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Beowulf

  • Genre/Type Descriptor(s)
    Translation from Old English
     
    Language(s)
    English
  • Translator
    Alexander, Michael
  • Contained in
    The Earliest English Poems, 3rd ed., by Michael Alexander
    Location Details
    Pages 21-32
    City
    London
    Publisher
    Penguin
    Date
    1991
  • Relationships
    (Upstream) Reproduces in new context -> Beowulf, Alexander, Michael (1977)
    (Downstream) Revised and recontextualized as -> Passages from Beowulf, Alexander, Michael (2008)
  • Identifying Numbers
    ISBN: 0140445943
     
    Descriptive Notes

    Book is xxix + 148 pp. The 3rd edition of Alexander's collection of translations of several Old English poems or excerpts from poems, with some new additions. Besides the introductory material present in the 1st ed. (1966), the preface to the 2nd ed. (1977) is reproduced (xxvii) and a new preface to the 3rd added (xxviii). Commentary notes (112-33), appendices (134-38), and a glossary and index of proper names follow the book's main content (139-45). The list of further readings is updated (146-48). The same five segments of Beowulf as were in the 2nd ed. are included: "The Funeral of Scyld Scefing," "Beowulf's Voyage to Denmark," "The Mere," "'The Lay of the Last Survivor,'" and "Beowulf's Funeral."

    The first segment, "The Funeral of Scyld Scefing," begins:

    At the hour shaped for him Scyld departed,
    the many-strengthed moved into his Master's keeping.

    They carried him out to the current sea,
    his sworn arms-fellows, as he himself had asked
    while he wielded by his words, Ward of the Scyldings,
    beloved folk-founder; long had he ruled.

    A boat with a ringed neck rode in the haven,
    icy, out-eager, the aetheling's vessel,
    and there they laid out their lord and master,
    dealer of wound gold, in the waist of the ship,
    in majesty by the mast.
                                       A mound of treasures
    from far countries was fetched aboard her,
    and it is said that no boat was ever more bravely fitted out
    with the weapons of a warrior, war accoutrement,
    bills and byrnies; on his breast were set
    treasures and trappings to travel with him
    on his far faring into the flood's sway. (26)

    And the final segment, "Beowulf's Funeral," ends:

    Then the warriors rode around the barrow,
    twelve of them in all, athelings' sons.
    They recited a dirge to declare their grief,
    spoke of the man, mourned their King.
    They praised his manhood and the prowess of his hands,
    they raised his name; it is right a man
    should be lavish in honouring his lord and friend,
    should love him in his heart when the leading-forth
    from the house of flesh befalls him at last.

    This was the manner of the mourning of the men of the Geats,
    sharers in the feast, at the fall of their lord:
    They said that he was of all the world's kings
    the gentlest of men, and the most gracious,
    the kindest to his people, the keenest for fame. (32)

     
    Notes on Prior Documentation

    This revised edition not noted in MO2, where Alexander's 1st edition is MO2 1966(a).

     
    Authentication

    BAM.

  • Last Updated
    04/01/2022