ABSTRACT

I would have wished that this full name-form [i.e. Beowulf] had been valuable enough to the worthy editor of the Beowulf for him to give it in place of the abbreviated one and to begin his explanation from there. Beawa, Beaw, will find its meaning in the Old Saxon beo, bewod (messis) [‘harvest’], which the Anglo-Saxon dialect does not know at all, and in this way a god of the harvest, of fertility and fullness is brought to light. It seems much safer to me to stay with Beowulf; in him too something divine is to be recognised. Already thirteen years ago [see item 21 above] I translated this name correctly as Bee-wolf. Bee-wolf is nothing other than the woodpecker, because all woodpeckers follow bees, and some woodpecker species are called so even today. Besides picus, the Romans called it apiastra, the Greeks merops [voice-possessing] or aerops [air-voiced] or druokolaptes [oak-chiseller]; it is a brave bird, with fine bright plumage. I touch a little on the woodpecker-cult in the Mythology p. 388 [there is no mention of Beowulf at that point]. Among the old Saxons there must have been legends of the holiness of this bird, which attached themselves to a hero or were derived from a hero who bore its name. Just as the Roman Picus was a son of Saturn, just as (next to the she-wolf, that is) he feeds Remus and Romulus, the sons of Mars, in the forest [cites several Slavic glosses], so long-lost Saxon traditions could celebrate a Beowulf and bring him into one race with Woden. Beowine (bee-friend) designates the bird that likes to eat bees, so the same as Beowulf, with a different expression. Indeed the uncompounded Beowa seems to express the same as the Latin apiaster, bee-eater. In this way the three name-forms Beowa, Beowine, Beowulf could be brought into harmony and given a more living meaning, which I will confirm later on through one circumstance. We can hardly hope for the most welcome confirmation through

and honoured a goddess Melletele.