130atheling excellent, unblithe sat,
labored in woe for the loss of his thanes,
when once had been traced the trail of the fiend,
spirit accurst: too cruel that sorrow,
too long, too loathsome.[1] Not late the respite;
135with night returning, anew began
ruthless murder; he recked no whit,
firm in his guilt, of the feud and crime.
They were easy to find who elsewhere sought
in room remote their rest at night,
140bed in the bowers,[2] when that bale was shown,
was seen in sooth, with surest token,—
the hall-thane’s[3] hate. Such held themselves
far and fast who the fiend outran!
Thus ruled unrighteous and raged his fill
145one against all; until empty stood
that lordly building, and long it bode so.
Twelve years’ tide the trouble he bore,
sovran of Scyldings, sorrows in plenty,
boundless cares. There came unhidden
150tidings true to the tribes of men,
in sorrowful songs,[4] how ceaselessly Grendel
harassed Hrothgar, what hate he bore him,
what murder and massacre, many a year,
- ↑ See v. 191.
- ↑ The smaller buildings within the main enclosure but separate from hall.
- ↑ So the text. Grendel, by his ravaging, is master of the hall; and there is no need to change to “hell-thane.”
- ↑ The journalists of the day, Widsiths, Deors, Bernlefs, carried such tidings in their “sorrowful songs.” So, too, perhaps, began the story of the actual downfall of the Burgundian kings, afterward the epic of the Nibelungs.
