Professor Borges - A Course on English Literature

“adorned with helmets”—the Germanic word
helm
is the same. And
hildebordum
is “battle board”: that’s what the shield was called, which was round, made of wood, and wrapped in leather. And then
beorhtum byrnum
means “bright armor,” and
swa he bena wæs
means “just as he ordered.” Then they lie him out on top of the pyre and set it on fire, and he has instructed them to build a burial mound that can be seen from the sea, so that people will remember it. He is then buried in the burial mound, and twelve warriors on horseback ride circles around the king’s tomb and sing his praises and celebrate his brave deeds.
    Now, in a medieval text about the history of the Goths, byJordanes, Attila’s burial and the same ritual is described: the pyre, the burial mound, and the warriors who ride circles around it singing praises of the king. 7 It is clear that the poet was an erudite poet: in his poem he wanted to describe the various funeral rites of the Germanic peoples. (They considered Attila to be one of their own, even though he was a Hun, because many Germanic kings were his vassals.) The poem ends with praise of Beowulf, and this praise is quite odd. Though I don’t agree, some have believed it to be an interpolation, for one might expect there to be mention of the ogre, as well as of the dragon, and of the other Swedes against whom he fought, and his victories, but none of this is mentioned. The penultimate line says that he was
manna mildust
, the mildest of men, the kindest of men, and one
most eager for praise
. This also contradicts our current sensibility, because we live in an era of propaganda: a man’s desire to be famous is not seen as an admirable characteristic. But we have to remember that this poem was written in the Middle Ages. In the Middle Ages, it was believed that all praise was just: that men wished to be praised, deserved to be praised. The poem ends with these words: “the mildest of men and the most eager for praise.” Nothing is said about his courage. However, we have seen that courage exemplified throughout the entire poem.
    There’s another curious aspect of this poem, and this is the appearance of a minstrel, and this minstrel sings—but doesn’t finish—a Germanic legend predating
Beowulf
: the story of a princess from Denmark named Hildeburh. Her name means “castle of war” or “castle of the battle.” Now, this fragment as sung by the minstrel might not be the same as the song—the old ballad—because the language is like the rest of
Beowulf
. That is, it is in rhetorical language with an abundance of metaphors, and undoubtedly Germanic primitive poetry was much simpler. We can see this, for example, in
The Lay of Hildebrand
; although composed more or less at the same time as
Beowulf
, it corresponds to a much more primitive era, for there are few alliterations, and I believe there is only one metaphor, and even that is a dubious one: armor is called “battle vestments,” or “war vestments,” which may or may not be a metaphor. It is far from the complexity of “weave of men” for “battle,” as we find among the Norsemen, or “swan-road” for “sea.”
    Now, this story is told only in part, and it is the subject of the other ancient Anglo-Saxon epic fragment,Finnsburh Fragment, which contains about sixty lines and must be, I suspect, prior to
Beowulf
because of the directness of the language. 8
    The fable chosen by the author of
Beowulf
does not lend itself to pathos. In it we have two feats performed by the same hero. The two are separated by an interval of fifty years, and there is no conflict in the poem. In other words, Beowulf always fulfills his duty as a brave man, and that’s all. He dies bravely. The poem is full of pious pronouncements. Some are obviously pagan, for example, when it says that it is “better to avenge than mourn a dead friend.” This is clearly pagan. It belongs to an era when revenge was not only a right but a duty—a man was obliged to avenge the death of his friend. So there is no conflict. The story of Hildeburh, on the other hand, which is interpolated into
Beowulf
, contains conflict. This is the story. There is a princess in Denmark named Hildeburh, and there is discord between the Danes and the Frisians, the people from the Low Countries. And so it is decided that a princess, the princess of Denmark, will marry the king of the Frisians, so that through this alliance between the two royal houses, the