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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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56 CHAPTER XXII The Scop chants Beowulf’s parting speech to Hrothgar, in which Beowulf now acknowledges gratefully Hrothgar’s adoption of him as son and repays Unferth’s generosity for the loan of Hrunting by willing Unferth his own sword, should he not return alive from battle with Grendel’s Dam. The Scop chants Beowulf’s descent under the sea and the perilous beginning of the fight, and how Beowulf soon found himself in a deep-sea hall where no water was; how Hrunting failed him at the stroke, and how Beowulf, relying again on sheer strength, stumbled and fell so that the Mere- Woman squatted upon him and drew her dirk. The Scop chants that Beowulf’s stout armor and God’s good help saved him awhile. Did they save him to the end? Beowulf made his speech then, bairn of Ecgtheow, he: “Bethink thee now, thou mighty son of Halfdane’s name, Gold- Friend of house-carls, Sovran wise and free, Bethink thee, now I’m girt for quest, what we twain spake before: If for thy need, O Hrothgar, my life I should give o’er, That thou to me wouldst ever be, when I’m no longer here, Still in the place of a father; every trusty fere, Each of these my kin-thanes, do thou as guardian tend, If once the battle take me; and likewise, O my Friend, These treasures that thou gavest me unto my Master send. Then Hyglac, son of Hrethel, may ken from all this gold, Aye, see, when he beholdeth these giftings rich and old, That I indeed had found me a Treasure-Giver bright, And had my joy in him and his so long as still I might. And let thou, too, thy Unferth, that far-famed soul, Have the olden heirloom, the sword with wavy scroll, Hard of edge and jewelled. In Hrunting will I trust To work my doom of glory-or I die the death I must.” After these his words the Geat, Beowulf, in pride Hastened in his valor. No answer would he bide. The billows took the Battle-Man. ‘T was a while of the day Ere he arrived the sea-floor where the Monster lay. And soon this grim and greedy She-Thing ravin-fierce, That held the stretches of the floods a hundred half-years, Found that there some one of men from up above had sought The dwelling-place of eldritch-wights. Against him then she caught, With grisly claws she gripped him. His warrior-body sound Thereby no whit she scathed. His mail did shield him round So that reach she might not, with loathly fingers stark, Athrough his army-corslet, his linked battle-sark. |
