One of the more obscure moments in the text of Beowulf is the infamous ġifstōl-passage that follows the account of Grendel’s initial attacks against Heorot and its inhabitants and his occupation of the hall by night. The lines in question read as follows in the standard critical edition of the poem:
The editors of Klaeber’s Beowulf identify no fewer than eight interpretative difficulties that impede critical understanding of these two lines of verse:
(1) whether ġifstōl refers to Hrōðgār’s throne or God’s, (2) whether grētan means ‘approach’ […] or ‘attack’ […], (3) whether mōste means ‘was permitted to’ or ‘had to,’ (4) whether māþðum refers to the throne or some other treasure, (5) the meaning of for, (6) whether metode refers to God or to Hrōðgār, (7) the reference of his (God, Hrōðgār, Grendel, ġifstōl, māþðum), and (8) the force of myne wisse.Footnote 2
An elegant and concise solution to problems (4)–(8) has been suggested by Alfred Bammesberger. Writing in 1992, Bammesberger revived and elaborated upon the earlier proposal of A. Pogatscher, published almost a century previously, that the manuscript reading for line 169a should be interpreted māþðum formetode, with formetode understood as a preterite form of an otherwise unattested verb *formetian, ‘to despise’, for which Bammesberger provides a convincing philological justification.Footnote 3 If this interpretation is accepted, then the force of line 169 becomes clear: Grendel repudiates worldly wealth in his vendetta against the community of Heorot. In such a reading, the pressure to interpret māþðum as a notably loose and unsatisfactory variation for þone ġifstōl disappears, whilst both the problem of identifying the nature and extent of any divine intervention suggested in the phrase for metode and the resultant ambiguity about the ownership of the ġifstōl itself (difficulty (1) in the above quotation) are removed.Footnote 4 The interpretation of line 169b also becomes less problematic. Bammesberger suggests the following translation for the line as a whole: ‘he despised treasure, nor did he feel its (= the treasure’s) love (= he felt no love for treasure)’.Footnote 5
Bammesberger’s interpretation of line 169, which has had relatively little impact upon subsequent discussion of these lines, deserves further consideration.Footnote 6 It is, in effect, a non-emendation: it does not involve the alteration of any of the letter forms found in the sole surviving manuscript witness of the poem, but rather a reinterpretation of those existing forms. The reading in question is split across the end of the ninth and beginning of the tenth line of text on folio 133v of London, British Library, Cotton Vitellius A. xv, with for meto appearing at the end of line nine and de at the beginning of line ten.Footnote 7 A small space appears in the manuscript between for and meto at the end of line nine, but it is by no means unusual for scribe A to separate the verbal prefix for- from the stem to which it is attached.Footnote 8 Manuscript spacing is, moreover, only at best an imperfect guide to word division.Footnote 9 Determining whether the string of letters found in the manuscript represents one word or two requires, on either hand, a degree of interpretative licence. On the one hand, we can accept the traditional reading of the otherwise-attested prepositional phrase for metode, which is linguistically straightforward but poses interpretative problems in context; on the other hand, we can interpret the same string of graphemes as a preterite form of the verb *formetian, otherwise unattested but offering good sense.Footnote 10 Grendel’s disdain for treasure and his inability or unwillingness to approach the ġifstōl, especially when read in the light of the earlier reference to his refusal to make peace with the Danes (to which I will return below), emphasizes his alterity by placing him outside of established social mechanisms.Footnote 11 Understood in this way, lines 168–9 provide clear context for the poet’s subsequent reference to Hrothgar’s despair in the face of Grendel’s implacable hatred:
These lines, the implications of which have been addressed from different perspectives by both Robinson and Jane Roberts, seem perfectly reasonable if the antecedent of þæt is understood as the powerlessness of the Danes, implicit in the immediately preceding lines, in the face of Grendel’s threat.Footnote 13
Taken on its own terms, a strong case can thus be made for the reading māþðum formetode at line 169a. Support for the viability of this reading might be adduced, moreover, by comparison with a passage from the Old English poem Andreas – a hagiographical poem detailing the adventures of SS Matthew and Andrew amongst the devil-worshipping cannibals of the land of Mermedonia preserved uniquely in the late tenth-century Vercelli Book (Vercelli, Biblioteca Capitolare, CXVII).Footnote 14 The passage in question describes the cannibalistic fervour of the Mermedonians, driven to distraction by oppressive hunger following the loss of the prisoners on whom they had intended to feast. Long accustomed to capturing, imprisoning and, ultimately, consuming unwary visitors to Mermedonia, the cannibals are frustrated in their habitual practices by Andrew’s mission to save his fellow apostle Matthew, in the course of which Andrew infiltrates the prison and frees all of those incarcerated within. Faced with this sudden loss of provisions, the despairing cannibals first resort to consuming the corpses of the prison-guards, struck dead by divine agency on Andrew’s approach, before casting lots amongst themselves to decide who should be sacrificed to the communal hunger. The lot falls upon an old man, who immediately offers his son to the host of cannibals in his place. Accepting the substitution, the Mermedonians greedily prepare to devour the youth:
The emphasis in this passage on the Mermedonians’ lack of interest in treasure and hoarded wealth might be seen to offer a general parallel to Grendel’s disdain of treasure in the lines from Beowulf. In both cases, the rejection of treasure, and of all that it signifies, implies a rejection of civilized values in the face of an overmastering desire. Both passages come at a moment when societal expectations are strained to breaking point. In Beowulf, Grendel’s refusal to engage in the social mechanisms surrounding gift giving and conflict resolution leads to a debilitating stasis in the community of Heorot, forcing the Danes to turn to extreme measures (namely, heathen observances) in an attempt to manage their unruly guest. In Andreas, the reference to a lack of interest in treasure marks the point at which the Mermedonian society literally turns upon itself, breaking down the defining opposition between native Mermedonians and the foreign outsiders on whom they feast.Footnote 16
The parallel may, however, be more specific than general. At first glance, the most striking thing about the reference to treasure in these lines from Andreas is its apparent irrelevancy. The precise contents of the Andreas-poet’s presumed source – a lost Latin version of the apocryphal Acts of Matthew and Andrew amongst the Cannibals – are ultimately unknowable, but comparison with closely related Latin and Greek versions of the same legend reveals no analogue for the reference to the compelling need of the Mermedonians at this point.Footnote 17 Nothing in these texts suggests that the specific reference to treasure was prompted by the poet’s lost source. Treasure has not figured at all prominently in the account of the society of Mermedonia up to this point, so that the contrast between the people’s lust for meat and their lack of interest in treasure does not seem to carry much weight. Why, then, does the poet choose these terms to describe the situation of the Mermedonians at this point in the narrative? One possibility – which will be explored in this article – is that the Andreas-poet knew the ġifstōl-passage in Beowulf and that the presentation of the Mermedonians was directly influenced by the Beowulf-poet’s statement that Grendel māþðum formetode.
