Читать книгу History of English Literature from "Beowulf" to Swinburne - Andrew Lang, Robert Kirk - Страница 8

It is impossible to be certain about the date when the original form of this great old poem, "Beowulf," was first composed, because it contains, on the one hand, descriptions of the ancient heathen way of living, thinking, manners, and customs; and, on the other hand, has many allusions to Christian doctrine, which the Anglo-Saxons knew nothing of till after they had quite conquered this country. The poet of "Beowulf" as it now exists, had read the Bible, or knew part of its contents. We must look first at the poem as it stands, and the story as it is told, or rather at the stories, for there are several.

One Beowulf, not our hero, was the son of Scyld. Scyld died, and, in place of Christian burial, was placed in his ship, with arms and treasures, and so sailed out to sea at the wind's will. Not so, when his time came, was our Beowulf buried; that is, Beowulf the hero of the poem, for the earlier Beowulf, son of Scyld, was another man.

The grandson of Scyld was Hrothgar (whose name becomes Roger in later times), and Hrothgar was a Danish king, builder of Heorot, a princely hall. His happiness awoke the envy of Grendel, a fiend of the wilds.

The Christian author of the poem, as it stands, thinks that Grendel and other monsters are descendants of Cain!

The nobles slept in the great hall, whither Grendel came and caught away thirty of them. Men sought other sleeping-rooms, but Grendel still came and slew them. The house was empty, and men promised sacrifices to their false gods all in vain: "they knew not the true God," yet the poet often forgets their ignorance, and makes them speak like Christians:

There was a king of Gothland named Hygelac, a real king living at the beginning of the sixth century. The king's nephew, Beowulf, heard of the evil deeds of Grendel, and set sail with some of Hygelac's men to help the unhappy Hrothgar. They all wore shirts of mail made curiously of interlaced iron rings, they had spears with iron heads, and helmets crowned with the figure of a boar made in iron; some of these shirts of chain-mail and helmets still exist. Coming into the great hall, built of timber plated with gold, the heroes explained their errand, and were well received. As Grendel cannot be harmed with stroke of steel, Beowulf will carry neither sword nor shield, but be slain by Grendel; or slay him with his hands. If Grendel eats him, Hrothgar will not need to give him due burial—burning his body, and burying the bones in a mound of earth; the custom is that of the unconverted German tribes. Hrothgar accepts the offer, the warriors sit at their ale (they had not much wine), and listen to the clear voice of the minstrel as he sings of old adventures. But Hunferth, a thane of Hrothgar, out of jealousy, taunts Beowulf with having been beaten in a swimming match that lasted for seven nights. Beowulf replies that Hunferth "has drunk too much beer": he himself swam better than his opponent for five nights, and slew nine sea-monsters with his sword; Hunferth, on they other hand, dare not face Grendel, and has been the destroyer of his own brothers. Yet Hunferth does not draw his sword, after these insults, which is strange; and the feast in hall goes on merrily.

Such scenes of boasting and quarrelling were, no doubt, common over the ale cups, but Waltheow, Queen of Hrothgar, "the golden-garlanded lady, the peace-weaver," enters the throng, and bears the cup of welcome to Beowulf, thanking God that she has found a helper to her heart's desire. Then she takes her place by her lord Hrothgar.

Night fell, Beowulf, committing himself "to the all-knowing God," takes off his armour and lays his head on the bolster—the word is the same in Anglo-Saxon. Grendel arrived, burst in the iron-bolted door, and laughed as he saw the sleeping men. One warrior he tore to pieces and devoured; but Beowulf, who had the strength of thirty, gripped the fiend, and the hall echoed with their wrestling and stamping up and down; the clamped benches were torn from the floor. Men smote at Grendel with swords, but the steel did not bite on his body. Beowulf tore his arm and shoulder clean away, and Grendel, flying to a haunted pool, described as a terrible place, dived down through the bloodstained water, and "hell caught hold of him".

In Heorot men now made merry, and the minstrel sang a new song of the fight.

After, the rejoicings, eight horses and princely armour are given to Beowulf. The minstrel sings of the hero Finn, with a pleasant description of the coming of spring after a long winter. The poem is not all about fiends and fighting; the descriptions of wild rocks and seas, and of happy nature, are beautiful. Then the gracious wife of Hrothgar bids Beowulf farewell, giving him a cup of gold. Other presents are offered, and on so happy a day, wine, not ale, is drunk in hall.

