ABSTRACT

But again it is evident that the style of Beowulf is not that of a literary poet, but of a minstrel. Had it been a deliberate literary composition, it would have exhibited some traces of central design, and its joints and articulations would have been carefully marked; but the poem as it stands is a medley of heterogeneous materials, singularly wanting in plan and consistency. A literary ‘Demiurgus’ of Anglo Saxon descent, and separated by a long period from the events which he professed to be recording, would undoubtedly have tried to produce an appearance of order in his creation, by furnishing a clue to his historical allusions. But nothing can be more careless and casual than the references to the heroic exploits, the family relationships, and the tribal feuds of the persons and nations mentioned in the course of the story. This is just what might be expected in the style of oral minstrelsy; it is indeed an exact reproduction of the style of Homer. Exceedingly Homeric, too, are the stereotyped forms employed by the narrator to indicate stages in the action: the words prefatory to speeches, e.g. Beowulf maðelode, bearn Ecgþeowes, Beowulf spake, the son of Ecgtheow; [in Greek]: ‘To whom then Nestor replied, Gerenian charioteer’—formularies of description, such as, ‘The time flew on; the ship floated on the waves; the bark lay under the hill and the seamen with alacrity climbed on to her stern; the streams rolled; the water dashed against the sands’—the descriptions of objects by means of metaphors, as ‘hyrde folces,’ the shepherd of the people, poimena laón; ‘fealone flod,’ the fallow flood, atrugetos thalassa; ‘ban-loca,’ bone-locker, meaning flesh, just as Homer speaks of the ‘fence of teeth,’ herkos odontón-and the use of conventional epithets like ‘ellen-rof,’ confident in his

to Müllenhof’s dogma that it is a mere assemblage of unconnected lays, each of which may be regarded as having once formed a separate whole. The unity of the work lies in the deeds and character of Beowulf; and this central conception shows every sign of having proceeded from the mind of a single poet, though it was doubtless built by him out of materials previously existing. That he was a Christian and sang before a Christian audience is evident, but I do not think we need conclude with Mr Arnold that he was an ecclesiastic. It seems to me more reasonable to suppose him a scôp of the roving kind described in The Traveller [i.e. Widsith] who was accustomed to wander from court to court, entertaining the lords who supported him with the legends of ancestors common to the race. On this hypothesis there would be no difficulty in understanding why the exploits of Danes and Swedes should have been recited in the court of an Anglo-Saxon king. Whether the poem was altered or added to after it was reduced to writing is a question of comparatively trifling importance.