocean, and the sea bears him
away (48-49).
Beowulf also survives being dragged to the
depths of the mere with Grendel's mother, and he swims for
his life through the sea after Hygelac is felled by the
Frisians.
Finally, he is buried on Hronesnaess next to the
sea.
Beowulf leaves Denmark with a ship full of treasure,
just as Scyld so many years earlier had left the land of the
Scyldings in his funeral ship loaded with treasure.
Mack
Allen Perry notes that the mention of the mast in the
description of Scyld"s funeral ship being readied "echoes
the mention of the mast when Hrothgar's gifts are placed on
Beowulf's ship (1898b-18 9 9) .1,42
So perhaps the Beowulf
poet's audience would have made this connection between
Beowulf and Scyld and in so doing would have understood that
Beowulf's voyage to Geatland is a voyage into the mythical
as well as historical place where he will face death.
Beowulf's primary function in the poem as the slayer of
monsters replicates that of the dying gods of Indo-European
myths as well as the gods of the pagan Germanic religion.
This role is emphasized by his disassociation from society.
Unlike Hrothgar and Hygelac, he has neither wife nor child.
156
Thus, while he shares the status of king on the historical
level with Hrothgar and Hygelac, he is set apart from them
on the mythological level.
In fact, in the lack of an
ordinary domestic life and in the absence of heirs, Beowulf
appears as a sacral priest/king.
As Dorothy Whitelock
points out, "A priest had to observe certain taboos. . . . "
For one thing, he could not carry weapons.43
Chaney also
notes "the forbidding of arms to the priests of the Angles
and the banning of weapons from their temples" and argues
that this is "a cult feature probably descended from the
cult of Nerthus."44
Perhaps this fact partially explains
why Beowulf does not bear weapons against Grendel, or why
the sword he bears against Grendel's mother does not work
and only the God-given sword on the wall of the cave avails
him there.
Chaney states that by the time of the early migrations,
the king "has become the tribal high-priest, the 'warden of
the holy temple.1"
The king "stood between his tribe and
its gods, sacrificing for victory and plenty, 'making' the
year."45
The function of "making" the year is exactly that
of the fertility god.
In mythology the fertility god is the
dying god who restores the land through his death.
Beowulf
functions as the dying Savior-Hero whose death effects
restoration.
In her famous study of Grail literature,
157
Jessie Weston summarizes the main components of the Grail
myth:
the story postulates a close connection between
the vitality of a certain King, and the prosperity
of his kingdom; the forces of the ruler being
weakened or destroyed, by wound, sickness, old
age, or death, the land becomes Waste, and the
task of the hero is that of restoration.46
This description could as easily be applied to Beowulf.
Hrothgar's vitality is certainly diminished if not
altogether destroyed, and Heorot, the center of his land,
has in effect been laid waste by Grendel.
Beowulf comes to
restore the kingdom of Denmark and particulcirly to cleanse
Heorot.
When Beowulf arrives at Hrothgar's court, he
asserts that without his help Heorot will never escape the
monster.
Thus he makes it clear that he has come to rid the
mead hall of Grendel.
He is able to restore Hrothgar's land
through a ritual, substitute death in the mere.
But the
attempted restoration of his own land requires his death.
The sacral kingship, as Chaney explains, involved
sacrifice:
"in the royal responsibility for the tribe's
temporal prosperity, when the heathen king lost his 'luck,1
he himself might be sacrificed to maintain the mana of his
house."47
As Moorman says,
158
Beginning with Frazer, anthropologists and
literary critics have seen as a ruling motif both
in primitive society and in literature the ritual
sacrifice of the sacral king as a means of
assuring the continuing fertility of the land and
the prosperity of the tribe.
Moorman agrees with Margaret Murray that "the sacrifice
either of the king or of his substitute was a fundamental
part of the Germanic paganism which infused England in the
Anglo-Saxon period and continued well into the Christian
Era."48
Beowulf's death natually would have been viewed by
the Anglo-Saxon audience as a ritual sacrifice, whether or
not the myth behind the ritual was consciously
apprehended.49
This belief in the sacrificial nature of the divine
king blended easily with the Christian idea of the savior
who sacrifices his life for mankind.
Graves calls Jesus the
"greatest of all Sacred Kings" and explains that the symbols
surrounding the Christian son of God were derived from the
ritual of the gods whom He superseded.50
Some critics have
noted parallels between Beowulf and Jesus Christ,51 but
William Whallon argues that such similarities are probably
coincidental, "since the Anglo-Saxon epic may have been
produced under relatively little influence from Scripture or
the writings of the Fathers."52
159
It is, however, entirely plausible that similarities
between Beowulf and Jesus Christ are intentional, not in the
sense that the poem is heavily influenced by the Scripture
but rather because both figures function as resurrectiongods.
For example, one piece of evidence cited in the
effort to prove that Beowulf is Christ is his troop of
twelve retainers at the end of the poem.
However, the
number thirteen, including twelve members and a god, is
common in pre-Christian religion and legend.
Odin was
accompanied by twelve lesser gods and the Danish hero Hrolf
by his twelve berserks.
As Murray points out, the
combination of twelve plus one was not limited to Germanic
tradition.
She cites the example of "Romulxis, who was both
king and Incarnate God," being surrounded by his twelve
lectors.53
Hercules also had twelve retainers.
The number
twelve is considerably more prominent in Northern mythology
than in Christian narratives, indicating "something more
than a late borrowing."54
It is also possible that the original audience would
have seen something of Balder, another dying god, in
Beowulf.
Branston contends that the Anglo-Saxons honored
Balder and that the existence of Balder in their preChristian religion made it easy for them to accept Jesus
Christ: "the Old English were content merely to replace the
160
old gods by a Prince of Peace who, after all, was for them
only an extension of Balder."55
One of the main symbols connected with the dying god
was the sun.
This symbol is obviously naturalistic, since
the sun is born and dies each day in its rising and setting.
The rising sun is a symbol of Jesus Christ as well, and the
sun and light imagery so often discussed in relation to
Beowulf seems to identify him as belonging to this
tradition.
It is strange that the sun in Beowulf is
sometimes said to be in the south instead of the usual east
or west.
In his boast preceding his fight with Grendel,
Beowulf promises King Hrothgar that anyone will be able to
go happily into the hall at daybreak of the following
morning when "sunne sweglwered
su^an seine#!" (606).
But
when the morning comes, the poet makes no mention of the
sun.
In fact, the next reference to the sun occurs just
after Beowulf has defeated Grendel's mother, lending support
to the theory that Grendel is not vanquished until his
mother also has been slain:
Lixte se leoma,
efne swa of hefene
rodores candel.
leoht inne stod,
hadre scineS1
(1570-1572a)
Much later, when Beowulf and his men arrive at Geatland, the
poet says "Woruldcandel scan, / sigel su&an fus" (1965b1966a).
One would expect the sun to rise from the east on
161
these occasions, from a symbolic as well as realistic
viewpoint.
So what could the poet possibly intend?
It
seems impossible to give a definitive answer, but these
references may again be allusions to the fertility god who
is also depicted as a sun-king.
According to Graves, in
mythology this sacred king is imprisoned at death "in the
extreme north" where "only dead suns are to be found."56
In
this context, it is perhaps significant that no sun is
mentioned on the morning after Beowulf's death when his band
morgenlongne daeg
bordhaebbende,
endedogores
leofes monnes.
modgiomor saet,
bega on wenum,
ond eftcymes
(2894-2897a)
Myth critics, concentrating on Beowulf's descent into
the mere in their discussions of his role, have failed to
understand the significance of the hero's death.
Michael
Nagler, viewing the fight with Grendel's mother as
climactic, completely omits any mention of the dragon
fight.57
Similarly, Janet Dow discusses only the battle in
the mere, arguing that Beowulf's descent is a return to the
womb, where he battles "his own shadow self."
She also
states, however, that "The Hero has returned to the lair of
Mother Earth, there to meet her terrifying and aggressive
aspect, her demon self, Death."
The sword is the phallic
symbol of regeneration which effects the Rebirth.58
Carl
162
Meigs believes that Beowulf loses his adolescence and is
reborn into manhood during the fight with Grendel's
mother.59
Thomas Gasque agrees and is clearly tempted to
suggest that "Beowulf defeats the darker side of his own
mother when he defeats Grendel's."60
Such psychological
interpretations are intriguing and even sometimes
enlightening for modern readers, but they seem strangely
unrelated to the poet's intentions or to what may reasonably
be imagined as the perceptions of his original audience.
Furthermore, they generally deny mythological
significance to the second part of the poem, neglecting even
to analyze the fight with the dragon.
Gasque argues that
Beowulf's return to Geatland marks "the completion of his
rite of passage" and that the mythic qualities which
permeate the first part are missing in the second part.61
He agrees with Jeffrey Helterman that Beowulf "has descended
fully into the world of time" upon completion of the
recounting of his adventures to Hygelac.
According to
Helterman, "The flat telling of the encounters
demythologizes Beowulf and sets him in a thoroughly secular
setting."62
John D. Niles also insists that the Beowulf
dragon "is a flesh-and-blood flying dragon etnd not a
mythological creature."63
This claim is of course amazing
in light of the rich mythological background of dragonfights and dragons themselves.
It is obvious that the
163
second part of Beowulf is just as thoroughly imbued with
mythological significance.
The dragon is after all a
dragon, by definition every bit as much a part of the
mythological world as Grendel's mother, in fact synonymous
with her in mythological terms.
It is in the combat with the dragon that Beowulf is
most decisively identified as a mythic figure.
Niles
asserts that "The mythic dimension of time is not evoked
during the dragon fight . . . because the poet does not want
this episode to be considered a new chapter in the
continuing feud of God against His enemies."164
On the
contrary, the mythic past is every bit as much referred to
in this part of the poem, but it is not the Christian mythic
past.
It is a mythic past much farther back in the history
of man, a past of which the Anglo-Saxons were aware long
before they came to know the Christian stories.
After the advent of Christianity, the ancient myths of
dragon-killers became part of Christian mythology.
Paul
Newman describes a bas-relief showing a "hawk-headed St.
George, clad in Roman military uniform" fighting a dragon.
This is clearly an example in Christian iconography of the
same mythic story of Horus and Set.
Newman concludes that
"there can be little doubt that George did assume
characteristics of the sun-gods that he supplanted."
Even
St. George's name connects him to these fertility gods:
he
164
is "ge-orge" or "earth-stimulator."
This fctntastic
interpretation is given more credence by the fact that St.
George's day is on April 23, planting time.
His role as
opposer of the "harvest spoiler" is clear in a variant of
the St. George legend in which the hero kills a serpent
which is causing drought in the land by blocking the watersource.
Once the serpent is dead, the water is released and
the land is restored.65
In Beowulf, the image of water does indeed identify the
hero as an otherworldly figure.
The descent of the hero
into water is a widespread motif in world mythology.
In his
psychological interpretation of the myth of the birth of the
hero, Rank asserts that "the exposure in the water signifies
no more and no less than the symbolic expression of
birth."66
Niles says that "the waters through which the
hero descends . . . separate the ordinary human world from
the magical and threatening 'other' realm in so many tales
of an otherworldly journey."67
Beowulf does not descend
into water to fight the dragon, but the close connection of
this motif with the dying god may explain the strange
welling stream which comes from the barrow.
The combats with Grendel's dam and the dragon are in
one sense struggles with the Otherworld.
The dragon fight
is, however, different from the struggle with Grendel's
mother; in the barrow fight, Beowulf does not cross the
165
threshhold.
The poet is careful to state that the torrent
of boiling water issuing from the mouth of the cave prevents
any man from entering.
Thus, the hero must do battle in his
own kingdom, not in the Otherworld where thesre is magic.
Nevertheless, the dragon's cave is cleansed and restored to
nature just as the mere is.
Wiglaf has the cursed treasure
removed, and the dragon's body is dumped into the sea, just
as the body of Grendel's mother remains underwater.
However, as Edward Irving says, "Cleansing implies the
restoration of normality in human society as well as in
physical nature."68
After the fight with Grendel's dam,
human society is seemingly restored.
folk rejoice, and the hero lives.
The hall is safe, the
The poet is careful,
however, to let the audience know that this is only a
temporary peace, a momentary haitus in the losing struggle
against the forces of disintegration.
Similarly, while the
dragon is vanquished, the restoration of society is even
more tenuous.
The hero is dead and there is only the laf of
his tribe to hold the kingdom.
Wiglaf, son of Weohstan, is
a loyal retainer and a heroic warrior, but he cannot be
compared to the Heil-filled Beowulf.
Whether or not Wiglaf
may be able to perform the functions of the hero, one is
sure that there will be another dragon to be fought.
