Page:Gummere (1909) The Oldest English Epic.djvu/22

6 embodiment of heaven’s extreme power and good-will. The poet even rationalizes his folk-lore. Though there are traces of “another story,” traces which would doubtless lead to outright myth, the epic is told in terms of human achievement. Though its hero, in this record of adventure, neither fights other heroes nor leads armies, and though, like many celebrated champions of vast strength, he is not at ease with ordinary weapons, nevertheless he is for the poet that same Beowulf who always fought in the van with trusty blade, despatched the mother of Grendel with a sword, and killed Dæghrefn,—presumably the slayer of Hygelac,—in the fatal combat by the lower Rhine. Yet Dæghrefn, one is abruptly told, as Beowulf boasts of all his good blade has done and all it is yet to do, was not slain by the sword, but “his bones were broken by brawny gripe.”

The inconsistency of this passage, taken with that reference elsewhere to the hero’s inability to use a sword, is supposed by a few scholars to prove different origins for different portions of the actual epic. It really proves that the poet combined Beowulf of the actual “war record” with Beowulf of the struggles against monsters and dragons, the hero with thirty men’s strength in his grasp. Every reader of popular tales knows that in these struggles swords are rarely good for much. Like Samson, Beowulf depends on his own might; but that might must approach the miraculous. Different formulas, if one may use the term, are applied to different phases of the same hero’s adventures. For example, Beowulf is evidently in one