When, turning from the inland, the men looked towards the sea, they saw that the coast was broken into short bays and headlands, down to which the moor ran from the hills. Between each headland there was a narrow valley, hollowed out by descending streams, and each stream finally fell over a ledge of rock into the head of a bay. The slopes rising into the nesses were "steep and stony," and the trees that grew along the bed of the streams were rough and blasted by the sea salt and the wind-"a joyless wood." And among these fiords, at the head of a cavernous sea-gorge, there was close to Heorot a deadly place which they were afterwards to do with, of which a clear description is given in the text. It is the dwellingplace of Grendel and his dam-"the mickle mark-steppers who hold the moors" - the sea-end of a "hidden land, wolfhaunted, full of dangerous morasses." This was the scene they saw, but it was scarcely new to the men, for they daily looked on a similar landscape in their own land. What they had now to do was to reach Heorot, and they took the "path paved with stones" which led straight from the low ridge to the "glittering hall." As they walked Beamed the battle byrnie. Hard and riveted by hand, broadly-shapen shields, Beowulf, 1. 321. Outside the hall a warrior on guard asks them of their ancestry and their coming. 1 This is otherwise translated "The bright ringed-iron rang on their warshirts," that is, the iron rings of which the byrnie was made, rattled as they moved; but we have had this before, and though repetition is frequent in Anglo-Saxon poetry we need not select a repetition when the words may bear another meaning. Beowulf tells his tale, and Wulfgar, "who knew the usage of the court," bids them wait without while he brings their errand to Hrothgar. Hrothgar sits on the high seat in the hall with his earls around him, old and bald-headed, and declares (and it is characteristic of the great noble throughout this tale to know the lineage of all who are also noble) that he knew Beowulf's father and mother, and Beowulf himself when he was a boy. He knew also his war deeds, and that he has the strength of thirty men in his grip. Wulfgar summons the strangers in, "the king," he says, "knows their kinship, but they must go into the hall armed only with helm and swords and war-shirts; their shields and spears must be left outside;" such was the custom of the court. They left the benches then that were set against the outside of the hall on either side of the door, and entered. Beowulf saw before him a hall,' differing somewhat in arrangement from that of his lord Hygelac. At home among the Geats there was no dais. But here, as in the later Icelandic halls, Beowulf saw Hrothgar enthroned on a high seat at the east end of the hall. This seat is sacred. It has a supernatural quality. Grendel, the fiend, cannot approach it (line 926). His queen, Wealhtheow, sat with him, and his daughter Freaware, and their women. At the foot of the king's "gift stool," as his seat is called, sat Hunferth the speaker, perhaps the jester, the boon companion of the king. The other tables ran at right angles to the dais nearly the whole length of the hall, and were covered with boar's flesh and venison and cups of ale and mead. On these benches sat the thegns of Hrothgar, and among them his sons, between whom Beowulf is afterwards seated. In the midst, on the many-coloured floor, paved perhaps with variegated stones, were the long hearths in which the fires were piled, and in the roof were openings through which the smoke escaped. The walls and supporting shafts were ornamented with gilding and walrus bone and were hung with shields and spears, and with tapestries. Gold-varied gleamed Woven webs on the walls. Beowulf, 1. 994. 1 Both halls are of a simple construction in comparison with the elaborate and much later Icelandic hall, such as we find in the Njal Saga. In Heorot the beds are laid with their heads against the main wall, and the place they occupy is the place of the tables and benches. In a great Icelandic hall the beds are in the aisles on either side of the body of the hall, but here the hall is without aisles. 2 Unferth is perhaps the best spelling of the name. He is the bitter-tongued, the envious, the fierce-tempered in his cups. His position and character resemble closely those of Conan in the Finn Legend. This was the aspect of the hall within, and the customs that prevailed in it are now presented to us. When Beowulf had told of his wish to fight with Grendel, and Hrothgar had taken his offer with joy, seats are found for him and his companions, and the song and feast begin again. A thegn bore round the enchased ale-cup and poured out the pure drink. Danes and Geats, a goodly company, sat together. And the Scôp, from time to time Chanted clear in Heorot. There was cheer of heroes. Beowulf, 1. 496. When the song was over, Hunferth, drunk and jealous, challenges Beowulf concerning a swimming match he had with Breca, his rival. Hunferth declares that Beowulf was beaten. The answer is triumphant and laughter fills the hall. Then rose Wealhtheow, the queen, in her golden ornaments, and greeted the guests. But first she brought the full cup to her husband and bade him be blithe at the beer-drinking; and the victory-famed king took the cup with joy. Then the great queen, peace-bringer to nations, and followed by Freaware her daughter, went round the hall to each of the warriors, gave a bracelet now to one, now to another, and last of all bore the cup to Beowulf and greeted him, and the fierce hero took the cup from her hands and said "This was my thought when I shipped on the sea; sat down in my boat with a band of my men, that I would fully work out the will of your folk, or fall on the field of slaughter, fast in the grips of the foe. Earl-like will I fulfil the daring deed, or abide my end-day in this mead-hall." The proud words pleased the queen, and she went to sit beside her lord. And