Even seemingly superficial patterns of imagery
contribute to the characterization of Beowulf as a
iMMp
166
mythological figure.
to the pagan gods.
is the boar.
For example, animal imagery links him
One of the animals mentioned frequently
As discussed in Chapter II, the boar is a
symbol closely associated with several gods in the pagan
religion, including Woden and the fertility gods Freyr and
Freya.
In her study of animal symbolism, Rowland discusses
the ancient "concept of the boar as a symbol of divine
essence" common in Europe as well as the East.
She explains
that the boar as Vishnu incarnated is said to destroy
demons.69
In the golden boar-figures on the helmets of
Beowulf and his men, then, there is a connection between the
northern symbol of battle power and the symbol of the demonslaying god of Indo-European mythology.
The stag is another animal significant in pagan
•
*
7fl
religion as the enemy of the serpent.
The antiquity of
this belief is attested to by a Bronze Age figurine of a
man-stag holding a wriggling serpent.
According to Graves,
the figure's "mouth and eyes express an excusable terror at
the sight; for the serpent is death."71
In Beowulf, the
image of the stag appears in the description of the mere.
This animal, the poet says, would rather give up his life on
the bank than enter the mere, home of Grendel's mother
(1368-71).
Davidson suggests that in pre-Christian religion
"the stag may have served as a sacrificial victim. . . .1,72
167
As such, it would have been a totem of the dying fertility
god.
The imagery which the poet uses in the description of
the hero's death and burial is especially rich in
mythological significance.
In the first place, there are
numerous references to pagan religion in the* burial ceremony
for Beowulf.
Cremation is clearly related to the pagan god
Woden, who, as J. S. Ryan explains, "instituted the custom
of cremation and ordained that all dead men should be burned
on a pyre."
The burning sacrifice to the god generally took
place on hills, "whence the smoke and spirit might go to
73
Woden."
«
Woden's son Balder is burned after death, and
Sigurd is said to be burned in his ship as he floats out to
sea, borne by the winds and the flame to the kingdom of
Odin.74
It is curious that at Beowulf's cremation, as
Ritchie Girvan notices, "windblond gelBeg" (3146), exactly
the opposite of the expected rising of wind as described in
Homer and even in Hnaef's cremation.
Girvan interprets this
difference as evidence that the poet was working from
sources which he did not understand.75
However, the poet
may have meant to indicate simply that even the winds would
cease when "Heofon rece swe(a)lg" (3155).
Beowulf commands Wiglaf to build his burial barrow on
the headland next to the sea so that it shall "heah hlifian
on Hronesnaesse" (2805) as a reminder to sailors.
The burial
168
mound itself was "a tribal centre and cult centre among the
Germanic peoples," including the Anglo-Saxons, and Chaney
believes that this fact explains Beowulf's command that a
barrow be built for him.76
According to T. C. Lethbridge,
"Associated with the idea that burning a victim led to the
general fertility, the ashes of the corpse were covered with
a round mound to represent the breast of Mother Earth."77
Although Lethbridge is referring to Bronze Age barrows, this
custom lingered on in Britain and is reflected in Beowulf.
After all, Beowulf is not put in a ship, either in the
ground or on the sea.
A mound is built in his memory, and
it is not so far-fetched to interpret this as the breast of
Mother Earth and thus a fertility symbol.
One of the most perplexing features of Beowulf's
funeral has been the presence of the weeping woman singing
her sorrowful song as Beowulf's body is burning.
Critics
have theorized that she is Hygd, either as Beowulf's widow
or as dowager queen of Geatland; that she is Beowulf's
unidentified widow, or that she is just a mourning Geatish
woman.
Tauno Mustanoja believes that this woman is a
professional ritual mourner whose song of lamentation "was
an essential traditional feature in the funeral ceremony and
had to be included in the description."
Her presence, he
believes, reflects an old Germanic tradition.78
undoubtedly true.
This is
169
However, the lamenting woman was perhaps included also
because of her symbolic relationship to the dying god.
In
ritual enactments of the myth of the dying god, the figure
representing the Vegetation Spirit is customarily attended
by mourning women.
Weston mentions the problem of the
weeping woman or women in the Grail romances.
She notes
that "in the interpolated visit of Gawain to the Grail
castle, found in the C group of Perceval MSS., the Grailbearer weeps piteously," as do the twelve maidens whom
Gawain, in the prose Lancelot. sees at "the door of the
chamber where the Grail is kept. . . . "
Weston points out
that these figures "behave precisely as did the classical
•
7Q
mourners for Adonis."
Still another aspect of mythic overtones in Beowulf's
funeral ceremony is the ring made around his barrow by the
twelve warriors chanting a dirge.
Such a ritual is in
accordance with early Germanic tradition.
Martin Puhvel,
however, cites much evidence in support of his argument that
such a custom was much more widespread.
He asserts that "it
appears to have been essentially a question of a ceremony of
imitative magic of cosmic import—relating to the movement
of the sun, the great guiding light of the world."80
circular movement itself is ritualistic.
The
Lethbridge says
that in Druidic festivals honoring the sun-god, for example,
there were bonfires and a ring dance accompanying a ritual
170
performance "in which the sun god overcame the demon of
darkness; or the moon goddess progressed across the
Heavens."81
Perhaps the circle of chanting retainers at
Beowulf's burial is a remnant of the ring dance ritual,
which was extremely important, according to Murray, "as a
religious ceremony and an act of adoration of the
Deity. . . .1,82
The character of Beowulf clearly resonates with
allusions to gods, particularly to the monster-slaying dying
god so prevalent in Indo-European myth.
It seems
reasonable, then, to reject once and for all Irving's
assertion that "Beowulf is not a god in any sense whatever,
not even in the limited sense that Scyld is godlike because
of his supernatural and mysterious origins."83
W. P. Ker
admits that Beowulf is "something different from the giantkiller of popular stories, the dragon-slayer of the romantic
schools."84
Indeed, Beowulf can be perceived as the god of
light who battles the forces of darkness and chaos.
It is
no accident that this description can apply to the Christian
Christ-god as well as the pagan sky-god.
As Chaney states, "Divine descent bound the monarch
into temporal and cosmic history and served as a link
between them."85
It seems clear that Beowulf as a divine
figure as well as a hero in the history of the Danes serves
as a link between the historical and mythological levels of
171
meaning in the poem.
Beowulf may be the traditional
Germanic divine king on the historical level of the poem and
at the same time a Christ-like figure on the Christian
level.
Similarly, on the mythological level of meaning he
could have been reminiscent of the dying gods of the pagan.
Undoubtedly, these roles were not mutually exclusive but
rather complementary, imbuing the hero with a richness of
characterization deeper than he might have on any one level
alone.
M. B. McNamee states categorically that "There is no
doubt whatever that the Beowulf-poet has gone out of his way
to exclude all the old pagan gods from an active place in
his poem."
It should by now be clear that this view is
simply incorrect, the result of a narrow perception of the
poem.
By the same token, the same sort of tunnel vision
would be apparent in an insistence that the poem is totally
pagan and that the Christian elements are late additions not
integral to the meaning of the poem.
The truth seems to be
that the poet understood the connection between the pagan
religion and the Christian religion.
McNamee bases his
interpretation of Beowulf as an allegory of Christian
salvation on "the remarkable parallel that exists between
the outline of the Beowulf story" and the Christian story.87
He fails to note, however, the parallel between the
Christian story and the myths of rebirth which exist in
172
practically every culture and which are certainly widespread
throughout the Indo-European world.
Modern appreciation of Beowulf. Thomas Pettitt
believes, can be brought nearer to that of the
contemporaneous audience by the study of folktale analogues
which "may reveal aspects of the 'original* narrative which
are not immediately apparent to the modern reader of the
88
poem."
,
,
Surely it is profitable to examine the analogues
and to see the similarities and differences between them and
the story in Beowulf.
The danger, however, is that scholars
sometimes tend to act as though the poet had mistakenly
deviated from the analogues, many of which are much later
than Beowulf.
For instance, in Pettitt's opinion, the
analogue of Hrolf Saga Kraka
explains why the hero's bear-
like and berserk character make him strong in the first two
fights while he is just a man in the third fight against the
dragon.89
This interpretation shows an over-reliance on the
analogue and failure to see it as a story, like Beowulf,
based on an older, more widespread myth in its basic
outlines.
A more rewarding approach, as argued here, is to
determine how Indo-European myth informs Beowulf.
Such an
analysis sheds light on the way the poet interwove mythic
themes with
historical and religious concerns.
The
conflict between Beowulf and the monsters is, as has been
173
demonstrated, another treatment of an ancient theme.
The
combat between the sky-god and serpent-monster is more
ancient than Zeus and Typhon, as old as Indra and Vritra,
Marduk and Tiamat.
It is this conflict which seems to
supply the much discussed themes and type-scenes of Beowulf,
the subject of the following chapter.
174
Notes
1
Bernard F. Hupp^, "The Concept of the Hero in the
Early Middle Ages," Concepts of the Hero in the Middle Acres
and the Renaissance, ed. Norman T. Burns and Christopher J.
Reagan (Albany: State U of New York P, 1975) 1.
2
Harry Berger Jr. and H. Marshall Leicester Jr.,
"Social Structure as Doom: The Limits of Heroism in
Beowulf." Old English Studies in Honour of John C. Pope, ed.
Robert B. Burlin and Edward B. Irving, Jr. (Toronto: U of
Toronto P, 1974) 59.
In the same collection of essays, see
Fred C. Robinson, "Elements of the Marvellous in the
Characterization of Beowulf: a Reconsideration of the
Textual Evidence," for an opposing point of view.
Robinson
insists that the poet purposefully does not present Beowulf
as superhuman in order to avoid the hero becoming "a kind of
monster himself" 119.
3
Friedrich Klaeber, ed.,
Beowulf and the Fight at
Finnsburg, 3rd ed. (1922; Lexington, MA: Heath, 1950), 11.
1560-61.
Subsequent references to this edition will appear
parenthetically in the text.
4
John C. Pope, "Beowulf's Old Age," Philological
Essays: Studies in Old and Middle English Language and
Literature in Honour of Herbert Dean Merritt. ed. James L.
Rosier (The Hague: Mouton, 1970) 57.
175
5
William A. Chaney, The Cult of Kingship in Anglo-
Saxon England (Berkeley: U of California P, 1970) 15.
6
Henry Allen Myers, Medieval Kingship (Chicago:
Nelson, 1982) 3.
7
Fred C. Robinson, "The Significance of Names in Old
English Literature," Anglia 86 (1968): 27.
8
Hilda R. Ellis Davidson, Mvths and Symbols in Pagan
Europe (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse UP, 1988) 155.
9
Vincent Foster Hopper, Medieval Number Symbolism (New
York: Cooper Square, 1969) 207.
10
Brian Branston, The Lost Gods of England (1957; New
York: Oxford UP, 1974) 126.
11
Paul B. Taylor, "Heorot, Earth, and Asgard:
Christian Poetry and Pagan Myth,11 Tennessee Studies in
Literature 11 (1966): 125-26.
12
Hopper 207.
13
•
Klaeber xxv.
Grimm argued that the "bee-wolf"
(enemy of the bees) was the woodpecker, which he believed
was sacred.
14
Otto Rank, The Mvth of the Birth of the Hero, trans.
F. Robbins and S. E. Jellife (New York: Brunner, 1952) 64,
note 6.
15
Betty S. Cox, Cruces of Beowulf (The Hague:
Mouton,
1971) 171.
16
Theo Brown, "The Black Dog in English Folklore,"
176
Animals in Folklore, ed. J. R. Porter and W. M. S. Russell
(Ipswich, Eng.: Brewer; Totowa, NJ: Rowman for the Folklore
Society, 1978) 48.
17
Juan Eduardo Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols. 2nd
ed., trans. Jack Sage (New York: Philos. Lib., 1971) 217.
18
•
Thomas A. Shippey, "The Fairy-Tale Structure of
Beowulf." Notes and Queries 16 (1969): 11.
19
Alain Renoir, A Key to Old Poems (University Park:
Pennsylvania State UP, 1988) 59.
20
•
Paul Newman, The Hill of the Dragon (Totowa, NJ:
Rowman, 1980) 268.
Newman reproduces here a "Zodiacal
diagram depicting Draco, the dragon, and Ursa Major, the
Great Bear."
21
Rank 10.
22
Beryl Rowland, Animals with Human Faces: A Guide to
Animal Symbolism (Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 1973) 31.
23
Joseph Fontenrose, Pvthon: A Study of Delphic Mvth
and its Origins (Berkeley: U of California P, 1959) 533.
24
Hopper 204.
25
Newman 70.
26
•
•
The poet specifies that Cain killed Abel with a
sword; he was Abel's ecgbana (1262).
