Читать книгу The Pageant of English Literature - Sir Edward Parrott - Страница 16
BEOWULF.
Оглавление“Lo! we have heard of the glory of the Spear Danes' warrior-kings in days of yore—how the princes did valorous deeds!”—Opening Lines of “Beowulf.”
Rome is far distant; the lovely landscapes of Italy, the genial warmth and the pure azure sky of that favoured land have disappeared, and another and far different scene presents itself. We are in the cold, gray north, on the shores of the Baltic Sea, in the original home of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes who are shortly to begin those settlements in Britain which in the course of time will transform the larger part of the island into England. It is a land of marsh and waste, with immense forests and a poverty-stricken soil. Mists hover above it; the sky is dun, and the north wind swirls down in angry shrieks and howls along the low level of the land. Sluggish streams crawl through it; the black sea, like a beast of prey, gnaws incessantly at it; gannets scream and sea-mews cry. Fog, rain, hoar-frost, and tempest succeed each other.
The Coliseum. (From the picture by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, R.A., O.M. By permission of the Berlin Photographic Co.) To List
It is a joyless land, and the inhabitants reap a hard and precarious livelihood from marshy meadow and boisterous sea. They are brawny and ruthless, but hidden beneath their stern, hard exteriors are nobler virtues than were ever known to the Roman world. They “scorn delights and live laborious days;” they love strife for strife's sake; they are fiercely independent, sombre and tenacious, gloomy in their dreams and fancies, inspired in their energy and mad in their rage. Yet they are frank and simple in their lives, and their word is their bond; home is their empire; the wife is sacred; they marry but one woman, and keep faith with her.
Gory combats and wild bufferings with the stormy sea are their delight; to them life is a warfare, and heroic death a boon to be craved. When a peaceful death seems imminent, they will wound themselves with knife or spear, throw themselves from the cliffs, or set sail in a little boat, and wrestle in their last moments with wind and wave. Death has no terrors; Christianity, preaching forgiveness of enemies and the abandonment of vengeance, is unknown to them. They are pagans with the pagan creed—“An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,” “The spoils to the victor,” and “Woe to the vanquished.”
Fierce, warlike, and bloodthirsty is their religion. Their gods are many. Tiu is the god of war; Wodin, the wise father of victory, sits enthroned above them all; Thor is the thunder-god, and Freya, the goddess of love—names still retained amongst us as those of the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth days of the week. Ogres and giants dwell beneath the ground, forging magic weapons and fashioning charmed rings; every wood, meadow, and well has its guardian elf. Their heaven is Valhalla, the hall of Wodin, which cowards may never enter. A sure passport to its fierce joys is to die gloriously “facing fearful odds.” In Valhalla the blessed ones cleave helmets and hack limbs every day, and when evening comes their wounds are magically healed as they sit feasting on a great boar whose flesh never grows less, and quaffing inexhaustible mead from the skulls of their enemies.
But Valhalla itself will pass away, and another heaven will receive them. This, too, will disappear. All passes, nothing is permanent. Monsters will devour the sun and moon, tear up mountains and trees, and blot the stars out of heaven until one wide shoreless sea shall cover the whole wide earth. Then, after a terrible fight, a huge wolf will devour the gods, but the jaws of the destroyer will be torn asunder; everything will perish and dissolve into utter nothingness.
Now let us witness a familiar scene in this stern, gloomy land. It is nightfall. Tall, blue-eyed, reddish-haired thanes are met in a great wooden hall dimly lighted with flickering torches. The evening meal is over, and the guests, seated on their stools, quench their heroic thirst with copious draughts of ale. Now the scop, the smith of song, steps forward, seats himself before the silent revellers, and cries Hwaet! to arrest their attention. He strikes his harp, “unlocks the word-hoard,” and begins the Iliad and Odyssey of the English—the great romance, history, and epic of Beowulf, a poem of 3,182 lines, which is preserved for us practically complete in a manuscript of the tenth century, now in the British Museum. Probably it was first carved on tablets of beech or ash in those early Germanic characters which are known as runes, and were believed by the rude, unlettered warriors of the age to be magical signs by which the dead might be raised, the sick healed, rain or thunder called down, and life preserved or destroyed.
It is from the song now being sung that the manners and sentiments of the early English may best be gleaned. What does this fierce old epic tell us? Beowulf was a hero of the Geats, a knight-errant before the days of chivalry. He “rowed upon the sea, his naked sword hard in his hand, amidst the fierce waves and coldest of storms, and the rage of winter hurtled over the waves of the deep.” He slew nine sea-monsters after a terrible fight, and the fame of his god-like courage spread far and wide. News reached him of the scourge which afflicted Hrothgar, king of the North Danes, who had built a splendid hall, called Heorot, for the lodging and entertainment of his great retinue. But while the warriors slept after a feast a monster named Grendel, “a mighty haunter of the marshes,” entered the hall, and devoured thirty of them. Again and again for twelve years Grendel came and went until the hall was shunned and deserted.
Then, with fourteen companions, appeared Beowulf, the bravest and strongest of living men, and heard the dismal story from Hrothgar's own lips. The hero offered to lie in the hall that night and grapple with the fiend without the aid of a sword or shield, for he “learned also that the wretch for his cursed hide recked not of weapons.” One condition Beowulf made with Hrothgar. If death should overtake him, his corpse should be borne forth and buried beneath a mound, and the best of the war shrouds that guarded his breast should be sent to Hygelac, his chief.
Beowulf, “trusting in his proud strength,” lay with his companions in the hall awaiting the coming of the monster. With the mists of night came Grendel. He burst the strong iron bands of the door, seized a sleeping warrior, “tore him unawares, bit his body, drank the blood from the veins, and swallowed him with continual tearings.” Then Beowulf seized the monster in turn.
