My laud of her moved through many lands
100whenever in song I was urged to say
where under heaven I’d heard of the best
gold-decked queen her gifts dividing.[1]
Then I and Scilling[2] with sounding voice
before our lord uplifted song:
105loud to the harp the lay rang out,
and many men of mood sublime
spake with words,—who well could judge,—
that they never had known a nobler song.
Thence I ranged o’er the realm of Goths,
110ever seeking the sturdiest clansmen.—
- ↑ See the summary of a queen’s duties in a note to the Beowulf, v. 622. “Gold-decked,” adorned with gold, is the usual adjective for high-born dames.
- ↑ Müllenhoff, Runenlehre, p. 54, makes this name mean “sonorous,”—another appellation, like “Widsith” itself, for the Scop.
- ↑ Müllenhoff’s arrangement is followed here, so that the names are given as chosen from the list of Eormanric’s company, though they are actually
Eadgils, and sings his way to Italy, where the great Alboin (Ælfwine) gives him welcome, and sends him along with the conqueror’s sister, Ealhhild, on the marriage journey to Eormanric. He stays at the Gothic court some time, and gets a splendid gratuity. This, in a kind of anticipatory clause familiar to readers of our old epic, and demanded no doubt by the curiosity of its original hearers, is further described as going to pay Widsith’s lord, when the singer got home again, for paternal estates now or previously restored. But another ring is given to Widsith by the new queen, whose praise he has sung and will sing again. Inspired by her, he and Scilling sang wonderfully to the Gothic court, so that the Goths themselves—first and greatest masters of the old minstrel’s art, be it remembered—can think of nothing better.—Fiction as it is, this is consistent, so far as it goes. Then follows a description of Eormanric’s retinue, a confusion of names, with a touch or so of legend; and Widsith has done. Dr. Lawrence points out that in view of the cross-pattern in Anglo-Saxon poetical style it is not at all certain that Widsith and Scilling are supposed to sing at Eormanric’s court. “Our lord” may well be Eadgils, as in v. 94.