H. L. Rogers,
"Beowulf's Three Great Fights," RES n.s. 6 (1955): 345, has
noticed this detail, which is not in the Bible and which he
177
was unable to trace elsewhere.
Interestingly enough, Set
kills his brother Osiris with a sword.
27
Robert Graves, The White Goddess (1948; New York:
Farrar, 1966) 49.
28
•
•
Edward Clodd, Magic in Names and in Other Things
(Detroit: Singing Tree, 1968) 89.
29
on
Clodd 131.
,
(
t
Hilda R. Ellis Davidson, "Shape-Changing in the Old
Norse Sagas," Animals in Folklore, ed. J. R. Porter and W.
M. S. Russell (Ipswich, Eng.: Brewer; Totowa, NJ: Rowman,
1978) 132.
31
•
«
Elizabeth Martin-Clarke, Culture in Early AngloSaxon England (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1947) 61.
also Davidson, Myths and Symbols 79.
See
Davidson discusses the
bear and wolf as symbols of brave warriors.
Thomas Pettitt, "Beowulf: The Mark of the Beast and
the Balance of Frenzy," NM 77 (1977): 533.
Pettitt contends
that Beowulf is a berserkr in the first part of the poem,
especially in his fights with Grendel and his mother, but
that he is transformed into "the steadfast hero" in his
fight with the dragon 533-35.
33
Charles Hardwick, Traditions. Superstitions, and
Folk-Lore (1872; New York: Arno, 1980) 46.
According to
Hardwick, the name "Geat" can be etymologically traced to
178
the Anglo-Saxon qeotan and aeat. "which imply a pouring
forth."
34
Peter F. Fisher, "The Trials of the Epic Hero in
Beowulf." PMLA 73 (1958): 173.
35
Graves 222.
36
COX 154.
37
R. W. Chambers, Beowulf: An Introduction. 3rd ed.
(Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge UP, 1959.
Chambers, accepting
Kemble's identification of these two figures, argues
convincingly for such an interpretation (Introduction 297).
38
Rank 63.
39
•
Tom B. Haber, A Comparative Study of the Beowulf and
the Aeneid (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1931) 25.
Haber
believes that the fact that Beowulf's name does not
alliterate with those of his family indicates that he is not
an historic king.
Haber argues that Beowulf "is as
unsubstantial as the dragon. . . . "
40
Davidson, Myths and Symbols 126.
41
Graves 410.
42
Mack Allen Perry, "Journey Type-Scenes in Anglo-
Saxon Poetry," Diss., U of Mississippi, 1984, 54.
43
Dorothy Whitelock, Beginnings of English Society
(Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1954) 25.
44
Chaney 107.
45
Chaney 14 and 2-3.
179
46
Jessie L. Weston, From Ritual to Romance (1920;
Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Inc., 1957) 23.
47
Chaney 113.
48
Charles Moorman, "The Essential Paganism of
Beowulf." MLO 28 (1967): 11.
49
The concept of ritual sacrifice is even more plainly
associated with King Hrothgar, who obviously has lost his
heil and is no longer able to maintain the Danes'
prosperity.
He is, in fact, so ineffectual that it is
necessary for a hero from outside the tribe to restore the
Scyldings.
The Beowulf audience may also have thought quite
naturally of the possibility of sacrifice; perhaps this
explains why the poet is careful to state that Hrothgar's
people did not blame him.
The poet seems to accentuate
Hrothgar's loss of mana or heil when he describes the Danes'
lapse into apostasy:
Hwilum hie geheton
wlgweorpunga,
Bet haergtrafum
wordum batdon,
him gastbona
geoce gefremede
wi8 ^eodpreaum. (175-178a)
Clearly, if the Danes are unfaithful to "Drihten God,"
Hrothgar would have been viewed as responsible.
According
to Chaney, "The role of the sacrificial king also continues
in the capacity of the ruler as the purifier of his people.
As the priest-king of heathenism had to change any imbalance
180
of nature and restore the 'luck' of the folk, so the
Christian Anglo-Saxon king had to mediate for the sins of
all his people."
In fact, the belief in the necessity for
sacrifice may have been strong enough that the poet was
obliged to provide a substitute victim in the person of
Aeschere.
Apparently substitute victims were sometimes used
in ritual king-slaying (Chaney 38).
50
Graves 144.
51
See especially Allen Cabaniss, "Beowulf and the
Liturgy," JEGP 54 (1955): 195-201.
Cabaniss sees the
struggle with Grendel's mother as similar to Christ's
harrowing of hell and as an allegory of the liturgy of
baptism.
52
•
«
William Whallon, "The Christianity of Beowulf," MP
60 (1962): 85.
Willem Helder, "Beowulf and the Plundered
Hoard," NM 78 (1977): 324, agrees that "although he is the
hero of a Christian poem, Beowulf is not Christ."
53
Margaret Murray, The God of the Witches (1952;
Garden City, NY: Archon, 1960) 66.
54
Hopper 204.
55
Branston 97.
56
Graves 111.
57
Michael N. Nagler, "Beowulf in the Context of Myth,"
Old English Literature in Context, ed. John D. Niles
181
(Cambridge, Eng.: Brewer; Totowa, NJ: Rowman, 1980) 143-56.
See especially 148-50.
58
Janet Dow, "Beowulf and the 'Walkers in Darkness, 1 "
Connecticut Review 4 (1970): 41-43.
59
Carl Meigs, "Beowulf. Mythology and Ritual: A
Common-Reader Exploration," Xavier University Studies 3
(1964): 103.
60
Thomas J. Gasque, "A Study of Some Ritual Aspects of
Old English Poetry," Diss., U of Tennessee, 1970, 103.
61
62
Gasque 106.
Jeffrey Helterman, "Beowulf: The Archetype Enters
History," JELH 35 (1968): 17.
63
•
John D. Niles, 'Beowulf': The Poem and Its Tradition
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1983) 193.
64
Niles 184.
65
Newman 229-30.
66
Rank 73.
67
Niles 17.
68
Edward B. Irving, Jr.
A Reading of Beowulf (New
Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1968) 125.
69
Rowland 39.
Rowland cites King Arthur's being
portrayed in a positive way as a boar as an example of the
continuation of the boar as a powerful symbol 42.
Although
Rowland offers no explanation, it seems clear that the boar
as a reincarnation of the god who slays the serpent
182
symbolically identifies the hero with which it is associated
as a divine power for good and order against the evil and
chaotic forces in the universe.
7(1
•
Cirlot 309.
See also Rowland 94.
71
Graves 217.
72
Davidson, Mvths and Symbols 56.
73
.
#
J. S. Ryan, " O t h m m
England: Evidence from the
Poetry for a Cult of Woden in Anglo-Saxon England," Folklore
74 (1963): 466.
74
Hilda R. Ellis Davidson, The Road to Hel (New York:
Greenwood, 1968) 62.
75
•
•
•
Ritchie Girvan, Beowulf and the Seventh Century
(1935; London: Methuen, 1971) 37.
76
Chaney 105.
77
T. C. Lethbridge, Gog Magog: The Buried Gods
(London: Routledge, 1957) 118.
78
Tauno F. Mustanoja, "The Unnamed Woman's Song of
Mourning over Beowulf and the Tradition of Ritual
Lamentation," NM 68 (1967): 27.
Mustanoja gives a
comprehensive summary of relevant critical approaches
appearing before his definitive article.
79
80
Weston 49.
•
Martin Puhvel, "The Ride Around Beowulf's Barrow,"
Folklore 94 (1983) 109.
81
Lethbridge 115.
183
82
Murray 113.
83
Irving, Reading 86.
84
W. P. Ker, Epic and Romance: Essays on Medieval
Literature (1896; New York, NY: Dover, 1957) 167.
85
Chaney 42.
86
M. B. McNamee, S. J., "Beowulf—an Allegory of
Salvation?" JEGP 59 (1960): 191.
87
McNamee 193.
88
Pettitt 532.
89
Petti tt 535.
CHAPTER V
THE RELATIONSHIP OF MYTH TO
THEMES AND TYPE-SCENES
Claude Levi-Strauss has advised, "If there is a meaning
to be found in mythology, this cannot reside in the isolated
elements which enter into the composition of a myth, but
only in the way those elements are combined."1
be said of the mythic elements in Beowulf.
The same can
Much critical
attention has been devoted to proving that the Beowulf poet
drew upon the techniques of oral-formulaic composition in
composing his work.
Many critics today agree that "the poet
did not invent the story himself, but was indebted to some
kind of source material" which "is clearly not to be found
in the historical records which remain to us."2
Thomas A.
Shippey contends that while the Beowulf poet may have indeed
been a literate artist, "he was clearly acquainted with and
affected by the techniques of formulaic composition at a
verbal level.11 And even though he was writing about heroic
themes, "he could not entirely shake off the structure of
his sources and models, any more than he could begin to
compose in a poetic diction all of his own."3
The purpose
of this chapter is to demonstrate that the poet did not
184
185
intend to escape from the structure of the myth which found
expression in the oral tradition upon which he drew.
On the
contrary, he fully exploited the themes and type scenes as
well as the structure, plot, and characters of the myth.
According to the theory of oral-formulaic composition,
epic poems are composed by recreating the smaller
traditional units of formulas and themes.
Milman Parry
first identified a formula as "a group of words which is
regularly employed under the same metrical conditions to
express a given essential idea."4
Albert Bates Lord was the
first to define "theme" or "thematic formulsi" in oral poetry
as "a subject-unit, a group of ideas, regularly employed by
a singer, not merely in any given poem, but in the poetry as
a whole."5
Attempting to refine Lord's definition, Donald
K. Fry explains that a "theme" is "a recurring concatenation
of details and ideas, not restricted to a specific event,
verbatim repetition, or certain formulas, which forms an
underlying structure for an action or description."6
This
definition is operative in the ensuing discussion of the
relationship between themes and the mythic tradition.
Interest in the conventional elements of Beowulf was
heightened by Francis P. Magoun's application of the
theories of Parry and Lord to the analysis of Old English
poetry.7
Subseguently, the existence of themes in Anglo-
Saxon narrative poetry has been amply documented.
Among the
186
well-known examples of such themes are the Beasts of Battle
and the Hero on the Beach.8
These two themes will be
examined here for their relationship to the mythic layer of
meaning in the poem.
Of the two, the Hero on the Beach theme; is the most
widely discussed and easily more significant in relation to
Beowulf.
The frequency with which it appears in this poem
alone indicates an emphasis on the thematic concerns which
it conveys.
The essential elements of this theme as
delineated by David Crowne, who first identified the theme,
are: "(1) a hero on the beach (2) with his retainers (3) in
the presence of a flashing light (4) as a journey is
completed (or begun)."
a scene of carnage.9
Further, the theme usually precedes
Expanding the applications of this
theme, Alain Renoir explains:
"A beach is by definition the
separation between two worlds—that of the land and that of
the waters—and the 'hero on the beach 1 necessarily stands
at the juncture between the two."
Thus, this theme could
just as well be expressed by the hero standing by a door.10
Sarah Higley has pointed out that the frequent appearance of
this theme in Beowulf reflects a deep concern "with the
'liminal,' a term used in anthropology to describe
•threshold crossings."11
On the other side of the threshold
invariably exists the Otherworld, the place of death or the
threat of death.
Noting the universality of this theme,
187
John Richardson suggests that the Hero on the Beach theme
probably is not a literary convention but rather "the
recognition of a situation intimately known to every
< • •
12
individual."
A more tenable position, however, may be
that the oral-formulaic theme is a literary convention which
reflects the reality of human existence, particularly the
necessity of facing death.
The "Hero on the Beach" theme is especially dense in
the final section of the poem, which deals with the death of
the hero.
It is present in Wiglaf's first glimpse of the
dragon's hoard.
Beowulf lies dying on the beach, and the
retainers are hiding in the surrounding forest.
The light
is provided by the golden banner "of 7am leoma stod,"13 a
strange and curiously emphatic description of the shining
gold.
The carnage which follows is, of course, the death of
Beowulf.
There are also, in the scene where the retainers
come out of hiding to view their dead king, potentially all
the ingredients for the Hero on the Beach theme.
His
retainers surround the dead hero lying on the wet sand, and
very near them is the treasure hoard.
But this time the
poet not only fails to make any mention of a flashing light
but seems to make an effort to suppress such an association.
Although the hoard includes golden treasures, the poet
focuses on those treasures which are corroded, "omige
-purhetone,
swa hie wi$ eorSan fae^m / pusend wintra
yzer
188
eardodon" (3049-50).
Here the light accompeinying the hero
is gone, and there is perhaps no point in the usual function
of the theme as predicting disaster since Beowulf is already
dead.
In the final burial scene, however, the theme
reappears.
