'Beowulf' may rightly be pronounced the great national epic of the
Anglo-Saxon race. Not that it exalts the race so much as that it
presents the spirit of the Anglo-Saxon peoples, the ideals and aims,
the manners and customs, of our ancestors, and that it does so in
setting before us a great national hero. Beowulf himself was not an
Anglo-Saxon. He was a Geat-Dane; but he belonged to that confraternity
of nations that composed the Teutonic people. He lived in an heroic
age, when the songs of the wandering singers were of the great deeds of
outstanding men. The absolute epic of the English people has yet to be
written. To some extent Arthur, though a British King--that is to say,
though he was King of the Celtic British people, who were subsequently
driven into the West, into Cornwall and Wales and Strathclyde, by our
Saxon ancestors--became nationalized by our Anglo-Norman ancestors as
a typical King of the English people. He has become the epic King of
the English in the poetry of Tennyson. It is always a mystery to the
writer that no competent singer among us has ever laid hands upon our
own Saxon hero, King Alfred. It is sometimes said that there is nothing
new under the sun, that there is nothing left for the modern singer
to sing about, and that the realm of possible musical production is
fast vanishing out of view. Certainly this is not true of poetry. Both
Alfred and Arthur are waiting for the sympathetic voice that will tell
forth to the world the immortal splendour of their personalities. And
just as the Anglo-Normans idealized Arthur as a hero-king of the
English nation, though he really fought against the English, so the
Saxon singer of Beowulf has idealized this Geatish chieftain, and in
some way set him forth as the idealized chieftain of the Teutonic race.
Beowulf is an Anglo-Saxon poem.--It consists of 3182 lines. It is
written in the alliterative verse of our ancestors in the Anglo-Saxon
tongue, which, though the mother-tongue of the English, is yet more
difficult to read for the Englishman than Latin or Greek. One wonders
whether any genuine Anglo-Saxon epic existed, and has been destroyed
in the passing of the centuries. The curious feature about this poem
is that it concerns a man who was not an Anglo-Saxon. Our poem is
written in the West Saxon dialect. The original poem was probably in
Northumbrian, and was translated into West Saxon during the period of
literary efflorescence in the West Saxon Court. We do not know whether
it was a translation or whether it was original, though the latter
is, I believe, the prevailing opinion. Arnold has put forth what
may be called the missionary theory of its origin. He believes that
both the choice of subject and the grade of culture may be connected
with the missionary efforts of the English Church of those days to
extend Christianity in Friesland and further east. 'It does not seem
improbable that it was in the interest of the spread of Christianity
that the composer of Beowulf--perhaps a missioner, perhaps a layman
attached to the mission--was attracted to the Scandinavian lands;
that he resided there long enough to become thoroughly steeped in
the folk-lore and local traditions; that he found the grand figure of
Beowulf the Geat predominant in them; and that, weaving into an organic
whole those which he found suitable to his own purpose, he composed
an epic which, on his return home, must soon have become known to all
the lovers of English song.' [1] Dr. Sarrazin thought this unknown
poet might have been the famous Cynewulf. Arnold, chiefly on stylistic
grounds, differs from this opinion. This is Arnold's opinion: 'Sagas,
either in the Danish dialect or that of the Geats--more probably the
latter--were current in the Scandinavian countries in the seventh
century. Among these sagas, that of Beowulf the Geat must have had
a prominent place; others celebrated Hygelac his uncle, Hnaef the
Viking, the wars of the Danes and the Heathobards, of the Danes and
the Swedes. About the end of the century missionaries from England
are known to have been busy in Friesland and Denmark, endeavouring to
convert the natives to Christianity. Some one of these, whose mind had
a turn for literature and dwelt with joy upon the traditions of the
past, collected or learnt by heart a number of these sagas, and, taking
that of Beowulf as a basis, and weaving some others into his work,
composed an epic poem to which, although it contains the record of
those adventures, the heroic scale of the figure who accomplishes them
all imparts a real unifying epic interest.' Whatever may be the truth
as to its origin, there it lies in the British Museum in its unique
MS. as a testimony to all ages of the genius of the Anglo-Saxon race.
Now it will be quite naturally asked, What do we learn from Beowulf
of the genius and spirit of that race from which we are sprung?
