seeking the home of the Hrethan king,—
from the east, from Anglia,—Eormanric fierce,
marrer-of-covenants.[1]—Much he sang.
10 “Many men have I heard of who held dominion.
Let every leader live aright,
earl after earl in honor rule,
who thinks to thrive and his throne maintain!
- ↑ Foil to “weaver-of-concord.” Eormanric, king of “Hreth-Goths,” or Goths, is the typical tyrant in Germanic legend,—witness Deor’s Song,—and the epithets are bestowed on him as part of his proper name. That he had not won them at the time of this supposed marriage, but was a generous prince, we gather from vv. 88 ff., where the singer warms at the remembrance of a fine gratuity. Epithets, moreover, must not be taken too literally. The Beowulf poet speaks of the “Victor”-Scyldings when telling of their defeat.—“From the east” (long misunderstood) means that the home of Ealhhild and Widsith was in the “east” for the writer of this prologue in England; Anglia being the “old home” on the Cimbrian peninsula and by the lower Elbe. Not far from this old home, for the writer and for the legends that he knew, were still grouped Goths and Vandals to the eastward, by the Baltic, and nearer yet, the Langobards.
- ↑ This list, which in vv. 18 ff. shows (in the alternating use, for example, of the word “ruled”) plain traces of a strophic or stanzaic arrangement, is of immense ethnological interest. It ends with names that give a glimpse of legend itself, and it shows an effort at systematic grouping.—The moral, too, with which it opens, is in the vein so often found in old epic; gnomic verse is very ancient, and there is no need to put these edifying lines upon an “interpolator.”
(a tribe living near the Elbe) who goes to the Gothic court to be wife (“weaver-of-concord” is the usual kenning) to Eormanric. Widsith goes with her. If she is called daughter to Audoin (therefore sister to Alboin), and thus is made out a hundred and fifty years or so younger than her husband, and if the conqueror of Italy is put back in the old home of the Langobards, these inconsistencies are only a part of the legendary process. To the English writer of this short prologue, the figures of his continental legends, even when historical, had no chronology. All belonged together; and the various nations are pictured in their original territories. Even the favorites of the English themselves never leave the old home.