Beowulf, albeit in ashes, lies in the barrow on
the beach, "aet brimes nosan" (2803b) surrounded by the
circle of retainers.
His barrow, as he commanded, is
"beorhtne aefter baele" (2803a) .
This phrase, "bright after
the fire," seems to have a double meaning in this last
instance of the theme of the Hero on the Beach.
The poet
indicates that Beowulf's spirit will be bright even after
death, that the light of life will rise from the ashes of
the dead hero.
Thus, in death the hero has himself become
the light, the beacon for sailors approaching the shore.
The impending disaster, on a historical level, is of course
the fall of the Geats.
On the pagan mythological level, it
is the certainty of the appearance of another dragon.
This
means, however, that another god-like hero will appear to
destroy the dragon of chaos.
The essential element of the Hero on the Beach theme
seems to be the light.
This image is symbolically connected
with crossing from one world into another.
According to
Mircea Eliade, fire rites were an important part of the new
year ritual in numerous traditional cultures.
"Fires are
189
extinguished and rekindled" precisely at the moment when the
old year passes into the new.14
In this case, the light
obviously signifies the necessity of death in the process of
re-creation.
An argument can be made for the same
interpretation of the light in the Hero on the Beach theme.
Although carnage usually follows the appearance of this
formulaic theme, such destruction is necessary in order to
effect regeneration.
Of particular interest here is the
Northern tradition in which "Thor, provoked by the giant
Hrungnir, met him at the 'frontier' and conquered him in
single combat."
As Eliade points out, the mythical
prototype of this tradition is "the slaying of a threeheaded monster."15
Perhaps the phrase "beorhtne aefter baele" is a signal
that the hero, in Joseph Campbell's terms, has completed
"the mythological round" which comprises the monomyth.
One
reward achieved by the hero at the end of the "supreme
ordeal" is "his own divinization (apotheosis)," after which
the hero must re-emerge from "the kingdom of dread (return,
resurrection)."16
In the brightness after the fire, the
poet may be signifying that Beowulf, while dead in an
individual, historical sense, is not dead at all in cosmic,
mythic time.
In terms of Christian mythology as well, the
disaster is thwarted by the resurrection of the dying god
from the ashes of his grave.
190
In addition, this final appearance of the Hero on the
Beach theme marks the completion of a structural cycle,
since the opening section on Scyld introduces the theme.
In
his description of the burial of Scyld, the poet says that
the hero's retainers set a "segen g(yl)denne / heah ofer
heafod" (47b-48a) just before they let the sea bear him away
on a journey to an unknown destination.
Then when the poet
first introduces the hero Beowulf, he shows him also on a
beach preparing to cross the sea.
After that, all
mythically significant appearances of the hero show him on a
"beach," a threshold or dividing line between two worlds.
He stands on the beach at Denmark, on the banks of the mere,
returns to the beach of Geatland after his great success in
Denmark, and dies on the beach of Geatland.
So it is
appropriate that his ashes are buried on the beach from
which his spirit makes the last great journey into the real
Otherworld of death.
The theme of the Hero on the Beach, them, emphasizes
Beowulf's function as a crosser of thresholds.
Unlike the
deer on the banks of the mere, which would rather give up
its life to the hounds than enter the mere; unlike Hrothgar
and all of humanity, Beowulf voluntarily crosses the
threshold into the other world.
Like Scyld and like every
dying god, Beowulf must make journeys to the other world,
must cross thresholds in order to effect the renewal by
191
which he is defined.
The mythical archetype of the crossing
of the threshold, the boundary between degeneration and
creation, is the "cosmogonic moment of the fight between the
god and the primordial dragon. . . .1,17 In this paradigm
are finally united the warrior god as dragon-slayer and the
figure of the dying god.
Another theme closely related to the Hero on the Beach
is the Traveller Recognizes His Goal.
this theme in several scenes:
George Clark detects
Beowulf's arrival at the
Danish coast (217-24a), Beowulf's arrival at Heorot (301307a), Beowulf's return to land after the swimming match
with Breca (568b-572a), Beowulf's return to his native land
(1903b-13), and Grendel's approach to Heorot (702ff.).
This
theme, Clark notes, "often associates the traveller's
arrival and dawn or a bright light radiating from the
destination."18
It is significant that the details are
those associated with the sun-king, the ancient fertility
god.
The sun rises, the dawn of a new day arrives, and the
sea(water) is ever-present.
Plainly, this theme is a
natural consequence of the Hero on the Beach theme; the hero
makes a journey and the traveller recognizes his goal.
And,
as Carol Jean Wolf remarks, "Almost invariably, the journey
of the hero is either the prelude or the sequel to a
triumph."19
The sun, therefore, is appropriately present.
192
The traveller and the hero are one and the same, the dying
god.
An attentive reader might reasonably ask how Grendel 1 s
approach to Heorot fits into this interpretation.
The
answer involves a discussion of what might be called the
Brother-Killing motif.
Of course, the numerous instances of
the slaying of brothers and kinsmen, especially in regard to
Cain, have long been a subject of critical analysis.
The
motif has not, however, been extended to include Beowulf and
his antagonists nor has it been analyzed in terms of its
mythological significance.
The many similarities between Beowulf and his monstrous
antagonists, especially Grendel, are quite obvious.
Physically, both Beowulf and Grendel are huge and bear-like,
killing opponents with their powerful grip.
Like Grendel,
who always fights alone, "ana wi<5 eallum" (1.45a), Beowulf
fights his opponents single-handedly, both monsters and men.
Significantly, both the hero and the monster are threshold
figures.
Grendel crosses the threshold of Heorot in order
to destroy, while Beowulf crosses the same threshold in
order to restore.
Thus, Beowulf and Grendel seem to be
positive and negative of the same structure.20
in fact, be seen as Beowulf's double.
Grendel can,
A possible source for
this motif may be found in Indo-European myth.
In a survey
of comparative mythology, Jaan Puhvel discusses the theme of
193
"Twin and Brother" as it appears in the mythologies of
various Indo-European cultures.
Among the examples he cites
are the Germanic Tuisto ("Twin") and Mannus ("Man"), the
Vedic Yama ("Twin") and Manu ("Man").
In this mythic motif,
the Twin has to die "as part of the act of creation," and
Man "stays behind to get history going."21
There are
countless other examples of Brother-Killing in the
mythologies of many cultures.
Horus slays Set, who is in
fact his mythological double.
Titias, god of the waning
year, is killed by Hercules, god of the waxing year, at the
winter solstice.
It is particularly interesting that Titias
is "identical with the giant Tityus whom Zeus killed and
consigned to Tartarus,1,22 considering Grendel1 s connection
with the race of giants.
Martin Puhvel noteis Cuchulainn's
slaying of his mythic Fer Daid as "obviously a question of
one sun-deity slaying his double or twin with the lightningweapon" and suggests this story as a possible source for the
Beowulf poet's description of Beowulf's killing of
oo
Grendel.
t
It is more likely that the Cuchulainn myth is
yet another story in the same broad tradition of IndoEuropean myth which includes the theme of Brother-Killing.
It might also be worthwhile to consider the possible
manifestation of this theme in Beowulf's fight with the
dragon.
Robert Graves says that Python, the Serpent, is the
sun-god's tanist, his darker self.
As the "Demon of the
194
Waning Year," he must be killed by the sun-god, who is of
course symbolic of the waxing year.24
Similarities between
Beowulf and the dragon have been discussed at the end of
Chapter III.
While it is risky to state unequivocably that
the dragon is also Beowulf's double, the poet's description
of the two in very much the same terms is surely meaningful.
As John D. Niles says, "There is something fitting about the
twin deaths of the two aged antagonists, as if two enormous
sources of energy were to meet and cancel each other,
leaving only timid survivors to dispose of the dead."25
In
this last fight, the opponent is not the man-like Grendel or
his woman-like mother.
It is a dragon, the ancient, potent
symbol of evil and chaos which even gods must battle.
Beowulf is, like the sun-god who combats the dragon in IndoEuropean myth, the symbol of creative, ordering energy; the
dragon in Beowulf is the same as the ancient enemy of the
g o d s — t h e destructive force of chaos and death.
This same notion of death and destruction versus life
and renewal is found elsewhere.
In "The Theme of the Beasts
of Battle in Anglo-Saxon Poetry," Francis P. Magoun
identifies the mention of a wolf, an eagle, and/or a raven
at a scene of carnage as a theme.26
He convincingly
describes the existence of this element in Anglo-Saxon
poetry, and the implication is that the theme existed in the
oral tradition of narrative poetry upon which the Beowulf
195
poet drew.
However, as in other studies of themes and type-
scenes, there is no attempt to decipher the ultimate origin
and function of the Beasts of Battle.
It is obvious that
the three beasts are exactly those associated with the
Northern god Odin (Anglo-Saxon Woden).
It is logical to
inquire about the significance of this fact,,
First,
considering the strength of the cult of Woden in Anglo-Saxon
England "seen from the way in which the beliefs and customs
associated with it continue through the centuries,1,27 it is
hard to believe that the poet's audience could have heard
wolf/eagle/raven references without being reminded of the
central god of their pre-Christian religion.
The swallowing of Odin by wolves, a common motif in
Northern European mythology and art, was familiar to the
Beowulf poet's audience, as is attested to by numerous
representations, including Anglo-Saxon.28
At the end of the
world, according to the Voluspa. the bound monsters escape;
"the wolf breaks loose from his chain, the serpent emerges
from the depths where Thor placed it. . . .,|29
Also, the
cause of the Great Winter which precedes Ragnarok is said to
be "the swallowing of the sun by the wolf on the one hand,
and the overthrow of the gods who brought the assurance of
repeated harvests to men on the other."30
Thus the
appearance of the wolf would have had connotations of the
end of an ordered world in which the sun rose again, the
196
land came to life after the cold darkness of winter, and
another heroic warrior-king came to replace a slain or aging
leader.
"wulf
So that in Beowulf, when the poet says that the
wa?l reafode" (3027), he is introducing a powerfully
connotative symbol.
This one appearance of the theme of the Beasts of
Battle in Beowulf is placed in Wiglaf's speech just after
Beowulf's death.
Furthermore, it occurs immediately after a
passage which could very well have reminded the poet's
audience of Balder, a dying god whose story was known to
them:
Foroon sceall gar wesan
monig morgenceald
haefen on handa,
mundum bewunden,
(3021b-3023a)
This eighth-century audience would have known, just as the
poet clearly did, that Balder died when a shaft of mistletoe
was hurled at him.
The morning is cold, no sun appears, and
the wolf ranges free on the battlefield because the priestking, heroic warrior and god-like hero has died.
The Great
Winter is plainly at hand for the Geats.
The raven is also closely associated with myth.
It has
been noticed before that the raven is depicted in two
apparently very different roles in Beowulf.
it is the
corpse-eater joyfully devouring the dead son's hanging body
197
in the father's lament (2448) and the "wonna hrefn" which
fus ofer faegum
earne secgan,
fela reordian,
hu him ftt «te speow,
fenden he wi§ wulf
waei reafode.
(3025-27)
In these instances, it is the typical raven of the Beasts of
Battle theme.
As a messenger of death, it tells the eagle,
primarily a symbol of the sky-god, of its meal of corpses.
In northern European mythology, it is known as "a source of
wisdom and prophetic knowledge" as well as an eater of the
dead.31
It may, then, have been understood as a prophetic
sign of the end of the heroic world.
In addition, it is also the blithe-hearted "hrefn
blaca" which "heofones wynne / bliSheort bodode" (18011802a) just before the arrival of the bright morning.
As
Martin Puhvel says, "in Indo-European mythic tradition the
raven repeatedly appears as the associate, mostly herald, of
a sun-deity, at times serving as a harbinger of happiness or
bearer of good tidings. . . ."32
Puhvel explains the two
different roles of the raven as befitting "the intimate of
Odin in one of the God's capacities—in one instance as the
god of war, in the other as a solar deity."
The raven is
also associated with Freya, best known as a fertility
goddess.
In the face of the evidence given, it seems
logical to agree with Puhvel's conclusion that the Beowulf
198
poet "has here selectively and effectively utilized a
tradition known to him."33
The Beasts of Battle theme, then, is clearly related to
the mythic level of the poem in which the functions of the
warrior sky-god and the dying sun-god play so great a part.
It should be remembered that in Scandinavian tradition Odin
and Freya were responsible for the spirits of fallen
warriors; both god and goddess are fertility figures as well
as patrons of warriors.34
Although Magoun contends that the
theme of the Beasts of Battle is "an ornamental rather than
an essential theme,"35 its function as allusion to the
mythic elements preclude its being called simply ornamental.
Further, in its function as enhancing the revelation of the
meaning of the poem, it is far from non-essential.
