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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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81 CHAPTER XXIV The Scop Continuing his recollection of Beowulf’s feats of old, chants how Beowulf, while still a young king, had, like Heardred, befriended Eadgils, son of Ohthere and rebel nephew of Onela, and avenged Heardred’s death. And now the time had come for what to be Beowulf’s last feat of all. The slave who had found the cup was forced to show the way to the Dragon’s cave down near the bleak ocean-cliffs. And Beowulf, with his eleven companions around him, sat down and talked, remembering old times. And he remembered particularly the fate of Hygelac’s brother, Herebeald, accidentally shot by his other brother, Haethcyn, and the grief of the father, Hrethel, who had thus lost one son and who might not avenge his death on the slayer or even take blood-money from the slayer because the slayer was his son too. And as Beowulf thought of Hrethel’s plight and grief, he imagined how sad it would be for an old king to see his son hanged for murder. Beowulf’s speech is well in accord in mood with his fore-bodings of his own impending fate; but does it not seem odd he should have been speaking at such length on matters so far from the business awaiting him? You and I feel that the Scop is forgetting the Dragon, and making Beowulf forget the Dragon; and because we haven’t forgotten him, we chide the Scop or don’t listen very attentively. In after-days did Beowulf bethink him to requite The downfall of Heardred; and that wretched Wight, Eadgils, he befriended; Ohthere’s son did he Aid with a folk-band across the broad sea, With warriors and weapons; and Eadgils then was bold To slay the King in payment for paths of exile cold. So the son of Ecgtheow had ‘scaped every harm Of strife and stern encounter, by works of sturdy arm, Until the day ‘t was his at last to battle with the Worm. He went with his eleven, wroth exceedingly, He, the King of Geatmen, the Fire-Drake to see. He’d heard for why had risen this feud, this deadly hap; The treasure-cup its finder’s hand had given into his lap; And he whose luckless finding that warfare all began Was, amid that company, the thirteenth man. A captive, a craven, ‘t was his in cringing sorrow Thence to lead the way along unto the moor and barrow; Against his will he footed until the mound he found, The one and only earth-hall, the cavern under ground, Near the ocean billows, near the surges’ sound. |
