ABSTRACT

The localities indicated lie in the south of England, in Wiltshire in Wessex. Further north on the Severn in Worcestershire there appear also a Grindles bec (Kemble 570, year 972) and a Grindles pytt (Kemble, app. vol. III, no. 59), as here Grendles mere, on which Leo [1842:5] and Grimm [1844:222] have remarked. But they overlooked the most important, the Beowan hamm, the Beow’s hill (cp. Leo 1842:32) near Grendel’s pond or marsh. Kemble was right to stress the coincidence. The assumption [Müllenhoff 1849b:419] that the historical Beowulf, son of Ecgþeo, only took the place of the divine hero Beowa and that it was of the latter that the fight with Grendel was at one time told, is completely confirmed by it. If one compares the description which Beowulf gives (lines 1357 ff., inhabited by Grendel and his mother with the details of the charter-the names of the localities in the immediate vicinity of the ‘Grendel’s mere’, ‘wood-’ or ‘forest-pond’, ‘rough hedge’, ‘the dark pool’ or ‘dark gate’ (geat) are comprehensible enough, up to ‘langan hangran’, which one also meets fairly often elsewhere, but which neither Kemble nor Dietrich know how to explain certainly-then one easily grasps the localisation and transplantation of the myth. In the old homeland of the Anglo-Saxons it was I expect local to the Fifeldor [the Eider river]; Anglo-Saxon fifel points to sea-monsters and water-creatures in the compounds fifelstream, fifelwæg El[ene] 237, and especially also in fifelcyn, Beow. 104.—Against the explanation which Kemble gave of the names Beowa or Beawa, and which I attempted in this journal (1849a:411 ff.) to justify from the context of the genealogy Sceaf Scild Beowa Tætwa, there does always remain the weighty objection that Anglo-Saxon knows no beowan or beawan like MHG bouwen next to buwen. I now think that one can also very well stay with

more the stories of Fiölnir and Froði discussed in 1849a before returning to Tætwa and to Beowulf.] As Beowulf, as bearer of the epic legend or of the myths of the fights with Breca, Grendel and the dragon, Beowa shows indeed no more of the character which the name ascribes to him. The myths belonged originally to the god alone, whose by-name in the sense given was Beowa, and no doubt once formed a connected series of legends with the myth of Sceaf, his coming, youth, heroic deeds and departure; they moved on however through the genealogy to the name Beowa, just as in the poem the myth of Sceaf’s coming has been transferred to Scild, where they linked themselves to history through the son of Ecgþeow, Beowulf the Geat. [Müllenhoff then considers more than twenty names in ON and MHG more or less resembling Beowulf, before deciding that nothing can be concluded about mythology from them.]