The influence of myth can also be discovered in typescenes.
The type-scene, a smaller unit of formulaic
composition, may be defined as "a recurring stereotyped
presentation of conventional details used to describe a
certain narrative event, requiring neither verbatim
repetition nor a specific formula content."36
"Motif," a
more familiar term from literary analysis, is sometimes used
interchangeably with "type-scene."
Examples of type-scenes
or motifs are banquets, battles, and sea voyages.
Of
special relevance to the present discussion is the typescene of single combat.
Clark contends that the three
199
examples of the single combat scene in Beowulf and the one
in Judith provide support for the theory that such a typescene was known to Anglo-Saxon poets.37
It was an ancient
part of the oral tradition.
The motif of single-combat in the oral tradition seems
patently derived from myth.
As mentioned earlier, "One of
the oldest battles in literature must be the fight between
the sun-god and a monster deity," a myth pattern extant in
numerous civilizations.38
Lord also discusses this pattern
as one of "two discrete narrative patterns that are found
fairly widely in Indo-European epic or story tradition."
The other pattern is that of "absence, devastation, and
return," which involves the restoration of the devastated
OQ
land.
Lord finds that "The interlocking of these two
patterns from the deep past of the story . . . provides a
mythic base both for the triumph of Beowulf over the evil
generations of Cain and for the inevitable death of the hero
in old age, still fighting against destructive forces.40
Applying the theories of Joseph Campbell as well as the
ritual study of Jessie Weston, Carl Meigs concludes that the
structure of Beowulf follows "the growth pattern in the
development of the hero."
It "outlines the mythical
progress of a world hero" from initiation, to combat with
"the last and greatest threat of all to the health of his
land," to death.41
Here the warrior sky-god tradition is
200
clearly united with that of the sacral dying god.
But Meigs
views Wiglaf as "an emergent hero" who will do for Beowulf
what Beowulf did for Hrothgar, as a "re-emergent saviour."
It is difficult to Relieve that any reader would see Wiglaf
as another Beowulf.
saved Hrothgar.
He does not save Beowulf as Beowulf
Although Beowulf bequeaths his armor to
Wiglaf, he does not accept him as a son as Hrothgar accepted
Beowulf after the defeat of Grendel's mother.
In fact,
Beowulf pointedly laments his lack of a son and successor:
'Nu ic suna minum
guSgewaedu,
syllan wolde
-J'aer me gife<5e swa
»nig yrfeweard
(2729-2731a).
Based on the foregoing discussion, it can safely be
assumed that the Beowulf poet skillfully maintains a
thematic relevance in the use of formulaic elements.
Further, this relevance of composition and theme is
sustained by the mythic tradition from which the formulas
are derived.
William Whallon says that "the old poetic formulas gave
the oral tradition a religious continuity not easily
broken."42
This may indeed be so, in the sense that ritual
repetition can be the basis for religious experience.
But
the real significance of these poetic formulas lies in the
theme which they transmit and which truly does give the oral
201
tradition a religious continuity.
And it is the myth which
provides the structure and substance of the theme.
W. P. Ker charges that "The plot of Beowulf is not more
serious than that of a thousand easy-going romances of
chivalry, and of fairy tales beyond all number."43
On the
contrary, the plot of Beowulf is that of so many romances
and fairy tales precisely because of the seriousness of the
theme underlying these stories.
Rhys Carpenter believes
that "the real theme of the seemingly foolish folk tale" of
the Bear's Son is "Death in the midst of life, and some hope
of life even after the crushing calamity of death."
The
universality of this theme "explains why such a story could
keep itself unchanged through centuries and captivate an
Ionic epic poet in archaic Greece egually with a heroic
singer in Denmark or Northumberland or a storyteller in the
distant sagaworld of Iceland."44
Working from an entirely different perspective, Robert
Graves also finds that "story-tellers did not invent their
plots and characters but continually retold the same
traditional tales. . . . "
But he goes further in connecting
these traditional tales with myth: "Almost all were
explanations of ritual or religious theory overlaid with
history. . . ."
Graves argues that there is only one true
theme of poetry:
"the life, death, and resurrection of the
Spirit of the Year, the Goddess1 son and lover."46
As
202
Graves explains, the mother goddess had a lover who was the
Serpent and a son who was the Star of Life.
This son "was
reborn every year, grew up as the year advanced, destroyed
the Serpent, and won the Goddess' love."
He further
contends that this theme was appropriated and transformed by
Christianity; in the process, the serpent became the
devil.47
It is tempting to follow Graves into this
labyrinth and devise a way to work out Grendel in the role
of Serpent, his mother as the Goddess, and Beowulf as the
Star Son.
Such a path to understanding, while intriguing
and quite possibly profitable, is unnecessarily circuitous.
This myth can be readily interpreted as a
representation of the cyclic pattern of life and death,
order and chaos, which is a fact of human existence.
As
James Frazer, Joseph Campbell, and Robert Graves have
demonstrated with an overwhelming number of examples, this
mythic pattern is disseminated throughout the world.
The
pattern of Hindu myths has been described as "the resolution
of chaos into order and its dissolution back into chaos."
According to Davidson, these words "might be taken as the
leitmotif of the poem Voluspa." in which "the major gods are
represented as creating, arranging, separating and
controlling the universe, but progress can only come through
conflict."48
Obviously, all of this could just as well be
said of Beowulf.
203
The search for the sources of the main plot and central
characters has long held a primary place in Beowulf
criticism.
This area has been particularly fertile in the
identification of analogues.
The existence of common
features in Beowulf and certain Icelandic sagas has been
noted and fully discussed.49
Many scholars have devoted
their efforts to the detection of possible Scandinavian
influences on Beowulf.50
Particular attention has been
given to the Grettis Saga because it contains monster fights
similar to Beowulf's first two struggles.51
Scholars have
also discovered parallels between Beowulf and the
Volsunqasaqa.52
Such similarities lead to the reasonable
assumption that, as William C. Johnson points out, "a common
tradition existed," despite the fact that "no known source
for Beowulf exists."53
Accepting the premise that the
relatively late Scandinavian sagas "contain material of
considerable though unspecifiable antiquity," many scholars,
including Johnson, have found the common tradition to be
Germanic.54
Others, however, have noted parallels between Beowulf
and narrative poetry outside the Germanic tradition. In his
close study of the resemblances between Beowulf and the
Aeneid, Tom Haber concludes that "there is indeed a closer
connection between the two poems than has heretofore been
credited; even though it must always be admitted that any
204
specific point referred to may find its explanation in
unadulterated Germanic tradition."55
The connection between
Beowulf and Greek narrative poetry as well as the parallels
in Germanic tradition may be explained by one common source
ultimately located in Indo-European origins,
Noting several
close parallels between Beowulf and the Odvssev. Rhys
Carpenter wonders what could possibly explain these
similarities since "On no possible score could Beowulf have
been derived from Homer."
Carpenter argues that the
folktale of the Bear's Son identified by Panzer as the
ultimate source of the plot of Beowulf is "the same story
which has inspired both the Greek and the Old English epic,
two poems separated by at least thirteen centuries of time
and obvious disparities of language and culture."56
Lord
agrees that Beowulf and the Odvssev "both belonged to an
Indo-European oral epic narrative tradition111 in which the
story patterns are "very old, amazingly stable, surprisingly
alive. . . .,|57
Beowulf scholars have only begun to consider searching
for the sources of themes and type-scenes.
Higley suggests
that "it is conceivable that the theme of the Hero on the
Beach is not simply a quirk of oral composition but may
indeed have its origin in Germanic myth (as may all notable
thematic formulas) .1,58
Renoir has discussed the appearance
of the Hero on the Beach theme in the Nibelunaenlied59 and
205
has quite recently argued that "a similar paradigm occurs in
the Homeric poems."
Such parallels, as he reasons, indicate
that "the origin of the theme may possibly go back to IndoEuropean times."60
He cites the "common origin of Greek and
Germanic verse" and the "vestigal resemblance" of OldEnglish meters "to the current notion of what Indo-European
verse may conceivably have been like" as support for this
possibility.61
It is, in fact, probable that all themes and
motifs in Anglo-Saxon formulaic poetry can be identified in
Indo-European mythic traditions.
The more one learns about the similarities of the
beliefs of all Indo-European cultures, the easier it is to
imagine that the Anglo-Saxon poet was familiar with these
mythic traditions.
There is early evidence that the
religious beliefs of Britain were similar to those of farflung Indo-European cultures.
In Pliny's day, the Britons
"celebrated magic rites with so many similar ceremonies that
one might suppose them to have been instructed therein by
the Persians."62
The Mithraic cult of the sun was
"prevalent in later Roman Britain."63
The Germanic peoples
who came to inhabit Britain, including the Anglo—Saxons,
evidently preserved strong cultural affinities with their
Indo-European forebears.
In an examination of pre-Christian
runic inscriptions on burial urns, C. L. Wrenn finds "echoes
prehistoric Indo-European religious cults inherited
206
through Germanic culture by pagan Anglo-Saxons. . . .»64
According to Georges Dumezil's theory of comparative IndoEuropean mythology, Germanic religion is basically the
religion of the Indo-Europeans.
Although the names and
specific personalities of the gods are transformed somewhat,
their functional attributes remain the same,.65
Dumezil, Udo
Strutynski says, has shown that "the link between the IndoEuropean and the various national traditions was not merely
typological but genetic."66
Whether or not these shared traditions are in fact
genetic, they are undoubtedly deep-seated and thus not
easily disposed of.
"For a believing society," Dumezil
states, "a myth or an entire mythology is not a gratuitous
product of fancy, but the repository of traditional
wisdom. . . ."67
in light of the pervasive nature of the
pre-Christian religion and its myths and gods in eighthcentury Anglo-Saxon England, it seems reasonable to admit
the likelihood of the use of this body of tradition by the
Beowulf poet.
Undeniably, there were beliefs and ideas in
the minds of his audience which were touched by certain
elements in the poem, including the themes and type-scenes
which are undoubtedly closely related to the mythic
tradition.
The genius of the Beowulf poet does not, however, lie
in his knowledge of myth or in the fact that he used myth.
207
The formulaic themes and type-scenes were inherited forms of
composition; the basic plot and characters also came from
the rich mythic tradition, pagan and Christian, in which his
culture was steeped.
It is the way in which he used these
mythological elements which sets him apart.
He did not
compose a Judith or a Guthlac or a Battle of Brunanbtira: he
produced Beowulf, the centerpiece of Old English narrative
poetry.
His accomplishment, his "originality," is to be
found in the careful interweaving of myth and history.
Thus, although myth is not the key to Beowulf, it is, as
will be demonstrated in the next chapter, a significant
structural and thematic key.
208
Notes
1
L^vi-Strauss, "The Structural Study of Myth," Mvth: A
Symposium, ed. Thomas A. Sebeok (Bloomington: U of Indiana
P, 1958) 53.
2
Thomas Pettitt, "Beowulf; The Mark of the Beast and
the Balance of Frenzy," NM 77 (1977): 526.
3
Thomas A. Shippey, "The Fairy-Tale Structure of
Beowulf." Notes and Queries 16 (1969): 9.
4
Milman Parry, "Studies in the Epic Techniques of Oral
Verse-Making, I: Homer and Homeric Style," Harvard Studies
in Classical Philology 41 (1930): 80.
Cf. Robert P. Creed,
"The Making of an Anglo-Saxon Poem," ELH 26 (1959): 447,
adapting Parry's definition to Old English poetry, defines a
formula as "a word or group of words regularly employed
under certain strictly determined metrical conditions to
express a given essential idea."
5
Albert Bates Lord, "Homer and Huso II: Narrative
Inconsistencies in Homer and Oral Poetry," Transactions and
Proceedings of the American Philological Association 69
(1938): 440.
See Lord's A Singer of Tales (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard UP, 1960) 68-98, for a comprehensive bibliography of
studies on the oral-formulaic theory and a discussion of
extended units of oral composition.
209
Donald K. Fry, "Old English Formulaic Themes and
Type-Scenes," Neophiloloaus 52 (1968): 53.
7
Francis P. Magoun, "The Oral-Formulaic Character of
Anglo-Saxon Narrative Poetry," Speculum 28 (1953): 446-67.
Magoun's pioneering work has been developed and qualified by
Larry Benson, "The Literary Character of Anglo-Saxon
Formulaic Poetry," PMLA 81 (1966): 334-41, and others.
most recent comprehensive discussion
The
of oral-formulaic
theory and its application to Beowulf is found in Alain
Renoir, A Key to Old Poems: The Oral-Formulaic Approach to
the Interpretation of West Germanic Verse (University Park:
Pennsylvania State UP, 1988).