That the Andreas-poet was familiar with Beowulf and drew upon it in the process of transforming the hagiographic legend into traditional Old English verse is now widely, though perhaps not universally, accepted. An impressive weight of scholarship suggests that the Andreas-poet not only knew Beowulf, but knew that poem very well – and may have counted upon at least some of the audience of Andreas being likewise familiar with the older poem.Footnote 18 The evidence for the relationship between the two poems depends in large part upon the observation of extensive verbal parallels – including uniquely shared compounds, formulaic phrases, and whole- and half-line parallels. In the past, critical debate has focused on the question of whether the undoubted similarities in the language of the two poems result from direct borrowing or from shared participation in a formulaic tradition.Footnote 19 More recent studies have, however, demonstrated more clearly than ever before the remarkable extent of these parallels, strongly suggestive of direct influence from one poem to the other.Footnote 20 The strength of this lexical evidence clears the way for the literary-critical analysis of compelling similarities in the treatment of episodes in each poem and to a more detailed consideration of the meaningful relationship between the two poems.Footnote 21
In the current instance, the possibility that the Andreas-poet is influenced by the ġifstōl-passage in this reference to the Mermedonian disinterest in treasure is strongly supported by close comparison of the wider contexts in which the passages occur in each poem. One fact to emerge from recent studies of the relationship between the two poems is that apparent borrowings from Beowulf, whilst often widely spread throughout the text of Andreas, frequently seem to ‘cluster’ within relatively discrete passages in the older poem – the implication being that the Andreas-poet was particularly familiar with (or particularly attracted to) specific relatively short passages of Beowulf. Footnote 22 The discussion that follows will likewise argue for the demonstrable influence on the Andreas-poet of a particular, identifiable passage in Beowulf. The evidence for this influence is different in kind, however, from the ‘cluster’ parallels identified previously in that the Andreas-poet’s engagement with Beowulf is, in this instance, both more extended and essentially structural and thematic rather than formulaic in nature. In offering such an argument, this article builds upon the important foundations laid by studies of the language of the two poems, but simultaneously seeks to help extend the discussion of the intertextuality of Old English poetry beyond the merely verbal.
Specifically, I will argue that the episode in Andreas concerning the Mermedonian response to the escape of their captives – from the moment Andrew leaves the prison in line 1058 up until the appearance of the devil in line 1168 – differs from other known versions of the legend in ways that seem designed to recall the Beowulf-poet’s account of Grendel’s campaign of violence and the response to it of the Danish community. Reading the former passage in the light of both the surviving analogues to Andreas and the account of Grendel’s persecution of the Danes strongly suggests that the poet of Andreas is modelling the adaptation of this section of the hagiographic legend on Beowulf. I will suggest that the correspondences between these passages are neither fortuitous nor the result of ad hoc or pragmatic borrowing on the part of the Andreas-poet. On the contrary, strategic and systematic allusions to Beowulf are both productive of meaning in this passage of Andreas and also sensitive to the nuance and art of the passage from Beowulf on which they draw. In particular, both fitts display a thematic concern with the opposition of literal and non-literal conceptions of wealth based around the development of a body-as-treasure motif. In each case, the prioritization of bodily over literal treasure causes the frustration or perversion of established social processes. The results, in each fitt, are, firstly, a disintegration of society and a shift to personal rather than communal interest, and, secondly, a despairing recourse to idolatrous practices.
I shall argue, moreover, that the picture that emerges from an examination of the relationship between these passages is of a specifically textual engagement with Beowulf on the part of the Andreas-poet, organized around discrete textual units marked out as such in the surviving copies of each poem. The portion of Beowulf with which we are concerned here centres upon fitt II of the poem as delineated in the only extant manuscript (lines 115–88 of the edited text). This section of the poem seems to have provided a comprehensive model on which the Andreas-poet drew for the depiction of the Mermedonian response to the loss of their prisoners contained in the unnumbered tenth fitt of Andreas, marked out by the spacing and capitalization of the text in the Vercelli Book (lines 1058–1154).Footnote 23 The implications of this observation for our reading of both poems, and for our understanding of Old English poetic composition and transmission more generally, will be outlined in the conclusion to this article.
LĪFES TŌ LISSE: SYMBOLIC WEALTH AND CORPOREAL CURRENCY
Both fitt II of Beowulf and fitt X of Andreas are concerned with the discovery and aftereffects of violent invasion. Both poets also develop a contrast within these respective fitts between the expected social valence of material wealth and a more gruesome metaphorical currency. The similarities of structure and theme between the two passages are evident from the beginning of each fitt. In Beowulf, the violent invasion with which the fitt is concerned is constituted by Grendel’s first raid on Heorot, depicted at the beginning of fitt II in a narrative unit marked out by the use of envelope patterning.Footnote 24 This eleven-line passage describes Grendel approaching Heorot to discover how the Danes occupy the hall after their feasting (‘hū hit Hrinġ-Dene / æfter bēorþeġe ġebūn hæfdon’, 116b–117), whereupon he finds within the hall (‘fand þā ðǣr inne’, 118a) a host of prospective victims and departs home again bearing fifteen corpses.Footnote 25 The remaining sixty-three lines of the fitt then focus upon the aftereffects of this first raid, describing Grendel’s continued attacks and the increasingly desperate reactions of the persecuted Danes.
In Andreas, the violent invasion, the consequences of which we see in fitt X, is, properly speaking, Andrew’s entry into the prison and the release of St Matthew and the other captives described in the previous fitt. Fitt X begins immediately after this release, and the first nine lines of the fitt describe Andrew venturing out into the city to discover what violent fate might await him there (‘hwæt him gūðweorca gifede wurde’, 1066). This passage is followed immediately, however, by an account of an armed host of Mermedonians approaching the prison in which they expect to find their prisoners:
The Andreas-poet seems to have had a particular fondness for depicting the gathering of people, often in seemingly inappropriate martial terms, in scenes for which little or no warrant is to be found in the analogues, but the transformation of the expedition to the prison – so matter-of-factly described in the Latin and Greek texts – into a pseudo-militaristic raid is of particular importance here.Footnote 27 The Mermedonian expedition to the prison, undertaken in the expectation of a cannibalistic feast, stands in the design of fitt X in an equivalent position to Grendel’s raid on Heorot in Beowulf fitt II. The parallel is, however, antithetical: unlike Grendel, the Mermedonians are frustrated in their search for victims, finding only an empty prison, the doors of which stand open (‘carcernes duru … opene fundon’, 1075b–1076).Footnote 28 The dramatic reversal of expectations experienced by the Mermedonians at this point (especially as expressed in lines 1072–7) recalls the heavy emphasis on similar reversals throughout Beowulf and specifically during the account of Grendel’s final visit to Heorot, but the frustration of their desires also stands in inverse relationship to the success of Grendel’s first raid.Footnote 29
This antithetical parallel is pointed up, moreover, by two minor details in the account of the discovery of the empty prison which seem to have been introduced by the poet. In both the Latin and Greek texts, the Mermedonians are said to depart from the prison to find their leaders in order to announce their discovery. In Andreas, however, the poet specifies that the Mermedonians return from the prison to make this announcement, adding that they do so without the ‘booty’ they had expected to find in the prison: ‘Hīe þā unhȳðige eft gecyrdon’ (‘They turned back then without booty’, 1078). This more specific account emphasizes a sense of parallel journeys to and from the prison, recalling the description of Grendel’s journey to and return from Heorot. In contrast to the returning Mermedonians, however, Grendel departs exulting in his booty: ‘þanon eft ġewat / hūðe hrēmiġ’ (‘he went back from there, exulting in booty’, 123b–124a).Footnote 30
The Mermedonians’ empty-handed return from the prison not only establishes a distinct antithetical parallel to Grendel’s exultant return to the mere, but it also demonstrates the Andreas-poet’s thematic engagement with fitt II. In each poem, the actual or potential victims of cannibalism are linguistically equated to the material riches which might normally have been carried off in the aftermath of a violent raid. In each case, this equation establishes a metaphorical body-as-treasure motif and a thematic concern with the opposition of literal and non-literal wealth which accrues significance as the respective fitts progress.Footnote 31
In Beowulf, Grendel’s greed for the corporeal currency represented by his unwholesome booty stands in opposition to his disavowal of (actual) treasure. Grendel’s rejection of the social value of material wealth is expressed not only in his exclusion from the gift economy of the hall, but also in his refusal to engage in customary mechanisms for dispute settlement. Following his first attack, the poet emphasizes at some length that Grendel is neither willing to settle his feud with the Danes in exchange for money nor prepared to pay the expected werġild for the men he slays:
The essence of the threat that Grendel poses to the Danish community is, as this passage shows, that his violence is both disproportionate and impossible to contain. Unlike that of Scyld Scefing in the opening lines of the poem, Grendel’s violence cannot be bought off with tribute, nor can the Danes compel him to pay compensation for his actions. Grendel’s refusal to allow his behaviour to be governed by social conventions and his preference for corporeal rather than material wealth places him outside the value system of Heorot.