“The lordly hall thundered, the ale was spilled... both were enraged; savage and strong warders; the house resounded, then was it a great wonder that the wine-hall withstood the beasts of war, that it fell not upon the earth, the fair palace; but it was thus fast.... The noise arose, startling enough; a fearful terror fell on the North Danes, on each of those who from the wall heard the outcry....
“The foul wretch awaited the mortal wound; a mighty gash was seen upon his shoulder; the sinews sprang asunder; the joinings of the bones burst; success in war was given to Beowulf. Thence must Grendel fly, sick unto death, among the refuges of the fens, to seek his joyless dwelling. He all the better knew that the end of his life, the number of his days, was gone by.”
Grendel had left behind him his “hand, arm, and shoulder,” and in the lake of Nicors, where he was driven, “the rough wave was boiling with blood, the foul spring of waves all mingled, hot with poison, bubbling with warlike gore.” Still remained a female monster, Grendel's mother, who “was doomed to inhabit the terror of waters, the cold streams.” She came by night and devoured the king's best friend, whereat there was great lamentation and renewed terror. Again Beowulf came to the rescue.
He and his friends mounted their horses, and rode across the wild moor and along narrow, lonely paths until they reached the monster's den, near windy promontories, where a mountain stream rushed downward under the darkness of the hills, a flood beneath the earth. “There may one by night behold a marvel, fire upon flood.” ... Strange dragons and serpents swam there; “from time to time the horn sang a dirge, a terrible song.”
Beowulf donned his armour, and taking a magic sword in his hand, plunged into the wave, descended deep, passing monsters who tore his coat of mail, until he came to the ogress, who seized him in her grasp and bore him off to her dwelling. A pale gleam shone brightly, and Beowulf saw before him—
“The she-wolf of the abyss, the mighty sea-woman; he gave the war-onset with his battle-bill; he held not back the swing of the sword, so that on her head the ring-mail sang aloud a greedy war-song.... The beam of war would not bite. Then he caught Grendel's mother by the shoulder; twisted the man-slayer [Pg 54]that she bent upon the floor.... She drew her knife, broad, brown-edged, and tried to pierce the twisted breast-net which protected his life....
“Then saw he among the weapons a bill fortunate with victory, an old gigantic sword, doughty of edge, ready for use, a work of giants. He seized the belted hilt, the warrior of the Scyldings, fierce and savage whirled the ring-mail; despairing of life, he struck furiously, so that it grappled hard with her about her neck; it broke the bone-rings, the bill passed through all the doomed body; she sank upon the floor; the sword was bloody, the man rejoiced in his deed; the beam shone, light stood within, even as from heaven mildly shines the lamp of the firmament.”
Then he saw Grendel dead in a corner, and cut off the monstrous head. Taking it by the hair, he left the hall, plunged again into the water, and reached the shore. Four of his companions with difficulty raised the huge head and bore it in triumph to Hrothgar.
This was the second labour of Beowulf, and the remainder of his story is cast in the same mould. Plenteously rewarded, he returned to his own land, to be joyfully welcomed and extolled by his king. In after-days he succeeded to the throne, and reigned fifty years in peace and honour. Then a winged, smoke-breathing dragon, who had been robbed of treasure, wasted the land with “waves of fire.”
The old hero, his courage undaunted, yet sad at heart “because he was not fated to abide the end,” approached the dragon's lair alone. The beast attacked him, but his sword would not bite. A solitary companion passed through the poisonous smoke of the beast's nostrils and came to his succour. In spite of the hero's exhortations, the rest fled with loud cries. As the dragon darted forward again Beowulf smote it on the head, but his brand broke in his hand, and its poisoned fangs met in his neck. The wound was mortal, and Beowulf, well knowing his end was nigh, commanded that the treasure should be brought from the dragon's lair. Then, presenting his faithful companion with his armour and necklace, he bade him burn his body on a headland and raise a burial mound over his remains:—
“Which may for my folk, for remembering of me,
Lift its head high on the Hrones-ness;
That sea-sailing men, soon in days to be,
Call it 'Beowulf's Barrow,' who, their barks afoam,
From afar are driving o'er the ocean mists.”
Such in brief outline is the story which the scop sang in the rude alliterative verse of the early English. When these grim, fierce pagans crossed the North Sea to the “promised land” of fair and plenteous Britain, and with sword and battle-axe dispossessed the Celtic inhabitants, Beowulf was sung by transplanted minstrels in many a rude hall on the Northumberland moors. In due time it was written down, and thus rescued from oblivion.
The work as we possess it to-day contains Christian references; but these were in all probability inserted in later days, when the English had changed their faith. The Christian elements in Beowulf plainly testify to the wondrous hold which this stark, grim poem had on the affections of the English even when the mild influences of a new religion were softening and sweetening the national character. To this day their descendants possess something of the virtues of Beowulf: the same steadfastness of purpose; the same love of combat, real or mimic; the same fearlessness in the face of danger; the same readiness to play the champion's part; the same passionate love of the sea.
Beowulf and two or three fragments of lay and religious poetry constitute all the literature that has come down to us from the pre-Christian singers of early England. Widsith, one of these fragmentary poems, is specially interesting, because it seems to commemorate the memory of a far-travelled minstrel who in the fourth century visited the court of the Gothic king Eormenric. The last verses of the poem have thus been rendered:—
“So wandering on
the world about,
Gleemen do roam
through many lands;
They say their needs,
they spake their thanks,
Sure, south or north,
some one to meet,
Of songs to judge
and gifts not grudge.”
Scops and minstrels were very numerous in these early days, and no doubt a great body of popular poetry existed. It died with those who gave it birth, and we now seek it in vain.
Hrothgar and his Warriors. To List