See also Edward B. Irving's A
Rereading of Beowulf (Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P,
1989), which, as he says, is the result of the firing of his
critical imagination by "the 'oral' theory of Old English
literature (Preface ix).
8
The third widely-known theme is discussed by Stanley
Greenfield, "The Formulaic Expression of the Theme of
'Exile' in Anglo-Saxon Poetry," Speculum 30 (1955): 200-06.
9
David Crowne, "The Hero on the Beach: An Example of
Composition by Theme," NM 61 (1960): 368.
10
Alain Renoir, "Oral-Formulaic Theme Survival: A
Possible Instance in the 'Nibelungenlied,'" NM 78 (1977):
73.
Support for Renoir's insight is presented by James D.
Johnson, "A Note on the Substitution of 'Door' for 'Beach'
210
in a Formulaic Theme," Neophiloloaus 67 (1983): 596-98.
Chapter 7 of Renoir's
See
A Key to Old Poems for a detailed
examination of the occurrences of the Hero on the Beach
theme before the fight with Grendel 112-28.
Renoir also
looks at this theme in relation to the fights with Grendel's
mother and the dragon 129-30.
11
Sarah Higley, "Aldo on Ofre; or, the Reluctant Hart:
A Study of Liminality in 'Beowulf,'" NM 87 (1986): 342.
12
John Richardson, "The Critic on the Beach,"
Neophiloloqus 71 (1987): 118.
This article includes a
comprehensive review of treatments of the Hero on the Beach
theme.
13
Fr. Klaeber, ed., Beowulf and the Fight at
Finnsburq, 3rd ed. (Lexington, MA: Heath, 1950) 1. 2769.
Subsequent references to this edition will appear
parenthetically within the text.
14
Mircea Eliade, The Mvth of the Eternal Return: or
Cosmos and History, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton UP, 1971) 67.
15
Eliade, Mvth of the Eternal Return 29.
16
Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Far.P.ar 2nd
ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1972) 245-46.
17
Eliade, Mvth of the Eternal Return 69.
18
George Clark, "The Traveler Recognizes His Goal: A
Theme in Anglo Saxon Poetry," JEGP 64 (1965): 653.
211
19
Carol Jean Wolf, "Christ as Hero on the Beach in
Dream of the Rood." NM 71 (1970): 209.
20
•
I had come to this conclusion independently, but see
Renoir, Key 116-17, for a characteristically impressive
discussion of the relationship between the visits of Beowulf
and Grendel to the Hero on the Beach theme.
21
Jaan Puhvel, Comparative Mythology (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins UP, 1987) 284-90.
22
Robert Graves, The White Goddess: A Historical
Grammar of Poetic Mvth. rev. and enl. ed. (1948; New York:
Farrar, 1966) 282.
23
•
Martin Puhvel, 'Beowulf' and Celtic Tradition
(Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier UP; Gerrards Cross:
Smythe,
1979) 28-29.
24
Graves 393.
25
John D. Niles, 'Beowulf: the Poem and Its Tradition
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1983) 28.
26
Francis P. Magoun, "The Theme of the Beasts of
Battle in Anglo-Saxon Poetry," NM 61 (1955): 81-90.
27
J. S. Ryan, "Othin in England: Evidence from the
Poetry for a Cult of Woden in Anglo Saxon England," Folklore
74 (1963): 478.
28
See A. Margarent Arent, "The Heroic Pattern: Old
Germanic Helmets, Beowulf, and Grettis Saga," Old Norse
212
/
Literature and Mythology, ed. E. C. Polome (Austin: U of
Texas P, 1969) 133-34, 139.
29
•
•
•
,
Hilda R. Ellis Davidson, Mvths and Symbols m
Pagan
Europe (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse UP, 1988) 190.
30
oi
32
Davidson, Mvths and Symbols 191.
,
Davidson, Mvths and Symbols 91.
«
•
•
Martin Puhvel, "The Blithe-Hearted Morning Raven in
Beowulf." ELN 10 (1973): 244.
Puhvel cites numerous
examples from Scandinavian, Celtic, Greek and Iranian
mythologies.
33
•
•
Martin Puhvel, "Blithe-Hearted Morning Raven" 24647.
34
C. L. Wrenn, "Some Earliest Anglo-Saxon Cult
Symbols," Franciplegius: Medieval and Linguistic Studies in
Honor of Francis Peabodv Magoun. Jr.. ed. Jess B. Bessinger,
Jr. and Robert P. Creed (New York: New York UP, 1965) 48.
35
Magoun, "Beasts of Battle" 83.
36
Mack Allen Perry, "Journey Type-Scenes in AngloSaxon Poetry," Diss., U of Missisippi, 1984, 9.
37
George R. Clark, "Some Traditional Scenes and
Situations in Anglo-Saxon Poetry," Diss., Harvard, 1961, 88.
38
Paul Newman, The Hill of the Dragon (Totowa, NJ:
Rowman, 1980) 23.
Newman favors the interpretation that
these encounters reflect "clashes between old and new
religious factions," between the female Mother Goddess and
213
the male sky-god."
He contends, for example, that Indra's
slaying of Vrita "indicates the displacement of the Goddessworshipping cult of ancient India by the Aryan invaders from
the steppes who began to occupy this part of the world in
the second millenium B.C."
Thus, the dragon descends from
"age-old deities that were submerged and deposed by a new
order of sky-gods" 24-25.
39
Albert Bates Lord, "Interlocking Mythic Patterns in
Beowulf," Old English Literature in Context, ed. John D.
Niles (Cambridge: Brewer; Totowa, NJ: Rowman, 1980) 137-38.
40
41
Lord, "Interlocking Patterns" 141.
Carl Meigs, "Beowulf. Mythology and Ritual: A
Common-Reader Exploration," Xavier University Studies 3.2
(1964): 101-102.
42
•
,
William Whallon, "The Idea of God in Beowulf." PMLA
80 (1965): 23.
43
W. P. Ker, Epic and Romance: Essavs on Medieval
Literature (1896; New York, NY: Dover, 1957) 167.
See
Shippey for a demonstration of how Beowulf fits the
structure of fairy tales according to a list of functions of
the
dramatis personae as set forth by Vladimir Propp.
44
Rhys Carpenter, Folk-tale. Fiction, and Sacra in the
Homeric
Epics (Berkeley: U of California P, 1956) 156.
45
Graves 60.
46
Graves 422.
214
47
Graves 387-389.
48
Davidson, Myths and Symbols 226.
49
•
Klaeber lists Norse materials pertinent to Beowulf
on pp. clxxx-clxxxiii and discusses some of them on pp. 25666.
Useful translations can be found in G. N. Garmonsway,
Jacqueline Simpson, and Hilda Ellis Davidson, eds., Beowulf
and Its Analogues (New York: Dutton, 1971).
50
Among many studies, see those of A. Margaret Arent,
"The Heroic Pattern," Old Norse Literature and Mythology,
ed. E. C. Polom^ (Austin: U of Texas P, 1969) 130-99; Ursula
Dronke, "Beowulf and Ragnarok." Saga-Book of the Viking
Society for Northern Research 17 (1969): 302-25; and Gwyn
Jones, Kings. Beasts, and Heroes (London: Oxford UP, 1972)
3-61.
51
The most recent and complete discussion of these
parallels is by Larry Benson, "The Originality of Beowulf."
The Interpretation of Narrative. Harvard English Series, I
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1970) 1-43.
52
Particularly interesting is William C. Johnson,
Jr
* ' s "Beowulf and The Volsungasaga." In Gearriagiim TT?
Essays in Old and Middle Language and Literature, ed. Loren
C. Gruber and Dean Loganbill (Denver: Soc. for New Lang.
Study, 1977) 42-53.
53
•
•
William C. Johnson 42.
215
54 See G. V. Smithers,
The Making of Beowulf (Durham,
England: U of Durham P, 1961) 13.
55
Tom Haber, A Comparative Study of the Beowulf and
the Aeneid (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1931) Preface viiviii.
56
Carpenter 138.
See Michael N. Nagler, "Beowulf in
the Context of Myth," Old English Literature in CnntP.vt. e d.
John D. Niles (Cambridge: Brewer; Totowa, NJ: Rowman, 1980)
143-56 and 178—81, for a more recent discussion of parallels
between Beowulf and the Odvssev.
57
Lord, "Beowulf and Odysseus" 91.
58
Higley 346.
59
Renoir, "Oral-Formulaic Theme Survival: A Possible
Instance in the 'Nibelungenlied,1" NM 65 (1964): 73.
60
•
Alain Renoir, "The Hero on the Beach: Germanic Theme
and Indo-European Origin," NM 90 (1989): 111-16.
This
article appeared after the first draft of this chapter had
been written.
61
Renoir, "The Hero on the Beach" 115.
62
Charles Hardwick, Traditions. Superstitions, anri
Folk-Lore (1872; New York, NY: Arno, 1980) 96-97.
63
64
65
Wrenn, "Anglo-Saxon Cult Symbols" 54.
Wrenn, "Anglo-Saxon Cult Symbols" 52.
/
Georges Dumezil, Gods of the Ancient Northmanr ed.
Einar Haugen (Berkeley: U of California P, 1973).
216
66
Udo Strutynski, Introduction, Part II, Gods of the
Ancient Northmen, by Georges Dumezil xxiv.
67
/
Georges Dumezil, The Destiny of the Warrior, trans.
Alf Hiltebeitel (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1970) 48-49.
CHAPTER VI
MYTH AND HISTORY IN BEOWULF
It was once a generally accepted and orthodox view that
the subject matter of Beowulf was originally mythical and
symbolic of forces of nature.
This theory was, however,
discarded because scholars found clear evidence for the
origin of the main subject matter in folktales.
"The
mythological theory," as J. R. Hulbert states, "though still
urged in studies of Arthurian origins, has proved to be
inadaptable to Beowulf.1,1
This opinion, expressed over
forty years ago, seems to be shared by the majority of
Beowulf scholars: this perhaps explains why relatively few
have approached the poem from the viewpoint of myth.
Nevertheless, as shown in the previous chapter, the fact
that the main story in Beowulf is echoed by stories in
folktale and legend does not exclude its mythological
elements.
On the contrary, its inclusion of folklore motifs
provides further evidence for the importance of the
mythological basis of the story which is the poem's central
plot.
The fact is that the mythological layer or level is
every bit as significant to a complete understanding of the
poem as the Christian level or the individual/historical
level.
That the poet meant these layers of meaning to be
217
218
complementary is evident in the way he carefully interwove
the mythological (both pre-Christian and Christian) and
historical elements in such a way that they all fit together
like pieces in a masterfully wrought puzzle to produce the
effect made on the reader by the poem as a whole.
The rationale for emphasizing the mythological level is
not that it is more meaningful or inherently more valuable
but rather that it is not as readily accepted or apprehended
by twentieth-century readers of the poem as it was by the
poet's eighth-century audience.
Certainly twentieth-century
readers can and do appreciate Beowulf without knowledge of
the eighth-century poet's pre-Christian religious
background.
It is, however, impossible to fully appreciate
what the poet meant to convey or what his audience found in
the poem without apprehending the connotative value of its
various elements.
It is understandably difficult for a
twentieth-century audience, including learned critics, to
automatically understand the emotional force of the monsters
or of the references to gods which had recently become
devils for the eighth-century audience.
This somewhat submerged layer of meaning is, without
specific knowledge of pre-Christian religion and its gods,
rather alien to many modern readers and therefore
inaccesible without elucidation.
for an Anglo-Saxon audience.
It would not have been so
The historical level of the
219
poem offers some of the same limitations, and scholars have
painstakingly tried to piece together the history revealed
; n
i- Beowulf.
These efforts are generally appreciated.
Likewise, the school of criticism devoted to the revelation
of Christian elements has attracted much respectful
attention.
Because the author was a Christian, this layer
is closer to the surface of the poem, easily admissible as
"real," just as the historical elements, while removed in
time, are easily understood in the context of the reader's
experience in everyday life.
Somehow, the possibility of
another layer of meaning, deeper than and outside conscious
human experience and based on historically ctnd culturally
remote sources, raises suspicion at best and derision at
worst.
Nevertheless, there is still value in aipproaching
Beowulf from the perspective of myth.
It is well to heed
Edward B. Irving's words:
while it is no longer possible for us to give
serious attention to the theories of Mullenhoff
and the other enthusiasts for the Solar myth, we
should remember that they were after all giving
their attention to a symbolic pattern that was
clearly there in the poem, however distorted or
narrow their final interpretation of it may have
been.2
220
The operative words here are "distorted" and "narrow."
The
rather too brave reference to Beowulf as a sun-god in
Chapter IV perhaps requires qualification.