In Andreas, the representation of prospective victims as plunder in the account of the raid on the prison anticipates both the Mermedonians’ stated lack of interest in material treasure (in the passage cited above) and also the further development of the body-as-treasure motif throughout the poet’s account of the episode of the old man and his son. The poet’s treatment of this episode differs significantly from that in both the Greek and Latin analogues. In both of these texts it is, in the first place, a group of seven elderly people that is destined by lot to become a meal for the Mermedonian community, one of whom then offers his son to the executioners in his place. In the Latin text, a particularly grotesque scene follows, in which the leaders of the people agree to accept the substitution provided that the son weighs no less than his father. Having weighed the two men in a balance, the executioners discover that the son is lighter than his father, whereupon the old man proffers his daughter also to make up the shortfall.Footnote 33 The more outlandish elements of this scene are not found in the Greek text of the legend, in which the executioners, after consultation with their superiors, are content to accept the son in place of the father (who, however, subsequently offers them his daughter as well, presumably in relief at being spared himself).Footnote 34 In both of these versions of the legend, the father appears again later in the narrative when, together with fourteen Mermedonian executioners, he is condemned by Andrew to be sucked down into the abyss with the receding waters of the flood.Footnote 35 By contrast, the equivalent episode in Andreas appears to have been radically simplified. In the poem, the old man alone is nominated to be eaten; no weighing takes place, the offer of the daughter, common to both the Latin and Greek texts, is omitted, and only the fourteen executioners are said to be swallowed up in the watery abyss.Footnote 36
These changes may reflect a sense of narrative economy or, perhaps, dissatisfaction with the unnecessarily spectacular and macabre course of events, particularly as depicted in the Latin text. But the simplified treatment of the episode also imbues it with greater and more specific significance in the Old English poem. The adaptations were, most likely, driven in part by the poet’s typological imagination. As has been frequently observed, the presentation of this episode in Andreas seems designed to bring into relief the latent inverted Eucharistic connotations of the underlying narrative: the father who sacrifices his son for purely selfish gain within the world is set in ironic counterpoint to God the Father, who gives his Son to bring salvation to all with the promise of the life of the world to come.Footnote 37 In the light of the Andreas-poet’s well-documented interest in figural narrative, these Eucharistic resonances cannot be ignored.Footnote 38 At the same time, however, critical focus on this aspect may have obscured other significant features of the poet’s treatment of this scene. In particular, the poet’s presentation of the man’s son specifically as a treasure or object of exchange – without precedent in the Latin or Greek texts – has gone unacknowledged.
The Andreas-poet recasts the father’s selfish actions by presenting the intended sacrifice of his son in terms of the social practice of gift giving. In a recent discussion of the application of gift theory to Old English and Anglo-Latin literature, Stephanie Clark has emphasized the differences in social terms between commodity exchange, which is based on the logic of transaction, and gift exchange, which depends on a logic of reciprocity.Footnote 39 Clark cites the work of the economic anthropologist C. A. Gregory, who argues that commodity exchange ‘establishes objective quantitative relationships between the objects transacted’, while gift exchange ‘establishes personal qualitative relationships between the subjects transacting’.Footnote 40 The distinction between these two modes of exchange is a helpful one, accurately defining the difference between the account of the offer of the youth in Andreas and that in the surviving analogues. In the Latin text in particular, the offer of the son is clearly driven by the logic of transaction: the old man gives his children to the executioners explicitly in order to save his own life; father and son (and daughter) are equally understood as commodities subject to quantitative comparison (a fact demonstrated in strikingly literal fashion, as their ‘dead weight’ is subjected to very explicit testing).Footnote 41 In the Old English poem, however, the offer is presented as an instance of gift giving by means of which the old man establishes a friendly and beneficial relationship between himself and the Mermedonian crowd:
The old man offers to gift (syllan) the child into the Mermedonians’ possession. The rare compound ǣhtgeweald – which literally denotes the power of a possessor over a valuable object – construes the child metaphorically as a treasure or gift object.Footnote 43 Tellingly, and in contrast to the treatment of the episode in the analogues, the implicit motivation behind the man’s actions (to save his own life) is expressed only in the most oblique and ambiguous fashion in the Old English text. The poet states that the man offers his son to the Mermedonians līfes tō lisse. This is a phrase which defies easy translation. In their recent edition, North and Bintley render the half-line ‘in exchange for enjoying life’ – a translation that offers a perfectly reasonable interpretation of the situation but which adds a sense of explicit quid pro quo transactionality at odds with the more subtle sense of reciprocity inherent in the original.Footnote 44 It is, in fact, far from clear to whose enjoyment of life the half-line refers. Read in relation to social practices associated with gift giving, the statement could very easily be taken to mean that the precious gift of the man’s own son, his direct descendant (‘sylfes sunu … eaforan geongne’), is made to the Mermedonians for the sake of their own enjoyment of life (or even for the enjoyment they can derive from the youth’s life).Footnote 45 The phraseology may even hint at a sort of graciousness on the part of the man offering such a significant gift: the noun liss can connote not just delight or enjoyment but more specifically the enjoyment of a favour bestowed through benevolent condescension.Footnote 46
An instructive parallel for the language of gift exchange in this passage can be found in Genesis A in the accusations of ingratitude made by Abimelech in his rebuke of Abraham:
Abimelech’s words provide a context for understanding both the old man’s largess in gifting his son for the people’s enjoyment (tō lisse) and the crowd’s response to this significant gift. Abimelech’s complaint to Abraham highlights, in Gregory’s terms, a failure of reciprocity, whereby benevolence is rewarded with perceived hostility and the ideal intended personal relationship between Abraham and the king is undermined. By contrast, the Mermedonians reciprocate the apparent benevolence of the old man in an appropriate manner, receiving the offered youth ‘gratefully’ (tō þance). Again, language associated with gift giving is prominent. The crowd accept the child as a lāc, a noun which means ‘gift’ but which can also mean ‘sacrifice’ (the significance of which will be discussed further below). Similarly, the preterite form of the verb þicgan in the phrase þēgon tō þance can mean either ‘received’ or ‘consumed’. The implications of a sacrificial meal contained in the punning phrase lāc … þēgon – here suggestive of the Eucharistic sacrifice – is paralleled closely, though not exactly, in the much-discussed opening lines of Wulf and Eadwacer. Footnote 48 But since the Mermedonians are subsequently prevented (by divine intervention) from feasting upon the child, the primary meaning is clearly ‘received’. The verb þicgan is well-attested in the Old English poetic corpus in the context of receiving treasure and a direct parallel for the phrase þēgon tō þance can be found in Guthlac A in the context of the gifts with which God will reward the faithful.Footnote 49 The metaphorical presentation of the youth as a treasure is developed yet further in the following passage, in which the Mermedonians organize the division and distribution of the precious gift. In a construction that parallels the earlier account of the old man’s intention to offer the gift for the crowd’s benefit (‘syllan wolde … līfes tō lisse’), the Mermedonians decree ‘that old and young should receive their share for the support of life’ (‘duguðe ond eogoðe dǣl onfēngon / līfes tō lēofne’, 1122b–1123a).Footnote 50
