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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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61 CHAPTER XXIV THE Scop Beowulf’s account to Hrothgar of the deep-sea fight, and how Beowulf presented him with the hilt of the deep-sea sword; how Hrothgar gazed on that hilt whereon was graven in runic staves the Bible story of the flood (for our Anglo-Saxon forefathers combined in their imagination stories of their old heathen days with Christian stories told by Monks and Abbots). And the Scop chants the beginning of Hrothgar’s long speech to Beowulf, so full of an old man’s wisdom and advice, in which Hrothgar to his sound precepts added the profitable example of the evil career and evil end of a former Danish King, Heremod, who reigned cruelly before the coming of Scyld. Beowulf made his speech then, son of Ecgtheow, he: “Lo, thou Son of Halfdane, with joy we’ve brought to thee, As token of glory, this spoil thou here dost see, O Sovran of the Scyldings. I barely ‘scaped with life; Unsoftly did I risk the work in under-water strife; Straight had the battle ended, had God not been my shield, For Hrunting in the combat I might in no wise wield, Though doughty be that weapon. But he, mankind’s Defender, Gave me upon the wall to see, hanging in its splendor, A huge sword of old times. (Oft and oft withal The Father guides the friendless.) I drew that sword from wall, Then slew I at the onset, when my chance was good, The Wardens of that under-house. But so sprang the blood, The hottest gore of slaughter, that the fretted blade, The battle-bill, was burnt all. From my foes I made, Bearing thence the hilt away. I wreaked the crimes of hell, The death-fall of Danishmen, as was fit and well. I promise thee in Heorot a sleep care-free, With band of thy retainers, each who follows thee, Of the older, of the younger; and ever from that quarter, O Sovran of the Scyldings, release from dread of slaughter For these here, thy jarlmen, as erst ‘t was thine to dree.” Then was that hilt, the golden, the giants’ work of yore, Giv’n to hand of the old King, the Battle-Leader hoar; After the fall of devils, to Hrothgar’s keep it fellThis work of wonder-smithmen; yea, when this Heart-of-Hell, God’s Foeman, murder-guilty, this world of ours gave o’er (And eke this Grendel’s Mother), it passed into the power Of him, the best of World-Kings of all between the seas Who e’er on Scandia’s island dealt men their golden fees. Hrothgar made his speech then; on hilt he cast his eyes, Relic of the olden time, whereon was writ the rise Of that far-off warfare, when o’erwhelmed the flood And the ocean’s outpour once the giants’ brood: |