But Beowulf s adventure is not ended. That night he slept, not in hall, but in a separate room, and the mother of Grendel, a creature more terrible than himself, came to avenge her son, and slew a warrior.

Next day Hrothgar described to Beowulf the home of the fiends; they abode in dark wolf-haunted places, windy "nesses," or headlands, wild marshlands, where the hill-stream rushes through black shadows into a pool or perhaps sea-inlet, under the earth. The boughs of trees hang dense over the water, and at night a fire shines from it. Even the stag that ranges the moors, when he flies from the hounds to the lake, dies rather than venture there to take the water. This is a fine example of the descriptions of nature in the poem. Beowulf is not alarmed; we must all die at last, he says, but while we live we should try to win glory.

So they all rode to the haunted pool, Beowulf in his iron armour and helmet. The man who had insulted him now repents, and gives Beowulf the best of iron swords, named Hrunting; for famous swords in these days had names, like King Arthur's blade, Excalibur, or Roland's Durendal. "I will gain glory with Hrunting, or death shall take me," says Beowulf.3

Beowulf dived into the black water, the fiend strove to crush him, but his iron shirt of mail protected him, and she dragged him into the dreadful hall, her home, where the water did not enter. A strange light burned; Beowulf saw his hideous foe and smote at her with Hrunting; but the edge did not bite on her body. He threw away the useless sword, and they wrestled; they fell, Beowulf was under her, and she drew her short sword. She could not pierce his armour, but he saw and seized a huge sword, made for a giant in times long ago. With this he cut her down from the neck to the breast-bone, and his friends on shore saw the pool turn to blood; all but his own men had believed that Beowulf was dead, and had gone home.

Meanwhile the blade of the great sword melted away in the poisoned blood of his foe, and he swam to shore with the hilt, and with the heads of the two monsters, Grendel and his mother. With these he came gloriously to Hrothgar, who wondered at that sword hilt, covered with plates of gold, engraved with a poem in Runic letters; for the poet is fond of describing beautiful swords and armour.

Hrothgar now made a long speech about the goodness of God, which, of course, is a Christian addition to the poem. Beowulf gave back Hrunting to Hunferth, saying no word against the weapon though it had been of no service. Then they all departed in high honour, and their swift ship under sail cut the sea into foam as she flew homeward.

In time Hygelac and his son fell in battle, and Beowulf was for fifty years "the shepherd of the people". The last adventure of his old age was a fight with a fiery dragon which dwelt among the golden treasures in an ancient burial mound. In the tomb, says the poet, "there is no sound of swords or harness, no joy of the harp; the good hawk flits not through the hall; the swift horse does not beat the ground at the gate". Anglo-Saxon poetry is full of the melancholy of death, and of mournful thoughts awakened in presence of the ruined homes of men long dead.

In his last fight and his best fight, Beowulf, with a young prince to aid him, slew the Fire Drake, but he was mortally hurt by its poisonous flaming breath, and spoke his latest words: "Bid the brave men pile up a mound for me, high and far-seen on the headland, that seafaring men in time to come may call it Beowulf's mound". These are almost the very words of the ghost of the dead oarsman, Elpenor, to Odysseus in Homer.

So much has been said about the poem of "Beowulf," because it is by far the greatest poem that the Anglo-Saxons have left to us, and best shows how they lived. From "Beowulf" we learn that our ancestors lived almost exactly as did the ancestors of the Greeks, in Homer's poems, made perhaps 1600 years before the making of "Beowulf". Both these ancient Greeks and our own ancestors had, and expressed in poetry, the same love, of life and of the beauty of the world; and the same belief that, after death, hope was hopeless, and joy was ended. Both had the same sense of the mystery of existence, and, when they took time to think, had the same melancholy. Our poetry thus began like that of Greece, and, in the end, became the rival of the greatness of Greece.

We know from broken pieces of these old songs which have come down to us that the Anglo-Saxons, like their German neighbours on the Continent, had even better stories than "Beowulf". But they have been lost, and "Beowulf" was perhaps saved by the Christian parts of it, which must have been put in by some one who wrote it over again after the Anglo-Saxons were converted: the language is like what was spoken and written about 750. One beautiful poem is "The Ruined City". The minstrel, beholding the desolation of the towers and baths of some Roman town which the Anglo-Saxons have overthrown, laments its fall and the perishable state of human fortunes. Other poems may be briefly mentioned.