The language of this passage, by invoking the practice of gift exchange, accomplishes a remarkable transformation. In the analogues, the father is presented as a desperate supplicant begging for his life; in these texts it is the Mermedonian people – and specifically their leaders – who occupy the position of authority, who dictate the terms of the exchange, and who ultimately determine the man’s fate. The changes wrought by the Andreas-poet present the old man instead, however illogically, as a gracious benefactor; the gift of his son, presented metaphorically as a valuable treasure, is gratefully received by a seemingly-dependent population, establishing a relationship of reciprocal good will between the two parties. So complete is this transformation that the father’s status as prisoner and prospective victim seems to be entirely forgotten in the Old English poem, so that the release and reprieve of a man who, moments before, had been depicted as bound in chains (fetorwrāsnum fæst, 1107a) and despairing of life (fēores ōrwēna, 1107b), is passed over in silence.Footnote 51
Taken at face value, the poet’s distinctive presentation of this episode is difficult to account for, running as it does counter to both the narrative logic of the situation and, we can assume, the treatment of the episode in the poet’s source. It is, I think, only when the episode is read against the account of Grendel’s first attack in fitt II of Beowulf that the rationale behind the poet’s adaptation of the underlying legendary material becomes apparent. In the first place, the metaphorical depiction of the youth as a precious gift builds upon the body-as-treasure motif established through the earlier reference to the ‘booty’ denied the Mermedonians in their raid on the prison. The thematic parallel with Grendel’s more successful raid is extended to incorporate the Beowulf-poet’s grimly ironic contrast between literal and non-literal currencies: the Mermedonian preference for the metaphorical treasure represented by the man’s son over the literal treasure for which they have no use (‘næs him tō māðme wynn’) reflects Grendel’s disdain of treasure (māþðum formetode) in favour of the more gruesome levy that he exacts each night in the form of human plunder.Footnote 52
The use of the body-as-treasure motif in these respective fitts, and the opposition between literal and corporeal treasures, generates irony when viewed in a wider context. In Beowulf, the wryly ironical payoff for the development of these themes in fitt II comes later in the poem, when the poet applies the same body-as-treasure motif to Grendel’s own (dismembered) body following his defeat by Beowulf. Grendel’s body is linguistically associated with treasure when, after the battle in Heorot, the hero regrets that he was unable to present Hrothgar with the spectacle of his enemy dead amongst the ornaments of the hall (fēond on frætewum, 962a).Footnote 53 The reference to hall-treasures here in fact recalls the description in fitt II, immediately before the ġifstōl-passage, of how Grendel occupied by night the treasure-adorned hall (sinċfāge sel, 167a). From disdaining the social function of treasures within Heorot, Grendel is here imaginatively reduced to the status of one of those treasures. Beowulf goes on, moreover, to figure Grendel’s severed arm as a sort of deadly payment, a futile and ruinous parody of dispute settlement paid in the only currency that Grendel acknowledges: ‘Nō þǣr ǣniġe swā þēah / fēasceaft guma frōfre ġebohte’ (‘nevertheless, the destitute man by no means bought any comfort there’, 972b–3).Footnote 54
In a similar way, the poet again alludes to the idea of corporeal currency when, following the defeat of Grendel’s mother, Beowulf beheads her son’s corpse. Specifically recalling the description of Grendel’s initial raid in fitt II (on ǣnne sīð, 1579b), the poet recalls the body-as-treasure motif by referring to the fifteen Danish corpses with which Grendel leaves the hall, rather incongruously, as lāðlicu lāc (‘horrific gifts’, 1584a). In the following passage, Grendel’s own body is again implicitly connected to hall-treasures when the poet tells us that, despite the riches on display in the underwater hall, Beowulf did not take any more treasures (māðmǣhta mā, 1613a) than the head and the hilt of the giants’ sword. Paralleling Grendel’s own booty-laden departure from Heorot, Beowulf removes the head specifically to ‘repay’ Grendel’s previous assaults (forgyldan, 1577a, 1584b), and head and hilt are subsequently twice described using the unique compound sǣlāc (‘sea-gifts’, 1624a and 1652a), first when Beowulf leaves the mere and again when he presents them to Hrothgar in token of glory.Footnote 55
In Andreas, too, the concern with corporeal over literal wealth developed in fitt X produces irony, but the irony is in this case both intratextual and also specifically intertextual. At the intratextual level, the use of the body-as-treasure motif in fitt X recalls the earlier account of Andrew’s departure for Mermedonia. As the saint and his disciples embark upon the divinely-piloted boat which will ferry them to their destination, the poet remarks upon the nobility of the cargo the ship will carry:
As has been often noted, these lines – which have no equivalent in the analogues – appear to have been modelled upon the Beowulf-poet’s account of the ship-funeral of Scyld Scefing near the beginning of that poem:
But while the passage in Beowulf sees the narrator praise at length the royal treasures which accompany Scyld on his solitary voyage, in Andreas it is the disciple and his companions who are metaphorically described as ‘high-treasures’.Footnote 58 This use, early in the poem, of the body-as-treasure motif to describe the ship’s holy cargo provides a counterpoint to the later use of this same motif in the context of the Mermedonians’ cannibalistic lusts. At the same time, however, the Andreas-poet’s engagement with fitt II of Beowulf provides a more pointed, intertextual irony for the use of this motif in fitt X. In Beowulf, Grendel’s preference for somatic riches over material treasure frustrates, as noted above, customary mechanisms for avoiding violent conflict (specifically compensation, tribute, and gift exchange). In Andreas, by contrast, the same preference on the part of the Mermedonian people in fact facilitates the old man’s successful attempt to divert a similar threat of violence (from himself, at least) through the custom of gift giving. The metaphorical depiction of the youth as a gift object represents a perverse inversion of the Danish concern with werġild, signalling the fact that for the pre-conversion Mermedonians, as for Grendel, violent death is the only currency of exchange.
METOD HĪE NE CŪÞON: SOCIAL DISINTEGRATION AND RECOURSE TO IDOLATRY
In the Latin and Greek texts of the apocryphal legend on which Andreas is based it is stated quite simply that, following the loss of their prisoners, the Mermedonians draw lots to determine who should be the first to die in order to feed the people. In the Latin text in particular, this process is presented in terms of a civic assembly: ‘Collecti autem omnes seniores civitatis, quasi ducentos septem, et duxerunt eos in concilio, ut super quem sors deveniretur, esset eorum in cibum, et sang[u]is ipsius in potum. Mittentes vero sor[tem], et cecidit sors super septem seniores.’Footnote 59 The Andreas-poet similarly describes the assembly of the Mermedonians, translating the civic assembly of the Latin text in familiar cultural terms. The meeting is presented in Andreas as a traditional gemōt (‘assembly’, 1059b) located by a boundary path (be mearcpaðe, 1061b) – a description that reflects the realities of early medieval England, where such assemblies were often held on significant territorial boundaries.Footnote 60 The use of the participial adjective mæðelhēgende (‘assembly-holding’, 1096b), which, outside Andreas, occurs only in Cynewulf’s Elene (279a), describes the Mermedonians’ actions in terms that play into a particular emphasis on communal agency in the first half of fitt X. The account of the expedition to the prison in lines 1067–71, quoted above, is notable for the piling up of appositive noun phrases indicating the collective action of the Mermedonians (‘side herigeas, / folces frumgāras; wǣrlēasra werod … hǣðne hildfrecan’), and we see the same thing in the subsequent description of the assembly of the people (lēode … burgwara, 1093b–1094a; beornas … wīggendra þrēat, 1094b–1095a). This emphatic depiction of collective activity stands in strong contrast, however, to the individuality of the old man subsequently selected by lot to be sacrificed to their communal hunger:
In this carefully controlled narrative sequence attention shifts for the first time in the poem from the Mermedonians as a group to an individual member of that group. Collective agency is fragmented when the focus of communal violence turns from the outsiders represented by the foreign prisoners and is redirected against members of the community itself.
