Beowulf & Grendel I - Footnotes - Myths & Legends From The Mysts of Time

Beowulf and Grendel because some legends should never die!

BEOWULF - Footnotes{4a} Hrothgar.
{4b} Beowulf's helmet has several boar-images on it; he is the "man of war"; and the boar-helmet guards him as typical representative of the marching party as a whole. The boar was sacred to Freyr, who was the favorite god of the Germanic tribes about the North Sea and the Baltic. Rude representations of warriors show the boar on the helmet quite as large as the helmet itself.
{5a} Either merely paved, the strata via of the Romans, or else thought of as a sort of mosaic, an extravagant touch like the reckless waste of gold on the walls and roofs of a hall.
{6a} The nicor, says Bugge, is a hippopotamus; a walrus, says Ten Brink. But that water-goblin who covers the space from Old Nick of jest to the Neckan and Nix of poetry and tale, is all one needs, and Nicor is a good name for him.
{6b} His own people, the Geats.
{6c} That is, cover it as with a face-cloth. "There will be no need of funeral rites."
{6d} Personification of Battle.
{6e} The Germanic Vulcan.
{6f} This mighty power, whom the Christian poet can still revere, has here the general force of "Destiny."
{7a} There is no irrelevance here. Hrothgar sees in Beowulf's mission a heritage of duty, a return of the good offices which the Danish king rendered to Beowulf's father in time of dire need.
{7b} Money, for wergild, or man-price.
{7c} Ecgtheow, Beowulf's sire.
{8a} "Began the fight."
{8b} Breca.
{9a} Murder.
{10a} Beowulf, -- the "one."
{11a} That is, he was a "lost soul," doomed to hell.
{12a} Kenning for Beowulf.
{13a} "Guarded the treasure."
{13b} Sc. Heremod.
{13c} The singer has sung his lays, and the epic resumes its story. The time-relations are not altogether good in this long passage which describes the rejoicings of "the day after"; but the present shift from the riders on the road to the folk at the hall is not very violent, and is of a piece with the general style.
{14a} Unferth, Beowulf's sometime opponent in the flyting. >NEXT