BEOWULF
121
2430had me, and held me, Hrethel the king,
with food and fee, faithful in kinship.
Ne’er, while I lived there, he loathlier found me,[1]
bairn in the burg, than his birthright sons,
Herebeald and Hæthcyn and Hygelac mine.
2435For the eldest of these, by unmeet chance,
by kinsman’s deed, was the death-bed strewn,
when Hæthcyn killed him with horny bow,
his own dear liege laid low with an arrow,
missed the mark and his mate shot down,
2440one brother the other, with bloody shaft.
A feeless fight[2] and a fearful sin,
horror to Hrethel; yet, hard as it was,
unavenged must the atheling die!
Too awful it is for an agéd man
- ↑ Usual litotes: “he held me no less dear.”
- ↑ That is, the king could claim no wergild, or man-price, from one son for the killing of the other. The casus is peculiarly Germanic in detail; in general scope it is like the great kin-tragedies of the world’s literature. A similar story is told in the Thithrekssaga of Herbort, Herdegen, and Sintram, but, as Müllenhoff points out, with a different ending. In the Scottish ballad of The Twa Brothers, one kills the other while wrestling (though with a knife); but the ballad touches the parent only by messages to account for the disappearance of John. It is important to understand that the picture of the old king’s grief is hypothetical. There is no wergild, says the poet, and revenge is out of the question. For let one but fancy the feelings of a father who has caused his son to be hanged! The picture of such a state of things then follows. Then (v. 2462) one returns to Hrethel with the remark that his case was really as sad as the hypothetical one. Gering thinks that the poet took his picture of the broken-hearted parent from the story of Ermanric, of whom the Volsungasaga relates that he caused his only son to be hanged on an accusation of misconduct with Swanhild, the young man’s stepmother. Ermanric’s story was known to English poetry. See above, v. 1201, and the stanza in Dear’s Song.