As noted above, the emphasis on the individual victim singled out by the casting of lots appears to be an innovation on the part of the Andreas-poet. The shift from seven prospective victims to one – and, subsequently, from son and daughter to simply son – heightens the sense of the fragmentation of the Mermedonian community following the loss of the captives, but it also mirrors the prominent movement from communal life to individualized self-interest that stands at the heart of fitt II of Beowulf. One of the prime effects of Grendel’s raids is the social disintegration of the formerly united Danish community. As a result of his attacks, the noble company (æþelinga ġedriht, 118b) which had previously occupied the hall together is divided, each man seeking for himself a safer resting place elsewhere (138–43). The significance of this movement from collective action to individualism is marked out, moreover, through the poet’s stylistic technique. Lines 126–54a of Beowulf represent an excellent example of the sort of chiastic patterning sometimes called ‘ring composition’.Footnote 62 At the heart of this extended pattern stands the prominent reference to Danish individualism:
The opening section of this chiastic pattern (a1) describes the immediate aftereffects of Grendel’s first raid: his hostility is made manifest to the surviving Danes, whose weeping is metaphorized as a ‘great morning-song’.Footnote 64 In the following section (b1), attention focuses upon Hrothgar, identified by epithets that stress his responsibilities as ruler, emphasizing the sorrow he endures. After a statement of Grendel’s continued aggression (c1), the central portion of the passage focuses on the individual, rather than societal, response to Grendel’s attacks. There is a repetition here of what might be seen as the governing background motif of the passage – the manifestation of Grendel’s enmity (a*) – but here in the context of an individual response, contained within the twofold description of the (hypothetical) Dane seeking for himself a safer resting place (d1, d2). The self-interest of this individual response is stressed by the repeated third-person singular pronouns, notably in those constructions employing, firstly, the dative of personal advantage (him … sōhte) and, subsequently, a reflexive pronoun (hēold hyne). The second half of the passage completes the chiastic structure. Following a second statement of Grendel’s continued tyranny of the Danish society (c2), attention turns again to ‘the lord of the Scyldings’ and the sorrow that he suffers (b2). In the concluding section of the passage (a2), there is a third and final reference to how Grendel’s hostility was revealed, as word of his depredations spreads among ‘the children of men’. In these final lines, the grimly ironic reference to ‘a great morning song’ in section a1 is literalized in the ‘sorrowful songs’ by means of which the Danish plight is conveyed to the wider world.
This chiastic structure, together with the repeated vocabulary and synonymous phrases that link the various movements of the passage (highlighted here in bold), masterfully suggests the stasis afflicting the helpless Danes.Footnote 65 It is impossible to say whether or not the Andreas-poet recognized the Beowulf-poet’s use of ring composition in this passage, although it represents a demonstration of poetic skill and narrative control which we might reasonably expect to have commended itself to another poet. What is clear, however, is that the underlying thematic concern of the passage – the demonstration of how violence from without disrupts the normal operations of society – is reflected in the emphasis on the conflict between the individual and the collective in the account of the Mermedonian response to the hunger with which they are oppressed. As Grendel, acting alone against the community (āna wið eallum, 145a), brings about the fragmentation of the community of Heorot, so too the lots that determine between the Mermedonians, distinguishing the individual (ǣnne) from the rest (ōðrum), signal the introduction of an individualized self-interest at odds with the good of the community. In this context, the Mermedonian councillor’s determination to save his own skin, even at the cost of his son’s life, reads like an extreme reflection of the self-interest of the hypothetical Dane who abandons the communal life of the hall for his own security.
In a further significant development of the presumed source, the Andreas-poet infuses the account of the casting of lots, so matter-of-factly presented in the Latin and Greek analogues, with clear ritualistic significance: the Mermedonians cast their lots through hellish arts (hellcræftum) and in accordance with heathen practices (hǣðengildum).Footnote 66 Following the old man’s gift of his son, the preparations for the youth’s death are further presented in terms that suggest not just slaughter, but specifically sacrifice. As has already been noted, the boy is described as a lāc when presented by his father to the bloodthirsty crowd. Although the primary meaning of the word in this context is clearly ‘gift’, the more specific meaning ‘sacrifice’ is also relevant. The blood-thirsty Mermedonians who subsequently apprehend the youth are said to be compelled tō þām beadulāce (1118b): the rare compound beadulāc, found elsewhere only in Beowulf, may have originally meant ‘battle-play’, but in context in Andreas the interpretations ‘battle-gift’ or ‘warlike-sacrifice’ are equally appropriate. Following his capture, arrangements for the boy’s death are directed by heathen temple-guardians (hǣðene herigweardas, 1124a) and he is subsequently bound before the idol (gehæfted for herige, 1127a) to await his fate.Footnote 67
There is nothing in either the Latin or the Greek text to suggest that the poet’s source inspired the ritualistic treatment of this episode. But the transformation of the practice of drawing lots into a heathen observance redolent of human sacrifice again aligns the episode in Andreas with the aftermath of Grendel’s assaults on Heorot. A further outcome of Grendel’s hostility is a resort to idol-worship on the part of the persecuted Danes, who are said to offer sacrifices to the ‘slayer of souls’ in an attempt to secure help against their enemy:
The language of this passage is particularly striking, including four poetic compounds in as many lines, three of which occur only here (hærgtræf, gāstbona, þēodþrēa) and one of which (wiġweorþung) is found elsewhere only once, in the work of Cynewulf (Juliana 180a). Of quite what the sacrifices consisted is left tantalizingly vague; comparison with the preparations for the death of the youth in Andreas suggests, however, that at least one early medieval reader connected the Danish idolatry with the practice of human sacrifice.Footnote 69 At any rate, the populace in each poem responds to persecution with recourse to heathen observances. Where the Danes of Beowulf are beset by a national affliction (þēodþrēaum) in the form of Grendel’s attacks, the Mermedonians are afflicted by a hunger personified by the poet as a ðēodsceaða (‘oppressor of the nation’, 1115b). There is no parallel in the analogues to Andreas for this striking personification. Here, as elsewhere, the poet’s departure from the presumed source seems to point up connections between the situation of the Mermedonians and that of the Danes in Beowulf. The word ðēodsceaða itself is used in Beowulf to describe the dragon (2278a and 2688a) and its appearance in Andreas recalls the frequent use of -sceaða compounds in descriptions of both the dragon and Grendel.Footnote 70 Moreover, personified hunger is presented as tyrannizing (rīcsode, 1116a) the Mermedonian people in much the same way that Grendel is depicted as tyrannizing the Danes in fitt II (rīxode, 144a).Footnote 71 Hunger reigns over Mermedonia just as Grendel reigns by night in Heorot, and on both occasions the tyranny serves as a catalyst for heathen worship.
