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7 the end of one line and the beginning of the next. So, though my line has only seven beats on the words, it really has eight beats as music, like the AngloSaxon, if one counts, as one should, the end- pause, or rest. (The pause in the middle is shorter, the time being kept by the light beat plus the short pause.) But how is it that this old poem in a dead language has been preserved for us, so that I or any other man could read it and translate? The Beowulf-stories were originally handed down by word of mouth, in the same way as the stories, the legends and myths, of the American Indians. I think myself that the poet who wove those stories together himself wrote out his poem; even though he delivered it from memory, chanting it to his harp. Anyway, some one wrote it down and others afterwards copied it. They probably copied it in the monasteries, for the monks were about the only men who were handy with the pen, and they probably made the copies for pay “to fill orders” from wealthy burghers or noblemen who could afford the luxury of books, so long before the days of printing. One copy only has come down to us. It is on parchment, and, from the kind of handwriting and from the kind of spelling, scholars judge it must have been made about the year 1000- that is, about one hundred years after the death of King Alfred, or two hundred and fifty years after the poem itself was composed. It was discovered over two hundred years ago, and is now preserved in the British Museum at London. Two scribes made it. The first wrote in a finer, the second in a much coarser hand. And the second took up the task just before the of a sentence (and of a verse). This makes me wonder if the first scribe suddenly went blind or took sick or died right there at his desk. Otherwise, we would have to believe the scribes worked in a very mechanical way, with even less interest in the subject matter than my stenographer who typed this translation of mine for the printer. And the ink is faded, and the parchment is charred by the heat from a fire in an old library where it used to be kept. So it’s not always easy to make out the words. Thus it is that many scholars of England, America, Germany, and the Scandinavian countries, with microscope and pen and paper and grammar and dictionary, have studied it and copied it, filling in by shrewd guesses missing letters or words, and sometimes even changing letters, when by the change they thought they could improve the sense. And they have published their revised and corrected texts with many explanatory notes; and their difficult labors have given us what we call “editions of Beowulf.” There are many, I say. The last edition is that of Professor F. Klaeber at the University of Minnesota, but it was published (Heath and Co.) only after my version was |
