ABSTRACT

Now the background of the Breca-episode is unquestionably a mythic one (cp. Müllenhoff 1849:420 ff.), and the meaning of the myth is the victorious battle-for the swimming contest there portrayed between Beowulf and Breca would least of all for the original transmitters of the legend allow one to infer an undertaking stemming from a hostile intention, a swimming-fight-of the newly beginning, gentle season of the year, giving new life to farming and seafaring, with the wild raging of the still stirred-up wintry sea. The name Breca fits this mythological context well, i.e., he who brings it about that the waves break on the cliffs and rocks, or the personification of the surging, stirred-up sea itself, as does the name of the people ruled by Breca, the Brondings, i.e., the sons of the sea-surge [ = German Brand]; but not the name of Breca’s father [i.e. Beanstan].