Following the account of Danish paganism, the Beowulf-poet goes on to explain that Hrothgar’s people did not know God, the judge of deeds, before shifting to the present tense to offer a gnomic contrast between the fate of the damned, who commit their souls to the fires of hell, and that of the righteous, who seek the Lord and entreat for the protection of the Father’s embrace:
The contrast established here between the false assistance sought by the heathen Danes in their idolatrous worship and the true succour to be found only in God is again reflected in the account of the persecution of the Mermedonian youth. In the Latin legend, the condemned children beg for mercy, citing their tender years as a reason why they should be spared:
Cum autem ducerent illos ad locum, ut interficerent, ceperunt infantul[i] ill[i] flere amarissime, suppl[ices] volutabantur pedibus carnificum, obsecrantes illos ac dicentes. Rogamus et obsecramus vos, miseremini adolescentie nostre, ne interficiatis nos modo quia infantul[i] sumus, dimictite nos aliquantulum, maxime ut crescamus, et tu[n]c nos interficite.Footnote 73
The Greek text contains the same scene, with an additional aside to the effect that it was the Mermedonian custom to consume, rather than to bury, their dead.Footnote 74 In neither text do the executioners pay any attention to the youths’ pleas. By comparison, the equivalent scene in Andreas seems more pointed:
Again, the treatment of this episode serves the Andreas-poet’s well-documented interest in Christological typology. The description of the youth’s plight juxtaposes two well-defined lexical sets. In the first place, the youth is associated with sorrow (geōmran stefne), captivity (gehæfted), pain (hearmlēoð galan), deprivation (fēasceaft), and wretchedness (earmsceapen). In the context of Old English religious poetry, this terminology is strongly suggestive of the lamentations of the captives of hell, a popular poetic motif. This connection seems to be confirmed later in the poem, when the devil is similarly described as a captive singing a song of pain (‘helle hæftling, hearmleoð galan’, 1342), and the spokesman of his demonic retinue is, like the youth, termed an earmsceapen (1345a).Footnote 76 At the same time, however, the poet appropriates the language of Christian prayer, foregrounding the concept of salvation: the boy seeks grace (āre), protection (freoðe), and, in a half-line that closely echoes the Beowulf-poet’s gnomic pronouncement, peace (friðes wilnian), with life represented as a gift to be granted (geunnan). In a poem marked by such dense typological referentiality, the combination of lamentation and petition in these lines evokes, I suggest, the situation of the prophets and patriarchs in hell awaiting the coming of Christ at the Harrowing (and, more generally, that of the penitent Christian anticipating release from the worldly prison).Footnote 77 The connection is, however, parodic, in the sense that the youth’s petition is misdirected: his pleas for grace are addressed not to God, but to his persecutors (æt þām folce).Footnote 78
Like the devil-worshipping Danes, then, the youth seeks help from an ironically inappropriate source and, as in Beowulf, the contrast is pointed up by the Andreas-poet in a moment of self-conscious narratorial commentary. In all versions of the hagiographic legend, God intervenes at this point in the narrative to prevent the slaughter of the youth(s): in the Latin text, as in the Old English poem, the executioners’ swords miraculously melt; in the Greek legend, the swords simply fall from their hands. In both the Latin and Greek texts, however, this miraculous reprieve is the direct result of Andrew’s prayers on behalf on the youths, whereas in Andreas the saint pities the youth but does not explicitly intercede for him.Footnote 79 The salvific agency comes from God alone, and where in the analogues Andrew is said to have praised the Lord following the miracle, in Andreas it is the poet who undertakes this act of thanksgiving:
The language of this moment of explicitly didactic commentary clearly refers back to the description of the youth’s pleas, establishing God as the true source of the help (gēoce) and peace (frēod) which the youth could not find amongst his own people. But the sudden interjection of the narrative voice, the move to a universalizing present tense, the emphasis on the Lord’s role as judge, the use of the gnomic construction with bið, and the promise of salvation to those who seek it all bring this moment in Andreas into line with the equivalent narratorial intervention in Beowulf. Footnote 81
This passage from Andreas not only recalls the similarly didactic passage in fitt II of Beowulf, but also fulfils a similar structural role. In Beowulf, the dramatic intrusion of the narratorial viewpoint occurs at the end of fitt II, providing an effective conclusion to the account of Grendel’s twelve-year reign of terror contained in this section of the poem.Footnote 82 In Andreas, the lines praising God as the source of all true security occupy a similar position as the conclusion of fitt X, bringing to an end the account of the attempted sacrifice of the youth. Fitt X is not the only fitt in Andreas that ends on a specifically didactic note, sometimes including a present-tense narratorial comment.Footnote 83 The parallels with the end of Beowulf fitt II are compelling, however, not least because of the conspicuous way in which the transition from fitt X to fitt XI in Andreas seems to imitate the transition between fitts II and III in Beowulf.
Fitt XI of Andreas begins by depicting a seemingly protracted period of widespread grief and confusion caused by the continued hunger of the Mermedonian people:
Once again, the focus of these lines is on the social ramifications of the Mermedonians’ distress: the poet stresses the debilitating effects of the people’s hunger and again highlights their lack of interest in worldly wealth. Perhaps the most striking feature of this passage, however, is the way in which it seems again to allude directly to the situation of Hrothgar’s Danes. The combination of images of weeping, empty feasting halls and men at counsel once more recalls details from fitt II of Beowulf, reading, in fact, very much like a condensation of three separate passages describing the implications of Grendel’s raids:
Taken individually, the similarities with these passages might not seem unduly significant and might be explained in terms of conventional poetic depictions of grief. In view of the evidence presented here for the Andreas-poet’s sustained engagement with Beowulf fitt II, however, such an explanation does not stand up, especially when the passage from Andreas is compared to other versions of the underlying legend.
In both the Latin and Greek analogues, the despair of the Mermedonians following the reprieve of the youth is expressed briefly and perfunctorily, before the narrative continues, with no apparent change of time or scene, with the appearance of a disguised devil.Footnote 88 There is no warrant in either text for the extended lamentations described in the Old English poem. Noting the suspension of ‘temporal unities’ at this point in the poem, North and Bintley explain the divergence from the presumed source by suggesting that the poet is ‘measuring time by the emotions of depressed Mermedonian cannibals’.Footnote 89 This may be so, but it is perhaps more significant that the reference to þā bitran tīd experienced by the Mermedonians finds a precise analogue in the reference to the long-lasting mǣlċearu (‘sorrow of that time’) endured by Hrothgar and his followers at the beginning of fitt III of Beowulf:
In both cases, the beginning of a new fitt is marked by means of a summative passage which recapitulates and elaborates the narrative situation. This recapitulation is particularly evident in Beowulf, as the reference in this passage to Hrothgar’s powerlessness in the face of overwhelming hostility (‘wæs þæt ġewin tō swȳð, / lāþ ond longsum’) echoes the account of the king’s reaction to Grendel’s first attack in lines 133b–134a (quoted above).Footnote 91 In each poem, moreover, the conclusion of one fitt on a moment of didactic present-tense narratorial comment is followed at the beginning of the next fitt by a retrospective account of a period of protracted sorrow and helplessness. In the case of Andreas, this sequence is, as we have seen, highly unlikely to have been inspired by the poet’s source. It is far more likely that the transition between fitt X and fitt XI was directly modelled upon the transition between fitts II and III in Beowulf. The comparison of these two transitions also points up a further example of the sort of antithesis so often evident in the Andreas-poet’s allusions to Beowulf. In Beowulf, the recapitulation of Danish sorrow at the beginning of fitt III immediately precedes the introduction of a saviour in the form of the poem’s (initially nameless) hero (194–198a). In a disconcerting parallel, the recapitulation of Mermedonian distress which begins fitt XI is followed by the first appearance of the devil in the poem, a much less certain answer to the people’s need (1168–9).
CONCLUSIONS
The correspondences identified here are mostly not the sort of verbal parallels on which arguments for the influence of Beowulf on Andreas have typically focused. Whilst there is, as has been indicated above, some overlap in the diction of the two fitts, this does not, for the most part, consist of the sorts of rare terms, distinctive compounds and repeated collocations which have been the main subject of scholarly attention to date. Fitt X of Andreas does, in fact, like the rest of the poem, display a veneer of ‘Beowulfian’ phraseology, but the phrases in question are not in this instance drawn from the account of the Danish response to Grendel’s attacks; conversely, the Andreas-poet does indeed seem to borrow formulaically from material in fitt II of Beowulf, but these borrowings are not found in the section outlining the Mermedonian response to the captives’ release.Footnote 92 Despite this lack of conspicuous verbal parallels between the two passages, however, the above analysis strongly suggests that the Andreas-poet’s account of the discovery of the empty prison and the subsequent despair of the Mermedonian people, which differs significantly in matters of detail from the Latin and Greek analogues, has been systematically modelled upon the passage in Beowulf describing Grendel’s first attack on Heorot and the helplessness and sorrow of the Danes.
Several implications follow from this suggestion, as regards both the Andreas-poet’s engagement with Beowulf and our understanding of the textual history of the earlier poem. One such implication concerns the starting point of this essay: the interpretative difficulties of Beowulf 168–9 and the various attempts that have been made to resolve or alleviate them. It has been suggested above that the reading māþðum formetode for Beowulf 169a provides a reasonable interpretation of these troublesome lines and that, understood in this way, the lines can be seen to participate in the development of a body-as-treasure motif in fitt II more generally. No more definitive statement than this seems possible, but in assessing the pros and cons of the reading supported here we must, I suggest, take into account the efforts of not one, but two early medieval readers whose interpretations of the poem, very different as they are, remain available to us.
