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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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36 CHAPTER XIII The Scop chants how chiefs and thanes from round about rode to Heorot, and how they then followed on their horses the bloody trail of Grendel to the mere of the Nicors, the Water Monsters, and how they galloped back, for another look at Grendel’s paw, sometimes racing for sheer joy and sometimes listening to the ballads sung by one of their number along the road. Our Scop tells us that one song was made up then and there, in praise of Beowulf’s quest; and this sets us to wondering whether Beowulf was with the party or whether, wearied by his watch and his work in the night, he had remained at the Burg or at Heorot to sleep a sound sleep. Our Scop then gives us the substance of another ballad sung by the Scop in the story. This was about another hero, Sigemund, who had slain a Dragon and rifled its gold-hoard (even as Beowulf was himself to slay a Dragon sometime and rifle its hoard). And this ballad reminds our Scop of an old Danish King, Heremod (before the coming of Scyld and Hrothgar’s line), who is mentioned several times in the poem for his cruelty and feuds, especially in contrast to such fine, generous aethelings as Sigemund and Beowulf. But if we don’t understand the allusions to such folk-characters as Sigemund and Heremod, never mind; for some wiser heads today don’t altogether understand them either, though those who used to listen in the old days surely understood them and liked them. For bygone men knew many legends well that even the wisest men of today, by the hardest study of old books in Anglo-Saxon, in Old Icelandic, or in Mediaeval Latin, can often only partly puzzle out. Perhaps we will do better to ask the Scop to omit such digressions and to tell us only about Beowulf himself. Or if he won’t omit them, we have a right not to pay any attention till he comes back to the main story. Then there was at morning -so I’ve heard the tale Round about the gift-hall many a man-of-mail. Thither fared the folk-chiefs, near and far asunder, All along the wide-ways, for to view the wonder, The traces of the loathed Thing. Seemed his passing-out Not a grievous sorrow to any thereabout, Any who were viewing now the craven’s trail-How he, wearyearted, beaten in the bout, Death-doomed and routed, off away from here Made for very life his tracks to the Nicors’ mere. Yonder were the waters weltering with blood; Mingled all with hot gore, surged the gruesome flood; With battle-spatter rolled the |
