Chapter XI: Section I: The Grendel Fight

When we come to the story of Beowulf's struggle with Grendel, with Grendel's mother, and with the dragon, we are faced by difficulties much greater than those which meet us when considering that background of Danish or Geatic history in which these stories are framed.

In the first place, it is both surprising and confusing that, in the prologue, before the main story begins, _another_ Beowulf is introduced, the son of Scyld Scefing. Much emphasis is laid upon the upbringing and youthful fame of this prince, and the glory of his father. Any reader would suppose that the poet is going on to tell of _his_ adventures, when suddenly the story is switched off, and, after brief mention of this Beowulf's son, Healfdene, we come to Hrothgar, the building of Heorot, Grendel's attack, and the voyage of Beowulf the Geat to the rescue.

Now "Beowulf" is an exceedingly rare name. The presence of the earlier Beowulf, Scyld's son, seems then to demand explanation, and many critics, working on quite different lines, have arrived independently at the conclusion that either the story of Grendel and his mother, or the story of the dragon, or both stories, were originally told of the son of Scyld, and only afterwards transferred to the Geatic hero. This has indeed been generally accepted, almost from the beginning of {42} Beowulf criticism[83]. Yet, though possible enough, it does not admit of any demonstration.

Now Beowulf, son of Scyld, clearly corresponds to a Beow or Beaw in the West Saxon genealogy. In this genealogy Beow is always connected with Scyld and Scef, and in some versions the relations are identical with those given in _Beowulf_: Beow, son of Scyld, son of Scef, in the genealogies[84], corresponding to Beowulf, son of Scyld Scefing, in our poem. Hence arose the further speculation of many scholars that the hero who slays the monsters was originally called, not Beowulf, but Beow, and that he was identical with the hero in the West Saxon pedigree; in other words, that the original story was of a hero Beow (son of Scyld) who slew a monster and a dragon: and that this adventure was only subsequently transferred to Beowulf, prince of the Geatas.

This is a theory based upon a theory, and some confirmation may reasonably be asked, before it is entertained. As to the dragon-slaying, the confirmatory evidence is open to extreme doubt. It is dealt with in Section VII (Beowulf-Frotho), below. As to Grendel, one such piece of confirmation there is. The conquering Angles and Saxons seem to have given the names of their heroes to the lands they won in England: some such names--'Wade's causeway,' 'Weyland's smithy'--have survived to modern times. The evidence of the Anglo-Saxon charters shows that very many which have now been lost existed in England prior to the Conquest. Now in a Wiltshire charter of the year 931, we have _B[=e]owan hammes hecgan_ mentioned not far from a _Grendles mere_. This has been claimed as evidence that the story of Grendel, with Beow as his adversary, was localized in Wiltshire in the reign of Athelstan, and perhaps had been localized there since the settlement four centuries previously. Until recently this was accepted as definitely {43} proving that the Beowulf-Grendel story was derived from an ancient Beow-myth. Yet one such instance of name-association is not conclusive. We cannot leave out of consideration the possibility of its being a mere chance coincidence, especially considering how large is the number of place names recorded in Old English charters. Of late, people have become more sceptical in drawing inferences from proper names, and quite recently there has been a tendency entirely to overlook the evidence of the charter, by way of making compensation for having hitherto overrated it.

All that can be said with certainty is that it _is_ remarkable that a place named after Beowa should be found in the immediate proximity of a "Grendel's lake," and that this fact supports the possibility, though it assuredly does not prove, that in the oldest versions of the tale the monster queller was named Beow, not Beowulf. But it is only a possibility: it is not grounded upon any real evidence.

These crucial references occur in a charter given by Athelstan at
Luton, concerning a grant of land at Ham in Wiltshire to his thane
Wulfgar. [See Birch, _Cartularium Saxonicum_, 1887, vol. II, p. 363.]