The first of these readers is the figure known as scribe A, who was responsible for copying these lines in the surviving manuscript. This individual read the poem in an older (perhaps much older), possibly faulty exemplar, which they reproduced more or less faithfully in the course of their work.Footnote 93 While the work of scribe A, together with that of scribe B, is the basis of almost all that we know about the poem which they collaboratively reproduced, their evidence is, in this instance, decidedly ambiguous. It is impossible to say whether scribe A intended this sequence of letter forms to be read as one word or as two. Even if it were possible to determine with any confidence what the scribe intended to write in this instance, a more fundamental problem would still remain concerning the degree to which early medieval scribes were alert to the wider sense of the texts that they copied. Recent work by Leonard Neidorf has advanced a compelling argument that patterns of apparent ‘corruptions’ in the text of Beowulf support a ‘lexemic’ model of scribal copying according to which the scribes who produced our copy of the poem in (probably) the early eleventh century are held to have processed their exemplar lexeme by lexeme with a view ‘to modernize and Saxonize the orthography of the text, not to discern its formal qualities or interpret its deeper meaning’.Footnote 94 This theory of scribal practice could account for a hypothetical situation in which a scribe faced with a rare and unfamiliar verb form like *formetode in their exemplar might, through a process of trivialization, rationalize the difficult reading as the familiar prepositional phrase for metode. Footnote 95 In this case, however, such scribal misinterpretation would not be reflected in any substantive alteration of the transmitted text. In fact, Neidorf’s conclusions regarding the lack of scribal attention to the deeper-than-lexemic meaning of a text would tend to suggest that the interpretative difficulties of lines like Beowulf 168–9 which have so exercised modern editors and textual critics might have been virtually invisible to the individuals who copied them.
Eric Stanley, writing in opposition to what he saw as injudicious emendation of Old English poetical texts, famously declared in 1984 that even the most inattentive of scribes ‘knew his living Old English better than the best modern editor of Old English verse’.Footnote 96 Stanley’s dictum, represented as an abdication of editorial responsibility in the face of difficult textual readings, has become something of a target in recent years.Footnote 97 To place this gloss on Stanley’s statement is, however, to misrepresent his argument. Stanley’s paper, taken as a whole, is manifestly not (as it has sometimes been presented) either a defence of the accuracy of scribal readings or a rejection of critical editing per se. Footnote 98 It is not the need to identify passages of seeming corruption that Stanley challenges, but rather the certainty of scholars who believe that they can reconstruct more surely a supposed authorial original. In making this argument, Stanley draws a double distinction: between early medieval scribes and modern editors on the one hand, but also between scribes and poets on the other, pointing out that ‘most scribes may not have been the equals in Old English of the best Old English poets’.Footnote 99 This distinction is relevant in the case of the ġifstōl-passage, where we have available to us not only the ambiguous evidence of scribe A, but also, I believe, indications of how this passage was understood by an accomplished poet who was also a careful reader of a (lost) scribal text of Beowulf.
The poet of Andreas appears to have read the poem as a poem with careful attention to its many nuances. Our ability to reconstruct the interpretations of such a reader will, of course, remain subjective and open to challenge; such inferences as we might draw cannot, moreover, be taken as a sure indicator of definitive or authorial readings. In the overwhelming majority of cases, early medieval readers encountering Old English poetry in manuscript form must have constituted imperfect readers of imperfect texts in the same way, though perhaps not always to the same degree, as modern editors and textual critics. But the Andreas-poet’s understanding of these lines must presumably have arisen from a concern with the meaning of the passage beyond that required of a scribe engaged in ‘lexemic’ reproduction of an exemplar. In this sense, their testimony, contentious as it might be, is valuable. If the argument expressed above is accepted – if, that is, the account of the Mermedonian response to the loss of their prisoners has been redrawn in Andreas in a way intended deliberately and meaningfully to recall the Danish response to Grendel’s attacks in Beowulf fitt II – then there is good reason to think that the poet of Andreas saw in line 169 of Beowulf a statement to the effect that Grendel did not care for treasure, not a divine prohibition against his approaching Hrothgar’s throne. In view of the increasing awareness of the interconnections between surviving Old English poems, scholars may in the future be more inclined to consider intertextual evidence of this kind in their interpretations of imperfect manuscript witnesses.Footnote 100
The mere presence of these lines in the copy of the poem available to the Andreas-poet is also significant. Both the ġifstōl-passage itself and the so-called ‘Christian excursus’ in lines 175–88 have been treated with considerable suspicion by modern scholars. In a published appendix to his seminal British Academy lecture, J. R. R. Tolkien expressed doubts about the authenticity of both lines 168–9 (‘probably a clumsily intruded couplet’) and the references to Danish ignorance and the didactic present-tense passage in lines 180b–188 (‘unless my ear and judgement are wholly at fault, they have a ring and measure unlike their context, and indeed unlike that of the poem as a whole’).Footnote 101 The former passage was viewed with distrust by both Frederick Klaeber (‘[o]ne might suspect an inept interpolation here’) and by C. L. Wrenn, who believed the lines to have been displaced from their proper place between lines 110 and 111 and read them as an ‘amplification’ of the account of God’s punishment of Cain composed ‘by the poet himself or a later interpolator’.Footnote 102 Doubts about the authenticity of the excursus have also been raised by Dorothy Whitelock and, more recently, Thomas D. Hill, and while several critics have argued forcibly for the integrity of the passage, a persistent uneasiness characterizes much of the critical discussion of these lines.Footnote 103 The apparent engagement with and repurposing of this material in the later hagiographical poem suggests, however, that these passages were present in the text of Beowulf known to the Andreas-poet – which is to say, at an earlier stage in the manuscript transmission of the poem than that represented by Vitellius A. xv.
The poet of Andreas, widely thought to have been working in the ninth century, seems to have accepted these lines as an integral part of fitt II, and of the poem generally.Footnote 104 This suggestion does not, of course, constitute an argument for the ultimately authorial status of the excursus passage. The possibility remains that some or all of these lines constitute a skilful addition by a poet other than the one responsible for the shape of the poem as a whole.Footnote 105 But there is good reason to think that, at the very least, these lines had a venerable history as part of the poem long before they were copied into our surviving manuscript. In particular, the Andreas-poet’s familiarity with these lines would seem to argue against the idea that they draw specifically upon the rhetoric of a tenth-century vernacular homiletic tradition – either as a late interpolation into an early poem or as an intrinsic part of a late Beowulf. Footnote 106 Indeed, the Andreas-poet’s recognizable engagement with a text of fitt II apparently very similar to that available to us today, but which apparently predated the surviving manuscript copy by more than a century, tends to support a model of the transmission of the poem involving minimal alteration to a text that remained more or less stable across a significant passage of time.Footnote 107
This stability may have extended to the structural divisions of the poetic text. The numbered fitts of Beowulf have received considerable scholarly attention. On the basis of inconsistencies in the numeration of the fitts in Vitellius A. xv, it has been suggested that these numbers were not present in the exemplar but were added by scribe A and scribe B during the copying process.Footnote 108 The more fundamental question of the origin and rationale of the sectional divisions themselves has been the subject of a study by R. D. Fulk.Footnote 109 Discerning an apparent ‘lack of congruence with the structure of the narrative’ in the placement of several of the divisions, Fulk argues that ‘the divisions were made by someone other than the poet’.Footnote 110 Noting a particular confusion in the divisions in the work of scribe B, Fulk further argues that ‘the two scribes of the Beowulf manuscript are themselves responsible for the sectional divisions’ and that ‘the first scribe was considerably better attuned to the structure of the narrative’.Footnote 111 Fulk’s wider argument concerning the supposed clumsiness of the division of the poem deserves fuller consideration than can be offered here. I would suggest, however, that the analysis above provides reasons to doubt his conclusion that the sectional divisions in Beowulf originated with the scribes of Vitellius A. xv.