The one outstanding fact, as it appears to the writer, is the
co-operative principle. And this principle stands in almost violent
opposition to the ruling principle of the modern world, in which
society is divided into a number of mutually opposite sections or
classes, whose interests clash with fatal results to individual
and corporate well-being. In this poem we see the whole community,
from the King to the churl, bound by one common interest. King and
chieftain and thane and churl freely intermingle and converse. They
eat and drink and sleep under one common roof, or at least in
one common enclosure. Tempora mutantur! but the idea of social
interaction and mutual interdependence never found more vivid or
real expression than in the pictures presented in Beowulf of Hart,
the Great Hall of Hrothgar, and in the Court and township of Hygelac,
King of the Geats. In the Hall of Hart Hrothgar and his Queen and his
courtiers sit at the high table on the dais, and the lower orders
at the long table down the hall. The spears and shields adorn the
walls. After the evening meal, the singer, or scop, as he is called,
to the accompaniment of the harp, tells forth the deeds of some ancient
feud, such as that of Finn and the Danes or the Fight at Finnsburgh,
or the feud of the Danes and the Heathobards, in which Freawaru,
Hrothgar's daughter, and Ingeld figure so tragically. Then the benches
are removed, and the rude beds are spread out on the floor of the Great
Hall and they seek 'evening rest.' The whole is a picture of fraternal
and paternal government. If Grendel, the Fen-monster, carries away
one of their number, then there is weeping and lamentation. The King
and the Queen and the nobility and the commonalty are all concerned
in the tragedy. The loss of one is the loss of all. When Aeschere is
slain by Grendel's mother Hrothgar thus bewails his loss: 'Seek no more
after joy; sorrow is renewed for the Danish folk. Aeschere is dead,
he who was my wise counsellor and my adviser and my comrade in arms,
when in time of war we defended ourselves; ... but now the hand lieth
low which bestowed every kind of joy upon you.' And in the end of the
poem it is said of Beowulf that he was 'most gentle to his folk.' The
King was king only 'for his folk.' The interest of his folk, their
physical and moral well-being, was his chief solicitude.
2. But not only was this so within any one nation or tribe, but there
was a sense of comradeship and mutual responsibility among those of
various tribes and nations. When Beowulf the Geat hears in Gautland of
the raids of Grendel upon Hart, he commands his folk to make ready a
boat that he may fare across the sea to the help of Hrothgar, because
'he was lacking in warriors.' Beowulf's whole mission in Hart was
the discharge of a solemn obligation of help from the strong to the
weak. He announces to Hrothgar that he is come 'to cleanse Hart of
ill,' and this he feels he must do. 'Woe is me if I preach not the
gospel!' cried St. Paul. 'Woe is me if I help not the weak and cleanse
not the demon-infested palace of my kinsman!' cried Beowulf. 'Weird
goes as he willeth'; that is, Fate must be submitted to. And Fate
hath willed that he should help the weak and 'cleanse the ill.'
3. Then there is the tremendous sense of loyalty on the part of the
folk to their king or chieftain. The idea of the 'Comitatus' bound
the folk to their leaders. Nothing more disgraceful could be conceived
than the desertion of the leader. Terrible were the reproaches hurled
at the trembling cowards who had hurried away into the woods, to save
their own skins, whilst their King Beowulf wrestled with the dragon,
the enemy of the people. 'Yea, death is better for any earl than a
life of reproach.' Loyalty, a passionate loyalty to the King, was
the greatest of virtues, and disloyalty and cowardice the greatest
of vices. Society was an organic whole, bound together by the bands
of loyalty and devotion to the common good.
4. There is, too, the fatalistic note heard all through the
poem. Beowulf feels himself hard pressed by Fate. The Anglo-Saxon
called Fate by the name 'Weird,' which has survived in modern English
in the sense of something strange and mysterious. Weird was the God,
or Goddess of Fate. Again and again in the poem we hear the solemn,
minor, dirge-like refrain, 'Weird hath willed it'; 'Goeth Weird as she
willeth' (chapter VI. p. 44). There is this perpetual overshadowing and
almost crushing sense of some inscrutable and irresistible power that
wieldeth all things and disposeth all things, which is, I believe,
a pre-eminent characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon race, and accounts
for the dare-devil courage of her sons upon the battle-field or on
the high seas. We find it, too, in its morally less attractive form in
the recrudescent pessimism of modern literature. Thomas Hardy is the
lineal descendant in literature of the author of Beowulf when he says:
'Thus the President of the Immortals had finished his sport with poor
Tess.' [2]
5. And closely allied to this sense of Destiny is the sombre view of
life that is characteristic of the Teutonic peoples. There is none of
that passionate joy in beauty and in love that we find in the Celtic
literature. Life is a serious thing in Beowulf and with us of the
Anglo-Saxon race. The scenery of Beowulf is massive and threatening
and mist-encircled. Angry seas are boiling and surging and breaking
at the foot of lofty and precipitous cliffs. Above the edge of the
cliffs stretch mysterious and gloomy moorlands, and treacherous
bogs and dense forests inhabited by malignant and powerful spirits,
the foes of humanity. In a land like this there is no time for
love-making. Eating, drinking, sleeping, fighting there make up the
business of life. It is to the Celtic inflow that we owe the addition
of love in our modern literature. The composer of Beowulf could not
have conceived the Arthur Saga or the Tristram love-legend. These
things belong to a later age, when Celtic and Teutonic elements were
fused in the Anglo-Norman race. But we still find in our literature
the sombre hues. And, after all, it is in the forest of sorrow and pain
that we discover the most beautiful flowers and the subtlest perfumes.
I desire to express my indebtedness to A. J. Wyatt and William Morris
for their translations; to A. J. Wyatt for his edition of the poem
in the original; to Thomas Arnold for his terse and most informing
work on Beowulf; to the authors of articles in the Encyclopaedia
Britannica and in Chambers's Encyclopaedia and The Cambridge History
of English Literature.
Ernest J. B. Kirtlan.
Brighton,
November, 1913.