... Ego Aedhelstanus, rex Anglorum ... quandam telluris particulam meo
fideli ministro Wulfgaro ... in loco quem solicolae _oet Hamme_
vocitant tribuo ... Praedicta siquidem tellus his terminis circumcincta
clarescit....

dhonne nordh ofer d[=u]ne on m[=e]os-hlinc westeweardne; dhonne
ad[=u]ne on dh[=a] yfre on b[=e]owan hammes hecgan, on br[=e]meles
sceagan [=e]asteweardne; dhonne on dh[=a] bl[=a]can gr[=ae]fan; dhonne
nordh be dh[=e]m ondh[=e]afdan t[=o] dh[=ae]re scortan d[=i]c b[=u]tan
[=a]nan aecre; dhonne t[=o] fugelmere t[=o] dh[=a]n wege; ondlong weges
t[=o] ottes forda; dhonon t[=o] wudumere; dhonne t[=o] dh[=ae]re
r[=u]wan hecgan; dhaet on langan hangran; dhonne on grendles mere;
dhonon on dyrnan geat....

Ambiguous as this evidence is, I do not think it can be dismissed as it
is by Lawrence (_Pub. Mod. Lang. Assoc. Amer._ XXIV, 252) and Panzer
(_Beowulf_, 397), who both say "How do we know that it is not the
merest chance?" It _may_ of course be chance: but this does not justify
us in basing an argument upon the assumption that it _is_ the merest
chance. Lawrence continues: "Suppose one were to set up a theory that
there was a saga-relation between Scyld and Bikki, and offered as proof
the passage in the charter for the year 917 in which there are
mentioned, as in the same district, _scyldes treow_ and _bican
sell_.... How much weight would this carry?"

The answer surely is that the occurrence of the two names together in
the charter would, by itself, give no basis whatever for starting such
a theory: but if, on other grounds, the theory were likely, then the
occurrence of the two names together would certainly have some
corroborative value. Exactly how much, it is impossible to say, because
we cannot estimate the element of chance, and we cannot {44} be certain
that the _grendel_ and the _beowa_ mentioned are identical with our
Grendel and our Beowulf.

Miller has argued [_Academy_, May 1894, p. 396] that _grendles_ is not
a proper name here, but a common noun signifying "drain," and that
_grendles mere_ therefore means "cesspool."

Now "grindle" is found in modern dialect and even in Middle English[85]
in the sense of "a narrow ditch" or "gutter," but I doubt if it can be
proved to be an Old English word. Evidence would rather point to its
being an East Anglian corruption of the much more widely spread
_drindle_, or _dringle_, used both as a verb "to go slowly, to
trickle," and as "a small trickling stream." And even if an O.E.
_grendel_ as a common noun meaning "gutter" were authenticated, it
seems unlikely to me that places were named "the fen," "the mere," "the
pit," "the brook"--"of the gutter." There is no ground whatever for
supposing the existence of an O.E. _grendel_ = "sewer," or anything
which would lead us to suppose _grendles mere_ or _gryndeles sylle_ to
mean "cesspool[86]." Surely it is probable, knowing what we do of the
way in which the English settlers gave epic names to the localities
around their settlements, that these places were named after Grendel
because they seemed the sort of place where his story might be
localized--like "Weyland's smithy" or "Wade's causeway": and that the
meaning is "Grendel's fen," "mere," "pit" or "brook."

Again, both Panzer and Lawrence suggest that the Beowa who gave his
name to the _ham_ may have been, not the hero, but "an ordinary mortal
called after him" ... "some individual who lived in this locality."
But, among the numerous English proper names recorded, can any instance
be found of any individual named Beowa? {45} And was it in accordance
with the rules of Old English nomenclature to give to mortals the names
of these heroes of the genealogies[87]?

