This poem, printed in vol. 8 of Clement Shorter, ed., The Works of George Borrow, is presented as part of a collection Shorter titled The Songs of Scandinavia, and Other Poems and Ballads, drawn from Borrow's unpublished manuscripts. This poem of 64 lines, in 8-line stanzas rhyming abcbdefe, is a partial translation of the second of two prefatory poems that N. F. S. Grundtvig had included in his 1820 Bjowulfs Drape, one in Danish and the other in Old English. Borrow translated portions of both prefatory poems into English, and both are given, but not identified, by Shorter, who did not know their source in Bjowulfs Drape or their authorship by Grundtvig.

The second of Grundtvig's 1820 prefatory poems is a collage of lines, phrases, and words drawn almost entirely from the Old English of Beowulf (see separate record for Bjowulfs Drape). Borrow's translation of it, therefore, is de facto a translation indirectly from Beowulf, although Borrow may not have been fully aware of this at the time he made it (see Scholarship, below).

Borrow's rendering, titled by Shorter "In Praise of Bülow," begins:

Many like to Bülow,
     But one great and kind,
Sprung from race of Athelings,
     Who doth bear in mind
Certain words of Beowulf
     Unto death when nigh,
Beowulf son of Egtheow,
     Chieftain proud and high:

"None should be forgetful
     Life must have its close …["] (193)

And ends:

Of their valiant fathers,
     Of their ancestry,
Who, whilst favouring letters
     With a hand so free,
Roam'd undaunted over
     Learning's mighty sea,
There was no one ever
     More belov'd than he. (195)

• Britt Mize, "George Borrow’s English Translations from Grundtvig’s Prefatory Poems to Bjowulfs Drape," Grundtvig-Studier (forthcoming).

Not in Fry, GR, MO1, or MO2.

BAM.