Book is 352 pp. + plates; b/w illus. The Beowulf story follows a very brief introduction and contains translation extracts by Conybeare, "Metcalfe" (see below), C. F. Keary, and Longfellow, as well as one unattributed verse rendering of a few lines that may be Guerber's own (12). The book is illustrated with reproductions of paintings by various artists; the Beowulf chapter contains one illustration, "Funeral of a Northern Chief" by F. Cormon (facing p. 18).

The two translation extracts ascribed by Guerber to "Metcalfe" are misattributed, being actually by Thomas Wright, from Wright's Biographia Britannia Literaria (1842). Guerber took them from Frederick Metcalfe, The Englishman and the Scandinavian: Or, a Comparison of Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse Literature (London: Trübner and Co., 1880), pp. 116 and 117, where Metcalfe reproduces Wright's lines without credit. The translation extract by C. F. Keary is from his article "The Mythology of the Eddas: How Far of True Teutonic Origin," Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature 12 (1882): 517-90, at 582.

The retelling begins:

Hrothgar (the modern Roger), King of Denmark, was a descendant of Odin, being the third monarch of the celebrated dynasty of the Skioldungs. They proudly traced their ancestry to Skeaf, or Skiold, Odin's son, who mysteriously drifted to their shores. He was then but an infant, and lay in the middle of a boat, on a sheaf of ripe wheat, surrounded by priceless weapons and jewels. As the people were seeking for a ruler, they immediately recognized the hand of Odin in this mysterious advent, proclaimed the child king, and obeyed him loyally as long as he lived. When he felt death draw near, Skeaf, or Skiold, ordered a vessel to be prepared, lay down in the midst on a sheaf of grain or on a funeral pyre, and drifted out into the wide ocean, disappearing as mysteriously as he had come. (9-10)

And ends:

The mighty treasure was all brought forth to the light of day, and the followers, seeing that all danger was over, crowded round their dying chief. He addressed them affectionately, and, after recapitulating the main events of his career, expressed a desire to be buried in a mighty mound on a projecting headland, which could be seen far out at sea, and would be called by his name.

                                     "'And now,
Short while I tarry here—when I am gone,
Bid them upon yon headland's summit rear
A lofty mound, by Rona's seagirt cliff;
So shall my people hold to after times
Their chieftain's memory, and the mariners
That drive afar to sea, oft as they pass,
Shall point to Beowulf's tomb.'"
                         Beowulf (Conybeare's tr.).

These directions were all piously carried out by a mourning people, who decked his mound with the gold he had won, and erected above it a Bauta, or memorial stone, to show how dearly they had loved their brave king Beowulf, who had died to save them from the fury of the dragon. (21; double sets of quotation marks and attribution of verse extract to Conybeare as in orig.)

[unfinished business--need to create relationships for the translation excerpts from Metcalfe and Keary, who don't have database entries yet, parallel to those given for Conybeare and Longfellow.]

Not in Fry, MO1, GR, or MO2.

BAM, from digital facsimile of a copy at Harvard University, via Hathitrust.org.