Beowulf: A Heroic Tale from Early Medieval England

Hello everyone –

It’s October 31^st again, and today we celebrate Halloween with a summary of the Beowulf epic from early medieval England – a tale full of monsters and paranormal happenings, well worth the read! 😊

 

Bulfinch’s Mythology

By Thomas Bulfinch (1796–1867)

Volume III: The Age of Chivalry (1913 Edition)

 

Beowulf

Notable among the names of heroes of the British race is that of Beowulf, which appeals to all English-speaking people in a very special way, since he is the one hero in whose story we may see the ideals of our English forefathers before they left their Continental home to cross to the islands of Britain.

Although this hero had distinguished himself by numerous feats of strength during his boyhood and early youth, it was as the deliverer of Hrothgar, king of Denmark, from the monster Grendel that he first gained wide renown. Grendel was half monster and half man, and had his abode in the fen-fastnesses in the vicinity of Hrothgar’s residence. Night after night he would steal into the king’s great palace called Heorot and slay sometimes as many as thirty at one time of the knights sleeping there.

Beowulf put himself at the head of a selected band of warriors, went against the monster, and after a terrible fight slew it. The following night Grendel’s mother, a fiend scarcely less terrible than her son, carried off one of Hrothgar’s boldest thanes. Once more Beowulf went to the help of the Danish king, followed the she-monster to her lair at the bottom of a muddy lake in the midst of the swamp, and with his good sword Hrunting and his own muscular arms broke the sea-woman’s neck.

Upon his return to his own country of the Geats, loaded with honors bestowed upon him by Hrothgar. Beowulf served the king of Geatland as the latter’s most trusted counsellor and champion. When, after many years, the king fell before an enemy, the Geats unanimously chose Beowulf for their new king. His fame as a warrior kept his country free from invasion, and his wisdom as a statesman increased its prosperity and happiness.

In the fiftieth year of Beowulf’s reign, however, a great terror fell upon the land in the way of a monstrous fire-dragon, which flew forth by night from its den in the rocks, lighting up the blackness with its blazing breath, and burning houses and homesteads, men and cattle, with the flames from its mouth. When the news came to Beowulf that his people were suffering and dying, and that no warrior dared to risk his life in an effort to deliver the country from this deadly devastation, the aged king took up his shield and sword and went forth to his last fight. At the entrance of the dragon’s cave Beowulf raised his voice and shouted a furious defiance to the awesome guardian of the den. Roaring hideously and flapping his glowing wings together, the dragon rushed forth and half flew, half sprang, on Beowulf. Then began a fearful combat, which ended in Beowulf’s piercing the dragon’s scaly armor and inflicting a mortal wound, but alas! in himself being given a gash in the neck by his opponent’s poisoned fangs which resulted in his death. As he lay stretched on the ground, his head supported by Wiglaf, an honored warrior who had helped in the fight with the dragon, Beowulf roused himself to say, as he grasped Wiglaf’s hand: 

        “Thou must now look to    the needs of the nation;

        Here dwell I no longer,    for Destiny calleth me!

        Bid thou my warriors    after my funeral pyre

        Build me a burial-cairn    high on the sea-cliff’s head;

        So that the seafarers    Beowulf’s Barrow

        Henceforth shall name it,    they who drive far and wide

        Over the mighty flood    their foamy keels.

        Thou art the last of all    the kindred of Wagmund!

        Wyrd has swept all my kin,    all the brave chiefs away!

        Now must I follow them!”

These last words spoken, the king of the Geats, brave to seek danger and brave to look on death and Fate undaunted, fell back dead. According to his last desires, his followers gathered wood and piled it on the cliff-head. Upon this funeral pyre was laid Beowulf’s body and consumed to ashes. Then, upon the same cliff of Hronesness, was erected a huge burial cairn, widespread and lofty, to be known thereafter as Beowulf’s Barrow.

 

The Scandinavian warrior-hero Beowulf (fl. ca. 6th century CE) battles a fire-breathing dragon in this painting by J. R. Skelton (1908).  (Image Credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)

 

Happy Halloween – from Quotemail to you! 😊

 

Rob

#WingedWordsWindsday: 2022/10/26 -- Happy Halloween!

 WINGED WORDS WINDSDAY

Compiled by Rob Chappell (@RHCLambengolmo)

Vol. 1, No. 52: October 26, 2022

 

 

Happy Halloween & Happy 1^st Birthday to Winged Words Windsday!

 

“Dusk in Autumn”

By Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)

 

The Moon is like a scimitar,

A little silver scimitar,

A-drifting down the sky.

And near beside it is a star,

A timid twinkling golden star,

That watches like an eye.

 

And through the nursery window-pane

The witches have a fire again,

Just like the ones we make, —

And now I know they’re having tea,

I wish they’d give a cup to me,

With witches’ currant cake.

