300shall succor and save from the shock of war.”[1]
They bent them to march,—the boat lay still,
fettered by cable and fast at anchor,
broad-bosomed ship.—Then shone the boars[2]
over the cheek-guard; chased with gold,
305 keen and gleaming, guard it kept
o’er the man of war, as marched along
heroes in haste, till the hall they saw,
broad of gable and bright with gold:
that was the fairest, ’mid folk of earth,
310 of houses ’neath heaven, where Hrothgar lived,
and the gleam of it lightened o’er lands afar.
The sturdy shieldsman showed that bright
burg-of-the-boldest; bade them go
straightway thither; his steed then turned,
315 hardy hero, and hailed them thus:—
“ ’Tis time that I fare from you. Father Almighty
in grace and mercy guard you well,
safe in your seekings. Seaward I go,
’gainst hostile warriors hold my watch.”
- ↑ See Klaeber, Modern Philology, III, 250. In other words, the ship will carry back the survivors. Other translators take “the well-loved man” to be Beowulf, and read:
for hero like him, by best of fate
shall surely fare from the fight unscathed. - ↑ Holthausen points out that by verse 1453 Beowulf’s helmet has several boar-images on it; he is the “man of war” (to be sure, a conjectural reading); and the boar-helmet guards him as typical representative of the marching party as a whole. The boar was sacred to Freyr, who was the favorite god of the Germanic tribes about the North Sea and the Baltic. Rude representations of warriors show the boar on the helmet quite as large as the helmet itself.