The epithet of
sun-god, not only in this paper but also in the myth itself,
functions as a sort of shorthand for the symbolic
connotations of this mythic figure.
The terms of this myth
and the interrelationship of the dying god and the sun-god
are nicely stated by Peter Lum, who believes that the
stories of gods and heroes struggling against monsters "are
in essence the story of the sun-god attacking darkness."
In
time this story symbolized not only the conflict between
night and day, moon and sun, but also "the contrast between
summer and winter, between life and death, and between good
and evil as well."
Moreover,
The sun-god and all the innumerable heroes who
descended from him became symbolic not only of the
actual, shining, visible sun, but of all that was
good and fruitful in life; the hideous monster
that he destroyed was no longer simple darkness
but the very soul of evil and of death.3
The myth, however symbolically complex, is not the poem.
Neither is the poem a myth.
The poem is the complex work of a poet who was surely
responsive to tradition but who also amplified the
traditional elements.
"Characteristically," Larry Benson
221
points out, "the eighth-century poet depended on his source
only for a bare kernel of traditional narrative fact . . .
which he then expanded for his own poetic ends. . . .1,4
The
excellence of Beowulf partly lies in the ingenious way in
which the poet combined the essential elements of the rich
mythic tradition of his culture with its historical and
Christian components in order to convey a theme which cannot
fail to touch the human mind and heart.
Just as in myth it
is the function of the sun-god to fight the monster, in
heroic society it is the function of the sacral king (and
his warriors) to protect his land and people by fighting the
monster, whatever form it takes, and thus to preserve order
in a chaotic world.
The combination of historical and mythic elements is
not at all foreign to the traditional functions of the poet.
Morton Bloomfield states, "One of the major functions of the
scop was to be the historian of early traditions."
He was
supposed to "preserve in metrical form . . . the religious
legends and early history, half historical, half mythical,
of the community."
As such, the poet had to be familiar
with these traditions.
Deor and Widsith, Bloomfield
comments, "possess extensive historical and mythical
information, not confined to Anglo-Saxon lore."
Another
example is the scop mentioned in Altfrid's life of St.
222
Liudger, who "sang of the acts of the ancients and the
rivalries of kings."5
This is what the Beowulf poet does.
If the function of the Anglo-Saxon scop is primarily
that of historian and preserver of tradition, one might well
wonder why most of the historical matter in the poem seems
to be at its edges and not at its center.
The relationship
between the historical passages and the central narrative
has been so problematic that they have been called
"digressions."6
Alistair Campbell says that "the Beowulf
poet . . . gave the Germanic heroic legend, which he had
rejected as a source for his main plot, a considerable part
in his poem by means of background and episode."7
Perhaps
the poet did not so much reject the heroic stories as
perceive them to be historical illustrations of the
universal truth of human existence as revealed by the mythic
pattern which provides the "deep structure" for his main
plot.
As earthly repetitions of the cosmic pattern, the
historical elements would logically be subsidiary to the
pattern in one sense and at the same time part of it.
As
Campbell notes, the poet is obviously using heroic lays as
sources for the passages on Breca, Finn, Hygelac,
Ongentheow, Onela, Ingeld and Offa, and Sigmund.
Campbell
further argues for the cyclic nature of these lays in
Germanic heroic legendary tradition.8
If he is right, the
cyclic nature of the historical legends would have been even
223
more clearly seen by the Beowulf poet as reflections of the
cyclic nature of all existence.
An understanding of the way in which history and myth
are interwoven in the poem is enhanced by consideration of
the theory of history proposed by Mircea Eliade.
Traditional man, Eliade explains, views history as cyclic,
a temporal period with a beginning and an end.
At the
juncture between end and beginning is conflict, which is
necessary for regeneration.
Eliade notes that this
"periodic regeneration of time . . . presupposes, in more or
less explicit form—and especially in the historical
civilizations—a new Creation, that is, a repetition of the
cosmogonic act."9
In other words, human history is
symbolically abolished at the instant of regeneration.
For
example, in the passage from the old to the New Year "there
is a repetition of the mythical moment of the passage from
chaos to cosmos," from dissolution to re-creation.10
"The
cosmogonic moment of the fight between the god and the
primordial dragon," Eliade suggests, is a paradigm of this
ending of existing forms "in order to make room for the
birth of a new form. . . . "
This mythical combat is thus
related to the passing from one world into another, from the
old into the new year.11
Such passage into a death-state is unavoidable.
explains:
Eliade
224
The death of the individual and the death of
humanity are alike necessary for their
regeneration.
Any form whatever, by the mere fact
that it exists as such and endures, necessarily
loses vigor and becomes worn; to recover vigor it
must be reabsorbed into the formless if only for
an instant; it must be restored to the primordial
unity from which it issued; in other words, it
must return to "chaos.". . ,12
This conception of history guides the Beowulf poet's
handling of historical events and helps to explain why they
are interwoven with the mythical level of mesaning.
and for his audience, history was not arbitrary.
For him,
Whether it
"was governed by the movements of the heavenly bodies or
purely and simply by the cosmic process, . . . whether,
again, it was subject to the will of God, . . . the result
was the same."
Everything that happened was necessary.13
Perhaps the poet had seen that, even with the advent of his
new religion, the pattern of existence continued to appear
as it had always done, controlled by a cycle which included
destruction and death as well as creation and life.
As
Eliade points out, Christianity did translate "the periodic
regeneration of the world into a regeneration of the human
individual."14
Nevertheless, in the world of time, the
225
individual, pagan or Christian, must die, a fact which the
Beowulf poet seems supremely aware of.
The significant relationship between myth and history
is also explained by Eliade.
"The historical event in
itself," he says, "however important, does not remain in the
popular memory, nor does its recollection kindle the poetic
imagination save insofar as the particular historical event
closely approaches a mythical model."15
Thus, the Beowulf
poet's juxtaposition of historical events which were in some
way analagous to the mythical main story may have served to
rekindle the memory of the historical and lesgendary so
important to Anglo-Saxon culture.
By hearing these stories
interlaced into the main plot which held so much mythic
significance, the audience may well have shared the
imaginative insight of the Beowulf poet. In addition, the
"real" stories would acquire greater significance.
As
Eliade suggests, the myth makes "the real story yield a
deeper and richer meaning. . . . »16
By association with the
mythic, archetypal pattern, the individual and historical
stories must have acquired a higher significance as
repetitions of the archetypal pattern.
Considering the
poet's use of the historical materials as repetitions of a
paradigm which reflected the nature of existence, these
materials must be viewed as essential elements in the poem.
226
The historical allusions and stories, therefore, can hardly
be called digressions.
Structure and theme, then, reflect the cyclic nature of
existence.
These elements refute Irving's contention that
Beowulf contains "no cyclic or recurring reenactment of
significant events, so important in myth properly
defined. . . . "
Irving argues that "The historical nature
of the events and characters in itself takes the story out
of any cyclic pattern."17
This statement can as easily be
refuted by the common-sense realization that history repeats
itself as by an examination of the textual elements of the
poem.
In any case, the purpose here is not to say that
Beowulf is myth.
It is a poem, crafted by a poet who was
aware of the shape and meaning of the myth and who clearly
perceived its deepest implications and its intimate
relationship to the history and religion of his culture.
The rich complexity of the meaning of Beowulf is the
product of this careful interweaving of complementary levels
of narrative and thematic development.
On the historical
level, the theme is surely the death of peoples, especially
the Geatish people, and of their leaders.
On the Christian
level, the theme is quite possibly the inevitable end of man
in time and the futility of his actions in this world.
On
the mythic level the theme of shining order versus dark
chaos, creation versus dissolution is easily discernible.
227
In all these, the common thread of cyclic movement is easily
seen.
From both the Christian and mythological vantage
points, resurrection and rebirth are not only possible but
necessary.
The cyclical nature of the history of peoples echoes
this same pattern of death and rebirth.
The poem begins
with the leaderless Scyldings and ends with the leaderless
Geats.
Just as Scyld came out of nowhere to save the Danish
people, Beowulf comes from across the sea to save them again
in the next downward cycle of their history.
In spite of
these efforts, the poet is careful to foretell their
destruction, just as the destruction of the Geats inevitably
follows the long period of Beowulf's reign during which they
were unchallenged.
A succession of peoples follows the
invariable pattern of rising and falling, creating order and
returning to chaos.
Within this historical cycle, the poet
shows the rise and fall of individuals—of Scyld, Hrothgar,
Hygelac, Onela, Ongentheow—and, most conspicuously, Beowulf
the ideal warrior and king.
The character of Beowulf, then, serves as a paradigm,
an exemplary model, on all three levels.
On the historical
level, he is indeed an ideal Germanic warrior, brave and
furious in battle, unmindful of his death.
As the model
sacral king, he sacrifices himself in order to save his
people.
From a Christian perspective, he is a Christ-like
228
figure, the "mildest and gentlest of men, kindest to
people."
Like the Christian God, he is "most eager for
praise."
Beowulf's functions on the historical and
Christian levels seem to be contradictory; on the face of it
the fury-filled warrior has little to do with the "manna
mildust".
These two types, however, unite in reference to
Beowulf's mythological role as dragon-slayer, the archetypal
figure of the god who must die in order to defeat chaos and
usher in the ordering, creating phase.
Eliade states,
"Insofar as he repeats the archetypal sacrifice, the
sacrificer, in full ceremonial action, abandons the profane
world of mortals and introduces himself into the divine
world of the immortals.1,18
On all three levels, Beowulf
sacrifices himself: as sacral king, as a type of Christ, and
as the dying god-like hero.
Furthermore, sacrifice is "an
archetypal gesture," and "any repetition of an archetypal
gesture, suspends duration, abolishes profane time, and
participates in mythical time."19
In Beowulf's death,
therefore, history is momentarily suspended.
Time stands
still and the audience has an intimation of mythical time.
Because of the overlay of the Christian, historical,
and mythic levels, categorically defining the meaning of the
end of Beowulf is virtually impossible.
By ignoring
selected facts, it is of course possible to "prove" that
Beowulf's death is symbolic of the tragic end of a people,
229
that it is symbolic of the inevitable return of chaos, or
even that it is a symbolic victory in the Christian sense.
Such exclusive selection seems not only to betray a lack of
intellectual energy but also to deny the poem its rich
complexity.
It is only by comprehending the careful
interweaving of Christian, historical, and mythic elements
and their implications that an understanding of the poem's
complete meaning may be reached.
From this vantage point,
Beowulf's death has many meanings.
The poem seems to end on a note of ambiguity.
Although
Beowulf is supposed to be joining his God, the tone is
elegaic.
All readers, Christian and non-Christian alike,
surely respond with the same sadness the Christian poet
expresses at Beowulf's passing.20
Beowulf is dead, and
although Wiglaf lives, "endelaf
usses cynnes, /
Wacgmundinga" (2813-2814a) , he is no Beowulf.
In spite of
what some critics try to make of this "War-leftover," the
poem ends with a world seemingly empty of heroes.
returns because that is how life is.
Chaos
Even so, this is not
to say that there will never be another hero.
Surely the
listener or reader will remember that the poem begins with a
hero, Scyld Sceafing, who arrives out of nowhere.
In this
memory lies the possibility, even the inevitability, of
another return of the archetypal hero.
Because of the
cyclical nature of existence, by definition this hero must
230
die, as all men must and even gods do, to be replaced by
other heroes, other men, and other manifestations of the
dying god.
It is a mistake to see the ending as solely
mythological, as the death of a dying god.
This view would
wrongly deny the individual and historical/heroic aspects of
the characterization of Beowulf.
W. P. Ker contends that
"The characters in Beowulf are not much more than
types. . . ,"21
They are in fact "archetypes" in the pre-
Jungian sense of "exemplary model" or "paradigm."
In this
way they become much more than individual characters could
be, however fully drawn.
William Righter complains that one
of the presuppositions "that give substance to the uses of
myth . . .
is that character has ceased to matter."22
is simply not so.
This
The individuals in a piece of literature
do not cease to affect the reader just because they have
mythic overtones.
Nor did the Beowulf poet intend Beowulf
the man, the ideal warrior, to be less important than
Beowulf the god-like hero.
On the contrary, he ends his
poem with the Geatish people, Beowulf's hearth-companions,
lamenting the death of their leader's fall:
cw»don -patt he wacre
wyruldcyning [ a ]
manna mildust
ond mon(Sw)aerust,
leodum li&ost
ond lofgeornost.
(3180-82)
231
Whatever allusions these words contain to the Christ figure,
certainly they elicit sadness, not because a god has died or
because the death of this king portends the loss of an
entire people, but rather because a man more worthy than
most has died.
The reader, like the Geats, mourns for
Beowulf the man.
Quite possibly grief for the death of all
people may have something to do with the reader's depth of
feeling at the end of Beowulf.