 

“A Forest Child”

By Madison Julius Cawein (1865-1914)

 

There is a place I search for still,

Sequestered as the world of dreams,

A bushy hollow, and a hill

That whispers with descending streams,

Cool, careless waters, wandering down,

Like Innocence who runs to town,

Leaving the wildwood and its dreams,

And prattling like the forest streams.

 

But still in dreams I meet again

The child who bound me, heart and hand,

And led me with a wildflower chain

Far from our world, to Faeryland:

Who made me see and made me know

The lovely Land of Long-Ago,

Leading me with her little hand

Into the world of Wonderland.

 

The years have passed: how far away

The day when there I met the child,

The little maid, who was a fay,

Whose eyes were dark and undefiled

And crystal as a woodland well,

That holds within its depths a spell,

Enchantments, featured like a child,

A dream, a poetry undefiled.

 

Around my heart she wrapped her hair,

And bound my soul with lips and eyes,

And led me to a cavern, where

Grey Legend dwelt in kingly guise,

Her kinsman, dreamier than the moon,

Who called her Fancy, read her rune,

And bade her with paternal eyes

Divest herself of her disguise.

 

And still I walk with her in dreams,

Though many years have passed since then,

And that high hill and its wild streams

Are lost as is that faery glen.

And as the years go swiftly by

I find it harder, when I try,

To meet with her, who led me then

Into the wildness of that glen.

 

“Halloween”

By John Kendrick Bangs (1862-1922)

 

The ghosts of all things past parade,

Emerging from the mist and shade

That hid them from our gaze,

And, full of song and ringing mirth,

In one glad moment of rebirth,

And again they walk the ways of earth

As in the ancient days.

 

The beacon light shines on the hill,

The will-o'-wisps the forests fill

With flashes filched from noon;

And witches on their broomsticks spry

Speed here and yonder in the sky,

And lift their strident voices high

Unto the Hunter's Moon.

 

The air resounds with tuneful notes

From myriads of straining throats,

All hailing Folly Queen;

So join the swelling choral throng,

Forget your sorrow and your wrong,

In one glad hour of joyous song

To honor Halloween!

 

“The Shadow on the Stone”

By Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

 

I went by the Druid stone

That broods in the garden white and lone,  

And I stopped and looked at the shifting shadows  

That at some moments fall thereon

From the tree hard by with a rhythmic swing,  

And they shaped in my imagining

To the shade that a well-known head and shoulders  

Threw there when she was gardening.

 

I thought her behind my back,

Yea, her I long had learned to lack,

And I said: ‘I am sure you are standing behind me,  

Though how do you get into this old track?’  

And there was no sound but the fall of a leaf  

As a sad response; and to keep down grief

I would not turn my head to discover

That there was nothing in my belief.

 

Yet I wanted to look and see

That nobody stood at the back of me;

But I thought once more: ‘Nay, I’ll not unvision  

A shape which, somehow, there may be.’  

So I went on softly from the glade,

And left her behind me throwing her shade,  

As she were indeed an apparition—

My head unturned lest my dream should fade.

 

“The Kraken”

By Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

 

Below the thunders of the upper deep,

Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,

His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep

The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee

About his shadowy sides; above him swell

Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;

And far away into the sickly light,

From many a wondrous grot and secret cell

Unnumbered and enormous polypi

Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.

 

There hath he lain for ages, and will lie

Battening upon huge sea worms in his sleep,

Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;

Then once by man and angels to be seen,

In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

 

The constellation Cetus (the Sea-Dragon or Kraken) is visible from the American Midwest in the southern sky on autumn evenings. (Image Credit: Samuel Leigh [1824] – Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)

 

#WingedWordsWindsday: 2022/10/19 -- Cyrus the Great

 WINGED WORDS WINDSDAY

Compiled by Rob Chappell (@RHCLambengolmo)

Vol. 1, No. 51: October 19, 2022

 

 

The International Day of Cyrus the Great: October 29

 

Editor’s Note

                This week, I’d like to call to your attention a holiday that is rising in popularity throughout the world, which occurs on Saturday. October 29^th: International Cyrus the Great Day, marking the date that King Cyrus and his Persian army took over the city of Babylon without meeting any resistance. King Cyrus was the founding monarch of the Persian Empire, and his benevolence toward his native and conquered subjects was both exceptional and long-remembered. The Greek historian Xenophon, writing in the 4th century BCE, remarked in the Cyropaedia, his biography of the great king:

 

“And those who were subject to him, he treated with esteem and regard, as if they were his own children, while his subjects themselves respected Cyrus as their "Father" ... What other man but 'Cyrus', after having overturned an empire, ever died with the title of "The Father" from the people whom he had brought under his power? For it is plain fact that this is a name for one that bestows, rather than for one that takes away!”