now night had come and the mists, and under its shadowhelm creatures came stalking, wan under the clouds. The king stood up, and his thegns; each man greeted the other. Hrothgar gave over the hall to Beowulf and went to his dwelling outside where the queen awaited him. Then the benches and tables were removed. Beowulf stripped off his armour, gave it in charge to one of his thegns, and laid down with naked hands, his cheek upon his pillow. Around him many a snell seaman stooped to his hall-rest. Grendel now comes before us, and the main action of the first part of the story-the fight of Beowulf with him. I gather together all the things said of him in the poem. He is a grim and giant demon, of the old Eoten race, of so great strength that Beowulf, who has the power of thirty men, scarcely overcomes him. His fearful head is so huge that four men carry it with difficulty. The doors of the hall burst open with the smiting of his hand, and the hall cracks and groans with the dreadful force he puts forth in battle. His whoop in pain rings through the house. The nails of his hands are like iron, monstrous claws, and it seems he wore a kind of glove, large and strange, made fast with wonderful bands, wrought by curious skill with devil's craft and out of dragon-hides. Finally, he is spelled against all weapons. Like many an Iceland troll, no sword can bite his skin; he must be fought with naked hands. He is the fiend of the moor, the quaking bog and morass. Lonely and terrible he goes, a mighty mark-stepper who holds the fen and its fastness! Perhaps the gnomic verse which tells of the Thyrs, the giant, is written with Grendel in the writer's mind Pyrs sceal on fenne gewunian, ana innan lande. "The giant shall dwell in the fen, alone in the land." "In Evernight Grendel kept the misty moors." Darkness is his native land, and helmèd night. There is no joy where he is. He is called the dark death-shadow. The Christian editor brings him from Cain, with other dreadful creatures—eotens and elfs and orks and the giants (with a classical reminiscence) who fought with God. In all this he is the impersonation of the superstitious dread which men felt when they looked from their island of reclaimed land over the surrounding moors and saw the strange shapings of the cloud upon them as evening fell, and heard through the mist the roaring of the sea. Then, as men sat by the fire, dreadful tales were told, tales of those who were lost in marsh or pool, in the tempest and the snow slain by the evil will of the ghostly dwellers in the wastes.2 It was the same horror of the desolate lands which created in Scotland the kelpie in the black pool, the river demons of Tweed and Till, and the misshapen monsters that rose out of the sea. For Grendel was not only the demon of the mist and moor, but also of the sea. The trackless moors in Beowulf ran right up to the cliffs, and the actual dwelling of Grendel and his 1 This glove business (line 2085) is probably a Christian interpolation. No heathen Englishman would have written of devils' crafts; and the glove which is said to "hang down" is probably a kind of pouch. 2 He seems to be the master and bringer of the mist, and we might illustrate this connection of his evil will with the stormy and misleading powers of nature by the power which Dante gives the Devil over mist and rain. "Quel mal voler," who Mosse il fume e il vento Per la virtu, che sua natura diede. mother is in a cave, the entrance to which is under the sea, and their companions are sea-monsters. The Mere, that is, the sea-hollow where they haunt, is called the mere of the nickers, and a full account of it and its scenery is elsewhere given. The only point to be made here is that these seawolves, as they are called, represent not only the ghastliness of the deadly fen, but the ghastliness of the deadly sea-gulfs among the cliffs, deep, narrow-entranced clefts filled with boiling waves, which invariably collect ghostly legend round their solitudes. It The character of this man-beast is like his shape. He is said to be greedy of blood, fierce, ravenous, furious, joyless, firm in hatred of men, pleased with evil; and he is, like evil, restless. The moment night comes he roams incessantly. adds a special touch of horror to him that, when he had emptied Heorot by his harryings, he spends the dark nights of winter in the hall. Only at night can he appear. He is the creature of the winter and the sunless gloom, like the Icelandic Trolls who, at the touch of the sun, burst asunder, or change into stone. He abhors the pleasant noise of men, and chiefly the song and the harp, like those giants who hated agriculture and the sound of church bells. It is this which leads him to attack the hall, and when he attacks there is so much of the savageness of a wild beast in his work that some have supposed that he represents the furious bear of the North. He laughs as he sees his victims, springs on them and tears them limb from limb, breaking the bones, drinking the blood, and devouring them, head and hands and feet and all. Those he does not eat in the hall he carries away to the moor and consumes them alone, unpityingly. On the first night he invaded Heorot, he slew thirty men, but after a night or two, the warriors did not sleep in the hall for twelve years, but outside in their houses, into which he does not seem to be able to enter. Now and then, however, men, with the valour of drink in them, slept in the hall, and in the morning the inad fury of the monster is plain enough. The "benches are covered with blood, the hall afloat with gore." With all this, he has, when he meets his match, the blind fear of the wild beast, terror driving him to cry out for the darkness of the morasses whence he came; terror the Icelandic story does not give to Glam. The description of his onset when Beowulf and his thegns wait for him in the hall is full of power. "In the wan night came the shadow-ganger stalking, while the warriors slept |