Page:Gummere (1909) The Oldest English Epic.djvu/64

And so it came that I killed with my sword
575nine of the nicors. Of night-fought battles
ne’er heard I a harder ’neath heaven’s dome,
nor adrift on the deep a more desolate man!
Yet I came unharmed from that hostile clutch,
though spent with swimming. The sea upbore me,
580flood of the tide, on Finnish^[1] land,
the welling waters. No wise of thee^[2]
have I heard men tell such terror of falchions,
bitter battle. Breca ne’er yet,
not one of you pair, in the play of war
585such daring deed has done at all

with bloody brand,—I boast not of it!—

“There’ll no man die but him that’s fee. . . .”

Schücking, in Englische Studien, 39, p. 104, insists on a different translation of this passage. “Undoomed,” he suggests, is proleptic; and the poet really says “fate often saves a hero—who then, of course, is not a doomed man,—if he be brave.” It is true that the proleptic construction is found in Anglo-Saxon; and the interpretation is possible. Practically the same case occurs when Horace tells Lydia (III, ix) that he would die for Chloe if the fates would but spare this love of his and let her live;—

Si parcent animae fata superstiti.

But the present passage hardly needs this subtle interpretation, and evidently means that fate often spares a man who is not doomed, really devoted to death, if he is a brave man, in a word, favors the brave if favor be possible. Weird sisters and fey folk survived long in Scottish tradition.
1. The Finnish folk, as Gering points out, we now call Laplanders.
2. This speech of Beowulf’s is admirable. He has defended his own reputation, shrugs his shoulders at the necessity of referring to his prowess, and makes a home-thrust at Unferth. The climax of his invective is imputation to Unferth of the two supreme sins in the Germanic list: murder of kin, and cowardice.—Below, v. 1167, Unferth is said to be courageous, but faithless to his kin.—Then the hero-orator proceeds to promise or “boast” what he himself will do; and with his cheerful “gab” the speech closes amid general applause.