But most of all, like Gerard
Manley Hopkin's Margaret, the reader grieves at the
reflection of his own mortality.
For the modern reader who has been conditioned by the
twentieth—century world view, this kind of seemingly
ambiguous, open ending is undoubtedly powerful and symbolic
of man's ultimate inability to know.
For the Anglo-Saxon
poet and his audience, however, this ending possibly meant
something quite different.
Jeffrey Helterman may be correct
in his belief that "The movement of Beowulf becomes a
dialectic between the Mediterranean (Christian) and Norse
Mythologies."
But it is difficult to agree with his
conclusion that the triumph of the hero represents the
triumph of Christian mythology, which is essentially based
on the Pagan Mediterranean mythology stressing rebirth.23
The ending does not seem to reveal such a satisfactorily
clear conclusion.
After all, even on a mythological level
232
the hero dies in the killing of his monster, just as Thor
and the serpent destroy each other at Ragnarok.
This is not to say that the poet has purposefully
created an ambiguous ending.
If there is any such ambiguity
at all, it may reside in human certainty of death versus
uncertainty of renewal and regeneration.
The poet's
intention is rather to dramatize his realization of the
cyclic nature of human existence.
On the historical,
individual level, Beowulf the man is as dead as Hygelac and
Ongentheow.
The Beowulf poet could, after all, perceive the
cyclical pattern not only in the continuous rise and fall of
peoples in his historical environment but also in the advent
of a new religion which included recurring characters and
themes familiar to him from the pre-Christian religion which
had held sway much longer than Christianity and was still
very much alive.
It seems, then, that he clearly structured
his poem to reflect the cyclical nature of all human
existence, which has both positive and negative
implications.
The interlacing of Christian, historical and
mythic elements suggests the impossibility of extricating
the individual and collective historical manifestations from
the cosmic imperative of this cycle.
The poet perhaps saw
in the ancient myths which permeated his cultural traditions
the basis and meaning of all human existence.
233
Notes
1
J. R. Hulbert, "The Genesis of Beowulf; A Caveat,"
PMLA 66 (1951): 1168-69.
2
Edward B. Irving, Jr. A Reading of Beowulf (New
Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1968) 98.
3
Peter Lum, Fabulous Beasts (New York: Pantheon, 1951)
96-97.
4
Larry Benson, "The Originality of Beowulf." The
Interpretation of Narrative: Theory and Practice. Harvard
English Studies, I. ed. Morton W. Bloomfield (Cambridge:
Harvard UP, 1970) 7.
Benson believes that the "Sandhaugr
episode" in the Grettis saga is the one identifiable source;
it provided the "tale of a hero who meets and defeats two
monsters, of opposite sex, one a hall-hunting monster, the
other a water-dwelling monster" 30.
Everything else in the
main plot of the poem, including the dragon episode, can be
attributed to the originality of the poet.
5
Morton Bloomfield, "Understanding Old English
Poetry," Annuale Mediaevale 9 (1968): 68-69, as rpt. in
Essays and Explorations: Studies in Ideas. Language and
Literature, ed. Morton Bloomfield (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
UP, 1970).
6
Adrien Bonjour, The Digressions in Beowulf (Oxford:
Oxford UP, 1950).
234
7
Alistair Campbell, "The Use in Beowulf of Earlier
Heroic Verse," England Before the Conquest: Studies in
Primary Sources, ed. Peter Clemoes and Kathleen Hughes
(Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge UP, 1971) 291.
8
Alistair Campbell 289.
See this article for a
detailed discussion of the way these lays are used in the
poem.
9
Mircea Eliade,
The Mvth of the Eternal Return: or
Cosmos and History, rev. ed., trans. Willard R. Trask (1954;
Princeton: Princeton UP, 1971) 52.
11
Eliade, Mvth of the Eternal Return 69-70
12
Eliade, Mvth of the Eternal Return 88.
13
Eliade, Mvth of the Eternal Return 133.
14
Eliade, Myth of the Eternal Return 12:9.
15
Eliade, Mvth of the Eternal Return 42:.
16
Eliade, Mvth of the Eternal Return 46.
17
Irving, Reading 86.
Irving withdraws somewhat from
this indefensible position just one page later, where he
admits that "the poem may include certain cyclic aspects"
87.
18
19
Eliade, Mvth of the Eternal Return 36.
•
Eliade, Mvth of the Eternal Return 36.
20
See Charles Moorman, "The Essential Paganism of
Beowulf," MLQ 28 (1967): 4, for a revealing comparison of
235
the closing passages of Judith and Andreas. which reflect a
strong Christian assurance in death, and the end of Beowulf,
which does not express so strong an assurance.
21
W. P. Ker, Epic and Romance: Essavs on Medieval
Literature (1896; New York: Dover, 1957) 165.
22
•
*
»
William Righter, Myth and Literature (London:
Routledge, 1975) 72.
23
Jeffrey Helterman, "Beowulf: The Archetype Enters
History," ELH 35 (1968): 3.
CHAPTER VII
CONCLUSION
After having gained so much inspiration and information
from Robert Graves' academically formidable and emotionally
charged study of The White Goddess. I must respectfully
challenge his judgment that Beowulf is not true poetry.
This death sentence is based on his observation that "The
Anglo-Saxons had no sacrosanct master-poets, but only
gleemen. . ." and thus were faithless to the single grand
mythic theme.1
In the first place, the investigation
conducted in this study has demonstrated that the Beowulf
poet was much concerned with this theme.
Secondly, there is
evidence that Anglo-Saxon poets were indeed sacrosanct in
the sense of being considered sacred and holy.
If the
purpose of reciting traditional myths is to transfer
"knowledge of the world and life from those who have it to
those who do not,"2 the poet's function is definitely
religious.
Morton W. Bloomfield applies the following
definition of early bards to the Beowulf poet:
"The
bards . . . were the authors of each new nation's holy book,
the repositories of the highest truths in which men
believed, and they were revered for their priesthood."3
Beowulf serves as such a repository.
236
The ancient myth which
237
reveals these truths is the same myth which informs the
characters, plot, structure, and theme of Beowulf.
The
symbols, themes and motifs also resonate with allusions to
the single grand cycle of life and death.
Thus, the mythic
sub-structure or layer of meaning not only enriches the
narrative but, in its universality and antiquity, lends an
extraordinary power of attraction.
The pull of this myth,
reverberating down the ages and into the far reaches of the
Indo-European world, may be one key to answering the old
question of why Beowulf continues to affect twentiethcentury readers whose world is so seemingly different from
that of the eighth-century Anglo-Saxon audience.
The conclusions drawn here have ramifications
particularly for the study of formulaic elements.
Certainly, it should be clear that themes in traditional
poetry are probably never exclusively ornamental, whether or
not they advance the main action.4
In any case, at least
some themes are connotatively complex and contribute to
thematic development as well as enhance the narrative and
dramatic aspects of a poem.
It is also obvious that the
function of a particular theme or type-scene cannot be fully
appreciated without a knowledge of its provenance.
As has
been shown, Indo-European myth is a promising source of
information regarding the origins of these elements.
238
This paper hardly exhausts the discussion of the
function of mythic elements and their relationship to
structure and theme.
These findings are only suggestive of
the fruitfulness of a study of Indo-European comparative
mythology and comparative literature.
Such a study may
yield more answers to still unsolved questions concerning
motifs in Beowulf.
For example, F. H. Whitman has isolated
the motif of corrosive blood of monsters.
He admits that
the origin of this motif is unclear and that "there is no
reason to think that it is peculiarly Germanic."5
motif is that of feast followed by sleep.6
Another
It is quite
possible that the origin of at least some of these motifs
may exist within the body of Indo-European mythic tradition.
The discovery of the origins of these formulaic elements
must of course be accompanied by an interpretation of their
function in the poetry.
Other motifs already apparent in Indo-European myth and
Beowulf beg to be interpreted.
One such example is the
mother-son motif, which has its origins in the myth of the
moon/earth goddess and her son and which appears frequently
in Beowulf, especially in the characterizations of Grendel
and his mother and Wealhtheow and her sons.
The motif of
the aging king, also known as the lame king or fisher king
in ritual sources, also bears closer scrutiny; its
appearance in Beowulf has not been fully explained.
239
There is also work to be done in attempting to identify
and explain the use of the Indo-European mythic tradition in
non-narrative Old English poetry.
The mythic elements, at
least the themes and type-scenes, discussed in this study
seem to have found their way into Beowulf via the tradition
underlying the oral-formulaic method of composition.
Nevertheless, even poems which are not the product of oral
composition were created by authors who undoubtedly were
familiar with the pre-Christian traditions surviving in
Anglo-Saxon culture.
In any case, critics such as Larry
Benson, Arthur C. Brodeur, and Robert D. Stevick have
established that lettered poets did use formulaic style.7
The elegaic poems, for example, seem to be particularly
fertile ground for interpretation and elucidation from a
mythological point of view.
Such studies are important
because uncertainty concerning the full implications for
poet and audience of certain words, phrases and larger
elements (including plot, character, and structure)
undeniably hinders an understanding of Old English poetry.
A fully developed system of mythological elements would
also be valuable.
This could perhaps be done by comparing
Beowulf with other Old English poetry in the same way as has
been done for verbal formulas.
It would undoubtedly be
fruitful to extend such an investigation to Indo-European
literature, and chances are that an examination of
240
literatures outside the Indo-European tradition would have
rewarding results.
The creation of such an organized system
of mythic elements could only be accomplished by drawing on
the findings of fields as diverse as history, archaeology,
anthropology, comparative religion and, more specifically,
Indo-European studies.
Such collaboration might even bring
forth answers to superficially non-literary questions.
For
instance, it might be possible to describe with greater
certainty the extent to which common European or even world
elements exist in the pre-Christian religion of Anglo-Saxon
England.
Before any significant headway can be made towards a
complete understanding of the relationship of myth to Old
English poetry (as well as to Indo-European poetry), Beowulf
scholars must be open-minded.
They need to be able to
forgive the excesses of genuine attempts to elucidate the
poem through a comparison with myth and to benefit from the
real, though small, discoveries.
It seems inevitable that
such open-mindedness, coupled with collaboration with
scholars in other related fields, will one day produce
another critical commonplace.
It will be generally accepted
that the mythic elements of Beowulf provide a basic,
timeless level of meaning, possibly apprehended at times
only subconsciously, and yet undoubtedly related to the
241
historical/individual and Christian levels of meaning in a
fundamental way.
William Righter, whose rigorous comments on the
problems inherent in myth criticism exerted a much-needed
corrective force on this study, states: "Through myth
criticism a certain kind of romantic sensibility has
endeavored to find its voice."8
romantic sensibility.
I cannot disclaim a
Even if Righter's assumption
concerning the sensibilities of myth critics is correct, the
contents of this paper perhaps show that there is a place in
Beowulf criticism for romanticism, as long as it is grounded
in a careful consideration of fact.
242
Notes
1
Robert Graves, The White Goddess: A Historical
Grammar of Poetic Mvth. rev. and enl. ed. (1948; New York:
Farrar, 1966) 23.
2
Dean Loganbill, "Literature as Initiation," Four
Papers for Michio Masui. ed. Raymond P. Tripp Jr. (Denver:
Soc. for New Lang. Study, 1972) 19.
3
Morton Bloomfield, "Understanding Old English
Poetry," Annuale Mediaevale 9 (1968): 69, as rpt. in Essavs
and Explorations: Studies in Ideas. Language and Literature,
ed. Morton W. Bloomfield (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1970).
4
Robert E. Diamond, "Theme as Ornament in Anglo-Saxon
Poetry," PMLA 76 (1961): 461-68, argues that themes in
traditional poetry do not contribute to the advancement of
the main action and are therefore essentially ornamental.
5
F. H. Whitman, "Corrosive Blood in Beowulf,"
Neophilologus 61 (1977): 276.
6
See Henry Kavros, "Swefan aefter Symble: The Feast-
Sleep in Beowulf." Neophilologus 65 (1981): 120-28, and
Alain Renoir, A Key to Old Poems: The Oral Formulaic
Approach to the Interpretation of West Germanic Verse
(University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1988) 113ff.
7
See Larry Benson's "The Literary Character of Anglo-
Saxon Formulaic Poetry," PMLA 81 (1966): 340; Arthur C.
243
Brodeur's The Art of Beowulf (Berkeley: U of California P,
1959) 3-6; and Robert D. Stevick's "The Oral-Formulaic
Analysis of Old English Verse," Speculum 37 (1962): 382-89.
Inherent in this finding is the rejection of the certainty
that Anglo-Saxon poetry was composed orally.
8
William Righter, Mvth and Literature (London:
Routledge, 1975) 58.
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