Recent scepticism as to the "Beow-myth" has been largely due to the fact that speculation as to Beow had been carried too far. For example, because Beow appeared in the West Saxon genealogy, it had been assumed that the Beow-myth belonged essentially to the Angles and Saxons. Yet Beow would seem to have been also known among Scandinavians. For in somewhat later days Scandinavian genealogists, when they had made the acquaintance of the Anglo-Saxon pedigrees, noted that Beow had a Scandinavian counterpart in a hero whom they called Bjar[88]. That something was known in the north of this Bjar is proved by the _K['a]lfsv['i]sa_, that same catalogue of famous heroes and their horses which we have already found giving us the counterparts of Onela and Eadgils. Yet this dry reference serves to show that Bjar must once have been sufficiently famous to have a horse specially his own[89]. Whether the fourteenth century Scandinavian who made Bjar the Northern equivalent of Beow was merely guessing, we unfortunately cannot tell. Most probably he was, for there is reason to think that the hero corresponding to Beow was named, not _Bj['a]r_, but _Byggvir_[90]: a correspondence intelligible to modern philologists as in agreement with phonetic law, but naturally not obvious to an Icelandic genealogist. But however this may be, the assumption that Beow was peculiarly the hero of Angles and Saxons seems hardly justified.

{46}

Again, since Beow is an ancestor of Woden, it was further assumed that he was an ancient god, and that in the story of his adventures we had to deal with a nature-myth of a divine deliverer who saved the people from Grendel and his mother, the personified powers of the stormy sea. It is with the name of Muellenhoff, its most enthusiastic and ablest advocate, that this "mythological theory" is particularly associated. That Grendel is fictitious no one, of course, would deny. But Muellenhoff and his school, in applying the term "mythical" to those portions of the _Beowulf_ story for which no historical explanation could be found, meant that they enshrined _nature-myths_. They thought that those elements in heroic poetry which could not be referred back to actual fact must be traced to ancient stories in which were recorded the nation's belief about the sun and the gods: about storms and seasons.

The different mythological explanations of Beowulf-Beowa and Grendel have depended mainly upon hazardous etymological explanations of the hero's name. The most popular is Muellenhoff's interpretation. Beaw is the divine helper of man in his struggle with the elements. Grendel represents the stormy North Sea of early spring, flooding and destroying the habitations of men, till the god rescues them: Grendel's mother represents the depths of the ocean. But in the autumn the power of the god wanes: the dragon personifies the coming of the wild weather: the god sinks in his final struggle to safeguard the treasures of the earth for his people[91]. Others, remembering that Grendel dwells in the fen, see in him rather a demon of the sea-marsh than of the sea itself: he is the pestilential swamp[92], and the hero a wind which drives him away[93]. Or, whilst Grendel still represents the storms, his antagonist is a "Blitzheros[94]." Others, whilst hardly ranking Beowulf as {47} a god, still see an allegory in his adventures, and Grendel must be a personification either of an inundation[95], or of the terror of the long winter nights[96], or possibly of grinding at the mill, the work of the enslaved foe[97].

Such explanations were till recently universally current: the instances given above might be increased considerably.

Sufficient allowance was not made for the influence upon heroic poetry of the simple popular folk-tale, a tale of wonder with no mythological or allegorical meaning. Now, of late years, there has been a tendency not only to recognize but even to exaggerate this influence: to regard the hero of the folk-tale as the original and essential element in heroic poetry[98]. Though this is assuredly to go too far, it is but reasonable to recognize the fairy tale element in the O.E. epic.

We have in _Beowulf_ a story of giant-killing and dragon-slaying. Why should we construct a legend of the gods or a nature-myth to account for these tales? Why must Grendel or his mother represent the tempest, or the malaria, or the drear long winter nights? We know that tales of giant-killers and dragon-slayers have been current among the people of Europe for thousands of years. Is it not far more easy to regard the story of the fight between Beowulf and Grendel merely as a fairy tale, glorified into an epic[99]?

Those students who of late years have tried thus to elucidate the story of Beowulf and Grendel, by comparison with folk-tales, have one great advantage over Muellenhoff and the "mythological" school. The weak point of Muellenhoff's view was that the nature-myth of Beow, which was called in to explain the origin of the Beowulf story as we have it, was itself only an assumption, a conjectural reconstruction. But the various popular tales in which scholars have more recently tried to find parallels to _Beowulf_ have this great merit, that {48} they do indubitably exist. And as to the first step--the parallel between _Beowulf_ and the _Grettis saga_--there can, fortunately, be but little hesitation.

* * * * *