 

                King Cyrus was renowned in his own time as a liberator of the oppressed, a promoter of religious toleration and cultural diversity, and an early champion of what we could call basic human rights. These characteristics of his personality, and some of his heroic deeds, are recorded in the Cyrus Cylinder, a proclamation made after King Cyrus had conquered Babylon in 538 BCE. The text of this world-famous decree can be found at https://web.archive.org/web/20180311235804/https://www.livius.org/ct-cz/cyrus_I/cyrus_cylinder2.html. King Cyrus is also remembered as a heroic figure to this very day by Zoroastrians (his own community of faith), Jews, Christians, and Muslims – and his generous support for rebuilding the Jerusalem Temple is recounted in Ezra 1.

                And so, after all these preliminaries, I present this week’s poetical gem – an excerpt from a poem about the Persian Empire by the first published poet in Britain’s North American colonies – Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672), making generous use of both historical and legendary material drawn from her vast learning.

 

The Second Monarchy, being the Persian, began under Cyrus, Darius being his Uncle and Father-in-law reigned with him about two years.

Cyrus Cambyses’ Son of Persia King,

Whom Lady Mandana did to him bring,

She daughter unto great Astyages,

He in descent the seventh from Arbaces.

Cambyses was of Achaemenes’ race,

Who had in Persia the Lieutenant’s place

When Sardanapalus was overthrown,

And from that time had held it as his own.

Cyrus, Darius’ Daughter took to wife,

And so unites two Kingdoms without strife.

Darius unto Mandana was brother

Adopts her son for his having no other.

This is of Cyrus the true pedigree,

Whose Ancestors were royal in degree:

His Mother’s dream and Grand-Sires cruelty,

His preservation, in his misery,

His nourishment afforded by a switch,

Are fit for such, whose ears for Fables itch.

He in his younger days an Army led,

Against great Croesus then of Lydia head;

Who over-curious of wars event,

For information to Apollo went:

And the ambiguous Oracle did trust,

So overthrown by Cyrus, as was just;

Who him pursues to Sardis, takes the Town,

Where all that dare resist, are slaughtered down;

Disguised Croesus hoped to escape in the throng,

Who had no might to right from wrong,

But as he past, his Son who was born dumb,

With pressing grief and sorrow overcome:

Among the tumult, blood-shed, and the strife

Brake his long silence, cried, spare Croesus’ life:

Croesus thus known, it was great Cyrus’ doom,

(A hard decree) to ashes he consume;

Then on a wood-pile set, where all might eye,

He Solon, Solon, Solon, thrice did cry.

The Reason of those words Cyrus demands,

Who Solon was? to whom he lifts his hands;

Then to the King he makes this true report,

That Solon sometimes at his stately Court,

His Treasures, pleasures pomp and power did see,

And viewing all, at all nought moved was he:

That Croesus angry, urged him to express,

If ever King equaled his happiness.

(Quoth he) that man for happy we commend,

Whose happy life attains an happy end.

Cyrus with pity moved knowing Kings stand,

Now up and down, as fortune turns her hand,

Weighing the Age, and greatness of the Prince,

(His Mother’s Uncle) stories do evince:

Gave him his life, and took him for a friend,

Did to him still his chief designs commend.

Next war the restless Cyrus thought upon,

Was conquest of the stately Babylon.

Now treble walled, and moated so about,

That all the world they need not fear nor doubt;

To drain this ditch he many Sluices cut,

But till convenient time their heads kept shut;

That night Belshazzar feasted all his rout,

He cut those banks, and let the River out,

And to the walls securely marches on,

Not finding a defendant thereupon;

Enters the town, the sottish King he slays,

Upon Earth’s richest spoils his Soldiers preys;

Here twenty years provision good he found,

Forty-five miles this City scarce could round;

This head of Kingdoms Chaldees excellence,

For Owls and Satyrs made a residence,

Yet wondrous monuments this stately Queen,

A thousand years had after to be seen.

Cyrus doth now the Jewish Captives free

An Edict made, the Temple builded be,

He with his Uncle Daniel sets on high,

And caused his foes in Lions’ Den to dye.

Long after this he against the Scythians goes,

And Tomris’ Son and Army overthrows;

Which to revenge he hires a mighty power,

And sets on Cyrus, in a fatal hour;

There routs his Host, himself she prisoner takes,

And at one blow (world’s head) she headless makes

The which she bathed, within a Bit of blood,

Using such taunting words, as she thought good.

But Xenophon reports he died in his bed,

In honor, peace and wealth, with a grey head;

And in his Town of Pasargadae lies,

Where some long after sought in vain for prize,

But in his Tomb was only to be found

Two Scythian boys, a Sword and Target round:

And Alexander coming to the same,

With honors great, did celebrate his fame.

Three daughters and two Sons he left behind,

Ennobled more by birth then by their mind;

Thirty-two years in all this Prince did reign,

But eight whilst Babylon, he did retain:

And though his conquests made the earth to groan,

Now quiet lies under one marble stone.

And with an Epitaph, himself did make,

To shew how little Land he then should take.

 

Cyrus the Great enthroned at his royal court. Painting by Jean Fouquet (1420-1481). Image Credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons