ABSTRACT
Their eponym [i.e, of the Hocings, or Chauci] is Hoce, who in Beowulf is named as the father of Hildburg, the wife of Finn. Perhaps she had already been given to the latter as recompense for old enmity. The prince of the Hocings who is named in our poem [i.e. Widsith], Hnæf, who is given out falsely in Beowulf as a Dane, falls in battle against Finn. Yet this latter is defeated by Hengest, a Hunlafing? [in a note rejects Ettmüller’s equation of Jutes and ‘Eoten’, and assertion that Hengest is a Jute] (the fragment of the ‘Battle of Finnsburg’ describes this fight); he has to swear heavy oaths, and Hildeburg has to sacrifice her own son as recompense on the pyre of the slain Hnæf (her brother?): the poor woman sees her entire race destroyed. But Hengest’s arrogance compels Finn to cunning and new breach of faith; he kills him. Then the Hunlafings come, no doubt Hengest’s relatives, Gudhlaf and Oslaf, kill Finn, destroy the citadel (Finnesheim), plunder and take away loot and treasures, and the ‘dark’ woman Hildburg, filled with grief, goes with them into misery. If this Oslaf has been regarded rightly by us earlier on as that Oswine, the prince of the Eowen, then the homeland of the Hunlafing race has been found; and we would see in this for the most part perished heroic poetry a tedious strife full of alternations between on the one side the Frisians proper, and on the other the Chauci and Eowen, the Hocings and Hunlafings; who are now just called North-and EastFrisians.