That fitt II of Beowulf constitutes an impressively coherent narrative unit has been noted by several critics.Footnote 112 The coherence of these lines is inherent to the structure of the poem and does not depend upon their formal demarcation in any given manuscript copy. It is by no means unthinkable, therefore, either that a scribe seeking to divide the poem meaningfully into discrete sections should choose to demarcate precisely these lines or that an attentive reader (such as the Andreas-poet) should also have recognized the integrity of the account of Grendel’s tyranny and its effect upon the Danes. That the Andreas-poet, reading an undivided text of Beowulf in (probably) the ninth century, should choose to engage with precisely the same passage that scribe A, copying an undivided exemplar in (probably) the early eleventh century, would identify as fitt II of the poem would be a coincidence, but within the scope of the imagination. Credulity is stretched to breaking point, however, when the sectional divisions of Andreas itself are taken into account.
North and Bintley argue that the fitt-divisions of Andreas, like those of Beowulf, tend to be ‘speech-oriented’; in contrast to the more ‘bookish’ construction of Cynewulf’s Elene, in which fitt-divisions tend to match closely the chapter divisions of the Latin source, they note that the sections of Andreas sometime, but not always, seem to correspond more or less closely to two chapters of the presumed source.Footnote 113 This is the case with fitt X, which corresponds to the portion of the narrative covered in chapters 22–3 of the Latin and Greek texts. When the parallels with Beowulf are taken into account, however, the correspondences between the respective fitts indicate the structural and thematic influence of fitt II on the composition of Andreas fitt X. This emerges particularly clearly from comparison of the beginnings and ends of the respective fitts. I have suggested above that the end of Andreas fitt X and the transition to fitt XI mirrors the end of fitt II and the transition to fitt III in Beowulf in ways that cannot be accounted for by comparison with other versions of the hagiographical legend and which respect the fitt-divisions in each poem so closely as to suggest deliberate design on the part of the Andreas-poet. A similar point can be made about the beginning of the respective fitts. Fitt II of Beowulf begins with a clear sequence of cause and effect, in which Grendel’s initial act of violence is followed by a lengthy account of the consequences of this event. In Andreas, fitt X apparently follows chapter 22 of the presumed source by beginning with an account of Andrew leaving the prison (lines 1058–66). In the lines that follow, however, the reworking of the Mermedonian ‘raid’ on the prison as a parallel to Grendel’s attack on Heorot brings the overall structure of the fitt into alignment with that of Beowulf fitt II, the majority of the fitt concerning the consequences of the discovery of the loss of the prisoners. The logic of this structural parallel is, however, somewhat destabilized by the fact that while Grendel’s attack on Heorot is the ultimate cause of Danish despair, the ‘raid’ on the prison is only the proximate cause of the misery of the Mermedonians. For an audience alive to the parallels with Beowulf, the reworking of the expedition to the prison divorces the effect of the loss of the prisoners from its true cause – the release of the captives by Andrew – and presents a double-vision of the Mermedonians as simultaneously perpetrators and victims, re-enacting both Grendel’s initial raid on Heorot and the despair and helplessness suffered by the Danes on account thereof. This double-vision could possibly be taken as an example of the sort of confused logic sometimes held to characterize the Andreas-poet’s engagement with Beowulf. It seems more likely, however, that in this case the poet’s intention of replicating the structural design of fitt II has overridden more strictly logical concerns.
On the evidence presented here, it cannot be definitively stated that the fitt-divisions of Beowulf are authorial, but the evidence does suggest that they are considerably older than the surviving copy of the poem. In the case of Andreas, however, there is good reason to believe that the divisions did indeed originate with the poet, and that sectional divisions featured significantly in that individual’s understanding of the composition of Old English narrative poetry, both as reader and as writer.Footnote 114 To date, discussions of the Andreas-poet’s debt to Beowulf have tended to suggest that this influence can best be explained by the assumption that the poet’s memory retained the impression of specific well-known passages and formulas encountered in their reading of Beowulf which were then recycled in the composition of Andreas. Footnote 115 To my mind, however, the precise engagement with fitt II of Beowulf discussed here suggests instead a directly textual influence.Footnote 116 Throughout this article, I have been talking about the presumed Latin source of Andreas. It is important to recognize, however, the ‘copresence’ of Beowulf as a second, written source for more than just a verbal patina overlaid upon the hagiographical narrative.Footnote 117
The account of the helplessness of the Danes in fitt II describes an obvious moment of crisis in Beowulf. It is one of many such moments described in the poem, including Beowulf’s fight with Grendel, the subsequent attacks of Grendel’s Mother and the Dragon, and other reported events such as the death of Hygelac, the fate of Hildeburh, or the hints at future crises in the Danish royal dynasty. What distinguishes fitt II, however, is the poet’s simultaneous emphasis on the ever-present spiritual crisis which faces all of the characters within the poem.Footnote 118 In drawing upon this fitt as an intertext for the account of the loss of the Mermedonian prisoners, the Andreas-poet notably reflects this doubled social and spiritual crisis, echoing the key themes of the Beowulf passage through the introduction of the opposition of literal and non-literal wealth, through the emphasis on the fragmentation of the Mermedonian society, and through the description of a partisan recourse to pagan observances in the face of an overmastering threat. The parallels between the two episodes are, however, typically and essentially antithetical. The Danes in Beowulf are saved from the social crisis with which they are afflicted by the actions of the poem’s hero, but the spiritual crisis which threatens them is not resolved. In Andreas, by contrast, the spiritual crisis of the Mermedonians subsumes the social crisis, as their literal hunger is met, ultimately, with the spiritual nourishment of Christian teaching.Footnote 119
It seems very likely that the Andreas-poet would have expected at least some of the audience of the poem to pick up on these parallels. In the course of a discussion of the traditionality of Old English poetic art, Britt Mize has argued that observable verbal connections between Andreas and Beowulf should be viewed as ‘imitative acts’ which signal the Andreas-poet’s ‘participation in an ongoing tradition of poetic discourse’, rather than as deliberately intertextual allusion:
The Andreas poet was not citing Beowulf, I would maintain, or quoting from or alluding to it, but borrowing from it: more precisely, borrowing aspects of its language, or more precisely yet, attempting to redirect and use that language’s tried-and-true rhetorical ability to operate in desirable ways within a highly marked poetic register.Footnote 120
Whilst Mize’s suggestion that traditional and formulaic poetic language was learned through imitation is surely correct, we should not therefore discount the possibility that verbal borrowing between Old English poems might indeed constitute meaningful allusion. More particularly, the connections between Andreas and Beowulf which have been the subject of this study – connections which manifest in structural and thematic parallels rather than in shared lexical elements – strongly imply a more deliberate and calculated form of intertextual referentiality. The close replication of the structure of Beowulf fitt II in fitt X of Andreas cannot, in view of the latter poet’s reliance on another, more immediate textual source, be explained in purely functional terms. The apparently deliberate deviation from this primary source might, on the contrary, be viewed as an invitation to cross-textual comparison at the level of theme and imagery.
The poet’s own attitude towards this source material must, however, remain a matter for speculation. In a recent article, Richard North has suggested that the parallels between the situation of the Mermedonians and that of the Danes in Beowulf comprise ‘mock-epic ridicule’ and a ‘Cervantesque parody’ of the older heroic poem.Footnote 121 But the target of this ridicule, North argues, is not only the pagan cannibals, but also the Beowulf-poet’s own nostalgic ‘evocation of pathos for the pre-Christian condition’.Footnote 122 It is possible, however, to view the connection between the poems in less antagonistic terms. By placing the major crisis of Mermedonian life in juxtaposition with the major crisis afflicting Hrothgar and his people, the poet of Andreas glorifies through comparison the gift of grace afforded to the Mermedonians through their conversion; as a corollary, the pathos inherent in the situation of the Danes is only increased.
